After Bleeding Cool Interviews Vox Day, IndieGoGo Axes Latest Alt-Hero Comic Campaign

Bleeding Cool interviewed Vox Day about his nascent comics publishing business in “Vox Day: Altered States of America” [Internet Archive link — but see Update] . Day’s Castalia House imprint Arkhaven Comics has published 22 comic books and graphic novels in the past year, using crowdfunding to generate capital and create sales.

Mark Seifert precedes his interview with a multi-thousand word apologetic seeking to manage fan reaction to Bleeding Cool’s platforming of the controversial figure, the kind of response Vox Day anticipated (see “Interview with Bleeding Cool” [Internet Archive link]) when he promoted it on Vox Popoli

I expect a fair number of SJWs will be outraged by the fact that Bleeding Cool acknowledged my existence at all, and when they did, failed to devote the entire interview to angrily denouncing NAZICOMICSHATE, but then, birds will fly and fish will swim too.

And, indeed, there was a hostile reaction on Twitter —

Throughout Bleeding Cool’s interview Matt Seifert delivers plenty of pitches right into Vox’s wheelhouse. For example —

BC: Now let’s talk about the other part of your response there — your assertion that major publishers are restricting who they will hire to produce comics based on their political beliefs. One of the elephants in the room there is that Ike Perlmutter, chairman of Marvel Entertainment, is one of the Republican Party’s largest donors. He’s a man who has President Trump’s ear. He is also legendary for his attention to the details, and for the level of control he exerts over those details. There’s little doubt that if he thought an ideological course correction in Marvel’s output was necessary and/or more profitable, he would be bringing that about with speed. Why hasn’t he been doing that?

VD: Mr. Perlmutter’s mysterious inaction notwithstanding, it is an absolute fact that major publishers, in both comics and science fiction, restrict who they will hire and who they will publish based on their political beliefs. Two of the writers I publish, Chuck Dixon and Nick Cole, were directly told by editors at Marvel and HarperCollins that they would never be permitted to work with them again. I am a novelist myself and I have been personally told by people who work for Tor Books as well as authors published by Tor Books, the largest science fiction publisher, that I would never be published by Tor due to my ideological beliefs. I also know several illustrators and colorists who have been blackballed by either Marvel or DC. Why do you think it’s so easy for Arkhaven to find excellent, experienced artists who are excited to work with us? They understand we aren’t interested in policing their thoughts or opinions.

An unexpected consequence of the interview is that IndieGoGo shut down Arkhaven’s current fundraiser for Alt-Hero: Q, refunded backers’ money, and posted this banner over the webpage —

This campaign has been closed by Trust and Safety due to a violation of our Terms of Use. The campaign will no longer be accepting contributions, and the Campaign Owners no longer have access to the campaign.

The comic had been advertised to be “an incendiary 150-page graphic novel in six parts that explores the mysterious phenomenon of QAnon. The story is written by the legendary Chuck Dixon, who is backed by a first-rate professional art-and-production team.”

In a video commentary posted this afternoon, Vox Day said he believes Bleeding Cool readers lobbied IndieGoGo to get the Alt-Hero: Q book pulled from the crowdfunding site.

And he told readers of his blog (“Indiegogo cancels AH:Q” [Internet Archive link]) —

Needless to say, we’re looking into this. We’ve got everyone’s email addresses and so forth, so if we have to set up our own crowdfunding platform, we will do so. However, in light of the fact that Indiegogo has done this retroactively, we are already looking into the legal aspects of their actions. I am not yet aware of any reason, in fact, I do not even know if the scheduled payment for the campaign was delivered on schedule or not two weeks ago. I assume not, but I won’t be able to confirm that until tomorrow.

Update: Bleeding Cool Removes Interview and Apologizes: Seifert’s interview didn’t last to the end of the first day before public reaction prompted Bleeding Cool to remove it and issue “An Apology Concerning Vox Day: We Made a Mistake” —

Today one of our writers made an error in judgement resulting in giving exposure to viewpoints that we abhor. We will do better, going forward, and that is a promise. The author admits that this was an extreme error of judgement that never should have been made and that other members of the Bleeding Cool writing staff were unaware of the contents of this article.

Seifert has been Bleeding Cool’s managing editor, however, Kaitlyn Booth, who wrote the apology, announced —

In a first step towards that end we are announcing, effective immediately, I am stepping into the role of Editor-in-Chief and will be implementing new review policies across the Bleeding Cool teams.

Update 10/11/2018: Soon after this post went online Bleeding Cool yanked the Seifert interview. I then changed the link to the Wayback Machine’s capture of the page, which worked when I first searched it, however, that link isn’t working now. No idea what’s making it impossible to retrieve. Subsequently Jon Del Arroz posted a different archive link which is working and looks like a valid copy, so I have changed to that.

55 thoughts on “After Bleeding Cool Interviews Vox Day, IndieGoGo Axes Latest Alt-Hero Comic Campaign

  1. Dann665: I’ve got a PDF copy that I made via Archive.org due to their links going pear-shaped. It’s so good that a couple of comic books and the latest issue of Grimdark Magazine someone jumped ahead of it on my TBR pile

    I read the article. I found it fatuous and flawed. To each their own, I guess.

  2. @JJ

    I’m pretty sure Dann was joking/being sarcastic — he said things had jumped ahead of it on his TBR pile, and also that it was very long and not very interesting, so I didn’t exactly get the impression it was holding his attention.

  3. It seems that I am now in the unusual and uncomfortable position of not being the one with a wonky sarcasm detector.

    Finished as much of the interview as my PDF copy contained. I didn’t see much of interest from VD. The interviewer pretzeled himself to clarify, correct, and generally distance himself from VD. If you haven’t read the interview*, you haven’t missed much.

    The question I was looking to answer was if there was a sound justification for retracting and black-holing the interview. There was not. The interviewer did a decent job even if the results were not terribly interesting.

    *The link via Archive worked when I obtained it. Who knows about 5 minutes from now.

    Regards,
    Dann
    TAGLINE ERROR! Report to tech support

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