Disappointment

I read an article on Buzzscope last night that really got me angry. Ronee Garcia Bourgeois interviewed three women on sexual harassment in the comics industry. You can read it here. There’s no point summarizing it; the women talk about their experiences, and as expected, reading it made me angry. Angry that people treat other people this way, just because they’re women. Angry because I’m an outsider who likes to think that the comic book industry is better than that, even though I know it’s not. Angry because we’ve all still got a long way to go before we’re civilized.

You can read it for yourself. You’ll get angry too.

But underneath that anger is a real sense of disappointment. I’d heard one of these stories before, and I’d love to not believe it. The offender in question is a guy whose work I’ve admired since I could read the credits in comic books, even if I wasn’t quite sure what an “editor’ did. And it bothers me that he personally doesn’t live up to what I’d built him up to in my head, what even other anecdotes I’d hear about him billed him as. I met him briefly when I was in high school, and he was very nice to me and my friend, showing us a big wall of upcoming comics covers.

Then again, I was a teenage boy. I didn’t have anything to worry about.

This guy was, in my opinion, one of the best editors comics ever had. The comics he produced were exactly what the ten-year-old me craved. Certainly, he was one of the people who made the stories so compelling that they’re still my hobby, nearly 30 years later.

And yet.

Everyone is entitled to feet of clay. No one is perfect. But in some people, that’s what you want from them. That’s what you expect, because you do idolize them, as silly as that sounds. They’re, in some way, your heroes. And when they fall short of that ideal—as this one certainly did—it hurts. This isn't simply a matter of a human failing. It's manipulative and it's mean and I don't have any sympathy for it. Everyone should be better than this.

Certainly, there’s more at stake here than my feelings. People have been hurt or traumatized in genuine, direct ways. I haven’t had that experience, and wouldn’t presume to speak for those who have.

But I have to ask: if you build your career spinning the adventures of true-blue superheroes, paragons of virtue and honor, shouldn’t that sense of right and wrong rub off on you? Because it rubbed off on me, and I just read the stuff.

Rob

(Via Johanna. Heidi at The Beat also has a thoughtful (and far less self-absorbed) perspective on the topic.)