The writer of the TCJ column "Journalista," after taking inaccurate swipes at this blog, announced that I could have "the last word" on the subject. This is a popular on-line gambit in which one person actually endeavors to have the last word himself by trying to present himself as above whatever rebuttal could be offered. The usual hope is that the other party will then want to show that he's as above-it-all as the first guy, so he refuses to avail himself of the opportunity. I don't know whether that's the intent here. But I--who Gary Groth has referred to as one of Fantagraphics "favorite whipping boys"--do know I want to say something.
It's been a good long while since Fantagraphics took something I didn't write, acted as if I did, and then offered a half-hearted, Well we meant everything we said but we're sorry we said it apology. The time before was a fabricated letter defending some former Fanta employee that Groth utilized to produced a multi-page slam, without anyone there bothering to verify that I'd actually written it. Which I hadn't. This time around, Journalista was incapable of reading an entry that referred to Kathleen and me in the third person, featuring such phrases as "Peter and Kathleen" and "their child," ascribed it to me, and took me to task for it. Endeavoring to subsequently explain the mishap, the author claimed the posting carried no label of authorship...even though it said "posted by Glenn Hauman" right under it.
But hey, in the world of journalistic accuracy that passes for Fantagraphics, it's all even-steven because I stated a decade after the fact that, as I recall it, Groth was a guest at Carol's house even though he claims it was the other way around...while, eleven years ago, at the time it occurred, journalistic maven Groth couldn't get the cause of Carol's death correct (it wasn't a heart attack, it was a brain aneurysm.)
One of the two things that Groth and his stooges has never been able to wrap themselves around is that I don't care what Groth said about Carol. Carol was beyond his ability to hurt. What I care about is that Groth revealed himself as someone with a total lack of human decency. A young woman dropped dead. A woman he knew, that he had presumably broken bread with. She collapsed in the street, was rushed to a hospital, briefly regained consciousness, and then died. And he used that tragedy as a pretext for two things, and two things only: To bash Marvel, and to promote the Comics Journal, holding it up as the gold standard of how to do euologies correctly.
Here's the other thing Groth et al never got: Carol always saw Marvel as a stepping stone. She was only going to be there another six months to a year. She always planned long-term, you see. She had meticulously been putting everything into place and was preparing to make the jump to her own business. To create her own publishing firm, producing work of artistic merit. She truly loved comic books, but she wanted more out of life than pushing superhero titles. She had great and lofty goals.
And she didn't get to achieve them.
The people who mourned her didn't know that, of course. But they were aware that, at the very least, a life with vast potential had been cut short. They got that. Criticize the effusiveness with which they did it if you must (though God knows why one would feel compelled to), but they got that. And Groth didn't get that, making him less understanding and more devoid of anything approaching human feeling than any of them. Instead he pontificated over how he "abominated" the use to which she put her intellect in building her career.
Carol used Marvel Comics as a foundation toward a publishing career that was cut short. Gary Groth, who has published porn (the Eros line) and a magazine extolling the virtues of the very superheroes he despises (Amazing Heroes), all to generate revenue to keep TCJ going, doesn't get to excoriate others for the way they build a career.
Here endeth the word.
PAD
Posted by Peter David at December 20, 2002 05:22 AM | TrackBack | Other blogs commentingI live in Dallas Texas, I wasn't lucky enough to meet Carol but after reading your thoughts on her, I wish I had. And I know after reading this entry that we all would be blessed to have a friend like you. God be good to her! And may he bless her namesake and all those who remember Carol Kalish.
Merry Chrismas!
Not to nitpik, but I believe it was
a coronary embolism, not a brain anyeurism.
It never amazes me what some people will do to draw attention and make themselves feel important. For some reason a lot of these people, once they learn to string a subject and a predicate together, figure the best way to do that is to knock down other people in writing. I dunno.
Does anyone else ever get the urge to grab these people, shake them, and say, "nobody cares what you think! Give it up!"
When you get down to it, how many people are there where we care what they think anyway? I know that at least for myself it's a small list; this website is one of a very select few of its type that I visit. I care what PAD has to say because I admire him as a writer and because even though I may not always agree with him he never takes the low road with people - that, I feel, is deserving of respect and attention.
People who just sit at their keyboard and hack out invective about people and things they don't like? Keep it.
I was also going to say something to the effect of, "man, Peter, you're up early," and then I remembered "new baby," and then I thought, "I'm a big dumbhead."
JLK
The writer of the CBG column "Journalista,"
Surely you mean TCJ, yes?
Although I've never met either party, I've only ever heard admiration for Carol and contempt for Groth. While it's not "the last word", it does usually indicate how a person tends to treat others (like engendering like, and all that).
"Criticize the effusiveness with which they did it if you must (though God knows why one would feel compelled to)..."
See, to me that's exactly it. Whatever happened to acknowledging that it's just plain bad taste to use someone's death as an excuse to parade your personal grievances about something? If there's a circumstance where the phrase "it's not about you" is more apt, I can't think of it at the moment. Kalish's death wasn't about Groth's problems with Marvel. And the more Groth and Dirk insist on the appropriateness of saying what Groth said at the time he said it, the less credibility they seem to have.
"'The writer of the CBG column "Journalista,' ...Surely you mean TCJ, yes?"
No, Peter is referring to Dirk Deppey, the writer of TCJ's weblog, which is named Journalista. It's usually a pretty good weblog, particularly if you want to find out about foreign cartoonists. Gary Groth is Dirk Deppey's boss.
Elayne, Peter mistakenly refers to Dirk Deppey's weblog as being a CBG column rather than a TCJ weblog. That's the typo Dan was trying to correct.
I'll say this. I never knew Carol Kalish. But I do know that it is customary, after one has died, for friends, family, and the like to remember good things about said about the dead. For TCJ to take that to task is ridiculous. Wouldn't it have been easier (and more tactful) to simply not dump on her employer, if indeed, Marvel was Groth's true target? He did, after all, say he had nothing but "respect" for Carol. She worked for a comic book company, for chist's sake. She wasn't a Nixon administrator. I don't know about anyone else, but if someone respected me as a person, and then spent a few pages in print defecating on my life's work and shaming everyone I knew about reminiscing about me, I'd hope to have a friend as good as, say, Harlan Ellison (or PAD) to set it right.
I'm not sure if this is the right time or place to say this, but I feel the need to vent something about The Comics Journal and their mindset.
Like a lot of comics fans, I try to read almost all of the comics websites out there. One of them is Alan David Doane's Comic Book Galaxy. I think it would be safe to say that Doane and Groth share a similar mindset. On that website, Doane has often quote what I think to be some sort of mantra over at TCJ, which is "TCJ isn't elitist. You're just stupid."
How arrogant is it to say that? I do think the TCJ is elitist in its narrow view that comics should dump superheroes. Are there too many superhero books? Certainly, but there is nothing wrong with publishing them along with crime books and western books and romance books and biographies and what have you. It's that arrogant comment that has turned me off of TCJ. I still read ADD's website, but I won't read TCJ. It still sticks in my craw every time I see it.
I don't know how people can side with such an arrogant point of view and the arrogant people it comes from.
Yeah, that'll teach me to make an entry right after I write my CBG column...at 5 in the morning, no less.
PAD
When a public figure dies, it is not at all uncommon for the press to offer a critical (and possibly negative) assessment of that figure's career. Groth's piece was not unusual in that regard. Kalish was a significant figure within the comics field.
However, the more 'pop' new channels like Time and Newsweek and television news tend to run drippy eulogies when celebrities die, overstating their achievement (like all the ridiculous pieces on Princess Diana). I think comics fans see only that stuff, and thus were struck by Groth's approach.
Yes. Yes, it was unusual. Because the piece wasn't motivated by her career, but by his. It wasn't about her, it was about him. About his need to attack Marvel under any pretext. About his need to promote his editorial viewpoint under any circumstance. You go find me another essay on someone whose passed where the essayist promotes eulogies published in his own magazine as the right and vastly superior way to mourn, and then we'll talk some more.
PAD
It seemed to me that Groth's main point was that the mourners in CBG were motivated by their own self promotion rather than a sincere mourning of Kalish.I think it is a wrongheaded opinion in many ways but to call Groths comments a personal attack on Kalish is wrongheaded.His focus is on what he considers exploitation of a womans death for commercial and career promoting means and done with such overblown and lugubrious rhetoric that it can be reasonably intepreted as tasteless.
It seemed to me that Groth's main point was that the mourners in CBG were motivated by their own self promotion rather than a sincere mourning of Kalish.I think it is a wrongheaded opinion in many ways but to call Groths comments a personal attack on Kalish is wrongheaded.His focus is on what he considers exploitation of a womans death for commercial and career promoting means and done with such overblown and lugubrious rhetoric that it can be reasonably intepreted as tasteless.
It seemed to me that Groth's main point was that the mourners in CBG were motivated by their own self promotion rather than a sincere mourning of Kalish.I think it is a wrongheaded opinion in many ways but to call Groths comments a personal attack on Kalish is wrongheaded.His focus is on what he considers exploitation of a womans death for commercial and career promoting means and done with such overblown and lugubrious rhetoric that it can be reasonably intepreted as tasteless.
I've seen "The Comics Journal" only rarely. The comics shops in Orlando tried to carry it, but no one would buy it. Calling it "elitist" is probably too elevated a word. Try "obscessed with the obscure." I can understand someone not being "Wizard" magazine. But to completely ignore the largest part of their chosen field, focus their attention on the few minor creators that they like and acting like Internet trolls to the rest is something else.
In fact, although I've never met him, this Groth character sounds exactly like the snottier trolls I've, um, "stepped into" on USENET. I've often tried to get these people to step up and debate in peson at a con, and they start hemming, hawing and making excuses. Although Groth seems to appear at cons in person (though I've never seen him, or mention of him on panels). It would be really tempting to give him a verbal dressing-down in public; probably making oneself look like a bully by doing so, but really emotionally satisfying.