Humanoids Director of Creative Development Mark Waid has been accused of insulting a retailer at the Diamond Retailer Summit that took place last month at Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas, Nevada.
WonderWorld Comics co-owner Dennis Barger Jr. recently took to his Facebook to describe an incident with Waid at the Diamond Retailer Summit. According to Barger, after Waid wrapped up his Humanoids presentation he walked off the stage and then pointed at Barger and told the woman he was with, “See that guy. He’s one of the garbage humans I was telling you about.”
Barger then notes that he and Waid steer clear of each other for the majority of the convention. However, when retailers go and visit each publisher, Barger Jr. encountered more hostility from Waid when he arrived at the Humanoids booth.
Barger states on Facebook:
“As I walk up to Humanoids booth Mark immediately says ‘Go away Dennis you aren’t welcome here’ while making the shoe away gestures with his hands. I laugh at him and say “I’m a customer coming to check out your product, the lady immediately stands next to mark and remains silent. Mark just continues “go away Dennis we don’t want your business, you’re not even a real comic shop anymore” I again laugh at him and talk directly to the lady in hopes that she has sense “so I’m being denied the preview of your comics?”
He continues:
“Mark reaches over and picks up his fcbd comic and throws it at me and says ‘you can have this’. I bat it away from me and say ‘are you crazy throwing a comic at me, and besides I already have those I ordered them because I’m a customer, (looking directly at the lady I say), are you going to let your employees treat a customer like that?'”
He then details how the Humanoids sales representative, Harley Salbacka, responded and states he doesn’t plan on ordering anything from Humanoids due to the encounter.
“She says ‘I’ve known mark a long time and I’ll take his word for it’ so I reply ‘well then you’ve lost a customer forever til you get rid of this hack fraud’ so yeah the reason why I won’t be ordering anything humanoids puts out from here on in is because of the way it’s employee Mark Waid and whoever the lady exec was with him treated me at the diamond retailers summit in Las Vegas 2019.”
We did speak to Barger and he indicated he does plan on still stocking Mark Waid written books. He told us, “Yeah just the Marvel stuff that customers preorder.” He also noted that the woman with Mark Waid was Harley Salbacka, a sales representative for Humanoids.
He did make it clear that Mark Waid “insulted me and assaulted me on Humanoids time.”
Barger had previously shared a video of Waid pitching Humanoids to the various retailers at the Diamond Retailer Summit.
Barger and Waid have had disputes in the past. Back in 2014, Barger and Waid challenged each other to a set of debates over IDW’s Powerpuff Girls #6 variant cover by Mimi Yoon. Barger also criticized Mark Waid for having Scott Snyder as a guest at his store in Indiana while at the same time publicly criticizing DC Comics for their Future’s End comic.
And while Barger and Waid have disputed in the past, his store WonderWorld Comics has done exclusive retailer variants for Waid’s [easyazon_link identifier=”B01LXRO7ZV” locale=”US” tag=”boundingintocomics-20″]Champions #1[/easyazon_link] and [easyazon_link identifier=”B078XLHZSQ” locale=”US” tag=”boundingintocomics-20″]Avengers #675[/easyazon_link].
What do you make of Mark Waid’s alleged behavior towards Dennis Barger?