I tend to the view that everything is real, even the stuff we try to fake, like pretending to be cool while I chatted up some young thing (obviously not now, but in the long distant past) but though I was faking it (badly) it was still real.

It's not just the possibility of role-playing and the screen names, although certainly that's part of it.

Maybe it's just me, but I tend not to view online interaction the same way I do in-the-flesh interaction.

The people I've physically met, whom I'm likely to meet again -- I dunno, there's just more of a tangible connection there. We're more accountable to each other for what we say and do, we're more real to each other. I have met and enjoyed the company of online pals, but it's really only at that point that I feel like I've gotten to know them, that we're real to each other.

I wonder, given the rise of social media like Facebook and Twitter, if the tangible connections I'm describing aren't breaking down a bit in favor of the Interwub. I've got online pals in other countries and I know more about their lives than I do the old guy who lives right next-door to me.

The Internet makes it easier to find people of similar interests. The people next door don't care about the same stuff we do, so we find each other in cyberspace.

I have noticed that women are far more aggressive on the Internet than they are in person though.

Also, if any of you would like to access my Facebook account it's Facebook.com/Ted.Kilvington .

Yeesh! Brian Floyd keeps that sad childish tradition of calling Marvel "M*****" alive in this thread:

http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=36030&PN=1&TPN=1


I've said before the only thing more embarrassing than when Byrne was doing this was when his groupies did it.

How much money did Marvel and DC need to shove into Byrne's pockets to escape his eternal wrath? The millions he got paid wasn't enough? Looking the other way while he publicly markets his commissions featuring their trademarked characters isn't enough?

Siegel and Shuster and Kirby could complain about DC and Marvel.

Byrne needs to shaddup.

Did Byrne really say something nasty about Quesada's mother right after she died?

No, not really. What Byrne did was criticize Quesada for missing some of his art deadlines following his mother's death.

Byrne was kvetching about modern comics pros and how they blow off deadline for no particularly good reason -- which is fair enough. But he specifically cited some comics Quesada turned in late. Someone replied and said, "Well, Joe's mom had just died and he was devastated, he wasn't able to work for a while."

And rather than say, "Oh, I didn't know that. Well, let's not use that as an example, then," Byrne crudely plowed forward and blamed Quesada for not working far enough ahead so that taking a few weeks off to grieve for his mother wouldn't result in a late issue of DAREDEVIL.

Here is the actual quote.

Which did not, by the way, endear Byrne to the man who now runs Marvel Comics.


John Byrne
Byrne Robotics CEO
Posted: 25 July 2006 at 9:48am

I recall Quesada using his mother's death as an excuse for his Daredevil work being late. At the time I noted that if the work had been on a realistic schedule to begin with, this family loss would have had no impact on the timeliness of that work.

I am tired of personal tragedies, natural disasters and other such upheavals being used as excuses for late books.

In the fall of 1980 I quit UNCANNY X-MEN, started on FANTASTIC FOUR, got engaged, moved to Chicago, got married and, in a nutshell, turned my whole life upside down. In the process, I lost about two months from my schedule. Did any of my books ship late? No. Why? Because I was ahead of schedule to begin with.

Paul Sondersted can trot in now to explain why this totally wasn't an asshole-ish thing to say.

I think in this case, Paul will use the exaggeration defence i.e. it's a silly thing to say but he doesn't say that sort of thing all the time so stop exaggerating and it's only detractors who are making a mountain out of a molehilll and it's all your fault anyway. Rinse, lather, repeat.