Staring at the Puzzle Cube (It is A Cube, Right?)

Alan Moore and Grant Morrison are a strange pair. They’ve got that thing about magic. Well, Alan Moore is a practitioner of Magic, while Grant Morrison is a man who goes in for Chaos Magick (pronounced Mage-ick, if my sketchy sources are to be believed, don’t put too much stock in it). I won’t go into what either of these things actually mean, because I don’t fucking know and I don’t have time to rummage around to find out. Actually, their interest in these similar-sounding esoteric pastimes is really the only strange thing about either of them.

Not being friends with either man and not even being acquainted with one, I can’t give any insights into their thought processes. You know, that whole having only a shallow exposure to them, so anything I were to say about what’s going on in their weirdly oppositely-haired domes is going to speculative at absolute best and spurious at worst. I hate spurious.

Fucking hell this is starting to sound serious. Lemme give some disclosure, I’m not an academic^* or a journalist. Anybody who claims so is up to something and should probably be hunted down and forced to do something unpleasant, like watch nothing but Eastenders and River City for a week. Yes, I am a terrible man.

Anyway.

I find they both sound even-tempered and reasonable when they speak. The only anger I’ve ever encountered (in my limited experience, mind you, I have to stress that again for those gimps picking and choosing words to use against me) is from Grant Morrison when he talks about Mark Millar. A whooooooole different kettle of bile, there, and something I will never touch on again. Intelligence is the lasting impression from Morrison and Moore.

They are both also highly successful and influential comic story tellers with a background in artwork. Watchmen, V for Vendetta and From Hell are some of the seminal comics works Alan Moore has graced the world with. Grant Morrison spent five years telling the story of The Invisibles. Both have done much, much more than I’ve listed and you have to whole internet right there to find out, you lazy fuck. They’ve both got something of a pedigree, in case you aren’t familiar.

There is also THE FEUD. Alan Moore doesn’t like Grant Morrison. At least that was the impression given for a long time and the best you could say was Moore wasn’t a fan. Then an interview with Pádraig Ó Méalóid, claiming to be Moore’s last, swatted the internet in the buttocks a few days ago. And my, my did it get a squealy reaction. Moore hates, hates, hates, hates, HATES, HATES, FUCKIN’ HATES Grant Morrison. With a side order of hate^**.

My understanding is that Grant Morrison, again, until recently wasn’t entirely in love with Alan Moore either. Again, this changed with an interview at the end of 2012 conducted by Laura Sneddon in which he showed some consternation and confusion about the tension between himself and Alan Moore, as well as the timeline and events^†.

The comics internet was shaken to its core and turned a lot of people into fuckin’ Twilight fans – turning into Team Moore and Team Morrison with all the ridiculously juvenile and noxious bullshit that entails. Seriously I’m embarrassed for the comics community (and some of the industry) for the way this whole business has been treated. Them and us isn’t a healthy attitude in relation to a personal conflict like this, no matter if the participants want you to do it^‡. It’s human nature to leap on a flaw of someone you aren’t enamoured with^§, but I do wish more people, people who oughtta know better would take a step back and use the mushy grey stuff in their skulls. Oh, and engage the empathy bone. Essentially a lot of Forest Whitaker eye going on – and there was enough of that anyway.

So, it’s turned into a complete fucking mess with people making arseholes of themselves on either side of the argument. Though there have been some islands of sanity and sense in this lake of bubbling vitriol.

I was going to compare and possibly contrast their accounts of Morrison’s and Moore’s ongoing relationship, because relationship is what it is, one based on verbal swipes through intermediaries. It’s not a pleasant relationship, but there is a connection and it’s something they need to work out between them, without the braying peanut gallery of the internet inciting more from them, something that’s been absent from historical literary feuds. Looking at the two interviews (the Morrison one being a weirdly editorial affair with him adding changes in red and everything) it seems so tangled and twisted I’d just find myself in knots about them. It invites another one of those Can-Can moments, I’m afraid.

So, as I’ve written this, with an eye for looking at the affair, I find myself being distracted and disheartened by something that’s bothered me about the comics community for a long time: the vocal minority of arseholes it engenders. The unwelcoming trolls and ogres who have set themselves up at the gates of the community judging who is worthy, grovelling at the feet of people in the industry while preparing knives to hamstring and hack apart those same individuals. Seeing industry figures jumping in on this behaviour just makes me stand back in confusion and go, “Huh.”

There’s an ingrained aggression in the comics community. Nothing wrong with aggression, it creates energy and drives artistic expression. It’s when this aggression gets redirected at inappropriate sources like women, gays, creators and each other it’s done with all the grisly violence of a troop of chimps taking a baby, and it’s about as brutal and upsetting as that image conjures. It’s what taints the medium for people outside of it. And there’s a lot of writing on this behaviour, particularly the shameful treatment of women (and in the last year, incidentally, of women in the games industry), and I’m not the best source for it.

So what do we do about this handsy uncle no one talks about part of the comics community? Well we start talking about it, we engage it; see if we can change something about it. Not an easy task for the spittle-chinned glaring bastard, threatening us with death and rape, but in this case robust discussion needs to take place. Because (clumsily switching metaphors) cancer doesn’t go away by ignoring it. Treatment, that’s the thing.

It might not be so bad if the industry side of the didn’t foment it and encourage it. Pandering to the lowest members of a rich community is not the way to keep it alive–

Stop acting like cocks, is what I’m saying.

Fucking hell, that’s all it boils down to: stop acting like cocks. Think about what you’re going to say before you launch into a venomous tirade or write yet another story objectifying women and consider, perhaps there’s another way. Being a cock gets you attention but it fucks up the whole place for everyone else. This doesn’t mean disagreements aren’t going to happen, but perhaps it will create discourse a bit better than, “Youre a fucking fagot fucktard,” and it means we can have industry characters who aren’t misogynistic, homophobic narcissists.

Of course, yes, I’ll do the obligatory it’s only a minority of the community who behaves that way. And I wouldn’t say it if it weren’t true, however it would be nicer if it were a dwindling minority. Let them be as vocal as they want, too, then we know who they are and point out to those who don’t know, that’s not the way to behave.

So, what was going to be a sticking my oar in to an argument I have nothing to do with (albeit, I was doing it dispassionately, with a hint of humour^§§ and adopting the middle ground) has turned into a small attempt at weakening the hold on the comics community of the sweaty arsehole element. I think that’s in the territory of ‘win’, don’t you?

Now I’ll shut up for a few days.

^* Y’know despite this little nugget of internet obscurity having an academic bent. Or it was.

^** He’s no fan of Laura Sneddon, either, but that’s for someone else to blether about.

^† The Alan Moore interview can be found here: Last Alan Moore Interview? this is a long article. The Grant Morrison interview can be found here: The Strange Case of Alan Moore and Grant Morrison, as Told by Grant Morrison. I so wish these interviews had happened closer together. No doubt by next week there’ll be a new Morrison one.

^‡ Which Alan Moore does and it disappointed me. Perhaps it was point-making hyperbole, but it’s so easy to misunderstand. And people did, wilfully and enthusiastically.

^§ I’m guilty of it myself and it drives my wife nuts. Doesn’t mean I condone it.

^§§ “Y’whut?” I hear you cry. Cunts.


Will

Fans don't care about ticket prices.

Do any of you remember the days when going to a concert was affordable, even cheap?  You could go into a shop and pay six or eight quid to go see a band you liked.  Some bigger bands, playing bigger venues, would ask for twenty, maybe thirty quid.

(For the real crusties out there, I'm sure you could get a ticket for ha' penny and a bacon sandwich in your day; it all ties in with what I'm saying, really.)

Today, in my meanderings through my usual internet haunts I came across the news that Motörhead are touring and will be hitting the O2 Academy in Glasgow later this year.  Having seen something of a trend in recent years, I decided, perhaps counter to my heart health to take wee look at the prices for the gig.  Now, the O2 Academy is a middle-sized venue, which for better or worse will always inform my view of the ticket prices.  Once I'd followed the links from the official site and got nowhere, I found somewhere that gave them.  When these tickets go on sale in the next couple of days they'll be looking for a whopping thirty-one quid.  Twenty-seven pounds plus a four quid booking fee, the rise of booking fees has been a point of contention for me for a long time too.

What the cunting fuck?

That's a disgusting price for a gig in a medium-sized venue.  And, as I feared it tied in with other gig pricings.  Chris Cornell playing the same venue are a staggering forty-odd quid!  What's he going to do?  Paint the stage in twenty-four carat gold and sit in a paddling pool of caviare?  If I paid that I'd expect at least to have a butler waiting on me all night.

I won't even go into the price tag Iron Maiden tickets had, it just makes me angry, after Bruce Dickinson's protestations that the band just want people to have an affordable good time.  A bit difficult when fans are being charged fifty quid a ticket in this economic climate (yes, I said it, I'm adult, no need to be embarrassed).

The thing is, I'm not sure who to blame for the price-setting.  How much control do the bands have?  How much is driven by the venues themselves?  There's no question that anyone who can ask for that kind of money with a straight face is a cunt.  It's just too murky to point the finger at any one entity (I did it with the Iron Maiden thing, out of anger and frustration).  I know that everyone's been hit by the economic downturn, but if you're that desperate to tour you might consider being a bit more conservative with your pricing.

One thing we should be doing is maybe telling them to fuck off.  That's right, a wholesome boycott.  Don't go to gigs by big bands and back it up with an email or (gasp!) snail-mail campaign.  They'll get the message and you'll see the prices drop.

But then that hits the wall when you come to fans.  Fans of things are great, the more fans of something there are, the longer it (whatever you want to replace 'it' with) hangs around (or it might end up horrible, depending on what the 'it' is).  The downside is that fans are often uncritical of those things that they like, so you end up in a situation where a band charges fifty or sixty quid and the tickets vanish like vapour in a few minutes.  And then these same fans will smugly say when you offer your legitimate concerns over pricing, "You're not a real fan, are you?"

To which I have to answer 'no'.  I've discovered that I'm not a real fan of anything.  I can't deal with things uncritically any more.  From comics, to books, to music, to films.  I look at things and weigh them up.  Of course I want to enjoy things, but I'm not going to ignore dreadful things or things just not to my taste.  I love the writing of Alan Moore, but I'm just not interested in 'Promethea' and found 'America's Best Comics' patchy.  I think Iron Maiden are a fantastic band, but I still can't listen to most of 'Piece of Mind'.  So any attempt to gouge money is going to be met with a very stern expression.

There's my little call for activism, I'll be over here, trying to be invisible.


Will