"... If the retconners wipe Dame Joan's fraud from memory and defend him so easily, then what you'd get about this is ‘it's a lot of hard unpaid work and if you think you could organise it better you're welcome to’, or that sort of thing." – Craig Johnson, editor-in-chief, The Comics Village

I’m such a tease. I edited that sentence, with Craig’s permission, and replaced a couple of specific words with general ones. The reason is that I’m currently working on a piece that I believe could be one of the more important articles I ever write, but I’m stymied by problems. Not least the crux of Craig’s comment above. The key problem with this important article is that an icon of the British industry is the target and Craig feels history might repeat itself. The story might get lost in a mixture of apathy and personal attacks. The Walls of Jericho must not come tumbling down!

Let’s briefly, and I mean briefly, recap that old Kev F Sutherland exposé: I revealed he had used charity money, he helped to raise, to pay other costs pertaining to his Bristol Comics Expo. He admitted to it. He was elevated to Christ-like proportions by his acolytes; I was treated like dog shit on shoe of humanity. If an acquaintance broke into your house one day and stole things because he was desperately in debt, would you have been so forgiving?

The upshot was comics fans couldn’t give a flying fuck what dirty dealings are undertaken by anyone in authority as long as they continue to be all right, Jack! Or, if you think you could have done it better, why didn’t you?

It’s the easiest excuse in the world and I see it so often in comics circles, because of the uniqueness of this industry. People’s propensity to offset criticism by turning the criticism around is prevalent here. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if comics fans invented this kind of argument. Someone organises an event, people deem to criticise the event, even possibly constructively, and this horde of holier-than-thou fuckwits come out of the cyber-woodwork and throw the same old chestnut – if you can do better why don’t you?

Isn’t that just a weak and cowardly answer and no way of dealing with anything?

It’s easy to be a critic, but equally it’s just as easy to be the critic’s critic. In fact, it takes less effort. If someone takes the time to sit down and constructively critique something, they’ve invested far more time and thought into this subject than you have by coming back with the one line retort that you think is the hook, line and sinker of an argument stopper, but is in fact facile and not worthy of the respondent’s time or effort.

I also think it’s actually a very unusual form of compliment. They can’t think of anything to counter your critique with anything positive, so instead, they offer this seemingly negative response, but what they are saying is, "I actually agree with you, but I’m not going to be seen agreeing with you because ### thinks I’m a nice guy, so I’ll actually sit on the fence." If these people disagreed with a criticism, surely the best way to combat it would be to say, "No, you talk out of your arse. It was a great event and blah and blah were excellent. I can’t understand why anyone wouldn’t have been impressed by blah." Or some such banally positive comment. But you rarely see that.

About a year before the Dame Joan charity money fiasco, there was a big debate on his Comics 2000 Yahoogroup about improving the Expo; many people had really positive ideas, most of which were either ignored or dismissed as too expensive by His Joanship. Plus there were his busy little acolytes, all singing from the same, ‘if you think you can do better’ hymn sheet, all unaware that they thought they were doing him a favour.

The Joanster was absolutely correct; comics conventions cost a lot of money. His acolytes are also right in suggesting others should have a go. I was part of Dez Skinn’s team that contemplated hiring the Manchester G-Mex centre in the late 1990s to do something really extravagant; but before long we started to realise that doing a convention anything like the USA or France would require massive amounts of cash and ultimately sponsorship from corporations, who would possibly want to bastardise the concept for the sake of commercialism. The logistics were also a nightmare; if you want the big publishers and the top stars you have to book three years in advance and hope there’s slots in the timetable.

I also looked at the possibility of putting on a big comics event in Milton Keynes a couple of times; first was back when I had my shop and the second time was during Borderline, even before I went to Poland and saw a convention no bigger than a UK Expo or UKCAC run with such passion, precision and with so much going on, I realised the UK is just too damned expensive to be anything other than an enthusiastic amateur. Because comics have such an insignificant image in the arts world, I couldn’t even drum up interest from arts councils.

The best way for a convention to be organised is via committee. I know that sounds awfully socialist and 1970s Trades Unions Congress, but a convention should be a huge deal and whoever organises it has to be able to delegate the duties and be happy the delegates are doing the right job. If you aren’t confident with the people acting on your behalf, then they shouldn’t be doing it or you need to take a reality check.

It seems to be traditional that comics events have to be organised by a big personality, but they aren’t necessarily the best people to be doing the job. I’m told that current curator of the Bristol Expo, Mike Allwood, is a nice, affable, understated kind of guy – a sort of Pierluigi Collina of comics without the baldness and mad staring eyes…

The problem is that things like comics conventions become babies to the people organising them; they become over protective, they know what’s best for its development; they really don’t want the opinions of people, because opinions are like arseholes and everyone has got one and they all stink. In fact, it becomes almost like a form of deafness crossed with tunnel vision, even when things start to go horribly wrong they can’t see it nor can they hear anything negative. But that’s the people on the pedestals…

Fans don’t like the boat rocked. The UK comics scene is already something of a shambles in terms of organised gatherings; yes, it’s thriving with creative talent and new burgeoning young people offering a wide variety of skills; but it’s disparate and held together by a framework of Internet forums and sites, pub meets and regional events organised by enthusiastic amateurs, who are trying to do something. They don’t want to hear anything that might possibly put a stop to one of those rare opportunities for a mass countrywide gathering. In the face of threats to their own personal enjoyment, the individual suddenly loses his moral fibre or sense of justice and looks at how it will affect his life and if it affects his life in a negative way then he will not act or comment accordingly.

At least comics fans are consistent with their moral ambiguity. Over the years I wrote Movers & Shakers, there were any number of stories about the private lives of comics creators – most of them benign or amusing, but these were the stories that went down the least well with the punter, Despite some of them being genuinely important, interesting or even funny, it was like dedicated fans had built these people up and they now stood atop pedestals and were untouchable. It didn’t help when some creators felt the same way about themselves.

I never suggested Kev Sutherland was a real crook. I fully accept that what he did with the charity money was out of necessity; his reasoning was that if he didn’t take that money there would be no more expos, but as it was, my breaking that story necessitated his quitting; hence why I was castigated. I can understand why there was gossip columnists not prepared to go near this story because of its sensitivity. I might not be Dame Joan’s biggest fan (and if I get to run this important column you’ll find out exactly why), but he did try something different. He had a vision and he tried to stick by his convictions. However, he ultimately failed because he wanted to do it all and only employ people he saw as unwavering Kevites, except when you’re doing something like that you need to have even your best enemies on board, because it isn’t about you, it’s about the industry. Or has everyone forgotten this?

I’ve just picked comics conventions as an example, there have been, after all, many tales of dodgy dealings throughout the history of British comics. It might be wrong in many people’s opinions to air dirty laundry in public, but that somehow smacks against all kind of rights and privileges, not least freedom of the press and free speech. You might not want to hear about something that could ultimately fuck up your big weekend in Bristol or Brighton, but it has to be said. You might not like being the victim of a crime, albeit one perpetrated out of necessity, but I work in an environment where people are routinely prosecuted for what we call ‘survival crimes’ – stealing food because they have nothing to live on. That’s necessity, but it’s still wrong. For every one of you that wants to put your fingers in your ears and chant gobbledygook whenever a major negative comics story breaks, there are actually people who want it becoming public, because it really is in your best interests to know when something isn’t all sunny in the garden.

What about the "it's a lot of hard unpaid work…" argument? It is. But so is a website, a magazine, a fanzine, or a small press distribution network. The appreciation of comics has many guises and with few exceptions, every ounce of effort costs more than it rewards. The thing I especially like about the argument that it’s a lot of hard work is that the antithesis is no one asked you to do it. This is the crucial issue, nothing is actually asked for. Let’s take a convention out of the equation for the moment; no one demands anything, but the demand is always there, especially if you offer something interesting. Glenn and Craig decided to start Comics Village because they felt there was a hole in the market, a need, a demand; but they didn’t have people queuing up saying, ‘we demand you start an independent oriented website.’ No one asked CBR to start; Dez Skinn didn’t start Comics International because you demanded it, the same way The Human Torch didn’t fight Spider-Man because you demanded it. Chris Staros and Brett Warnock didn’t start Top Shelf for any other reason than believing there was a demand for the type of product they wanted to release. However, when their company hit a severe cash flow crisis, a few years back, they asked you to help bail them out and you did. No one asked them to start it. No one used that as a reason not to help them out.

Yet, no one asked you to do it, when used, is possibly one of the most hurtful, insensitive and nasty things a fellow comics fan can level at someone. This industry and its entire fan structure is based on no one asked them to do it. There wouldn’t be such a huge number of comics websites, fanzines and everything else under the fanatics banner. One of the nastier untold tales from my WEF-based article a few columns back, was when we pitched the idea of ‘Borderline doing a Top Shelf’, because we were just about to lose our genial and virtually free server and with about 10 gigabytes of traffic a month and several key members of the editorial team were already out of pocket. We faced a real dilemma, shut the magazine down, and we were still averaging nearly 100,000 downloads a month, or try to get some money from people to help us pay for our essential overheads – site maintenance.

Danny Black, our PR guru and friendly face of the magazine hit every large website, forum, notice board and group he could find and released a begging letter; explaining the situation and asking for help. This was done about a week before we were due to lose our server, we’d already been shafted by Cool Beans World and over the first year of the magazine, we’d seen a number of people attempt to sabotage our efforts – we should have had the sympathy vote if nothing else. I’d produced a second Press Release for Danny, this was due to go out on the day our server was going and was only going to go out if necessary. Unfortunately, I did a really stupid thing and sent him the PR, then spent about 45 minutes writing an email to him with all the details. In these 45 minutes, he’d written back to me and expressed grave doubts about releasing a second PR so quickly after the first. I was busy writing to him, didn’t check my in-box when a new mail came in and because he didn’t hear back from me straight away, he assumed I wanted it made public. So he did the mass spamming thing again and Warren Ellis and his harpies picked up on it, after already treating the original PR with malevolent disdain. The WEF tore into me big time and I was a sometime visitor on there, trying to help promote the magazine, I was, in their eyes, fair game. The underlying accusation being levelled at me was no one asked you to do it and as much as I argued that no one asks anyone to do anything like this in this industry, the more nasty and semantic the vultures became. Warren sat and gloated, and I really couldn’t understand why, even to the point of writing to him, asking what the fuck was his problem with me.

[This was effectively the end of what had been a pretty friendly working relationship. It had deteriorated almost from the moment Ellis signed the contract to write Excalibur. Up to that point, Warren was friend of CI and on the phone to me at least twice a week, but once he became aware that his star was in ascension, he started to distant himself from CI. It wasn’t immediate; we were still on good terms, personally, at the first Bristol Expo, but by the time he started to gain a huge amount of critical acclaim, his calls dried up, my calls were never returned and there were some thinly-veiled comments on some of his daily email columns about CI and comics journalism. We disappeared off his radar, but continued to plug him as much, if not more, than we did before; but, of course, by this time he realised that because he was now a top writer, we were obligated to do it.]

It all ended very acrimoniously. The Borderline begging incident put the final nails in the coffin; we’d both suffered bereavements in the months that led up to the fight, but we descended into what was essentially a ‘I couldn’t give a fuck about your loss because I’ve had my own loss, mate’ kind of slanging match. I was never going to win and while I never suffered the ignominy of being banned from there, I never showed my lilywhite arse in there ever again.

Over 100,000 people on this planet know Borderline and because they kept coming back they must have enjoyed it – no one asked me to do it – we asked people to download it and they did. Even today, I get comments from people saying that Borderline was a really important contribution to comics history and what a great magazine it was for diversity. We had a huge percentage of pros as fans; and it was the pros that eventually bailed us out of our server dilemma.

The Borderline begging incident raised a grand total of £298, which after PayPal took their percentage, was about £250. This paid for the server for the next 12 months and gave us a little bit of a budget. Of that £298, over half of it came from comics professionals, many of which had been given exposure in our magazine! That is a humbling and also really annoying statistic, but I suppose it was justified, after all, no one asked me to do it. Considering the amount of people who picked up paid work through Borderline’s pages, I suppose in some ways it was a small price to pay to have had your work seen by 100,000 people.

I’m betting the majority who have said, no one asked you to do it, or if you think you could have done it better, why didn’t you think of themselves as intelligent, witty, possibly even gregarious people, yet they sink to lowest common denominator counterarguments. Sometimes you don’t realise how you damage yourselves by protection. I know I’ve said that people who produce things tend to suffer from tunnel vision, but at least public criticism is there, in case anyone wants to have a debate, if it wasn’t then the autocrats will have won. Negative criticism isn’t always said for reaction or because of spite; it can and often has been useful for fixing things; you’ve seen it for years with your favourite comics. So if there’s a breaking news story, one which casts a shadow over your hobby, don’t dismiss it; whatever hurts you makes you stronger.

… comics are so fucking contrary; a reviewer is a critic, yet reviewers are treated with a certain amount of respect, especially if they write coherent sentences; yet a critic without a brief – a rogue, nomad critic, who posts to a newsgroup or a forum is all number of unsavoury Internet neologisms. Don’t comic fans just love to constantly fight the old adage – everyone is entitled to their own opinion?

Phil Hall