Multiple CBR Writers Attack Eric July’s Isom #1 Campaign, One Calls Customers “Brainwashed”

Jon Del Arroz |

Aug 22, 2022

Two writers from the alleged comics news website CBR attacked Eric July’s Isom #1 campaign this weekend. Both writers from the CBR site took exception to the pricing of July’s graphic novel at $35, making statements that allude to him ripping off his customers.

CBR’s David Harth tweeted to one of July’s fans, “You can go get Saga Volume 1, over a hundred pages of excellent comic, for 9.99. The Mary Deaths of Laila Starr for 13 bucks. Watchmen for 25 bucks. This isn’t a good value, you’re just brainwashed.”

Harth compares the value of reprints of corporate properties to a self-made pre-order campaign when it would be more apt to compare what Eric July is doing to Kickstarter or IndieGoGo projects of the same length of 96 pages.

One recent popular crowdfund, Skies of Fire on Kickstarter, offered their basic books of similar length for $30, a similar price-point to the Isom #1 book. Mark Waid’s Irredeemable campaign had a reprint campaign with its first issue, a standard 24-page comic, at $20. In comparison to those, July’s Isom seems to be on par with what independent comics charge.

Another CBR writer, Anthony Gramuglia, joined in the attack of July, tweeting, “’Just because I deliberately made it unaffordable to purchase doesn’t mean that it’s too expensive.’ One of the best superhero comics ever written, All-Star Superman, costs roughly $30 on Amazon when not on sale. It’s 300 pages.”

David Harth continued an argument with Eric July once the Isom creator saw the tweets attacking his book. Harth accused July of “picking on a nobody” for replying to the attacks on his unreleased comic book. He also illuminated that there appears to be a policy at CBR not to cover right-leaning books.

“We don’t cover ComicsGate either, mostly because both you and them are anti-all of the things we write about,” he tweets. The site used to be called “comic book resources,” before it rebranded to CBR, and one might expect that they would be writing about comic books and comic news, of which Isom #1 should qualify as the book has sold more than 50,000 copies from 40,000 customers as of this writing.

Very few comics from Marvel or DC reach such a threshold in sales, which makes this one of the top-selling books of the year.

On a live stream addressing the topic, July posits that CBR is admitting that they’re a political operation and not there to cover comics. His hypothesis is based on one of Harth’s tweet which states, “That would be like asking why Bernie Sanders doesn’t have a column in a right wing publication.”

The implication is that CBR is a left-wing political blog, not a comic book news website. If true, this marks a rare moment where the mainstream entertainment media admits its political biases.

It appears as if there is a coordinated narrative being crafted by the mainstream media against Eric July’s comics. July’s theory, according to a recent live stream, is that companies for these alleged news platforms get access to Marvel and DC books and act as mouthpieces of those corporations in exchange.

On his live stream on Sunday, August 21st, July said of the matter, “This is the top story in comic books, because obviously of how many s**t we’ve sold. But look at how it’s happened. It’s the most organic story that could possibly exist.”

He continues, “Not asking anyone to cover this shit. Not paying anybody in advertisement. All I did was put the s***t out there and I self-promoted. That’s it.”

With the success of Isom #1’s sales exceeding all but the very top-selling issues in comics, it is one of the biggest stories in all of comics news. It seems dishonest to try to suppress the story by not reporting on it, which would be a disservice to readers of a comics’ news website.

Fortunately, readers have Bounding Into Comics, which will cover all comic book news, regardless of the political persuasion of the character.