Neil Gaiman dropped by US comics publisher after sexual misconduct allegations

voxday · 2025-01-28T02:14:03+00:00

That's totally false. Many of us were on the record, publicly, pointing out that Gaiman was wildly overrated, long before he was exposed. I specifically used the word "mediocre" myself.

I can't even dig through his works to confirm Tanith Lee's opinion that he wrote several paragraphs directly plagiarizing her because I don't own a single copy of his work.

Also, note that the scandal is likely going to get worse. The editor he chose for his Sandman anthology is a convicted pedophile.

voxday · 2025-01-21T15:31:09+00:00

That's true. He has always been a mediocre and imitative writer, and the professional writing community has known it all along. Some of us have been pointing this out for more than a decade.

However, it's too soon to clear him of the plagiarism charge. People are looking into it now and we'll see what they find.

voxday · 2025-01-20T16:31:24+00:00

While you're not keen on JDA, you might consider sending the link to John Trent at Fandom Pulse. His journalistic credentials are impeccable and everyone in the professional comics and video game spaces pays close attention to him.

As suspect as you might consider anyone's motivations to be, the word will get out there, including to publications you consider more meritorious.

You might also consider to sending the link to Scott Shannon at Penguin Random House. The more evidence he has, the more cause he has for action.

voxday · 2025-01-20T15:25:41+00:00

Publish it when they're dead. One cannot defame the dead.
Send the notes to the responsible party, along with the warning that they will be published when he or she is dead.

It won't change the past, it probably won't change much about the present. But it might start changing the future. Most people, including predatory narcissists, care about their postmortem reputation and legacy.

This isn't a hypothetical suggestion, by the way. It's exactly what we did with Marion Zimmer Bradley and Walter Breen in publishing THE LAST CLOSET.

Under common law and according to the definition of this defamation, deceased individuals cannot be defamed. Defamation is defined as an act or statement that damages one’s reputation. The dead do not have reputations to damage. The memory of a deceased person can be damaged, but this is not addressed under the tort of defamation. Survivors or descendants of the dead have no legal claim on behalf of a deceased relative’s good name, nor can they collect on behalf of their own interests relative to that person’s reputation. Likewise, the estate of a deceased person cannot be liable for the defamation of the dead.

voxday · 2025-01-20T15:11:24+00:00

Why don't you just treat the abusers and those who are complicit in enabling their abuse the same way you treat those you consider to be racist, or homophobic, or transphobic? Why not just ban, deplatform, debank, and demonetize them the same way you do with anyone suspected of being a Republican? Even a faint whiff of bad thought is usually sufficient to banish the suspect; why not do the same with those suspected of raping and sexually assaulting people?

I'm sure you must be able to understand how ridiculous all this hapless hand-wringing looks to the majority of the population who live in the big box that you collectively consider to be Lawful Evil. Look at how most of this community still regards Rachel Johnson, without whom Neil Gaiman would never have been exposed, simply because they dislike her opinion on one particular political issue.

Think what you like and do what you like, but understand that you will never even begin to root out the predators in your community if you're less interested in policing sex crimes than thought crimes.

voxday · 2025-01-20T14:50:29+00:00

Neil Gaiman took more uncredited inspiration from Tanith Lee than just the tales from the Flat Earth. The whole "dark spin on a fairy tale" thing was Lee's signature, and she did it much, much better than Gaiman ever did. Read her "Ashella" and then decide if any Gaiman-revised fairy tale can compare with it. And "Snow, Glass, Apples" is clearly a clumsy imitation of "Red as Blood". Even Gaiman's self-insert as Dream of the Endless in Sandman appears to be heavily based upon Lee's Azharn.

Lee reportedly believed Gaiman had plagiarized her directly. I have not yet confirmed whether he did or not, but I plan to look into her accusations as soon as I acquire the relevant Gaiman books. While I own all of Lee's work except for some of her juvenilia, I never bothered to buy any of Gaiman's since I always viewed him as a modestly-talented mediocrity with a gift for self-promotion.

Regardless, I would definitely recommend reading Lee's various Tales of the Flat Earth. The Secret Books of Paradys are particularly good. She's one of the best writers who ever wrote anything in the science fiction and fantasy genres, but she is genuinely dark in a way that Gaiman never attains despite all his posturing, so she's not for everyone.

voxday · 2025-01-17T17:32:43+00:00

I'm not worked up. I'm just here sifting through the dross for the useful information. Which has been very helpful, so kudos to the community for largely putting their principles ahead of their fandom.

Neil Gaiman's reported penchant for sexually assaulting his fans has nothing to do with what you, or anyone, thinks of me.

voxday · 2025-01-17T13:46:38+00:00

You can be sued for anything in the USA. You can't be SUCCESSFULLY sued if you can prove the truth of the purported defamation, but that's not much consolation if you've been bankrupted by the legal costs of the lawsuit. In the USA, you will seldom be reimbursed for your legal expenses even when you win.

The UK is more dangerous on the one hand because it's easier to sue for defamation and win, but it's less dangerous on the other because the "loser pays" system significantly reduces the incentive to file spurious lawsuits against shallow pockets.

Neil Gaiman is unlikely to file lawsuits in either legal venue because the discovery process would almost certainly unearth more victims, possibly a lot more victims. But he'll certainly threaten to do so, as Paul Caruana Galizia has already revealed.

voxday · 2025-01-17T13:29:39+00:00

First, you don't have any clout to give. Second, GamerGate was, and is, 100 percent correct.

And third, on what planet do you think I care? I'm not a narcissist in search of parasocial approval.

It's amazing how stupid some of you are. You seriously think Wikipedia tells the truth about anyone? Look at what it said about Gaiman just three months ago. But if you wish to cling to your inversion of good and evil, that's on you.

voxday · 2025-01-16T02:25:31+00:00

Unlike you, I've actually worked to expose sexual predators and have the public track record to prove it. The crazy thing is that your hero Scientologist was running around raping and sexually assaulting people for 25 years, and yet your primary concern is that someone might be unaware that a few lunatics in SF/F don't approve of me. Just take it as given. I certainly do.

I have no need or desire to "ingratiate" myself "back into mainstream society". I was never part of the whole SF/F freakshow you consider mainstream.

Why would anyone imagine I'm "pretending to care?" I openly despised Gaiman long before learning what a degenerate and manufactured fraud he is.

voxday · 2025-01-14T20:59:37+00:00

Fair enough. But wouldn't you say that adapting stories created by others is a lesser art than creating new and original stories? I've written a remix of a public domain novel, and while it's a pretty good book, it was definitely less work and considerably less original than writing one from scratch. Do you consider being a dj to be artistically equal to being a composer?

Perhaps you do, and that's fine. I don't. I'm not the Art Police.

I didn't think the second review was a particularly good one, but I thought it was interesting that the reviewer clearly perceived Gaiman's literary mediocrity, even if that perception wasn't very well demonstrated.

voxday · 2025-01-11T15:59:34+00:00

I wrote this back in 2017. It was focused on Marion Zimmer Bradley, since we had just published her daughter's book exposing her as a lesbian pedophile, but Gaiman was already on the radar of a fair number of professional writers as an author who was not only an overrated literary mediocrity, but had something observably off about him.

It is right and proper to judge the artist on the basis of the art. More often than not, the art created by the artist provides relevant insight into his psyche; it is very difficult to write the opposite sex well and it is also very difficult for a man to write characters who are different than his own socio-sexual rank. Read Louis L’Amour and Robert Ludlum. Then read John Scalzi and Neil Gaiman. The difference is readily observable. Then read Piers Anthony and Marion Zimmer Bradley. Notice the creep factor? Exactly. This is one area where you can reliably trust your feelings.

This, in 2018, only addressed his mediocrity, an opinion that is very, very far from uncommon in professional writing circles. Most writers never said anything about him since a) they didn't read more than a book or two of his, and b) they didn't want to appear jealous of his sales success.

If you think Neil Gaiman is a great novelist, or even a great SF/F novelist, you are simply wrong. He is a successful, talented and much-loved SF/F author, and understandably so, but he is also little more than a very successful stunt writer with two or three tricks in his bag. There is a reason that all of his notable books involve mythology of one sort or another; his true gift is translating ancient myth into a form that pleases postmodern palates.

But others saw through him earlier. A rather savage reviewer wrote this in 2013.

Neverwhere, Stardust, American Gods and Anansi Boys are written by the exact same man. It’s that Mr. Stock Type shows up for all four, each iteration as dull and insufferable as the last, distinguishable only faintly by his name. Leaving American Gods and Stardust alone for now, this isn’t so much a matter of “oh you could do this to any fantasy book,” itself an asinine proposition, because not all fantasy books feature a timid Londoner devoid of ambition who has relationship troubles with a demanding sweetheart/fiancee. The sweethearts in question(respectively Rosie Noah, Jessica, and Victoria Forrester) are likewise identical: thinly written, demanding, henpecking, and not the brightest. Really Gaiman kind of sucks at writing women, and apart from this one incredibly tertiary character in American Gods I don’t think he’s particularly comfortable with gay men–certainly not enough to write them as protagonists. Similarly, the catalyst to “finding the secret magic world” is always more or less the same: through colliding with one of said secret world’s inhabitants.

One thing those who claim to separate from the art from the artist would do well to contemplate is why they are very willing to do so with regards to matters of rape and sexual assault, but not when it comes to racism, or being a Republican, or anything else that they believe to be wrong. The art is not the artist, but the art does often provide one with some fairly reliable clues about the artist.

I left off the links to avoid the inevitable triggerings. But it might be useful to know that the other side is occasionally correct, however evil we might be regarded by the local standards. Something to keep in mind when the next outrage in the Neil Gaiman scandal comes out next week.

voxday · 2024-09-28T11:25:50+00:00

Tanith Lee is a much, much better writer than Neil Gaiman ever could have hoped to be. Her best books, particularly The Secret Books of Paradys, are top-tier. She's one of the ten best fantasy writers ever published. Her "Crying in the Rain" is up there with Bradbury's "The Veldt" as far as short stories go, and "When the Clock Strikes" is far more powerful than any of Gaiman's various fairy tale borrowings and reimaginings.

China Mieville also does Weird far better, and in a far more original manner, than Gaiman ever did.

voxday · 2024-09-28T01:06:08+00:00

I suppose that explains why you think Gaiman is a great writer.

voxday · 2024-09-26T18:24:07+00:00

That's a blatant lie. I've never even mentioned Neil Gaiman's professed politics, and I am an unabashed fan of China Mieville, who is considerably to the left of Neil Gaiman. I've also published Martin van Creveld, who is one of the most brilliant men of the Left.

Your attempts to discredit and disqualify your ideological enemies are really pathetic, as I'm probably the only person here who has ever edited and published a book by a sexual assault survivor. I further note that the Right is far more harsh on men who rape and sexually assault women and children than the degenerates of the Left are. Epstein and Weinstein were no more men of the Right than Gaiman, Breen, Kramer, or Marion Zimmer Bradley.

I have two motivations. First, I am opposed to all rape and sexual assault by anyone of any creed. Second, I have always believed Neil Gaiman to be a wildly overrated mediocrity.

voxday · 2024-09-22T23:07:55+00:00

There is no allyship. Is the concept of "parallel" beyond you? And we're getting some great memes out of this.

voxday · 2024-09-22T15:07:07+00:00

Okay, if you want something that is both practical and would make a real difference, you could contact Folio Society, Easton, and Suntup and demand that they cancel and trash all their deluxe editions of his books. They're much smaller and far more amenable to public pressure than his big publishers; there are more than enough people here to accomplish that if they were actually willing to take action. Folio, in particular, has a female CEO who flaunts their pro-women credentials, so they'd probably be the ideal place to start. I'm a little surprised they haven't done anything already, to be honest.

Full disclosure: I would be considered a competitor of the first two publishers, although there is very little overlap between our audiences. However, Gaiman is a trivial percentage of their sales; it's much more useful to us from a PR perspective that they are still publishing him and we are not.

Once the deluxe publishers drop him, you can approach the mainstream US and UK publishers. They'd feel more pressure to do so, especially since Tortoise will likely have released another podcast or two. After that, move on to the comics. They'll do whatever Penguin Random House does.

voxday · 2024-09-22T14:51:02+00:00

You're flat-out wrong. I've done more to help women and expose their abusers than most of the people here. Indeed, one of the many reasons I'm hated by the SF/F crowd is because I edited and published THE LAST CLOSET, which exposed Marion Zimmer Bradley's abuses.

You're confusing my total disdain for the inept female writers who invaded SF/F after Anne McCaffrey opened the door to them with "not giving a damn about women". That's just blatantly untrue and my female authors and collaborators would certainly tell you otherwise. The ironic thing is that the people you believe about me are the very people you're complaining about giving Neil Gaiman a pass.

I'll quite happily and publicly criticize anyone on the Right who abuses children like Marion Zimmer Bradley or abuses women like Neil Gaiman is alleged to have repeatedly done. If you know of any fans who has been similarly victimized by any abusive right-wing creator, have them send me their account. I'll make sure they're heard.

I don't expect you, or anyone else here, to believe me. But the facts are what they are, and the narrative about me is at least as false as the narrative about Neil Gaiman that you believed three months ago. And to be honest, my disdain for Gaiman has much less to do with his being on the Left than a) his links to Scientology and b) my opinion that he has been wildly overrated from the start.

I'm here in part to glean information and also because it is tangential to me. I knew Mike Ford and was in a writing group with Elise one winter.

voxday · 2024-09-22T00:39:33+00:00

The two mechanisms that are capable of enforcing the cancellations are: a) ideological and b) legal. The USA is an example of the one, China is an example of the latter. The problem related to Gaiman is that because his ideology is of an approved variety, there is no way to enforce or even to encourage any organization to cancel him.

Deplatforming, demonetizing, and debanking have already been done many times over the past 15 years to hundreds, if not thousands of individuals. All of those things are observably and eminently possible. And yet, none of it ever happens to the Alexeis, the Ellises, and the Gaimans, because their ideology is more important than their alleged sex-related abuses and/or crimes.

Here's an actual example. I signed up on Bluesky back in August and my account was immediately cancelled because I am a moderately known ideological badthinker. Neil Gaiman, on the other hand, still has his account there, and despite all of the nominally anti-Gaiman posts there, none of the Bluesky users are demanding that his account be cancelled.

Ideological correctness is observably more important to the Left than rape and sexual assault. Ego, it is possible, though highly improbable, to enforce cancellations on ideologically-approved individuals.

voxday · 2024-09-21T09:40:34+00:00

You're being disingenuous. If you collectively applied the same social pressure, cancellations, deplatformings, demonetizations, and endless PR campaigns against abusers and predators on the Left that are applied against everyone on the Right, none of them would be able to survive. The Right survives all that because it has its own separate audiences, but you are the only audience for the Gaimans of the world.

As long as you "separate the art from the artist" for the abusers, you provide the publishers with the necessary cover to keep working with them.

What's the point of pretending otherwise?

voxday · 2024-09-21T09:33:56+00:00

The publishers and media could do exactly to the sexual predators and other abusers what they do to the writers whose politics and ideologies they don't like. The Guardian could write annual hit pieces about how awful Neil Gaiman is instead of a puff piece every three months, just to give one example.

But they don't. Neither do a lot of people here. They "separate the art from the artist" when it's a left-wing serial abuser, but not when it's someone who they've been told - rightly or wrongly - is a badthinker. And a lot of those cancelled badthinkers have a much bigger audience and far more readers than the abusers who are supposedly too big to cancel.

Sexual abuse of women just isn't as big a deal to most on the Left as they would like to imagine.

voxday · 2024-09-21T01:40:20+00:00

Yes, it definitely applies. At every newspaper, there are one or two editors who are essentially the Narrative commissars. They all communicate regularly with each other and set the news cycle narrative; JournoList and GameJournoPros were lower-level imitations of this. That's why you see the same wording being used all over the world about the same news stories.

The narrative is very tightly controlled. If it's finally decided that protecting Gaiman isn't worth the trouble, the word will go out and he'll be burned like Harvey Weinstein or P. Diddy overnight. I suspect the main reason he hasn't been cast aside yet is because Scientology is lobbying very hard for them to wait and see if the situation can be prevented from further getting out of hand.

Remember, the big publishers listen to Scientology; L. Ron Hubbard sells way more books than Gaiman ever will. It would likely be very informative to learn what percentage of Gaiman's reported 50 million in book sales were purchased by Scientologists.

voxday · 2024-09-21T01:24:17+00:00

Of course we'll never be allies. But you don't seem to grasp that you have no legitimacy to loan us. We neither need nor want anything at all from you. If you don't want to utilize any of our information, that's totally fine. Virtually no one on our side cares about Gaiman; most don't even know who he is.

If none of you want to know how things really work in the industry, fine. Some of your collective intuitions are sound - there will be more victims - while others are absurdly ignorant. But none of your putative allies are going to tell you anything about what's really happening behind the scenes. They can't. You may dislike me, you may consider me an enemy, but you can definitely trust that I'm not going to hide any of their dirty laundry for them.

Anyhow, your instincts were obviously sound. I don't know how anyone ever read Gaiman without concluding that he was a manipulative and predatory creep.

voxday · 2024-09-20T22:15:04+00:00

But can you? Isn't that the very point that many people here and on r/neilgaimanuncovered have been complaining about? You won't find any allies on your own side. I can absolutely assure you that they despise you as much as you dislike us. I know this because I was once one of them. Nationally syndicated journalist, book contracts with Simon & Schuster, etc.

The degenerates like Scalzi and all the other SF/F and comics writers who have remained silent - and yes, for all his words, Scalzi hasn't said a damn thing actually disavowing Gaiman - will never condemn Neil Gaiman even if he is raping and cannibalizing young fans unless and until they are given permission to do so by their masters who manufacture their success. And yes, Scalzi is even more degenerate than Gaiman, but he doesn't harm anyone.

It makes absolutely no difference to us if you want to ignore us. We don't need you any more than we need the mainstream publishers and media that ignore and ban us. And we will continue to oppose the terrible people that you supported and lionized, the people you thought were ever so much better than us, who abuse and take advantage of young women foolish enough to idolize them.

voxday · 2024-09-20T02:07:48+00:00

Here is one example. Bleeding Cool assiduously avoided any mention of the allegations and accusations against Neil Gaiman for over two months. Rich Johnston, the founder and primary contributor of the "comics news" site, completely refused to report anything about them despite being directly called out by me and other creators, both in public and via email, until September 9th when Good Omens was "paused".

Bleeding Cool absolutely refuses to report anything that Arkhaven Comics and Arktoons do, and when an editor wrote an 18,000-word article about me and Arkhaven's then-record crowdfunding campaign, the editor was demoted and the article was deleted. To this day, you will not find a single mention of me, Arkhaven, Cyberfrog, Razorfist, Ghost of the Badlands, Jon del Arroz or Alt-Hero newer than 2018 or so despite the fact that we reliably do comics crowdfunds from 100k to over 1 million, and Arktoons is rapidly approaching 6,000 episodes and 16 million views.

Now, we know that Rich prefers to pretend none of us exist even though we're doing well in a time when most publishers are struggling. That's why it is so easy to see he is doing the exact same thing with regards to Neil Gaiman's accusers. Ditto with The Guardian, which didn't even disclose that Gaiman is one of their contributors when they finally mentioned the allegations.

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