Chuck Dixon, the creator of Bane, and an all around comic book legend saw his Alt-Hero: Q crowdfunding campaign shutdown by IndieGoGo on Thursday without any kind of explanation.
We reached out to Dixon to get his thoughts on the matter and one thing is clear. He’s determined. Dixon already has the entire first issue scripted and a good chunk of the second issue. The series is expected to be six issues long with each issue being 24 pages. The entire story will eventually get collected into a graphic novel.
Dixon told us, “I’ll do my work on this project if I have to write it for free.”
He believes the campaign was shut down due to “politics.” And he doesn’t think this will be the last time independent creators who have differing politics will be targeted. We asked him if he believes further moves will be made against creators because of their politics. Dixon responded, “Absolutely. The left will weaponize anything to shut down free speech.”
Dixon did tell us that he will keep using IndieGoGo for other projects he is working on.
“Well, I’m used to being blacklisted. And I suppose IGG can do more. But we received funds on my other projects so they will continue on.”
However, he did note that IndieGoGo denied the funds for Alt-Hero: Q. But once again he showed his determination to get this project completed.
“Qanon will have to be completed by other means as the funds we raised have been denied us. But it WILL be completed. This is a speed bump.”
Dixon is working on a number of different projects besides Alt-Hero: Q. He’s working on Trump’s Space Force with Timothy Lim, Mark Pellegrini, and Brett R. Smith. He’s also working on Ravage: Kill All Men with Benjamin L. Henderson and artists Jimbo Salgado and Bryan Arfel Magnaye. He’s reviving Jungle Comics with Kelsey Shannon and Antarctic Press. He’s also still working on Arkhaven Comics’ Avalon. Not to mention he has his own novel series.
Dixon is more than likely right that this won’t be the last time that a social media, crowdfunding, or payment platform targets an individual or even a company because of their politics. Alex Jones and Infowars were deplatformed from almost all forms of social media earlier this year. Roosh Valdizeh put Return of Kings on hiatus due to being deplatformed on PayPal. Twitter seemingly bans people on a whim.
And this type of behavior does work as Motherboard points out. Juan Donovan of Data Society notes:
“We’ve been running a research project over last year, and when someone relatively famous gets no platformed by Facebook or Twitter or YouTube, there’s an initial flashpoint, where some of their audience will move with them. But generally the falloff is pretty significant and they don’t gain the same amplification power they had prior to the moment they were taken off these bigger platforms.”
It’s definitely a tool that can be used to target your political opponents and it definitely looks like that is what IndieGoGo has done.