A few weeks ago, the subject of a Crush Yiff Destroy post regarding Better Days surfaced on the Furrymilitia forum. I didn't read the piece, really, but it seemed to raise a few hackles among those who keep up with my website. It wasn't until the person mentioned above pointed the link out to me for some reason, that I gave it a cursory inspection. It consists of a scrolling page layout with footnoted jumplinks and poorly cropped, reduced samples of the comic, pointing out snippits that are put in context by the author of the essay in terms of either exposing hidden meanings, prejudices, and inconsistencies I exhibit with his divined notion of how a typical straw-man "conservative" should be. The cropped samples of my comic show embarassing levels of .jpg degridation to the point where I wondered why they didn't just leave them as .gifs and reduce the image sizes. My comic images are only 50 to 80kb in size and these are meer snippits. It's a weird thing to think about it, but it stood out to me and added to the atmosphere of non-seriousness already put forth by the desperately contrived conclusions of the self-admitted "leftie" author. I presumed since his political leanings were mentioned several times, it's one of the core seeds of his irrational dislike. The article didn't give an actual link to my website, which was disappointing. People might have visited the site to see it for themselves.
The post isn't about the article. I don't even think the author believes most of what they espouse. To me, it comes off as the kind of thing someone says in a crowd as a means to entertain through extreme imbellishment. It's hard for me to imagine a person outside of a special education class that doesn't have the mental faculties and self control to be able to sit back, actually ponder everything in context, apply a level of rudamentary critical thinking, and realize the conclusions put forth here can't be true.
In comes the ponderous man.
On the particular forum entry refering to the CYD article, most people responded with some level of maturity. Others were perplexed. Some wanted to react and thrash like prey. The usual. I worked to calm and disuade people from irrational behavior. I see forums as fan-service. I'm not really into them. Occassionally, I'll post something to answer a question, make a clarification, or moderate someone's transgressions when necessary, but in large part, I don't enjoy immersing myself in chattery speculation and assorted commentary. But a man posted to the forum. A man I've not heard from in years. The post was an attempt to start a flame. The post was really bad. It even included something of a battle cry that consisted of the words "flame on" in all caps and underlined. He even went so far as to add a little devil-horned smiley face after resurrecting a quote from a long-ago livejournal entry, taken out of context to imply that I hate Jews. It would have been easy to respond to, but it was even easier to delete. The post identified itself as originating from Mr. Hirtes of CYD.
Oh my.
I remember Mr. Hirtes from back in the 1990s. My bemusement at CYD only became more acute when I realized the kind of people that were contributing. Just about every creator that's had any experience in the fandom in the 1990s has a story about Mr. Hirtes. The creature that is Hirtes is such an odd example of desperate, helpless anger and frustration, that I can't imagine why he hasn't been the subject of a CYD article to date. When I first encountered Hirtes, he was publishing several fanzines that were selling through MailBox books. This was back when the internet was just reaching maturity and the days of vast online art archives were yet to be realized. A lot of work was still traded in embarassingly sad black and white booklets featuring individual pinups of varying quality from page to page. New talent would use them as stepping stones to publication, and when he asked me for work, I sent a few pieces his way. Why people paid for these books, I'll never fathom, but he seemed to have a relationship of charitable sympathy with MailBox Books, which would purchase batches of his booklets every time he put one out.
Hirtes lived in some Midwestern city at the time that I knew him, managing to scrape a living off of his Government disability check. He never revealed the nature of his disability to anyone who asked, and it lead most people with any degree of experience with him to conclude the disability was mental, if anything at all. Every phone conversation with him was sort of like speaking with a twelve year old. Somewhat on the verge of adult thinking, yet never quite there. Never quite having had that big life responsibility enema that everyone stumbles into at one point in their life where they finally resolve to get their shit together. Most of it consisted of begging for new pictures to put in his books. Because I'd contributed a few of them, and didn't block his phone calls, and he hadn't managed to hack me off to the degree where I refused him, I was invited to get together with him and about five other creative types in Las Vegas for a decent time. He'd acquired some kind of flight miles program thing that he could transfer to somebody, and since either didn't need them or couldn't use them within whatever time, he gave them to me.
Names of note that I recall being there.. this was well over six or seven years ago.. included Mr. Flynn, a fairly decent person, and Mr. Sheppard, another fairly okay kinda guy. With this ensemble, we managed to have a decent time checking things out. Hirtes primary reason for going, along with another gentleman who flew all the way from England, was to visit one of the legal brothels outside of the city limit. What a way to blow your Government disability check. The rest of us who didn't need to pay someone hundreds of dollars to convince them to have sex with us, didn't partake. What I feared might be an excercise in the spiralling endless dark pit of mental disability, started to manifest itself when Hirtes managed to win something around $300 in chips at the hotel casino and then brilliantly managed to lose it all the next day trying to win more. The pouty depression started from that point and culminated in all it's brilliance when the gentleman from England (I can't remember his name) who was driving our rental van, managed to accidentally scrape another car while dipping into a left hand turn lane at a major intersection. This would impact the the English gentleman's financial blow from the trip. Even though he wasn't driving, somehow... in some convoluted type of logical reach, Hirtes managed to blame himself for "everything going downhill". Flynn and I exchanged glances as the vocal display of self-pitty started to punctuate itself with near-tears voice cracks, and the stomping of feet on the floorboards of the van as a means of venting his childish frustrations at what wasn't his fault. It was my first candid look at severe furry disfunctionality, and like a green soldier seeing his first battle, I slowly grew numb to whatever scraps of empathy I may have had.
In phone conversations after the trip, Flynn and I came to the conclusion that Hirtes was mentally handicapped in some fashion and couldn't hold down a job with the stress management skills of a three year old that he exhibited in Las Vegas. I didn't know that qualified someone for some sort of welfare, or perhaps his official disability is imbellished in some manner. One may never know. I stopped talking to Hirtes after I moved on to other, more lucrative (a relative term in comics) publications. I realized he just wanted someone there to contribute work, even as the internet culture slowly dried up his copy machine booklet market, and someone to call when he needed his hand held through whatever life hardship he wanted to whine through for the evening. No harsh words were exchanged, or fights were had... we just... stopped speaking. Since that time, whenever his name has creeped into conversations with others, there's always someone with a Hirtes story to share. Wolf had recalled the instances Hirtes would phone his house at times, sobbing over not receiving enough submissions to put out a new 'zine, or how horrible his life was. Mr. Schwartz had an instance where Hirtes had traced either his or Mr. Higgs' line art and tried to pass it off as something original. They expressed their displeasure over the telephone and that was the end of any publishing relationship they may have had.
I think the last thing I received from Hirtes was an e-mail from years ago asking if I wanted to have anything to do with him. I didn't reply to it. I just let it fade. Sometimes we just move on like that. I have projects going on, a job to show up for, bills to pay, all the things that responsible people without mental disabilities have to do. Low and behold, years later, a blast from the past dredges itself up from the dark recesses of the internet. A whiney voice that once begged me for illustrations now aches to tell the world what a horrible right-wing kind of guy that I am.
Of all the things the internet has done for me, it's never helped me write a book report as promised.
October 12 2004, 19:09:53 UTC 13 years ago
But I have seen some people in this fandom do some pretty cold stuff to other people. And some pretty mean stuff. The kinds of things that would earn you some serious 'payback' in the place I grew up in. But hey, if you can draw a naked fur having sex with another naked fur and a prominent huge cock, well it's alright then...
Sometimes I wish I had the talent and patience to draw, especially when I hear about the money spent at art auctions by people who have more money than good sense. A good artist can make a good living at cons (at least 30K a year), I have met several that do.
October 12 2004, 20:06:47 UTC 13 years ago
CYD is an extension of SomethingAwful.com, basically an army of provocoteurs. Someone who knows the right things to say and the right people to approach will fit in perfectly with these people. As such, I can understand it being a magnet to the socially maladjusted types who are still struggling for a group to validate and accept them. It doesn't surprise me at all that they'd just as soon destroy as create if it fills their needs.
October 15 2004, 16:54:41 UTC 13 years ago
I guess I'm lucky I haven't had enough involvement in furry to see all that mean stuff ya mentioned. Would be nice to be able to draw, but yeah, I've seen a little of the shit some of the better ones have to put up with....
October 12 2004, 20:07:52 UTC 13 years ago
October 12 2004, 20:19:47 UTC 13 years ago
Jay Naylor
October 12 2004, 20:23:08 UTC 13 years ago
(Damned new LJ interface)
October 12 2004, 20:28:34 UTC 13 years ago
Now, I go.
Jay Naylor
October 12 2004, 21:48:51 UTC 13 years ago
I would, but my momma taught me not to tell tales. Every time I encounter someone of this mentality, I seem to learn soon that this person was Hoit By Teh Fandom Bad. Much like the most vitriolic arch-neo-psycho-"conseravative" (in quotes to distance from actual read-the-books, thought-it-out real conservatives) is generally a arch-neo-psycho "liberal" (ditto) who's been mugged.
October 14 2004, 10:36:07 UTC 13 years ago
October 15 2004, 10:42:20 UTC 13 years ago
October 15 2004, 17:00:59 UTC 13 years ago
Heck, a friend showed me Better Days and I went through it in a couple of hours... If you can inspire that kind of interest in ONE guy who doesn't know you except by pin-up pieces (and considering that the comic has little relation to those), then surely there are plenty more that haven't stepped forward to speak...
January 31 2006, 17:03:22 UTC 12 years ago
January 31 2006, 17:05:41 UTC 12 years ago
Remember, in 1992, I was a freshman in high school. I didn't brush up against the fandom until 1996, and I wasn't really seriously participating until about 1997-98.
January 31 2006, 17:25:10 UTC 12 years ago
Hirtes has no friends anywhere or in Council Bluffs Iowa.
January 31 2006, 17:30:59 UTC 12 years ago
So I complied. But the entry is still intact and understandable. I have a feeling the people who run LJ just wanted some cursory level of compliance to get a crying, squealing monkey out of their e-mail box.
12 years ago