Ellison and Groth have also both become completely inexcusable assholes as the decades have gone by, to the extent that they actually prove correct the Dr. Evil quote, “There’s nothing more pathetic than an aging hipster.”

My point is, I still want to support their respective works, but I really wish I could do so without lending any support whatsoever to the two men themselves.

So, I’ll continue to buy Ellison’s stories and the stuff out of Fantagraphics’ catalog that interest me, but I’d feel much better about it if I could be picking the pockets of Ellison and Groth themselves to pay for their work, so that the work could continue, without bankrolling either man in the process.

That is subjective, not objective, something that you’ve complained about before.
He defnietly has a voice to his writing, and his work has more levels to it than just a surface one, so ‘genre hacksman’ is a misuse of the term.
You’re sounding more Joe Quesada than Joe Rice by ignoring that and getting defensive.
(sorry if that’s too harsh)

” Or, frankly, how including an interesting, important interview is some affront to him. Ellison’s suit is ridiculous, no matter how dickish Groth has acted in the past. Ellison is the one that decided to litigate vs. a good company just because of this long, tired grudge. Groth’s been an asshole to him in the past, but including this interview isn’t an example of such.”

Neil Gaiman succesfully sued over using his name to advertise the the TPB of the mini-series Angela by Todd Mcfarlen (among other things), so there must be some merit to the claims of Ellison over using his name to advertise a work.
(Maybe they should just put the publisher on the cover without a motuh to poke fun at Ellison’s story ‘I have no mouth but I must scream’. Those who were going to buy it already would get the joke, and with a clever tag it might appeal to the casual shopper).

Joe, you are entitled to your opinion without question, however, others are equally entitled to their opinion regarding yours.

I didn’t see anything where Joe said they weren’t. I did see something along the lines of “I don’t really care if my post has offended you”, but he’s never claimed to be entirely empathetic to the readers.

Except it is, kind of. If I understand American defamation law correctly, Ellison needs to prove that Groth’s comments are untrue and that they were made maliciously.

I have no idea whether they’re true or not, but Fantagraphics have provided plenty of evidence that they don’t like Ellison, and have taken several opportunities to insult him.

Just by taking the time to compose and post a comment, you have, in fact, participated. You just haven’t added anything of note to the ‘discussion’.

What I find distasteful with this case is that Ellison seems like someone who has no problem when he’s the one calling people names.

I’m also partly shocked partly amused by the declarations of intellectual bancruptcy inherent in responses along the line of “it’s just an old feud”, “best not get involved” or “how can you know who’s right here” or “both have been dicks to each other”. Do those people self-identify as mentally challenged? There are legal documents available, anyone willing to do so can inform themselves and form their own opinion. No need to argue them or be interested enough in the first place, but if either of these is the case, that can be stated without having to resort to nonsense-phrases. As to the “feud”-line, it appears (but probably isn’t the case) that people are too dense to understand that it doesn’t matter who has been the bigger jerk over the years. That’s not how morals work and it certainly isn’t how the law works. There is a concrete claim/suit here which will be settled/decided one way or the other. Groth could eat little children in his spare time and still be 100% right in this case and vice versa.

Some folks seem to disagree.

But I imagine that will be settled in a court of law, rather than in blog responses, no?

Regarding the involvement of the First Amendment, here’s Fanta’s justification for invoking the phrase.

“Notwithstanding Ellison’s own denials (embedded in the text of his rambling lawsuit), we consider this suit to be a petty and malicious effort to trample our 1st Amendment rights to truthfully relate the history of our company, and to cost us money and time.”

I’m out of this.

Not entirely.

Gary Groth also writes about the trial that led to the whole hullabaloo, and he says several unflattering things about Ellison, who considers this to be libel. Defamation is the big part of the lawsuit. Who knows if it’s true or not, but Groth & Thompson have taken pretty much every opportunity to snipe at Ellison over the years, up to and including forming the “Enemies of Ellison”. I’d probably consider the comments innocuous on their own, but Fantagraphics have given Ellison plenty of ammo over the years. The Comics Journal has certainly spent a lot of time writing about a guy who hasn’t done much work in the medium.

The other part isn’t quite about the interview. Ellison doesn’t deny that Fantagraphics owns it; he claims that Fantagraphics doesn’t have to right to use his name to promote the book. Which seems a bit of an arbitrary distinction, but I can almost-kind-of see his point.

The page Joe links to actually has some very good info, including Ellison’s full claim and Fantagraphics’ rebuttal (which is rather more legalese)

That’s about the gist of it, right?

I’ll be buying some Fanta books this week.

But this is strictly an opinion piece. Nothing more and nothing less. It is fairly clearly an opinion piece.

An opinion piece that has, at the very beginning of it, “by Joe Rice.” So while I happen to agree with the gist of Joe’s post (A. Fantagraphics is a great company and B. Ellison’s case seems wanting), that does not mean that Joe is “speaking for Comics Should Be Good.” It’s not some collective hive mind.

We all have our opinions, and I like everyone to have the freedom to express that opinion, even if it is one that I, personally, disagree with.

ETA: Ryan’s post (which he posted while I was writing this one), though, was a lot better than most of the criticism Joe was getting. That’s some fine criticism there, Ryan!

- get facts incorrect (Ellison is suing primarily for defamation, not merely the interview/cover)

- off-handedly dismiss Ellison’s work (of which I’m not even a big fan, but hey – this whole mess started because Gary Groth thought he was an important figure)

- disregard a quarter-century of feuding and petty squabbling and grossly simplify the situation to “Ellison is mean and Fantagraphics publish good books.”

As Ed pointed out, these two situations are wildly different, for a variety of reasons.

WILDLY different.

The fact that you even had to say the most obvious of all obviousnesses means that yes, Virginia, the sky is falling.

And I didn’t even bring my umbrella.