Why we're not running 'Maakies' anymore
April 20, 2015 8:27 AM   Subscribe

[Baltimore MD] City Paper has been running the syndicated comic "Maakies" by Tony Millionaire (aka Scott Richardson) for 15 years, but this week we decided to stop running it. We told Millionaire our decision and explained the reasons, and were content to leave it at that. But he took to Twitter with dozens of tweets lashing out at City Paper and me as editor, quoting from my email to him, calling the staff "idiots" and "cunts" and asking me, "You on the rag now?" So, I figured I'd explain the decision, which actually reflects on an interesting dynamic in alternative newspapers around the country.
posted by josher71 (3 comments total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: Definitely a kind of weird situation, but somebody having a freakout on twitter is kind of low-hanging fruit by itself, a short editorial about it is thin for a post; if there is (or there develops) something more to this, a post that captures more of that could be worth doing but probably better to keep the gendered slur stuff out of the front page blockquote in any case. -- cortex



 
Millenials are firing so many cartoonists, they're changing the way they throw tantrums!
posted by thelonius at 8:35 AM on April 20, 2015


That's bizarre! I haven't read Maakies in years and years because it seemed kind of repetitive, but those recent two comics aren't even jokes. I mean, I'm good old proper Gen X, I remember the alt-weeklies of the early nineties and even wrote a little bit for a couple of very small ones, and honestly "lol she has her period" would not have flown back in the high and palmy days of riot grrrl and Kurt Cobain. No, that's pure backlash late nineties nonsense; I remember when it came in.
posted by Frowner at 8:43 AM on April 20, 2015 [3 favorites]


And good for them; this idea that somehow there's some kind of "legacy" of "transgressive" misogyny that is more authentic than the actually existing legacy of riot grrrl and the old Baffler and all that is pure nonsense. Significant mid-nineties alt comics were feminist and gay and not banally misognyist (which isn't to say that they didn't have problems; they did, but not this kind.)

There's some old Raw comics stuff from the eighties that's pretty bad, granted, but that's what the alt weeklies were working against
posted by Frowner at 8:47 AM on April 20, 2015 [2 favorites]


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