Thread by @spacetwinks

y'know on the walk home i thought a bunch more about comics pros feeling willing, able, and safe enough to talk shit about alan moore in public, and it made me think about two real pieces of shit comics doesn't talk bad about

frank miller and john byrne

miller of course being a well known islamophobe who hasn't made a good comic in years but if you search for criticism of him and his bigotry in public from comic pros you'll be searching for a very long time

but byrne in particular standing out in my mind here right now

byrne is a notorious creep and bigot, who among many, MANY appalling statements, has once compared trans people to pedophiles. and it's not like he has some personal social charm that gets his peers to gloss over it, he's also well known as an egomaniac with control issues

and yet, tons of pros will still talk fondly about byrne. from cb "akira yoshida" cebulski (who is still trying to rehire him) to many longtime industry vets, pros will talk positively in a way about byrne that you won't get in so much of the acidity that gets thrown at moore

when i was thinking about it from the angle of frank miller compared to moore, i thought "so long as pros go along to get along, peers'll keep their mouths shut" but byrne very much doesn't go along to get along, he's an enormous asshole.

so why's he get slack and moore doesn't?

you wonder "what did moore do that byrne didn't?" and, y'know, other than produce a comic (more than one) that has longterm influence on the medium and the industry - byrne doesn't talk shit about companies the way moore does.

byrne will talk shit about people, any he sees as personally crossing him or interfering with his ideas on how certain characters should be or even how to talk about comics terms (has said that using the term "word bubble" instead of "balloon" is akin to using the n-word)...

...but he hasn't talked about the business, the companies, the way they exploit people and their creations the way moore does. byrne hates it when people mess with his ideas, but only in the sense of superhero comics canon, not in terms of creator's rights.

there are surely other reasons people give miller and byrne a pass but have so much venom for moore, but it's really hard to ignore how one bigot who goes along to get along, and one bigot egomaniac who still doesn't question the industry, gets more warmth from pros than moore.

it's also very telling that pros feel safe to trash talk moore in public at all - pros will flip-flop between "we can say whatever we want in public" and "you better watch what you tweet if you wanna get work in comics". who pros feel safe to trash is always instructive.

not a peep about miller's bigotry, not a peep about byrne's bigotry, pros whistling and pretending CB cebulski didn't do yellowface, or that bob harras protected eddie berganza, etc, etc, the list goes on for pretty much forever.

but pros feel safe to trash alan moore.

if moore didn't care about creator's rights the way he did, if he stayed in the industry and kept his mouth shut about the way DC and others exploited his work and just kept churning out shit - the rest of the industry would keep their mouths shut about him too.

only because moore has cut himself off from comics do comics pros feel free to spit at him for any reason at all, justified or not. if he stuck around instead? everyone suddenly would find their courage lacking, just like they do with everybody else.