No, Mark Waid Having A GoFundMe Isn’t A Win For Comicsgate
Last week, Mark Waid launched a Go Fund Me in conjunction with the lawsuit filed against him by Diversity & Comics. Immediately, hot takes on Twitter and YouTube appeared, slamming Mark Waid, making complete conjecture about the situation from claiming he’s broke to claims that the industry doesn’t support him at all to the fact that this is just to raise “settlement money”. The easy thing to do as a personality in the industry right now is to go along with the flow of these comments — the problem is, the hot takes and zingers in this instance are just wrong.
It’s pretty standard course of action to launch a Go Fund Me in a lawsuit like this, especially if someone has a sizable fanbase and presence. Why? Because as a person in such a position he can quickly and easily raise money to fund the lawsuit without having to go to his employers, without having to call on their insurance, without having to come out of pocket himself. That’s a smart thing to do in this instance, and anyone in his position would do the same (including D&C who now has a GoFundMe headed by Ethan Van Sciver on the opposite side). In any instance, this doesn’t mean a “loss” for the person having a Go Fund Me. We can’t glean anything from the potential court case on this matter.
In fact, we have very few facts about what the court case is, what the details of the evidence is, or how this is going to go.
What we do know, is there’s tremendous support for Mark Waid. In just 3 days, he raised over $60,000 as of this writing from 1,600+ backers. That’s a crazy amount of money. What it does is shatter the narrative of “this is a consumer revolt apolitical!” on the Comicsgate side, making it difficult for Comicsgate to keep up that veneer.
I’ve been saying from the start that a “consumer revolt” isn’t necessary without the context of politics. There’s hundreds of books on the shelves each week and having a “revolt” to simply want “more left-center leaning comics” makes little to no-sense. The revolt existed because right wingers were forced out of the industry and into their own thing.
What we see here is there is no unified “consumer.” The IndieGoGos raised money from people wanting to make a political statement against the industry first and foremost. Now, the supporters of the industry want to make a statement about the folk making a statement. It shows that we have a completely divided consumer base. Lots of people in the camp of the left. Lots of people in the camp of the right.
Everything is political these days, and this is just another example of the way our society is collapsing. We can’t talk together anymore, outrage culture is at an extreme, and both sides have plenty of support for the people perceived as their champions.
What I have and always will be concerned about is that this all takes the focus off of comics. We’ve now got teams competing politically where the ComicsGate side is still pretending like they’re not in a political civil war — dividing over politics internally — while going to the crowdfund well now for legal fees instead of making comics. This is going to slow the rate of new indie comics produced because the money’s getting tied up in legal Go Fund Mes.
No one’s losing here except for comic book readers on both sides pushing money that could be spent on comics into a battle of egos.
I call it like it is regardless of what’s going to be the “popular hot take.” I’m blacklisted from not only mainstream publishers, but also all of the major comicsgate YouTube channels because I will always choose truth over having to toe the line. That’s a big reason to read my work.
This article was originally published on DelArroz.com and was reprinted with permission.
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