.
Well, this was interesting :
https://bleedingcool.com/comics/neal-adams-republicans-work-comics/ Neal Adams Investigates Whether Republicans Can Work in ComicsPosted on March 14, 2019, by Rich JohnstonNeal Adams posted the revelation on Twitter. That comic book creators were not getting work because they voted Republican.
@nealadamsdotcom
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WHOA! I'm hearing that certain creatives are not getting work because of their Republican political views! I hope this is WRONG! WE ARE A CREATIVE COMMUNITY,..NOT a political party. The very thought that "black-balling" for political reasons happens would be JUST PLAIN WRONG....
It's not the first time such a thing has been alleged. Despite plenty of Republican voters to my knowledge having senior comic book editorial and creative positions at Marvel and DC. With prominent figures including Marvel chairman Ike Perlmutter being a personal friend and major supporter of Trump, and the likes of Steve Geppi and Mike Richardson being very vocal against voting Democrat at the last election. And there are plenty of creators in regular Big Two work who vote Republican but who, probably wisely, choose not to talk publicly about their politics. Democrats, the same, the usual reason given is that they don't want to alienate any of their readers.
What there does seem to be is a number of creators not getting work at the Big Two because they have posted online in a fashion that has spurred too much controversy for the publisher, including the likes of Ales Kot, Chuck Wendig, Chelsea Cain, Ray Dillon, Renee DeLiz, Chris Roberson, Aubrey Sitterson and more. Moreover, they have often been openly critical of a publisher that they are working for. And others have been similalry pushed into the long grass for attacking or verbally abusing other creators or editors at a publisher, publicly or privately. Or writing some nasty e-mails to a collaborator, which then got passed around the creative community so that no one wanted to work with them anymore. Or, you know, for always being late.
And some of those people may have voted Republican. But a hell of a lot more of them seemed to have voted Democrat. Or Green. Or wrote in votes for Bernie. That's how I see and have experienced it, whenever I've dug a little deeper. Your mileage may vary of course.
Anyway, Neal Adams got back to us all. And he seems to have come to a similar conclusion.
@nealadamsdotcom
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Well, a hundred phone calls later, and i haven't found any talented artists or writers who don't get work because of their political views. I was pretty thorough,....and I could be wrong, but I just can't find it!
I hope all in our biz do well. Love you all.
Keep hunting Neal…
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About Rich JohnstonFounder of Bleeding Cool. The longest-serving digital news reporter in the world, since 1992. Author of
The Flying Friar, Holed Up, The Avengefuls, Doctor Who: Room With A Deja Vu, The Many Murders Of Miss Cranbourne, Chase Variant. Lives in South-West London, works from Blacks on Dean Street, shops at Piranha Comics. Father of two.
- Of course, there are also a number of responses stating that someone got to Neal and made him switch his opinion. As a man who for years expressed his belief that all matter is expanding and this explains why the Earth's continents are the shape and in the position that they are, no one gets to make Neal Adams' change his publicly expressed position about anything, but him. He's Neal Freaking Adams…
Posted in: Comics | Tagged: trump
Neal, this is not going to sit well with people who need to blame someone–anyone–else for their own mistakes.
— Patch Zircher (@PatrickZircher) March 14, 2019
@BillyTucci
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Replying to @nealadamsdotcom
You didn't call me.
11:17 PM · Mar 12, 2019
@schiekapedia
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Replying to @nealadamsdotcom
It’s true, at least to the best of my knowledge, that I’ve never lost a comics job due to my political views. But it’s also true that I don’t voice those views publicly as I would not want it to interfere with my professional pursuits.
While Neal Adams is notoriously liberal/Democrat, it's nice that Adams might disagree with conservatives on their political views, but even so regards them as friends, and would not want their political views to lose them jobs or creative assignments. I like that, it makes me have greater admiration for Neal Adams.
Although he certainly hyperventilated with his political views online. But at least he draws the line there, at respectfully disagreeing with others' political views, but not to the point that he would support a purge of conservatives.
My opinion is that while liberals in comics editorial/management positions would never come out and say they are denying conservatives work... they are. Not across the board, not in all cases, but I've certainly experienced myself in recent years those on the Left who want to purge anyone who doesn't agree with them. I've experienced it myself for articles I wrote, and that was in far saner political times, almost exactly 30 years ago. More recently in virtually every field of work, it has become impossible to even casually discuss politics. It didn't used to be.
The posts after the above article, and not even all of them duplicated above, saying "Neal, you didn't talk to ME," are people who can attest to that purge mentality affecting their jobs. And it certainly manifests the same pattern as in Hollywood movies and television. And would also reflect the highly visible ultra-woke politics at DC of at least the last 20 years, and feminist DC writers who plot to get male writers fired, particularly ones they disagree with politically.
There are comics pro's who keep their politics to themselves, Democrat and Republican. And there are those, MANY, who ram it down the throats of their unreceptive readers in their work, and in their public comments and interviews. And the stories doing the ramming have consistently come from the Democrat/Left side of the creative community. I discussed writer Brian K. Vaughan's doing so intolerantly in Y THE LAST MAN, for one example. And others across many titles, particularly the former Vertigo line, and other more recent DC titles, intolerantly demonizing Republicans, and hard-selling their own gay or other leftist and social justice issues.
But as I've said in the past, if it's a story that is just exploring both sides of an issue, as the O'Neil / Adams GREEN LANTERN series did, or as many others did in the 1970's and 1980's, that can be a good and interesting thing.
But when it comes to demonizing one entire side of the dialogue, as we've seen for at least 20 years in comics and other media entertainment, and even denying that entire side work in the field, we have truly entered crazy and dangerous times. Outside of comics, we are seeing that kind of purge going on, from Hollywood, to corporate America, to the FBI and DOJ, to the U.S. military and its officers. It is not a stretch of the imagination at all to see this as very possibly happening in comics as well. Welcome to the Marxist/socialist revolution and purge, and to George Orwell's
1984.
Man, even comics....
At least Neal Adams didn't stoop to supporting that.
