Offering no additional explanation, Baron steps away from this alt-right project both as its Indiegogo fundraising page has disappeared and as provocateur Vox Day’s Alt★Hero series (discussed previously by guest columnist Sean Kleefeld) has apparently raised over ten times its campaign goal on the new “free speech” crowdfunding platform FreeStartr. Whether the BSM project could resurface on FreeStartr is unknown at this time.
As of last month, comics writer Chuck Dixon remains attached to the Alt★Hero volumes. Vox Day (aka Theodore Robert Beale) continues to tweet publicly about the project:
[The following piece was originally published at KleedfeldOnComics.com and it is reposted here with the author’s permission.]
On Business: Dixon on Alt-Hero
A couple of weeks back, Vox Day launched a crowd-funding campaign for his brand new comic called Alt-Hero which Day describes as “A new alternative comic series intended to challenge and eventually replace the SJW-converged comics of DC and Marvel.” It garnered a bit of news because Day is a right-wing petty asshole who’s an active racist. He led the 2015 and 2016 “rabid puppies” campaigns to deny any people of color from the Hugo Awards, mostly out of spite for not actually winning an award himself in 2014. He later described his actions as, “I wanted to leave a big smoking hole where the Hugo Awards were. All this has ever been is a giant Fuck You—one massive gesture of contempt.”
Now first off, it’s absolutely laughable that he thinks he can replace Marvel and DC. Politics aside, Marvel and DC have each been making superhero comics for the better part of a century; they do superhero comics very, very well. No one in the past fifty years has come close to even touching their sales on superhero comics. They’re not invulnerable, certainly, but any and every problem they have had and will have is of their own making, not because of a competitor. If someone else is able to usurp their place as premier superhero comic publisher, it will be because they got out of publishing comics.
Second, “SJW-converged comics of DC and Marvel”? What the hell is that supposed to mean? Seriously, no definition of “converged” makes sense in this context. If that’s the level of writing he’s bringing to Alt-Hero, Marvel and DC have nothing to be worried about. Hell, anyone making mini-comics out of their parents’ basement has nothing to be worried about. If I had to guess, I suppose he’s trying to say that Marvel and DC have been taken over by social justice warriors and that they have been pushing a decidedly leftist agenda. Which clearly is not the case if you actually look at any of their books. But Day is doing what he does — whipping up conspiracies to make it look like white men are being oppressed. Because his mediocre work isn’t celebrated enough.
OK, all of that is old news. I only mention it to make sure you’re up to speed on who this asswipe is. (And why I’m not linking to any of it!)
[EDITOR’S NOTE: Any links have been provided by Sacred and Sequential.]
In a recent e-mail to Sacred and Sequential founder A. David Lewis, Eisner Award-winning comics creator Mike Baron wrote the following: