Alex and Mr. Grell are acquainted, I believe.

Yes.

And Mike Grell regularly follows Comicon, does he?

It wouldn't have to be regularly. Maybe he's a sock around here, or maybe Erik Larsen tweeted him? Who knows, the guy is older right, he may have asked the more net savvy Mr. Ness to post his response, who cares.

If Alex says it was Grell, it is. I've never known him not to be honest. Unless anyone can prove otherwise there is no reason to doubt the man.

Not to derail the current discussion, but...


I'd actually only met Kubert three times, the first time at a New York convention in the early 70's and the second when I took a tour of the DC offices somewhere around the same time. Both times, though, I was tremendously impressed with the guy's sense of calm and warmth and the generosity that he bestowed on folks talking to him.

In the early 90's, when my son was considering a career as a cartoonist, we went to the Kubert school to meet the faculty. We had a sit down with Joe, and while he said that he was impressed with my son's portfolio, they spent a lot of time talking about what he really wanted to do with art. After an hour or so he was able to impress on my son that, though he'd accept my son if he truly wished to attend, his interests weren't really strongly directed towards this type of art, and that he'd probably be happier with a different course of study. He was right.

My point being that Joe was nothing but considerate in the way he treated not only his students, but his potential students as well. Everyone I've spoken to who actually knew the man seemed very aware that he always considered the actual needs of others and was very skilled at helping them determine for themselves what those needs actually were.

All that aside, I loved Kubert's art. He wasn't of the Neal Adams realist school, but far more focused on fluidity and grace of line. Perhaps because of this his story telling was unique to himself (or was until he taught it to so many students at his school) and for me it seemed that he had the mind set of an artist in ways that many other comic book illustrators didn't.

There's nothing about the guy that I'm aware of (including the accusations in this thread) that paints him as anything other than an incredibly honorable and generous man who also happened to be an incredibly gifted artist and wonderful human being.

No, I'm not disputing that it was Mike Grell.

I'm just curious -- and this always gets me in trouble -- how the eminent Mr. Grell so quickly became aware of a Comicon thread that so deeply upset him -- and where he made his ridiculous threats about me and Allen needing to arm ourselves.

Because I've never seen Grell around here.

I would hope that someone didn't provoke the man via email in order to be able to publicly post the outrage that resulted.

I wish more people would do so, and in such a respectful and heartfelt way. That's what this is supposed to be about.

It is Grell. He didn't go to Kubert school, but many of his friends did. Tom Mandrake, Jan Duursema, Timothy Truman, Rick Veitch, SR Bissette...

Grell is my older, wiser, smarter, more talented by a mile, uglier, far shorter brother. I mentioned to him my frustration, not to rile him up, but to ask if it was outside of any bounds of reality to be offended.

I am not apologizing, just as you all might shit on Kubert, or his school, it is a public forum, not a private one. Since words last forever here I thought it was not in the least out of bounds to say, in a public forum, is this really ok?

Alex, I really don't think I shit on Joe Kubert.

While I'm happy to reserve any controversial comment in future R.I.P. threads, as I've already said, you sort of ginned up a controversy. You went to Mike Grell with some minor thread from a fairly unknown message board and said, "Look, read this, isn't this disrespectful?", and then you ran back here with his indignant reply. And then we got a lecture in being careful what we say at Comicon because there are, you know, dear friends of Joe Kubert here.

Except Grell wasn't here.

You took the conversation to him.

Boo fucking hoo.

*Sigh*

Very well.

I like Alex, and I like Allen, and I think the freewheeling nature of our discussions at this place is usually of some benefit. But I'm clearly just upsetting folks now.

Time for a short break, I think.