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womzillaGail Simone said quoted someone saying this about Erik Larsen's high-speed stream of vile comments about Neil Gaiman's latest legal victory over Todd McFarlane:
This misses a key point. It is, indeed, a good thing when people stand up for their friends. But, you know, most people do. That's why they're friends. But standing up for your friends does not extend to declaring a free-fire zone around anyone who has disagreed with them. Larsen has gone far, far beyond any bounds of propriety, and just "standing up for his guy" doesn't actually bring him any honor in the circumstances.
(Annotation 1: Neil Gaiman is a writer who writes comic books well.)
(Annotation 2: Todd McFarlane is a penciller who writes comic books very poorly.)
(Annotation 3: Erik Larsen is a penciller who writes comic books somewhat better than Todd McFarlane does, and is a friend of McFarlane's.)
(Backstory: Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, Todd McFarlane asked several real writers to write issues of McFarlane's comic, Spawn, that McFarlane then pencilled. Gaiman was one of them. Characters co-created by Gaiman then appeared in various subsequent Spawn works, including the animated show and live-action film. Gaiman had to sue McFarlane at tedious length to get paid for the use of his co-creations.
McFarlane responded in part by creating "new" characters who were, in all respects, basically identical to the characters that Gaiman co-created. So Gaiman sued for payment for proceeds from those characters as well, saying that, look, even a moron like McFarlane can see that "Dark Ages" Spawn is fundamentally the same character as "Medieval" Spawn. The judge agreed.
Larsen has posted over 100 tweets condemning the decision. Some of his statements do not limit themselves to insulting Gaiman, or the judge, but indicate that women cannot be trusted with the responsibility of being in a jury. (The first trial was a jury trial; all the jurors were women.)
ETA: Corrected, as noted. How does anyone ever figure out what is going on, on Twitter?
I think @ErikJLarsen's wrong on the relevant facts and certainly wrong on the law, but I like him standing up for his guy.
This misses a key point. It is, indeed, a good thing when people stand up for their friends. But, you know, most people do. That's why they're friends. But standing up for your friends does not extend to declaring a free-fire zone around anyone who has disagreed with them. Larsen has gone far, far beyond any bounds of propriety, and just "standing up for his guy" doesn't actually bring him any honor in the circumstances.
(Annotation 1: Neil Gaiman is a writer who writes comic books well.)
(Annotation 2: Todd McFarlane is a penciller who writes comic books very poorly.)
(Annotation 3: Erik Larsen is a penciller who writes comic books somewhat better than Todd McFarlane does, and is a friend of McFarlane's.)
(Backstory: Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, Todd McFarlane asked several real writers to write issues of McFarlane's comic, Spawn, that McFarlane then pencilled. Gaiman was one of them. Characters co-created by Gaiman then appeared in various subsequent Spawn works, including the animated show and live-action film. Gaiman had to sue McFarlane at tedious length to get paid for the use of his co-creations.
McFarlane responded in part by creating "new" characters who were, in all respects, basically identical to the characters that Gaiman co-created. So Gaiman sued for payment for proceeds from those characters as well, saying that, look, even a moron like McFarlane can see that "Dark Ages" Spawn is fundamentally the same character as "Medieval" Spawn. The judge agreed.
Larsen has posted over 100 tweets condemning the decision. Some of his statements do not limit themselves to insulting Gaiman, or the judge, but indicate that women cannot be trusted with the responsibility of being in a jury. (The first trial was a jury trial; all the jurors were women.)
ETA: Corrected, as noted. How does anyone ever figure out what is going on, on Twitter?
