Author: VD

DramaGate

Bounding Into Comics urges everyone to stop the madness:

With coordinated attacks coming from all sides, it’s more critical than ever that #Comicsgate members keep their eye on the prize and don’t turn into #dramaqueens who favor sniping and infighting over solidarity. Sadly, for those supporting this consumer revolt in the name of good comic books, and for the high profile figures within it, recent history may not be on our side.

On September 3rd, 2018, Alt-Hero publisher Vox Day announced his prospective Comicsgate imprint right here on Bounding Into Comics, and it would be an insult to diarrhea to say that the Comicsgate community understandably lost their crap in response. Whether Vox Day was trying to do something he deemed to be positive for the movement, or he was just trying to co-opt it a la Sad Puppies…or both, is mostly irrelevant; the fallout from his move was quite real, particularly when it came to author and occasional BIC contributor Jon Del Arroz…. Guilt by association? Juvenile stunts? Sounds a little SJW, doesn’t it? That’s because these are the brushes that crowd loves to paint with, and this is the same crowd who is smiling with glee at seeing Comicsgate infighting because they equate it with weakness.

With someone like Vox Day, it’s easy to understand this reaction. He has a history of co-opting movements, and he’s far more apt just to burn down the house rather than try to treat the infestation, which is what many longtime comic book fans don’t want to see. However, in this case Vox didn’t do that. He gave up on the Comics Gate imprint and is sticking to publishing popular stories through Arkhaven Comics and Dark Legion Comics.

I tend to agree that it’s important to stay focused on the business rather than the tempests and teapots, but I also have to admit that I’m really not concerned about this one way or another. Things will probably play out as they usually do, those who talk will talk and those who act will act. This ComicsGate nonsense hasn’t slowed down our release schedule in the slightest or interfered with the Alt-Hero:Q campaign. The only real ComicsGate-related problem for us has been the latest SJW attack at Amazon; the four digital editions of Gun Ghoul there are still blocked for absolutely no legitimate reason.

As I pointed out to a very irate Will Caligan last night, this isn’t a showstopper and the print edition of Gun Ghoul is available at Arkhaven Direct, at Barnes & Noble, Book Depository, and even on Amazon itself. You’ll get the best price at Arkhaven. But it is the sort of ridiculous thing that has inspired the President of the United States to consider lowering the antitrust boom on the social media giants.

I would, however, like to correct one common misapprehension: I never co-opted Sad Puppies. To the contrary, I was the architect of the Sad Puppies most notorious success and at no point in time was there ever any conflict between the Sad Puppies and me. If you look more closely, you’ll notice that none of the four leaders of the Sad Puppies, from Larry to Kate, have ever made a single accusation on that score. I don’t intend to say any more than that, except to reiterate an absolute fact: I did not co-opt Sad Puppies and anyone who claims I did in any way, shape, or form is wrong.

They are, however, correct to observe that I believe the optimal response to a converged organization is to burn it down. Because that’s what is going to happen anyhow, one is merely helping to speed the inevitable process along.

Break them up already!

The God-Emperor is considering the wisdom of subjecting the social media giants to Inquisition:

The White House has drafted an executive order for President Donald Trump’s signature that would instruct federal antitrust and law enforcement agencies to open investigations into the business practices of Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Facebook Inc. and other social media companies.

The order is in its preliminary stages and hasn’t yet been run past other government agencies, according to a White House official. Bloomberg News obtained a draft of the order. The document instructs U.S. antitrust authorities to “thoroughly investigate whether any online platform has acted in violation of the antitrust laws.” It instructs other government agencies to recommend within a month after it’s signed actions that could potentially “protect competition among online platforms and address online platform bias.”

The document doesn’t name any specific companies. If signed, the order would represent a significant escalation of Trump’s antipathy toward Google, Facebook, Twitter and other social media companies, whom he has publicly accused of silencing conservative voices and news sources online. The possibility of an executive order emerged as Attorney General Jeff Sessions prepares for a Sept. 25 briefing by state attorneys general who are already investigating the tech firms’ practices.

This would be such a massively positive development. He really has to go through with this, in light of the way in which these companies are actively campaigning against him and his supporters.

Trade and war

One argument I often hear from free traders is that free trade is necessary because trading partners do not fight wars. Like every other argument for free trade, this argument is false and readily disproven by history.  Consider the 10 largest US trade partners:

  1. China
  2. Canada
  3. Mexico
  4. Japan
  5. Germany
  6. South Korea
  7. United Kingdom
  8. France
  9. India
  10. Italy
The USA has fought wars against six of those countries and currently considers its largest trade partner to be its primary military rival. But perhaps these wars preceded the trade? No, not at all.

In 1931, Japan’s resources were inadequate, and its rural poverty became severe, so it invaded Manchuria, China to obtain natural resources.  The US wanted to keep China free from Japanese control and was competing for natural resources—especially oil, rubber, and tin—from Southeast Asia, while at the same time Japan and the US had significant trade with each other.

In fact, during the Napoleonic Wars, France was Britain’s largest trading partner, which is why Napoleon attempted to create the Continental system to harm Great Britain.

Napoleon also attempted economic warfare against Britain, especially in the Berlin Decree of 1806. It forbade the import of British goods into European countries allied with or dependent upon France, and installed the Continental System in Europe. All connections were to be cut, even the mail. British merchants smuggled in many goods and the Continental System was not a powerful weapon of economic war. There was some damage to Britain, especially in 1808 and 1811, but its control of the oceans helped ameliorate the damage. Even more damage was done to the economies of France and its allies, which lost a useful trading partner. 

In fact, Japan’s three largest trading partners, the United States, China, and South Korea, are also three of the very small number of countries against which it has waged war. Trade does not reduce the likelihood of war, to the contrary, the stresses it necessarily causes the relationship between to countries tends to increase the probability of war taking place.

For the record

Diversity & Comics@DiversityAndCmx
I’ve been peeking in on yall’s conversation, but I needed a chime in here. Vox has been roundly mocked by me and Ethan for the past year in his abortive attempts to be a publisher.

Castalia House has been around since 2014 and publishes more than 100 titles in print, digital, and audio editions. Arkhaven/Dark Legion has been around for nine months and has already published 24 digital editions and 11 print editions, including a new digital edition earlier today.

It’s not exactly surprising to learn that Two-Face was roundly mocking me at the same time he was suggesting that I collaborate with him. Hence the moniker. But I don’t think this D&C moron even understands what the word “abortive” means. Or “attempts”, for that matter.

Anyhow, it’s very good to know exactly who and what these people are, so that we’ll know to avoid working with them in the future. I’m beginning to conclude that some of these guys were not rejected by their former colleagues in the comics industry for their politics, but for their personalities and lack of professionalism.

UPDATE: An Arkhaven author points out that our attempts to be a publisher are observably successful.

The Ember War IndieGoGo!@jondelarroz
Funny. Vox publishes me, @Dixonverse, Gary Kwapisz and others in comics. In politics @Cernovich @JackPosobiec @StefanMolyneux and others. In science fiction big names like @NickColeBooks and B.V. Larson so sell books 10x the level you do.

How’s Splatto Comics coming?

UPDATE: I wonder why 2VS didn’t use “ComicsGate Comics”? I hear it is available. And doesn’t he have the trademark?

Cyberfrog: Bloodhoney creator Ethan Van Sciver announced a brand new publishing company called ALL CAPS Comics that will house Cyberfrog: Bloodhoney and future endeavors he plans on taking on. Ethan described ALL CAPS Comics as “the name of my publishing. It will be the label under which I solicit my comics through DIAMOND to place my books for sale on the direct market.”

The publishing company will currently be focused on Cyberfrog as well as possible spin-offs from that title. It will also house “all other ideas [Ethan has] for IPs” unrelated to Cyberfrog. Ethan told us Cyberfrog: Bloodhoney will be released in a “new format next year thru DIAMOND under ALL CAPS.” Ethan is currently the only creator who will be operating under ALL CAPS Comics at this moment, but he’s definitely open to see other creators join him.

I have to admit, I liked this movie better the first time, when it was called Dangerous Books. But some people are simply incapable of learning from the mistakes of others.

Wait, what?

Now Q is confirming… aliens? Even Neon Revolt is more than a little dubious:

Guys, believe me, I’m right there in the Twilight Zone with ya.

Separating fact from fiction is very challenging here, and frankly… I’ve never wanted to walk away from #QAnon more than I do right now.

And it’s not helped along by the fact that… it’s not at all clear what Q really meant when he answered. What I mean is: there’s a spectrum of conclusions you could arrive at here:

Was he saying that they’ve picked up radio waves from a far distant corner of the galaxy?

Or is he saying Bill Cooper is right, and First Contact was made 70-odd years ago?

The reason – the only reason – I’m not abandoning Q right now… is because of all the other hundreds of #QConfirmations we’ve had along the way.

And, of course, that video I took, years ago.

Amidst the uproar, #Anon noted this: Friendly or hostile?

We’re building a #SpaceForce, anon.

They’re all getting armed with battle rifles for a reason.

You tell me.

(That, more than anything, should speak volumes).

This just gets more interesting and entertaining by the day. I assume this is disinformation meant to distract from other fronts, but at this point, I wouldn’t rule anything out. The thing I find myself wondering, though, is if a larper went there, wouldn’t he be a little more… dramatic on the issue?

Anyhow, for what is definitely a fictional take on Q, check out Alt-Hero: Q, which now has over 1,000 backers! Join the Winning! Below is page 4.

Right Ho, Jeeves #5

GUSSIE AT BAY is the fifth issue in the RIGHT HO, JEEVES series, which tells of the travails of the inimitable Bertie Wooster, who is summoned from the comforts of #3A Berkley Mansions, London to Brinkley Manor by his imperious Aunt Dahlia. Love is in the air and Wodehousian shenanigans are afoot, as Wooster’s well-meaning attempts to help out his friends sort out their romantic difficulties only leads to one disaster after another… including his own engagement to the unbearably soppy Madeline Bassett!

Adapted from the classic Wodehouse novel by comics legend Chuck Dixon and drawn by SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN illustrator Gary Kwapisz, GUSSIE AT BAY is issue #5 of 6 in the RIGHT HO, JEEVES series.

The other four issues in the series are available on Amazon. Issues #1 and #2 are also available in print at Arkhaven Direct, Barnes & Noble, and can be ordered through your local bookstore.

Rosenstein the Rat

How does this guy still have a job?

The deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, suggested last year that he secretly record President Trump in the White House to expose the chaos consuming the administration, and he discussed recruiting cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Mr. Trump from office for being unfit.

Mr. Rosenstein made these suggestions in the spring of 2017 when Mr. Trump’s firing of James B. Comey as F.B.I. director plunged the White House into turmoil. Over the ensuing days, the president divulged classified intelligence to Russians in the Oval Office, and revelations emerged that Mr. Trump had asked Mr. Comey to pledge loyalty and end an investigation into a senior aide.

Mr. Rosenstein was just two weeks into his job. He had begun overseeing the Russia investigation and played a key role in the president’s dismissal of Mr. Comey by writing a memo critical of his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation. But Mr. Rosenstein was caught off guard when Mr. Trump cited the memo in the firing, and he began telling people that he feared he had been used.

Mr. Rosenstein made the remarks about secretly recording Mr. Trump and about the 25th Amendment in meetings and conversations with other Justice Department and F.B.I. officials. Several people described the episodes, insisting on anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. The people were briefed either on the events themselves or on memos written by F.B.I. officials, including Andrew G. McCabe, then the acting bureau director, that documented Mr. Rosenstein’s actions and comments.

Something must be going down soon with Rosenstein, because I don’t see how he can remain in office after this.

AH:Q Exclusive at BIC

Bounding Into Comics has an exclusive on FIVE complete pages from Alt-Hero: Q. Check them out!

Arkhaven Comics is currently running an IndieGoGo crowdfunding campaign for their upcoming Alt-Hero: Q series by Bane co-creator Chuck Dixon and artist Hélix Haze. Colors are provided by Arklight Studios. The series will be released in individual issues and ultimately collected into a graphic novel. There will be six total issues and each issue will be 24 pages long. The story will be set in the Alt-Hero universe alongside Vox Day’s Alt-Hero series and Chuck Dixon’s Avalon.

The series finds inspiration from the QAnon phenomenon and will have a focus on “ordinary men and women who make the choice to become extraordinary through their selfless actions to save others.” If you are unfamiliar with the QAnon phenomenon, Chuck Dixon told us “this will be an intro, at least in a fictional sense to what it’s all about and what its mission is.”

Arkhaven Comics’ Publisher Vox Day hinted at what we can expect from this story:

“It’s going to be our answer to the question that everyone is asking: “who is Q”. Everyone has a different theory, everyone has a different explanation. Since we’re setting this in the world of Alt-Hero, that allows us to throw out some outlandish ideas about what’s really going on underneath all the various conspiracy theories. We’ll be launching it as soon as we have the sample pages to show the potential backers, so in about two weeks. It’s an awesome script and people are going to love it.”

Chuck Dixon gave us some more key details keying in on the series main protagonist Roland Dane:

“What we’re presenting is an action/thriller hero that I’m really excited to be creating. We’ll be inserting him into stories of global cabals and dark conspiracies that threaten not only world peace but the basic human rights of the individual. Our guy, Roland Dane, is an experienced law enforcement professional who has to drop out of the system to act as an operative for the mysterious organization he knows only as Q. Roland is a little rough around the edges and his methods are often direct but he’s one man trying to make a difference for all of us.”

Take a look at the first five pages:

I was going to post all five pages here by the end of the weekend, but when BIC asked for the exclusive, I could hardly say no. So, go see them, and comment on them, there.

The most pyrrhic victory in history

Coraline Ada Ehmke@CoralineAda
40,000 open source projects, including Linux, Rails, Golang, and everything OSS produced by Google, Microsoft, and Apple have adopted my code of conduct. You can make me have a bad day, but it doesn’t change the fact that we have won and you have lost.

Wanna bet? I just wish xir could convince Marvel and DC and IDW and Dark Horse to adopt xir’s code of conduct too. The more completely an organization converges, the faster they will collapse.

This isn’t a defeat for us, this is a vast horizon of opportunity being handed to us on a platter.

Right, but wrong. Again.

ESR is an intelligent man, but he is fundamentally handicapped by his stubborn commitment to irreligion and his left-liberalism, which is why his diagnoses of the Left’s evils tend to be accurate, but his predictions and prescriptions are reliably off-target:

One of the clearest lessons of recent times (exemplified not just by kaffiyeh-wearing western leftists but by Hamas’s recent clobbering of al-Fatah in the first Palestinian elections) is that po-mo leftism is weaker than liberal individualism in one important respect; it has only the weakest defenses against absolutist fervor. Brittingham tellingly notes po-mo philosopher Richard Rorty’s realization that when the babble of conflicting tribal narratives collapses in exhaustion, the only thing left is the will to power.

Again, this is by design. Lenin and Stalin wanted classical-liberal individualism replaced with something less able to resist totalitarianism, not more. Volk-Marxist fantasy and postmodern nihilism served their purposes; the emergence of an adhesive counter-ideology would not have. Thus, the Chomskys and Moores and Fisks are running a program carefully designed to dead-end at nothing.

Religions are good at filling that kind of nothing. Accordingly, if transnational progressivism actually succeeds in smothering liberal individualism, its reward will be to be put to the sword by some flavor of jihadi. Whether the eventual winners are Muslims or Mormons, the future is not going to look like the fuzzy multicultural ecotopia of modern left fantasy. The death of that dream is being written in European banlieus by angry Muslim youths under the light of burning cars.

In the banlieus and elsewhere, Islamist pressure makes it certain that sooner or later the West is going to vomit Stalin’s memes out of its body politic. The worst way would be through a reflex development of Western absolutism — Christian chauvinism, nativism and militarism melding into something like Francoite fascism. The self-panicking leftists who think they see that in today’s Republicans are comically wrong (as witnessed by the fact that they aren’t being systematically jailed and executed), but it is quite a plausible future for the demographically-collapsing nations of Europe.

That’s not the worst way, it is the only way. If you want Western civilization to survive, then militant Christian nationalism is the only way that is going to happen. Period. Fools decry Franco, but he was one of the greatest leaders of the 20th century simply because he a) prevented his people from falling into the hands of the Communists, and, b) kept his nation out of World War II. Spain lost 4,500 soldiers from the Spanish Blue Division serving with the German Army in the USSR and promptly withdrew them. That was it. Italy, by contrast, lost 500,000 soldiers and civilians.

ESR notes that he and the Left were wrong about the past and that the Right was essentially correct. But note that this essay on suicidalism was written 12 years ago, and it’s already obvious that he was totally wrong to again put his faith in the liberal Left’s ability to control its extremists.

I remain more optimistic than this. I think there is still an excellent chance that the West can recover from suicidalism without going through a fevered fascist episode and waging a genocidal war. But to do so, we have to do more than recognize Stalin’s memes; we have to reject them. We have to eject postmodern leftism from our universities, transnational progressivism from our politics, and volk-Marxism from our media.

The process won’t be pretty. But I fear that if the rest of us don’t hound the po-mo Left and its useful idiots out of public life with attack and ridicule and shunning, the hard Right will sooner or later get the power to do it by means that include a lot of killing. I don’t want to live in that future, and I don’t think any of my readers do, either. If we want to save a liberal, tolerant civilization for our children, we’d better get to work.

The cure for suicidalism is not suicidalism lite. There is no saving “a liberal, tolerant civilization” because liberal tolerant civilizations are intrinsically suicidal. Most tolerant, civilized liberals can’t even bother to have children, let alone seek to save Western civilization for them.