Andrew Clavin dissects Brett Kavanaugh’s 2018 confirmation hearings, where Christine Blasey Ford’s unverified assault claim—lacking dates or witnesses—became a partisan credibility battle, mirroring Duke Lacrosse and Tawana Brawley controversies. He slams media bias (e.g., "stinky Jewface" slurs) and leftist prioritization of belief over evidence, while comic artist Ethan Van Skyver recounts DC Comics’ ideological purge: his 20-year career derailed by a misread Hitler satire, death threats tied to the "Gotham City Pizza incident," and sales drops (10% decline) as "SJWs" enforce diversity mandates over fan-driven creativity. Both threads expose how political weaponization—whether in courts or culture—erodes truth and art alike. [Automatically generated summary]
The New York Times, a former newspaper, is calling on its readers to report examples of political disinformation being spread to the public.
I did not make that up, though I kind of wish I had.
An article headlined, if you see disinformation ahead of the midterms, we want to hear from you, was posted in the Times, I guess so people wouldn't have to look very far before reporting in.
So far, the Times has received several reports.
In one email, UN Ambassador Nikki Haley wrote, quote, Dear New York Times, your report suggesting I'd paid over $50,000 for curtains in my New York apartment was proved mistaken in its own sixth paragraph where you yourself reported that the curtains were ordered during the Obama administration, unquote.
The Times promptly replied, quote, dear stinky Jewface, this was not a mistake.
We were trying to make you look bad because you support America and Israel, both of which we've been trying to undermine for the last 30 years, unquote.
Another email came from Judge Brett Kavanaugh, who protested, quote, dear New York Times, I wish to report an article mistakenly accusing me of making salacious remarks in my high school yearbook.
The source of that report was an anti-Trump fanatic, a fact you included in an early draft, then deleted, unquote.
The Times replied, quote, dear fascist smoky pants, no mistake there.
We were trying to sink your Supreme Court nomination by any means necessary so that babies can continue to be slaughtered in the womb, unquote.
Yet another email came from President Donald Trump saying, quote, I think your reporting on me has been broadly biased and unfair, unquote, to which the Times replied, quote, eat crap and die, son of Satan, unquote.
Finally, an email reported that the paper mistakenly claimed it contained all the news that's fit to print, but the Times responded that this too is not a mistake, but merely a way of pretending the New York Times is still the New York Times.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
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All right, the Clavenless weekend is right here, and I feel guilty sending you into the abyss while the Kavanaugh hearings are going on.
Even as I speak, the aftermath will be bloody, I'm sure, and you'll be all alone because you won't have me there to save you, but consider it a kind of penance for your sins.
And when we get back on Monday, those of you who survive, I will be telling you all about it.
I hate to comment on things that are going on in the moment anyway, because I like to think about them, read and find out what my opinion actually is.
But I do have a lot to say about what is happening right now.
I've seen some of the opening of the hearing, and I do have a lot to say about it.
Hearing Matters: Truth and Accusations00:18:13
And we've also got an absolutely fascinating interview with Ethan Van Skyver, who is an artist for both DC Comics and Marvel Comics for many years and basically lost his job when it turned out that he supported President Trump.
And it's a really interesting interview for those of you who like comics or art or books or anything about how hard it is to be a conservative and actually produce the entertainment that you consume.
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So they've started the hearing.
They have Christine Blasey Ford made her statement, her opening statement, and then they have a prosecutor who's kind of this lady from Arizona who's kind of in a bad way because she is getting the time that senators get, which is only five minutes.
So she's trying to build her case and kind of find out what's going on.
But let's listen to Christine Blazing Ford.
She makes a good impression.
She comes across well.
And then I will tell you what I think about this, which really is not going to change almost no matter what happens in the following few hours.
I am here today not because I want to be.
I am terrified.
I am here because I believe it is my civic duty to tell you what happened to me while Brett Kavanaugh and I were in high school.
When I got to the top of the stairs, I was pushed from behind into a bedroom across from the bathroom.
I couldn't see who pushed me.
Brett and Mark came into the bedroom and locked the door behind them.
I was pushed onto the bed and Brett got on top of me.
He began running his hands over my body and grinding into me.
I yelled, hoping that someone downstairs might hear me.
And I tried to get away from him, but his weight was heavy.
Brett groped me and tried to take off my clothes.
He had a hard time because he was very inebriated and because I was wearing a one-piece bathing suit underneath my clothing.
I believed he was going to rape me.
I tried to yell for help.
When I did, Brett put his hand over my mouth to stop me from yelling.
This is what terrified me the most, and this had the most lasting impact on my life.
It was hard for me to breathe, and I thought that Brett was accidentally going to kill me.
Both Brett and Mark were drunkenly laughing during the attack.
They seemed to be having a very good time.
So you look at her.
She's credible, whatever that word means.
She's believable.
She's voice is trembling.
She's emotional.
And the story itself is credible, although she can't remember the day or the place.
Here is the thing about this hearing.
It doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter because we don't have any facts.
There's no corroboration from the time.
The people who she says were there say it didn't happen or they don't remember.
It is just all they're saying is, do you believe her?
And when the Democratic senators are asking questions, they're asking these general questions about sexual assault, as if this had anything to do with sexual assault as a major issue, as an issue, an overarching issue.
It doesn't.
It has to do with this incident and whether it happened.
And there is not enough information here to prove it or disprove it.
She could be lying.
She could be telling the truth.
She could be misremembering.
Anything could be possible.
And, you know, I mean, Dick Durbin, who is really, he really is, he's gone the full sleaz at this point.
He says, how sure, what percentage sure are you that this happened?
And the answer is, she says 100%.
Well, what difference does it make?
You know, what difference does it make?
It's like that old song, I believe I can fly.
That's great, until you step off a building and find out you can't.
It's not an attack on her.
It's not an attack on any other sexual victim of sexual assault.
It has nothing to do with that.
It has to do with process.
This is the hardest thing for the human heart to learn, that facts are what matter in these cases.
It is so hard when you think of all the lynchings that took place.
There were lynchings of blacks.
There was a lynching of a white man by blacks for rape and murder.
There were lynchings of Jews.
There were attacks on Catholics.
We remember Tawana Brawley, who ruined a man's life with a lie.
We remember the Duke La Crosse case where the guys were splattered all over the fronts of magazines.
We remember the Rolling Stone.
They had their story at UVA, right, where there was this gang rape.
All these stories are powerful.
You can sit there and, of course, the left is constantly saying, I believe, I believe, I believe.
It doesn't matter what you believe.
What matters is the truth.
What matters is the facts.
This is, this is an important moment for America.
It really is.
You almost never hear me say this.
I always believe tomorrow is another day.
You know, these things come and they go.
If the Republicans let their nominee go down on unsubstantiated, unprovable allegations, no matter how credible this woman is, if they succumb to fear, because that's all it is, it's fear that the public will believe her, fear that women will get angry, fear that people will attack them or vote them out of office.
If they succumb to that, they have lost the country.
They have lost what the country means, what it's supposed to be about.
They have lost the concept of guilty, of innocent until proven guilty.
They have lost the concept of due process.
They have lost the power to put forward anybody because, first of all, none of us is wholly clean and any of us can be slandered.
I mean, both those things are true.
There's no such thing as a perfect person.
And if you're going to destroy people with things that happened 36 years ago, that alone is bad.
But if you're going to destroy them with something somebody said happened 36 years ago, you have lost everything.
They will lose this House.
I think they'll lose the Senate.
Whereas, whereas if they stand firm, if they stand firm and they push forward and confirm Kavanaugh, which is what I believe they should do without question, without doubt, unless he comes out, the only thing that would change my tune, my opinion, is if he came out and said, ah, all right, I confess, I confess.
You know, I mean, that would be the one thing that would change my opinion.
But if they stand firm, the lynch mob hysteria will pass.
Good people who write this minute are thinking, I believe her, I believe, will stop and think, well, wait a minute, why did I believe her?
What were the facts?
Where was the corroboration?
What was going on here?
What got me so carried away?
Good people will do that.
Not on the left, but good people will do it and they will come to their senses.
The lynch mob mentality will pass and the Republicans will survive.
And of course, if anything ever comes out that can be proved, he can be impeached.
But then you've got to prove it.
Then you've got to put forward the evidence and not just ask people whether you believe her.
This cry of I believe her is the cry of every single lynch mob that ever killed a man.
The cry of I believe her has gone all through history.
It is so hard for our hearts to understand that it doesn't matter what you believe.
It doesn't matter whether I believe in God.
It only matters whether God is there.
It does not matter what I believe is the truth.
It only matters whether it can be proved and whether there are facts.
This is the thing.
I mean, and when you saw yesterday, yesterday, this country, the press, the left worked itself up into a witch hunt crucible mentality that was shameful.
I mean, if the left had any shame left, I mean, I got to the point where I was laughing at part.
I mean, I hate to, I have a mordant sense of humor.
I have a very dark sense of humor.
And at one point, Brett Kavanaugh put forward his calendars for the year 1982, and it had things where it said he had been grounded.
He had been grounded.
And I thought, well, he was obviously grounded because he killed and dismembered a prostitute.
It's like, Brett, you go to your room right now.
I told you not to kill any more prostitutes.
No more gang rape parties for you, my friend.
You have to stay home from the gang rape parties if you kill any more.
You know, it's like, how insane did it get yesterday?
How ugly did it get?
And yet, yet, always, always from the news, from the left-wing news people was that the guilt, the drumbeat, I believe, I believe, I believe, not let's see what happens, not let's see if there are any facts, not there are no facts, but I believe they were even reporting at one point an anonymous report that went on the news, an anonymous report saying, oh yeah, he pushed me up against a wall or something.
You know, our friends at Newsbusters, the Media Research Center, they put up this montage of news people convicting Brett Kavanaugh.
Listen to this, cut number six.
He's a liar.
Really big red flags today, and this is just the latest one.
I don't think Brett Kavanaugh takes women's pain very seriously.
Kavanaugh simply refers to it as the accuser.
Kavanaugh has lied multiple times.
Kavanaugh's potentially lying.
And that to me is disqualified.
This is not a court of law, right?
So this doesn't need to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
Credibly accused.
Credibly accused.
Credibly and authoritatively accused.
Credibly accused of sexual assault involving teeth.
Who are you going to believe?
She's being bullied into showing up four or five days after this letter is leaked to be questioned by 11 white men.
Pen all white men.
10 white men.
White men.
All white men.
All white men.
Asking her, you know, aggressive and obnoxious questions.
Why not?
Hold a nomination.
Hold a nomination.
Kavanaugh is quite overcooked.
His nomination should be withdrawn.
It wouldn't surprise me if he chose to withdraw.
This nomination is cut.
They're protecting a man who is probably guilty.
So much stuff there.
The casual racism of our modern press, the casual racism is despicable.
They are despicable.
Every time the words a white man comes out of their mouth, the guy should be thrown off the air.
He should be fired or she should be fired on the spot.
What don't you like about the color of white skin?
What is it you don't like about it?
What gives you the right to judge a man by the color of his skin?
It is wrong.
It is wrong when you do it to black people.
It's wrong when you do it to yellow people.
And it's wrong when you do it to white people.
It's disgusting.
And it wouldn't be happening if they weren't surrounded by like-minded people.
If they all didn't think the same thing, it's just like the Klan sitting around.
You know, you listen to people, you listen to racist people, people who are racist against black people instead of white people.
They're the same way.
They're the same way.
As long as they're surrounded by their own, they can say anything they want, just like the people on CNN, just like the people on MSNBC, just like all these people.
And the second thing about how she shouldn't have to, she's being bullied into showing up and answering questions.
That is how the truth is found.
You know, it's like, it is like the way competition serves business.
If you have to make a better iPhone than the next guy or go down the drain, you will make a better iPhone.
It's competition serves business, makes business better.
The courtroom system is a system of adversaries.
It is a system that puts, it's called a trial.
It's called a trial for a reason.
It puts people on trial.
And yes, you get questioned.
Sometimes they bring out stuff about you that you don't want to reveal.
Sometimes they make you look bad.
Sometimes they slander you.
They do all kinds of things.
But you have to survive that and get to the facts.
You know, what's interesting about this to me?
Yesterday, Donald Trump gave a press conference.
And everybody's making fun of Donald Trump's press conference.
And it is funny.
He's a funny guy.
He's narcissistic.
He kind of goes off, you know, he's blow the eights and he's inarticulate and all this stuff.
It all is comical and all this.
But when you compare it to them with their fancy suits and dresses and their fancy ways of speaking and all this, who are just convicting this man without due process, Trump got closer to the truth.
Play this thing, cut number one.
And people are going to be scared because we could say it about you.
35 years ago, you met, and you might know, you might not know what's going on.
What is going on?
Why did they wait so long?
Why did Senator Feinstein wait till the hearings were over and make this case?
Why didn't she bring it right at the beginning when you ask about, as an example, the FBI?
Why didn't they bring this right at the beginning?
During the hearing, you would have had all the time in the world for the FBI.
It would have been fine.
Now, the FBI, as you know, did investigate this time, as they have five or six other times, and they did a very thorough investigation.
But this is a big con job.
And I would love to be in the room with the Democrats, close the door.
You guys are all away outside waiting.
And Schumer and his buddies are all in there laughing how they fooled you all.
Let's just stop them.
A big fat con.
Yeah, go ahead.
He's right.
It is a con.
Regardless of whether what Blazy Ford is in her mind, regardless of what she's doing, it was a con the way she was used.
They used her as a checkerpiece in this game of keep the nominations out, win back the Senate, stop Trump from affecting the Supreme Court.
That's the game we're playing.
There's no other game that we're playing.
We're not playing a game about defend all women.
We're not playing a game of Me Too.
We're just playing a game of power.
That's all that's happening.
And we know that's all that's happening because there's no standard.
There's no standard by which Blaise Ford or Kavanaugh can be redeemed.
There is no standard.
So if there's no standard, we're not looking for that, are we?
We're not looking for proof.
We're not looking for facts.
We're not looking for truth.
We're looking for power.
That's the game that's being played.
And Donald Trump says what Donald Trump says in his funny way and in his belligerent way is the truth.
It is the truth.
Yesterday, the witch hunt reached this kind of feverish, feverish pitch when Michael Avenatti, who could not believe Michael Avenatti, you know, like who could not think this classy, classy man, this, you know, and here's the thing that gets me about him.
He's a creation of the press.
The CNN made him a hero when he was bringing out stormy.
Remember with Stormy Daniels, they were almost saying he was a hero.
They almost used that word.
Michael Avenatti brings out this woman, Julie Swetnik, and she says, oh, there were gang rape parties.
I was at 10 of them.
I thought, what?
Wait a minute.
What do you mean you were at 10 of them?
Maybe it's just me.
After the first gang rape party, I'm not going back.
That's like, that's it.
That's it.
I mean, it's amazing.
And all this stuff comes out about her.
And, you know, I don't say this without any compassion.
You know, all this stuff comes out about her that her boyfriend, Richard Venecki, Venecchi, got a restraining order against her because they broke up and he says she threatened him multiple times after they broke up.
And even after he married his current wife, with whom he had a child, he says, right, this is from Politico, right after I broke up with her, she was threatening my family, threatening my wife, and threatening to do harm to my baby at that time.
I know a lot about her.
She's not credible at all, not at all.
And even the media starts to realize that, oh, uh-oh, maybe we have stepped over the line.
Here's Sonny Hostin.
This is cut number four, questioning Michael Avenatti and asking him, because this is the other thing.
She didn't accuse Kavanaugh of anything.
She just accused him of being there.
So she asks him, you know, is she charging him with anything?
And he can't answer the question.
Did he do anything to this particular woman?
Yeah.
I'm sorry, I didn't get to the question.
Did he do anything to this particular woman, Julie Swetnick?
Or is she alleging that she just has seen him be aggressive with other women?
Well, I think the allegations, Sonny, if you read further in the declaration, are far more specific and relating to Brett Kavanaugh's conduct towards women in general, including the attempts to drug women by placing grain alcohol and or drugs in basically the punch at these parties, that many of these women ended up gang raped, unfortunately.
I mean, the details in this declaration are specific.
They are shocking, but above all else, they are true.
And my client stands behind them 100%.
And she's looking forward to having an opportunity to meet with one or more FBI agents, hopefully, and describe what happened.
And she's also prepared to testify, if she's permitted to do so, to the U.S. Senate.
So now Cable News starts to think, uh-oh, maybe the American people are not absolute, like worm-like morons who are going to start to realize this guy is pulling a con, this woman is not believable, this stuff we're piling on.
See, what they're trying to do is they're trying to create this cloud of inference, a cloud of accusations.
Serious Accusations vs. Political Maneuvering00:04:09
So you say, well, there's so many, there's so much.
But it doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter how many people there are.
Again, it doesn't matter what you believe.
It doesn't matter who's credible.
It doesn't matter how many there are.
All that matter are the facts.
And there's no way to get them.
There's no way to get them.
It is the hardest thing for people to understand when something cannot be done.
We can't get the truth.
And therefore, this hearing shouldn't even be going on.
It shouldn't be going on because it can't lead to the truth.
It cannot lead us to the facts.
So what's the point?
So now, Cable News, who created Michael Avenatti, panics.
So here is what is again from MRC, from Newsbusters, a montage of cable news panicking that this is going too far.
Michael Avenatti certainly knows how to get a lot of attention, but we're taking this from serious accusations to a very political situation.
Does that hurt this accusation?
Michael Avenatti has inserted himself in this conversation in a way that is, you know, honestly makes the circus an even bigger circus.
There will be some Republican senators who might have been inclined to listen more openly to Dr. Ford, who will now see the involvement of Avenati in this as further evidence that this is somehow a politically organized smear campaign.
That's a pretty big hanging out there.
I mean, you know, are you saying that Kavanaugh was present?
That Kavanaugh was present in the room.
He was in the line.
He was in the party.
I mean, just to say he was present is a really egregious lack of specificity when you're talking about charges this horrific.
It's like Frankenstein.
They created this monster.
Now he's destroying the village.
Uh-oh, maybe we shouldn't have sent him up into the rooftop when the lightning was going on and brought Avenati to life.
I am Michael Avenatti.
Now I must kill everybody.
You know, it's like they caught up by, this is them.
They made him.
They made him.
And now they're sorry because he's making them look bad because Blasey Ford at least is not that.
Whatever she is, she is not this kind of tool of a guy like Avenatti.
You know, it's really interesting.
The Senate judiciary revealed yesterday very quietly that they had interviewed one man twice and another man who said, you know what, it wasn't Brett Kavanaugh, it was me.
The guy said, it wasn't Brett Kavanaugh.
He sent in a letter.
He said, I was the guy.
I think I'm the guy who attacked Christine Blasey Ford.
Now, how would it be?
How would it be if I applied the logic that they use on Christine Blasey Ford with this guy, okay?
Either one of these guys, let's pick one.
How would it be if I said, well, why would he come forward and risk this?
You know, he could go to prison.
Why would he say these things and destroy his reputation and destroy his life?
It's credible.
I believe him.
He's credible.
This is credible.
You know, it sounds, it makes a lot of sense.
The letter he sent in makes a lot of sense.
Why don't I say it?
Because I don't know.
I don't know.
The cops will tell you people confess to things all the time.
The cops will also tell you women accuse men of rape falsely all the time.
Life is complicated.
People are complicated.
People lie.
That is why we have built out of over thousands of years, out of thousands of years, we have dragged out of the mud through blood and thunder and death.
We have dragged out this system of due process where a man or a woman is innocent until proven guilty and they throw it away for the power.
They want the power and they throw it away.
If they can get you hysterical, if they can get the Republicans scared enough, they will win.
If they will win, that is how the country is going to be governed until the day I die, okay?
It's going to be governed for a long time by panic and fear and bullying and innuendo.
You know, I'm not Spartacus.
I'm not Spartacus.
I want to tell you, if they were looking for Spartacus, I'd be like, I think it's the guy who looks like Kirk Douglas over there.
I would give Spartacus over in a 10 seconds.
I would not.
But I'll tell you who I remind myself of today.
There's an Alfred Hitchcock movie called Foreign Correspondent that was made to encourage America to support the war effort in Britain.
And the guy is in England, I believe, and he's, you know, usual Hitchcock thing.
He's accused of something he's chased around.
Nazi Accusations in Comics00:15:24
In the end, the hero winds up in a radio station during the Blitz, and London is being bombed, right?
And the lights are flickering on and off.
And he says, he says, keep your lights burning, America.
They're the only lights left in the world.
Okay.
The way I feel right now, the Republican Party is a mess.
It's full of weakness.
It's full of dishonesty.
It's broken.
It doesn't know where it's going.
It doesn't know what its future looks like.
It doesn't know what its principles are.
But Republicans, keep the lights burning because yours are the only lights left in Washington, D.C.
The other party has lost the plot of America.
It has lost the meaning of America.
It has lost what we stand for.
It has lost how we operate.
It has lost who we are.
Keep the lights burning, Republicans.
They're the only lights left in Washington, D.C. All right.
That's enough of this for now.
When I get back on Monday, if any of you are still here, if you have lived through the Clavenless weekend, I will discuss the aftermath, which I'm sure is going to be as hilarious as it can possibly be.
I mean, I hardly have to write a satire or just kind of put it up there, and there it'll be.
But let's move on to something.
This interview is so cool.
I just really want you to hear it.
Ethan Van Skyver, he's a comic book artist.
He worked for DC Comics, Marvel Comics.
He's illustrated Green Lantern, The Flash, and some Batman.
He talked to me about what happened when he was exposed.
I guess you could say he'd always been very open about it.
But after Trump was elected, things changed.
He has created his own comic.
Its latest iteration, Cyberfrog Blood Honey, has raised over half a million dollars through crowdfunding.
Here is Ethan Van Skyver.
Ethan Van Skyver, thank you so much for coming on.
It's my pleasure.
It's great to be here, Andrew.
Big fan.
Oh, thanks.
You know, I want to hear, you were in, worked for DC Comics, right, for like 20 years.
So I want to hear how you got into this and how that part of it went before we get into the whole SJW thing.
Well, I've worked for DC Comics since 1997.
I started out drawing a book called Impulse, worked my way up to the Flash Green Lantern.
We basically revolutionized the whole Green Lantern concept, me and Jeff Johns, who's now their chief creative officer.
And then Flash Rebirth, we brought back Barry Allen.
So most of the stuff that you see on the TV show right now comes from work that I've done with Jeff Johns, the writer.
And then I met Greg Hurwitz.
We worked on Batman together, did Man Bat and a fantastic Mad Hatter arc.
It was just great.
I mean, it was fantastic.
Everything was good.
And then November 9th, 2016 changed absolutely everything.
On the way, did people know you were a conservative?
Were you open about your everybody knew I was a Republican, but as long as I was in the political minority, it wasn't a big deal.
But as soon as we gained power, as soon as Republicans gained power, they started to get very, very upset.
Had it ever come up in like professionally, had anybody ever said to you, oh, take out that panel, take out that storyline, anything like that?
Well, not in terms of me being a Republican, but I did see, because I never put political content in any of my books.
I started to notice PC creeping into comics way back in 2003 when I was working at Marvel Comics for a short stint.
I had to draw the sequence of Wolverine on a motorcycle in the rain.
Now, the Scottish writer, a guy named Grant Morrison, so cool.
He described this scene for me: Wolverine sitting on his motorcycle.
There's an ambulance full of like mutant-killing, you know, cultists in an ambulance.
They're about to hurt a teenage girl.
And Wolverine's parked out in his motorcycle in the rain.
And what does he do before he goes in there and kills them all?
He lights a cigarette.
Okay.
Now, I was like, that is a great scene, that feels great.
Like, that's a great scene.
So I drew it just as it was described.
And then I got a notification from editorial, and I mean high up, the EIC, the president of Marvel Comics.
Redraw that panel.
Wolverine doesn't smoke anymore.
And I was like, since when?
He's always smoked.
That's been so, that's the whole thing about him: he's got a stogie and a cowboy hat, and that's Wolverine.
We don't want to set a bad example for children.
Smoking is bad.
I'm like, he's about to go in and murder six people.
I mean, do you want me to take that out as well?
Can I take out the murder scene, or is it just the cigarettes that we oppose?
And no, I did have to redraw that scene so that Wolverine is just sitting there on his motorcycle in the rain.
It looks like the cover to Prince's Purple Reign, actually.
It doesn't quite have the impact that the original had.
Cool fact.
So that's when I started to notice PC kind of creeping into comics.
And it got worse and worse.
And right around 2014 is when it became full-blown SJW invasion.
So what did that look like?
That looked like, hey, you know, we need more women in comics.
The reason why the comics are declining in sales, perhaps, is because we could double our audience if we only had more female characters.
So instead of creating new ones, let's kill Thor.
Let's kill Thor and replace him with a woman.
Or Wolverine can go away.
Let's replace him with a woman.
Tony Stark, Tony Stark, white male.
Let's kill him and replace him with a teenage black girl.
Wow.
Still called the book Iron Man.
And, you know, the incredible Hulk, Bruce Banner, that's boring.
You know, let's replace him with an Asian kid who's super smart and happy to be the Hulk.
They took all of the pathos away from the Hulk.
Now, fans began to complain.
Fans began to complain.
Not because of the inclusion of more women and people of color.
The LGBT characters started to show up, not because of that, but because they were replacing characters like Bruce Banner and Tony Stark and Thor.
I mean, these are characters that you see in the movies, Wolverine.
And then you go to the comic shops and they're not there.
Instead, you've got these replacement characters that aren't half as interesting because SJWs cannot create characters.
I don't know what it is.
They just step in and ruin other people's characters.
Well, I think that may be part of the point, though, isn't it?
I mean, it's not just not just that, it's not just that they want to succeed.
They want you to fail.
That's the important point.
Yeah, I think so.
The more I think about SJWs in comics or in any pop culture medium, and I'm a big Star Wars fan too.
I do a YouTube show about Star Wars criticizing pop culture and the culture war within Star Wars.
It's called Comic Artist Pro Secrets.
That's my YouTube channel.
And they do the same thing there.
I don't think it's that they, I think what it really is, is they just want to control, they want to infiltrate and control a megaphone, a pop culture megaphone that is beloved.
and then just ruin it.
Okay, so the culture is changing in the comic industry.
Suddenly Donald Trump wins the election.
Now it happens.
Now suddenly everybody's hitting my Twitter account calling me a Nazi and calling me a scumbag and calling me terrible names.
And somebody digs back into my past.
I had a sketchbook in 2007 where I called it, I had a character that I redesigned, a villain I redesigned to look like Hitler, the Green Lantern's main villain.
I gave him a haircut, like a fashion kind of haircut.
I gave him an armband and I made him look more kind of imperious and like with heavier bags under his eyes.
And he became a major hit character.
I mean, he was DC's number one character because he just had so much weight.
And I said openly, I said, I'm running him through this kind of Nazi filter to just kind of fix this goofy character and make him worthy of Hal Jordan.
Well, I put out a sketchbook with him on the cover, which was just basically a, you know, a pamphlet of my drawings that you could buy at a convention.
And I called it my struggle because he was on the cover.
And basically, I thought it was a two-way, well, it was a three-way joke.
I mean, the first thing obviously was the character was kind of Hitlerian, but also the artwork contained my struggle from 1993 to present day to become a comic book artist.
And then the third thing was, kind of the wink and the nod was, you guys know I'm a Republican and you keep calling me a Nazi.
And that's, you know, but he was the villain.
The Hitler guy was the villain.
Of course he was.
I mean, he was a major villain.
He was a dictator.
He was Hitler from space.
I mean, it just, it made, they made our heroes more heroic by opposing him.
So they dug this out and said, some, some bright genius, some bright little soy boy ran ran my struggle through a German translation, Google something or other.
And it came back Mein Kampf.
And they had a full scale panic attack, a full-scale outrage attack.
Oh my gosh, he's been signaling that he's a Nazi this whole time.
And I was just kind of like, I thought everyone knew that, but no, no, no.
This was, this was, I thought everyone knew that my struggle was like Mein Kampf.
I thought that's like, no, this was, this was alarming to people.
And they even had a meme where it was like, my struggle, like the meme, my struggle, German translation, Mein Kampf.
You know, like revealed, Nazi revealed.
So this was, I mean, this was 10 years old at this point, and they started running articles about me.
Now, these people, the way that they work is they have like a bunch of journalists that work for them, a bunch of friends in the media, and they started writing article after article about, you know, me being a far right wing, alt-right, a Nazi, all of these things.
And a certain portion of the audience believed that.
Did anybody, any of these people interview you or talk to you about it?
No, no, of course not, because they knew it wasn't true.
I mean, it was just a way to get me kind of excommunicated and exiled from comics.
So we went through a hell of a time, me and my wife.
I mean, they really did make it tough.
We didn't know how to deal with SJWs.
We didn't understand that, you know, this is all disingenuous.
None of it's real.
Never apologized to them for anything.
All of this stuff.
We were just kind of enduring a hell storm.
And I was talking to DC Comics PR the whole time and just kind of saying, what do I do?
What do I do?
These people are calling me names, and then people believe it.
And they're going to think I'm actually, you know, legitimately a white supremacist or something.
And this is terrifying.
That means if you're a white supremacist, that means that you can't go out of your house without getting punched or assaulted.
What do you do to Nazis?
You shoot them.
I mean, you know, that's that's really an awful thing to do to somebody.
It's a terrible thing to do.
That's that's amazing.
So, what happened?
Did you?
How did all this turn out?
I mean, did you have to were you have to leave DC or did you leave on your own?
I did.
I left DC shortly after what is now known in comics lore and comics gate lore as the Gotham City Pizza incident, wherein I decided to make an appearance at this place in Florida called Gotham City Pizza.
I was going to draw, we're going to have some beers, private event for the fans, you know, to come out and meet me.
It was really wonderful.
This was in November of last year.
And I received a bunch of death threats, like, do not go to Gotham City Pizza.
If you do, we are going to kill you.
We're going to rape your wife and all this.
Don't go, Nazi scum, et cetera, et cetera.
Now, I showed these tweets to everybody.
You know, I was just like, I don't hide death threats.
When they come, I show them to people.
You know, so I went anyway after consideration.
I left my wife at home, but I, you know, I went to the event, had a great time.
I had a bunch of like Navy SEALs and Marines that were like, nobody's going to touch you.
Nobody's going to mess with you.
We're going to have a good time.
I drew Batman on the wall.
It was awesome.
Thought I had it, thought it went great.
But the next morning, somebody had kicked in all of their windows and smashed their doors.
And, you know, that was a shame.
We rallied the community.
We were able to raise money to actually replace this guy's door.
But from then on, it was just kind of like, all right, this is serious.
Like, I really can't go anywhere.
You know, I can't go and appear somewhere because these guys have so rallied up crazy people against me that it's unsafe.
Eventually, I talked to DC Comics about this.
They didn't know what to do.
They kept saying things like, remove your social media.
I mean, maybe disappear.
And I kind of said, well, my social media is my sword and my shield.
You know, I can't just disappear.
And I don't think that they're going to stop ever.
So I said, I'm going to leave.
At the end of my contract, I asked how many more issues I owed them.
I owed them five.
I quit after four.
They let me out.
And it was like free falling.
I've been there for 20 years.
I've been there for 20 years.
And I've been chased out by people, maniacs, crazy people who were lying about me.
And this was all over comic books.
I just want to underscore this.
This is about comic books.
You know what I mean?
It's like, and the whole time this is happening, I'm like, this is an incredibly high price to pay for the privilege of having worked in comic books.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
In a dying industry.
So what are you doing now?
What are you doing instead?
Well, I kind of got my act together and just said they started to call this rebellion, this uprising of it's a consumer revolt against far left wingers ruining the comic book industry.
And they are.
Comics are down 10% last year in sales.
This year, down 6.5%.
I mean, comic sales are in free fall.
Stores are closing left and right.
Now, if comic stores close, there's nowhere to go.
Marvel and DC have an exclusive distributing agreement with Diamond Distributing.
They're only selling.
They're only located in these brick and mortar comic shops.
The last of the newsstands died in August of 2017.
There's no more newsstand, you know, picking up a comic book at the newsstand.
So as these brick and mortar local comic shop retailers go out of business, 50 of them last year, I don't know how many this year, but a friend of mine who is a publisher had a list of 100 comic shops.
There are 2,000 or so in the United States.
100 comic shops that he was calling up.
And as he was calling these comic shops to invite them to purchase his books, he realized 15 of them had gone out of business this year, 15 out of the 100.
This is terrifying.
I mean, this is absolutely terrifying.
And in the meantime, while this is all happening, we've got SJWs accusing right-wingers of being abusive, of being hateful, of being Nazis in comics.
If you do not like what they're doing, if you do not like the fact that women are no longer allowed to look sexy in comics, they're just not allowed to look sexy anymore.
And I know that for a fact because, you know, I've been told, you know, I drew a woman with her top zipped down one time, a superhero, and I was told to zip that up by editorial.
You know, I mean, it used to be that comics were about kind of sexy women, handsome, tough men fighting monsters, smoking cigarettes, doing stuff that your mom didn't approve of.
Comics Gate Terror00:06:50
You're supposed to read them under the blankets at night.
You were supposed to hide the fact that you liked comic books.
Now they become so PC that nobody's buying them.
They become PC and they become vehicles for far left-wing propaganda.
So now, yes.
So this is what I'm on a tie right now.
So this is what Comics Gate is.
Comics Gate is me and a bunch of other comic book creators who have abandoned the mainstream.
And we've stood up and said, we're going to do this on our own.
We're going to defy you guys.
We don't need you.
We don't need your comic shops.
All we need is our group of fans.
All we need is the market out there, the audience that would buy these comic books if they weren't so repellent.
And we can market them through our social media.
We can market them by going on YouTube.
We can market them by going on Twitter.
We can use crowdfunding and then we can distribute them by hand.
I mean, virtually by hand.
We can mail these things.
We can use fulfillment services and skip over all of the harassment that these SJWs do because they do.
They actually call comic shops and say, if you stock these right-wing comics, you know, we're going to harass you.
We're going to tell other people not to support you.
So I'm running out of time.
Tell people where they can get your stuff now.
All right, listen, crowdfunded a book called Cyberfrog Blood Honey.
We raised $538,000.
Wow.
Wow.
Two months.
Alarm bells are going off everywhere.
This is a big deal.
Comics Gate is the future of comics.
You can go to Indiegogo and find Cyberfrog Blood Honey.
And you can find many other awesome Comics Gate books as well.
Support these comics.
Comic books are important.
It is American as jazz.
It is an American art form, uniquely American, and we can't allow it to die.
Absolutely great story.
I wish you success.
I will talk to you again.
And if you come out to LA, we'll get Hurwitz to buy us a drink.
It's on him.
Absolutely.
Thanks very much, Ethan.
It was great talking to you.
Ethan Van Skyver, now stuff I like.
Stop that too, Clayton.
Okay, that was from Justin Whitaker.
Hunt him down and pelt him with water balloons.
The terror.
I watched this 10-episode show, The Terror, which is based on the novel by Dan Simmons.
And I was talking about it when we had the conversation with Glenn Beck because it is, it was an amazing, it was originally originally a British show and then was put up here on AMC and now it's available on Netflix, The Discs.
I got on the disc, so I must be on Amazon Prime.
It is so well done.
What it is, is a fictionalized account of an actual journey, Captain Sir John Franklin's lost expedition of the HMS Erebus and the HMS Terror to the Arctic in search of the Northwest Passage.
This is in 1845 to 1848.
And There was starvation, illness, mutiny, all these terrible things.
And it just tells that story, but it adds a horror element.
It adds a kind of monster movie element to it.
It has got unbelievable production values.
Just the credits alone are worth watching.
The cast is fantastic.
Jared Harris, Jared Harris, a wonderful actor.
You've seen him on Mad Men.
He plays King George in the Crown, King George VI and the Crown.
He's on Fringe.
He was on Fringe.
You'll know him the minute you see him.
Just a spectacular actor.
He plays one of the two captains of these two ships.
And I have to tell you, I warn you about this.
It's grim.
It is a really grim story.
Around the seventh or eighth episode, I started to think like, oh, why am I putting myself through this?
But by the end, I found it tremendously spiritual and rewarding.
It is really about the spiritual journey of a man.
That's what it's about.
And here is the scene.
We start out with, it's really interesting, the one captain who's played by, I don't know how to pronounce his name, Sharon Hines, Shiaran Hines.
You'll recognize him too.
He's played by, he is the captain of one of the ships, and he's a guy who is really likable, lovable, you know, sort of an admirable character, but not a very good captain.
Whereas the captain played by Jared Harris is a drunk and kind of a complainer and kind of down in the dumps, but he's a great captain.
And it's about his journey, really, to a sort of new spiritual level.
Here is the moment when he realizes that they're in such desperate straits that in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the Arctic, he's going to have to beat his alcohol addiction, which has basically taken him over.
And here's the moment when he tells his crew and his fellow captain that basically they're just going to have to take over him, take over, while he just beats this addiction.
I'm going to be unwell, gentlemen.
Quite unwell, I expect.
And I don't know for how long.
A week?
No.
to perhaps Perhaps more.
And not only must you draw the tightest possible curtain around what is happening, but you must also care for me as well.
As I will not be able to care for myself, you needn't worry for a thing.
So I will be in no position to command.
That will be for Captain Fitzgames.
For all things.
And you must be my proxy here, Edward.
Francis.
No, I'm sorry, but we mustn't stop until it is finished.
I mustn't stop.
And you mustn't let me.
The terror, it is absolutely riveting.
It's grim, and it's tough to watch.
So if you're not into that, it is a horror thing.
They've actually renewed what is now going to be a series called The Terror.
It's going to be horror stories that seem to be kind of based in history.
So they're going to have a second series.
I think the second series is going to deal with the internment of the Japanese.
So very interesting idea, very interesting thing to do.
But this one was just terrific.
Made me want to read Dan Simmons' novel, which he's a really good writer.
I really like him.
All right, that's it.
I'm sorry to dump you in this.
Clay, it's going to be a tough clavenless weekend.
The Terror Renewed00:00:50
We're going to see whether the GOP has a spine.
It's never happened before, but you just never know.
You never know.
It's going to be a tough Clavenless weekend, but survivors will gather here on Monday.
I'm Andrew Klavan, and this is The Andrew Klavan Show.
Hooray!
The Andrew Clavin Show is produced by Robert Sterling.
Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.
Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover.
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Edited by Alex Zingaro.
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