Unca Cheeks the Toy Wonder's Silver Age Comics Web Site!
. . . or: "When Fanboys Turn To Hate Speech.
. . and Why."
(Part Two)
"To the service of the most wildly eccentric thoughts, he brings the acerbity of a bigot [...] his mental temperament is that of the first Spanish Grand Inquisitor. He is a Torquemada of aesthetics [...] he would burn alive the critic who disagrees with him."
-- Max Nordau (German physician and author),
on John Ruskin (British critic); 1889
Subj: [withheld]
Date: 97-10-04 00:27:00 EDT
From: [name withheld]
Message-id: <19971004202501.PAA24086@ladder03.news.aol.com>
Hal Jordan s _ cks d_ ck.
There you go. No smiley face.
[NOTE: letters removed from original posting by this site's author.]
We were talking about the willful and unprovoked ("speak[ing] to or treat[ing] with scornful abuse") of others... a.k.a., the insulting of others...
... about a professional comics editor, with a genuine; pronounced; and wholly inexplicable inability to tolerate even the most hesitant and half-hearted of criticisms (""Perhaps you'd have room [for my comics] if you dropped your subscription to W.E.T.R.A.T.S. Monthly?")...
... about a flinty, Gollum-like cadre of online trolls ("I told you. I troll. Yes, I take pleasure in your misfortune"), mouthing inanities as to how they are the ones who've been "victimized" on a message board set aside ("For Fans of Green Lantern: Past, Present or Future")...
... and -- of course -- we were talking about the much-bandied, ill-used notion of "the truth."
Very well, then.
The truth.
"Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth."
-- Franklin Delano Roosevelt; radio address; 10/26/39
There are several persistent (and willfully, gleefully engineered and perpetuated) fallacies; brute distortions of plain fact; and (why mince words; we're all seekers of truth here, after all) demonstrable, garden variety lies the online troll brigade never tire of attempting to lend the hard-won currency of legitimacy, by dint of idiot repetition.
Let's subject these to a little hard scrutiny, shall we...? 
1.) "H.E.A.T. takes every opportunity to insult GREEN LANTERN editor Kevin Dooley, and series writer Ron Marz; and insulting working comics professionals is terrible, awful online behavior."
This plainchant first sprang up when one member of H.E.A.T. opined, on the GREEN LANTERN message board, that -- in his estimation; after having read every issue to date of the series' present-day incarnation -- messieurs. Dooley and Marz were both "hacks."
For this argument to carry any real "heft" or merit whatsoever, then: two other things must also be equally "true":
a.) The anti-H.E.A.T. cabal must -- of a necessity -- not engage in precisely the same behavior which they (ostensibly) find so abhorrent; and --
b.) It must be demonstrable, in turn, that calling a "working professional" a "hack" (or any other "mean name," for that matter) is "out-of-step" (if you will) with the traditional and established parameters of behavior within the fraternity of "working professional" writers themselves.
Let's take those in reverse order, shall we...?
"A hack writer who would not have been considered a fourth-rate in Europe, who tricked out a few of the old, proven "sure-fire" literary skeletons with sufficient local color to intrigue the superficial; the credulous; and the lazy."
-- William Faulkner; discussing Mark Twain
"An idiot child, screaming in a hospital."
-- H.G. Wells, reviewing the works of George Bernard Shaw
"The stupid person's idea of the clever person's 'writer.' "
-- Elizabeth Bowen, on the matter of novelist Aldous Huxley
"He is not a proper person to be admitted into the society of respectable letters, his being the most perverse and malevolent fictions that ill-luck has thrown my way."
-- William Wordsworth, on the writings of William Hazlitt
"A reptile, marking his path wherever he goes and breathing a mildew at everything fresh and fragrant; a midnight ghoul of literature, preying on rottenness and repulsive filth. A creature hated by his nearest intimates [...]"
-- Walt Whitman, blowing a "kiss" in the direction of
Robert Louis Stevenson
... and: a little closer to "home," comics (and GREEN LANTERN)-wise:
"I am a DC kid... and I'd like to slap into a coma the feebs at DC who thought it was cool to turn Green Lantern into a wimp, a drunk, a psycho and, last time I checked, an airhead teenager."
-- noted "magic realism" scribe and essayist Harlan Ellison
"Small sales didn't kill Hal Jordan; small minds did."
-- comics scripter and novelist John L. Byrne
Not that any of this matters overmuch, of course...
... given the demonstrable fact that the raving "anti-Hal Jordan" yahoos indulge in precisely the SAME behavior which they find so "deplorable" in others, their thin-skinned selves:
Subject: Re: Broome Was a Hack
Date: Mon, Nov 24, 1997 13:27 EST
From: [name withheld]
Message-id: <board-a-folder-001b1cf3-msg-001c0a53-at-34882e3a@aol.com>
Broome is a comic book writer. Period. He is not above me busting his chops for a really crappy story.
[AUTHOR'S NOTE: check out the title of the thread, here. Apparently, the word "hack" is only an unforgivable insult some of the time...]]
Subject: [withheld]
Date: Mon, Feb 2, 1998 02:27 EST
From: [name withheld]
Message-id: <19980202072701.CAA06865@ladder03.news.aol.com>
Wait a minute, you're saying such fops as Louise Simonson, Dan Jurgens, Chuck Dixon, and David Michelinie would do BETTER than Ron Marz?
Subject: [withheld]
Date: Thu, Aug 13, 1998 13:49 EDT
From: [name withheld]
Message-id: <19980813202501.PAA24086@ladder03.news.aol.com>
Steve Englehart is a bitter old hack. He shot his wad a decade ago.
So... now...
... let me make absolutely, 110% certain that I understand this:
The fact that one particular member of H.E.A.T. elects to utilize his constitutional, God-given right to designate the published works of a "working professional" as "hackwork" means that it's okey-dokey to demonize and slander and dog-pile onto the poor guy (and his friends) for over two years, non-stop...
(e.g.: Subject: Re: [withheld]
Date: Wed, Dec 30, 1998 16:08 EST
From: [name withheld]
Message-id:
<19981230160812.01042.00000279@ng-cg1.aol.com>
Poor baby. Does the delusion that you'll have your sexual target back in print keep you up at night?)
... but it's (apparently) hunky-dory for them to opine, in turn,that ("[John] Broome was a hack"; that "Steve Englehart is a bitter old hack," who "shot his wad a decade ago"; and -- towering hypocrisy! -- that no comic book writer is "above me busting his chops for a really crappy story"...?!?)
Can you believe these guys...?!?
Accusation the First, then: dismissed.
If the would-be "prosecutors" don't take the (alleged) "crime" seriously enough to avoid nearly daily indulgings in same...
... then I (for one) feel comfortable in favoring their little kangaroo
court with a clear and unobstructed view of my own middle finger.
Ohhhhhh... you're all really going to love this next one:
2.) "H.E.A.T. continually calls present-day "Green Lantern" Kyle Rayner Really Mean Names; therefore, we are altogether justified in calling them Really Mean Names. Neener-neener-neener."
Merciful, bleeding Jesus.
For those of you out there who may well be goggling incredulously at that last one -- wondering if, perhaps, you may not have read it aright -- allow me to elucidate the particulars a bit more succinctly, on your behalf:
"Kyle Rayner" is a f-i-c-t-i-o-n-a-l character.
F-i-c-t-i-o-n-a-l characters HAVE no feelings to "bruise" or "trample upon."
The folks who post on most message boards, however... are R-E-A-L people.
R-E-A-L people -- by way of simple, straightforward comparison -- DO have real feelings.
I know you good, intelligent folks out there readily grasp these simple, commonsense essentials...
... but -- apparently; from all available evidence -- the "anti-H.E.A.T."
brigade is having just a wee bit more difficulty with said concept(s).
Did somebody say: "Examples, please..."?
Subject: [withheld]
Date: Thu, Mar 26, 1998 08:28 EST
From: [name withheld]
Message-id: <1998032613283301.IAA10565@ladder01.news.aol.com>
Haven't been following the discussion, have you? That's ok, we won't laugh at you for that. This time.
Subject: [withheld]
Date: Tue, Dec 23, 1997 03:14 EST
From: [name withheld]
Message-id: <19971223081401.DAA19795@ladder01.news.aol.com>
No doubt you're still sore from your father's molestation lessons.
Subject: [withheld]
Date: Sat, May 23, 1998 11:09 EDT
From: [name withheld]
Message-id: <1998052315090600.LAA10844@ladder01.news.aol.com>
Play (with) thyself some more why dont'cha.
Subject: [withheld]
Date: Wed, Jun 3, 1998 17:21 EDT
From: [name withheld]
Message-id: <1998060321215500.RAA14711@ladder01.news.aol.com>
God obviously wasted his humanity on you, you bitter little elf.
Subject: [withheld]
Date: Sun, Apr 26, 1998 21:40 EDT
From: [name withheld]
Message-id: <1998042701400900.VAA21434@ladder03.news.aol.com>
HAL IS DEAD!
AND NO-ONE CARES!
IF THERE IS A HELL!
I'LL SEE YOU THERE!
An important point to bear in mind, throughout all of the foregoing (and the even more brackish and fetid message board samplings yet to come) is this:
No H.E.A.T. member has ever -- EVER -- spoken to any message board correspondent in such a manner... no matter how blunt or craven the provocation.
Search the message board archives as far back as pleases you. Comb through every last posting, from the dawn of DC COMICS ONLINE to this very nano-second in time. It is with no little amount of pride in my fellow members that not one of them has EVER posted anything as nakedly ugly as "No doubt you're still sore from your father's molestation lessons"; "IF THERE IS A HELL!/I'LL SEE YOU THERE!" or "Kyle Rayner s _ cks d_ ck."
No.
We leave that sort of thing to our poor, put-upon, "victimized" message board brethren.
... and what sort of hideous, unspeakable variety or sort of "name-
calling," re: Kyle Rayner, on the part of H.E.A.T. has occasioned this bilious, concentrated out-pouring of sheerest loathing and contempt, I hear you ask...?
One of our members occasionally refers to the aforementioned Mr. Rayner (a comic book character, I remind you) as...
... "the Flea."
That's it.
That -- in a nutshell -- is the "insult" which served as unlikely genesis for all of the aforementioned hate speech.
As mentioned previously: I'm no psychiatrist, after all...
... but: I think the clinical term "thin-skinned" might well apply, in this instance especial.
If only because the phrase "full-bore loony" has not yet -- as of this
writing; to the best of my knowledge -- been formally accepted as a clinical
term by the AMA.
Accusation the Second: outta here.
"No doubt you're still sore from your father's molestation lessons."
"Peaceable, fun-loving guys."
Jesus.
Who's kidding whom, here...?
... but wait: it gets even better yet.
That whole "Try and show a little simple, human decency [re: the juxtaposition of "Kyle Rayner" and "flea" in the same sentence] you big mean H.E.A.T. brutes, you" thing...?
Apparently: said "transgression" only works one way.
It's just different, somehow, when you're wearing the other team's jersey.
Turn to Page Three of WHEN IN DOUBT: TELL THE TRUTH...
... and see just how contemptibly and abominably low some individuals are willing to go, when "debating" with others...
... as well as the interesting little "spin" they're willing to put on the matter, when stubborn little facts prove an impediment, otherwise.
Pinch your noses, people.
This one is Major League ugly.
"When In Doubt: Tell the Truth": PAGE ONE
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