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10 Times Sci-Fi and Fantasy Creators Threw Amazing Tantrums in Response to Criticism


Being a creator can be hard. Your work feels like a piece of you and it stings when critics find you wanting. But it’s generally not a good idea to respond to critique like a petulant two-year-old.There are times when creators can’t quite grasp that concept and throw tantrums that would make the screaming baby at your local grocery store blush. The people listed below show the variety of creative ways our beloved authors and artists can flip out at critics- from libel, to attempted litigation, to straight up threats of violence. Take this list as an example of what not to do.

  1. Comic Creator Bill Willingham Wanted to Do Violence to His Critics

    This particular spectacle is special to me because it’s one I witnessed firsthand. It requires a bit of context.

    Detective Comics #809 (2005)

    Back in 2004, a character called Stephanie Brown became Batman’s first female Robin. She was killed off in an extremely graphic, sexualized way soon after. Unlike the dead male Robin, she didn’t get a memorial case in the Batcave. This prompted a lot of discussion about gratuitous violence against women in comics by feminist fans and they gathered to protest her poor treatment. DC Comics caved under the pressure and bought the character back four years later. Stephanie’s death was editorially mandated, but Bill Willingham was the one who had to write it. I attended a 2010 Heroes Con panel he co-hosted. At the panel, Willingham used the opportunity to state that he found the “girls” who campaigned for better treatment of Stephanie “annoying” and that he had fantasized about shooting them in the face. It was a shocking moment. The irony of this man wanting to shoot women because they were protesting violence against women in media was incredible. I later reported it online a few times, but since the panel had been small, it didn’t receive much attention.

    Bill Willingham. Dynamite Entertainment

    Which might be why nobody realized it was a bad idea to have Bill moderate a “Writing Women-Friendly Comics” panel this year. He opened it by bashing a feminist news site that had criticized the panel, and then proceeded to interrupt every woman and minority who tried to speak. Some audience members called Bill out on this and so after the panel, he went to twitter and compared them to screaming little girls. Oh, Bill. It’s pretty clear who’s really mastered throwing tantrums here.

  2. Comic Book Artist Randy Queen Threatened to Sue a Blogger

    The Tumblr Escher Girls, run by Ami Angelwings, catalogs the many mind-bending (and spine-bending) ways women are drawn in comics. The blog will post a comic panel or cover where a woman is drawn in an anatomically improbable way and give critical commentary. Sometimes artists will contribute by redrawing the picture in a more plausible way. Randy Queen, the artist behind the Image Comics title Darkchylde was deeply unhappy to discover Escher Girls essentially pointing out the leggy blonde protagonist had misplaced most of her organs and replaced her bones with silly putty.

    Darkchylde Remastered #1 (1997)

    He quickly got Tumblr to issue a takedown notice and emailed the blog creator, threatening to sue her from defamation. It wasn’t a smart move. As any lawyer will probably tell you, saying someone’s art looks a little weird is a far cry from falsely accusing someone of cheating or murder.

    Darkchylde #1 (1996)

    Fortunately for all involved, Queen eventually came to his senses and apologized to the blog creator.

  3. Penny Arcade Spitefully Released Rape-themed Merchandise

    The popular webcomic Penny Arcade received some ire for making a joke about game characters being "raped by dickwolves". This was met by criticism from rape survivors and other activists who were hurt and offended. The team behind Penny Arcade, Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins, did what any mature creators would do and escalated the situation by releasing a comic that made further light of rape.Penny Arcade

    Mike and Jerry were so attached to defending their beautifully crafted joke that they started producing "I support Dickwolves" t-shirts for Penny Arcade's store.  Having to deal with an overblown crusade to defend the sanctity of sexually predatory phallus creatures sort of took the fun out of the Penny Arcade Expo and a lot of professionals began cutting ties with the convention. As a result, the store stopped the merchandise.

    But Mike Krahulik was not going to let the issue drop that easily. He wore his “Dickwolves” T-shirt to the Penny Arcade Expo the following year and complained about the merchandise being pulled. Unsurprisingly, this caused even more professionals to cut ties with him.The whole incident is a striking example of a sort of double-standard creators can have towards their critics. Mike’s whole argument was that people were being too sensitive and overreacting his joke. Yet rather than ignoring the perceived silliness, he was the one still crusading about the incident three years later. Who’s overreacting?

  4. Comic Legend Stan Lee used the Fantastic Four to Yell at Small Children

    This one is an oldie but goody. Way back in 1963, Fantastic Four #11 was published. It featured the truly hilarious spectacle of Stan Lee using his own characters toberate the little kids who dared critique him.

    Stan was never exactly revolutionary in how he handled female characters. Sue Storm’s role in his Fantastic Four to stand around, cry a lot and be told things like "wives should be kissed and not heard”. Readers had a negative reaction. Stan Lee’s truly amazing response was to try to make the children feel guilty for hurting a fictional character’s feelings.

    Fantastic Four #11 (1963)

     

    Yeah, having Sue respond to the criticism by crying helplessly is

    sure

    to make her seem like less of sexist stereotype. Since she couldn’t possibly speak up for herself, it was up to the fictional male heroes to yell at and vaguely threaten the children for not “getting it”. Which somehow segued into a rant about Abraham Lincoln’s mother.

     

    Fantastic Four #11 (1963)

    Basically, Stan Lee’s argument was “a woman’s place is behind a man”. Just like Lincoln’s mother had to content herself with being the backdrop of his life (since she wasn’t allowed to be president herself), Sue must content herself to being the backdrop of the lives of the male characters. As Ben Grimm “If you want to see women fightin’ all the time, then go see lady wrestlers!” Yeah, readers, what are you doing, expecting to see a female superhero do actual superheroics? For shame.

    So, writers, next time a reader gives you negative feedback, just guilt ‘em by turning on the waterworks and historical lectures. It worked for Stan Lee.

  5. Fantasy Author Anne Rice Went to War against Amazon.com

    Stan Lee isn’t the only one who used his own characters to berate his critics. In fact, using her own characters as a mouthpiece was only a punctuation mark on the Interview with a Vampire’s author’sone-woman war against negative reviews.

    Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

    In Rice’s book Blood of the Canticle, she had her main character go off on a tirade against her ungrateful readers for complaining about earlier novels.

    This move didn’t exactly make her readers beg forgiveness. In fact, the book got quite a few negative reviews on Amazon. Rice’s response? A 1200 words rant that called Amazon "a public urinal to publish falsehood and lies".  She also went to war directly with one reviewer in particular, siccing her entire fanbase on the unsuspecting soul. Blogger Kayleigh Harrison had a blog following of only 100, but Rice made her famous by posting her review and inviting her fanbase to fight with her. Naturally, the first comment was someone wishing Kayleigh would get an STD. Despite the fact she had just gone out of her way to bully a blogger, Rice also ended up signing a petition that aimed to force Amazon reviewers to post under their real names to “prevent bullying”.

    Rice’s tantrum was so epic that it even made

    The New York Times

    .

     

    Click next

    to continue list.

  6. Jurassic Park’s Michael Crichton Fictionalized a Critic as a Child Rapist

    Michael Crichton is best known as the author of Jurassic Park.

    He also apparently holds the belief that global warming is a hoax perpetuated by the liberal media and included that as a plot point in his 2004 book, The State of Fear.

    HarperCollins Publishers LLC

    Critic Michael Crowley disputed these views. And so, by amazing coincidence, a character named "Mick Crowley" showed up in Crichton's 2006 novel, Next. Like the real Crowley, this character was a Washington political journalist who had gone to Yale University.

    Crichton really didn’t hold back in his hatred. Crowley was described within the book as a cheating profiteer who raped toddlers…and, to top it all off, he had a small penis. It really wasn't the most subtle libel, but luckily for Crichton, Crowley responded with a bemused editorial rather than legal action.

  7. DC Comics Editor Dan Didio (Probably) Wrote One of His Critics as a Supervillain

    DC Comics Editor in Chief Dan Didio also seems to have fictionalized a critic. In his case, he decided to make his nemesis a full-blown supervillain.

    Outsiders #29 (2010)

    Outsiders #29 had a character creatively named “Harold Winer” who went on to become the supervillain “Herald”.

    Since there was already a hero in the DC Universe called Herald, it seems a bit odd to reuse the name and general motif for a villain. But makes sense knowing it probably a “gotcha” at a critic who loved said hero.Schwapps Online instantly recognized it as "a shot at a message board poster who obsesses over D-level and lesser characters on the 'net, with the username of Herald".  This man was reportedly unpopular at the DC Comics offices.

    Outsiders #29 (2010), DC Comics

    The character happened to be black like the critic in question. He also happened to have a lot of stereotypical campy gay mannerisms, which may imply… unfortunate things about Didio’s views on sexuality.

  8. Anime Studio Founder Tamaki Akai Flames His Critics

    Tamaki Akai was a co-founder of Studio Gainax, known as the studio behind landmark anime like Neon Genesis Evangelion and FLCL.

    Studio Gainax

     

    Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is a fairly beloved property of the studio these days, but when it first came out, there was a lot of drama surrounding it, and the drama ended up costing a man his job.

    When reviewers at the Japanese forum 2chan criticized the animation of the Gurren Lagann episodes Akai worked on, he became so infuriated that he described the words of his critics as "like putting [his] face next to an anus and breathing deeply." This was a very bad move on Akai’s part, as it caused a furor so great that he ended up having to resign his post at the studio. Yikes.

  9. Milo Manara Compared His Critics to Radical Islamists

    Spider-Woman #1 (2014), Marvel Comics

    Milo Manara caused quire an uproar in the comic community with his booty-licious Spider-Woman #1 cover. The title was an effort on Marvel’s part to attract more female readers and the image made most of us roll our eyes instead. The picture looked more like the cover to a porn mag than a superhero comic (and actually was very similar to an erotic image Manara had previously drawn). But Manara made an even bigger ass out of himself than the one on the cover.First, he stated that it was silly of people to criticize his art because of the riots in Ferguson and Ebola scare happening at the time. Apparently if anything bad is happening anywhere in the world, readers are not allowed to criticize the media they consume. It’s a common, if flawed defense.

    But he took it a step further by implying his critics were in league with Islamic extremists in saying the criticism was probably related to “the ongoing discussion of Islam”.

    And then he basically blamed women themselves for the picture, essentially claiming that we all naturally evolved to look great walking around on all fours to with our butts sticking out at improbable angles. It was the only way our fragile forms could avoid extinction, y’see. You can’t make this stuff up.

  10. Comic Writer Rick Remender Insults His Twitter Followers

    Uncanny Avengers #5 (2015), Marvel Comics

    Rick Remender wrote Uncanny Avengers #5, where X-man Havok claimed that labels like “mutant" were divisive and mutants shouldn’t separate themselves from the general population in claiming an identity. Since mutants are a really blatant allegory for real life minorities, this raised some discussion. Remender's response was to tell the dissenters on Twitter to drown in hobo piss, though he failed to specify which hobo specifically should provide the fluids. He also encouraged a critic to suck Havok's shiny red dick. Maybe Havok should worry less about labels and more about his inflamed genitalia.Remender later apologized, claiming to have misunderstood what the conflict was about. Interestingly, fellow comic creator Brian Michael Bendis ended up being the most effective of Remender’s critics when he used Kitty Pryde to bite back at Havoc’s statement in All New X-men #13.

    All New X-Men #13 (2015), Marvel Comics

    Despite Remender’s suggestion, Bendis has yet to suffocate in a homeless man’s urine.

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