Comicsgate, the culture war rebellion that was so self-defeating that it managed to turn its own harassment campaign against itself still drifts on. The anti-free speech group that engaged in online harassment campaigns against multiple creators (e.g. Magdalene Visaggio, Sue DeConnick, Alyssa Wong, Noelle Stevenson and Ta-Nehisi Coates to name just a few) likes to style itself in the standard alt-right opposite-day rhetoric as being pro-free speech and opposed to “cancel culture” “mobs”. The movement engaged in verbal abuse, rape threats, death threats and doxxing as well as calls for boycotts and campaigns to get creators fired for their views. Connected with the harassment campaigns were various crowd-funding attempts by comicsgate creators such as Ethan Van Scriver to take advantage of the outrage marketing to help fund their own projects. [for examples see the references]
When Vox Day decided to attach himself to the movement [see my coverage in the references] the amount of abuse increased but much of the toxicity turn in on itself with pro-Day and pro-Ethan Van Scriver factions attacking each other. Caught in the crossfire (or fuelling the crossfire depending on who you ask) was our old pal Jon Del Arroz, who after spending a few years on his own harassment/culture-war grift, is currently complaining, as a consequence of his comicsgate experience, about right-wing culture war grifters [references].
Well that’s two paragraphs just to cover the background. What has all that got to do with John Ringo?
Currently there is a crowdunding campaign on Indiegogo to turn John Ringo’s zombie apocalypse Black Tide Rising series into a series of graphic novels [references]. The creators involved are Chuck Dixon, Derlis Santacruz, Brett R Smith, and Dave Dorman.
Veteran writer Chuck Dixon became embroiled in the alt-right comics culture war after being recruited into Vox Day’s Arkhaven Comics ‘Alt Hero’ line of comics. Day, in case anybody here has forgotten, is infamous for his support of terrorist Anders Brevik and called the mass murder of over 70 people (the youngest of whom was 14) “a highly effective blow against the political machine”. Day’s randomly vandalised version of Wikipedia also spreads conspiracy theories that casts people convicted of child abuse as victims of state conspiracies [references]. I mention all that not to say that somehow Dixon is guilty by association but to point out which things bother these ‘alternative voices’ in comics and which things very notably do not seem to bother them at all.
Of the others, Brett R Smith openly aligned himself with the comicsgate campaign eg:
However, Smith’s most notable connection was with the comic Jawbreakers, which he worked on with notable comicsgate figure Richard C. Meyer. Smith also attempted to produce a comic in support of violent far-right protestor Kyle “Based Stickman” Chapman. Chapman, a man with convictions for robbery, theft, and illegal weapon sales, became something of a hero among the alt-right when he was filmed beating protestors with a stick. Chapman later attempted to set up his own quasi-Proud Boys street-fighting spin off called ‘Fraternal Order of Alt-Knights’. Smith said of Chapman: “I concur but we have an army of our own. @BasedStickMan_ @ProudBoysUSA @Oathkeepers all kept the peace. They stood firm & we won the day.” [references]
I suspect that just listing all this stuff in one place and pointing to the connections will engender counter-criticism that doing so is ‘cancel culture’ or stirring up an SJW-mob. It isn’t. If people want to buy a John Ringo story in comic book form then that’s their business but we shouldn’t be shy about discussing the overt and publicly stated views of the creators. If people state they are engaged in a culture war then it is really odd, indeed psychologically unhealthy, to pretend that they aren’t.
Meanwhile, Baen Books is promoting the crowdfunding campaign on Twitter and in their forum.
References
- https://web.archive.org/web/20180914192140/https://www.thedailybeast.com/comicsgate-how-an-anti-diversity-harassment-campaign-in-comics-got-uglyand-profitable
- https://hornet.com/stories/comicsgate-harassment-explainer-two/
- https://www.vox.com/2018/7/18/17585950/she-ra-redesign-controversy-netflix
- https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/41132-comicsgate-explained-bigots-milkshake-marvel-dc-gamergate
- https://bleedingcool.com/comics/fake-tweet-discredit-marvel-comics-writer-alyssa-wong/
- https://camestrosfelapton.wordpress.com/2018/09/04/fascist-feuding-fuels-further-fuss/
- https://camestrosfelapton.wordpress.com/2018/09/05/stray-popcorn-observations/
- https://camestrosfelapton.wordpress.com/2018/09/06/comicsgatecomicsgategate-versus-comicsgatecomicsgatecomicsgate/
- https://camestrosfelapton.wordpress.com/2018/09/07/maybe-the-true-scandal-was-comicsgatecomics-gategate-comics-all-along/
- https://delarroz.com/2020/08/27/the-corporate-culture-war-grift/
- https://www.jimchines.com/2018/01/jon-del-arroz/
- https://delarroz.com/2020/08/27/the-corporate-culture-war-grift/
- https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/black-tide-rising-volume-1-graphic-novel?#/
- https://web.archive.org/web/20200720213128/http://voxday.blogspot.com/2017/05/mailvox-breivik-saint-or-monster.html
- https://dorisvsutherland.com/2018/06/14/infogalactic-and-the-child-abuse-cover-up/
- https://twitter.com/search?q=comicsgate%20(from%3ABrettRSmith76)&src=typed_query
- https://www.dailydot.com/parsec/jawbreakers-comic-comicsgate-antarctic/
- https://graphicpolicy.com/2017/07/29/the-alt-rights-hero-based-stick-man-is-coming-to-comics/
- https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Kyle_Chapman
- https://twitter.com/search?q=Based%20Stickman%20(from%3ABrettRSmith76)&src=typed_query
- http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/crime/meet-the-based-stickman-173908
- https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2017/04/25/new-fight-club-ready-street-violence
- https://twitter.com/BrettRSmith76/status/858368935615266820