4thletter!

I saw an interesting conversation on the blogohedron last week. It was about criticism and its place in art. It started here, with Johanna’s review of How to Make Webcomics, which was written by Brad Guigar (Evil Inc.), Dave Kellett (Sheldon), Scott Kurtz (PvP) , and Kris Straub (Starslip Crisis). It’s an overall positive review, though she dings it for proofreading errors (which is totally fair and most likely warranted), but the controversy (or whatever you want to call it) arose from this paragraph:

Oddly, the promotion chapter doesn’t mention either press releases or getting reviews, both sources of free coverage; instead, dealing with critics is covered in the audience chapter. The author of this section, Dave Kellett, breaks them into four categories and says, “each one can be diffused or made impotent by kindness and politeness.” So the goal here is not to listen, but to deflect. And that’s reflected in his categories; not one covers someone pointing out a legitimate flaw or place for improvement in the work. In other words, he doesn’t think critics are ever right. (The categories are the person who’s mean without meaning to be and really loves the comic; nitpickers correcting “useless details”; the hater; and the troll. This section, by the way, was the first piece of the book I read — it’s where the copy I was browsing fell open when I first picked it up. Fate!)

Scott Kurtz talked about the review here, and says this:

I’m not sure how I ended up in so many tug-of-war competitions with bloggers, where the outcome of our match determines the superior position: creator or critic. But it seems to be cropping up again. There is a strange sense of entitlement, an eerie assumption of an unspoken working relationship that I am happy to inform does not exist. Why we insulate ourselves from the notion that the external critic can EVER be right, is because their critique is moot in regards to the progression of our work.

Click through for the rest of the post. I’ll have some excerpts here, but not the full text.

I’ve got kind of a huge problem with this statement. The biggest problem I guess is that no one has ever said this in the history of ever. If anyone has actually said it, they were probably a pretty terrible critic.

I don’t think that any critic believes that he or she is a part of the direct creative process. Indirect? Yes. Direct? No. Critics do not exist to tell you how your work should go as you’re making it. They exist to tell you how you work has gone after you’ve finished. My mental image of a critic is still that first bit from History of the World Part I. The caveman paints on the cave wall, his friends and family praise it, they cheer, and then the critic walks in. And the critic pees on the drawing.

It’s probably a bad example, because the critic pees on the work and I can’t think of anything that’s really worth all that trouble, but it fits my view of a critic. Critics come along after the work is done and judge it. Whether they’re judging the literary worth of the work or just whether or not it made them laugh, they’re there to judge the finished work in whatever form it may take. Whether they pee on it or praise it is up to them.

Kurtz goes on to say–

Think about Star Trek and the Prime Directive. Sometimes, civilizations take a left turn in their natural progression and things go tits up. Sometimes there is a dictatorship or a famine or a plague that is going to steer this civilization into trouble, but the crew of the Enterprise CAN NOT ACT. They can NOT interfere. To interfere with those hardships would be to damage the natural progression of that civilization.

I feel like this is a labored metaphor, but maybe that’s just because I’ve never been a trek fan and had to actually ask someone about the Prime Directive. Anyway, his point here, boiled down and hopefully not misrepresented, is that you can’t interfere at all in the creation of art because that will kill the creativity inherent in it.

Again, I can’t agree. I think he has half a point, here, but feedback is important in the creation of anything. The best teacher I ever had was my senior year IB English teacher who wouldn’t hesitate to hand you a paper back with “rewrite this entire terrible thing” scrawled across the top. Critics exist to point out what you have done that didn’t work. It can give you pointers on what’s succeeding and what’s failing with your audience.

No critic is going to, or deserves to, stand over your shoulder while you’re at the drawing board or your typewriter and go, “Hey hey, hold up! You should change this word here and that line is way too heavy. Lighten that up and try this specific brush. Also make his cape blue.” That’s not why critics exist.

It might just be the critics I read, but I don’t get a sense of entitlement from any of them. It’s more about reading a book and giving your opinion on it. These opinions come in a lot of different forms, be it free association, measured responses, retailer-oriented, rambly new journalism, fairly highbrow, irreverent, worthless fanboy/fangirl screaming at the heavens (too many examples to count), or whatever. It’s up to the artist to read these and decide which ones are valid and which are not. Some of them may valid, all of them may be valid, or none of them may be valid.

The trick is being discerning. Not everyone’s opinion is going to make sense. Discounting the idea that any critic can ever be right seems kind of silly. No one is perfect yet, which Kurtz seems to agree with, but how exactly do you figure out what you did right and wrong? I’ve had things that I think work that turn out to be opaque and terrible. I’ve read interviews with creators who have had things pointed out to them that they never would’ve realized otherwise. Alternate points of view are important.

It’s not that we don’t realize we’re making mistakes. It’s not that we’re oblivious to the fact that our work is imperfect. But if we play it safe and never risk those imperfections, then we’ll never grow as artists. Ultimately, we can’t chart our course based on what our readership or critics thinks is working. We have to go with our gut.

Kurtz seems to be thinking that critics exist to encourage (or force) artists to work inside little boxes and never grow. “Nine panel grids or death! That person better be five heads tall! Why isn’t this three act structure?” There are critics who do that, yeah, but they aren’t the end-all, be-all. Honestly, I don’t even think those critics are any good.

This is kind of how I approach reviewing. I’m not there to try and diminish it, so much as to try and spot what went right and what went wrong. Sometimes comics outstay their welcome. Sometimes clunky dialogue kills an otherwise fun story. Sometimes someone writes a story where two adults with superpowers don’t realize that they’re upside down until eighteen pages in. Sometimes you get a sublime mix of words and art like JLA: Classified 1-3.

If anything, the critic should be a help to the creator. It is something the creator can go to, check out, and judge himself. Maybe they have a valid point. Maybe something wasn’t as clear as he thought it was. Maybe he’ll find something to take away from it, maybe he won’t. That’s the luck of the draw, I guess.

Recently, I called Mike Krahulik to compliment him on a new coloring technique he had used on a recent Penny-Arcade strip. I opened my phone conversation with the following statement: “Mike, Ignore all emails about the new coloring. It’s awesome. Pursue it.” But it was too late. He had already read all the mail and had been sufficiently discouraged enough to just drop the matter. “That’s what I get for trying to innovate.” he said to me.

He was joking, but there was some truth to his statement.

And that’s why there is no chapter in our book on when to accept that, sometimes, the critic is right.

This is kind of a terrible anecdote, though. Kurtz liked something that Krahulik did, other people didn’t, and Krahulik already decided to quit it, deciding that it wasn’t worth the hassle. I’m not sure exactly why that is why there is no chapter on when to accept that, sometimes, the critic is right, but okay?

It did illuminate one thing for me, though. It made me realize that Kurtz holds fans and critics to different standards. Critics exist to give negative feedback and fans exist to give positive feedback. It’s a thoroughly false dichotomy, and kind of an intellectually dishonest one, as well. What Kurtz told Krahulik is just as much criticism as what JDC displayed in her review of the book. It’s offering a critical opinion of a work. The idea that positive feedback is valid while negative feedback shouldn’t be paid any attention is a terrible one. Feedback is feedback, whether positive or negative, and both can help to grow a work.

I’ve got a friend who just screened his movie, Yeah Sure Okay. It’s something new and innovative, both for him and possibly for movies in general. I know that he co-created it with that idea in mind. After the screening, he went around soliciting feedback. What worked, what didn’t, what was hokey, what was awesome, and so on. He did it because he needs to know if he succeeded at his goal, and if he didn’t succeed, what parts weren’t hitting with the audience. He didn’t decide that he should never listen to critics because critics will alter the natural course of his creativity. He decided that it’s important to get feedback so that you can be sure that you’re on point.

That’s what the critic is for.

Usually, whenever a big comic book movie comes out, I’m there with a little article about comparing the film to the novelization. After all, the novelizations are based on earlier scripts of the movie and shed some light on what was taken out. Sometimes things are for the better. Sometimes they’re for the worse.

There’s a reason I’m so late with the Dennis O’Neil adaptation of Dark Knight. While the books for Marvel movies come out about a month or so before release, it was decided, for spoiler purposes likely, that Dark Knight would be released as a strict-on-sale title. It came out the same day as the movie, but my Barnes and Noble didn’t receive it until days later. As a fun aside, O’Neil himself came to the store, wondering if we had it yet.

At first I wasn’t even going to bother. Reading the book after seeing the movie didn’t sound like as much fun. That decision changed after seeing what I have to call the best movie of the summer. I picked up a copy and spent the next week or so reading it.

I should point out that this is going to be spoiler-heavy, but this is a comic site and you are a person reading a comic site. If you haven’t seen Dark Knight by now and haven’t at least been spoiled about the scene where David Allen Grier appears as Oswald Cobblepot, then there’s probably something wrong with you.

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What If THIS Was the Fantastic Four is a comic that nearly passed me by. For whatever reason, my comic shop didn’t even get it in until I got wind of it and had it ordered for myself. It’s a good thing it got on my radar, because it’s a classy issue and well worth the read.

It’s about the New Fantastic Four sticking together as a team, which has been done before. While that wasn’t a bad issue, this one goes in different directions. Not just the optimism and the opposite use of Dr. Doom, but the 90’s story barely included Ghost Rider at all, while here he takes center stage.

The true story of the issue is this: it was meant to come out with the other What If issues around December. Mike Wieringo, the artist, was seven pages into drawing Jeff Parker’s script when he passed away. Rather than leave the comic alone, many of Wieringo’s artist friends got together and finished the comic themselves. Art Adams, Stuart Immonen, Humberto Ramos, Mike Allred and many others help tell the story of four loners joining together in snazzy black and blue tights. Plus it has a Mini Marvels page about them at the end!

If anything, the comic gives me one of my favorite sequences in recent history.

Though there are a couple snags. Parker forgot that Daniel Ketch was Ghost Rider during the New F4 storyline and had Wieringo draw Johnny Blaze. They kept it that way so as not to mess with Wieringo’s art. Then we have a scene later in the book where Skottie Young depicts Dr. Doom’s face with his mask off. Last I recall, that’s supposed to be one of the big no-no’s in comics.

I really need to redo that Top 100 list. Probably after the next batch come out. They’ve really been on the ball with these lately.

Hellcat is the best comic you didn’t get last week. Kathryn Immonen and David LaFuente a comic that’s best described as “delightful,” and Stuart Immonen’s cover is pretty awesome, too. Here’s a bit from the comic to convince you to rectify your sin and go back and get the book. Brian Hibbs reviewed it, too.

Go buy it.

I haven’t really seen anyone talk much about the new Squadron Supreme 2 miniseries, so I thought I’d take a crack at it.

To really get into my thoughts on the first issue of the new miniseries, you have to look back at what brought us here in the first place. The original concept of the Squadron Supreme was brought to us by Roy Thomas as part of an Avengers storyline. The team would be the first example of what would eventually become a very hackneyed comic book cliché of one company copying another company’s characters and changing their names to keep things legally clean. Sometimes this works, like the time Plastic Man trained with an invisible monk, a super-strong monk and a fire monk. Most of the time it doesn’t work, like when Superman and Batman had to face the Ultimates/Avengers-based Maximums or when Garth Ennis thinks up yet another Superman knock-off for the sake of making fun.

The Squadron Supreme, of course, was based on the Justice League. It was a cool idea at the time and their alternate universe was instrumental in the Defenders. It was there that they laid down the groundwork for Mark Gruenwald’s opus maxi-series based on the Squadron Supreme universe.

If you haven’t read the original Squadron Supreme series, I’d suggest you do. It’s not the best comic ever, but in light of the last few years in comics, it comes across as an interesting bridge between the older days of superhero morality and the more sensitive times of now. It mainly dealt with the team taking over the government and giving themselves a year to fix up the damage they had caused during a mind-control episode. The big deal of their plan to change the world is that they used a special machine to alter the minds of their villains to make them good. The moral dilemmas weren’t lost on the story, as some heroes left due to disagreeing with the situation and one member of the team got kicked off for using the same machine on another teammate to make her love him. In the end, it became a Civil War situation with Hyperion’s side up against Nighthawk’s side.

The Squadron Supreme world could never successfully follow up on that series. There were stories here and there, including an arc in Exiles, but nothing special ever truly happened with it.

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Marvel’s Mythos series is pretty interesting. They’re 32 page one-shots that re-tell, and sometimes re-adjust, the origins of a few Marvel heroes. They don’t fit into any ongoing series, so the collection will likely come in the form of a “Marvel Mythos” premiere hardcover sometime over the next year, hopefully. From the first solicit:

AN ALL-NEW SERIES OF PAINTED ONE-SHOTS FROM MARVEL, RECAPTURING THE EARLIEST DAYS OF OUR GREATEST HEROES! The first of a series of quintessential, stand-alone, done-in-one stories by Paul Jenkins and Paolo Rivera, MYTHOS: X-MEN takes readers back to the formative days of Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, and recounts the first encounter between the nescient, teen-aged X-Men with their ultimate nemesis, Magneto! Filled with new detail and nuance, the MYTHOS books are also the perfect starter set for those readers new to the Marvel cast of characters, or to those who known them only from movies and television cartoons!

The line-up thus far has been pretty much par for the course. X-Men, Hulk, Spider-Man, Ghost Rider, Fantastic Four, and Captain America. The books haven’t really functioned as direct movie tie-ins, save for maybe Ghost Rider or Fantastic Four. Instead, they’re quick primers on the character that also serve as a light continuity patch. Characters are modernized and origins are retooled for the modern day. The FF were given their powers on a space station, instead of fighting Russkies, for example. Come to think, their origin is probably the most changed.

Usually, this is the exact kind of story I’m not interested in. Continuity Comix? Give it a miss. For some reason, though, I’m really digging them. I think it’s because they feel like a throwback. They’re like the backups that used to show up in Marvel comics, like “Here’s the secret of Spider-Man’s webshooters!” or “Here’s the layout of the X-Mansion!” Paul Jenkins and Paolo Rivera make it work, though.

Rivera’s art is fully painted, but still manages to come with enough of a retro flair to make it reminiscent of old comics. He uses a color palette that isn’t garishly dayglo, nor is it Alex Ross-y. It’s not subdued either. It feels just right. His facial expressions come through clearly, in part due to the large size of the panels giving him room to work. Johnny Storm’s casual embarrassment, the Congressman’s bemusement, and Sue Storm’s complete and utter lack of surprise at her little brother’s antics all are true to life. You can recognize them on sight. I also love that they included the schematic of the old school Baxter. I love seeing that stuff.

Paul Jenkins caught a lot of flack post-Civil War: Frontline. You’d think the man hadn’t written a good comic in his entire life, the way some people talk. However, looking back, he’s got The Sentry, Inhumans, and he had a killer run on Spider-Man. His last issue of Spectacular Spidey, with art by Mark Buckingham? That was one of the best issues of Spider-Man in years. It was pitch perfect.

The core of all of those stories that Jenkins did so well on lies in the relationships he puts on display. Ben and Peter, Norman and Peter, Black Bolt and his subjects, Black Bolt and Medusa, Sentry and his wife/friends, and so on. He’s putting in similar work on the Mythos books. They are about the origins, yeah, but more about the choices, or lack thereof, that led to the origins and the choices that followed. Reed desperately trying to talk Ben down, or Captain America thinking about the men he served with and the things he missed, are what makes these books so good. Johnny Blaze making the decision to sell his soul and Peter Parker’s rage and shame at realizing he caused the death of his uncle are more crucial scenes that succeed.

I started this post with the intention of talking about the Captain America book, but got way off track. The Cap book is a good one because it focuses on Steve Rogers, not Cap. It’s about his life, his dreams, and his regrets. I’d challenge anyone who thinks that Jenkins doesn’t “get” Captain America to read it. I’m willing to bet that you won’t come away with that feeling. This page alone is dead on. I love the dual Nick Fury appearances… and is that milk Cap is drinking?

The Jenkins/Rivera team is a great one. They’re telling tales that you’d think were inessential, but are actually really good. I’m hoping Marvel does the series justice when it collects it. I’m hoping for an oversized HC, myself, but that’s because I’m addicted. I also kind of want Jenkins to get a crack at the Fantastic Four for a while, too.

Also, this cover is basically the definition of awesome. I didn’t even catch the detail on the shield when I first picked up the book.

Ka-pow.

All I need in this life of sin,
Is me and my girlfriend
Down to ride to the bloody end,
Just me and my girlfriend

Honestly, I don’t generally like the Joker. He’s a one note villain– his gimmick is that he’s crazy and kills people. That isn’t really what I want out of my villains. It’s a flat motivation and part of why I’m not really digging on Batman’s rogues gallery. How many of them have the gimmick of “I’m just plain crazy” or “I hate Batman?” That’s boring.

So, yeah, generally, I don’t like the Joker. When I do like him, though, is when Harley Quinn is around.

They have an interesting dynamic. Harleen Quinzel was a psychologist who pulled some strings to get assigned to Arkham Asylum specifically to meet the Joker. After they meet, she falls for him hard and tries to seduce him. Joker, unsurprisingly, finds this hilarious and decides to go along with it. What follows is a whirlwind romance of old-fashioned violence, laughs, and whatever you call spousal abuse when you aren’t married.

Harley is kind of spectacularly damaged goods. She’s in love with a mass murderer and takes the abuse he dishes out with nary a complaint, nine times out of ten. She dresses up like a jester and kills people for fun. Her best friend mind controls and kills dudes for fun. She breezes through life doing exactly what she wants, how she wants, to who she wants… actually, that list bit ain’t so bad.

I’ve dug Harley ever since she first appeared on the Batman cartoon. She was a fun twist on the Joker’s style– more concerned with the comedy than the killing. She’s simultaneously playful and menacing. She’s just as likely to give you the joy buzzer as the bang gun. The joke is that both will kill you.

Harley is one of my favorite characters to read about, in part because of the stellar job Karl Kesel and the Dodsons did on her solo series. They spun a tale that combined both her latent guilt, her issues with the Joker, her desire to become her own woman, her desire to have fun, and her belief in love to create something both compelling and entertaining. There are times when I even like the Dodsons’ rendition of Harley better than Bruce Timm’s. They draw her with a smile that’s infectious.

I enjoy the fact that she makes the Joker interesting again. Suddenly, he’s got a foil. Sure, she’s crazy, but she forces him into new areas beyond just “Hee hee hoo hoo look how ZANY and CRAZY and EVILLLL I am!” The opening arc of Harley Quinn involved him faking an injury while living with Harley. Harley was planning this big get-back for Batman while the Joker grew increasingly threatened by how efficient and trustworthy she seemed.

It’s really fun, despite all the murder, and an interesting relationship. Joker, as befitting his supersanity, flipflops between hating her and loving her. One of my favorite scenes between the two is in Emperor Joker. This is after Joker has gained almost infinite power.

I dunno, I dug it.

I really like Harley is what all this boils down to. I actually have four pieces of Harley related art. The first sketch I ever bought was of Harley Quinn, in fact, by Mike Huddleston.

From left to right, top to bottom– Mike Huddleston, Rob Reilly, Dustin Nguyen, and Art Baltazar. Pardon the poor scan on the Gotham Girls print, it was too big for my scanner and I couldn’t find an image of it online. It’s also the only one that isn’t an original.

Over the past few years, with all the various comic mega-events shoved down our gullets, the idea of the tie-in comic has been make-or-break to the main series. House of M seemed to do it the best, where all the tie-ins were completely unnecessary to the main series, but were mostly well-written and made for a good expansion to what was going on. Annihilation dodged the bullet by having seemingly no real tie-ins at all. Infinite Crisis became a huge mess where you had to know a lot about what was going on in the smaller books to truly get the story. Civil War, as far as I’m concerned, is the worst offender. The main series was competently-written, if a little convoluted, and Millar wrote very fair versions of Captain America and Iron Man. Then you look at all the tie-ins where Captain America is the perfect god of morality and Iron Man is the king of all assholes. The only truly good tie-ins were the two Captain America/Iron Man one-shots.

With Secret Invasion, the issues of New Avengers and Mighty Avengers, whether good or bad, are in a class of their own. After all, Secret Invasion is Bendis’ big cumulative storyline tying together a lot of loose ends from those series. They’re more like extended scenes and extra issues to the miniseries than anything else. Discarding those, I honestly haven’t read too many of the Invasion tie-ins. Yes, Captain Marvel was completely amazing and Hercules is a blast regardless of what story it’s linked to, but I’m not a regular reader of Ms. Marvel and I haven’t picked up Captain Britain yet, so I can’t comment on them.

That brings us to Secret Invasion: Who Do You Trust? This one-shot, based on five different stories, gives us more details on certain characters and their roles in the series. The five writers, Brian Reed, Mike Carey, Christos N. Gage, Zeb Wells and Jeff Parker keep things extremely competent and diverse in topic, while staying true to the series.

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I’ve talked about the differences between Marvel’s What If comics and DC’s Elseworlds comics before, but another major contrast has made itself apparent to me. They are both about taking a cool out-of-continuity concept and running with it as a full story. The problem with Elseworlds is that a lot of the time they get bogged down by either the need for familiarity (how many times has Kal-El become Superman when the entire idea of the story is that Kal-El is not Superman?) or the over-complication of the storyline.

Take JLA: Destiny for instance. The four-issue miniseries is based on a concept that is so full of promise that it could have carried the story itself. They could have just plugged it into the DC Universe and let loose a great story. Writer John Arcudi decided not to, seemingly going for more of an epic clusterfuck of a story. So this big twist in DC history is made into part of a bigger theme. It also becomes merely a subplot to the whole miniseries and this big shocker that should have been the selling point for the comic isn’t fully revealed to the reader until the third issue.

A couple years back, when I first read Destiny, I scoured online for reviews. I’m too lazy to check now, but all the reviews I found were for the first two issues only. Some didn’t make it past the first. Nobody knew what the point of the story was yet and had no indication that they were going to discover it in the final two issues, so everyone dropped it like a rock.

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Let me start this off with a quote from Common’s “Sixth Sense,” just so that you don’t get what I’m saying twisted.

Some of that shit, y’all pop to it, I ain’t relating
If I don’t like it, I don’t like it, that don’t mean that I’m hating

Plain talk: Racists and sexists make for terrible villains.

Wonder Woman’s next big story arc is about the Manazons. They were introduced in DC Universe Zero over the course of three pages where a couple gods are sitting around and watching Wonder Woman. They reveal the Manazons and say something along the lines of “Never send a woman to do a man’s job!”

Lame.

The thing with villains these days is that we basically have two types. One type has two or fewer dimensions. They cackle and kill and are basically evil. Depending on the writer, this is the Joker and Magneto. Their gimmick is that they are evil. If they are part of a group that once called itself “Evil” or “of Doom” or something like that, they are probably part of this group. This is a holdover from the days when (bang, pow) comics were for kids.

The other kind of villain is the kind who is more three dimensional. He has a goal beyond just wrecking shop, or at least some kind of personality that makes him more than someone who just wants to kill everything ever for whatever reason. Claremont’s Magneto pretended to be this guy, Lex Luthor is this guy, Two Face is this guy when written popularly, and Prometheus started out as this guy. They aren’t evil for evil’s sake– they are evil for a (occasionally good) reason.

Which one of these villains do you prefer? The nuanced one or the black & white one?

I don’t mind evil villains. Joker is frustrating, but fun when Harley Quinn is around to take away from the “RARR EVIL” stuff. But, I think that evil villains are a cheap writer’s trick at this point. With the skill of writers these days, we should be able to have villains that don’t instantly inspire revulsion in the reader. We should be able to mix it up.

I’m only picking on the Manazons because it’s the most recent example. Their gimmick is that they were put into action by two gods who straight up say that women are less capable than men. What decent person is going to be able to say “Hey, this guy is really interesting. I wonder what would happen if they win?”

What happens if the Manazons win? A bunch of women are banished to the kitchen, and even then, they know that men cook better, anyway.

What’s the point? Where’s the depth? Racist sexist villains are cheap. When’s the last time you were like, “Boy, the Red Skull sure is an interesting character! His methods suck, but I can understand where he’s coming from!”

Racism and sexism are bad words. This is partly why people who are (rightly or wrongly) accused of sexism or racism get so upset at the very idea of being such. The only people who accept those labels are people who will never change. Everyone would like to be past the use of them. Racists and sexists are Bad People. Who wants to be a Bad Person?

Tossing these traits onto a bad guy is just another way to make him more unlikeable without actually writing scenes that illustrate that. It’s telling, not showing, and it is cheap like a dinner at a friend’s house or a date at the communal TV room in your dorm. It’s lazy.

Seeing a brand new villain immediately go into “mulatto” or “whore” talk immediately kills any connection I might have had. Now, he’s just a regular old bad guy. A regular, old, uninteresting, boring, cliched, terrible bad guy.

Give it a miss. You can have bad guys without using these shortcuts. I can’t believe how tired I am of seeing cheap cookie-cutter villains. It takes me out of the story instantly. and it just feels hilariously lazy.

I’m not asking for a moratorium, but at least give me another reason to hate these dudes beyond “Ha ha, he said nigger.”