White Lightning Productions

BAR-1 has... interesting... ideas as regards filler.

More filler next week, but I'll be scripting that.

I don't mean to talk out of turn here, but it's starting to look like you and BAR-1 are not operating on the same wavelength anymore.

We've migrated to opposite ends of the political spectrum, though I think Ben's into conservatism more to troll than anything else.

So, Carla is climbing over the back of the couch while Jack tries to read? I can honestly say that I have absolutely no clue what's going on here. This has got to be some inside joke.

So last week we didn't even see filler, this week we get incomprehensible filler, and next week we get more filler? Oh Joy.

Especially considering the rather big plot bomb that was dropped two weeks ago.

But hey, not like it takes more than 15 seconds of my day to check and see if there's an update.

I'm not gonna give Kris any shit for having to take a break from the script because I'm pretty sure his grandmother died. He can take as long as he needs to get those affairs settled.

As far as this filler goes, all I can determine so far is that this is definitely an inside joke/troll between Kris and Ben. Carla is dressed up like Vivian James who apparently is the mascot for a movement called Gamergate. The only thing I know about Gamergate is that Kris doesn't like them, a lot. The pose she's in is reminiscent of Spider Woman from a comic cover, the significance of which I also don't understand.

In any event, it's nice to see more of Carla, even if its for weird filler.

I'm not giving him any feces. Life gives him enough.

Please accept my sympathies for your loss Kris.

Yeah.. the reaction to the Manara variant cover really irritated me. I loved that Cho did three successive parodies, going further meta each time he did it. I've been a fan of Manara's work & style since the 90s, his stuff just looks amazing.

(And the #ShirtStorm i.e.: what happened to astrophysicist Matt Taylor really, really really pi$$ed me off.)

As for next week, I plan on having Jean riffing a Frazetta pose...

I love this filler page.

The negative reaction to a 1-in-50 variant cover was absolutely ridiculous. I agree that Frank Cho's responses are fantastic in subverting all of his critics.

While I look forward to returning to the story, I found this to be a very satisfying gag.

Spending the afternoon today chatting away with Ben at the Palladium Books Open House has made me realize just how UNaware I truly am about all these social and blogging memes that go into his creative process. He just kept mentioning all these obscure references in various comic pages that I never even noticed, let alone thought about. Still, he's a friendly and easy going guy and was willing to explain everything.

What kills me about this is that stuff like ShirtStorm and the variant cover start out as really tepid complainy insider-speak between people who just disagree with the optics of it/have pragmatic views, and then the super reactionary conservative counterculture grabs onto it, blows it way out of proportion and circulates it within their circle, it catches the attention of ACTUAL crazy people on the liberal side who repeat the fabricated talking points verbatim, giving it more credence, then by the time the rest of us see it, it's been manufactured into something ridiculous.

Basically everybody needs to chill out and ask deeper questions about who's giving them their gossipy news. I've been on both sides of the slacktivist blogosphere's ire; the key is to imagine that they're all complainy teenagers, because emotionally they are.

And meanwhile I've just had a couple of long-time readers tell me via Twitter that they're stepping away from the comic over this page.

Urgh.

The main difference between myself and Ben is that I loathe Internet drama, whereas Ben thrives on it. He finds SomethingAwful, EncyclopediaDramatica, the 4-channers and GamerGate funny as hell. I've never seen the humor value in making other people angry merely for the sake of offending them. Add to this the steep political differences developing between the two of us, and you'll understand why I've been trying to bite my tongue a LOT, and why I've come to dread every moment I see Ben's name on a Facebook post.

The hell of it is, I've had people drop my works based on what I believe before, but this is the first time they've done it because of what my creative partner believes, and it's a frustrating experience. I can't tell these people, "This is why I believe X," nor can I say, "I try not to put my personal beliefs ahead of the story I'm telling," because in this case it's not my beliefs causing the problem.

And although I can (and do) speak up when I believe someone else's beliefs are wrong, I cannot and will not order anybody to stop believing X, or expressing their belief of X, simply for my own convenience.

For my part I thought Shirtgate was a tempest in a teapot (you wore that shirt when you knew you were going to be on worldwide television? When you know women are strongly discouraged from pursuing scientific careers, especially in physics and space sciences? That makes you an idiot, but not a misogynist, and you shouldn't be hounded out of science for it).

I think (and evidence backs me up) that GamerGate began when a creepy stalker broke up with a female game designer and decided to punish the woman he saw as his property by spreading false statements about her on the Internet and encouraging others to stalk, harrass, and terrorize her and other women in video games. I thought the Manara comic cover was stupid and a little insulting (what serious superhero would seriously go out on patrol wearing nothing but body paint and a mask- I mean outside a WLP comic that is?), and I thought Frank Cho's responses to the overblown response were nothing more subtle or artistic than an upthrust middle finger.

I think a lot of my fellow liberals have a tendency to overreact without thinking, and I think a lot of conservatives have the notion that freedom of speech means they can criticize others, but that their critics should be silenced.

I think that it is not censorship to point out that men outnumber women ten to one or more in the games industry, that most mainstream video games restrict female characters to the roles of victim, sex object, or reward for the male hero to claim, or to suggest that game developers are missing a trick by not offering independent female heroes or non-blonde, non-bikini female avatars for MMOs and the like.

And mostly I think you're not here for any of that; you're here to read a story about silly, sometimes sexy werewolves; and so I put that priority above having a drag-out political argument with the artist who is just as much responsible for the creation of the comic as I am. In the current political climate such things usually end with burned bridges and dead projects, and PitW is too important to me to risk that.

That said: you've probably seen the last GamerGate joke in PitW. The only reason I didn't say no to this one was that it's perfectly in character for Carla Goodwin to use the fourth wall to troll other people for her own amusement. Hell, she trolls her own DAUGHTERS, and her younger daughter is following in her footsteps. Carla herself isn't a GamerGate person by any stretch of the imagination, but she doesn't see it as important either- just Internet drama and fluff that will be forgotten a year from now, in her mind.

So, yes, we did this filler. No, we probably won't do it again. But no, neither Ben nor I are going to shut up about what we believe in venues outside the comic. You, the readers, are free to do what you feel you have to do.

Sorry for the rambling, but I've been upset and stressed over this sort of thing for months now, and other factors in my recent life are NOT helping.

Since I've never followed the GamerGate horseshit, or the shirtgate horseshit the filler was just incomprehensible to me. And not any kind of statement.

As I told Ben on Saturday, I'm pretty sure the only reason I keep my blood pressure low enough to qualify for a two year medical card from every physical is because I don't get involved in shit like this.

Because I don't have a Twitter, Tumblr, 4chan, or Facebook account and have very little interest in following the latest quasi-manufactured internet controversy I'm proud to say I have only the faintest inkling of what's going on here and really don't care either way. Please don't take this as an invitation to explain things.

The Internet can indeed make you stupid, Something Awful was right about that much.

No idea what the big deal is over the filler and/or what it's supposed to be parodying.

That being said, you can't please all of the people all of the time. Or even most of it ( seriously, you can take three people that are good friends and ask em what they want on a pizza and there'll be WAR! ) If these readers are really that thin skinned that they're going to completely stop following the comic/story over one filler image then it's their loss.

Really sick of all the folks that go ' I'm offended by something, the entire universe must now bend to my whims and change until I'm no longer offended. Or I shall whine on social media TWICE as hard! '

Anyway, looking forward to whatever you guys toss up next, love your work.