Warning: this is a take, the take is mine, you might not agree with it. I hope you’ll give me the benefit of the doubt and take my thoughts on good faith.
The spark for this is I wanted to share Renton Hawkey’s recent article reacting to the controversy around the Jim Rugg variant cover for Ed Piskor’s Red Room. I suggest reading Renton’s article for what I think is a really well considered assessment of what went on and what is a rather large problem within comics and arts in general, the notion that the critic (who usually takes the form of a smug person on twitter who wields their followers as a public guillotine) can assign intent, and ascribe their reading of a piece as the one and only view of art. Here’s Renton’s article (his Substack based comic “Ronin Digital Express” is linked at the bottom, I highly suggest it):
What follows are some of my scattered thoughts on censors and comics.
Some background first, Rugg has been producing a series of variants for the series which combine the splatter-house gore-hound book with other famous creator-owned, independent comics, creating a homage to classics while using character’s and situations from Piskor’s Red Room world. With that framework in mind Maus makes sense as a subject for the variant cover. Was it a good subject matter choice match? No, the cover was in poor taste, a torture book homaging a book about the Holocaust just draws all the wrong parallels. However, should Jim Rugg be piled onto, have his name dragged through the mud, and considered in the worst most uncharitable light possible? Also no.
Even after pulling the cover and apologizing for creating the work - he was still being attacked. As have Piskor and Fantagraphics for even allowing the work to be made.
Sidenote: Piskor’s total silence on the matter and allowing Jim to twist in the wind alone was a very bad look.
There is a reasonable conversation to be had regarding the poor taste of the cover, however the general zeitgeist we have in comics is not one that takes anyone on good faith - instead it takes the worst possible reading and applies it harshly without allowance for forgiveness, change, or even a dialogue about artist intent.
The scolds and censors of the internet today are just as bad as the Bible thumping censors of the 80s and 90s that the current wave denounce, they exist to enforce specific readings of work that are colored far more by the censor’s own insecurities.
Comics is not a new frontier for censorship, unfortunately, it has a long history with it Wertham’s crusade against comics led to the Federal Government getting involved which brought about the restrictive Comics Code which completely infantilized the medium. The medium has been making its way out of that legacy - but it still suffers from the consistent calls of new rules, new censors, and new fears.
This wave of censor shares common ground with the last round of comics’ would-be censors, ComicsGaters, they all go out of their way to criticize books that they know they’d hate. The books and covers and concepts they critique and demand removed are never ones they’d buy. The endless YouTube videos of 40 year old men buying and complaining about Squirrel Girl or something similar are sad and pathetic.
The other point, beyond censorship that I think is worth noting and discussing, is what constitutes harm? It’s not unusual to see the phrase “this literally hurts people” tossed around when a piece of art is considered worthy of censorship. I think the bar for “hurt” needs to be a lot higher than “this piece offends my sensibilities” or “this hurts my feelings”. The act of viewing and creating the cover in question does not cause harm, too often today words and pictures are treated as if they are creating physical victims, it’s not the case. Art is not violence, words are not violence, the threshold for harm must be higher than hurt feelings. Otherwise the line for objection and ultimate censorship is completely undefined - moveable to wherever the censor would like it.
The message on poor taste can be received without creating a new unspoken form of the Comics Code Authority, one whose aims and goals are always shifting with the wind.
Anyway… take a read of Renton's thoughts on this subject (linked above), he does a much deeper dive into it, and also give him a sub on Ronin Digital Express - it’s a really excellent action, sci-fi comic, that’s got a fair bit to say. Really enjoying his use of Substack for comics.