Pick of the Week Podcast
Show Notes
Eighteen hours before recording the show, Josh Flanagan had major surgery. And now he’s on pain meds. So he’s a little loopy. Conor Kilpatrick does his best to keep the show in line. Comics!
Running Time: 00:59:30
Pick of the Week:
00:01:45 – The Defenders #7
Comics:
00:10:14 – Batman #35
00:19:02 – The Batman Who Laughs #1
00:22:26 – The Mighty Thor #701
00:28:12 – Green Lanterns #6
00:29:35 – Guardians of the Galaxy #147
00:31:09 – Superman #35
00:32:59 – Mech Cadet Yu #4
00:35:38 – Wonder Woman / Conan #3
Patron Pick:
00:38:06 – Doctor Strange #381
Patron Thanks:
00:42:42 – Dave Cicirelli
00:44:05 – Chris Heithoff
00:45:11 – Dustin Hammond
00:47:00 – Eddy Colloton
Audience Question:
00:49:37 – Tom B. from Springfield wonders what would happen if Comixology were to go out of business.
00:52:39 – Christopher P.thinks that Batgirl is the most noble of all the heroes.
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Music:
“Kick Drum Heart”
The Avett Brothers
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Hey, get well Josh.
Get well soon Josh so you can get back to playing! 🙂
Iron Fist in the sweatsuit and the taped fists he looks too much like the JSA’s Wildcat. They have to do better than this.
Thanks for the power guys. I was surprised by the certainty that I felt when electing not to put on my heavier jacket this afternoon, must have been that ability kicking in.
Feel better soon, Josh!
Um… I Googled the stuff with Ron, and based on what you guys said, I assumed it was going to be an isolated accusation from an ex-girlfriend or something. It’s actually more like a pattern of misogynistic behavior that seems to have touched dozens of women in both Ron’s personal and professional lives. I understand that you’ve been friends for 20+ years, so I don’t expect you to grab your pitchforks and join the mob, but, as a listener, I can’t say I’m super comfortable with the situation.
“I googled the stuff…”
Well it sounds like you’re an expert. Unless you know someone personally involved let’s remember that we probably shouldn’t pass final judgement on anyone based on accusations and allegations.
I did some googling too and what I found sounded more like someone who needs a visit to HR but who knows, the point being most of us on this side of it won’t know.
I think we’re all going to be experts before this wave of accusations finishes breaking. Unfortunately, we’ve all had plenty of opportunities of late to watch these situations play out, and what I’m learning is that when multiple women who have no reason to be in collusion describe a man’s pattern of abusive behavior, we have good reason to take them seriously.
I don’t think there’s ever reason, as you say, to pass FINAL JUDGEMENT without first hand knowledge of a situation, but until someone presents a credible explanation for why multiple women, both inside and outside of the comic industry, all have it in for Ron, to the extent that they’d lie and try to destroy his career, well, I’m probably going to lean pretty heavily towards believing them.
And if we did the same googling and your conclusion is that these are problems for HR to resolve, then I feel like I have to warn you for your own good, it’s not 1985.
This to me is heartbreaking. I get that there are a lot of older guys that come from the madmen era that just like to grab ass, and it seems to me most of the accusations against Ron aren’t the sexual assault variety and more like “mean to women” variety but it’s still so disheartening. I feel like the ifanboy guys are my friends, I know I don’t know any of them really but I feel a friendship, it’s so hard to imagine that people have a completely different relationship and emotion related to Ron. I’m pretty discouraged by this.
I am not sure what everyone is googling but I looked all over Google and on Twitter and I found a couple of third and second hand accounts of workplace harassment but that’s it, just the word harassment or similar. I also saw the posts from the ex GF. I dont see this at all like the Eddie B situation. For now I am going to reserve judgement until something more concrete comes out.
I am not trying to cast doubt on anyone but “rude at work” and “talking behind peoples’ backs” is a lot different than being aggressive toward women or a serial harasser. I also dont like that plenty of people on twitter say stuff like “its true” and “ya he is a harasser”, without any detail or similar.
Yeah thanks @andyb, I know it’s not 1985. And why 1985 of all years?
This is is exactly what I mean some people seem more excited to make a pithy comment than to focus on a systemic issue while acknowledging that they aren’t connected enough to know anything truly about it.
Take this seriously absolutely.
Realize you don’t know what happened and from your perspective this is the telephone game- probably a smart idea.
Newsarama reporting on re-tweets isn’t enough.
Does it seem like Ron might not have been an ok dude to work with sometimes- maybe.
It does seem like there are enough people saying that.
Specific predatory behaviour against women? I’m not finding it, hence my HR comment.
I think ChinBo37 summed up pretty well what seems to be out there and I think his approach is sensible.
Sorry, didn’t mean to be pithy. 1985, because random year I imagine it was easier to get away with toxic BS in the workplace. If I said the stuff Ron’s accused of having said and it got back to management, I’d be out on my ear. That’s my 2017. I don’t know where you’re at.
We’ll see how it plays out. When institutions ignore women accusers, those accusers tend to get louder and more specific and they tend to multiply. (That is assuming there’s truth to the accusations.) So I expect we’ll either see Marvel respond or the chorus will intensify. One woman has said she’s talked to the press, so it’ll be interesting to see if anything comes of that.
Or maybe I’m wrong and the whole thing will just go away. I know that’s what Josh and Conor are hoping for.
Speaking of the ifanboys, I did not like the way their statement ended with a declaration that they won’t be discussing this any further. Ostrich with head in sand… not a good look.
I Googled this a lot also and monitored Twitter about it for several days.
All I’m finding are:
1) An ex-gf said he was terrible to her during a break-up
and
2) One woman who worked at Image said Ron told her that an idea she had wasn’t a good idea.
That’s it. Aside from that I just found a dedicated contingent of fewer than a dozen people just saying “It’s true he’s a harasser” over and over and over again.
Look, maybe he is a real dirtbag, and I’m perfectly willing to believe that, but this whole trial-by-social-media thing is in this case really lacking specifics. I don’t need “evidence”, but I sure wish the claims were at least a touch specific. And yeah we’re talking about “multiple” claims… multiple meaning TWO, several years apart.
So he had a bad break-up and was really nasty to an ex-gf. Like 60% of all people have been mean to exes. And what he’s accused of wasn’t physical abuse. That doesn’t excuse Ron’s alleged behavior, but what the anti-Ron contingent seems to be saying is that he shouldn’t have a job in this industry. Are they aware that actually women exist in all industries? So basically by following their own logic we’d have to conclude that Ron shouldn’t have a job anywhere, ever. All because of precious few actual allegations with precious few details or examples in them. I’m sorry but if you sent mean voice messages to an ex, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be able to find a job ever.
As for whatever happened with him at Image: again, the only specific thing I’m finding is that one claim from that one person who used to be in comics. The “best” (i.e. worst) example she had was that Ron had the audacity to tell her that some PR idea she had was not a good move, because even though she supported her in principle, she was going about things wrong in his opinion and hurting her own cause. This is “harassment”? The woman in question is actually a pundit whom I’ve agreed with in principle in the past. But she also has a track record of going about things in the wrong way and, yes, hurting her own cause in the end. She and others at CBR handled things so badly regarding something she said that they ended up having to totally destroy 20 years’ worth of forum posts in a last-ditch scorched-earth attempt at saving their community. So yeah she has a terrible track record in regards to “how” to get her ideas out. That doesn’t accuse the trolls who harassed her. That doesn’t excuse them at all. But yeah she did a terrible job of handling that situation, and in the end she hurt herself, her cause, her employer, and the community in general. Those are the facts.
The most disturbing part of all this are the people who want Conor and Josh to just throw Ron under the bus. Apparently people think 20 years of friendship should melt away due to vague accusations. This is truly frightening to me. I think iFanboy has handled this well.
Really if there is more information out there about Ron’s actions, I haven’t seen it. I’ve searched for hours, because this shocked me so much. I need more than 2-3 people and 7-8 of their White Knight friends speaking against him. That’s not to dismiss anything that Ron did or might have done, and honestly the thing with his ex does sound bad. But not bad enough to get him black balled from an industry forever. I don’t know what to believe anymore, because there are people who think that just telling a woman “Your idea isn’t good” constitutes harassment.
A majority of the tweets and news articles about this portray Ron as if he were guilty of physical assault and even call the women “survivors” (as if they were raped or as if he attempted to murder them). It’s insane and I can’t get a bead on it. The people talking about it are not trustworthy and they simply accept “several people are talking about it so it must be true” as reason enough to ruin someone’s life.
Sorry for the typos. Probably it’s clear, but just to make sure:
I meant “…even though HE supported her in principle”.
And I meant “That doesn’t EXCUSE the trolls who harassed her”.
“The most disturbing part of all this are the people who want Conor and Josh to just throw Ron under the bus. Apparently people think 20 years of friendship should melt away due to vague accusations.”
For the record, I don’t believe this. Not sure if you were talking about what I said or something you saw elsewhere. Frankly, I think they should remain friends with Ron, even if he’s done everything he’s accused of and lots more. I don’t think the solution to sexual abuse is for the accused (or even the guilty) to be abandoned by all the people who love them.
But if there does end up being more to this, I think Josh and Conor are going to have to address it more thoroughly, and it’s not going to look great that they were initially so dismissive.
I swear I just watched an Orville episode about this very thing…
What’s out there for us to digest is practically nothing. So unless there is something else not being said in public I’m not sure what we are suppose to be outraged at right now.
The iFanboys said they aren’t going to discuss it further because nothing good will come from discussing it further. From their address I got that they didn’t have any first hand information on the accusations. They asked Ron and he denied it. They said from their personal experience as friends of Ron they wouldn’t expect him to be labeled as a misogynist. That’s pretty much all they can say.
phillosmaster: I’d agree with you 100% if we weren’t watching similar situations unfold over and over again in the news. You might still be right, because you can’t generalize specifics, and maybe this specific time it really is only a few women somehow making it seem like there’s more noise than there really is, and these women are either emotionally unstable enough or vindictive enough to want to exaggerate or lie to hurt Ron. But the pattern we see most frequently is vague accusations are made, the guy denies it, more accusations or more specific accusations are made and eventually the guy admits it or the evidence becomes so overwhelming that it doesn’t matter that they’re still denying it. That obviously hasn’t happened here yet and maybe it never will (I hope it doesn’t!), but this will be the first case I’ve been following in a long time where it didn’t play out that way. (The last example I can think of was when Conor Oberst was accused of statutory rape and the woman was outed as a liar.)
I guess what I’m saying is that in light of new evidence about how sexual harassment is perpetrated at large in America, what once sounded reasonable to me (basically what you’re saying) now sounds spurious.
Again, I hope I’m wrong and for some reason it’s all a misunderstanding and Ron doesn’t have a history of harassment, but we can’t be dismissive of women when they make accusations right now, even when they’re vague, made on Twitter and we like the guy they’re accusing. Comics has been a boys club since the beginning. It’s an industry ripe for misogyny. As fans, we’ve got to take this issue seriously even when it hurts.
I’m not asking anybody to assume Ron is guilty based on what’s come out so far, but I don’t think people should be dismissive of the accusations. That approach has not been working out for people lately.
Andy I think you make some great points but in this situation what we have is one person saying Ron was mean at work and one ex gf saying it was a bad break up and he shared work details with her. I think most people would be more than happy to listen to and give credence to more people who can cooberate a “pattern”. However it seems that the only pattern that exists is multiple people saying that these are “known” facts without the facts actually being out there.
I hate to keep going back to the Eddie B situation because I don’t want to down play verbal harrassment as opposed to physical but with that situation several people said yes he touched me or kissed me etc. I don’t see that here at all. Maybe I’m not a comics insider so I don’t know the real story but if we are supposed to have a real opinion on the matter we need more than what is out there now. We can only see of more accusers come out with their stories.
ChinoBo37: Yeah, I hope you’re right.
If one is Elektra.
If it turns out Ron is guilty of sexual harassment in the workplace I’ll be just as outraged as everyone in the community. The problem is I can’t really identify what Ron is being accused of here. Is it sexual harassment because I honestly can’t tell? Should I pass judgment with that little information? Should you expect guilt because of a perceived trend in society? Are either of those rational stances to take?
I’m not saying the people complaining about Ron should be silenced because I have fun listening to his opinion on a podcast. I’m literally asking a question. Of what is he being accused and by whom? I’ve got no facts therefore I have no opinion.
Batman 35: I think you guys missed the real reason for the visit. They went to talk to the girl from Cat’s past who killed the 237 people that Cat took the blame for. This decompressed mess of a story barely touched on it (why she was with Talia in the desert??). Tom King has had his moments, and the ideas are good, but this was no more than a single issue worth of material that was stretched out over 3 issues. The Bat Family stuff was pretty good, but everything else was very “not worth the price of admission”.
FYI no one is safe from the modern-day McCarthysim aimed at “bigots, rascists, and sexual predators”. I’m not defending anything or anyone, but with the way information travels today, all it takes is an accusation and the call for pitchforks happens fast and lives are ruined leaving so much collateral damage. It’s really kinda scary and I worry about my sons as they grow up.