Written by Marvel’s Dan Slott has taken his fear of this very blog to a whole new level. Criticism of The Amazing Spider-Man is now illegitimate if screenshots taken from this blog accompany said feedback. A reader pointed me to recent Comic Book Resources discussion where the writer expertly used his favorite red herring and “poison the well” fallacies.
A user commented:
What are people going to remember about “the best selling comic in 2012, 2013, or 2014”?
– Will it be SlOtto shooting an unarmed man in the face, while his peers and allies stood around drooling on themselves like idiots? (Because, you know, Spider-man always fought crime with guns and a lust for criminal execution like the Punisher, except for the 50 years of stories where didn’t, and there’s nothing weird about that).
– Will it be Peter running around in his web-diaper, in a literal on-panel representation of the painfully regressed man-child he’s become in the dumbed-down, lowest common denominator, post-One More Day comic continuity?
– Will it be Peter claiming “wow Sanjani is so right and I’m wrong” as (SlOtto’s) his company crumbles, and he has to be saved from a villian by the likes of Anna Maria and Clash (a character we’re supposed to care about since he was shoehorned into yet another unneeded reinterpreting of Spider-man’s origin)?
– Will it be this glorious, gag-inducing panel?
Dan Slott’s response:
HA! Look at that link! You pulled that image from “dougernst.files.wordpress.com” Wow! You went all the way to crazy town for that one. You chew over your Spidey-bile with Mr. I-Think-Spider-Man-Should-Kill-North-Koreans? Seriously… wow. Your posts make SO much more sense now.
I thought I was talking to a potentially reasonable person… but if that’s where you dredge up your “intellectual ammo” …you’re a lost cause. Sorry. But good day, sir.
The commenter handled Mr. Slott like a true professional.
No idea what you’re on about here, man, unless you’re trying to get this thread flagged by the NSA. But way to dodge. YOU wrote the panel, so you must find nothing icky / silly / ridiculous about Peter and Silk addressing each other and lolling around together like an old married couple. But it’s all just another day in the silly Slott-Verse for us and Spidey.
See, I’m discussing content, where you keep dissembling and trying to spin off the topic, so much so that Mets could freely thread drift your posts.
Dan. Slott. Nailed. To. The. Wall.
Let us speak of intellectual ammunition, shall we? Dan Slott was blasted away by this young man with an intellectual .50 Caliber Machine Gun. As bits and pieces of Dan’s fragile ego exploded off his psyche, he looked for anything that might save him and found some cover just in time — a link to douglasernstblog.com. Dan Slott’s go-to survival technique when faced with punishing critiques is to bring up this blog and then distort things I said — in 2012.
Here is where it gets fun. Consider Dan Slott’s retort to this young man: “If that’s where you dredge up your ‘intellectual ammo’ …you’re a lost cause.”
Let us pretend this individual did get his intellectual ammunition here. If that is the case, then it is obvious that he is using the kind of nuclear weapons from 2012 that are still reverberating in Dan Slott’s mind three years after detonation. The shock waves from what I’ve said continue to bounce around in Slott’s skull for years, and yet he still strangely attempts to convince others that my reviews of his work are without merit.
I wrote a post in 2012 where I said it was ridiculous that Dan Slott’s Peter Parker would be faced with a possible extinction-level event and — when every single second could mean the death of six billion people — he thought it was a wise decision to berate his teammates about the sanctity of North Korea’s gulag overseers. While billions of lives hung in the balance and time was of the essence, Dan Slott’s Peter Parker decided to harangue Black Widow over how she navigated an army of North Korean torturers. Kudos!
Years later, Marvel’s ASM scribe is still so emotionally scarred by the drubbing he gets here that he has to frame the debate as if I want Peter Parker to snap the necks of emaciated North Korean women living in rural villages outside Pyongyang. Perhaps if Dan Slott actually read comics like Guy Delisle’s “Pyongyang,” (It’s a good bet that he probably isn’t going to make time for books like “Escape from Camp 14”), then he’d know just how foolish he comes across on CBR message boards.
Exit question: If I showed up to defend myself over at CBR and I did so tactfully, then how long would it take before Dan Slott’s moderator buddies banned me anyway?
Douglas Ernst Blog 
This guy needs to be fired! I hate him writing Spider-man. The only good thing of his that I read was Superior Spider-man. This guy needs to be fired and replaced with a good writer like Bendis.
Here’s what Dan Slott does: 1.) He stalks my blog because he knows that I’m a smart guy. 2.) He memorizes my critiques and looks for anything that he can twist into something strange and ridiculous. 3.) He waits for people on other websites to make similar arguments. 4.) He then throws out the “Douglas Ernst is ‘crazy’ and you both make the same argument so you must be ‘crazy’ too” card.*
I disagree with Bendis’ politics, but I do think that he is a very strong writer. I would gladly welcome him on ASM. I think it would be a great improvement.
*Note: It doesn’t matter if the person has no clue what Dan Slott is talking about (e.g., the guy who wasn’t familiar with my 2012 post on North Korea) because all that matters is diverting discerning eyes away from his work. Some guy could Google “Spider-Verse” images, and if mine popped up and he used it, then oh well. To Dan Slott, that must mean that he’s on some secret payroll that I have going.
I personally would love to see Marvel put some new blood on Spider-Man.
While Bendis, Waid, Millar and all the other Marvel “go-to guys” have written comics I am really fond of, lately they all seem a bit creatively bankrupt to me. I’m sure part of this has to do with them being overworked (how many different books has Waid been working on in the last year? Daredevil, SHIELD, Proncess Leia, the all-new all-different Avengers, Insufferable and Empire on his Thrillbent site, the Archie reboot, Black Fox etc.)
I’m sure some of it has to do with them being too close to Marvel for too long and too comfortable with being lead by editorial rather than creative passion.
Either way, I imagine Bendis writing Spider-Man would only result in more of the Marvel PC Super Agenda being rammed down our throats…in the form of ultra-decompressed six issue talking head scenes.
I think what Spidey (and Marvel) desperately needs is a new face with some new ideas who is willing to get in there and fight to have them published. I’d certainly be a bit more optimistic to give that a try than I would be trusting one of the same old cast of crooked characters.
If I did have to toss out a name though I’d recommend Jason Aaron. I don’t know if you guys read Astonishing Spider-Man & Wolverine, but I thought it was pretty damn good (at least, the first half).
The combination of being overworked and too close to editors definitely can hinder the product. I think one of the reasons why Spider-Verse generally a mess was because Dan Slott was overworked and because his Nick Lowe seemed to have been transported to Editor-Verse Universe 000, where editors don’t do their jobs. “Okay, Dan, you’re saying that Master Weaver is just going to hand the heroes a magic scroll with ‘everything’ they need to know in order to move the story along? Sounds good to me. Let’s run with it, boys!”
I agree with you on the Marvel PC Super Agenda concern, but at this point I could deal with PC Bombs going off in ASM here and there if we can get someone on the book who understands Peter Parker. Did you notice that Dan Slott always says stuff like “I understand Spider-Man,” but he doesn’t ever seem to say “I understand Peter Parker“? Maybe I’m wrong on that one, but that seems to be the case in my random run-ins with message boards, interviews, etc. I think on some level he knows that he can write a wise-cracking superhero, but that he struggles with the kinds of personal interactions Peter deals with in his everyday life.
I didn’t get a chance to check out Jason Aaron’s work with the character. I’ve been trying to keep my spending on Marvel merchandise to a bear minimum, although I will make exceptions if someone like you says, “Hey, check this out.”
I just read the first issue of Brian K. Vaughan’s “We Stand on Guard.” I say read, but I should say “skimmed.” I probably should have reviewed it.
Shocker: America is evvvvvvvil, and now we’re going after Canada. These writers are so predictable. I have to laugh, because they seem to think they’re somehow pushing the envelope. Maybe in part six it will be revealed that the U.S. president is some sort of mutant made with Dick Cheney’s DNA. Do it, Mr. Vaughan. The guys who hand out the industry’s awards will eat it right up. They’ll call you “brave” for “speaking truth to power” when you accept your award.
Dan unfortunately has a distinct habit of maintaining polarizing attitude on some communities. Look at how he conducts himself on John Bryne’s forum about the new direction…despite the fact Byrne is giving him dog’s abuse the entire time, Dan is respectful, humble, and engages in a friendly sort of communion with people on that forum that don’t like where he’s taking the book, but still falls back on his sales success and other things to again present the argument he must be doing something right. He keeps his cool there and acts like a pro knowing that if he sets off on one, Byrne could ban him…and what a P.R disaster that would prove to be. One of comics most iconic artists schooling and tossing out the head writer for a book Marvel are already trying to downplay as one with a flagship hero in favor of Iron Man (which will be written by Bendis). Dan needs to drum up all the good word-of-mouth he can muster and he was able to turn heads at Byrne’s forum and convince them to give it a try.
Contrast that to CBR, where he knows he has no filter, has favoritism from the mods, has seasoned trolls like Cyberhubbs, Prof Warren, Jimishim etc echoing his attitudes with similar bait and snark, and he just goes nuts, pointing out his sales sucess but doing so in a cattier manner, telling people to “stop” forming their own opinions on how they see the book going (he apparently has never heard of “death of the author”, where as Spider-Gwen’s author Jason Latoure HAS and actually ENCOURAGES it) and of course tries to character assassinate the people who have given his books a chance for eight years running and frequently come out of the experience as dissatisfied customers. People like Mike (aka Stillanerd) are the audience Dan dreads will steadily multiply, as they are, so he tries to shop around trying to recruit as many new readers as possible before they become the “cranky vets” who see through the sheer shock of the new and see and now expect the same old song.
Indeed, the contrast between how Slott tiptoed through John Byrne’s site and how he behaves on CBR is incredibly telling. At one point he asked his CBR critic “Is this really how you want to spend your 4th of July?” This is coming from the guy who a.) trolls Twitter for random women to insult, b.) stalks my blog at 1:00 a.m., and c.) was spending his 4th of July pushing back against a critic. He will spend hours upon hours upon hours talking about how awesome his work is and how it stands on its own. If it stands on its own, why is he so prickly and hyper-paranoid about criticism? Deep down he knows that guys like Stillanerd are very smart.
We now have a culture that embraces impulsive tweets. It loves throwaway Snapchat images and self-congratulatory Facebook posts. It swims through vapid Tumblr streams. Dan Slott’s work on ASM is made for this culture. His own Twitter feed tells the tale: Knee-jerk responses to critics between and ongoing stream of “I’m-so-awesome”-type status updates. It is that sort of mentality that seeps into his work. John Byrne knows it. The guy he was lashing out at on CBR knows it. You know it. I know it, and so do many others.
Here is what Dan Slott does, which is both hilarious and utterly pathetic. He’ll see something a critic wrote and become outraged. On some sort of subconscious level he knows that said criticism is usually pretty tame or that it may even hit the mark. He doesn’t care because all that matters is that he’s upset. He needs the world to then feel his outrage. He will then distort the remark to a degree he thinks that a sufficient number of his fans and gullible people will accept what he says as true.
The level of distortion Dan Slott applies to criticism is positively correlated to the intensity of the internal temper tantrum going on in his head.
I think that is a good prism through which to view his interactions with critics on Slott-friendly websites.
“Deep down he knows that guys like Stillanerd are very smart.”
Well, as Bill Murray from Groundhog Day would say, “I’m not that smart.” 😉
Still, thanks for the compliment, Doug.
You and I differed in opinion in terms of the grading for Renew Your Vows. If I were to pull a Slottian move, then I’d weirdly twist myself into intellectual knots trying to convince people that you were totally off base. There was no way I was going to do that because it was obvious to any objective observer that your opinions are formed through sound logic and reason. I find myself differing with you by degrees on occasion, but I have never scratched my head and thought, “Where the heck did he come up with that opinion?”
The mere fact that Dan Slott can barely keep it together when discussing these issues with you is incredibly telling. I can just imagine him on the other side of the computer screen clenching his fists when he reads your feedback. He wants to unleash his full Slottian rage on you, but he knows that to do so with someone who carries himself with your level of tact and grace would make him look really bad.
I spent about an hour on that Byrne bulletin board thread b/c it was SO damn entertaining watching a TRUE comicbook legend — Byrne — heap nothing but scorn on a hypersensitive ingrate — Slott — who’ll be nothing but a FOOTNOTE in comicbooks in years to come.
Slott kept trying to brown-nose Byrne by telling him how much he admired all his work, but Byrne wouldn’t play along. Absolutely DELICIOUS.
Byrne: X-Men, Alpha Flight, Man of Steel, Fantastic Four, Iron Fist, etc.
Slott: … who??
Dan Slott is sort of like Cal Ripken without Cal Ripken’s Hall of Fame talent or respect. Dan is good enough for the big leagues and he’s stayed on the same team for a really long time without sitting out any games, but at this point he should really walk away.
Dan Slott is sort of like Dennis Rodman without the Hall of Fame talent or respect. Dan is weird and outlandish. He throws temper tantrums and is incredibly unprofessional, but his odd behavior and antics sell the product.
So I’m the one having that go around with Slott. And it really was as simple as googling “Spider-man and Silk” to find that annoying panel which I posted. I didn’t look at where I was grabbing it from. And while I have read your blog in the past, I don’t frequent it (I will more now though so you can thank Slott for that). You haven’t seen me comment here before, and I don’t operate under other pseudonyms on boards, which is another of his hostile accusation tactics.
And while I didn’t know at first just what the hell he was referring to, it was damn obvious that it was all a diversionary tactic on his part.
Thanks for taking the time read and comment, Cheesedique. There was a part of me that wanted to register and comment on CBR yesterday, but years ago it was made clear that tactfully defending myself when Dan Slott throws personal attacks my way was somehow off limits. I wanted to find a way to digitally shake your hand, so your comment allows me to do so now. Again, good stuff.
It was a sheer pleasure to watch someone a.) dismantle Dan Slott’s run on ASM in a clear and concise way, and b.) call him out on his diversionary tactics.
I’m surprised his buddy Mr. Mets didn’t find an excuse to step in and stop the beat-down. Anyone who can expose Dan Slott’s giant logical fallacy smoke screen gets three cheers in my book.
Mr. Mets? Could that be Ron Marz?
I’m not sure, but Mr. Mets clearly likes playing the role of Dan Slott’s ball boy. 😉 He’s also a little bit like Leslie Nielsen playing an umpire in “Naked Gun.” Mr. Mets has to pat down anyone who comes into the ballpark and keep them from harming Dan Slott.
I’m to blame a bit for those particular accusation tactics as I frequently come back on CBR to tackle a few people I dislike there and Dan keeps tabs on me with as much frequency as he does Stillanerd and Doug…sometimes it got others unnecessary scorn from Dan whenever they posted like-minded comments I happened to share. if anyone there is still being subject to that, I’m sorry for giving him just cause to use that on them
The “Dan Slott Worldwide ‘Net Summer Tool Tour” continues apace with this frosty exchange with the editor-in-cheif of Bleeding Cool
http://www.theouthousers.com/index.php/news/132330-fanboy-rampage-dan-slott-vs-bleeding-cools-hannah-means-shannon.html?utm_content=buffer73e98&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer
More of this, please:
As it pertains to your situation Zariusii, I wouldn’t apologize for Dan Slott’s behavior. That’s the problem: Dan Slott spends the bulk of his energy trying to find ways to discredit a person instead of responding to his or her actual criticism. He needs to go on weird rants about posts I wrote in 2012 because the criticism leveled by guys like Cheesedique is powerful.
When Slott can’t dismiss a person as “crazy” or use the all-purpose sales crutch, he’s soon flailing about like a shipwrecked sailor without a life preserver.
I think that Marvel’s biggest mistake is not overseeing Slott’s work with great criticism before it gets published. Perhaps Superior Spider-Man might have turned out better knowing that Otto’s plan had failed. All we’re seeing in the upcoming ASM series is the same thing as Big Time, but on a Iron Man scale. I never understood why won’t the other departments hire Dan Slott from the Spider-Office because it becomes an obsession to keep one writer on the ASM for so long with the kinds of stories that he’s created thus far. I would like to see a writer actually take a chance on Peter Parker’s personal life by not giving him a love interest and simply focus on developing his personal relationship with a super heroines as it was once done with Carol Danvers and Felicia Hardy(before Slott ruined her character)…
“All we’re seeing in the upcoming ASM series is the same thing as Big Time, but on a Iron Man scale.”
This seems like a reasonable prediction to make. Dan Slott’s response is something along the lines of “You haven’t read it yet!” Stillanerd nicely told him that fans have a deep well of material from which to draw their conclusions. Someone like Stillanerd might not be correct with 100 percent of his predictions, but he’s going to be right on a heck of a whole lot. Where he’s wrong, it’s not like his stated fears are unfounded.
This line by Stillanerd had me laughing out loud:
Someone should do a flowchart with Dan Slott’s stock responses to legitimate criticism.
1. “You didn’t read it.”
2. “You haven’t read all of it yet.”
3. “You were never going to like it.”
4. “Sales! Sales! Sales!”
5. “Douglas Ernst! Douglas Ernst! Douglas Ernst!”
Yeah, much about trying to guess what’s going to happen is usually based on what you know about these characters, how they’ve been portrayed in the past, and, based on the scenario they’ve been placed in, how they might respond in that situation. Course the tricky part is with comics is they’re serialized stories with various writers who might have their own ideas about who are character is and what they’re supposed to be like.
Also, adding to what I mentioned about how Slott now has a large body of work on Amazing Spider-Man and thus one can better guess at what he might do, it reminds of something I heard about writers, artists, filmmakers, etc. You see enough of their work and you start to better pick up on their patterns, their style, and the “tropes” they often use. For example, the Stephen King drinking game on TV Tropes: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/DrinkingGame/StephenKing
Also, for as much as Slott criticizes those for prejudging a story before they read it, let’s not forget what those teaser images, covers, creator interviews, etc. are designed to do. They’re intended to generate anticipation and excitement about as story, promising potential readers you will have a good, fun time reading it, just like when film trailers show scenes of an upcoming movie, promising you this will be a great movie because it has these actors in it, or this director at the helm, etc. In other words, their intention is to make you prejudge the story before you read it or see it..
This is why it is so bizarre for me to see Dan Slott trying to shoot down your comments as somehow unfair or illegitimate. It makes no sense, particularly when he must understand that you know what you’re talking about. Or perhaps he doesn’t. His self awareness is notoriously bad.
If you are always so off track with your predictions, then Dan Slott should just sit back and say nothing. Then, when the story turns out to be nothing like what you predicted and all your fears end up being unfounded, he can come back with a giant “See! I told you so!” and watch you wipe the egg off your face. He doesn’t do that because he knows darn well that you’re very often on point.
Someone at Crawlspace just made the claim that Dan Slott has a very particular loathing for anything created by Tom DeFalco, then listed a rather persuasive list of storyline and character stuff that Slott has attacked or dismantled, all of which was connected to DeFalco somehow. Do you think there’s anything to this idea? It might provide a connective thread to Slott’s disconnected thinking.
Dan on CBR spoke of Tom D telling him that he was glad the Spider-Verse event had sparked fresh interest in Spider-Girl and Spider-Ham (though Mayday is only getting a back-up feature in another comic and is distinctly a much darker character per the results of that event) and that Slott should enjoy his time at the top, but that is Dan again being modest and Tom being a nice guy. Ron Frenz already let us know how he personally felt about Dan, saying that he was never going to be “Roger Stern”.
It seems like most of the industry writers are pretty good about keeping their quarrels in-house. My guess is that even if Tom DeFalco was annoyed with some of Dan Slott’s moves on the book, he’d bite his tongue.
I think Dan Slott typically acts like an immature man-boy, so it makes sense that he would turn ASM into an immature man-boy’s dream-come-true. I’m assuming there is no personal animus held against Mr. DeFalco, but at the same time Mr. DeFalco’s target audience in the 80s and early 90s is quite a bit removed from today’s Slott Brigade.
It’s like he doesn’t know that google image search is a thing.
Note to Dan Slott: If I have a picture of Spider-Man and Silk embracing each other during Spider-Verse, there’s a good chance I will title the image “Silk Spider-Man Spider-Verse.” 😉 That helps bring traffic to my blog. That doesn’t mean that everyone who comes here likes what they read or agrees with me 100 percent.
Dan rarely has a decent response to intelligent criticism, so all he can do is try to make people believe I’m “crazy”.
There’s nothing I can say that hasn’t already been said in the post and the other comments, but I will say that Slott is one sick puppy. The guy should look into therapy. I’ve never encountered someone that obsessive and tweaked before. He brings new meaning to the cover of The Spectacular Spider-Man #211.
http://www.spiderfan.org/comics/reviews/spiderman_spectacular/211.html
You have to love the CBR clowns who can hurl personal attacks knowing that they have moderators like Mr. Mets to protect them. Here is “Cosmic Spider”:
I’m assuming Cosmic Spider is totally cool with Superior Spider-Man, the guy who wanted to kill six billion people before body snatching Peter Parker…and then became a “hero” who blows off a man’s face at point-blank range after said perpetrator has laid his weapon down. But hey, I’m a “scary” guy because I wouldn’t give Black Widow a hard time if a few of North Korea’s gulag overseers died as she attempted to save…the world. Gotcha.
Cosmic Spider wouldn’t want to live next door to me — a law-abiding American veteran and who loves his neighbors in line with Christ’s teachings. My wife is also a doctor. And an amazing cook. Your loss, Cosmic Spider.
I’ve noticed emac190 has also quoted me on the forums too
http://community.comicbookresources.com/showthread.php?45785-Is-Dan-Slott-hogging-Peter-Parker-Spider-Man/page13
Look at these guys. Just like Dan Slott, they’re all about talking tough — when they know the target of their vitriol isn’t there to defend himself.
Why won’t they come into this arena and say their peace? It’s because they need their Mr. Mets safety net to protect them when they get intellectually body slammed up and down the boards.
I don’t know who the heck Cheesedique is. He never commented here before the other day. I wrote the blog post because that will digitally live for a long time. If I showed up to defend myself on CBR, then there is a high probability I would be be banned shortly thereafter (even though I would professionally conduct myself), the thread would be closed, or every comment that made these guys look like amateur clowns would be deleted.
The other thing that is funny is these guys act like I care about site hits. I wrote this blog when 5 people a day came here and I’ve written it when roughly 20,000 people a day showed up. I have a full-time job. My wife has a full-time job. The peanuts that WordPress sends me once every five months or so is used to keep the domain name registered, upgrade the blog, and to give away free stuff to regular readers.
@ zariusii,
The name is emac1790
@Douglas Ernst,
Now, with that out of the way, let’s talk.
I’m not going to read this whole thing, so tell me, what is the problem you have with Slott’s writing? While you gather your thoughts upon that, I’ll just state I’m no “fanboy” or “stan” as it were and just because I like a writer’s work doesn’t mean I’ll like every single thing a writer writes. For example, I thought this last volume of was weak. But I do like Slott’s run overall.
You could sign up at CBR and speak your piece. The mods will protect you as long as you keep it civil, but I suspect you know that already. IMO, I think you’re full of it. But like I said, that’s just my opinion.
As you may know, the CBR boards are now a “kinder and gentler” place and if you have something to say, as long as it falls within the rules, no one can stop you from speaking your mind. (seriously, read the X-boards there. ugh) But be aware if you do so because if someone like me feels your argument is BS, I will call you out on it as much as the rules allow.
Superior, in my eyes, was a story about how no matter what Doc Ock thought and even if he was living Peter’s life, he would never be the superior Spider-Man.
I’ve been reading comics for 38 years and I know that true change in this form of entertainment is hard to come by. Especially at the Big 2. So I do like it when the creators mix it up for a little while, at least. It keeps me entertained and that’s the whole point to me.
Now if that’s not what you want from comics personally, that’s fine. It’s your time and money, no one else’s. Just remember you are not the arbitrator of what an entertaining comic is any more than I am.
So if you to debate here or on CBR, it’s fine with me. I never take debates about comics or comic characters personal. It’s all make believe anyway.
Thanks for taking the time to read and comment, emac1790. I appreciate it. I’ll try and go through these point by point.
1. I’m not going to read this whole thing, so tell me, what is the problem you have with Slott’s writing?
I think it’s slightly unfair to ask me to condense at least three years of reviews, critiques, etc. into one or two lines. Regardless, I’ll just give a few examples. SSM: Dan Slott had to drop main characters’ IQ about 20 points for the story to work. ASM Relaunch: Peter became a supporting character in his own book. Spider-Verse: A literal Deus Ex Machina gives the characters “everything” they need to move the story along.
2. You could sign up at CBR and speak your piece. The mods will protect you as long as you keep it civil, but I suspect you know that already. IMO, I think you’re full of it.
You wouldn’t think I was “full of it” if you saw this thread, which no longer exists. At least we sill have the url: http://community.comicbookresources.com/showthread.php?453484-Superior-Spider-man-Just-trying-to-anger-fans-into-buying-issues&p=17170845&viewfull=1#post17170845
Steven Wacker and Slott got to hurl all sorts of insults at me, but as soon as it was apparent I could defend myself without falling for their ban-bait, the thread was closed down.
There was also the time that Newsarama banned me after its hit piece backfired and complete strangers started defending me. I was banned, and when people started to complain the thread was closed down. Eventually the whole story went down an Orwellian Memory Hole. Again, at least we still have the url: http://blog.newsarama.com/2013/04/04/the-inferior-online-debate/#respond
Regular readers can also tell you about the time Dan Slott got a Comic Vine thread closed down because he wanted to go off on all sorts of weird tangents on what I supposedly believe about Trayvon Martin, etc. Again, I didn’t take his ban-bait. In short: I am most assuredly not “full of it.”
I always feel bad for users on these websites when Dan refuses to talk about the substance of my reviews and instead goes off on incredibly long screeds on how I’m a “horrible” person. Dan’s strategy to force me away from comic book websites may have worked, but there were consequences. He won certain battles, but he lost the war — I decided to review ASM until he leaves the book. At one time I just randomly reviewed ASM or made comments on other websites. Now I’m blogging regularly on ASM and SEO keeps bringing in new readers to my blog. Thanks, Dan!
3. Superior, in my eyes, was a story about how no matter what Doc Ock thought and even if he was living Peter’s life, he would never be the superior Spider-Man.
This comment is a great segue to talk about just how well Dan Slott understands characters. Do you remember the time he likened Doc Ock — a megalomaniac who tried to kill six billion people — to Hawkeye in his early days? I do.
That is the man who is writing The Amazing Spider-Man. That is moral relativism at its finest (or should I saw “worst”?). If you can’t see how that kind of warped worldview severely affects his ability to give fans the ASM they deserve, then I’m guessing it will be very difficult to convince you how wrong he is for the book. Regardless, I’m happy to have the conversation. If someone tactfully gives me their time (time they can never get back), then I will always do my best to return the favor.
I can give you the first point. Plotholes are a pain and the way the Big 2 operate now is to give their creators the freedom to write what they want. This really isn’t anything new in the comics. Look at Bendis’ Avengers work. A lot of it could not happen if Bendis kept the continuity “correctly”. (Not a Bendis fan and that’s not because of continuity) And the one weakness of SSM was a lot of people were carrying the idiot ball. But overall, it was still one of the better Spider-Man stories. Better IMO, than early BND, mid to late JMS, non Venom Michelinie, etc.
I don’t think Peter was more of a supporting character in his own book after the relaunch. So I say let’s agree to disagree on that.
As for Spider-Verse, even though I didn’t think the relaunch was Slott’s best work, I think it was one of the better events. I can see you feeling a Deus Ex Machina being used, but to me it was something to get the story moving along. Again, agree to disagree.
The thread you had problems with, did it happen before the CBR “reboot” last year? All I can say is CBR isn’t like that any more. You could give them a try now, but I understand if you don’t.
The Hawkeye comparison. I take that as more as Slott was talking about how Hawkeye is an ass****. If you read those “Kooky Quartet” issues, that’s how he was. To me, he was borderline unlikable. I don’t think Slott was trying to say Hawkeye was the same as a murderer. (Which even before Ends of Earth, that’s what Ock was/is) I take that as Slott hyping up his story. In fact, that’s one of the reasons I don’t get into creator interviews. Let the story play out.
Over the years, I found myself not caring about hype. I rather let the story speak for itself. I also found myself not caring about continuity. Not continuity as in one part of the story logically follows another but continuity as in “in ASM # whatever Mindworm was going bald now he has a full head of hair with no explanation”. I rather have a killer story that doesn’t follow continuity than a mediocre story that remembers Flash Thompson is left handed from a 10 year old story.
Good speaking with you.
I’m not sure if “Good speaking with you” was “Glad to have the discussion” or “I’m glad we had this discussion, but I’m off and shall not return.” 😉 In case you’re still reading, a few quick points:
I think it was obvious that Slott was having a ball writing SSM. You can see a verve and an energy that simply wasn’t there with the relaunch. It was like Marvel let the air out of his SSM balloon.
My problem was never having Doc Ock swing around New York City with spider-powers, but that they needlessly killed Peter Parker and put a megalomaniac in his body. Only a few issues before SSM began, Ock was literally trying to “end” the earth. He wanted to be the man who succeeded in bringing about a world wide genocide, and then suddenly I was asked to flip the switch and see him as some sort of anti-hero who was merely a Hawkeye-like annoyance.
The other issue I had is the way Dan Slott treated fans who weren’t happy. He totally upsets the apple cart and then acted as if it was somehow an affront to his dignity that fans got angry. He’ll take people with legitimate criticism and then lump them in with “crazy” internet trolls, or random online idiots who issue death threats. He tries to inoculate himself from criticism by personally attacking people or using other strange diversionary tactics. Instead of actually debating Cheesedique on the merits of his argument, suddenly my name is being thrown around along with total distortions of things I said in 2012.
What the heck does it matter that some guy Googles “Silk and Spider-Man” and grabs a screenshot from my blog to make a point? Answer: It doesn’t matter. It’s red herring. Dan Slott knows it, but he hopes his fans will just pretend like that isn’t the case.
Thanks again for dropping in to share your point of view. I appreciate it.
My problem was never having Doc Ock swing around New York City with spider-powers, but that they needlessly killed Peter Parker and put a megalomaniac in his body.
Come on. Did you believe at any point that Peter Parker was dead and never to return? Put of the fun of SSM was watching Ock as Spider-Man ending up over his head.
As for Slott’s interaction with some fans, I’ve never seen him just attack someone just for the hell of it. Then again, as I said, I don’t follow the interviews. But I have read his statements when he goes after some people who in his eyes are just blatantly wrong with their theories.
Come on. Did you believe at any point that Peter Parker was dead and never to return? Put of the fun of SSM was watching Ock as Spider-Man ending up over his head.
Of course I believed Peter would be back. I have a problem, on principle, of putting a megalomaniac into Peter Parker’s body for that length of time. I have a problem with Marvel ending ASM at 700 for the stunt. I have a problem with Dan Slott trying to pass off the story as some sort of genius move when body switching isn’t a fresh new idea (just like Peter Parker trying and failing to be Tony Stark isn’t a fresh idea).
Would Marvel “kill” Captain America and put Red Skull in his body for over a year? It’s sick and, again, reeks of moral relativism. If it doesn’t bother you, that’s cool. I have a problem with Dan Slott acting shocked and confused that there are fans who would take offense to that kind of editorial move.
I might be in the minority here, emac1790, but I believe that if Slott treated everybody on-line as courteously as he treated John Byrne last week, a lot of people would be much more charitable toward his writing. The writing flaws would still be there (characters bent out of shape to drive plots, plot-holes the size of the Grand Canyon, fizzled finales) but you wouldn’t get so much of the, “Gah, enough of this guy already, can’t stand him!” reactions. However, he **does** call people abusive names, neurotically chases people all around the Internet to argue with them, makes “facts” up out of thin air, and seems to sincerely believe that he is always right, and anyone who critiques even the slightest thing (even done courteously, like Stillanerd) is always wrong.
Bingo. ‘Nuff said.
What’s that folks? Did Jack just climb up on the top ropes like old school Jimmy Superfly Snuka and lay Dan Slott out flat? I believe he did! 🙂
Dan Slott has done himself no favors over the years. Even when fans act like complete morons, he has the choice to take the high road or the low road. All too often he takes the low road. As someone who works for a newspaper, I can attest to receiving some pretty negative feedback over the years. If I behaved like Dan Slott has on Twitter and other social media platforms, then I’m confident that I would have lost my job. That’s fine if Marvel wants to let him get away with it, but the company (and Dan) needs to know that his behavior isn’t conducive to skeptical readers cutting him slack.
I agree that you should debate in a respectful tone to people. Especially on the Internet where tone can be hard to determine. At the same thing I think people should also have thicker skin. This goes for both sides.
But “Gah, enough of this guy already, can’t stand him!” reactions” as you put it is not the thing. There are people that don’t want Slott writing because he is not writing the book the way they want him to. To that I say, “well what can you do about it other than not buy or read the comic.” These writers don’t take requests. They write what they feel the best they can.
We’re all fans, but all fans have different ideas on how the book should be.
I meant “At the same time I think people should also have thicker skin.”
emac — you have no idea how many times Doug, I, and others had attempted to hold reasonable, rational discussions about comics and politics with Slott and others. We were nothing BUT respectful to them.
Contrariwise, they were snotty, arrogant, condescending, and foul-mouthed. All because we didn’t share their politics and merely questioned them on some of their (social media-voiced) opinions. Then, most of them blocked us (on Twitter). Like … why?
Hilariously, some of them keep tabs on our blog posts, occasionally talking about them on s.m. How they HATE that we can actually have a voice and counter their too-often spouted moonbattishness.
Hi ema1790, we’re glad of your company.
Dan can pick and choose with Spider-Man. He is very capable of giving us something we want (I have often showered him with praise for things like New Ways To Die, Spider-Island, Learning to Crawl, and Renew Your Vows), keep in mind that two of those storylines are from an era which I otherwise have no real love for (Brand New Day/Big Time). I have problems with how labored some of Dan’s writing tends to be, either due to the twice a month schedule or becoming more laid back due to success or spending a little too much time online bickering with his critics. Also, I don’t personally feel he sticks the landing well on his endings with his stories…they’re either far too open-ended (with no immediate follow-up for what seems like years) or largely dissatisfying in terms of off-point characterization. It’s not for reasons of change either, it’s just it has to make sense for me to accept the changes, and they don’t most of the time.
I hope you can understand concerns like mine. I do think Dan is a capable writer who has strong ideas, but I have a low tolerance of how he conducts himself professionally to fans, regardless if their theories are off or not, and I wish he would temper himself a bit better in that regard, and also to concentrate on tightening up his plots, I know we’re all human and prone to great weakness as well as strength, but sometimes I catch Dan enjoying himself too much with one idea that he forsakes the consistency that should encircle or well as center on the main character he’s writing about.
@ Hube,
Why people would discuss anything on Twitter is beyond me. But that’s just my opinion.
Contrariwise, they were snotty, arrogant, condescending, and foul-mouthed.
I find the foul-mouthed part a little hard to believe, but whatever. The other stuff can be in the eye of the beholder so I would say anything about that. Just like perhaps “they” thought you were snotty, arrogant, condescending.
In all honesty, Doug and I were exactly as I said in our initial conversations with the creators. There is no rational way for someone to take it as snotty, arrogant, and condescending. All I can think of is that they deal endlessly with idiot fanboys, and simply made bad assumptions,
And it’s not hard to believe — Mark Waid, in particular, is awful. We have it all documented, if you’d care to search it. Ron Marz at one time, good hypocritical “progressive” that he is, made a “funny” homophobic crack about Doug and I … merely b/c we share a similar political view. (That, too, is documented.)
In all honesty, Doug and I were exactly as I said in our initial conversations with the creators. There is no rational way for someone to take it as snotty, arrogant, and condescending. All I can think of is that they deal endlessly with idiot fanboys, and simply made bad assumptions
That last sentence is true. They do deal with idiots and it’s only human to think they felt like you were another one and they got nasty. It’s not right, but sometimes it’s like that.
If you feel a creator is like that, don’t deal with them.
I think it was the Mark Waid interaction where I eventually said something along the lines of “Why are you so angry?” and he didn’t really have a response. 🙂 The guy takes to a public forum, makes inflammatory political statements, and then acts surprised when people push-back. Classic.
Yep, that was one of course. And don’t forget the “Go f*** yourself” (did Slott get that from Waid? 😉 ) when I tweeted that bit about gun control.
And you do remember Marz’s little homophobic comment, don’t you?
I do remember him insinuating you and I were gay as the punchline to some sarcastic comment (mean-spirited sarcasm being par for the course when dealing with Ron). I guess it’s okay to use gay people as a punchline if you’re of the right political persuasion…
Slott told some poor kid at CBR to go F himself. And the kid was trying to **defend** Slott, but he said it in a confusing way. Do you think a writer should be able to tell you to go F yourself, and that’s something you should just have a “thicker skin” about?
When did this happen?
And personally, if someone tells me to F myself, I say to them “right back at you”. No need to play victim.
That’s the kind of response Dan Slott is counting on when he behaves that way. If he takes the low road, then the next guy goes there with him. Perhaps the next guy will go even lower, and then it starts a weird vortex of personal attacks and distractions that completely draws attention away from substantive debate.
I know writers are only human and they have feelings just like the next guy, but there is a certain **cough** responsibility **cough** that comes with being the guy who writes ASM. Shouldn’t the writer of one of the greatest comic book characters ever always strive to elevate the debate, even when faced with internet trolls? I think so.
Think about all the things you may have heard about me from Dan Slott or others on CBR who said I seemed “scary”. Now think about the interactions you’ve had here thus far. Is there a disconnect? Am I “scary” and “crazy”? I think not. I’m a pretty rational guy, even if we have strong disagreements on some issues.
Dan does himself a disservice when he pulls the “crazy-town” card on people who are quite sane and capable of level-headed discourse.
That kid WAS a victim, of cyber-bullying. You brush it off like it’s no big deal.
Again, when did this happen?
Is this what your talking about?
In a thread called “How long do you expect Dan Slott to be the lead/ sole writer of Amazing Spider-Man?”, lejayjay posted a comment seemingly deriding Slott as a fair-weather comics writer who would likely depart for a more lucrative field. Though the comment eventually spun off into facetiously hyperbolic territory, it began by directly attacking Slott’s motives for writing ASM at all:
“It is jus a paycheck for Slott anyway. He’s not a real fan.”
Those two sentences prompted the following response from Slott, who expressed his displeasure in no uncertain terms:
As a guy who turned down a side job this year for a paycheck that would’ve been over a third of his yearly income– BECAUSE it would’ve meant cutting back on his not-so-lucrative comic book writing career– and get in the way of working on his Spider-Man dream job…
…and the guy who slept less than 12 hours over the course of 4 days this week working on a script while he was sick… a guy who finally had to be ORDERED off it by his editor to go see a doctor… and is still in a good deal of pain today…
…this is the first time I think I’ve ever said this to somebody over a comic book message board:
Go fuck yourself.
Seriously.
Go. Fuck. Yourself.
Source; http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2010/12/dan-slott-responds-to-message-board-insult-with-well-deserved-f-bomb/
Cyber-bullying, my ass.
First, this “kid” was not trying to defend Slott. He was questioning Slott’s commitment to his professional work. You don’t like his writing, fine. That’s one thing. But what this “kid” did was shitty. Two, I was on CBR when that happened and I did remember it. What you tried to do was start a dishonest dialogue. This is not a “Dan Slott was being mean to me” story. This was a person doing something shitty and getting called out for it.
Before anybody else post a comment to me, be aware I’m not some nubie. Like I said in another post, I will call out BS.
Try again, Jack.
This is what I was talking about earlier about Slott taking the low road. Is it frustrating as a writer to have someone say you’re only in it for the paycheck? Sure. On smaller scale but in a related manner, it’s annoying for me to see people at CBR insinuate that I only care about the chump change WordPress sends me for site hits every so often. That same guy acknowledged that he spent hours reading my blog. He read content I provided — for free — after my full time job and after handling all my other responsibilities to my family, etc.
Do I go around saying “Fuck you” to people who annoy me? Nope. I either ignore them, or a wait and gather my bearing to say something to tactfully put them in their place. Dan Slott acts like an impulsive man-boy and then wonders why people think he is an impulsive man-boy.
eMac, I still think it’s a bit much for Slott to go to those lengths in that exchange. I remember too when that happened.
Good thing the slate at CBR has literally been wiped clean since then.
I think it comes down to the lowering of the bar for the character in ways I think many, if perhaps not all, can agree with.
We don’t want to see Peter as Spidey be portrayed as hopeless (can’t win a fight, has to be saved by newbie cast of characters) This is a character who’s been superhero-ing for years, and it makes him look pathetic.
We don’t want him continually upstaged in his own book for characters Marvel wants to spin off in their own series, and have his landmark anniversary issues hijacked for said spinoff characters.
Peter is corny, Peter is socially awkward. But he is not a clown, though as Spidey he quips.
And to me, making him a variation on Iron Man (which has already been done since the Big Time run, with the tech suits) takes away from the already VERY cool power set Spider-man already HAS.
And people said Micheline made Peter too much like Iron Man during his ASM run..
I’m not even going to talk about the rest of the regular supporting cast, which has vanished or been altered in ill-fitting ways to serve the narrative.
This character seems to have very little to do with the one we used to read about: he’s Peter-in-name-only, and Marvel is now currently plundering the Spider-man name to sell diluted spin-off books.
In the end, it’s their property to plunder, but it’s really a goddamn shame.
“We don’t want to see Peter as Spidey be portrayed as hopeless (can’t win a fight, has to be saved by newbie cast of characters) This is a character who’s been superhero-ing for years, and it makes him look pathetic.”
Thank you. Silk comes onto the scene (after having spent most of her life in a bunker) and she’s a better fighter than Peter, she can spin different colored webbing, she can spin webbing that doubles as a radioactive suit, she comes to his rescue, etc. Come on… It’s embarrassing. Let’s not even get into Spider-Man having to be saved by Anna Maria in that last issue before Renew Your Vows.
I give you credit for commenting, Cheesedique. Dan Slott will now say that you have been fully subjected to my mind-control powers, since anyone who remotely agrees with me can’t possibly have their own opinion on the book. 😉
Regardless of my misunderstanding of that original CBR commenter’s intention, Slott’s conduct in dealing with Byrne was almost exemplary. He ought to use the nobler approach he used with Byrne, but use it with everyone.
That exchange between Dan Slott and John Byrne was extremely informative. It shows that Dan Slott is very capable of controlling himself — when he chooses to do so. Byrne telegraphed exactly what he thought of Slott’s work, and it certainly was not favorable. Dan reacted like a school boy on his best behavior.
I know there is a certain level of deference that should be shown to someone with Byrne’s accomplishments, but at the same time it highlights just how little respect Dan shows to his critics outside the industry. Dan is quick to get flippant and rude with regular fans who strongly disagree with him when his position at Marvel dictates (or would have dictated in the old days) the he carry himself with much more professionalism.
More BS. If you really knew what happened, you wouldn’t have brought it up. All you knew was Slott told a “fan” to go fuck his self and you ran with it. Hell, you could have known the real story and thought I didn’t know what happened and then used that to your advantage.
As for the way Slott conducted himself on Byrne’s site vs the way Slott conducted himself that day on CBR, did you read the link I added? In case you didn’t, I’ll fill you in. Slott said he was having a bad day and lejayjay made the mistake of crossing the line. lejayjay apologized and Slott accepted. The thread was closed. End of story. Until someone on another site brought back up to take a shot at Slott. Just like you’re doing now Jack. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention this happened in 2012. Three years ago. People can and do change in three years. They can also regret something that they did three years ago. The way you put it, if a person didn’t know what happened, it is quite likely they could assume this happened recently.
Should I dig something up from your past and use it to attack you?
Spare me the BS, Jack.
The pot-shots from the CBR clowns continue — from far away, of course.
Note to Pav: I work for a newspaper and there is always breaking news. I’m willing to put my work hours up against yours any day. I pull long hours and then after those long hours I still FIND TIME to be with my wife, exercise, handle other responsibilities and write this blog. I’m confident I was up working way before he crawled out of bed this morning.
I also find it quite funny how “Cyberhubbs” is so full of snarky put-downs over at CBR, but he doesn’t make them here. Oh, yeah, that’s because he knows that I’ll respond and completely embarrass him.
LOL … those “too much time” cracks about blogging are funny. Get the hint: It’s a FUN HOBBY!! I do this stuff on my down time as writing is ENJOYABLE to me!
These guys think we have “too much time” when, given our work schedules, we allocate just a sliver of time to blogging. I’ve been doing the equivalent of running a blog with one hand tied behind my back for years because of work and other commitments. Like you said, I blog because it’s a fun side-project that I get to when time permits. Would I like to blog more? Sure. But the idea that I’m sitting around with a whole lot of extra time on my hands is laughable.
If your reading these comments, you can start an account at CBR and defend yourself.
I stepped in the lion’s den, so to speak. Can you do the same?
If you do, if it looks like it’s unfair I’ll have your back.
You can see how I’m in a Catch 22, can’t you? Right now their CBR comments are all about personally attacking me instead of talking about Spider-Man. If I show up and defend myself, then suddenly the whole entire thread devolves into a giant conversation about me.
Just like what happened at CBR in the past, Comic Vine, Newsarama, the old Marvel Boards (where the moderator banned me while I was at work and then just told people I violated the rules…even though I wasn’t even posting) etc., the moment it’s obvious that I’m handing guys like that their lunch, the moderator will accuse me of sullying the boards and breaking the rules. Suddenly I’m the bad guy.
But, if I don’t show up at the boards now that you’re telling me I should, then I’m somehow ducking them and I just want to stay cloistered in my Dan Slott-labeled “crazy town.”
If those guys want to personally attack me, then they really should come here and do it. It’s also interesting how Mr. Mets doesn’t get them back on topic…
Regardless, I’d be glad to approve their comments unless they start going overboard with expletives. If I thought for a second that maybe they would actually talk about Spider-Man, then perhaps it would be worth it to register at CBR.
A man is known by the supporters he attracts.
I must be doing something right if I have you and Hube to talk to, Jack. 😉
@ Douglas Ernst,
You throw a lot of shit at Dan Slott. Do you think he has the right to defend himself?
Did you defend yourself against stuff like this?
https://doesdouglasernsthateamerica.wordpress.com/who-is-douglas-ernst/
Thanks for bringing up the website of the guy who stalked me and sent me “Silence of the Lambs”-type messages. You’ll notice that I never blogged about that guy. Not once. I think you can find a reply or two from me in the comments section of his blog saying, “Keep up the good work!” or something along those lines.
Right after my grandma (who basically raised me) died, that guy had the nerve to write a post about how I was a horrible person and hated my grandma. He sounds like a real winner, right? Did I lash out at him? No. I just laughed it off. In fact, I just felt bad for the guy because he obviously has problems. You’ll notice that my blog continues to thrive while his quickly ran out of steam. Telling, isn’t it?
“You throw a lot of shit at Dan Slott. Do you think he has the right to defend himself?”
I’m not sure why you’re even asking this question. Of course he has a right to defend himself. Everyone does. The question isn’t whether or not he has the right to defend himself — the question is whether or not Dan Slott defends himself like a professional. I would say up until this point in his career, the answer is “No.” Sometimes he does, but his track record of behaving like an immature, impulsive and thin-skinned man-child is pretty well known at this point.
It’s like the Slott GFY incident. Someone crossed a line and being polite went out the window.
If you told that blogger to GFY, I wouldn’t be mad at you. I would support you. Just because a person is professional doesn’t mean that a person stops being human.
There is this thing on the Internet where people get shitty with other people and then are surprised when they get it back in kind. It’s dumb. People like that need to get their heads out of their ass.
Here is where I think there needs to be some clarification. I’m going to combine two of your comments into one for the sake of clarity and brevity.
Your point, even though your did it in a roundabout way using two separate comments, was to tell me that I need to not be surprised that Dan Slott is “shitty” towards me because I “throw shit” at him. You’ll tell me (as kindly as one can) on my blog that I need to get my head out of my ass, but will you ever say the same thing to Dan Slott over at CBR?
Regardless, here is where your analysis is flawed. My reviews have almost exclusively focused on Dan Slott’s writing — not Dan Slott the person. Dan Slott has gone around the internet calling me a “horrible” person and a whole slew of other names. His Slottian fan-boys echo his personal attacks and then build off it with how I’m “scary,” etc.
As I mentioned, I didn’t start regularly writing ASM reviews — again, of Dan Slott’s writing and editorial judgment — until he started following me all over the internet. Newsarama did a hit piece on me that basically framed my blog exactly like Dan Slott wanted. Again, this was well before I was regularly reviewing the book. I’m sorry that Newsarama flushed it down the Memory Hole, but like I said the url still exists.
My issue with Dan Slott isn’t so much that he takes pot shots at me for my reviews, it’s that he always does it from afar. It’s that he blocks me on Twitter and then weirdly stalks my blog at 1:00 a.m. It’s that he relies on friendly moderators to kill threads when he looks bad. He’ll totally distort things I wrote years ago to distract from the legitimate criticisms leveled by guys like Cheesedique.
I tactfully went toe-to-toe with him on other platforms, and I got banned or the threads were killed. I embarrassed him in a YouTube video comments section and he went through and basically deleted all of his comments because he knows he got shellacked. I have shown that I have no problem talking to him on unfriendly boards over the years, but he has never — not once — confronted me here. That is because he knows that he can’t delete his comments or have the thread expunged by a “home team” moderator like Mr. Mets.
@Douglas Ernst
July 8, 2015 at 1:53 pm…
You keep saying that. Yet you call them “clowns”. I took the challenge. I have yet to be “intellectually body slammed”.
And once again, the CBR boards are not the same. But people will still call out BS.
You haven’t been intellectually body-slammed because you have conducted yourself like a responsible adult on my blog.
If you act like a clown on my boards, then you will be intellectually body slammed. Isn’t it self-evident to you that I have treated you with respect because you have treated me with respect? I hope so.
Perhaps I will register at CBR. Do I really want to get into a pissing match with professional pissing match champions? I’m not really interested in spending hours of my time splashing around in their digital urine.
I almost want to start commenting there so you can see what happens when Dan Slott inevitably shows up and melts down, as he has every single time he has interacted with me on another forum. If that happens, watch his behavior and watch the behavior of Mr. Mets. We’ll see.
@Douglas Ernst
July 8, 2015 at 3:10 pm
Your point, even though your did it in a roundabout way using two separate comments, was to tell me that I need to not be surprised that Dan Slott is “shitty” towards me because I “throw shit” at him. But here is where your analysis is flawed.
That wasn’t my point. Mixing my two different comments missed the point completely. My point was if any person (not just you, anybody) doesn’t act civil to someone else they shouldn’t expect that person to act civil towards them.
For example, If I said “Douglas Ernst’s work at the Washington Times is garbage. He’s no real reporter, he’s just doing it for a paycheck”, I would have no right to think you would be civil. I didn’t just say “I don’t like his work”, I attacked your character and commitment to your professional work. That is 100% wrong.
Now, I’m not saying you’re not being civil. Perhaps Slott feels you have some type of agenda or to him you said something that crossed the line. I don’t know and I won’t say he’s right or wrong because I don’t know his personal private thoughts. And to be fair, I say the same about you. I won’t say you’re right or wrong.
I’m just being realistic. People will act the way they want to act. Not the way you want them to act.
I got your point. I hope you can see how reading those two comments would cause me to extrapolate that additional “Doug needs to get his head out of his butt” interpretation, though. 🙂
I agree with you in that the person who made the personal attack should not be shocked if they get a nasty response back. I’m totally on board with you that. However, my point has always been that whether it’s me or Dan Slott getting nasty feedback at work, we both have a responsibility to always try and take the high road. I would hope that the guy who pens Peter Parker’s adventures would get that, but it appears as though he does not.
To his credit, he has been much more subdued in terms of politics on Twitter over the past year or so. He used to make some pretty strident statements, but these days he doesn’t go there as much.
Emac, thankyou for taking the challenge and visiting this blog to make a case for CBR. My problems with Dan have been echoed many times here, but I still do enjoy some of his work, and had a good time with Renew Your Vows latest issue, which I hope you had a pleasant time reading too. Dan is very capable of on-point Spider-Man storytelling, my issue with him is he doesn’t do it all that often, either because he can’t play with the “locked toy box” or trying new things and developing them in an off-point and muddled way, at least to my perspective. Yours may be different, and I appreciate that it is.
Hi. I just wanna say Dan Slott was one of the reasons I stopped buying Spider-Man. I do not feel there is a Peter Parker behind that mask anymore, just some adult-nager made to fit Disney’s standards. Many love Superior SM run, I hated it. For me is a nasty trap only comparable to the infamous clone saga.
I just loved JMS run, at least on the early part, it was Spider-Man/Parker to its finest, I’ll love someone new would take that approach again. Not Bendis, please… its just a plain showman similar to Dan… The House of ideas is out of them.
Thanks for taking the time to read and comment, Bloodcrisis. I appreciate it.
According to Dan Slott, readers like you don’t exist. 😉 Everyone loves his take because when he was at conventions everyone told him how great he was. The only people who don’t like the direction of the book have been brainwashed by this blog or, apparently, John Byrne. Heh.
Regarding defending Slott against Byrne, Byrne against Slott, or whoever acting in such and such a way toward whoever, my mom used to have a saying: two wrongs don’t make a right. I’ve seen it in my marriage counseling — if I can get the couple to stop excusing their bad behavior on the other person’s bad behavior, and accept responsibility before God and others for their own behavior, maybe we can get someplace.
Agreed. It’s strange to me how Dan Slott never acknowledges his own culpability in either a.) creating new critics, or b.) exacerbating his problems with those who already exist.
Say Dan Slott didn’t weirdly bring me up the other day. Now let’s consider the fact that I’ve been busy with work and haven’t been able to make a comic shop run. I could let a review of the next issue of Renew Your Vows slide, or I can make time. Given that he wants to continue sending personal attacks my way (e.g., “crazy town”), I very well might grab the issue after work today and cut short a few other plans I had.
It’s a tough balance in terms of reviewing ASM. I want to “turn the other cheek” when it comes to Dan Slott’s insults (and I have in the sense that I have already forgiven him and could easily sit down face-to-face and have a pleasant discussion), but at the same time I see my reviews as a small counterweight to the many websites that simply rubber stamp his work as mandatory pull-list material. Also, every time he distorts a review of mine (e.g., I want Spider-Man to wantonly kill North Koreans), it’s an indicator that he knows that I’m good at what I do. Therefore, it’s time for another post. 😉
Just like his manner in speaking with Byrne shows that he knows how to take the high road (even if perhaps he did it hypocritically), the recent reviews of RYV I’ve read at Crawlspace suggest that he *also* knows how to write a more-mature, competent Peter, as well as an appealing MJ Watson. Which then raises the question *why* he has chosen to write Peter in ASM as an immature, ADD-addled object of other people’s scorn.
Got into it with Slott again today, this time in a thread about the Spider-man and His Amazing Friends panel at SDCC.
I (admittedly unwisely) posted a picture of Marvel Editor Sana Amanat, saying I thought she was “pretty hot”. I was just having a bit of fun, and yes, I admit it was a completely boneheaded comment (though I do find her attractive).
Slott was already online, performing a rant in that thread about Mike McNulty’s Slott predictions. He jumped all over me for the Amanat comment, in his usual shrill, anally-PC attack mode. He said I was reducing Ms. Amanat to a piece of meat and objectifying her. I retorted that it’s not a crime to admire a woman’s beauty, and if he thought so, he should move to Saudi Arabia.
Slott was able to get in another comment, where he put my name in quotations, as if he thinks I’m some other poster posing as someone else or something (Slott needs a bit more tinfoil for that hat of his).
It was at that point that Mets stepped in and deleted the whole exchange, as expected. He said it had nothing to do with the thread at hand, a point I acknowledged in my original post. Of course, Slott’s attacks on Mike are still left up there (to which Mike responded, as usual, gracefully and tactfully).
Unfortunately, Slott’s censoring police stepped in before I could post another retort: a meme I created for this occasion in his honor: http://cdn.meme.am/instances2/500x/714464.jpg
Does Dan Slott think you’re me, now? That would be classic. My guess is that if female fans were calling him handsome on the CBR message boards, then he wouldn’t tearfully respond, “Hey, I’m more than just a piece of meat!”
Ask Dan Slott if he’s ever objectified some of the female Cos-players in his private thoughts at SDCC, DrangonCon, etc. Tell him to say “hi” to all the women dressing up as “hot” versions of our favorite superheroes.
Side note: This Key and Peele skit has feminists and PC-obsessed men like Dan Slott mighty confused. Heh.
Hahaha! ^ “Because that’s what gentlemen do!” This gave me a good laugh this morning, thanks for that.
He did say some crap also about how I don’t get on there and objectify male editors. Hey Slott, if you happen to be reading, it’s too bad your old drinking buddy Wacker isn’t around anymore to objectify. You know, the guy with the dreamy personality.
Oh please. A Big Two comics lecturing a fan on “objectifying” women?? Has Slott seen any of his artists (and others’) covers and interiors??
Dan Slott didn’t seem to get that worked over the cover to the second issue of Superior Spider-Man. Nothing says “I respect women” like body-snatching Doc Ock forcing himself on Mary Jane and stealing a kiss before she found out the truth… If Dan is going to be a hyper-sensitive PC cop, then he should be consistent with his manufactured outrage.
That’s classic Dan Slott. 🙂 Gotta love the specious arguments. The thought process is something like: “Hey guy is who is straight, why don’t you talk about Nick Lowe’s chest?”
If Dan Slott and Nick Lowe looked remotely like the superhero characters they deal with every day, there would be female fans making sexual Slott memes. I bet it wouldn’t take long to find some fans who are willing to make suggestive comments about Grant Morrison. He’s a handsome man.
Was also able to grab a screen pic of part of the convo from my phone, before Mets deleted..
Great timing. I just made that comment about Grant Morrison before you shared the link. Also, I’m glad you took the screen grabs. It’s sad that bloggers have to be so quick on the draw with those since moderators like Mr. Mets are such fans of Orwellian Memory Holes.
My wife has made Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds jokes for years every time they come on the screen just to mess with me. If Dan Slott looked like either of those men, she’d make them about him, too. Hard-core PC activists are like the modern Puritans and they don’t even realize it. It’s funny to see people who are not particularly religious (or even anti-religious) who engage in finger wagging over a compliment.
Wow, what a pompous ass. What exactly am I supposed to “do” to honor fandom? On who’s standards? Though it’s a bit of an honor itself to be the subject of one of Slott’s righteously-indignant sermons.
Anyhoo, I have read a bit of the Ms Marvel title. It’s not for me, but Kamela is a well-crafted character, so kudos to Ms. Amanat on that front.
And on the advance cover to ASM Vol 4, Peter looks like he’s about to engage in a Shanghai ménage a trois with two nubile females.
So is he objectifying them with his male gaze there?
Zing! That’s why Dan needs to side track the discussion; you’re too good at cornering him with these sorts of observations. Don’t be surprised if a year from now he randomly responds to someone who agrees with you by saying “Really? You’re taking him seriously? He’s the guy who objectifies women.”
Dan is building his distraction file on you right now. 😉
Yeah, I don’t doubt this will come up again down the line, because I “objectified” one of his collegues.
All this from the guy, too, that created and characterized Silk, the horny pheromone hero. Another great representation of women, that one.
Congrats, Cheesedique! Dan Slott apparently was talking about you in his Twitter feed. 🙂 Welcome to the club!