From: [bv 446] at [cleveland.Freenet.Edu] (James S. Ottaviani) Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.misc Subject: Evan Dorkin, The Usenet Interview -3- Date: 29 Mar 1993 16:37:16 GMT We left off last time in the middle of Evan's answer to Jed's question about what happened with Reflex -- and you thought the cliff-hanger at the end of PC$! #5 was bad. So lets dive back in, with a touch 'o repetition to help you get re-oriented (I hope): *** Evan -- ...Well, the strip was getting on my nerves and Kyle and I were discussing ending it. He couldn't justify the time he was putting into it, we weren't communicating well and I'd been "out" of the last few strips, and we were running out of things to say about the morons we saw at concerts. Out of some frustration, I wrote a short paragraph in Pirate Corp$! #4 about the situation, not mentioning anyone, just saying I was having problems with the strip and the pay was low and we paid for our own tickets to the shows. If I'd thought I'd written my "suicide note" to Reflex in PC$! #4, I sure wouldn't have sent the comic to Reflex for review. But a "suicide note" is what Bob Morales called it when he saw it, and he wrote a second article on me in Reflex, this time an openly personal attack. Again, this is a newsstand magazine, and from what I've seen in it's pages I'm the only person attacked personally, *twice*, no less, *in the review columns* (I can't recall anyone else being personally disparaged, save maybe in an editorial). Morales obviously felt he had to defend his sacred Reflex magazine from my massive slam (read my comments in PC$! #4, they are pretty harmless, name no one by name or inference and I end by complimenting the magazine!) written in an obscure comic that barely sold eighteen hundred copies! Well, and I'm going on memory here because I don't have the article anymore, the attack was really uncalled for. It deals almost totally with personal matters and contains outright untruths and half truths. The gist of the attack was that I was an unprofessional and ungrateful person because I complained about the low pay at Reflex and the fact that Kyle and I paid to see the bands we covered. He said music magazines were known to be low paying because they didn't make good money. He wrote that he spoke to Kyle and that Kyle said something to the effect that all my problems with the strip were that it was difficult working over the distance to California. That's untrue, I detailed my problems with Reflex earlier, and Kyle not only knew I had these complaints but he shared some of them as well. Also, there was no reason to drag Kyle into this in print, except to make it seem Kyle was against me as well. To further slag me personally Morales said that I told people that I felt Lou Stathis and he didn't like me, and he then proceeded to ridicule me about that. Yes, I had told Kyle I felt they didn't like me, they're his friends and I was his friend and yes, it bothered me in a personal, social context. What place did that personal information have in an article? What did that prove and whose business was it? Morales also wrote that I said the same thing to a woman at Reflex whose name I forget (it's in the article) at a concert at the Ritz -- this is totally untrue, the woman in question and I ran into each other at a restaurant in the East Village. I was at dinner with David Muzzachelli, his wife Richmond and Robbie Busch, a friend of mine and Kyles's. Robbie recognized the woman (I didn't even remember her) and we spoke briefly about the magazine. End of story on that one and witnessed, not that this is a court case. But just one of several incorrect statements made when Morales further goes after me to prove how disingenuous and ungrateful I am. Morales' point is that I'm foolish to complain about the low pay at Reflex when my life is so terrific and I'm all set with money and women and work. Honestly, Jed -- you obviously read his gripes, you tell me, am I wrong? He actually begins the piece about how he's "living the life of Evan Dorkin" and it's the good life or some crap like that. The idiot literally goes into a spiel about how bad the country is doing and who am I to complain when I'm making all this money on Predator and Aliens books (Wrong again, I've never worked on Aliens, but why bother researching a hack piece for a magazine, right? He also got the minimum wage amount wrong by a dollar or so when hitting me over the head with how much he thinks I earn.) He says I'm unprofessional because I should have asked the magazine to reimburse me for the tickets and that music magazines pay little. Maybe I was wrong to assume they wouldn't reimburse me, but no one ever offered or wondered aloud if we ever wanted tickets to any shows. And my pay complaint was toward the fact that I hardly made up for the hassles in doing the strip -- my phone calls to Kyle cost more than the amount I was paid. And my only other magazine experience was with Penthouse which paid me literally 12 times my Reflex pay. So I plead unprofessional ignorance in that I'd never worked for any pisspoor cheap music rags before. What was Reflex's excuse in printing that bullshit that no one except Morales cared about? My personal feelings about Morale's motives are that he obviously dislikes me, and, if you read the article, is a jealous little puppy. Maybe not of me, it feels awkward and egotistical to say that, but of working in comics professionally by and large. I'm not the only one to believe this, and Jed, I'd appreciate your take on the reading of this diatribe. I also wouldn't mind you sending the article to Jim to print in the interview. To attempt to prove my point I offer three examples from his piece that I remember. To further embarrass me and malign my character, Morales snidely writes about my having used the xerox machine at Reflex, intimating I did this with regularity and hinting it was out of cheapness. I was pissed off like crazy at that because I used the xerox machine once. Once. One time. And, so did Kyle Baker, Robbie Busch and Stephan DeStefano -- we were xeroxing the pages to a comic we did called Instant Piano (see Lance's question [installment -1-] on it) and Kyle had asked if we could go up to Reflex to run copies off. Lou Stathis took us up (this was directly after the dinner that caused Morales to first swipe at me) and that was the only time I'd been to that Reflex office, the only time I'd ever xeroxed anything at Reflex. Morales said whatever the hell would make me look bad, stretching the truth to fit his petty needs. (And he should talk about being unprofessional, when he sent me a package from Reflex using a DC comics Fed-Ex # -- he did the same thing to another cartoonist friend who briefly worked at Reflex.) But what really angered me, what was truly uncalled for, what I think cemented the pattern of pettiness and jealousy running through his piece -- was when Morales attempts to guess at my personal income and writes about how I always have cute girlfriends. What the &#$@! is the point of that? Not only is that incredibly personal, but incorrect and intrusive. I'd met Morales at most three times, never with a girl except at the dinner with my _girlfriend_ Sarah -- that statement could have caused me problems between my girlfriend and I, and my earnings are _my_ business. The whole thing was stupid, the article was useless and unnecessary, just a nasty, cheap attack. I never had a problem with Morales in regards to my job at Reflex -- he wasn't even my editor! I never mentioned any names publicly -- the person who seemingly caused all the miscommunications was then editor-in-chief Rich Dahm, who had been gone by this nonsense's happening. Only personal animosity explains Morales' having written about me in this manner twice. Discussing my personal income, my female company and my personal conversations displays malice and bad judgment -- furthermore, it's my belief that Morales is a comics geek (read his ass-kissing reviews and interviews for proof) who's ticked he's not working in the industry (a book he had at Piranha's been stillborn for a while now) and is aggravated that a little snotnose like me is. Whatever the case, I urge you to read his unwarranted bile, and between the lines you'll see a real pathetic case. Remember, this is a man who wrote in the Reflex classifieds; "Are you my fan?" and asked money to be sent to him. A joke, yeah, but I think it's sad. Like I said, a looong response, it's festered a long time -- and a bit disjointed, sorry, I'm real tired. It's 10:10 a.m. I gotta get some sleep -- But Mike's questions are short, so... [Mike's first question was kinda personal (nothing like that...) and probably not of interest to the rest of you. Mike, send me a message and I'll forward Evan's response. -- jimO] Mike Fragassi ([m f ragass] at [nickel.ucs.indiana.edu]) -- How many strips of "Kyle & Evan: Critics at Large" did you do with Kyle Baker? Recently I came across an issue of Reflex with the last one, the one just done by Kyle, and I'm curious about for long you had been doing this. I presume, from the smarmy flame in the comics column (which just make your quitting seem fully justified, by the way), that these won't ever be made collected and reprinted, right? Evan -- Oh shit! Mike agrees with me about Morales! Why'd I spend ages writing about all that shit when I could have had Jed call up Mike! Ohhh... Well Mike -- here's the strip info -- as far as I can tell, because it's confusing even to me which one's I was "in". The first "Critics at Large" ran in the Aug 91 issue (Fishbone cover -- Kyle interviewed them and I did an illo of the band) and "reviewed" a Blake Babies/Lemon Heads show. The Sept/Oct issue (Julian Cope cover) has us complaining about kids at a Fishbone gig. Dec 91 (Soundgarden-ugh-cover) has a unique 2-pager -- I saw BimSkalaBim w/Special Beat, Kyle saw a huge benefit gig w/the Circle Jerks, Firehouse etc. Jan/Feb 92, issue #22 (found issue #'s -- Pixies cover) I saw Mary's Danish and the Beastie Boys at a nightmare shithole, Kyle didn't go to a show. We are rebels! Issue #23 (Ice Cube cover -- you know, Ice Cube, the guy who slags Koreans and Jews but white alternative types think he's hep bein' down wif the man) I didn't write my dialogue for this one, which is sad as Kyle writes me better than I do. I missed an earlier strip because I was in the U.K. I think, and I missed one or two later ones because Kyle is hard to get on the phone. An aside -- in Reflex #24 there's a letter and cartoon called "Plagiarists at Large" supposedly from a "Mitch Swede", ragging our strip. Turns out it was Bob Morales, the guy with a joke in his heart and too much time on his hands. Yawn... Issue #24 has, I believe, the last strip I worked on -- this one I review the Pixies, Kyle stays at home, and the strip includes a third reviewer who we thought was a genuine shmucky Reflex reader whose childish letters were so sad Kyle decided to use his junk in the strip. Turned out the "reader" was Bob Morales. So we were half right -- it was still a shmuck. *** That's it for the first round of questions. Follow-up time, eh? Send me your questions for Evan Dorkin and I'll pass them on and we'll be back with more in a couple of weeks. Respond to this post or, more directly, to [h--l--p] at [engin.umich.edu] Also, you might want to write Evan to thank him for doing this and encourage him to visit your very own hometown comic book store this year. His address is 543 Van Duzer Street, Staten Island, NY 10304. seeya jimO --