Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Comic Books >

Micah Wrong

22:29 / 03.05.04

So, did anyone catch this crazy shit that's goin' down?

Looks like tough times ahead for Mr Wright.

As it says in the topic abstract, it's really a pity that he chose to do this. I think his poster books and all that are really good satirical material, and I generally agree with the political standpoint he comes from.

But now, by lying, it seems to me that he's undermined himself really pretty badly. As well as damaging some pretty serious people who endorsed him, such as Howard Zinn and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

D'oh.

The worst thing about something like this is that in some ways it really sets your cause back. Maybe better he'd never stuck his oar in the water than end up doing damage to the ideas he intended to peddle.

And I'd stand by that statement, regardless of what I thought of his politics.

Opinions?

XXII:X:II = XXX

22:57 / 03.05.04

It certainly isn't a great time for this to be coming to light, what with STORMWATCH getting its plug pulled. Is he signed to do anything else at the moment, or is he left without a pot to piss in?

VJB2

04:12 / 04.05.04

I can understand if he wants to make up this background to get a start, but to spin really elaborate yarns about parachuting in Panama in something like the introduction to Queen and Country is just wrong.

And second, it's pretty apparent that he only revealed because the Washington Post was about to, and he's spun another lie about his guilt driving him to confess. It doesn't affect my opinion of him as a writer, but as an anti-war advocate, he's completely lost credibility.

10:03 / 04.05.04

when you write stuff like this :

"I've seen combat to "liberate" people before in Panama. Have you? Did you volunteer to fight for your country? I fucking doubt it. I especially doubt your leg ass ever made it through Airborne School and I KNOW for a fact that you wouldn't have survived one week of Ranger School."

and then it turns out you lied you just look like a chump. Having said that forums I have read seem to be getting out of control...

ONLY NICE THINGS

14:36 / 04.05.04

I can understand the conniptions - I don't think it destroys his credibility as an anti-war campaigner as much as it destroys his credibility passim. It's a shame, of course, but you can see how tempting it must have been and remained. Is there also a feeling of betrayal because we got to believe that maybe, just maybe, a comic book writer was actually and demonstrably tasty in a rumble?

XXII:X:II = XXX

17:53 / 04.05.04

I don't think comics are devoid of their veterans (didn't Eisner and Kubert and that lot get their war material first person?). Also, Wright's not exactly the first writer to make questionable claims about their history; my bet is that Ernest Hemingway didn't experience half the shit he said he did, but probably picked up stories at hunting lodges and the like.

But to make claims about something that in this day and age can be easily confirmed or denied is just foolish, especially if in doing so you're not exactly creating a persona so much as pumping up your resume. I don't think there's any "good" or "bad" involved; I just think it showed poor judgement, for which he will inevitably suffer. I wish him no harm, but that and a dollar will buy you a soda.

Just one question, though: I wonder whether half the people who are now feigning outrage over this raise even a cursory peep over W's military record, or lack thereof. Why is it we should feel more betrayed by someone who gets paid to make up stories and lies doing just that than by someone we hope is at least going to be somewhat honorable as the representative of millions? Which one Wright is and which one's the Shrub is for you to decide.

VJB2

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

06:11 / 05.05.04

I'm not familiar with the guy, but after a quick (well, rather less quick than I intended) Google I'm left with a feeling of sadness.
I do feel sorry for the guy, but there is no escaping the fact that it was a really fucking stupid thing to do. (Also sounds like the kind of guy whose stuff I WOULD have read).
But some of the sheer fucking vitriol people're chucking at him...
It can only harm his cause, though, and that IS fucking out of order.

miss wonderstarr

06:52 / 05.05.04

I agree with many of the above points, but I have to admit I'm impressed with the detail, passion and consistency of his lie. It could be argued that a writer of fiction = a convincing liar. As such, Wright has been constructing and maintaining an incredibly plausible work of fiction for years. As an ethical human being, he sucks. As a creative writer, he's clever.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

09:06 / 05.05.04

I'm currently halfway through reading his Delphi forum shitstorm on the matter...
...it doesn't make the happiest reading, I have to say... I may have to go read a nice story about puppies afterwards...
although having taken a break to walk the dogs, it now appears to be unavailable (probably getting a lot of traffic).
I have to say, as I said in my earlier post, I'm not familiar with his comics work... but I've since discovered that I am familiar with his "propaganda remixes"... I thought they were fucking wicked. I just never really knew who did them.

I certainly don't buy his "it was all a media hoax" thing... I could have done, were it "just" comics... fuck, why NOT get all annoyingly post-modern and create a new identity for yourself? But when you're using this for propaganda purposes (and I don't actually mean the word to sound as loaded as it does... I just can't think of a better one right now) then it totally sucks.

I'm trying to imagine (yeah, it's kind of reductio absurdam, but it's not the most subtle of subjects) if I'd just found out that the famous Crass "Your Country Needs You" poster (of a severed hand hanging from barbed wire, released during the Falklands war) had actually been designed by Margaret Thatcher because she felt like getting the extra cash it would bring in... not sure how I'd feel about that. Would it still work?

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

11:08 / 05.05.04

Whoah. After four hours (althogether) reading the thread on his Delphi forum... it's not happy reading. At all.

Busiek turns up halfway through to offer (what I thought was) some fairly good advice... gets shouted down.

Anyone wanting to read this, unless you know the forum (which I don't)... don't bother with the last couple of pages; it's just people settling personal scores and figuring out where to go for a good forum after that one's died on its ass. But the rest of it is... worth reading.

Next up...

Alan Moore: It was always a fake beard... it just got out of hand.

Grant Morrison: I'm actually from Devon. The accent just seemed cool.

Fuck, I do feel for the guy, though. He seems to have serious issues (and I HATE people who use the word "issues" usually).

And his posters (in the "stick on your wall" sense, rather than the "post on your forum" sense) were/are fucking ace.

uncle retrospective

11:59 / 05.05.04

Yea, Micah is pretty fucked. He really should have kept his head down for a while after Stormwatch TA got canned, now people are wondering will he ever work (in comics, we hope) again. Which is a pity. I like Stormwatch, despite some bad art and a Clancyesque weapons fetish.
As for the lie? Well that lie was what got my attention on the WEF when he was trying to break the comic, but I really couldn't care as long as he writes good books.
Now he won't.
Oh, the shitstorm is on Millerworld as well. Boy people are pissed off.

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

12:58 / 05.05.04

I don't get why people are so surprised about the sheer amount of rage coming out of people.

To me, it's not that he lied per se, I mean look at Grant's colorful public persona, I doubt he did or felt everything he's talked about in interviews, it's that he took a big steaming dump on everyone who's ever sacrificed their lives for any country on Earth.

That's repri-fucking-hensible.

And Kurt's spot on, there are tons of professionals who are getting their own helpings of fucked because of this douchebag.

Sure, writing is lying and writers are liars, but show some fucking respect for the people who gave their fucking lives so you could even publish something like 'You Back The Attack' and not end up in a fucking gulag.

DOUCHE.

Regrettable Juvenilia

13:27 / 05.05.04

Hey, forget the politics. Simply on the level of conforming utterly to the stereotype of someone who writes post-Warren Ellis "grr! fuck! hard!" comics, this makes Wright look totally laughable.

From this old interview:

What sort of forethought did you put into the fight between Jukko and The Midnighter? Did any sort of real life experiences help you in the choreography?

MW: I was in the U.S. Army Rangers. We're one of the last groups of the modern military to receive intensive personal-combat training. In addition, I have tons of friends who compete in combat sports such as jiu-jitsu, Kendo and kickboxing. I worked that entire fight between Jukko and Midnighter out with a friend of mine in order to show people what a real fight looks like.

Suedey! SHOT FOR MEAT!

13:42 / 05.05.04

Yeah but I bet he watched some kung-fu movies! Or Rocky, or something. That's real.

miss wonderstarr

13:58 / 05.05.04

This whole scandal is making me want to read Stormwatch. Can anyone recommend the best TPB for a newcomer?

I have some vague memory that Stormwatch, as a superhero team, turned into The Authority and was therefore redundant; apologies for my ignorance. Checking my bookshelf I see I do own SW: A Finer World, The Authority: Under New Management and The Authority: Relentless, but these are all Warren Ellis.

Regrettable Juvenilia

13:59 / 05.05.04

So, I've just been searching Google for an interview Wright did around the time Stormwatch: Team Achilles launched, where he basically said that the Authority shouldn't have forced China to pull out of Tibet or Russia out of Chechnya, and some other stuff that pissed me off. I can't find it, but you know what I find? He mentions his Army Ranger experience in Every. Single. Interview. And always, always in the context of justifying why he is the man to write about guns and action and international politics, because he knows, man, he was there!

Fuck's sake. I don't really care about the memory of the brave souls yada yada yada. He's just a turbodouche!

And those remixed propaganda posters were never as clever as a lot of people claimed, either.

Suedey! SHOT FOR MEAT!

14:04 / 05.05.04

I think we should form a team and possibly fight him to the death.

ONLY NICE THINGS

14:37 / 05.05.04

Using our intensive personal combat experience, and our hard mates?

This whole scandal is making me want to read Stormwatch. Can anyone recommend the best TPB for a newcomer?

Carks. The Stormwatch that Wright was writing was strictly speaking "Stormwatch: Team Achilles", a group of Clanceyesque military specialists who, using the sort of high technology and combat expertise that Micah Wright used every single day of his life as an Airborne Ranger, battle and kill supercharacters. Of course, since noone is going to let them kill established supercharacters, this tends to mean invented and Z-list characters; the first lot being a bunch of new superterrorists straight out of the diabolical bottom drawer of the early, Jeff Marriote Stormwatch (Muezzin? Cheops? Ye gods and little fishes...) I read little of it, but the script for the first issue is hilarious. Any thoughts on whether it was any good, guys?

The Stormwatch that was concelled and replaced by the Authority was, conversely, a UN superhero peace-keeping team, which despite being a central feature of the Wildstorm universe was always a bit shit. This miasma of mediocrity led to the appointment of (at the time) hot writer Warren Ellis, who ejected half the cast, introduced a number of characters of his own, and actually made it quite interesting for a bit, before falling into that lesat ringing of endorsements, a relaunch at #1. It was eventually concluded after twelve or so issues and an ill-judged Aliens cross-over, and replaced by the Authority, which contained Ellis' favourite characters from Stormwatch, some characters inspired by some of his "villains" in the final story arc of Stormwatch volume 1 and a couple of bit part players from Stormwatch volume 2. The Authority then bimbled along quite happily as a sinecure for a number of once controversial writers, world without end.

15:32 / 05.05.04

Not sure if they are still up there but Micah Wright's website used to have an extensive archive of scripts from the series... and here it is...

Haus of Mystery

15:35 / 05.05.04

The word 'clancyesque' has ensured I won't bother with Team Achilles anyway. Brrrrr.

15:55 / 05.05.04

But could Micah Wright defeat Batman?

miss wonderstarr

16:23 / 05.05.04

Thanks Tanntamount for that round-up. I really like the Ellis SW and Authority I've got; all that playing around with the "gay Batman" motif under the Midnighter guise.

I agree with comments above that actually, Wright's photoshopped posters are only as good as the kind of material you can see on b3ta.com every week; and they're a bit of a one-trick idea, aren't they.

16:34 / 05.05.04

I really didn't know (or care) anything about Micah Wright before this, and care even less now that I've learned he's a baby Ellis (I didn't much like the original, thanks), but this thread has taught me the word "turbodouche," so that's something.

Haus of Mystery

19:00 / 05.05.04

Just been snooping around Millarworld - my them folks get pretty heated! The 'Micah Wright scandal' thread is 17 pages long! There's a weird witch hunty feel to it all though. Not to say what he did wasn't weird and stupid, but the sheer affront some people feel is a reminder of how strong feelings about the war, and soldiers in general, are.

19:02 / 05.05.04

He just seems like a real asshole, plain and simple.

Haus of Mystery

19:08 / 05.05.04

Don't know anything about him really - more interested in the hysterical reaction.

20:24 / 05.05.04

Yeah, I broke a personal rule and looked at MillarWorld (it's not *as* bad as Newsarama...I mean, I don't *always* sink into a deep despair when I look at it and regret every moment of my entire life I've spent reading comics, just...mostly), and was a little disappointed, honestly. The crowd is way too tame for any serious invective; the only real vitriol seemed to be between two apparently gifted-with-massive-free-time posters who disagreed on whether it was okay to use the f-word on the board (that word being FUCK, I believe).

Astonishingly, Brian Azzarello appeared as the voice of reason (!), which must mean people are not thinking rationally about this at ALL. His contention that Wright was trying to basically become a "celebrity" with the crafting of a memorable online persona seems pretty much dead-on to me. Which hazards the question...when exactly did the internet become so democratic that a man who writes superhero comics could be in danger of becoming any kind of a celebrity to begin with? I have to wonder how much of my own distaste for contemporary comics has to do with an overabundance of personal "information" (clearly a misleading term in Wright's case) about the creators. It's not just that, say, the 'net allows me to learn what an asshole John Byrne is in a way that was never before possible, but that generally electronic media now gains me access to all manner of foma about creators' personal lives, drug habits, girl/boyfriends, political beliefs, vague name-dropping relationships to people the wider world would consider famous, etc., that I frankly never wanted, and makes the division between who creators are and the creation itself incredibly blurry. And when I'm reading something, I want to read a work that stands on its own, and is more than the necessary by-product of someone's personal ad campaign. Whatever happened to "my work is me?" Bah.

Turbodouche.

Matthew Fluxington

23:11 / 05.05.04

Fuck's sake. I don't really care about the memory of the brave souls yada yada yada. He's just a turbodouche!

I think that Flyboy has it right. The guy is just a turbodouche. He just seems like a sad, pathetic man who made a big mistake and couldn't bail himself out before he was in way over his head. It's just too bad. But really, a lot of people are overreacting.

23:56 / 05.05.04

Does anybody know whether Wright's poster stuff was done before or after the Something Awful Photoshop Phriday posters? I much prefer the latter myself...juvenile tasteless humor beats heavy-handed repetitious political humor any day.

miss wonderstarr

04:53 / 06.05.04

I have to wonder how much of my own distaste for contemporary comics has to do with an overabundance of personal "information" (clearly a misleading term in Wright's case) about the creators.

I was thinking this myself. When I was growing up I didn't know a thing about Denny O'Neill and Neal Adams, or Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. I didn't know what they looked like, how old they were, who they hung out with, what music they listened to... the only reason I knew the names was by sheer repetition and in the Marvel case, hyperbolic alliteration. But even with Marvel jollying up its cosmos-crushing creators and, their astonishing artwork and their world-shattering words, I had no clue about Stan Lee as a person.

That seems very different to the more recent and current situation, where we have this cult of personality around hot writers and people like Warren Ellis promote themselves as a product. Even Morrison, whom I greatly respect, deliberately fashioned personae for different periods of his work, from the fey Morrissey-type of the 1980s to a martial-arts magickian in the 90s. Wright's fictionsuit for himself is on a different level as it does obviously insult those who genuinely served, and was helping him get contracts on false premises -- I doubt Morrison has been given book deals on the basis of his chaos magick, or that any magicnet veterans boards are trying to out him as a fraud -- but this idea of selling books on the back of who the author is, or wants to be, is perhaps a wider trend.

05:34 / 06.05.04

I've never read Micah Wright's comics but I can only feel pity for the bastard. I know what it's like to make up lies to look cool.

I also know that you grow out of that otherwise you're retarded.

No good will come of this.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

12:21 / 06.05.04

With the exception of people like Vonnegut and Zinn, I don't think this'll have too many bad repercussions for the anti-war cause... the guy writes a comic that just got cancelled, for fuck's sake. Even if it was Alan Moore, I doubt the rest of the world would care.

What it will do/has done, probably, is fuck up his life totally (he appears to be haemorrhaging friends right now), which is sad, even if he is a bit of a dick (well, okay, from some of his previous responses to genuine servicemen who tried to call him out, a LOT of a dick) and this is all his own fault.

Imaginary Mongoose Solutions

16:28 / 06.05.04

"I read little of it, but the script for the first issue is hilarious. Any thoughts on whether it was any good, guys?"

Stormwatch: TA has to be one of my favourite books launched in recent years (along with the also canceled Wildcats 3.0). It started out as a very "clancyesque" action book for the first few issues and goes straight into a fight with the Authority. Meanwhile Wright was doing an excellent job of setting up little mysteries here and there:

What's the deal with SW's teleporter?
What's Jukko's (a horribly scarred Finn, their hand to hand specialist) deal?
Does the leader (Ben Santini) really hate superbeings?
Who is pulling whose strings?

While his dialogue had the occasional quark, he set up a bunch of interesting characters and made with a steady supply of cool ideas. Stormwatch didn't have a teleporter, they had a gateway into an alternate world where our US unleashed a superbeing that killed everyone on that world. Jukko is actually a superbeing himself, able to feel the pain of every human in a three-mile radius; he was created during the peroid when Finland was run by cold-war superhumans who were trying to make the entire country post human. Santini ended up recruiting, and then while on the run from the Authority, marrying Flint (a character from the old Stormwatch).

To top it all of there was a nine-issue storyline pitting Stormwatch aganst a militia group led by "Citizen Soldier", a Captain America type that has defended America for hundreds of years, reincarnating as soon as he's killed. In the end, Washington D.C. is in shambles and Citizen Soldier is revealed to be George Washington.

Thet's right: Stormwatch vs. George fucking Washington.

Washington had, you see, been kept alive in this world, endlessly reincarnating, by a masonic occult rite performed on him by Jefferson and others as he lay dying.

Along with all that, there was humor, inrigue, well-rounded characters and the best Midnighter ever written.

I fucking loved SW:TA. I'm pissed that Wright was lying, but man am I going to miss that book.

XXII:X:II = XXX

19:31 / 06.05.04

A celebrity cut his face off and wrote on it: my them folks get pretty heated! The 'Micah Wright scandal' thread is 17 pages long! There's a weird witch hunty feel to it all though. Not to say what he did wasn't weird and stupid, but the sheer affront some people feel is a reminder of how strong feelings about the war, and soldiers in general, are.

Unfortunately the comic reader 'type' tends to be a disenfranchised person who'd like to make more of a difference than s/he feels him/herself capable of making. This results in grandstanding shows of 'heroics' and other behaviors meant to call attention to just how virtuous they are in comparison to their disgraced misanthropic brethren du jour. It's a compensatory tactic for their own inaction and ill-adjustment, not to mention insecurity as a member of whatever groupthink body to which they belong. Lest you need any further proof of his unworthiness as a spokesman for anyone, despite his cultivated image as an innovator and a rebel, Ellis is perhaps one of the most unapologetic perpetrators of this wilding technique; deprived of his cult on Delphi, his fortunes uncoincidentally tumbled around the same time. And let's not even start with Chuck Dixon and John Byrne; they go beyond the pale.

VJB2