I don't know much about Sean Gordon Murphy beyond the fact that he does fairly popular alternate-universe Batman stuff and comes across as a normal, decent guy on Twitter. I also don't know much about Doug TenNapel beyond the fact that he's the Christian creator behind Earthworm Jim (which I really liked) and Bigfoot Bill -- and that he apparently (?) got into a Twitter spat (??) with Ethan Van Sciver's faction (???) that has resulted in bad blood to this day.
(I don't closely follow these intramural fights, guys. I just want to buy good comics.)
However, on principle, I think what happened this past week between Murphy and TenNapel sets a terrible precedent that will ultimately result in a loss of freedom for all creators.
The skinny: Murphy sold a cover to TenNapel for the latter's Bigfoot Bill 2 campaign. When this went public, the usual suspects - what Our Boi Zack terms the "Twelve Psychopaths on Twitter" - proceeded to harass Murphy relentlessly for associating with someone who's sometimes expressed skeptical views about the LGBT community, claiming that they'd been hurt - hurt! - by Murphy's sale and implicitly threatening his status in the industry for his supposed misstep. Then Murphy, understandably afraid for his future at DC, decided to pull the cover.
Last night, I spent some time scrolling through TenNapel's Twitter feed. What I could uncover was standard Christian boilerplate that large swaths of the American public believes. Hell, as a Catholic, I believe a lot of the same stuff. I may be more liberal than TenNapel in that I've made my peace with the legality of things I find dubiously moral -- but then again, maybe not. I haven't had a chance to ask the guy. Suffice it to say that I unearthed no evidence of prejudicial or criminal behavior on TenNapel's part; I just found wrongthink.
Thus, I think Murphy made a bad call. I'm not going to hate him for it; because he's corporate, I've no doubt he's under insane pressure to conform. All the same, he shouldn't have buckled because he didn't do anything wrong. All he did was sell ketchup to a hot dog vendor; he didn't endorse everything that vendor believes. Seriously: it's not like TenNapel's hot dogs are stamped with an anti-LGBT logo or anything. Earthworm Jim and Bigfoot Bill are all-ages comics that don't address that particular issue at all. Thus, drawing a cover for Bigfoot Bill 2 only indicates -- that Murphy likes Bigfoot Bill. It tells you nothing else.
As I remarked on Twitter, we have to get away from this crazy notion that having a working relationship with somebody means you get all his wrongthink cooties. To be sure, if you personally don't want to do projects with TenNapel because he's an evangelical Christian with typical evangelical Christian views, that's your right. But if someone like Murphy makes a different choice because, like me, he thinks throwing supposed wrongthinkers into the outer darkness doesn't actually change minds? Butt the eff out. Other people's business is, well -- not your damn business.
I don't want to live in world in which I have to vet every single person I associate with on a professional level. Quite frankly, that's a ludicrously restrictive standard to meet -- especially since SJW's move their goal posts on an hourly basis. As matter of fact, said sharks, smelling Murphy's blood in the water, are now demanding that he disavow Blake Northcott, whose only sin (as far as I can tell) is a failure to denounce all #Comicsgaters as hatey-hatey-hatemongers. As we're seeing in real time, as soon as you give in to these people, they will never effing stop because they're malicious little effers who get off on their power to intimidate.
I was listening to one of Dennis Prager's "fireside chats" last night and was consequently introduced to one of his many fantastic formulations: "compassion in the micro, standards in the macro." By all means, if it's what you believe, push to make our society more tolerant of the LGBT community. But if you encounter someone in your professional life who opposes the normalization of LGBT lifestyles, maintaining that person's friendship and trust might actually redound to your benefit. At the very least, you'll learn the roots of that particular person's resistance and consequently discover how to fight for your cause more effectively. And maybe - just maybe - you'll manage to shift at least one man's point of view.
Like I said above, I don't think driving politically unpalatable creators to starvation will change their minds. On the contrary, I think that will only feed into their sense of persecution and thus further entrench their views. No: treat these creators kindly instead. Appeal to their common humanity because that's what actually persuades.
And if minds don't get changed? Don't worry: you can still sell your ketchup to that bigoted hot dog vendor. Don't let anyone convince you that you can be tainted by mere commerce. It's not true. Otherwise, as Zack has pointed out, Crest would have to stop selling toothpaste to prisoners on death row.
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