Bill Willingham and the girls of girl-wonder.org

[benicio127]

Cross-posted to No Scans_Daily.


First of all, apologies to nevermore999 for posting this from her LJ without asking first.

However, I really thought it was important enough to post.


Bill Willingham came in the panel, and ohmygod this really stupid guy bought up Steph, saying her death was poignant and he didn't think they should have bought her back because it was so important Batman kicked her to the curb and Leslie Thompkins (yes, he apparently liked THAT too) and Mom got all uncomfortable next to me...to Willingham's credit, he shut the guy down, saying the death was never his plan and he actually argued for Steph to live. Sattler said he wasn't around for it, and that the fans are really into Steph, and that he thinks it's important they redeemed Leslie Thompkins. Then Willingham had to ruin everything and say, and I swear to God this is a direct quote "I wanted to gun down those girls who kept asking about the (Steph's) memorial case."

My jaw just dropped open. I knew from interviews and shit that Willingham was an asshole- and I'm sorry, he is, for mocking people at panels, and mocking men for daring to cry over a comic book death- but that is just a creepy as fuck thing to say. I raised my hand and I wanted to say "Willingham, you're an asshole" but instead I just told him a) I hated Stephanie's death and b) You shouldn't want to gun people down for being passionate about a character.

Backpedaling time! No, see, those silly girls were just distracting from important issues at panels by asking the same question over and over again, andandand they just don't understanf how the comics industry works and then, I swear to god, he word for word said the "being hated is almost as good" quote. He DID. He and Sattler telled me that when fans hate a story, it's almost as good as if they love it, because at least they care.




So let me just lift the Internet veil for a minute. I am/was a journalist and I used to be a crime/court reporter. In my four years working for three different Canadian newspapers, I reported on a lot of incidents of violence against women. One of those was a four-part series on the high rate of domestic violence in a small community, for which I was nominated for a National Newspaper Award. So trust me when I say I have seen what violence against women does and how important a topic like this is to me.
So yeah, this comment disturbs me on many levels. It is truly an indefensible comment and the fact that it was made in a public venue with little discourse is disturbing. Serious props to nevermore999 for standing up to Willingham and pointing out his incredibly horrific and misogynistic comment. Young impressionable boys buy these comics and that writers who write them actually think these things and then say them outloud in a public venue is shocking to say the very least.





 

Comments

[stolisomancer.insanejournal.com]

Bill Willingham saying something deeply stupid in public doesn't exactly make my monocle fly off. He's been writing and drawing some really fucking weird stuff since the mid-eighties (like Ironwood, the fantasy porn comic where all the female characters die in the last issue! How sexy!), and I've been half-expecting him to go into a Dave Sim-style flameout for a while.

[darkblade]

I hate to say this but I find it hard to believe he is in any way as bad as Dave Sims got later in his carer.

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

Ya know, I know nothing of David Sims except how bad he is with regards to females. This makes me curious, much in the same way one is curious when they see a trainwreck. Could you please explain?

[stolisomancer.insanejournal.com]

You'd do better to Google it, but the short version is that over the course of publishing Cerebus, Sim's marriage went south and ended in divorce. Soon afterward, he started publishing anti-feminist manifestos in issues of Cerebus, depicting women as parasites that live off of men's creative drive, and the entire book started getting really strange.

I want to say the Onion interviewed him on the topic at one point, which may be the best way to get his side of the story.

[darkblade]

I'd explain but I think these selections from Sim's essays speak for themselves.

http://www.theabsolute.net/misogyny/sim.html

On top of that if you wish to speak to him at all now you have to sign a contract that specifies that you do not consider him a misogynist.

[lissa_quon]

Thanks for posting that link.

I hadn't had my daily aneurysm yet. God Damn, what the hell did his wife do to him? Or was he this broken to begin with?

[big_daddy_d]

"On top of that if you wish to speak to him at all now you have to sign a contract that specifies that you do not consider him a misogynist."

Nothing says misogynist like making someone sign a contact that says you aren't.

[stolisomancer.insanejournal.com]

He's not, and I didn't say he was.

Willingham's been talking about how hard it is to be a conservative Republican in the comics business since he was at Comico, though, and his right-wing perspective sometimes comes out in his work; for example, it's all over Shadowpact like a bad rash. Given how eccentric some of the big eighties talent have gotten over the years (i.e. Byrne's irascibility, Claremont going on trope autopilot, Moore communing with a snake god), I would not be surprised if Willingham's conservatism took him around the bend at some point.

[darkblade]

Sorry about that, I just see Dave Sim as sort of the comic creator equivlent to Hitler and Goodwin's Law. Comparing others to him just isn't right.

Also I'm pretty sure Moore and Glycon is a joke, even among Romans he was considered a joke.

[brandiweed.livejournal.com]

Sorry about that, I just see Dave Sim as sort of the comic creator equivlent to Hitler and Goodwin's Law[sic]. Comparing others to him just isn't right

For one thing, Sim (to the best of my knowledge) really had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and gave up his meds. That puts him on a whole new level.

Willingham's probably more in the Orson Scott Card mold of political nutjobbery.

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

"I would not be surprised if Willingham's conservatism took him around the bend at some point."

Me either. The guy's non Fables work is pretty bad, IMO, but it seems that all anyone pays attention to is how to twist his latest issue into some attack on the Republican platform (He killed Mr. Terriffic, he's racist because all right wing people are!).

I mean he sucks, but that is never enough for some people.

[kingrockwell]

Honestly, it doesn't matter who pulled that fakeout, it would've pinged my radar anyway. I love Mr. Terrific, and even playing like you're killing him off will make me sad.

but being that he's the only POC of the senior members of the JSA, he's kind of a weird target to pick

[darkknightjrk]

"He killed Mr. Terriffic, he's racist because all right wing people are!"

I get your point, and I don't think he is--but his first issue on the JSA he had the gay guy brushed aside by being turned into an egg and had a cliffhanger of the shiv-death of the black athiest. I'm not saying he has an agenda, but I wasn't surprised when I heard people say stuff.

[rordulum]

"Willingham's been talking about how hard it is to be a conservative Republican in the comics business since he was at Comico, though"

Threatening to shoot people he doesn't agree with probably doesn't help in that respect.

Really though, I can understand the sentiment, even if it was expressed with such glorious clumsy asshattedness. It must be more than a little annoying to have people constantly questioning you about, and blaming you for, something you were told to do by your boss.

Especially if was to the extent that he felt it was obscuring the rest of what he was doing.

[stolisomancer.insanejournal.com]

Yeah, that's something I always have in the back of my head when I'm talking about or reading DC comics. They seem to have a level of editorial interference right now that's on par with or worse than late-nineties Marvel, so I'm never quite sure how much blame to place on a specific writer if I don't like the comic I'm reading at the time.

Witness, for example, the dramatic difference between Sean McKeever at DC and Sean McKeever at Marvel.

[shadur]

Willingham's been talking about how hard it is to be a conservative Republican in the comics business

Oh, the poor oppressed rich white male, how dare we not all feel sorry for him.

[stubbleupdate]

Better is not the same as good.

[kijikun]

And because he's an asshole he should be excused for making such a horrible comment? He should be called out on it. Wishing violence on woman for demanding Steph being given the same dignity as Jason Todd?

[stolisomancer.insanejournal.com]

I don't believe that saying that I am not surprised by him saying that is the same thing as attempting to excuse what he said.

Allow me to rephrase so that I may remove all doubt:

Yeah, Willingham's always been kind of a douchebag.

[nefrekeptah]

I don't think he was saying that. I think he was saying he was tired of being asked that.

[skalja]

Then that's what he should have said. Because what he did say was a fantasy of violence towards women who were speaking up about the treatment of a character who was murdered in a violent and sexualized fashion.

[kingrockwell]

Except that is exactly what he did say. If it isn't what he meant, he shouldn't have said it.

[jlroberson]

That's how Ironwood ends? I've only ever seen one issue(seemed kind of bland, so I didn't care) and if anything it seemed rather gentle stuff.

Now, that he did smut, big deal; so did I and on & off, still do. I'm more cringed when I remember he started out doing illustrations for D&D books. DEITIES & DEMIGODS for instance--though full disclosure, I devoured that and it led me into actually reading mythology, and Moorcock, and Lovecraft. In fact, those books were probably the only thing I ever enjoyed about the game; I seem to recall only reading those, and painting the lead figures, when I was 11, but don't recall ever actually playing a game all the way through. Too much damn math.

[stolisomancer.insanejournal.com]

I have absolutely zero problem with any artist or writer doing porn. Ironwood, though, is just fucking weird; it has a knack for juxtaposing really explicit violence with sex (i.e. a multi-page sex scene that's interrupted by a single panel of a female characters' skeleton exploding out of her body), and no named female characters live through the book, which is lampshaded in the epilogue. It's hard to read it and not wonder what Willingham's deal is.

[jlroberson]

Ohh, I always assumed it was just a Phil Foglio-type sword & sorcery-tinged romp.

>> it has a knack for juxtaposing really explicit violence with sex

Ah, and that always sucks. You can have both in the same story, but when people intercut them it's, well, stupid and wrong and ruins the effect of BOTH. (My favorite for-instance example? CALIGULA. Every time.) Something like SALO is my exception, because turning you on is not the point of any of the "sex" in that film; it's in service of a statement about power.

But if you're TRYING to turn someone on--and IRONWOOD was at Eros and, though much later, I worked for them too; believe me, the intent is to have something to turn someone on every couple of pages at least, or that was the guideline I worked under--then yeah, that's a bit frightening someone would think those are two great tastes that taste great together.

Then again, having looked at a lot of the non-Beto, non-Chaykin, non-Kiely (and there are others) stuff at Eros when I was doing stuff for them--and this is not at ALL to knock Kim or Michael or anyone at Fanta, because they're all great and quite clear-headed about the relative quality between FBI & Eros--you find that an awful LOT of their output was mistures of sex and violence in the manner you describe. I felt strange there, because the closest I got to that in my stuff was a BDSM story satirizing corporate America. And it weirded me out that this story I thought was going to totally freak everyone out("Soft Ceiling") ended up looking pretty goddamn tame. I wondered just what was the base of the kind of fantasies I saw in some other stories. All that blood.

Not knocking my colleagues; just a personal take. I'm sure they outsold me.