CONSTRUCTIVE SEMANTICS

Can They Be Achieved?

HELLO WORLD

Hope you’re doing well. A radius clause is preventing my band from playing the DC/Baltimore area, so I am sitting in an AirBnB in Mineral VA. Could be worse.

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PAGES IN MY INBOX

GEHENNA IN TOKYO available to order! Call your comic shop today!

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THEMES

Some fellas take all bait life puts in front of them.

The tweet above was in response to the assassination attempt on Trump last week. Camp followed it up with some “in Minecraft”-style deniability, but his meaning was clear.

Some people were mad and called for his job.

Anyone who has followed my writing, here or anywhere, can guess my macro view of this. Camp should not lose his job for off-worksite speech. The specifics of that speech do not -I will say this again- do not matter.

Further, I think we need to acknowledge when a joke is just a little too sharp, it is still a joke. Camp may “want Trump to die,” but only in an abstract, thoughtless way. The way you might wish death on someone who cuts you off in traffic. Do you really want someone to die, or are you being hyperbolic and elevated? We all know the answer. And it’s dishonest to pretend Camp, a man who has clearly never been in a fight, has a heart full of violence.

With that out of the way, I thought it would be worthwhile to talk about the rational aspects of the situation.

Camp is engaging in online attention-seeking behavior unbecoming of a man in his 30s. But, as they say, many such cases. What makes it interesting is that he wasn’t hired to be a crashout. Other comic creators have torched themselves, but it was expected that they would. They say provocative things, but they are always (whether they know it or not) always halfway out the door. Camp is different. They’re tryna make him Cates. Camp was supposed to model himself after the shrewd self-interested creators we’ve seen the past decade. Some are political. Until it gets in the way of the money. At which point, quiet.

Guys in his position are expected to ‘put it in the work’ and occasionally throw plausibly deniable shade online. For him to kick the hornet’s nest on a self-righteousness tip in 2026 makes him look like he can’t regulate his emotions. Which is not what he’s been groomed for. So that part is interesting to me on the level that I observe other people’s careers.

What might be of greater interest to readers of this newsletter is what it ‘means.’

Writers do what they do for a number of reasons. To teach is one of those. Camp’s work is only about teaching. HIGHLY didactic. He sees himself as a professor, and you’re his first-year student.

There was a debate a few years ago, “comics have always been political vs no they haven’t.” And it was misguided. Anglosphere comics have always been about educating the reader. This is because comics started as children’s fare. Sometimes it takes a ‘political’ shape, but it’s really all just moralizing. Camp, in this regard, is a very American creator. And that’s the lens through which I had received his work. Another guy who believes his obviously adult readers need to be educated. A moralist with an agenda and a laptop. Got it.

But this tweet from him has me reconsidering what his writing is actually saying. A teacher needs the attention of his students. Once you lose it, good luck. And when you signal that you hate half the class, you’ve certainly lost them. Whatever percentage of readers who did not already subscribe to your worldview are now suspicious of your work. That is not a win.

If he’s really as unconcerned with losing his ‘teachable’ audience as he appears to be, then not the professor I assumed. And if he’s not trying to win hearts and minds, it seems clear he’s signaling for in-group affirmation.

Taking an honest appraisal of my feelings, I don’t know if I respect it more or less than professorship.

Polemics can be exciting. V FOR VENDETTA is fascinating for its new-believer anarchist zeal. HOLY TERROR is much-maligned for its transparently ugly politics. But as a frantic, aggrieved work, it’s impressive. The difference is both those books have emotion. Camp’s work is academic. The Brooklynite retired-student-activist energy of it is unmistakable. Wesleyan Rage doesn’t hit the same way. Take it from a Bard graduate.

Camp works in corporate comics, so nobody will be examining his work as closely as I am here. He will continue to get praise from Twitter and Bluesky. So the only loss here is the few readers that would receive his message and internalize it over time. Which I foolishly thought was the point.

Two things inform my treatment of people I disagree with. I’ve been vegan since high school and have toured the United States every year, save covid era, since 2006. Every day I interact with people who do not share my values. Multiple times a year I am shunted out of whatever silo I manage to create and into America as it is. These experiences have given me the opposite view Camp seems to hold. I do not assume the worst of strangers. Being ‘correct’ buys me nothing if I’m unwilling to engage.

My personal view is there was a rational argument for voting Trump in the first election if you saw him as the anti-interventionist he claimed to be. If your single-issue is no war, he presented as a viable candidate. But since that time there is no good reason to back this president. And like even his most ardent supporters, I find Trump boorish. I am open to plain talk and breaks from decorum, but I only want it packaged with honesty. His self-dealing precludes him from any office with more responsibility than town alderman. I will be happy to see him gone.

Any Trump supporters in my readership, did you feel dehumanized by what I just said? Or are you still willing to hear me out? What if I had led with “Trump should die.” Would that have gone better or worse?

I’ve been in radical spaces since the 90s, and here’s what everyone of this vintage knows: slogans are entry-level. They serve a purpose of prompting curious people to explore ideas. But if you’re still in the slogan stage of things by your mid-20s, you’re consigning yourself to useful idiot status. Condescension and ad hominin attacks are likewise worthless. Shame is worthless. Anyone interested in actual change has to start by acknowledging the personhood of their political enemies. Yes, even the ones unwilling to return the favor.

This is not religious thinking, it is purely practical. My personal beliefs are more extreme than Camp’s urbane DSA boilerplate. But I’ve never won a single person over by closing my tent around those beliefs. There is no Earth 2 on which to put the people you find objectionable. Seeing your countrymen as your enemy is not something you want to play forward. We have to divorce ourselves from the online fantasyland where civil war plays out like a video game cutscene. If things are serious, let us be serious people.

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MORE?

An angle I didn’t expect, but maybe shoulda seen coming:

There was a contingent of commentors who saw this through a gender lens. Gretchen Felker-Martin, you might recall, was released from DC for posts celebrating the death of Charlie Kirk. A number of people believe the fact that Felker-Martin was fired but Camp he will not be is proof that corporate comics is still a boy’s club.

I get the instinct, but it doesn’t map onto what we know.

People close to it have said Felker-Martin was a problem behind the scenes. Difficult to work with and not to be hired a second time. So when she posted what she posted, DC saw no upside to keeping her. Frankly, many observers within comics were shocked because the conventional wisdom is that firing someone with ties to online activists makes for a lasting headache. So it’s believed that she musta been a REAL problem.

[Note: if you choose, you can see the framing of Felker-Martin as a ‘problem’ to be anti-trans or misogynistic in nature. But that doesn’t quite map either, as MANY straights are exited for less. I am completely agnostic on Felker-Martin as I haven’t read her work and I certainly haven’t been her editor.]

Camp isn’t gonna lose his job. Because he sells comic books. That’s it. There is no other lens that applies here. Someday he won’t sell as many comic books, and if he creates a distraction or hassle at that point, well, he’ll be treated like anyone else. Foul Steph Curry, expect a different outcome than fouling a bench player.

Once again, I’ll ask readers to consider the idea that your freedom of expression should not require a union to uphold. Or a Twitter mob. Or even sales history. All off-worksite speech should be protected. But to arrive there will require us to treat it as a value (universal), and not based on our specific moral frameworks. You keep your job because your freedom of expression is a human right, not because you’re ‘correct.’

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MEDIA CONSUMPTION

ROYALS #1 from Kim/Perez is fun, but I felt that the ending provided no hook to bring us back. RECOMMENDED, but I’d like more punch from the last page.

Report To the Commissioner is a bizarre mix of formalism and, I think, accidental experimentation. The voiceover is so stupid it almost becomes artistic. I liked the idea of this film, but that makes for a very mealy-mouthed RECOMMEND.

Mother, Jugs, & Speed is a disposable workplace comedy about ambulance drivers. A good cast makes it fun enough. RECOMMEND.

Box Office Poison is a chronology of Hollywood failures. I found it fun and engaging, and my chief takeaway is that I’m blessed to work in comic books. Filmmakers wait forever to see anything reach completion, have endless stops and starts, and typically don’t get final say over their work or how it is sold. I don’t understand why anyone would do that to themselves. RECOMMENDED.

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FROM THE DESIGN FOLDER

This is the work of Adabana Bloom, an artist I enjoy and am trying to hire for some variant covers. Her pieces have a strong narrative suggestion to them and already feel like the best type of cover.

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THANKS

Feel free to hit the Paypal if you got anything from the newsletter. But I prefer you order GEHENNA IN TOKYO and TIGRESS ISLAND #4. Have a good week. Do for self.

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