Yesterday, Hannibal Tabu’s longtime, often strongly worded “The Buy Pile” created a bit more controversy than even he is used to. In a spot that he normally uses to kill books – his “no…just no” section for the worst books of the week – he shared an anecdote about this week’s rather universally beloved Image Comics debut “Pretty Deadly”. He said:
The retailer at Comics Ink made the case that “Pretty Deadly” #1 has superseded “The Monarchy” as the worst comic ever. The case that was made was that this comic combined “psycho babble, [being] pretentious, bad writing and meandering.” While it has only one issue to “Monarchy’s” twelve, it is remarkable in its rough hewn, unfinished looking art, drifting narrative and tedium. Said retailer tore a copy of the issue up in front of customers, stating there’s “nothing in there that makes you want to pick up the second issue.” That’s hard to argue against.
Given the rather potent, incendiary nature of that paragraph, the comics Twitter went absolutely bananas in response. Ales Kot, in particular, challenged journalists, readers, creators and retailers to create a better dialogue, but then unleashed a huge wave by asking whether this act was driven by the quality of product, or by misogyny?
This led to a deluge of conversations that went in all kinds of directions. Was it because of misogyny? Does Image make enough books with women? Does Image care about new creators anymore? Things got heated, they got massively off topic, and in my opinion they brought up a lot of topics that ignore the most likely reason why exactly this purveyor of comics did what he did: he hated “Pretty Deadly”.
While he should be smarter than that, the person who runs Comics Ink likely got into being a comics retailer because he started out as a fan. Comics fans are notoriously passionate and sometimes borderline insane, and this leads them to actions that are driven by fanboy rage rather than business logic. The fan clearly won against the businessman, in this situation.
That’s the kind of businessman who robs himself of potential revenue and the kind who poisons his own customer base against a title that has a ton of buzz behind it. He’s a damn fool, and someone who makes awful business decisions that are impacted by the passion that got him in business to begin with.
I regularly hear employees of my shop talking readers out of buying comics, outright disparaging the work of highly respected creators – both male and female, creator-owned and not – to customers who are asking questions about comics they want to buy. To hear something like what the Comics Ink guy did doesn’t surprise me. It makes me wonder how often things like this happen without someone like Hannibal Tabu to make it public.
But to jump to the misogyny angle, or to ask if Image doesn’t support female creators (when they themselves published the very book we’re talking about), due to this event? That’s maybe more bizarre to me.
After all, we’re a fan base who filed a petition to get Marvel to cancel and retcon “Avengers Arena” because people didn’t like how the book was treating fictional characters. Is it really so outlandish that a fan, even one who owns a business, would tear a comic to pieces because it made him mad?
Not everything that goes wrong in comics is because of sexism or racism. I have no doubt that there is the fair share of it in this boys club of a medium, but we never heard of Comics Ink burning copies of Kelly Sue DeConnick and Emma Rios’ “Osborn” mini-series, and when you look at their Yelp page, Comics Ink has several positive reviews from women who shop in the store. Let’s disparage the guy for being an awful, foolish businessman, but let’s dial it back on calling the guy a misogynist.
Note: Rich at Bleeding Cool tracked down the folks at Comics Ink for comment, as well as Hannibal Tabu, and I’d say its well worth a read.
Second note: Kelly Sue DeConnick commented on the whole deal on Tumblr. Definitely worth a read.