Douchebags of Comics
Douchebags of Comics is a series of trading cards I’m working on as a side project.
It seems that the comics industry just harbors a fairly large number of douchebags of all different sorts. From people who I think have pretty much lost their link to reality, to bigots and general assholes, to people who just suck in a way that’s holding comics back, the world of comics has representations for people all along the spectrum of douche. Obviously it all comes down to my opinion and people I think deserve a card, but a whole lot of people already have had suggestions about people they consider douchebags, and I love hearing those suggestions, so send them along if you think of one! As I started doing portraits of these people for fun, I realized that making the portraits into a set of trading cards would be a great way to use them and let people have fun with them. I’m shooting for a goal of 52 Douchebags portraits, The Douche 52, and when it’s all done I think I’ll also make it into a set of playing cards.
I’m creating this page to keep an updated list of possibilities for cards, and also to link to the discussions and blogs about it as the project goes on.
You can click here for a list of all the posts I’ve made under the category of Douchebags of Comics.
Already have illustrations for cards:
Definitely receiving cards:
Dave Sim
Jim Davis
Chuck Dixon
Stan Lee
Jim Lee
Gareb Shamus
Rob Granito
Mark Millar
Joe Quesada
Rick Worley
Under consideration:
Jim Shooter
Bill Willingham
Mort Weisinger
Jeph Loeb
Brad Meltzer
Mark Bagley
John Byrne
Geoff Johns
James Kochalka
J. Scott Campbell
Alvin Buenaventura
Ethan Van Sciver
Daniel Clowes
Jonathan Letham
Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson
Steve Geppi
Rick Olney
Greg Land
Stephen Wacker
Len Wein
Pat Lee
Robert C. Hendrickson
Sean O’Reilly
Erik Larsen
Axel Alonso
Darren Davis
Ruth Lutwitzi
Bob Kane
Tony Harris
I’m actually curious as to the reasoning behind having Shannon Wheeler on the list. I’ve met him and he’s always really nice. I live in Portland with all the other cartoonists, too, and I don’t recall anyone slagging him.
You’re the second person to ask about Shannon Wheeler being on the list, maybe there will be a lot of people that feel he doesn’t deserve a card. Personally, I don’t know yet whether he does. I told the other person who asked:
Shannon Wheeler was suggested to me by somebody who wishes to remain anonymous. Until I look into it further, my reasons for considering him are based on second-hand anecdotes, so that’s why he’s still on the under consideration list as opposed to definitely getting a card.
Why Chuck Dixon?
Because of his comments about gay people in comics, mainly. It’s being discussed on a Chuck Dixon messageboard right now and I’m being told I’m wrong about those comments: http://dixonverse.net/board3/index.php?topic=6788.0 . If I’m am wrong about those comments, I’m willing to reconsider, but as I understood them they were definitely douchey.
Rick, What information would you need to move Rick Olney from “being considered” to “definitely getting a card”?
I think I have enough information to know that he might deserve it. The reason he’s on the “Under consideration” list is more that he’s more of a fringe figure and people who don’t follow the business side of comics and comics messageboards and things probably have no idea who he is. I haven’t decided if making a card of him is just giving him more attention than he deserves.
Yeah, that seems to be the general consensus of most people. He’s trying so hard to be noticed and make it seem like he matters to the industry. When he really doesn’t at all. But his past actions should give him the card just so future victims know his name and can’t get scammed.
why Jim Davis, Brad Meltzer and Geoff Johns?
just curious, not criticizing.
Meltzer and Johns for things they’ve written, not for their personalities. Meltzer also because I have a chip on my shoulder about people who spend most of their time doing other things and then dabble in comics as hobbyists.
Jim Davis for Garfield being horrible, but also for seeming to care more about merchandising than the comics. For me, Garfield represents the polar opposite of something like Calvin and Hobbes, which was about art, and was brilliant. It’s even to me the polar opposite of something like Peanuts which, while Schulz did of course have a merchandising empire based on his creations, was still made for the right reasons. Peanuts was personal, profound and beautiful. Garfield is a ploy to sell dolls.
But, I’m gonna go a lot more into all of these when, and if, I actually make cards for a particular person. Geoff Johns and Meltzer, I’m still not sure about.
Rick, by that theory of people who treat comics as “hobbies” while they do other things, would that include Kevin Smith?
Seems to me like he should be included based on his accepting a mini-series project, then only completing issue one and not completing issue two for several years.
Kevin Smith is a good suggestion, more because it seems like he writes with a fanboy mentality of, “Oh, wouldn’t it be cool if blah blah” and then once he gets past that initial nerd moment, he loses interest and doesn’t even feel like finishing the stories sometimes.
Given his treatment of other co-creators, I glad to see Stan Lee getting a card.
How about Pat Lee? Nonpaying, misappropriating funds, trying to introduce a house style when people liked other-men’s work more than his:
http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Pat_Lee
Interesting suggestion, I’m not that familiar with him, I’ll look into it.
Yup, Pat Lee screwed over a LOT of creators royally. Also the Devil’s Due owner, I think Josh Blaylock is his name? He apparently did a lot of the same.
Also, on Chuck Dixon you might want to look up some of the likely racist crap he’s said and done in comics add it to the article when you write it., as well as his reaction to the repeal of DADT, wherein he says it is merely the left’s way of getting back at the right, and goes on to talk about how horrible it is and that it will make our military more diverse and *Gasp* like a college campus instead of like a WWII (segregated) military. Plus, of course, the Connor hawke whitewash+ I NEED HIM TO FUCK A WOMAN SO PEOPLE WON”T THINK HE’S GAY! debacle, and the subtle racism and homophobia in Grifter/Midnighter…
Be sure to look at the negatives in his work, and what he said outside his won boards as well as what he said on his boards…
look up some of his old comments on comicbookresources. The only way he doesn’t come out as homophobic is if you decide his words don’t mean what they say 90 percent of the time.
And lastly comes to mind the time he used Tennessee Williams as a term to illustrate something’s (in his opinion) low quality. So that’s not exactly a sign of taste.
Thanks for that, I was aware of some but not all of those things. Generally, his own messageboards when I went seemed like about 2/3rds threads making fun of Obama, and a popular thread was called something like, “Trayvon Martin- The rush to judgement.” In it Chuck was talking about how modern white on black violence is mostly a myth the media likes to perpetrate, etc., etc.
The conversation that I had on those boards was mostly about a few particular comments that I would consider homophobic that they were trying to explain to me weren’t homophobic to them. I was trying to wrap my head around how people could think that basically saying gay people should be hidden from view of children *wasn’t* homophobic. It wasn’t changing my mind about the comments, I was just genuinely curious about what goes on in the heads of people who think that way.
Regardless of those particular comments, this is a set of cards of people I think of as douchebags, and big reactionary Right-wing people I would generally call douchebags. Chuck Dixon has described himself as a second amendment gun nut, too, which as far as I’m concerned also equals douchebag. I’m not going to make a card of every single person whose politics I disagree with, but when I look at the list of search terms people have used that have led them to my website, I would say at least once a day or so somebody has entered the words, “Chuck Dixon homophobe” or “Chuck Dixon racist” into a search engine, which I would say right there kind of indicates a problem.
I say give Shooter and Byrne cards for sure. I could see Clowes.
I’d like to nominate Scott Lobdell* for being the worthless hack that made Starfire into a bimbo, then calling everyone else misogynistic for pointing it out, and Ted Rall for the whole not having a sense of humor and being a pretentious douchewad thing.
Maybe Alex Ross for constantly denigrating other creators because they don’t write everything like it was a Superfriends episode.
Also, just wondering why Kolchaka and Lethem are under consideration?
*On the other hand, maybe I should thank Lobdell for forcing me to go 100% into the world of indy comics for a good few years.
Scott Lobdell is a good suggestion based just on the quality, of lack thereof, of his recent crap output at DC. Alex Ross I’ve never really liked, because the one trick he kind of has of doing realistically painted versions of superhero outfits is interesting to see once or twice, but it seems to be the only trick he has and doing it over and over gets boring, his versions of all the characters look the same, and I get bored of the impulse to try to make superhero characters look more and more real in that way, at some point you’re taking them away from what they’re intended to be. Kolchake and Lethem were both suggested to me by other people, I don’t personally know to much of either of their work.
Jonathan Lethem is suggested primarily for his treatment of the at that time slowly-dying-of-cancer Steve Gerber when Gerber asked Marvel and Lethem not to do an Omega the Unknown remake. Read the full story here, scroll down about halfway and read the “INTO THE UNKNOWN” part: http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=14952
Then additionally you can dislike him for being yet another fake, dismissive, head-up-his-ass sellout justifier of the Watchmen prequels: http://comicscommentary.blogspot.com/2012/02/watchmen-prequels-irrelevant-and.html (second paragraph)
And the man is generally dislikable for slapping his name on every major important genre work of the past century whenever a publisher wants to sell more copies, even when the man knows next to nothing about the subject matter (see his endorsements of everything from Philip K. Dick novels to comics to films, to literature, to Bob Dylan music, it gets tedious and makes him come across as an above-and-beyond kind of sellout, rather than the kind that only does the average amount of selling out to support himself, etc). Lethem even admits as much in an essay he wrote: “How Much Is a Celebrity Endorsement Really Worth?” But even with that self-aware insight, he never stops!!!
Finally, he’s a champion of the “Influence” theory in creativity, which he celebrates in nauseating detail in his book “Ecstasy of Influence”, which lays out the theory that every new creative work is unavoidably influenced by work that came before it, as this is how culture works. But he fails to draw any line between the unconscious influence and the outright swipe. An “Homage” is equal in creative value to something that contained broad genre elements or could be compared academically to another work. And in doing so, he’s done a lot to push the idea that new ideas aren’t needed, that swimming in a mire of remakes, revisits, prequels, sequels, etc is the greatest joy of creativity. And THAT, makes me want to vomit, just a little. All the writers who believe as Lethem does, that living consciously and vicariously off the work of other writers in a very direct and explicit way is equal to struggling to mold a unique and personal creative vision, are the Republicans of the entertainment industry, eloquently pushing a bankrupt and empty ideology by making specious comparisons and failing to draw any lines between one type of behavior and another. And demonizing all those who speak out against them.
And those are the fundamental reasons to give Lethem a card.
Ah. I want to say that I had heard about the Steve Gerber thing, but even then, it would have been well after I had read the Omega remake, which I did enjoy. I have also enjoyed the novels of his I have read. That being said, I will make sure and check out all the articles you mentioned. In which case, like his work or no, yeah, he’d probably deserve one. Is Lethem working on the Before Watchmen project? Don’t know because I’ve been trying to avoid it. I care so little about it, even Darwyn Cooke can’t get me to read it.
I work in a comic book store and I can personally say ERIK “I need boxes to move but give no thanks” LARSEN is an ass and so is JAMES “Mr Stroll in Late on Free Comic Book Day” ROBINSON . JIM DAVIS is a world-class jerk-ball.
my i suggest alan moore
Why? I mean, I can think of several reasons why people might suggest him, but I’m curious what yours are.