TCJ MB: R.I.P.

Posted on March 17, 2011 by Mike Hunter

HERE COMES THE SHAFT AGAIN

Not even with a whimper, much less a bang, The Comics Journal message board was closed off Monday, March 7th of 2011. It was the final stage in a slow strangulation; the previous when — during the premiere of the much-ballyhooed original online version of the magazine — the message board was rendered inaccessible for a seeming eternity, and most of its remaining participants gave up and went elsewhere.

No wonder that David Recine wondered, in one of the last few posts to appear, “So is this board back in limbo again? … Have we gotten the shaft again?”

Yes, again. Still, what a ride it was! While the current incarnation of the message board dated from August of 2006, its liveliest years — a whole decade’s worth — were lost in the ether due to that redesign, and only exist in some of our memories, a few saved fragments. At least we are promised this last incarnation will remain archived and online. (Crosses fingers.)

Neither the genteel comics-lit salon some would have preferred, nor the eye-gouging Old West tavern brawl all too many perceived, the TCJ message board began in 1996, eventually sapping the mojo from the magazine’s famously combative letter column, the appropriately named Blood & Thunder.

B&T benefited from the limits imposed by page-space, and that old-fashioned letter-writing encouraged greater thinking about the words one was about to release upon the world. Non-celebrities were not shut out, but commentary by “names” received proportionately far more prominence. Thus, Harvey Pekar slamming Maus, Jim Woodring inveighing against James Kochalka’s “Craft is the enemy” commentary were Big News in the alt-comics world at the time.

In contrast to this gated community exclusivity, the TCJ message board offered anyone the chance to pop up with a comment, start a thread about an amazingly illustrated old book they’d discovered (and post scans), ask about a strange comic they dimly remembered, and so forth.

What did this lead to? Indeed, as in other places on the Web, a certain proportion of misbehavior. Though others familiar with many other locations on that realm have asserted that there was far worse stuff going on elsewhere, you’d think the TCJ message board was a behavioral sink, displaying the nadir of human iniquity. It would’ve helped if there had been consistent effort in enforcing discipline; alas, this was not to be the case, despite suggestions offered in the Let’s give fascism a chance! thread and elsewhere. The idea that volunteer administrators could help police the joint was likewise ignored.

THREAT OR MENACE?

“A snake pit,” said one prominent alt-comics talent; Kim Thompson on one thread ignored the well-behaved great majority, and focusing solely on the few who incurred his ire, proceeded to revile the whole bunch. In his write-up about it, Tom Spurgeon moaned,

I’m happy to see the message board gone. I feel much more responsible for the dark side of comics culture that festered there than I do any sense of community it may have fostered, more than I do whatever exposure to little-known works it may have facilitated. It was a place that had some virtues but mostly, I think, it was a place where unhappy people went to be even less happy.

Um? I feel the disconnect one does when hearing a Fox News commentator describing liberals as America-hating extremist feminists who want to impose Sharia law upon us all, abolish capitalism, force our kids into the horror of same-sex-marriage, end technological civilization and return us to the Stone Age.

Sean T. Collins wrote,

If you’ve never been there, I can hear you asking already: Was it really that bad? In a word, yes. Actually, in another word: worse. The fact that I’m saying this despite the formative role that board played in getting me thinking and writing seriously about comics, and despite the lasting friendships I formed there…should tell you something. The sheer volume of nastiness and trollery was unrivaled, and all the more disconcerting given that this wasn’t some battle board where Thor and Superman fans were duking it out for supremacy and where you’d therefore expect some smackdowns, but a place that could otherwise have been utilized for intelligent discussion of The ACME Novelty Library and what have you…

Intelligent discussion of The ACME Novelty Library whilst sipping Earl Gray, pinky up in the air, no doubt. (Though Collins’ characterization of the message board as “Mos Eisley-esque” is delightful.) And when The Comics Journal bigwigs kvetched about the nastiness and lack of civility supposedly prevailing at its message board: pot, meet kettle. Which magazine became infamous amongst the mainstream comics industry for slamming most of its creators as hacks cranking out meretricious product, was seen as focusing on negativity, inspired outrage with Gary Groth’s comments about the deceased Carol Kalish? And, look at Peter Bagge’s portrayal of Messrs. Groth and Thompson in Prisoners of Hate Island: gloomy, sour, cynical pessimists. Is Fantagraphics thus “a place where unhappy people went to be even less happy”? What does it say that Groth & co. like to shoot and blow up stuff for recreation?

THE UNSCARRED SIDE OF THE COIN

If you see that view of The Comics Journal and its creators as one-sidedly negative — as I do — it’s worth considering that the magazine’s message board was likewise unfairly maligned. And worth remembering the countless pleasures, interactions, and discoveries it contained. (Not to mention that it twice served to spread the word about Fantagraphics’ dire financial emergencies, and inspired outpourings of financial and less-tangible support.)

Don’t just take my word for it; check out the frozen-in-amber threads at the archived message board and see whether fairly civil discussions don’t infinitely outweigh the snark, trollery, and poop-slinging.

The Comics Journal message board was:

– A source for researchers, where those writing an article or dissertation, wondering What’s the longest unbroken continuity in Peanuts?, When did ‘comics shops’ as we know them start?, or asking for Any articles on the use of comics by political parties? or info on Ames lettering guides could count on help. Where erudite suggestions or answers to the most esoteric questions would pop up with amazing rapidity. In the case of a chap wondering, “I recall seeing, in an issue of the New Yorker around late 2004 or early 2005, a back page cartoon of – I think – four panels, featuring caricatures of stereotypical Republican (GOP) politicians (“I believe in a woman’s right – to bare arms!” etc.)…Can anyone name this cartoonist?”, somebody (ahem!) dug up and posted the actual page in question.

– A place to publicize efforts — calling for contributors to the Shiot Crock books, fr’ instance — and new publications, or ask for info about them: Will Fantagraphics publish the complete Krazy Kat dailies?; Boom! Studios to publish Peanuts comics; The Ink Panthers Show!…

– Where one could engage in prolonged debates with other just-as-serious folks about the definition of “comics,”aesthetics, philosophy; being free to research and post links, appropriate imagery…

– A means for turning others on to exciting discoveries, old favorites, or asking about good comics to read. I.e., what are some cool (and consistent) webcomics you follow??!?; Favorite minicomics of 2010?; WW II Photo-Comics from “LIFE”; H.M. Bateman; Mary Fleener’s Life of the Party; They Call Him…MILQUETOAST!!!; Horrors of the B&W Glut…

– A gathering of tips for creators, and place to ask for such. Artistic, technical, legal: Best Colourists and their color composition techniques; inking on Moleskins; The Perils of Celebrity Likenesses in Cartoons; publishers to stay away from; tips on printing my mini/home-made comic; questions about scanning comics…

– “…the genesis of social media for our community,” as Ian Harker put it. “That’s something that we take for granted in the age of Facebook and Twitter…To whatever extent the message board laid the groundwork for the alt-comics-osphere itself I feel that that’s a good thing.” And you could show off stuff like your original comic art collection, too; ask for others’ thoughts about Ethics: ‘Making Fun’ & ‘Wrong’ jokes, or that wacko new Neal Adams Batman mini-series…

– A place where one could post essays at will, when one felt like it, for those not interested in the commitment of regularly producing a blog: 20 French Cartoonists Who Dragged Eurocomics into Adulthood (by Kim Thompson!); a comprehensive detailing of the pro-Che distortions and propagandistic whitewashing in Spain’s Che: A Graphic Biography – a readers’ discussion…

– Where one could bump up against and talk with creators such as James Kochalka, Tony Millionaire, Danny Hellman, Eddie Campbell, Mary Fleener, and countless others. Even Dave Sim, who was said to have inspired more threads than any other creator, visited the TCJ message board in 2008 as part of his “internet tour” publicizing his new Judenhass and Glamourpuss titles. And, mirabile dictu, the questions and comments focused on his work as a gifted comics creator, rather than his widely derided personal beliefs.

Andrei Molotiu has also provided a substantial accounting of the positive aspects of theTCJ message board . Among which, mentioning that it was

…an early, and extremely important, forum for debating the very idea of abstract comics, a place for me to get feedback on my first tentative attempts at the genre, and a way to contact like-minded folks, some of which…ended up in the anthology.” He also noted how “…it was the earlier years when the board was at its best (despite the trolls and the jokers that make some people claim the board was worthless). There were more intellectually-involved, critically complex discussions there than on, say, the comix scholars listserv. At the time I suggested that everything should be archived, but the suggestion was summarily dismissed by a number of then current and former TCJ administrators. I remember one of them claiming there was absolutely nothing worth saving there. But he was wrong, wrong, wrong: the loss of the 1996-2006 archives is a serious loss to future historians of alternative comics…

TALKING COMICS ALONE IN AMERICA

On the launch of the new The Comics Journal website, its editors, Tim Hodler and Dan Nadel, were interviewed and said that

…we are taking down the message board. Its day — and that of message boards in general, frankly — seems to be done. However, most of our posts will have comments enabled (depending on the author). For the most part, the [Comics Comics] comments threads have fostered lively and valuable discussions, so we’re hoping that that will continue. On-line comments threads can provide a really good forum to discuss issues, and at CC at least we’ve been lucky enough to have artists and historians engage with their readers. If we can continue that, we think we can make a contribution to how comics are discussed in general.

Among the responses to Hodler’s Welcome to the New Comics Journal at TCJ.com was:

UlandK:
I do think this whole idea that messageboards are outmoded is pretty silly. Message-boards are blank slates. What is facebook, if not a bunch of individualized messageboards? … One important function the board served was in keeping in touch with this idea of fandom. Are those days over?…

Individualized message boards are a sad come-down from a boisterous, wide-open public space where one could regularly encounter new people with new ideas. The fragmentation of society continues; we may not be talking about comics to ourselves (unlike “Bowling Alone”), but the groups are far smaller, restricted, therefore more likely to be homogeneous. In the way many of a certain attitude reject mainstream news shows for Fox, which reflects and reinforces their ideology; some Christians turn away from the greater society, preferring “cocooning” among their own group instead. Personally, I found the extremely wide variety of “types,” preferences, and attitudes at the TCJ message board one of its greatest charms.

When one can only post comments to a blog or online article — assuming that its author chooses to allow you to do it — the power to start a discussion or thread is lost. Virtually all are relegated to providing feedback to what one of the Chosen Few has written. That feedback may be substantial in its own right, yet is a reactive rather than proactive position.

A late comment on the TCJ message board:

Dominick Grace:
Argh. This is the only comics-related board I visit regularly. I can’t imagine there’s another one with a comparably diverse discussion–or is there? Anyone have one to recommend?

Can’t think of anything remotely as diverse. Nor does it seem likely there will ever be again. The passing of The Comics Journal message board is a significant loss, whether we’re aware of it or not…

97 thoughts on “TCJ MB: R.I.P.”

Noah Berlatsky on March 17, 2011 at 6:07 am said:

At HU I actually often try to get commenters to expand ideas into posts (as you know!), so it’s not all top down necessarily. Still, it’s pretty different from a message board where everybody’s equal….
Alex Buchet on March 17, 2011 at 6:15 am said:

You are so right, Mike. They threw out the baby with the bathwater.

— You know what might have made the board livelier? A search function! How many times have I thought of something related to an old discussion, only to be unable to find the thread in question?
Alex Buchet on March 17, 2011 at 6:22 am said:

@ Noah: Yeah, you sly one, that’s how you got me involved in this racket.
Mike,hope this isn’t the last we see of you on HU.
Noah Berlatsky on March 17, 2011 at 6:30 am said:

Alex, I find a lot of the people on HU through comments. You, Richard, Caro, Stephanie, Sean, Jason, Miriam back in the day, Anja who’s starting this week…I think James. And lots of guest posters….
Caro on March 17, 2011 at 6:41 am said:

Great post, Mike! Thanks for the link to Andrei as well: I didn’t realize there were no archives of the old stuff. That really is a real shame.
Alex Buchet on March 17, 2011 at 7:18 am said:

Some of those old TCJ threads were wonderfully weird. There was one on how to do a Dr Strange movie that got stranger and stranger with time…

Contrary to perception, the board wasn’t hostile to fannish stuff like the odd “Thor vs Hulk” debate!
Noah Berlatsky on March 17, 2011 at 7:25 am said:

The hostility to the board is kind of bizarre. I mean, my first experience there was a 20+ page feeding frenzy after my shadow of no towers article in which I received borderline death threats…so obviously it could be unpleasant. But still, I had worthwhile interactions there, though I was never a regular or anything.

It needed to be better moderated…but I think Mike suggests fairly strongly that the reason it wasn’t better moderated was because it was despised, rather than that it was despised because it wasn’t better moderated.

I have trouble not seeing it as an ongoing anxiety about fan culture. Tom’s statement for example plays into fairly stereotypical notions about the lameness and poor social skills of comics fans. And god knows poor social skills were occasionally on display on the message board. But that’s the internet; you see it all over, even from industry folks and accredited commenters.
Alex Buchet on March 17, 2011 at 7:52 am said:

Tell me about it, I had Peter David troll the hell out of me along with his baying toadies.
Charles Reece on March 17, 2011 at 9:03 am said:

I date its death to the newer format, back when the moderators decided to make all discussions about comics and comics only. This was around the time that Spurgeon was saying that there was no community involved (not that he was in any way responsible for the lamer discussions that occurred afterwards). I had a chance to interact with Scott Bukatman, for example, back in the less focused days, when film, literature, politics and comics were (more freely) discussed.
Brion on March 17, 2011 at 11:36 am said:

The internet archive has a few archived pages from before 2006:

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http:/www.tcj.com/
Matthias Wivel on March 17, 2011 at 11:52 am said:

Now that we have several messboard veterans on the line here, there’s something I’ve been curious about for a long time:

Back in late 2002, or early 2003, I believe i was, there was an incredibly entertaining troll raising a ruckus on the board by dissing all the holy cows of alt. cartooning (sort of a proto-Noah ;) ). He called himself Kracklite Jensen-Meyer. My question is:

Who was he?

Any answers or theories much obliged.
Alex Buchet on March 17, 2011 at 11:53 am said:

Charles:
“I date its death to the newer format, back when the moderators decided to make all discussions about comics and comics only.”

Yeah, that followed hard on the cancellation of the ‘etc’ forum, where one was free to discuss any non-comics subject under the sun (due to hysterical flame wars about Israel and Palestine.)

I thought that decision was way lame; comics don’t exist in cultural isolation, after all.

There was also Spurgeon’s dopey war against ‘meta’, i.e. discussing the board itself. Well, Tom, if there had been more serious and engaged conversation about the board, it might still exist today, and be vital and relevant. You dropped the ball.

Another thing I never understood about Spurgeon’s stewardship of the board. He would be severe as hell with the ordinary posters, but gave literally unlimited licence to Tony Millionaire to be a monstrous creep.No obscenity or lie on Tony’s part was too much for Tom to stomach. One of the great things Dirk did when he took over the board in 2004 was to ban Millionaire and his subsequent socks.(Tony returned later, much chastened.)

I’d toyed with the idea of starting up a forum myself: currently, the tools are easy and the costs are trivial.

But a properly functioning forum demands a giant personal investment in monitoring.

I think Fantagraphics just couldn’t be bothered to make that investment any more, whether in terms of money, manpower, or energy.

At the new TCJ, the blog comments format gives easier control to the editors. Still, there are some vigorous discussions occurring there.

Let’s remember the original ‘forum’ metaphor; the Roman Forum was the market-place and meeting-place for persons of every class, creed, and nation to meet.

Social-network “walled gardens” or top-down controlled blogs can never be so fertile in creative encounters.

A word about the Hooded Utilitarian: I can’t speak for Noah, but my experience here tends to confirm that he values as great a diversity of points of view (even when they clash with his) as possible. He doesn’t puritanically restrict the subjects of the articles to comics, and I think the discusiion of comics is enriched by this.

He also is cheerfully inclined to let the comment threads veer where they may, into total irrelevance to the initial post if that brings about stimulating conversation.

Hail our Supreme Leader!
Hail the Noachian Party!
Alex Buchet on March 17, 2011 at 12:01 pm said:

Matthias, when are you coming back to Paris? I’ll buy you dinner and we can nerd out on the latest stuff!

There’s an exhibition on in Paris right now that I’ll be covering for HU:

http://www.evous.fr/Les-caricatures-de-Jossot-a-la,1147940.html

If you’re ever in Paris round that time, we could go together;
Noah Berlatsky on March 17, 2011 at 12:07 pm said:

Matthias…it couldn’t have been an early avatar of Jeffrey Meyer, could it?
R. Maheras on March 17, 2011 at 2:09 pm said:

Some folks have no strategic vision — which is understandable in today’s hectic, live-for-the-moment daily grind, I guess. But the fact is, in 50 years (if still archived in some form or another, of course), the immediacy of the TCJ board will be an invaluable snapshot of comics aficionados, circa the first decade of the 21st Century.

Will it matter? Maybe not. Then again, I’ve got a pretty good feeling it will.

No matter how forward-thinking he/she might have been, there’s not one 1960s-era comics fan who ever imagined that their modest beginnings would ever look anything like it does today, with thousands of authoritative (even scholarly) publications available (new or used) covering even the tiniest detail of every imagineable aspect of comics.

Likewise, there’s no one, not even the guys who were once behind the curtain of the TCJ message board, who has a clue how that material and/or ideas will be utilized in another 50 years.

It’s actually a bit ironic that a company priding itself on the outstanding packaging of such comics minutia, has such disdain for a forum whose free-for-all discussions gave THEM ideas and gave THEM feedback regarding new projects.

As a matter of fact, I’ll wager that for decades to come, some of the things discussed in the TCJ message board will continue to be expanded upon, referenced to, or tapped in other ways.
Noah Berlatsky on March 17, 2011 at 2:25 pm said:

You and Mike agree!
Mike Hunter on March 17, 2011 at 3:22 pm said:

——————-
Alex Buchet says:
– You know what might have made the board livelier? A search function! How many times have I thought of something related to an old discussion, only to be unable to find the thread in question?
——————-

I struggled and struggled with the grossly inadequate search system at the TCJ board, until I got this outstanding tip from Sinous, which I use regularly:

“The best way to search within a site is by using google’s ‘site’ term. In this case, I quickly found the above link using this: space site:archives.tcj.com/messboard
And that ‘site’ term can be used on just about any website.”

For instance, fun home site:archives.tcj.com/messboard . Just replace “fun home” or whatever is before “site” with whatever you want to look for.

——————-
Caro says:
Great post, Mike! Thanks for the link to Andrei as well…
——————-

Thanks! But alas, the link to Andrei’s comments is kaput.. What gives?

——————-
Alex Buchet says:
Contrary to perception, the board wasn’t hostile to fannish stuff like the odd “Thor vs Hulk” debate!
——————-

Yeah; all the praise given the first two “X-Men” movies, and the first “Iron Man” flick, Grant Morrison’s Superman, etc. are but a few examples that tastes there were nicely open to well-done superhero fare…

——————–
Noah Berlatsky says:
The hostility to the board is kind of bizarre. I mean, my first experience there was a 20+ page feeding frenzy after my shadow of no towers article in which I received borderline death threats…
——————–

No death threats from me there, but surely I gnawed upon your comments some. (Whaddaya expect, titling it “In the Shadow of No Talent“?)

The message board did, much to my surprise, awaken my “inner pit bull”; a capacity to relentlessly, endlessly ARGUE AND ARGUE AND ARGUE AND…. (you get the idea) which I had no idea I possessed, that having been crushed and stifled since infancy.

(I can pinpoint the moment it woke: Domingos on some ancient thread referred to drawings as “lines that think.” Slowly I turned…)

——————–
It needed to be better moderated…but I think Mike suggests fairly strongly that the reason it wasn’t better moderated was because it was despised, rather than that it was despised because it wasn’t better moderated.
——————–

Surely the Fanta-folks minding the board were stretched thin, and unable to give full attention; but still, the suggestion was made (by me, I think) for selected volunteers to be given the power to enforce a modicum of discipline. And typically, nothing came of it.

——————-
I have trouble not seeing it as an ongoing anxiety about fan culture. Tom’s statement for example plays into fairly stereotypical notions about the lameness and poor social skills of comics fans. And god knows poor social skills were occasionally on display on the message board. But that’s the internet; you see it all over, even from industry folks and accredited commenters.
——————-

Yes. The thing is, such poor behavior, lack of social skills, flame wars, and all-around jerkiness are hardly restricted to comics fans.

——————-
Noah Berlatsky says:
[Russ] and Mike agree!
——————-

We actually do agree on a great many things; comics-related, that is…
Matthias Wivel on March 17, 2011 at 6:13 pm said:

Come on, no one knows who Kracklite was?? (Jeremy Pinkham?; I don’t believe it was Jeffrey Meyer — has he behaved in a similar fashion, btw?)

Alex, I shall not be in Paris anytime this year, alas, but perhaps in 2012. Would be nice to meet.
Noah Berlatsky on March 17, 2011 at 6:18 pm said:

Matthias, I twittered it too on the off-chance, but no answer.

I thought maybe Jeffrey because of the name…and he and I seem to agree on a lot of the canon (he’s no fan of Chris Ware…I think he may have been one of the few people to say a kind word about that Shadow of No Towers article? I could be wrong though; that thread got accidentally torched, so it’s lost.) But I don’t think I ever saw Kracklite’s comments, so you’re guess here is way better than mine.
Noah Berlatsky on March 17, 2011 at 6:39 pm said:

Mike…the link to Andrei’s comment is still there….? Not sure why you’re not seeing it…?
Matthias Wivel on March 18, 2011 at 10:11 am said:

Noah, this guy wasn’t quite like that: he never really seemed to offer any rationale for why the Hernandez brothers were bascially T&A or why Crumb was ‘crapola’, and yet everyone took offense. He also inexplicably (as in relation to his others expressions of taste) liked Ben Katchor, and regaled the more or less credulous messageboarders with having wowed Peter Greenaway byshowing him his passport once.

Back in the early days of the comics blogoshpere, it was extremely entertaining, as these things go. Domingos, Alex, Mike — don’t you remember all this?
Jog on March 18, 2011 at 11:02 am said:

My foremost memory of the 2002-ish period (which is when I started lurking) was this thread on an official Rusty Brown lunchbox Dark Horse put out that went on for dozens and dozens of pages… maybe more than a hundred. Maybe a couple hundred! Someone named “memo” (I think!) started it, and I don’t think that person ever posted anything else. Love those one-hit wonders…
Alex Buchet on March 18, 2011 at 11:56 am said:

Huh, I was chuffed when one of my threads — “Good ‘Bad Artists”– went on to get 400+ posts.

As Mike indicates, TCJ.com was also a launching-pad for creative endeavours like Shiot Crock.

I myself got involved in a fun Narrative Corpse project:

http://narrat1vec0rpse.blogspot.com/2008/11/narrative-corpse-fufu-frauenwahl-page-1.html

…as well as the infamous BAM! The Big-Ass Mini…

…both co-ordinated from the TCJ message board!

Sigh…
Charles Reece on March 18, 2011 at 12:49 pm said:

I think the guy Matthias is asking about also went under the name ‘onemoment’ or something like that over at comicon.com. Maybe that was Meyers. It’s all hazy now. Pinkham was a different kind of crazy.
Mike Hunter on March 18, 2011 at 4:15 pm said:

——————
Matthias Wivel says:
… there was an incredibly entertaining troll raising a ruckus on the board by dissing all the holy cows of alt. cartooning (sort of a proto-Noah ;) ). He called himself Kracklite Jensen-Meyer. My question is:

Who was he?

…Domingos, Alex, Mike — don’t you remember all this?
——————–

(???) Canna remember him or that at all! But then again, I didn’t scope out every thread. It didn’t help that – a pet peeve – some had titles that said bupkis about what the thread was about. I ignored one about Fantagraphics being in financial trouble and needing HELP for weeks, ’cause the title was such a muddle.

——————–
Alex Buchet says:

Charles:
“I date its death to the newer format, back when the moderators decided to make all discussions about comics and comics only.”

Yeah, that followed hard on the cancellation of the ‘etc’ forum, where one was free to discuss any non-comics subject under the sun (due to hysterical flame wars about Israel and Palestine.)

I thought that decision was way lame; comics don’t exist in cultural isolation, after all…
———————-

Yes; and since the TCJ message board was a community (and what sitcom would boast such a varied cast of characters?), wasn’t it interesting to see what we thought about various non-comics issues?

———————–
I’d toyed with the idea of starting up a forum myself: currently, the tools are easy and the costs are trivial.

But a properly functioning forum demands a giant personal investment in monitoring.
————————

Hence, spread the work around with a chosen group of volunteers.

————————
Noah Berlatsky says:
Mike…the link to Andrei’s comment is still there….? Not sure why you’re not seeing it…?
————————-

Just had the chance to check it again – it’s been a BUSY last couple o’ days – and it’s fine! Just didn’t work when I first tried it, after the article was “published”…

————————–
Alex Buchet says:
…As Mike indicates, TCJ.com was also a launching-pad for creative endeavours like Shiot Crock.

I myself got involved in a fun Narrative Corpse project…as well as the infamous BAM! The Big-Ass Mini…

…both co-ordinated from the TCJ message board!

Sigh…
—————————

Yes; sigh…
Matthias Wivel on March 18, 2011 at 4:54 pm said:

Charles: Haha, I read a lot about Pinkham’s different socks, but never realized which was him. Can someone fill me in?
Uland on March 18, 2011 at 9:06 pm said:

Noah, I think you’re in a good position to start up a message board. Why not?
Buchet and I can moderate the “Race War” section…

I’m a little ambivalent over the death of the board. I spent a lot of time there. I typed more words there than I have anywhere else, easily.
It was a pretty sad place, but I’m okay with that, really. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing ( unless you’re trying to sell the amazing new world of indie comics to a wider audience…).
I got into alternative comics in a big way in 1995 or so. I don’t think I’m alone in associating that period of alt.comics with a kind of sardonic, angry sad-sack ethic. The board, for a brief time, seemed to embody that ethic ( if you can call it that). I kind of adapted to that and enjoyed playing that role when I started posting there. It wasn’t a difficult role for me to inhabit.

It was always a difficult place to have a real discussion, but I found that difficulty kind of fun. It was a challenge to shut down trolls and nay-sayers with good arguments.

I think people don’t keep in mind, when judging the merit of the board, that the nature of message-boards is that no one ever bothers to comment on something that they basically agree with. Why would they? You either comment on threads where the author is asking direct questions, or you post when you totally disagree with the author.

In general, I think that kind of angry-fan stuff doesn’t sit well with Tom Spurgeon, or the current editors . I think those guys are seeking to achieve various personal and professional goals within the world of angry-sad sacks that TCJ really helped create, in it’s early years. And for those guys, their careers basically are the web, or they at least wouldn’t have careers without it. So I don’t think they want to see their vision of what TCJ ought to be —along with their personal goals—sullied by angry sad sacks.
I sympathize with them, in a way. It’d be hard to take yourself seriously as a critic or a journalist when you’re sharing space with a bunch of wierdos.
I like weirdos though. I like that boards are a space where people can drop pretenses and have at it.
I also know that those guys are all just as full of bile as the rest of us. ( I do think the new TCJ is in need of some critical brutality; they need to slam some shitty comics.) And I kind of suspect that they’re interested in keeping up appearances in the art/literary world in New York ( It seems like Dan at least is pretty well connected to that world).

Anyhow, I came to suspect that I didn’t really share any real interest with anyone on the board, which is why I feel ambivalent about its demise. As the world of indie comics sprawled-out, it started to feel like different languages were being spoken, to the point where you couldn’t even argue properly. Nothing is at stake when you’re values are so divergent. I don’t have anything to offer Andrei, for example. The cometscomets guys have lost me completely. I have no interest in gender-bending manga, and the Fort Thunderers aren’t giving anyone much to talk about. What’s left? No one seems interested in the Millionaires or the Michael Kuppermans—maybe that crowd has aged out…
Maybe that’s what I need to start; a message-board dedicated to fans of the more mainline American alternative comics. A time machine…
Kit on March 18, 2011 at 10:23 pm said:

Kracklite’s name points towards K. Thor, though most likely someone trying to point towards him as a ruse. Pinkham was a decent dude who did not react well to being trolled, and who got personally trolled incredibly hard.

I don’t remember Millionaire running riot when Spurge was at the helm – wasn’t his maniacal heyday more 1999-2002, in the heat of the Rall’s Balls lawsuit?
Matthias Wivel on March 19, 2011 at 4:33 am said:

Yes, that’s how I remember it too; the whole bogus FCC censorship. That was hilarious.
Alex Buchet on March 19, 2011 at 5:10 am said:

That was about 2004, as I recall.

Yeah, Tony could be mean but he was hilarious.
Noah Berlatsky on March 19, 2011 at 5:22 am said:

Uland, man…the blog takes up enough time. No message board starting for me!

I love Michael Kupperman though. Even his twitter feed is genius.
Domingos Isabelinho on March 19, 2011 at 5:41 am said:

Pinkham was Steve Guttenberg, but I forgot all his other sock puppets. I’ve followed and participated in the messboard from 1997 to 2005, but I forgot almost all about it. Against the Portuguese mythology of “saudade” (homesickness, nostalgia or something like that) I never look back. A really limited long-term episodic memory helps me do it.
Kit on March 19, 2011 at 7:46 am said:

“That was about 2004, as I recall.”

Well, that’s six years after Spurgeon left, so blaming him is perhaps just slightly unfair.
Alex Buchet on March 19, 2011 at 7:50 am said:

No, Spurgeon was replaced by Dirk as messboard editor in 2004.
Uland on March 19, 2011 at 11:57 am said:

Could it really take up that much time though? If I were to moderate, I’d play fast and loose with my authority; anything vaguely out-of-line would be locked down.
I’ve never looked at admin functions for boards though, so I have no idea what it’d really take.…
Alex Buchet on March 19, 2011 at 12:55 pm said:

Noah:
” I mean, my first experience there was a 20+ page feeding frenzy after my shadow of no towers article in which I received borderline death threats…so obviously it could be unpleasant.”

Jeez, Noah, I was part of that particular lynch-mob.

I remember my reaction to your article at the time was that of a hidebound English reactionary outraged that some cad and bounder should be allowed into club premises. I say, sir! By Gad! Sputter…sputter…they should bring back the lash!

Hey, Noah…if I do the heavy lifting, could we start up another ‘narrative corpse’ or other collaborative comic on HU?
Noah Berlatsky on March 19, 2011 at 1:22 pm said:

Hey Uland. It would take up a certain amount of time…and it’s just not my passion. Really, the blog is a huge time sink, and I do it because I’m into it…but I’ve only got so much to go round.

I’d encourage Mike to do it though!

Alex, I remember that! I think Uland was part of it too…and Mike must have been there. Baptism by fire. It was fun, actually. I had a lovely, long email dialogue with Kim Thompson too.

Re: narrative corpse. Possibly? Email me about it.
Alex Buchet on March 19, 2011 at 1:31 pm said:

So long as we have fun…right, Noah?

Maybe that’s what finally killed the TCJ board…no longer fun.
entitled manga reader on March 19, 2011 at 2:00 pm said:

I have just one question.

I don’t mean to accuse anybody, but where were you?

If you loved the message board so much, where were you when it was all going down? Where were you when I was finding a period-appropriate Batman costume for every era? WHERE WERE YOU YOU SONS OF BITCHES
Noah Berlatsky on March 19, 2011 at 2:02 pm said:

EMR, I want to know who you are, damn it. You write some funny-ass comments.

Everybody; Tom Spurgeon responds to Mike’s essay in the tcj comments if you’re interested.
Nate Cook on March 19, 2011 at 3:49 pm said:

Oh man, I loved those threads about REALLY awful comics … like the “Horrors of the B&W Glut” and the one about the lady with the deadly boobs. Worth the price of admission.

And despite ongoing battles with the likes of Uland, Russ, and acebackwords, I had fun … disagree with those guys politically, and I despised some of their argument techniques, but I’d still rather engage with the “other side” than have a total “freeze out.” I usually figure: as long as all sides are still talking, things are basically okay.

RIP message board.
Alex Buchet on March 20, 2011 at 6:36 am said:

Jeez, Spurge has got his knickers in a twist. A very foolish post on his part.

And Mike didn’t compare Spurge to Fox News; he was making the analogy to the walled garden approach that defines communities now, when people only listen to like-minded types.
steven samuels on March 20, 2011 at 7:44 am said:

I’ll just repeat what others have said on here and the TCJ site- if it really bothers anyone then start your own.

A good example of a fan-run board is the Criterion Forum. It’s probably the closest thing to the TCJ board there is out there, but with a much higher standard of conversation, for the most part. And a much lower tolerance for trolls than TCJ had.

My only suggestion for anyone who starts one is to make sure you’re using “Facebook Connect” and any other system that allows one to log in from multiple sites. The rise of Facebook was probably one factor in the board’s decline, but that doesn’t mean the slide was inevitable.
Noah Berlatsky on March 20, 2011 at 7:54 am said:

The end of the board doesn’t actually bother me; it had been on life support for a long time.

I find the animosity with which people have jumped on its corpse a little off-putting. I think Mike (and Andrei) offer a nice corrective.
Jeet Heer on March 20, 2011 at 7:54 am said:

Obviously, if you’re talking about something as large, long-lasting, and amorphous as the TCJ message board, you’re going to get different memories. Some good things came out of the board — the Abstract Comics anthology being the best example cited so far. But it’s also the case that many people found the message board to be a deeply alienating place. The rhetoric about it being a haven for democratic free speech is belied by the simple fact that 1) it was a deeply male space, even for a comics site and 2) the sort frat-house free for all atmosphere of the place was a deep turn off for many people (these two facts are connected).

So where do we stand now: some people (like Mike) loved the board and miss it.

But lots of other people hated the board including Tom Spurgeon (who created it); Gary Groth and Kim Thompson (whose company ran the board and who really stopped posting on the board quite a while back; Tim Hodler and Dan Nadel (who as far as I can recall spent little or no time on the board).

It seems perverse to argue that people who don’t really care for the board (Gary, Kim, Tim and Dan) should maintain it for the pleasure of people who loved the board (Mike, et. al.).

The simple solution to all this — and I know it’s been brought up by others like Uland — is for the people who loved the board to start their own damn message board. I actually think Hooded Utilitarian could host such a board and it would be a logical extention of what is already happening at HU. Depending on how you look at it, HU is either a lively collection of minds who love free debate or a sad group of trolls who have endless energy to promote their hobby horses. In either case, there is the makings here of a strong message board community.
Uland on March 20, 2011 at 8:28 am said:

Check out this exchange:

I wrote:
“An unrelated suggestion to the editors: Move the webcomics from the Fanta blog here. What better venue for those strips?”

Dan Nadel:Wait, you mean web comics on a site about comics? O.M.G. We never considered it. Thanks SO much for the suggestion. What would we do without fandom?”

1. His tone is exactly like the message-board he and Tom described. 2.
He’s erased five replies I posted to that comment, in which I point that out.
Charles Reece on March 20, 2011 at 9:20 am said:

Yeah, plus the ones doing the jumping could be just as rude and nasty as anyone else.
Charles Reece on March 20, 2011 at 9:21 am said:

That last one was to Noah’s post, but Uland offers an example.
Charles Reece on March 20, 2011 at 9:23 am said:

“It seems perverse to argue that people who don’t really care for the board (Gary, Kim, Tim and Dan) should maintain it for the pleasure of people who loved the board (Mike, et. al.).”

Is anyone suggesting this? Rather, people are defending it from the dismissive attacks.
Noah Berlatsky on March 20, 2011 at 9:27 am said:

“or a sad group of trolls who have endless energy to promote their hobby horses.”

Hmm. Well, everyone has their own opinion I guess. But to me HU is already a lively community (and not an especially all-male one, for what that’s worth.) So I don’t think it’s “the makings” of anything in particular.

I appreciate the thought, but…I’ve got as much on my hands with HU as I can manage at the moment…and while I have several ideas for expansion, they don’t include message boards. I think, honestly, a lot of what made the tcj board special was its connection with tcj…and message boards in general are less than they used to be. I didn’t print MIke’s essay because I thought it was a horrible evil for Tim and Dan to drop the board. I printed it because, as I said above, I didn’t agree with the more vehement denuciations, and because I thought Mike would write a thoughtful and interesting piece.
Charles Reece on March 20, 2011 at 9:28 am said:

And Jeet, am I misremembering, or was it with you that I got into a long, and quite enjoyable, discussion over evolutionary psychology on the board? Nothing practical came of it, but there was a lot of stuff that spun out of comics discussion.
entitled manga reader on March 20, 2011 at 10:20 am said:

I have posted seven hundred replies since 2:00 PM yesterday, all of which Noah has deleted. Perhaps this will be the one that makes it through the gate. Bruce did not back down when he faced Geronimo*, so I remained at my post with only a carton of Red Bull and some plastic bags for my waste.

And Uland, when I see your name relentlessly topping the comments tab at the new “TCJ” every day, I know the fire has not died out. Thank you so much, Uland. I think I’ll renew my letter campaign to Julie Taymor today.

*fan fiction; hello
Jeet Heer on March 20, 2011 at 12:21 pm said:

@Noah. I didn’t say HU was an “all-male community”; I said the old TCJ MB was overwhelming male to a degree that’s striking even in comics.

@Charles Reese. I don’t think I ever engaged in the topic of evolutionary psychology at TCJ MB. In general, I go to these sites to talk about and learn about comics (my political and policy activities are pretty seperate from my comics since they involve writing articles for newspapers like The National Post, the Globe and Mail, the Boston Globe and others). So I don’t generally take part in political/social/scientific debates on the comics boards. In fact I think that’s one of the big turn offs of the old TCJ MB, that people there were more interested in talking about politics (which you can talk about anywhere) than talking about comics (which is what a specialized comics site should be focused on). Of coure, comics and politics overlap to some degree but still it was much easier getting a pure political discussion going there than a comics discussion. Aesthetics is hard to talk about, I know.
Caro on March 20, 2011 at 12:58 pm said:

Never having once logged onto the TCJ message board or even read a single exchange there, I have no knowledge of its tone or opinion about its demise. I do agree with Andrei that it’s sad it’s not archived. The loss of “born digital” material is an increasingly troubling problem for historians.

Perish the thought, though, of us Utilitarians having to moderate its replacement! Yikesa Yowza!

I would, however, consider hosting (at my own site, not HU) a forum exclusively on comics and illustration from “the long 1950s” (1946-1964) if anybody would be interested in such a thing.
Robert Stanley Martin on March 20, 2011 at 1:11 pm said:

My recollections of the MB are largely good, but that’s mainly because I treated it as a resource. I really didn’t frequent it all that often. It was a good place to go to post links to my reviews and foster discussion of them. I had to moderate the comments on my own site because of the political commentary I did when I started it, so it was much easier to get discussions going on the MB. As I recall, there was only one outbreak of trolling on a thread I started or seriously participated in, and Kim Thompson and Fiore were the culprits there.

You could also do things like post queries of the MB participants. That was how I first got in touch with Mike, by the way. I needed a hard-to-find Munoz & Sampayo story in English for a series of reviews I did of their work, and he was very gracious in responding to my request. I don’t know where I’d go if I needed to do something like that again.

It was also where me and Noah first got in touch, but YMMV on how much of a good thing that was.
Noah Berlatsky on March 20, 2011 at 1:46 pm said:

Jeet, I didn’t say you said that! I was just noting it was a difference.
Jeet Heer on March 20, 2011 at 2:29 pm said:

@Caro. Just for the record, everyhing on the message board from 2006 to the present is archived and will be for as long as TCJ lasts. The earlier stuff was lost long ago due to various changes on the site. It is a shame that it wasn’t preserved/archived.
steven samuels on March 20, 2011 at 3:24 pm said:

Yeah, I would’ve love to have read Domingos’ old posts from that. Too damn bad.
Charles Reece on March 20, 2011 at 3:43 pm said:

“Aesthetics is hard to talk about, I know.”

No more difficult than talking about anything else.
Charles Reece on March 20, 2011 at 3:49 pm said:

“I said the old TCJ MB was overwhelming male to a degree that’s striking even in comics.”

So’s the new and improved tcj.com.
Jeet Heer on March 20, 2011 at 4:53 pm said:

@Charles Reece. “No more difficult than talking about anything else.” I disagree. In my experience lots of people have a much easier time talking about politics than aesthetics. Of course there are things that are even harder to talk about than aesthetics (say, certain scientific matters). That’s why so many discussions of art tend to quickly become discussions about other things.
Noah Berlatsky on March 20, 2011 at 4:58 pm said:

People love talking about aesthetics. I think they don’t always talk about it exactly the way you want, though, Jeet. And I think you have a fairly limited definition of aesthetics often…or at least that’s my sense. So maybe what you’re saying is that people have trouble talking about aesthetics in precisely the way you want them to. Which I think is probably right.
Noah Berlatsky on March 20, 2011 at 6:22 pm said:

Robert, I’d forgotten that’s where I first met you!

The board was also I think where I had my first conversation with Suat (I recommended he read Empowered…which I bet he hated if he actually read it.) And it’s also where I met Uland, who is the person who got me involved in blogging over at Eaten By Ducks. As Robert says, though, some may not see any of that as a good thing….
Charles Reece on March 20, 2011 at 9:55 pm said:

Jeet, as Noah suggests it might be your own narrow confines. It seems to me that you probably don’t allow for as much theory in aesthetics (which to me is philosophy) as you likely do in politics (which, again, to me, is philosophy). But that’s fine. We’re just stating personal preferences here, and I’m only guessing based on some of your posts that I’ve read. I mean, evolutionary psychology is part of an argument over aesthetics: is taste in art biological, or culturally driven, objective, subjective? Etc.. Then it’s pretty easy to see why that would also be relevant to comics. But maybe that’s just me.
Mike Hunter on March 21, 2011 at 5:09 am said:

For reasons I’d mentioned at http://www.tcj.com/live-from-little-torch-key/ (or, I will be mentioning, once I post this and if I can sign up over there), I’m posting my response to Tom Spurgeon’s criticisms of TCJ MB: R.I.P. (and follow-up remarks by others) here:

————————
Tom Spurgeon:
That’s a really bad article.
————————–

But, what about all the enumerations of the positive aspects of the message board? Some of which you note actually existed? Ah, but this is the same “a proportionately few negatives outweigh all the good” thinking by which the entire message board was judged worthy of closing down.

————————–
…the idea that the message board took away from Blood & Thunder isn’t accurate — as the guy who processed them before and after, B&T submissions stayed about the same from a couple years before the piece to a few years after.
————————–

It was widely conceded, including in statements by Fantagraphics and Comics Journal folks, that indeed it did. And what do you mean by “the piece,” please?

————————–
The assertion that there was a democracy to message board postings that there wasn’t to Blood & Thunder is one of those things that makes logical sense if you squint your eyes but also has no basis in reality — we published everything we got…
—————————

Everything? I recall follow-up letters where writers such as Dave Sim heatedly griped about how their letters were edited for space reasons.

—————————
That Jim [Kochalka] felt more comfortable submitting a letter to B&T than hanging out on the TCJ boards in the first place was part of the problem with the latter.
—————————

Well gee, I was around the TCJ message board when James Kochalka hung around there all the time. In fact, my earliest TCJ message board memory is when Scott McCloud was there explaining/defending his arguments in Understanding Comics, and James K. was hassling him with wise-ass questions like, “Are my shoes comics?” (Cuz they’re “juxtaposed,” you see…)

—————————
The idea that the Journal people were somehow hypocrites because they didn’t like negativity on the boards but loved it in the magazine is self-flattering to people that hung out on the board, but again, it doesn’t match reality. I don’t think anyone’s ever argued against negativity, they’re arguing against a particularly ugly, insubstantial and pointless negativity as it existed on the board.
—————————

Was the ONLY kind of negativity on the board “ugly, insubstantial and pointless”? Sure, since due to the inadequate policing of the board, that crap got through. But, much was aimed at well-deserving targets; frequently the same ones TCJ fired broadsides against.

—————————
…the idea that the occasional interruptions in service is what doomed the board as opposed to the general trend of people really not using message boards any longer and the general poisonous reputation that hung around that board, that’s just really unconvincing. The message board got to do whatever it wanted for the most part for years and years and years and years; if a few weeks of interruption could kill it, good riddance.
————————–

Look at what happens to TV shows when they get pre-empted for weeks, switched around in their schedule so regular viewers can’t find them in the accustomed place: their audience drops by millions of viewers. Such was the case with the last incarnation of the message board. Though it had dwindled over the years, a HUGE fall in participation resulted from that last, lengthy interruption.

————————–
I’m also dismayed by the lack of generosity in letting Dan and Tim have the magazine they want.
————————–

I don’t know them from Adam; my best wishes to ’em, though…

————————–
A message board isn’t a blank slate, it’s a specific tool, and if the new editors desire to use other tools, that their prerogative…
—————————

That attitude says a great deal, unfortunately. So “a message board is a tool [for] editors”? Might as well say that Washington, D.C.’s National Mall – whose “wide, open expanse at the heart of the capital makes it an attractive site for protests and rallies of all types,” as Wikipedia puts it – “is a tool for the government.”

I saw the TCJ message board as a basically public space that the magazine generously provided and maintained for the benefit of comics fans. From which it got some use: publicity for Fanta products (I was hardly the only one not getting comics-news from the TCJ or Fanta sites), a “loss-leader” bringing people in to where they could click on those sites…

—————————-
Comparing me to a Fox News Anchor who lies to make a political point is the kind of asinine argumentation no one will miss seeing more regularly now that the board is gone.
—————————-

Oh, I thought you were being perfectly sincere and telling the truth as you saw it. My actual – and, I thought obvious; the sentence was hardly Henry Jamesian in its complexity – point was that your perception of the message board was as grotesquely negative and off-kilter as the image of liberals held by the Right. (Alas, I’ve gotten used to running across people who write for a living, yet are unable to “get” a perfectly lucid statement.)

—————————–
..It seems an entirely fitting memorial to its passing that its few remaining adherents refuse to acknowledge that a lot of people really did find it a uniquely horrible place.
——————————

(Rhetorically manipulative distortion – accusing the “other side” of saying something they didn’t say – or misperception? You choose!) I don’t believe ANY defenders of the board have “refuse[d] to acknowledge” that others thought it was utterly awful.

Rather, what we say is that such a perception was grossly inaccurate and unbalanced; that the positives far outweighed the negatives.
Mike Hunter on March 21, 2011 at 5:21 am said:

Some more remarks from http://www.tcj.com/live-from-little-torch-key/ :

————————
Noah Berlatsky:
…The suggestion that if you kill an institution everything good about it will catch on somewhere else is simply the worst kind of invisible hand nonsense.
————————

Indeed; in a “let’s keep Fantagraphics alive” discussion on the TCJ message board, when the company was going through one of its near-death experiences (and the message board was serving to spread the news and rally support), and some dolt[s] blithely argued that all the other alt-comics publishers would just take up the slack, people from those other publishers – Top Shelf, D&Q, etc., as I recall – said, no, they couldn’t.

————————
Kim Thompson:
It’s true that many fine, interesting, civil discussions occurred on the message board. But you know what they say: Take a barrel of wine and add a cup of sewage, and what you have is sewage.
————————

Problem with that analogy is that wine and sewage are liquids, therefore of course the nasty stuff mingles with and contaminates the rest. If on a comics store rack, a “Love and Rockets” ish gets placed beside one of “Youngblood,” does Liefeld’s crapola therefore contaminate what the Hernandezes did? Personally, I had no trouble appreciating one poster’s thoughtful comments and dismissing the snarky remark which might follow.

————————
UlandK:
Kim— I don’t think it’s about wanting a free ride. I think it’s about wanting to participate more directly in the world of comics…
————————

Which the TCJ message board, flaws and all, made possible. In a way that’s significantly different from being a passive “consumer” of comics news at assorted locales.

————————
…maybe the magazine benefitted in ways it didn’t fully realize ( again; those days are over. I’m okay with it.). When people were deep in discussion over an article I hadn’t read, I’d often want to pick up the issue just to know what they were talking about…
————————

I’d find myself buying particular comics to participate in the message board discussion about ’em; buying old nicely illustrated/cartoon books to “scan and share” rather than than just look at them. (I’ve got stacks that never had the chance to get to…)

————————
Kim Thompson:
The problem — Tom Spurgeon can weigh in on this — is that there was and is no hard line separating acceptable from unacceptable talk and everything seemed to devolve into a squabble as to what was and wasn’t acceptable and whose rights of free expression were being trampled…
————————

Yes to the first; but every thread did not “devolve into a squabble.” (And even if it would have, could not one get what value one could from it before things deteriorated? Mentally separate the wheat from the chaff?)

————————
Dan Nadel:
…Spurgeon is… not whining, he was fairly judiciously disagreeing with an article about something HE created, so, I dunno, seems like he might know whereof he speaks.
————————–

For all his admirable work and credentials, a parent reacting to criticism of their child, or an author defending his book, might “know whereof they speak”; yet they are also the people least able to take a clear-eyed look at their creation. Tom’s message board started out as such a lovely, well-behaved child! And then became a pierced and tattooed, argumentative, foul-mouthed teenager! Best to kill it, then…

———————–
Henry:
Tcj was right in getting rid of the messageboard. Good riddance. Barely anything of worth had been discussed there in years.
———————–

Don’t actually look at the archived board, or the listing of scattered threads in my article. Musn’t let your beliefs be confused by reality.

———————–
Alt Comics fandom is small enough that another board could easily takes it’s place.
———————–

Just like in was nonsensically argued that other alt-comics publishers could easily take up the slack if Fantagraphics was to go under…

———————–
Alixopulos:
…the board…was actually more akin to a wild looting of the TCJ brand…a place where fans could suit up in TCJ’s team uniform, play grabass in the outfield, hump the catchers mitt, or just give endlessly long, needlessly verbose speeches from the pitchers mound.

All of it benefited from its proximity to TCJ, either ironically (in the case of all the screeching vulgarianism) or just by swimming in the bank of institutional credit that TCJ built up over the years…
———————–

Mm? Well, could not The Comics Journal have distanced itself, in the way those movie DVDs do, by featuring a disclaimer to the effect that the magazine is not responsible for whatever behavior or comments take place on the message board?

And again, we get the misperception of the TCJ message board as an “Animal House,” where chaos and misbehavior ruled.

————————
I like to think that all the good things we got out to the board can be had elsewhere, in the blogs and stuff, but I also suspect that the board nurtured a kind of persona that resents the sort of basic decency you have to maintain to really access those good things.
———————–

And what about the great majority there, which WAS polite and decent? Was the board not nurturing them and their good behavior? Were they going against its flow?
Jeet Heer on March 21, 2011 at 7:04 am said:

@Mike Hunter.
Three things:
1) a small and minor correction: when Kim Thompson was referring to “Jim” in his post, the reference was clearly to Jim Woodring not James Kochalka.
2) The parallels you draw between the TCJ MB shutting down and Fantagraphics shutting down don’t work. To start up another message board, you don’t need any money at all (if you use yahoo groups or some other such service) and really only a bit of time from the people who love the message board. To start up another publishing concern like Fantagraphics — which publishes something like a hundred books a year, distributed both through the direct market and book stores — you’d need several million dollars worth of capital. That’s a huge difference.
3) I understand you loved the message board, which is why I’d encourage you and other like-minded souls to start up a new one. What is perverse is the idea that people who don’t like the message board (or at the very least have little use for it) should spend their energy to maintain it, rather than trying to create the website that they have in mind.
Jeet Heer on March 21, 2011 at 7:14 am said:

@Charles Reece. I agree that an evolutionary psychology approach to comics can potentially be very rewarding. I’m very fond of Brian Boyd’s pioneering work in this direction: http://aliceandrews.tumblr.com/post/432298948/on-the-origins-of-comics-new-york-double-take

My main point, which I don’t know how to express other than how I already have, is that the comments on the TCJ MB got very excited when they could talk about matters like politics but were less passionate when talking about comics; also, when comics did get talked about, the focus was rarely on formal matters or qualities inherent in them as works of art. Not to say that every discussion of comics (or any other art form) has to be strictly aesthetist, but the near total absence of real engagement with aesthetics was always depressing
Noah Berlatsky on March 21, 2011 at 7:15 am said:

But Jeet, it’s not perverse to argue for its value in order to try to convince the people who aren’t interested in it that it’s worthwhile. Probably futile sure, but an entirely reasonable approach.

Neither is it perverse to explain why, in Mike’s opinion, Fanta and tcj has made a mistake. It’s industry commentary. Happens all the time.

And finally, it’s not perverse to respond to people who claim that the board has no value by pointing out the ways that, in Mike’s opinion, it is worthwhile.

Mike doesn’t say that Tim and Dan had no right to close the board. He doesn’t say they’re evil for closing it. He just says they’ve made a mistake and provides numerous reasons. Unless you think that dissent is itself perverse, and that the new tcj should be above criticism, it’s really unclear to me what possible methodological objections you could have to his essay.
Noah Berlatsky on March 21, 2011 at 7:24 am said:

“the focus was rarely on formal matters or qualities inherent in them as works of art. ”

Yes, that makes your point clearer, and more or less confirms my earlier sense of what you were saying.

I do agree there was a lot of discussion of politics. I don’t know that I find that depressing, exactly; politics are probably overall of more practical importance than comics, so it makes sense that people would get more heated in discussing them. Still, off-topic conversations are something that a moderator could have reduced fairly easily if there had been the will.
Alex Buchet on March 21, 2011 at 7:38 am said:

Politics were mostly shunted into a “quarantine” thread.

And, you know, a lot of cartooning is political!
Mike Hunter on March 21, 2011 at 7:45 am said:

————————-
Jeet Heer says:
1) a small and minor correction: when Kim Thompson was referring to “Jim” in his post, the reference was clearly to Jim Woodring not James Kochalka.
————————-

Ah, thanks! I stand corrected. (Not so “clearly” for some, alas…)

————————-
2) The parallels you draw between the TCJ MB shutting down and Fantagraphics shutting down don’t work. To start up another message board, you don’t need any money at all (if you use yahoo groups or some other such service) and really only a bit of time from the people who love the message board. To start up another publishing concern like Fantagraphics — which publishes something like a hundred books a year, distributed both through the direct market and book stores — you’d need several million dollars worth of capital. That’s a huge difference.
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Fair enough. Though it’s not simply the availability of funding which makes it unlikely that something as lively and wide-ranging as the TCJ message board will ever exist again; there are many other factors involved: the Zeitgeist, when “art comics” was a far fresher, more exciting concept; the relatively far smaller portion of the Web devoted to such discussions, which made the message board a more important place to go to; the different economic situation, which makes even relatively minor extra expenditures or “free time” that much more scarce…

(In some ways, that TCJ’s “comics as art” argument went from rebellious to taken for granted, that talk – and news – of comics on the Web proliferated so, likewise drained much of the power and influence that The Comics Journal once had.)

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3) I understand you loved the message board, which is why I’d encourage you and other like-minded souls to start up a new one. What is perverse is the idea that people who don’t like the message board (or at the very least have little use for it) should spend their energy to maintain it, rather than trying to create the website that they have in mind.
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But (I just reread my article and subsequent comments to make sure) I never argued that they should keep the message board going. My article was a defense of the message board against a distortedly overly-negative image, a fond remembering of its good points, regret for what has been lost.

[I see that while I was writing this, Noah has made a similar argument…]

—————————–
Jeet Heer says:
…the comments on the TCJ MB got very excited when they could talk about matters like politics but were less passionate when talking about comics…
—————————–

Regrettably, that might have been a sign of the changing times. “Back in my time, kids, people got REALLY EXCITED when a new Love and Rockets or Acme Novelty Library came out! Now, it’s like, ‘Eh, so what?’ “
Noah Berlatsky on March 21, 2011 at 7:49 am said:

Oh…to Jeet’s point about it being easy for someone else to start up the message board. It’s true capital isn’t necessary..but there’s cultural capital. tcj had prestige and a built-in community. The message board was built out of that. Starting one somewhere else wouldn’t be the same.

I think it’s also true that message boards aren’t really what they once were for lots of reasons, and the best years of the board probably aren’t reproducible now in any case. But you can think getting rid of the board perhaps made sense without thinking that the board was a blight and that its departure should be greeted with hosannahs.
Jeet Heer on March 21, 2011 at 7:53 am said:

I don’t think politics were confined to the quarantine thread. And of course, you’re right that a lot of cartooning is political but I have to say a lot of the discussions tended to be lopsidedly political to the point where aesthetics (even defined in the most broad terms possible) were shunted aside. I think that’s a common tendency in discussions about art: it’s easy enough (and true!) to say that Ezra Pound’s fascism was evil, but it’s harder to give an account of what Pound was trying to achieve by presenting the Cantos as a fractured, jumpy set of poems rather than a continuous narrative.

Mike is course fully justified in wanting to try and argue that people have been unfair to TCJ MB and it had good points that are being ignored. But it also had many bad points that are being ignored in this discussion. And as I said before, in someways it’s impossible to sum up something like TCJ MB because it was too large and amorphous. Also, different people used the board differently (as Robert Stanley Martin notes above, it could be useful for getting quick answers to questions). Finally, I think there’s a question of when people were on the board. In my experience, the people who really hate TCJ MB were the ones who read it in the really dark period of 1999-2002. The board became quieter and tamer later, which accounts for some of the nostalgia of those who were on it from, say, 2006-2011.
Noah Berlatsky on March 21, 2011 at 8:09 am said:

I think it’s much easier to talk about what Pound was trying to do than it is to relate what he was trying to do to his poisonous political philosophy. Or at least, people are often more comfortable separating the two out.

I don’t think the bad points are being ignored. You’ve mentioned many of them! I think as Heidi said it could often feel like a locker room, which was not ideal at all. I recall some discussions of manga along the lines of, “what is this girly shit.”. But (as Heidi has also pointed out) those are endemic problems in the comic culture of which tcj is a part (and this blog is too, for that matter.) I don’t necessarily see that getting rid of the board actually addressed those problems, or was intended to.

I think the quarantine thread didn’t work as well as it might have. There were often threads that were essentially, hey, here’s a political cartoon, let’s discuss politics. Which did get kind of tedious.
Melinda Beasi on March 21, 2011 at 8:15 am said:

This comment is directed primarily to Caro: As another who never logged into or visited the TCJ message board when it existed (or actually any other comics-related message board) everything I know about it comes from Shaenon Garrity’s Half-Assed Guide to Comic Book Message Boards, which I suspect is more entertaining than most of the boards it discusses.
Noah Berlatsky on March 21, 2011 at 8:32 am said:

I don’t think it’s really fair to expect the board to be as entertaining as Shaenon…. I mean, by those standards, most of the comics internet would have to be shuttered.
Jeet Heer on March 21, 2011 at 8:37 am said:

Shaenon’s post was not just funny, it was accurate as well.

@Noah. “but there’s cultural capital. tcj had prestige and a built-in community.”

I think the operative word here is “had.” Whatever cultural capital and prestige TCJ may have once “had” was depleted by the message board itself, as well as by other factors (publishing you, the haphazard way the website was run).
Noah Berlatsky on March 21, 2011 at 8:56 am said:

Oh, that’s such nonsense Jeet. If tcj has no cultural capital, why on earth did all the news websites beshit themselves with glee at the new redesign? Why did Tim and Dan agree to dump their successful project and provide Gary with the vision he’s obviously misplaced? TCj is still highly respected and loved…probably moreso than back in the day, when its mission wasn’t yet conventional wisdom and Gary actually made people even more nervous and irritable than I make you.

You don’t even believe it’s lost its cultural capital yourself. Your actions speak louder than your words; if you thought the brand was ruined in some sort of thoroughgoing way, you wouldn’t write for them. Your comments are just an excuse to get a dig in. In true tcj message board fashion, I might add.
Melinda Beasi on March 21, 2011 at 9:16 am said:

I don’t think it’s really fair to expect the board to be as entertaining as Shaenon…. I mean, by those standards, most of the comics internet would have to be shuttered.

@Noah – Point taken. (at which point I would include a smiley if only it would be rendered as text!)
Jeet Heer on March 21, 2011 at 10:24 am said:

@Noah. “If tcj has no cultural capital, why on earth did all the news websites beshit themselves with glee at the new redesign?” Simple: TCJ had been an important magazine but had fallen on hard times, so the fact it was being redesigned and revitalized is an interesting story.

“Why did Tim and Dan agree to dump their successful project and provide Gary with the vision he’s obviously misplaced? … if you thought the brand was ruined in some sort of thoroughgoing way, you wouldn’t write for them.” I can’t speak for Dan and Tim. But I can speak for myself and it’s the same answer as above: TCJ has been in the past hugely important but it lost its luster so I was excited by the idea that Dan and Tim would revitalize it as an online magazine (and also I think Gary is now much more hands on in the print magazine, so I’m happy to write for it). Even in its worst days, TCJ had some merit so I was always happy to write for it, but it’s especially nice to write for it now when its in the hands of editors who have a strong vision (Dan and Tim for the online magazine, Gary for the print version).

“Your comments are just an excuse to get a dig in. In true tcj message board fashion, I might add.” As I said before, form and content go hand in hand, so when writing about the message board at HU it makes sense to use rhetoric of the message board and HU. When in Rome, as the saying goes.
Noah Berlatsky on March 21, 2011 at 10:34 am said:

“TCJ has been in the past hugely important ”

That’s cultural capital, son. The thing you’re saying it doesn’t have.

And you’re not really using HU rhetoric, I don’t think. The sneaky sneering thing; that’s kind of you. Folks over here tend to be a bit more direct. But you’ll probably pick it up if you stick around. I think you are actually more straightforward here than in many of your online interactions, so perhaps we’re already having a bracing effect!
Jeet Heer on March 21, 2011 at 11:15 am said:

“That’s cultural capital, son. The thing you’re saying it doesn’t have.”

But cultural capital (like real capital) is not a fixed and stable thing; it can go up and down in value. I think the message board and also the ramshackle nature of the website before the recent redesign hurt the brand value of TCJ. That’s the area of disagreement. I’m not sure why you think this is a sneaky thing to say: it seems like a fairly blunt statement that you can either agree or disagree with.
Tom Spurgeon on March 21, 2011 at 11:21 am said:

Hi. Someone asked me to clear up the confusion over when I administered the message board. I administered it from 1996 to early 1999 (encompassing two versions of the board); March 1999 is when I left the Journal. I administered it again briefly for a few weeks in 2004 while Dirk found his sealegs as print editor. So both are true.

My second go-round was about as brief and serious as David Lee Roth’s second tenure with Van Halen. My memory is that the mission given to me was to jump on with admin powers and delete as many crazy posts as I could, to kind of keep the yard as clean as possible until Dirk felt comfortable grabbing a shovel and a baggie as part of his full-time duties.

Tony wasn’t around during the first go-round. I guess I could have favored Tony during the second time period, but while I like Tony a ton I always found his TCJ.com postings to be as annoying as shit, so I hope not. Sorry if I did, though.

My aversion to meta was basically to keep the board focused on comics, and I think one of the reasons the board had the long life it did is because it didn’t over-emphasize the community aspects and thus fostered more posts about comics than movies and didn’t seem like too closed a circle to newbies. I know others disagree with me that this was a positive thing or that it was something that drove some of the board’s more positive aspects.
Robert Stanley Martin on March 21, 2011 at 11:29 am said:

Jeet–

In what way is Gary “now much more hands on in the print magazine”? Specifically, how do you see the way he’s handled TCJ 301 as different than, say, how Michael Dean would have? I’m asking as a fellow contributor. Thanks.
Alex Buchet on March 21, 2011 at 11:50 am said:

Hello, Tom Spurgeon.

I know you did your best during the second go-round (2004), but you honestly did let Tony absolutely run riot.

I connected to the Internet for the first time in November 2003, and signed up to the TCJ message board right away.

Turned out, under Tom Spurgeon, that was like a lamb trotting into a slaughterhouse.

I posted some innocent, innocuous posts– but Tony took that as an excuse to wreak his garbage: he said I was a sock of J;Roberson, a cartoonist he’d been persecuting online for years, mocking his painful divorce.

Soon many of Tom’s goon friends, like Cheese, chimed in, flaming the Hell out of me with lies and insults.

I was bewildered. What had I done?

Then, in January 2004, Tom, you banned me from the board, because of Tony’s lies. You could easily have verified them for lies: for example, my IP address would have clearly shown you that I lived (and still do live) in Paris, not Chicago where Roberson lives.

But you couldn’t be bothered with the truth, could you?

That’s when , as ‘Star Wars’ terminology puts it, I went over to the Dark Side. Tony and Tom taught me that the only way to survive online was to be as dishonest and aggressive an asshole as possible.

Way to go, Tom.

(What kills me is that Tom is a self-professed Christian. that was your version of Christianity, Tom?)
Jeet Heer on March 21, 2011 at 11:55 am said:

Well, I should include the proviso that Gary was never completely hands off at the journal and that I haven’t seen issue #301. But based on what’s been announced for 301, it looks like it’ll be closer to Gary’s vision of what’s important in comics: i.e. Crumb, Sacco, Woodring. Even the long essay on Cerebus is something that’s Grothian, because Gary’s had a long-running friendly argument with Dave Sim going back decades. So, just from what’s announced, it seems like a more Grothian magazine.
Noah Berlatsky on March 21, 2011 at 11:58 am said:

Jeet, Well, I said you were more straightforward here!

I don’t know that we actually disagree that much. TCJ has a lot of cultural capital. I don’t think the message board made much difference one way or the other; it’s been around for years, after all. The website launch was a debacle, no doubt…but I don’t think so much of one that tcj’s cachet disappeared or anything.

Most people are eager to see tcj succeed, including me. It has a lot of goodwill. When it hits public relations bumps, people are eager to help. When it has a redesign, it’s a big story. That’s cultural capital. TCJ’s can go up and down, of course, but your suggestion that the message board and other factors killed all of its goodwill is wrong, I think.

I even agree, as I’ve said, that HU was too central to the content. Our content should have been clearly distinguished from the rest of the site, as on a site like CBR.
Noah Berlatsky on March 21, 2011 at 12:04 pm said:

Alex…please man. This stuff is what, 7 years on now? Tom just apologized. What does starting a flamewar now get you? Just…the board feuds. Let them die, please.

Tom, thanks for stopping by and clarifying.
Robert Stanley Martin on March 21, 2011 at 12:04 pm said:

Jeet–

Thanks. I agree that it’s more thematically in tune with Gary’s interests.
Tom Spurgeon on March 21, 2011 at 12:13 pm said:

Alex, I’m sorry you had a bad experience with the board. I honestly don’t have any memory of what you’re talking about. Let’s be clear on one thing: I was never in charge of the board after March 1999 and in fact, I submitted a report to Gary Groth in early 2004 that it be deleted. If I were ever in charge, there would have been no board 10 minutes later. Milo George and Mike would have been in charge in late 2003 and into 2004, and then Dirk and Mike after him.

Like I said, I did do some volunteer admin work in 2004, but even then my memory is that this was later in the year. I was basically deleting a lot of excess noise, not setting policy or making decisions — I don’t know how to find anyone’s IP address — but I’ll admit the whole affair is such a minor memory for me I could be missing out on entire aspects of it.

Also, the thought that I would take Cheese Hasselberger’s word for anything is pretty odd — Cheese and I have almost never agreed on anything, especially not on-line, where 99 percent of my interaction with him has taken place. Also, like I said, my memory is that Tony was asinine on the TCJ boards. I don’t remember you. I do remember John Roberson, but I don’t remember Tony and John going at it. John’s never brought up my protecting Tony to me.

I don’t really have a version of Christianity, but I have the capacity to be a total fuck-up and lousy person just like anyone. More than most people, really. I’m deeply sorry that whatever trauma you experienced on the boards and whatever my role was in it would be do deep and hurtful that it would have theological ramifications. More than that, I’m just sorry you had what sounds like a horribly experience and that I may have had a role in it. If I can make it up to you somehow, please let me know.
Alex Buchet on March 21, 2011 at 12:34 pm said:

The only way you can, Tom, is by continuing your terrific work at The Comics Reporter.

Tom, Noah, I’m sorry but these things fester…I’m glad it’s out in the open. And I apologise, Tom, I didn’t realise how little control you had. These are the worst jobs in the world…when you have responsibility without control.

I must add that on a few occasions I’ve sent Tom (announcement) emails at CR and he’s acted on them. Plus I gave him some comedy gold with Motley Fool’s slavish devotion to Marvel.

Tom, I think you’ve probably settled on the optimum reader feedback solution at CR.

No forum, comments disabled– but an email address. In other words, a re-creation of the traditional magazine letter column, with the editorial filters that implies.

Your letters feature is notably more civil than the standard Internet solutions, without being bland.

OK, Tom, hope we’re friends.
Tom Spurgeon on March 21, 2011 at 12:41 pm said:

I’m as happy to hear you have no ill wishes as I was dismayed to hear that you had cause for ill wishes. Thank you for your generosity.

I’m not certain there’s any one right solution for any of this, but running letters has worked for me. There are pluses and minuses for sure.
Noah Berlatsky on March 21, 2011 at 12:53 pm said:

Andrew Sullivan runs emails; he’s had polls asking whether people want a comments section and they overwhelmingly say “no.”

I get a huge number of contributors from the comments section (including most recently Anja) and I think the discussions are probably one of the best features of the site (the Wire discussion from yesterday, for example, was really fun.) Having said that…policing comments can be miserable.
Caro on March 23, 2011 at 3:50 pm said:

Melinda — sorry for the lag here — Shaenon’s post is hysterical. Thanks for sharing it! (Also for backing me up on tcj.com. GRIN.)
Andrei on March 25, 2011 at 2:49 pm said:

Another old TCJ thread:

http://abstractcomics.blogspot.com/2011/03/drawing-thread-from-tcj-message-board.html
Ed Gauthier on September 14, 2011 at 1:30 am said:

Please guys, bring back the board… Life for me has been a living hell without it… I beg you guys, bring it back

Comments are closed.

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TCJ MB: R.I.P.

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