Welcome back to The Rundown, our daily breakdown on comic news stories we missed from the weekend. Have a link to share? Email our team at rundown@multiversitycomics.com.
– The Comic Book Legal Defense fund is coming under some blowback after releasing a statement supporting Simon & Schuster’s right to publish Milo Yiannopoulos’s upcoming memoir, Dangerous. (The memoir is not a comic book or graphic novel.)
Yiannopoulos is a member the neo-Nazi nationalistic white supremacist group who call themselves the “alt-right”. (He disputes the classification but not only is he the tech editor for the proudly “alt-right” website Breitbart, he has also said such comments as “America has a Muslim problem”, told women to stop going online so “[He], Donald Trump, and the rest of the alpha males will continue to dominate the internet without feminist whining”, and was instrumental in harassing Leslie Jones last year on Twitter.) After word was released that a subsidiary of Simon & Schuster, Threshold Editions — which tends to publish books from other far-right individuals like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and former Vice President Dick Cheney (who has literally shot a man in the face) — protests erupted online, started by the Chicago Review of Books. The online literary review site said they would not offer any coverage of Simon & Schuster books throughout 2017. (Carolyn Kellog at the Los Angeles Times offers an overview of the entire situation) The protest was especially focused on the quarter-million dollar advance Yiannopoulos received for the book, money the subsidiary gave him to spread his generally hateful comments. Many have already claimed to stop donating to the CBLDF because of this, although the statement was issued with the National Coalition Against Censorship and other anti-censorship organizations.
In response to the backlash, the CBLDF issued another statement about their statement supporting Simon & Schuster’s right to publish. “The statement cautions that attempts to suppress abhorrent ideas don’t defeat those thoughts. Often, those attempts do the opposite, and serve to embolden those who express such ideas,” the CBLDF said. “Citizens have the right to boycott any organization they wish. But boyvotts won’t defeat the the ideas we disagree with, only better ideas will. Meanwhile, some boycotts, such as the one proposed against Simon & Schuster, will adversely affect books by members of marginalized communities also published by the house.”
Simon & Schuster and its subsidiaries publish work from authors like Stephen King, Ursula K. Le Guin, R. L. Stine, Hope Larson, Jimmy Carter, Hunter S. Thompson, and Hillary Clinton.
– The CW has renewed all its superhero shows for 2017, including Arrow, The Flash, and Supergirl. They are also relaunching Constantine as an animated movie, premiering on the digital, CW Seed.
– Gerard Jones, the comics historian and writer, was arrested on December 29, 2016 on charges of possession and distribution of child pornography. The news, however, wasn’t released until last week. Police suspect he may have put some of this material on YouTube. Jones pleaded not guilty and was arraigned on Thursday, January 5. His lawyer said “his client denies all of the allegations” and stressed Jones has had “no prior criminal record.”
– Marvel is going to stop including a free digital copy code of their comics. Instead, all their comics will come with a code allowing users to download and access older comics “existing moments into the Marvel Universe readers may have missed in the past.”
– Huntsville, Alabama’s DeeP Comics & Games underwent some remodels last Friday.
