Tom Spurgeon On Unhealthy Comic Book Arguments

Over on his blog, Tom said (in discussing a Blog@ thread I was involved in):

All that being said, when I dipped into the seething anger in the comments thread of this post over what are at least to me bizarre and ridiculous "issues" like the Susan Storm Skrull, a light went off in my head. The desire to create a community in something as inappropriate in a comic book store (or to judge such a place on the expectations of community) and the desire to create one on-line where the shared values and relevant items of discourse depend on superhero comic book ephemera -- these desires have to be related, and neither one is likely to be healthy for anyone involved, be they outraged, hurt, disappointed or legitimized by the outcome. Okay, I don't get an honorary PhD from Bowling Green's pop-culture department for that one, but I personally never thought of it that way before. It has to be possible to read, buy and talk about comics without investing every human transaction of that type with the drama and import of one's core self-worth. If nothing else, it bleeds attention away from things like systemic reform and advocacy according to higher, more ethical standards by cuffing almost every issue about the head and shoulders until it turns into one more referendum on "what happened to me."

Besides mentioning a topic that wasn't even really involved in the discussion he linked to (the heavily referenced blog topic was when Val went off on an ill-advised tangent on black characters in the DCU), I think I understand where he's coming from...even if I don't necessarily agree.

I have a feeling that he might count some of my posts as having "seething anger" (even if I don't see it), let's subtract myself as a topic from the thread. When we do that, we get a discussion about whether moderation is good or not. We get one of the sources of the cited change to moderation being trying to avoid admitting a mistake by shifting the topic to a specious argument of racism.

That's like trying to avoid being stabbed in a knife fight by changing the weapon of choice to hand grenades. If you're going to introduce such a volatiles subject, you need to be ready to give it its due consideration...or else it will blow up in your face.

So...we get someone discussing topics that tend to reach outside of comics even when being discussed within (black tokens and other racial issues), but the idea is that you should walk away without discussing it at all? That you should never try to engage someone you disagree with in a conversation? I don't really get it.

It seems to be an isolationist position. Keep walking through your day without giving a second thought to anyone holding an opinion that might even be offensive to you (in fairness, Tom mentioned the Sue Storm Skrull thing, I know...but that had little-to-nothing to do with the discussion he cited as the inspiration for his comments).

What I get even less is Valerie D'Orazio linking to it as if it is the point she's been trying to get across to folks. She's MAYBE once tried to pull a "agree to disagree", but even in that thread she surrounds it with such snark that you couldn't possibly give her the benefit of a doubt that she was trying to withdraw when she felt she was at her breaking point. You want to talk "seething anger"? I think these are textbook examples. It wasn't earned or deserved by the person she fired it off at.

But maybe it is a position she's recently adopted after the calm that must have come from moderated her comments. I mean that sincerely. At this point, people who disagreed with her aren't likely to still be fighting to get their comments in...at least not if they are aware of everything that came before moderation. I think I'm even seeing comments that she probably doesn't love. Maybe she's purged the people that she'd never be able to address seriously, at this point, and will slowly build back to having people that disagree with her that she doesn't have a pre-existing history with. Maybe she'll be in a better place when the next Pedro, David, Matt, or Chris try to have a discussion with her and she won't immediately dismiss them as internet trolls.