A few online pundits react to Alex DeCampi’s potential career suicide the other day.
Steven Grant points out that public ridicule is not the best policy:
But, while we are a catty business, there are many private groups where comics pros share information about the behavior of editors, it’s generally not a very good idea to trash editors in very public forums. Unless you’re really not interested in working. Which may sound a bit strange in this column, since I comment on the comics industry all the time, but policy decisions, creative choices, general trends, these are all fair game for critique. I’d generally hope editors and other talent don’t think there’s anything personal going on, but when you’re deeply involved in something everything about it’s personal on some level, so if they do they do. Start sniping at their fashion sense, children or living partners, medical conditions and like that, and you’re not only asking for trouble, you probably deserve it. Editors talk to each other. Even editors who hate each other – there are more of them that you, and probably they, would think – share war stories, even among companies that hate each other.
The column also offers some good advice on aspiring pros for San Diego and other topics.
SLG editor Jennifer DeGuzman has a different take, although with many edits.
It’s funny how every single commenter who’s a bit inside the industry takes it for granted that Bond and every other editor in the American comic book industry are not professional enough to just shrug off DeCampi’s comment. If her work is on time and sells well, it shouldn’t matter, yet everyone seems certain it does.
That said Grant’s take quoted here without criticism is especially hilarious in the extent to which it misses the point. He not only fails to notice that the comment was public and hence his insight, delivered with all the gravitas of an uncharacteristically short sentence (“Editors talk to each other.”) is as totally besides the point as it is banal. He also seems blissfully unaware that the common sharing of information among editors also undermines his point that a public comment is particularly problematic. If a creator has a good informal reputation a public comment doesn’t matter to a professional editor and if a creator has a poor rep public comments are likewise irrelevant.
As is often the case with these internet controversies, my first reaction was, “Who is this person?” So I looked up Alex DeCampi and found her website and saw that she had some books published by TokyoPop, which is great. And then I saw her blog in which she trashes TokyoPop for the deal they gave her and what she sees as a deficient promotion of her book. So Shelly Bond should not feel bad that Ms DeCampi is trashing her for rejecting her pitch; because she also trashes people who accept and publish her pitches!