Comics Are Trying To Break Your Heart #77 by Drew Barth

This Cannot Continue

If you haven’t heard yet, there has been quite a lot in comics these past couple weeks. Revelations about men in the industry using their power to manipulate and abuse women was brought to a fresh light two weeks ago by artist Aviva Mai and her experience with Cameron Stewart. And this brought more accusations against other men: writer Warren Ellis, editor Scott Allie, and writer Scott Lobdell. They have all engaged in sexual predatory behavior or, in Allie’s case, sexual assault.

And here’s the thing: what I have to say doesn’t matter. I wasn’t a victim and likely wasn’t going to be one as a white guy in comics. What matters are the women who have been harmed by men who held positions of power over them. Their voices matter—their voices have always mattered—and that’s why I’m using my platform here to show their stories.

• Aviva Mai’s thread regarding Cameron Stewart
• Kate Leth on her experiences with Stewart
• Shawna Gore’s statement on Scott Allie
• Jhayne Holmes on the many women Warren Ellis preyed on and his patterns
• Tess Fowler on her experiences with Scott Lobdell
• G. Willow Wilson writes about the root of the power dynamics from the Warren Ellis Forums
• Gavia Baker-Whitelaw outlining the entire situation

This is a medium we love in an industry that has been rotten for too long. These abuses of power, this coercion and manipulation, are systemic. Bar meetings at conventions have become the industry standard and this is where these men plot and execute horrendous actions against women because they know they can get away with it. As an industry, we have to rip off this mask of supposed “acceptiveness” and look into the ugliness that has been hiding underneath for decades. Men in comics abusing their power for sexual gratification cannot continue. Men in comics manipulating and coercing women cannot continue. The “boy’s club” cannot continue.

We have to hold these men accountable for their actions against women. Comics can and will live beyond these shitty men, Scott Allie has already been fired from Dark Horse, but until the power structure that has enabled these men to enact their abuse against women is dismantled, we have to speak up whenever and wherever we can.

Believe women.

Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #75 by Drew Barth

A Different Kind of Horror

Some old buildings emit a sense of what happened in that building decades prior, echoes of the people who called that building home. What was familiar and known morphs into something sinister. A work like BTTM FDRS by Ezra Claytan Daniels and Ben Passmore is a slow, creeping work that drips with the horror of gentrification and how a building can become something otherworldly.

BTTM FDRS centers on two friends, Darla and Cynthia, as the former begins her move to a cheap studio apartment in the South Chicago neighborhood where she grew up, the Bottomyards. At the beginning of the story, the building itself, an old manufacturing complex, attempting to eat an electrician looking at some of its outside wiring. From here, everything else unfolds. We have Gene, the creepy landlord who’s converted the building into apartments; Katherine, the woman whose home the building had been since the 70s; Charles, Katherine’s shy son who explored every tunnel and vent when he was younger; and Julio, the rapper known as Plymouth Rock. Even though some characters only get a few panels, the small bits they interact with Darla and Cynthia cement how well rendered they all become through the story.

Daniels and Passmore weave the nightmare of gentrification throughout the story in small ways—from Katherine being priced out of the home she’s been in since the 70s to Cynthia taking advantage of the credibility Darla’s new apartment gives her despite Cynthia not living there. When the apartment complex’s secret organism bursts through the walls and destroys the building, where can the tenants go now? What is left for them?

Much like last week, BTTM FDRS is the kind of story that we need right now and Daniels and Passmore are the creators we need to tell that story. Gentrification looks benign to a white audience. Comics have the power to show us the ills of our world much more viscerally than other mediums and Daniels and Passmore show us to the point where we can no longer look away. It’s why now is the time to get active—with time, money, energy—to the organizations that need our attention the most.

Get angry. Get active. Get involved. Get reading.

Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #71 by Drew Barth

A Short Piece on ShortBox

Founded by Zainab Akhtar, ShortBox is continually the name that comes up for me when I think about where comics can go both as a place self-expression as well as a physical medium. I’ve written about their most recent box of comics as well as their efforts in helping to maintain an active comic community during COVID-19 by offering a wide variety of some of their best work for a pay-what-you-will rate. As such, I bought and read through a variety of work that I hadn’t read before, and, of course, it’s delightful. From short comics collections like A Long Distance by Jean Wei and What Are You Thinking About? by Anatola Howard to longer works like Nicole Miles’ Barbara, it’s hard to express the depth of quality work these creators have produced, and yet I’ll still try.

Barbara by Nicole Miles is a short rumination on friends and food. What works so well throughout this story is its constant narrative movement—Jayda looks at the emptiness of her room and fills it, she hears her coworkers talking negatively about veganism and researches it, she looks in her fridge and empties it of anything from an animal. And most of this is after meeting her newest friend, Barbara the cactus. The genuine feeling resonates through every page along with the confusion and reluctance that comes with change. Through a cactus like Barbara, Jayda can become who she wants to be and we’re only witness to the most difficult beginning stages.

A collection of five short comics, Jean Wei’s A Long Distance is a marvel of vignetted storytelling. One of the strongest aspects of that storytelling comes from Wei’s constant work with panelling and dialogue balloons throughout. In the story pictured above, “Bats”, there are only three panels with the rest of the story taking over the next eight pages with either full pictures like above or with only the characters heads talking while bats hover around them. Later, in “Offering”, a young boy, Evan, takes an offering to his deceased grandma. But this act becomes overwhelming for him as soon he’s on the floor, nearly smothered by the dialogue balloons above him. All of these elements culminate in these perfectly captured moments that represent an in-between, an almost liminal space that comes with the disconnection that a child of an immigrant family can feel.

Anatola Howard’s What Are You Thinking About? is just that, pure thought. These are short strips, vignettes, and illustrations that feel like a perfect summation of someone’s daily thoughts. There are characters that reappear, there are flashbacks to childhood, there are moments of comedy and sadness, there are times when you’re not sure what your thoughts are even doing but you still follow along because they’re your thoughts in the moment. And these moments are constant—continually flashing by on the page, and yet there’s a comfort in that. Even through all of the randomness of our thoughts, we still feel a connection to the work as a whole because we can still see so much of ourselves there.

There are still many more comics ShortBox is putting out and I’ve only touched on a small few, but I’ve always said that now is the time to start looking for new comics to read. Small presses like ShortBox need support right now, the creators being published by them need your support. This is a comic community, so let’s make sure we can make it through this together.

Get excited. Get together.

Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.