Webcomics wank.
There's a new book coming out; "The History of Webcomics", by the self-styled webcomics expert T. Campbell. The cover features unauthourized likenesses of PA's Gabe, Scott McCloud, Piro, and several others. Several people are pissed, including Pvp's Scott Kurtz. In short, he claims the book is self-important, poorly-written crap.

Permission vs. Forgiveness
Posted on Wednesday, March 1, 2006

It's been a long time since I really got into a good rant. So roll up your pant legs because it's about to get knee deep in here.

The first thing I need you all to do is take a good look at this ad for the upcoming Antarctic Press book "The History of Webcomics", written by T. Campbell.

This ad has my blood boiling. Discussing it with T. Campbell himself and reading his blog about our discussion didn't help matters at all.

Allow me to let you guys in on a little secret about T. Campbell. He is most certainly NOT a "World-reknown webcomics historian." He knows it, you know it and Antarctic Press knows it. To print that is a false statement. If T. Campbell is a "world-reknown webcomics historian" then I'm a "world-reknown fitness expert." They knew they were lying. They printed it anyway.

Neither T. Campbell, nor Antarctic Press bothered to get permission from Scott McCloud, Penny-Arcade, Inc, Fred Gallagher, Suck.com or Charley Parker to use the names of their strips and likenesses of their characters on the cover of the book or for the purposes of promoting it. Both of them knew the proper way to go about doing things. They printed it anyway.

When I asked T, who's idea it was to use the names and likenesses of popular webcomics to promote the book, he found the answer "hard to pin down." Although he didn't specifically ASK his editors to do so, he did mention that using popular webcomics mentioned in the book to promote it could appeal to those popular webcomics established audiences.

So let me just cut through the bullshit for everybody. They knew exactly what they were doing. They decided that it would be easier to ask forgiveness than permission. They printed it anyway. The book doesn't come out for a couple months. Plenty of time for apologies, cover alterations and maintaining ones innocence on blogs. But none of that will undo the fact that Antarctic and T. Campbell have already printed that ad in the PREVIEWS catalog and used the names of popular webcomics to promote their book without permission.

Antarctic Press has been around for years as a publisher. They know the proper way to do stuff. Don't think differently.

Don't judge a book by it's cover

Beyond the cover, I've only skimmed this book. I have it here to read, but have only bothered with chapter three in detail as it was the chapter Mr. T. asked me to create an illustration for. After hearing T's perspective on this chapter, I refused to do so because I didn't want to endorse his words with my art. The chapter is entitled "The Seven Horsemen" and it details the seven people who were the big guns in the inception of the webcomics community.

The seven horsemen, according to our "world-reknown webcomics historian" are:

Scott McCloud
Pete Abrams
J.D. Frazier
Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahaulik
Scott Kurtz
and Fred Gallagher.

Chris Crosby is not listed. I don't think Keenspot is even mentioned. Scott McCloud, on the other hand, has EIGHT pages dedicated to him. Scott's a friend and I respect and love the man. But was he more influential on the early formations of webcomics than Chris Crosby?

Rodney Caston, who co-created Megatokyo, is also not listed as a horseman. When I called T on this, he told me that he didn't feel it was needed to include Rodney. Not only that, but Rodney informs that the book contains a quote from Fred on the reason they duo split that is completely false. Of course, Rodney never had a chance to dispute it, because he was never contacted about the book.

I contributed strips and interview time to T. Campbell for this book despite disliking the idea of it. Why? Because at least this way I have some say over what is documented about me in this history of webcomics. At least I have a say. I could have ended up like Rodney.

How I would do it.

In my opinion....

This book is nothing more than another self-masturbatory project of the new webcomics cognoscenti crowd. Rather than try to make a name for himself by actually CREATING something, Mr. T. has to piggy-back himself on the webcomics creators out there giving it their all.

I love what I do. I love talking to other cartoonists who are doing the same thing. It's exciting to watch it all unfold. The experiments, successes, failures, accomplishments...all of this should be documented in case one day someone, besides ourselves, DOES care to learn about our history. But right now, nobody outside of our own circle even gives a shit.

If I were in charge of putting a book like this together, I think I would just let everyone tell their own story, even if they overlap and contradict each other. The contradictions would at least be compelling. It would be like listening to your grandparents retell the same story differently. Sure the recollection isn't as accurate, but at least it's compelling and the perspectives are genuine. Maybe it's something that should be more open-source and wiki-like than something that reads like a term paper.

A project like that would benefit the community on a whole.

Of course, it doesn't do much in the way of making "world reknown" experts, does it?

Great Teacher Largo w31gh5 in.

Recently published "The History of Webcomics" ... has my blood boiling.

After seeing the section on the history of MegaTokyo, I think I may need to have a few words with the fine folks over at Antartic Press... or five minutes alone in a room with Bonzo the Wonder Chimp in their fact checking department...

The author, T. Campbell, is a self-professed "world-renowned web comic historian" ... Now I'm not entirely sure how a person goes about obtaining that title, but I'm sure there is a very real institute out there which awards it in order to ensure that only the finest candidates are selected.

For this reason I am deeply troubled that the institute's golden child has failed to do the most basic of research. It reasons if someone would want to know the history of something, they ought to say - ask the source, and since I was not contacted I do not see how that was done in this case.

Though the book is not due out for several months, I was given a heads up about a few excerpts of pure fantasy that will be published.

Update:

After originally posting this entry, world-renowned T. Campbell decided to post on my forums with the following:

"If the section you quote really does strike you as pure fantasy, then you need to talk to Fred, because it's been on his site for more than a year"

He is correct in that it has been there for a year; however that does not in any way excuse him from my criticism of his writing a chronicle of me or my work without attempting to consult with me first. At the very least Campbell should instead name his book " The Hearsay of Webcomics." ...

It speaks volumes that his book is nothing more then googled blog entries.

Though, I think industry poobah Steve Fellows said it best:

"Any journalist or researcher knows that you don't take one source as valid, especially when there could be reasons for that source to alter the truth. Any "well renowned" anybody would corroborate his evidence with other sources; otherwise, he is following in the footsteps of James Frey (Million Little Pieces) and Jason Blair (New York Times scandal) and we all know what happened to them.

Mr. T Campbell should definitely send this essay to Barbara Walters and the news crew of 60 Minutes; because they clearly don't know what they are doing.

And it's true that the written word is way more "truthful"; just ask Lenin, Stalin, and those old publishers of Pravda. I suppose Mr. T Campbell has not heard of "spin" albeit it comes in both verbal and written form; but at least in written form you have time to craft ("lie") more carefully; as opposed to verbal, which means you have cover voice nuances, and think on your feet.

Let's hope that Antarctic Press follows in those publisher's footsteps and takes the proper steps to promote truth."

The comments, of course, explode with PiroBashing. There is a comparison to Michael Jackson. In the first comment.

Campbell himself comments. He basically laughs at being under the spotlight of, um, the Internet, claims the artists approved the use of their characters, and one more that I don't understand at all. Some Asian dude weighs in (actually how I found out about the drama). MT's down, so I can't check up on the forums there.
EDIT: Found this checking PVP's referrers; LOL.
EDIT the second: Websnark weighs in. (Thanks soleta!)Among the commenters is Kris Straub (Checkerboard Nightmare), Melonpool's Steve Troop, Ubersoft's Chris Wright, Sam and Fuzzy's Sam Logan, and probably more!