HARDtalk: The Virtual Tour #35

Okay. Here we are at the end of the Virtual Tour (October 13th where I am), ready to link to the last question. Firstly, let me say thank you to the sponsoring websites who hosted the HARDtalk Virtual Tour: BLEEDING COOL, MILLAR WORLD, THE BEAT, MINDLESS ONES, TERMINAL DRIFT and CANADIAN COMICS ARCHIVE.

However, since we're still only at 400+ names on the iPetition, the only conclusion to draw is that 99.97% of the comics community still believes that I shouldn't go out in public and that I am, indeed, a misogynist. For some reason the petition now has a heading at the top saying that the "goal" is 500 names. I don't know whose idea that was or why they didn't ask me before putting it on there but...

Well, no.

I've said for some time that if we get 2,000 names on the petition, I would revisit the question of my going out in public. That doesn't mean that I would automatically start going out in public again.  Far from it. I think the threshold is getting higher instead of lower and that view was certainly reinforced rather than refuted by all of the unpleasantness at the COMICS JOURNAL website. And, again, with the fact that virtually no one took issue with people explicitly stating that I'm a misogynist. I would be giving far too much weight to 2,000 names (1,600 of them, at this point, entirely hypothetical with no evidence to support the hypothesis).  It does not bode well and is certainly nothing that I think I'll have to reconsider -- at the rate we're going -- for many, many, many years. I assume that everyone is in complete agreement that the only sensible course of action for me is to live the rest of my life in complete isolation from any and all people who haven't said, specifically and publicly, that they don't believe I'm a misogynist.

And I assume we're all 100% comfortable with that.

I know I am.

Looking on the bright side, we did get 30 or so new names on the iPetition (no Big Names in comics, but I didn't really expect that, given the "political climate" we're all inhabiting) which constituted a year's worth of new signatories up until the last month or so.

Okay. The last HARDtalk Tour question goes to Carola Quick at BLEEDING COOL:

Dear Dave. First of all, thank you for all the good laughs and stories you've brought over the years. Now for my question. Do you really belive that the content of issues 289/290 constitutes a scientific theory (which as I recall one of your letters, and one of your introductions seems to suggest)? If so, how? There is little if anything that to me suggests any form of hard scientific evidence. At best I see it as theology. What is your view on science and evidence (in this or other cases)?

Hit the link to BLEEDING COOL for the answer to that question...

...and that will do it for the HARDtalk Virtual Tour. Now -- having accepted that the verdict on me, that as a non-feminist I shouldn't be going out in public hasn't changed appreciably from four years ago -- I'm headed back to my solitary confinement with strict limitations on my contact with people. I still have to make a living. I still have to buy groceries. I try to keep it to that.

Now, I've got my sunset prayer time coming up.

Ciao!

[All the Cerebus head-sketches used to illustrate the HARDtalk Virtual Tour posts were taken from John Scrudder's excellent web-site Behind The Panels. Thanks John!]