Do Not Siege Walled Cities - 308
Kaaww! Kaaaw!
BIRDLIKE VISAGE
Thank you to Shawn and Matteo for having me. A really fun conversation.
COOL PAGES IN MY INBOX
These are coming from Al Gofa, who has done career work on this book. I wish he would become a full-time funny animals artist, because he adds a lot to the genre.
SAYING THINGS
There’s some consternation about a 2023 tweet from new RED HOOD writer, Gretchen Felkner-Martin. In the interest of fairness, I’ll post it here:
“Can pretty safely state that bin Laden and I did not, uh, agree on much, but blowing up the World Trade Center is probably the most principled and defensible thing he did.”
Apparently this writer is known in horror prose circles and a minor controversy around the tweet reached spaces like The Daily Mail when it was initially posted. I don’t think it made many radars in comic books.
The content of the tweet is obviously stupid. Even if you hate the concept of the World Trade Center, you’ve still gotta account for the ~3k people who died. And if you believe those (mostly) civilians were valid targets, then you’re technically a terrorist.
Frankly, I don’t believe Felkner-Martin cares that much about global trade or American leadership of it. This is just someone with online brain saying things for the sake of it.
And with that in mind, I’m going to defend her.
I’m a wild boy. And verbal. I say things all the time. Every day. I enjoy farce and edginess. Finger-wagging moralizations and pearl-clutching are for losers, in my view. And while Felkner-Martin seems like a brainless goof, we’d be the assholes if we pretended she actually meant what she said.
Calling for someone’s termination from their job because of things they tweeted is a very 2018 mindset. And that shit was tired then. I didn’t back it when it was becoming a thing and I won’t back it now that it’s a relic.
I do feel some obligation to point out that she will keep her job, after rationalizing the murder of thousands, whereas a similarly goofy loser on the right of the political axis would lose his job for similarly stupid comments. We have to be honest. The ad hoc justification of “but the right says insensitive things about marginalized people” just doesn’t hold water. Marginalized/empowered balance sheets don’t really matter if we’re willing to keep the lady who says the incineration of 3000 is ‘defensible.’
The bigger issue in my view is that this person isn’t a comic book writer, yet they were hired to write comics. Let her say dumb shit all day. It’s a free country. But, please, I beg you, hire people who take this thing seriously.
TOM KING MUST DIE
I know. I know. Why am I amplifying these voices? Well, because my Twitter put me in this hole and I feel obliged as a relatively honest person to point out the obvious:
Tom King is not a war criminal.
The basis for calling him this, and a torturer, is an offhand remark about how torture doesn’t work in real life the way it does in comic books. King was in the CIA, and if you are an enemy of all military and national security agencies and their personnel, then count him as opposition (though long retired). But if you’re a normal person who can stand against the military industrial complex AND recognize not every cog in that machine is an antagonist from Dr Strangelove, then this shit reads insane to you.
Lest anyone think careerism is steering me here, I’ll make it clear I’ve never enjoyed a King book. And because he only does one thing, I doubt very much that will change. I don’t care about him, his work, or any sway he has at DC.
He’s just not a war criminal.
The CIA is only a ‘necessary evil’ if you assume the US must do evil to maintain its dominance, and you presuppose dominance is the goal. I am, I think it should be obvious, against the whole rotten enterprise.
But Tom King is not a war criminal.
We don’t have to say untrue things about each other to justify our dislike of someone’s work, or distaste for their public persona.
The oddest element of this whole thing is the idea that a multinational corporation is the space we need to see our moral betters. Warner-Discovery? An organization with a pay disparity that makes a Rwandan tungsten mine look virtuous? The one in partnership with China’s state-run propaganda outlet? What the fuck are we talking about? If you’re against these monoliths, good on you. But aiming at the near target, a balding middle-aged writer, is high insanity.
THE UNREALITY OF DIGITAL LIFE
If you look at the above and see lunatics you can disregard, you’re doing better than most editors.
There’s pockets of loud people online. Some of them are tied to specific fandoms within comics. And if you’re an editor, this might be some of the only feedback you hear in 2025. Forget sales trends! Numbers are for nerds! Better to listen to BottomF33der69 and TANKEEBEAST420 on Bluesky.
On Twitter there is a vocal contingent of… for lack of a better term… online-progressive X-MEN readers. They know A LOT about X-Men (though nothing pre-Morrison, weirdly) and have very strong opinions on the right and wrong of it all. Is the original conceit of the X-Men (“protecting a world that hates and fears them”) a “colonizer’s fantasy?” They think so. Is it a “dog-whistle appeal to transphobes?” They say it is. Everything is run through a 2025 (though it often feels like 2018) political lens, peppering it all with a type of stifling presentism you only find online.
I should be clear: the progressivism isn’t the problem. It’s the “everything looks like a nail” mentality that inevitably comes from dragging pop-culture through the filter of personal ideologies.
Now imagine you’re an editor. You need to put together a line of books. The first thing you do is call creators people have good memories of. Remender, Hickman, Fraction, and so on. They all tell you they want too much money or too much control. Next, you try reach out to buzzy creators who fall within the corporate Overton Window. Soft, easy politics, or none at all. Definitely nothing unapproved. Does anyone have energy around them right now? Not really? Squint harder. What about that guy who did the book nobody read but critics said was good? Hired.
Now for direction. Sales have been in decline for so long you can no longer ascribe it to anything editorial and instead write it off as a larger trend hitting the entire sector. There’s no lode star here. Nobody knows anything. So who do you listen to? There’s these people online who have been consistent in their criticisms. And they are ‘good people’ so there’s no complications there. And they are loud. So you take what they say under advisement…
WHOOPS.
Turns out listening to the unwell only serves to make you sicker. Sell some comic books. Don’t listen to anyone or anything but common sense and sales data.
PEOPLE I SPOKE TO THIS WEEK
New segment to the newsletter. The idea is to write about people I encountered in real life. This first fella sat beside me at the airport in Dublin. We were on our way to Doha. For me it was a layover. For him it is home.
He was a small-framed man with a short but dense beard. He wore leisurewear and sneakers. He put a Zyn nicotine pouch in his upper lip was we spoke. Beside him was his wife. She was wearing a black abaya and black shayla, with maybe a blue trim, I don’t recall.
He works for the government and was very proud of his brief exchange with Trump when the president visited Qatar. He showed me work photos, which included ceremonial guard duties with very lovely Arabian horses.
He was also proud of Qatar and happy I was asking questions about it. Showed me some footage of the Emir. Beamed when he explained gas, electricity, and healthcare is free in Qatar.
It was a pleasant conversation and I liked him. But I confess I was a little uncomfortable with the way in which he waved his wife away when she would attempt to enter the conversation. A gentle touch to her leg to indicate “men are talking.”
It got me thinking about some of the things that are normal in many parts of the world. An idea reinforced when I attempted to watch Mad Max: Fury Road on the plane.
If you’ve seen the film, you know there’s no nudity here. The blur is to cover the women’s cleavage, midsection, and legs.
MEDIA CONSUMPTION
A chance encounter with a veteran of the Rhodesian War put this movie front of mind. I’d never seen it before. Overlong, but enjoyable. Well-shot and lush. Everyone is the right amount of beautiful or handsome. Hollywood good looks but not beyond believability. Recommended.
Full Contact doesn’t compare to John Woo films, as I believe it was intended to. It’s ridiculous and aggressively stupid at times. But it was fun. Recommended if you’re a Cannon Films type of guy.
HAVE A GOOD ONE
That’s it! Do for self!
Had a fucking blast with the podcast and inevitably had to add it to my regularly scheduled programs. And Stoked for Gehenna next week.
Also, could someone please tell me that there's some leftover merch from the recent Drug Church tour so that I can pick up one of those sweet Bull Terrier tees?