You see, when I started the British Comic Book Archives you might have thought all of the comic fans out there would be great supporters. A central repository for Platinum, Golden and Silver ages British comics that would be free and accessible to everyone. That included the families of creators. And I would like to cite an example here.
Back in the late 1990s, a relation of Stephen Dowling, who created the Garth comic strip in 1943, got in touch. Dowling had a meagre existence after obligatory retirement from comic strips and his family had a few drawings but no examples of what he had drawn commercially -Belinda Blue Eyes, Garth, etc. I knew that the Daily Mirror newspaper, for which Dowling had done so much work, had a large archive. So I contacted then editor, Piers Morgan, and explained the situation and asked whether it might be possible to get some copies -for which I would pay- copies of some of Dowling's work. The up-shot of this is that in a very brief conversation over the phone, Morgan told me what he thought of childish comic strips and where I could go. meh
Anyway, I found enough to scan and also send copies of, to Dowling's family, then in Canada. At least they could see what he had drawn for a living.
Britcomics
I ought to point out here to readers outside the UK that the compulsory age of retirement (it keeps changing but used to be 60 or 65 for men) was strictly adhered to by UK publishers. There were a few very rare exceptions but Mike Western and John Cooper as well as other creators I spoke to all told, as did Dowling, of reaching 60 and being told "That's it. You're out. Get your pensions!" In a world where the Buscema brothers (John an Sal), Joe Kubert and many others continued/continue to work drawing into their 70s and 80s and even in Europe people like Hansrudi Wascher drew into their 80s this seems odd. American artist Martin Filchok was drawing up until the age of 99 (he was just short of his 100th birthday).
But back to "fandom". No, it never supported the idea of a British Comics Book Archive (BCBA). I could not understand it. Well, eventually I did.
You see, comic forums and places like Yahoo comic groups were only interested in Thomson or Amalgamated Press titles -specifically Beano and Dandy- from the 1940s onward. When I posted about finding more work from lost publishers of the British Golden Age -all part of the valuable history of our comics I got negativity. "I wouldn't say they were of any importance"/ "Of interest to you maybe" and it went on. Later, when these people were challenged over this (they had decided that collecting the books might now be worth money) they denied it all. The posts were still there when I quit those groups. The final straw was the accusation that I might be the person 'stealing' all their comic scans and selling them on CD collections on Ebay. It turns out that this must have started as a distraction because one of the accusers is the same person who steals my work and offers it as "original scanner unknown".
So there was a very narrow, blinkered outlook. There was also a lot of childish behaviour which I am not even going into here.
Then there were the Platinum Comics crowd who seem to see themselves as an intellectual elite in graphic illustration. A conversation will run on for a year or more about the date and source of the first use of speech balloons or the first use on Benday Dots. Mention Swan Comics or anything not considered "elevated" enough of a topic that spoils their year long rambles about "doing lunch" at only the best art conventions (Angouleme) and it is almost like you stepped into somethinbg nasty on the street and were wiping it off on their new kashmir rug.
Stuck between two sets of comic book closed minds. Interest only professed when it seems that it might be a good bit of one-upmanship.
BCBA
Why not just call your group The Beano and Dandy Club? Or the other end of things "The Group for Elite Discussion of the Aspectal Sciences Associated with the Archane Craft of Graphic Illustration"?
The other problem was, of course, that these groups thrive on scanned comics. Some of them see themselves, and claim that, they are editors of the comic scanned. "Editor" in the sense that they put the comic on the scanner platen and will discuss the settings they used. That is called "scanning" but whatever. You see, the idea that they contribute scans (credited) to a central repository almost causes cerebral hemorrhaging...nose bleeds abound. They feel that such an act will take all the kudos from them and their groups -after all, being a darling of the comic club is all they have in some cases.
I once had a rather brusque and angry email from someone on one of these groups about my using one of their scans of a 1947 comic in one of the Gold Collections and not crediting them. It was a "WTF?" moment! :-) I sent a photo of myself holding a copy of the said comic that I had purchased and scanned. Silence.
Giving credit is something I will always do without fail if I use a scan someone has sent. Dennis Ray (if I remember correctly he ran Lone Star Comics in Texas), Ernest Guevarro and so on I have credited. But the big problem comes with scanners who are pains in the ass. You see, "Atomic545@" cannot -cannot- like any internet pseudonym, be used to give credit to someone. Ditto with names such as "ComicBob40" -anyone could later claim to be that "entity" and cause problems.
Now, these scanners are not doing anything illegal -under UK or European laws- in fact they are contributing to the maintenance of UK Comic Book history. However, again and again I get "I don't want to give my name" or "just give my email/group name". No. Especially since two have several internet names and one is no longer using his old name -see the problems? Now, of course, just having their ISP number means I could identify and credit these people. However, they expressly do not wish to be named and I will not use silly internet/email names -so I credit "all those who have contributed scans".
How daft does it get? "I'll use those scans in volume 5. If you tell me where to post a copy to you--?" Scanner: "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!" Okay, I slightly -just slightly- exaggerated the response but they will not accept a free copy because it will identify them.
Sigh.
I once had an email exchange with someone who said that he would love to buy my books. The problem was that he would have to pay using his credit card or PayPal. He was worried about how safe it was giving his details when paying on the site. I pointed out that if he looked at the sites security licence he would see that it had a high protection rating. More "hmm" and "ahh" so I said he could pay me and I'd send him the books direct? "You'd have my details!" So I realised that he was a time-waster. He had no intention of buying any of my books so I just responded: "Do not email me again. Your mails are marked as Spam".
You see, you go into a store or online and see the laptop or PC you want. You buy it. Now, in a store you may pay cash but you still have to give legal details -especially for warranty. You now have a footprint online. You pay via credit card....oh come one -you are up there on Cinemascope! So the excuse of securing your anonymity is daft. You vote? You have an internet presence. It goes on and on and if you are visiting website even doing so "incognito" is NOT hiding you.
This is a weird comic fandom we have! :-)
There is the "It's mine -you can't have it!" attitude. I have heard this over and over and over ad nauseum. On my Yahoo groups there were people asking about specific scans/comics and they were downloading already existing scans. Despite the appeals for certain items I was looking for nothing was offered. Then I noted a couple of members were talking and they had the items I had asked about. Could they share? NO! Two less members on the group. On various Yahoo groups I have seen people boasting about a "near complete run" of a title or a collection of books that I was trying to get copies of for the BCBA -I asked as politely as I could whether they could scan certain items. No. The most common response? "If I hand out scans then I don't have a unique collection any more!" Uh, well, what you have are quite rare physical copies of an old comic. What the BCBA would have would be only scans.
I mentioned on my BCBA Yahoo group that I had put in an offer on a book on Ebay. It was damaged but for scanning, with a lot of work, could be added to the archive. The seller was asking £25 which was far too expensive anyway and with the damage, at best, was worth £15 so I made that offer. Two hours later a group member posted -he had the book after putting in an higher offer than I had. And, no, he was not going to scan it for everyone to see. Another member deleted.
The Golden Age books take a lot of time and effort to scan and edit. I don't even want to think what I have spent on some of them. The prices they are sold at basically make them almost free (as far as my getting money from sales goes) because this is a project done through love of comics and not a money-making scheme.
So I have done my bit -as have those who have contributed where they can. But that is one aspect of fandom.
The printed Comic Bits turned to the online Comic Bits Online moving from freeservers, Yahoo 360 and so on until ....where it is (so far) today.
You see, people wanted to get their fan stuff online rather than pay for a bulky publication (Comic Bits #3 just got purchased by someone for £25!). Oddly, rather like digital comics the trend is now reversing to where comic fans are buying fanzines that are printed.
DC and Marvel, as well as Image, Dark Horse and IDW were well catered for. Independent comics were not worthy of a fanzine put together by a DC or Marvel fan! So Independent Comics and the Small Press have always been covered by me -whether the old Zine Zone or Comic Bits publications. The other aspect of comics that no one back in the 1980s/1990s was writing or chatting about were Hong Kong/Peoples Republic of China Manhua. As someone noted about three years ago "Your manhua posts are almost everywhere -just not under your name!" He was quite right. But this is the internet and though I credit other writers or sites the "usual standard" is cut and paste and add your own name.
Here is a little secret of mine. Covers and images I scan all have a tiny mark on them and in a specific place so I know which images have been lifted from my sites. Of course, when someone offers 'their' scanned cover of a Chinese comic you look at it and ask yourself: what are the chances that there would be two hard to find Chinese Manhua, both with the exact same double crease in a specific corner, the exact same pen mark and even the same cannot-be-removed dirt stain? You work that out because I lost myself somewhere in there.
Australian and New Zealand comics -wrote about them and have even supplied scans of rarer comics for comic fans/historians there. For most comic people the belief was always that "Australia and New Zealand only reprinted UK and US comics" -far from the truth.
Back in the 1990s I began my IndoPakBang groups -covering comics from India, Bangladesh and Pakistan which, again, were seen as "only" reprinting UK material or in recent years, US material. India has a very rich comics industry as I noted in my first article on the subject in...1996.
European comics. "It's all Asterix and Tintin!" and "Europe has NEVER published super hero comics!" (one noted British comic 'historian' with a penchant for Europe told me as he dismissed my comments on such before his crowd of admirers.
The same person and just about any American or British comic book 'historian' you read will tell you: "there were no comics in Germany during World War 2 right up until the mid-1950s because the Nazis banned them" -they will either add because "they were Jewish American propaganda" or "designed for people of low IQs"
Well, through the work of collectors such as Peter Claus in Germany I produced posts that proved there were comic books in Germany during WW 2 -in fact I own two from 1941 (they were fairly cheap to buy and I would get more but I'm trying to make sure I can feed myself at the moment not collect comics...which is very depressing). And German comics began again in the early 1950s with Superman reprints.
And through my own searches as well as Sebchoq on the Yahoo Eurocomics groups, it was proven many years ago that Europe -France, Italy, Netherlands, etc.- did have super heroes and costumed or masked crime fighters going back to the 1940s. The French characters from companies such as Editions LUG have even been revitalised by people such as Jean Marc Lofficier.
All of this has been presented in posts and interviews on CBO over the years. That is excluding Mega Posts dealing with specific characters or titles. Now I don't do numbers but I know freaks who do :-) They tell me that if CBO were a printed fanzine and varied between 48-100 pages and at the lowest possible cover price (ie; making no money) then what the audience here has had for free would have cost them several thousand £/$ which, I guess, would be right.
Look at the reactions to posts on CBO. Usually only the same 4-5 people will comment every-so-often. There is the rare "I enjoyed this" but it is one reason why I would never actually go ahead with the planned re-launch of Comic Bits magazine. A couple people said "Yeah, I'd buy it" but if I went by that then I would be worth a fortune now with the number of books that would have sold! All the effort of putting together a quarterly magazine that just sits gathering internet dust waiting for one order...I don't think so! If I were a publishing house with distribution and shops were stocking the publication -yes!
And going back 15 years I predicted exactly the situation which exists today. The real comic fans are quiet and more-or-less in hiding. For a good reason. I saw one enter a polite discussion about a comic book series and he wrote: "I loved the series though, for me, #5 was not the best". That was it. About seven others then did a mindless "Let's jump in and kick the s**t out of him!" that went on. The moderator, as most of those cowards do, called it "free speech" and "everyone is entitled to their own opinions" because the moderator messed his pants at the thought of getting similar abuse.
GrosserOpa Heinrich Scharf on his first and only artillery drill
There are comics I do not like and I will tell people "I am not keen on it" and that is it. Ditto TV (though I don't have a TV so I don't watch any programmes!) and movies. Comics forums tend to be infiltrated and have arschlochs embedded in them -bullying and trolling is their way of adding something to their empty lives. They try to ruin the lives of fans as well as those working in comics -a medium some of them work(ed) in and they helped denigrate. There are little "comic mafias" who, if you do not do and draw what they say and become "one of the gang", will hound you, spread lies about you and even try to block you getting work. There are a list of their victims but to say that no one in comics (including editors) do not know about it is a lie.
So people moved over to You Tube and people producing comic book content there. Everything was fine and dandy and it was great. Then the trolls moved in. Spreading lies and rumours, attacking Tubers in comments and so on. Some were identified and names revealed or told to stop or be outed. Bad move. The trolls should be outed because they dropped their known troll names and adopted others -often hiding behind their 'respected' You Tube name.
These people moved on to troll gamers, crafters and many others. It is a psychological disorder. Same as the two members on one group talking on group chat about how many "Dislike" buttons they had clicked on You Tube. Why? No sane answer -it was fun to dislike something someone had put a lot of effort into and that a lot of people really enjoyed. I would say to any You Tuber that you ignore the Dislikes because they ARE malicious and designed to make you fret and panic. If you have 345498 Dislikes and 2 Likes....maybe then worry!
But these people being moved on tried the same tactics with bloggers. I simply delete any of those comments -having been accused of being a racist, homophobic and everything else. Now, however, I find it better to post those comments in a post and belittle the person as much as possible while blocking them from commenting.
Oh lords....what else was there? Comics...hmm. Called You Tubers names and it didn't get them the erection they needed just castration. Oh! Attack the companies. Attack the most popular company -Marvel! The problem here is that you have people working in the company who have a similar "internet millenial" IQ and so will counter-attack and we have the fake SJW-Anti-SJW War -both sides craving attention so name calling, trolling on Twitter while saying that it isn't/is trolling and even both sides lying about what the other said or wrote. Adding "SJW" -they have even admitted this in their videos- boosts views and that is what they want: attention through negativity. On both sides.
When things get to a certain point "Solid anti-SJW" friends get turned on. It might take a while but after a year or two the Anti-SJWs' brain cells work out their "comrade" is....AN SJW!!!!!! Cue the inter-Anti SJW spatting.
Now we have one stating that he has footage of one SJW comic conman creator screaming at him in the street. The recording shows the man calm as the Anti-SJWer screeches. In come the supporters on how the comics con man assaulted -only a couple state "verbally assaulted" because assaulted sounds like physical violence was used- their pal who was out for a quiet evening. The footage shown shows the opposite.
Then, after "Gamer Gate", let's not go there, faded away it was realised that gamers were missing out. Yeah, guess what? SJWs and crooks "with agendas" were everywhere. Now we have claims of a store owner assaulting a known fan ("with a rather chequered reputation") at a gamers convention and the convention organisers "victim blaming" and the video evidence is a cracked window. Now there are this "victimised fan'" pals jumping in "Like, this was an assault on me. It was,like, an assault on all of us gamers" and the quiet "We don't know all the facts but he's a friend of mine". Far from "terrified" and hiding out in his hotel room in "fear for his life" the guy is recording clips of himself hyped up and showing the broken window and one person -one- who will agree with what he says. One of his You Tuber friends points out the attack is "domestic terrorism" and that it is doubtful "weapons could be sneaked into the convention".
WTF did this become weaponised?????
For their five minutes of fame these people are destroying what should be fun. Those doing this in the companies and the alleged 'fans' -both guilty. Twist and lie about what was said. It goes on and on. The same as the ones who tell you how bad a movie is and how it stinks and it is full of the SJW agenda -two years before its release. Same with TV programmes.
These people scream and shout about the "SJW agenda" while spouting off that they just want to see a good and healthy comics industry. You Tube, blogs, forums -everywhere.
Comic book fans tend to love comics and if there is a comic they do not like they stop buying it. The company asks "Why?" and makes changes or cancels the title. Comic book fans tend to enjoy or love comics and want to do that in peace and quiet and, occasionally, chat about comics. They cannot. I predicted this situation 15 years ago and stated we would have the comics and fans we deserved unless changes were made. The current run of Marvel's The Avengers is far from "awfully written agenda filled" and is far more like the Old Marvel. There are other titles given good reviews by You Tubers and others that the Anti-SJW agenda group (when not fighting amongst themselves) slate as dire and awful. I'll go with the real comic fans and their reviews.
The reason that I continued CBO was so that fans, young and old, could comment or chat about comics. There is a zero tolerance of trolls, bullying or deliberate negativity on CBO when it comes to comments. No arguing: you comment in order to start trouble you are banned for life (oh, your ISP is reported, too so don't think a new fake name will help).
You can imagine that a lot of true comic fans are even terrified to say they purchased a Marvel comic! Why should they be? CBO has a world-wide audience and let's not get boring with stats! That audience I would love to believe are quiet comic fans and I may be kidding myself there. I do what I do FOR comic fans like me and it is sad they do not want to comment but nothing I can do about that. No one need ever fear I am going to be abusive to them if they comment. Thousands read the Avengers, Sub-Mariner and other mega-posts this year and there were 4 people (I know) who commented.
As a fan you should be allowed to watch or read whatever you want. Life is short and can be a heap of crap and grim at times -have fun reading and watching what you like and remember that there are still some decent You Tubers out there talking about comics.
And if you stuck it through that -thank you. This just took 6 HOURS because my computer is on its last legs!
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