rassum frassum can’t edit comments on blogger…

Hmm, in the great circle of internerd fights though, this is pretty lowkey imo.

Larry is protective of his company and products, as well he should fucking be - sometimes with snark. And Guy is a reviewer and all that, a professional opinion giver, and he calls em like he see’s em - sometimes with snark. Obviously (or seemingly) the two rub each other wrong to some extent, but there’s nothing horrible about that. Overall this has been a pretty decent and civil event, if not a bit boring by the “Fanyboy Rampage” scale of things, yeah?

The difference more probably being that since it’s Larry’s own money fronting the operation, Larry’s own hard work and toil, Larry’s sticking his own head above the parapet to take the shots so his creators don’t have to, and all, that he probably has a more personal view than employees of DC and Marvel and Dark Horse would about correcting misapprehensions.

Making Comics Better seems to require Sisyphusian tenacity to outside observers and employees of other companies, one imagines.

IMO, I praise and criticize Larry’s efforts as much as I do any other publisher on my radar, the difference perhaps being that Larry seems to take all criticism personally, and often feels the need to respond as if he were personally attacked, which, as you noted, simply results in responses offered in a similar fashion.

Two wrongs don’t make a right, though, and since Larry and I obviously don’t see eye to eye on…well, much of anything, really, I’ve decided to simplify both of our lives and take him off my radar. No more snark, no more praise, no more pissing contests to see who’ll blink first.

* blink *

I’m done.

As for Larry, firing back isn’t always the right thing to do. Sometimes being cordial can win over those that disagree rather than being defensive. I know you didn’t write it, but “Senor Buzzscope still has something stuck in his craw which you can see everytime he writes something about AiT” doesn’t really help matters. It doesn’t do anything, but make Guy fire right back.

The whole thing just seems like a childish grudge match to me.

I’m sorry if you guys don’t agree with me, but there it is. Some perspective from someone on the outside.

Oh, and smileys don’t help to soften an insult.

For example, you thinking that I am “loathe” to “ever” provide hard numbers has you retreating to an interview when I answered Spurge that sales numbers are meaningless without context. You got only “smoke and mirrors” out of that response, somehow missing the later bit in the same interview where I gave hard numbers in answer to his question re: THE BLACK DIAMOND and DOUBLE IMAGE. I just used my books as an answer rather than tick off every sales made in a hundred-book line.

But context is everything, because your summary doesn’t match with mine:

1. Guy makes disparaging innuendo about “running a sale.” His protestations about what “sale” means as a single word removes context, and the snark remains.

2. Josh blogs about it, because he knows I tried to smooth over the freakout you had when I innocently wrote that I found it funny you dissed Bri’s lyrics in DEMO #12 when you have a poetry blog, yourself, and noted you have “something stuck in” your “craw” re: AiT.

3. Larry makes money on this stuff, Guy does not. Larry therefore takes it more seriously than Guy, context being what it is. Guy moves goalposts around; Larry keeps eye on ball.

4. Guy makes more disparaging comments about being bored. Larry still remains ready to correct misapprehensions.

See? Everybody’s got a point of view.

L.

As for the numbers comment, I was recalling an interview with Spurgeon where you declined to discuss sales figures, choosing instead to tap dance around his question with some clever wordplay and a little smoke and mirror sideshow.

So let’s conclude things with a quick summary, yes?

1) Guy makes offhand comment.

2) Josh and Larry perceive said comment as a dis, fumbling the easy alley oop in the process.

3) Guy and Larry go back and forth online and via email, providing a bit of entertainment to the four people reading along who give a damn, while a) exposing Guy’s “bias” against overhyped and underwhelming comics, and b) exposing Larry’s mutant ability to make mountains out of molehills.

4) Guy gets bored and moves on to editing this week’s Buzzscope columns and writing his latest Establishing Shots.

And they lived happily ever after. The End.

I don’t believe you know “all the tricks.” I hardly believe you work in publishing.

But as to warehouse space, we have a standard international shipping container (the 8 x 8.5 x 40, not the Hicube, which is also a standard) that we rent for $50 bucks a month. That’s 2720 cubic feet, at 1.8 cents a cubic foot.

That’s cheap by anyone’s standards, not just your biased ones. Also hard numbers.