So Publishers Weekly’s online comic newsletter had a roundtable article on “a new era of comic publishing”. It wasn’t great, but I’m not sure how it could be, since the participants weren’t interacting with each other (only responding to the same questions); the topic was a bit broad and vague; and DC’s Bob Wayne, at least, has been doing this long enough not to be pinned down on anything he doesn’t want to be.

For some reason, though, this piece brought some knives out. Tom Spurgeon slams it with “This would not have been a good article for a random web site.”

Chris Butcher, one of the participants, points out fact-checking errors (link no longer available), which leads to his comment section ripping into the newsletter’s proofreading history.

Heidi MacDonald (link no longer available), PW editor, responds by saying they’re missing the point. I’m glad she did, because she highlights some points that I missed on my read-through. (I’m running on not enough sleep, but I had to keep coming back to the piece when my attention would drift.)

At the same time, it’s true that an obvious typo will cause people to fixate on the appearance over the content. It also gives them an excuse to disregard deeper points they don’t want to deal with.

So what’s my point? That this stuff is harder than most people think. That it’s all too easy, once one person gets savage, for others to follow (or be seen as following). That it’s hard to resist playing “let’s you and him fight”, as with pieces like this.