MISTER BENDIS GOES TO DC

DC Comics made the announcement Tuesday morning:

We are beyond thrilled to welcome Brian Michael Bendis exclusively to the DC family with a multi-year, multi-faceted deal. He’s one of the premier writers in the industry having created so many unforgettable stories wherever he’s been and we can’t wait to see what he has planned for the DC Universe.

On Tuesday morning, I was recovering from the weekend’s wonderful Akron Comicon and a big Monday night thing that I can’t talk about until sometime in December. I didn’t see the original announcement. When I did, I went online and quipped:

Clearly working with me has shown DC Comics the benefits of hiring writers who were born in Cleveland.

Of course, the Internet being the silly beast it often is, it was not long before I got a frenzied private message from a “reporter” asking me if they could interview me on my role in bringing Bendis  to DC. Yes, it was all my idea. DC had never heard of Bendis before I told them about him. I catered the meeting and brought doughnuts for everyone. Except the now-slimmed-down Bendis didn’t have any of them. Not even the ones with the Superman and Batman insignias on them. Brian’s will power is legendary.

While those of you lacking sarcasm filters will be rushing to quote me on the Internet, the real truth of the matter is that this news took me as much by surprise as anyone. Bendis and I are friendly, but we’re not close friends. It’s been way too long since we shared a proper conversation. But I do like and admire him.

This is a really big “get” for DC. Bendis has created some amazing characters at Marvel with Jessica Jones and Miles Morales leaping to mind. According to one report, he was currently writing Jessica Jones, Guardians of the Galaxy, Defenders, Spider-Man, Spider-Men II, Invincible Iron Man and Infamous Iron Man for Marvel. He’s done work on the Marvel cartoons and movies. He teaches comics-creating classes. He can do all of the above because he has one of the best work ethics I have ever seen in my decades in the comics industry. In Brian, DC is getting one of the best comics writers of all time. A writer who has also shown tremendous skills in many other areas of our industry. Like I said, it’s a big “get” for DC.

As I also said, I like and admire Bendis. I’ve enjoyed a lot of his writing over the past couple decades. Not all of it. But a majority of it. When I see his name in the credits of a comic book, I will read that comic book.

As usual, there is much speculation about why Bendis is making this move and why DC recruited him. In the case of DC, it’s a publisher clearly seeking to attract the best talent it can. That’s a total no-brainer. In the case of Brian, his reasons could be many or few. Choosing to share them is his call. All I care about is that he’s happy and productive in his new situation.

Back in the days when I was something of a “get” myself, though not like I kind of am today, I had really nice offers from both Marvel and DC. True, neither offer was quite what they seemed to be. I’ve written about that in the past, but my intent here is to show how I made the decision to go with DC at the time.

Marvel’s then-editor-in-chief offered me a hundred pages a month on some top titles. As it turned out, he didn’t have those pages for me. But that was the offer.

DC’s offer was for creating new titles for them, writing top titles like Batman and Justice League and joining them as a full editor. It didn’t happen that way either.

My decision to go with DC was based on the following:

Marvel had been in chaos since Roy Thomas stepped down as editor-in-chief and, for me, a more difficult work environment. I didn’t think the chaos would change. DC offered what I thought would be a more sane and stable approach to the making of comics, a chance to work with some people I truly admired and a chance to help lead the company to more exciting storytelling.

Those were my reasons back in 1976. In 2017, I’m certain Bendis has his own.

Something I’m very pleased about in this situation is that, for a change, the professionals are mostly acting like adults. Everyone is talking about their love for comics and how exciting the future will be. Bendis has praised Marvel. Joe Quesada was expressive and sincere in his praise of Bendis. This is how it should be.

There is much speculation about what Bendis will be writing at DC. Since I’m as big a comics fan as I ever was, I am more than willing to play that game. Here’s the three things I’d like to see Bendis write at DC:

SUPERMAN. I love the idea of a Cleveland-born writer on Cleveland-born Superman. I’d also love to see him go back to the Superman of the character’s initial appearances. In attitude. That Superman was a true defender of the oppressed and champion of the weak. He would leap into the air with a wife-beater and let the creep know how it felt to be weak and helpless. He would run crooked businessmen and  politicians out of town. He would laugh at authority figures as he went about his super-business. I love that Superman.

LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES. Several readers have speculates on this and I have my own reasons. To the best of my recall, Bendis has never written a comic book set in the future. Given his natural affinity for super-teams and super-team banter, it would be interesting to see what he could bring to that sadly moribund concept. He wouldn’t be able to fall back on the modern-day dialogue he does so well and he’d have to project our world centuries into the future. I love to see great writers challenging themselves.

Digression. Every time I throw even the slightest bit of shade on the Legion, I get angry comments. The truth is...I loved the Legion in the beginning, especially when a young Jim Shooter brought some Marvel-style characterization and storytelling to the team. After that, in my mind, there have only been a handful of good or even interesting Legion stories. The only Legion run I really liked was Mark Waid’s re-imagining them as young rebels making their way in a universe ruled by shortsighted adults. That run went south after Waid left, but I thought it was a great idea. End of digression.

DETECTIVE SQUAD. This one is a gift to Bendis and DC. Picture the Elongated Man with wife Sue Dibny heading a big-city squad that was a mix of human and metahuman detectives. Updated versions of Ralph and Sue and some of DC’s other forgotten detective characters. It could be, by turns, gritty or humorous, giving Bendis a stage for his delightful dialogue. It would need more than the working title I came up with, but I think it would be a fun series.

That’s my take on the industry’s big news of the week. If you would like to see more bloggy things like this one, let me know.

I’ll be back tomorrow with more stuff. See you then.

© 2017 Tony Isabella

RAWHIDE KID WEDNESDAY 126

RESOLVED: The Rawhide Kid is my favorite western comics character and one of my favorite comics characters period.  This is why I’ve written over a hundred columns about him. Something about his short stature, but large courage, honor and fighting skills speaks to me.  After rereading the Kid’s earliest adventures when Marvel reprinted them in a pair of Marvel Masterworks and an Essential Rawhide Kid volume, I decide to reacquire every Rawhide Kid comic, reread them and write about them. We’ve reached the title’s extended twilight.  We’ve seen the last new Rawhide Kid story that will appear in the now-bimonthly reprint series. This is the 126th installment of my “Rawhide Kid Wednesday” columns.
                                                                               

The Rawhide Kid #139 [May 1977] has a new cover pencilled and inked by Gil Kane and it’s terrific. “The Guns of Jesse James” hails from issue #33 [April 1963]. The Grand Comics Database has Jack Kirby as penciller and inker of the original cover, but I’m skeptical about the inking credit. Unfortunately, since I don’t own that particular issue, I can’t offer a better guess on the inks. I wrote about this story back in August of 2012:

The Rawhide Kid #33 [April 1963] has something new and more than a few things old.  Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers deliver a terrific cover for this issue, even if the title’s hero is darn near the smallest figure on it.  It’s so striking it would have worked just as well without the speech and thought balloons.  But subtle never seemed to be an approach either publisher Martin Goodman or writer/editor Stan Lee considered back then.

“The Guns of Jesse James” (13 pages) is the first of three issues drawn by the legendary Jack Davis of EC Comics fame.  Davis draws the Rawhide Kid as average in height, which isn’t on model for the
more diminutive hero portrayed by Kirby.  However, other than that, Davis does a splendid job.  His storytelling is clear, his ability to draw Marvel-style action is impressive and he draws interesting faces and expressions.  A different look for my favorite western hero, but it had a lot going for it.

Stan Lee’s story is another “bad judgment” episode for the Rawhide Kid.  The story opens with the Kid rescuing a stagecoach from some owlhoots, only to be fired upon and wounded by the coach’s driver who thought Rawhide drove off the other robbers because he wanted to rob the stage himself.

After digging the bullet out of his shoulder, Rawhide decides that if he’s going to be treated like an outlaw then he’ll be an outlaw. Soon thereafter, he joins the Jesse James gang which, conveniently, had an available position.  Says James, “I’m one man short right now–-that’s why we’re holed up here! But with you ridin’ with us, I won’t haveta hide out no more!”

James convinces Rawhide that he and his gang are peace-loving men who rob from the rich, give to the poor and don’t hurt anyone when they rob them.  A train robbery soon proves otherwise and the Kid ends up taking on the whole James gang and earning the admiration of a railroad station agent.

The Kid’s bad judgment continues.  When he’s called to by the town sheriff, he shoots the lawman’s rifle out of his hands and flees, never realizing the sheriff wanted to do him a good turn:

“The station agent told me what happened, and I wanted to take yuh to the governor, to see if I could arrange a pardon for yuh!  But, it’s too late now, Kid! Mebbe it’s always been too late!”

This issue doesn’t have the higher profile advertising we’ve been seen in recent issues. The non-Marvel ads are the usual comic-book pitches for a variety of cheap products and suspect educational opportunities. We get the usual three pages of “classified” ads featuring 22 ads from comics dealers, up one from the previous issue.
                                                                                

Superhero Merchandise of Dover, New Jersey has a full page ad that leads with a Hulk Flying Fist Launcher and a Captain America Shield Shooter. Each is $2.78 (including postage). A Stan Lee-signed copy of Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man is $6. The Art of Neal Adams is $3.50. Finally, you can get a copy of the Marvel-Con ‘76 booklet for $2.50.
                                                                             

The FOOM Fan Club shares a page with a Marvel Comics subscription ad. Both are fairly generic.
                                                                                   

“The Man Who Couldn’t Quit” (4 pages) is from Kid Colt Outlaw #81 [November 1958]. The writer is unknown, but the non-series story is drawn by George Woodbridge, better known for his many years drawing for MAD Magazine.

Fate deals each one of us one hand, and we must play it the best way we know how! Fate decrees that one man shall be big and strong, another man weak and cowardly! Fate gives one man exceptional skill with a plow, another man a way with wood or steel! Fate put a very fast gun in Jim Bender’s holster!

That’s how this fairly simple and straightforward story begins. Jim Bender, lightning fast and supernaturally accurate with a gun, is fated to go from town to town, taking up the badge and taming said towns. He meets his future wife and settles down with her and, a year later, their son to what he thinks will be a life of ranching. But when the town’s elderly sheriff needs his help, his wife tells him he has to go help the lawman. She’s a brave woman. Jim makes short work of the badman threatening the town, which leads to this wordy final panel:
                                                                                 

Straightforward though it is, this is a well-written, beautifully-drawn story. I missed seeing this non-series stories in the back of Rawhide Kid.

The Marvel Bullpen Bulletins page - Yabberings and Yeddings from Yeoman Yarnspinners to You! - marks the exit of Assistant Editor Scott Edelman, whose job included coming up with the alliterative headings for the page. He’ll be moving on to full-time freelancing on Captain Marvel and other assignments. His replacement is artist Ed Hannigan.

“Stan Lee’s Soapbox” leads with the announcement of the creation of Captain Britain to headline a new British weekly. Marvel’s very one “Traveling Stan” also reports that he has Grand Marshal of Northern Illinois University’s Homecoming Day Parade and that he has other future speaking engagements at SUNY in Buffalo, the University of New Mexico in Alburquerque and Orange Coast College in Costa Misa, California.

The first news item heralded the end of a Marvel softball season in which the Bullpen team finished second in the Publisher’s League. Mentions were made of “production potentate” Lenny Grow, Happy Herb Trimpe, Sturdy Stu Schwartzberg, Marie Severin (who drew special awards for the above) and team captains Irene Vartanoff and Jim Novak. The annual team banquet was put together by Nelson Yomtov.

After the notice of Edelman leaving staff, the page announced that Steve Gerber had been added to the roster of Marvel’s consulting editors and would be editing a special KISS comic book.

The penultimate item hints at Marvel’s signing a deal to produce Godzilla comic books. Fun fact: Before I came to work at Marvel in 1972, I had suggested to then Editor-in-Chief Roy Thomas that the company get comic-book rights to Godzilla. That was being worked on while I was at Marvel with the plan that Godzilla would be one of our black-and-white magazines with yours truly writing the stories and, among others, Dave Cockrum drawing them. The negotiations hit a bump in the road and, by the time they resumed, I was no longer at Marvel. Sigh.

The final item was how Marvel sometimes had to cancel titles, but would always try to tie up any loose ends. The saga of Deathlok was mentioned as being concluded in Marvel Spotlight and Marvel Two-in-One. Whatever the circumstances, though, Marvel loved all of its characters too much to leave them off the stage for long.
                                                                             

“Captain America and the Sore Sin’s Apprentices” was this issue’s wacky Hostess ad. Pencilled by Sal Buscema, the title villain was never seen in this one-page “story.” However, his marauding minions were tamed by Hostess Cup Cakes.
                                                                                 

“A Marvel Masterwork Pin-Up” of the Rawhide Kid ran three-fourths of a page. Taken from the cover of Rawhide Kid #21 [April 1961], the image was pencilled by Jack Kirby and inked by Dick Ayers with alterations by Marie Severin. The remaining one-third of the page was the annual Statement of Ownership, Management and Circulation required by the government.

As best I can tell with the ad of a magnifying glass, the average total paid circulation of The Rawhide Kid was 108,622 copies per issue, down from the previous year’s 143,972. For the single issue nearest to the filling date, the title sold 104,171 copies, down from the previous year’s 129,305. It has widely been suggested that these numbers were often made up on the spot. I wouldn’t doubt it.
                                                                               

The back cover was a paid ad for three complete fishing outfits - 411 pieces - for just $12.95 plus $2 for postage and handling. The ad from Nirsek Discount Sales of Chicago was typical of the less-than-lofty advertising comic books usually attracted.

We have eleven more issues to go before The Rawhide Kid concludes its 151-issue run. Come back next week for another installment of “Rawhide Kid Wednesday.”

Come back tomorrow for my thoughts on the big news just hitting the comics industry. See you then.

© 2017 Tony Isabella

TONY'S TIPS #232

This week in TONY'S TIPS at Tales of Wonder...Normandy Gold by Edgar-winning author Megan Abbott and writer/journalist Alison Gaylin with art by Steve Scott...Falcon by Rodney Barnes and artist Joshua Cassara...The Ruff & Reddy Show by Howard Chaykin with artist Mac Rey!

THINGS THAT MADE ME HAPPY IN OCTOBER

October had it all. Natural disasters that chilled my soul to its core. The unrelenting violence in our nation and the world. The by-now-common horrific bigotry and malfeasance from the Dumpster and the Republicans.

Alongside all the above, there were tremendous blessings in my own life. There is reason to hope for a better America in the voices, online and otherwise, who loudly oppose the monsters in the White House. It is possible to embrace joy amidst the struggle and that’s what I do every day on my Facebook page and Twitter.

Here are the things that made me happy in October...
                                                                                   

October 1: Mimi Pond’s The Customer is Always Wrong. A massive and challenging cartoonist coming of age graphic novel.

October 2: Some interesting offers have come my way, but making no decisions until the end of the year. Still, it’s nice to be wanted.

October 3: The Hook Jaw Classic Collection. The complete original series from the notorious British weekly Action.

October 4: The wondrous Margo Martindale voicing Ma Beagle in Duck Tales. I’m loving the show more each week. Woo-oo!

October 5: I Know a Secret, the new Rizzoli & Isles novel by Tess Gerritsen. It’s a nice mix of horror movie and police procedural.

October 6: Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan. Currently covering comics art fraud on eBay. Handling other real-life issues with sensitivity and grace.

October 7: Billy Joel and Miley Cyrus singing “New York State of Mind.” A great performance that brought good memories of my time in NYC.

October 8: The audaciousness of The Terrifics, coming soon from DC Comics/Dark Matter. I’m looking forward to it.

October 9: Skeletor as Geico spokesperson.

October 10: I am Gandhi, newest book in the “Ordinary People Change the World” series by Brad Meltzer and Christopher Eliopoulos.
                                                                             

October 11: “Springfield Splendor.” Lisa Simpson put her anxieties in a graphic novel and Marge drew it. Guests: Roz Chast, Alison Bechdel, Marjane Satrapi. Loved this episode a lot.

October 12: Ahiho Higashumira’s Princess Jellyfish. Charming manga tale of otaku women, politics, romance, family and fashion.

October 13: My “Diversity in Comics” lecture at the University of Akron went very well. Considering signing up with a speakers bureau to do more of these. Thanks to Mike Schuldiner, the students of his class on modern comic books students and the other attendees for an engaging evening.

October 14: Trying new things. Meeting new friends. Learning more. Growing beyond my comfort zones.

October 15: My old friend Dennis Knowles interviewing me for WVIZ’s “arts and culture” show. I’ll let you know when it airs.
                                                                              

October 16: Lost Cleveland by Laura DeMarco. Its many photographs show vanished landmarks from my home town.

October 17: When I can do a good turn for a comics professional, be it with information or something else.

October 18: Ronny Chieng’s brilliant Daily Show takedown of Chicago pizza. I stand with Ronnie.

October 19: The Late Show by Michael Connelly. Great introduction to Detective Renee Ballard. Threw me a curve I didn’t see coming. More please.

October 20: Grand Rapids Comic-Con 2017. Amazing convention in an amazing city with amazing fans, guests and staff. I had a ball and I’ll be back next year.

October 21: Getting to spend some time with comics legend Steranko. My friend Jim is almost always the best dressed and smartest person in the room.

October 22: Reconnecting with old friends like Allen Bellman, Jose Delbo, Andrew Pepoy, Scott Rosema, David Spurlock and many others.

October 23: The Kitchen by Wolfgang Puck in the convention hotel. I could eat there every day of my life.

October 24: The amazing kid cosplay at the Grand Rapids Comic-Con. I’ll have photos when I blog about it.
                                                                                  

October 25: Holding Black Lightning: Cold Dead Hands #1 in my warm live hands. To those who vexed me for decades...I won.

October 26: Planning my next projects after Black Lightning: Cold Dead Hands. One of them will surprise you.

October 27: I don’t feel 65 (which I am now). I don’t expect I’ll feel 66 when I hit that age on December 22. I have no problem with revealing my age. I’ve earned every one of those years.

October 28: Clark Bull (Publicity/DC Entertainment). He’s doing an amazing job promoting Black Lightning: Cold Dead Hands. It’s great working with him.

October 29: B’wana Beast? The Legends of Tomorrow writers are just plain lunatics, aka my kind of people.

October 30: My new Proven blood pressure monitor is more accurate and easier to use than my former monitor. My blood pressure remains excellent. Double win.

October 31: Thinking about my first day at Marvel in 1972 and how the first person to greet me there was Don McGregor.

I’m taking a few days off to attend the Akron Comicon, celebrating 40 years of Black Lightning with original artist Trevor von Eeden, original editor Jack C. Harris, second series artist Eddy Newell and Mike W. Barr, creator/writer of Batman and the Outsiders, the 1980s team that included Black Lightning as a member. It should be a memorable weekend.

I’ll be back next week with more stuff.

© 2017 Tony Isabella

MEN SHOULD KNOW

We start with some observations and thoughts...

Sexual harassment in the comics industry has never seemed to result in severe enough consequences for the men who committed the acts. The revelation Bill Cosby was a serial sexual predator didn’t seem to have much impact beyond him. The Dumpster’s admission of sexually harassing women was minimized by Republicans and other monsters of the right because all that was really important to them was winning elections and serving their rich benefactors.

The “conversation” continued, but didn’t have more than occasional consequences for the sexual predators. It took the exposure of film producer and studio executive Harvey Weinstein’s long history of sexual harassment and rape to give us some hope that the floodgates were finally opening and that other predators would be exposed and punished for their crimes. It’s even resulted in the exposure of a once0beloved actor - Kevin Spacey - as a criminal who would prey on an underage male.

While I have no doubt the overwhelming majority of sexual abuse is visited by men upon women, it is important to remember that men can also be abused and raped...and, obviously, that not every sexual predator is male. The horror of these revelations is made all the more so because they are just the start.

Recently, I was up and web-surfing at one in the morning on account of my life is insane. Three hours sleep at a clip is the most I can usually manage.

One of the several inadequate comics news sites I follow recently published a kind of think piece on the horrific, still continuing sexual harassment in the comics and entertainment industries. This is an ongoing disgrace. It should be dealt with severely.

When it comes to the comics industry, I have pledged that at every convention I attend, my table should be considered a safe space. If you feel harassed or in any way threatened, for whatever reason, you are welcome to come to my table and stay there as long as you need to. I will stand with you.

That said, I took more than a little offense when the writer of the above piece railed against men who are not harassers or predators and loudly proclaimed "How can you not know?"

How can I not know? Because I'm not a harasser or predator. I don't think like them. I can't even conceive of thinking like them. Their thought processes are alien to me.

I work out of my home office in Medina, Ohio. I don't physically go to any offices. I have visited the new DC Comics offices in Burbank exactly once and, it being a Friday afternoon, almost no employees were there. I have never been at the current Marvel Comics offices or the NBM/Papercutz offices or any of the offices of the other publishers with whom I work. Heck, I haven't even met the majority of my current editors and publishers.

When I attend a convention, I seldom hang out at the hotel bar. I don't usually go to parties or, when I do go to parties, stay for more than an hour. During the actual convention, I concentrate on answering questions, offering creative advice when it's asked for, selling stuff and signing stuff. If I'm lucky, I get to wander the convention floor from time to time, chatting with other guests and buying things I probably don't need. The Japanese melon bread was a particularly bad choice.

If you have been harassed or worse, tell your stories. I will stand with you. But don't expect me to somehow know all about conduct absolutely alien to my conduct...and especially don't condemn me for not knowing about it. I'm just a guy living my crazy life and trying to keep it all together so I can love my family and friends, help them when I can and keep producing work people enjoy. I never mastered being omniscient.

I’ll be back tomorrow with more stuff.

© 2017 Tony Isabella

SHUTTING YOUR ONLINE PIEHOLE (Part 2 of 2)

There are benefits to getting older. I mean, besides not dying and all. I would like to think I get a little better, a little more compassionate, a little smarter and a little more thoughtful with each additional year on the scorecard. I know I strive to achieve those goals.

I used to think Arthur (1981) was one of the funniest movies ever made. Today, after seeing too many drunks up close and hearing too many “I was drunk” excuses for terrible behavior, and despite the most excellent performances of Dudley Moore and John Gielgud, it’s a movie I can’t watch.

The underrated and unsuccessful Broadway musical Goodtime Charley (1975) starred the wonderful Joel Grey and Ann Reinking as Charles VII and Joan of Arc. Grey’s character bemoans the brutality of the age om which they live and expresses that in a song “Why Can’t We All Be Nice?”. The song condemns pillage and rape, proclaiming the latter is no fun unless they want to rape you back. I thought the line was amusing in 1975. Now it makes me wince.

We hear of rape fantasies and, while I’m of the belief consenting adults should be able to act our whatever fantasies they desire so long as no one gets hurt, the concept unsettles me. As do all those scenes in police dramas where interrogating detectives suggest that a suspect will be raped in prison if he doesn’t give them whatever information they seek. As does “humor” involving rape. The humor of such jokes doesn’t just escape me. It disgusts me.

So when, in the course of posting news stories on my Facebook page, posters would suggest that some evildoer would be raped in prison and laugh about it, I was more than a little put off. Indeed, I was disgusted by such comments.

I have forbidden such comments on my Facebook page. Any one posting such comments risks being un-friended. Most of my friends got the message. One guy complained about the policy.

Which is why I posted the following on my page:

Let me tell you a true story about rape. Decades ago, I was working for the worst human being I had ever worked for. He was the scumbag lawyer who took advantage of me vis-a-vis my comics store and failed to represent me properly in another case as well.

While running the lawyer's comic store, which I designed and named, and which was stocked with the inventory he'd gotten from me as part of an agreement where he was to settle the debts of my comics shop, I hired a clerk who needed flexible hours.

This clerk was one of several women raped by a serial rapist. She and the other victims would attend every day of the trial to support one another. She was a capable young woman and stronger than I would have been in such a situation.

This scumbag began to sexually harass her. Among other things, he took her to an out-of-the-area convention and, besides not getting her a room of her own, demanded that she have sex with him. Fortunately, she was able to stay in the room of a female friend also at the convention.

Let me boil this down to one sentence:

This scumbag was sexually harassing a rape victim.

She came to me for help with this awful situation. She needed the job and the flexible schedule I had created for her.

I talked to our scumbag boss. I reminded him that what he was doing was a crime. Something that, as a lawyer, he should've known. On the other hand, since he was regularly having sex with hookers in exchange for defending them, he had a loose interpretation of legal ethics. His response to my telling him to leave her alone:

"It's not your business. If I want to fuck the bitch, I'll fuck the bitch."

At the end of the day, I wrote my letter of resignation, took my personal belongings, locked the store and put the keys through the mail slot. To my everlasting shame, I continued to go to the store to purchase items I had pre-ordered. Up to the day when his large doltish assistant refused to honor the original terms of my orders and insulted me to boot. The assistant was a creep, but, really, I should have never gone back to the store at all.

The lawyer is now dead. But, before that happened, he did his best to make my life hell with bogus lawsuits and trying to get me arrested on bogus charges that he made to local, state and federal law enforcement officials. At comics conventions where I was set up as a dealer, he would stand in front of my table and make impotent threats against me.

I hired a new attorney. That new attorney easily won the case the scumbag had dropped the ball on.

I filed suit against the scumbag and won that case as well. My ex-lawyer had to make good on my store's debts..

I reported him to the state board and gathered evidence against him. The board went so far as to schedule a hearing before dropping the case. Why?

Because he'd hired a well-respected attorney to represent him and it would have cost the state too much time and money to go after him. This decision came down one day before I was scheduled to go to Columbus to testify against him. I don't fault the attorney. He was doing his job.

That very night, celebrating his victory, the scumbag was arrested outside a crack house where he had been having sex with a hooker. He tried to run away from the cops while naked. They caught him. He got probation. He got arrested a second time, lost his license to practice law, and did several months behind bars.

To my mind, the man was a sexual predator who should have suffered worse than he did. Some people claimed he turned his life around, went to AA meetings and became a drug counselor. He did, indeed, become a drug counselor.

Except...he never made any attempt to make amends to me or several others he'd wronged. He never so much as apologized for what he had done to myself and others. I think his alleged reformation was as much a lie as everything else in his life.

This is why - besides having the common decency I was born with - I do not find rape jokes of any kind amusing. This is why, to address the artist who posted on this page and whose ignorant post I deleted, I do not allow rape jokes on my page.

Rape jokes are not jokes. Not on my page. Not anywhere. If you're incapable of grasping that, self-un-friend yourself and save me the few seconds it will take me to do it.

Sexual predators of the rich and famous and powerful sort are again in the news. I am horrified by their actions. I am horrified by how long they were able to commit such actions. I am horrified by how many people knew they were committing such actions. I am horrified by an actor trying to excuse his attempted rape of a minor and his drinking and his conflicts about being gay. Way to conflate being gay with pedophilia, you arrogant swine.

I stand with those who have come forward to report these predatory crimes. But, along with the reports have come some comments about men in general that I find troubling. In tomorrow’s bloggy thing, I will talk about this.

© 2017 Tony Isabella

TONY'S TIPS #231

This week in TONY'S TIPS at Tales of Wonder...Beano Annual 2018. 112 pages of full-color comic strips starring Dennis and his dog Gnasher, The Bash Street Kids, Billy Whizz (the fastest boy in the world), football-crazy Ball Boy, Bananaman (when little Eric eats a banana, he becomes a super-hero), Roger the Dodger, and, the tougher-than-all-the-boys Minnie the Minx...Malika Warrior Queen, created and written by Roye Okupe with art by Chima Kalu...and Valiant's Secret Weapons by Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Eric Heisserer with artist Raul Allen.