by Robert Zimmerman at behindtheblack.com
They’re coming for you next: Long established comic book writer Mike Baron and his projects have now been blacklisted from a variety of sites, including having his most recent Kickstarter starter campaign shutdown, because of slanderous social media comments as well as a defamatory article on Daily Kos.
After a scathing article from a Daily Kos mouthpiece, Baron’s colleagues and fans realized they could not find his campaign on Kickstarter. The post smeared “Thin Blue Line” – a story about two police officers riding out a long night of rioting – along with “Private American.” The author, a person named Starr Mignon, called the comic a “diatribe of racist propaganda” and “stochastic terrorism disguised as a funny book.”
Prior to Kickstarter shutting his campaign down, it had also been banned from Twitter, as well as shadow-banned on Indiegogo.
A detailed blow-by-blow description of the slanderous attacks, based on no knowledge of these works, as well as the cowardly blackballing by others in response to those attacks, can be found here. This writer, who was helping Baron’s campaign, notes the following:
In what amounts to an unprovoked hit piece, a frequent contributor to the website going by the name of Starr Mignon wrote a screed entitled “Punisher Creator Mike Baron Releases Another Racist AF Comic Book.” Not only did the article claim that an Eisner winning comic writer was writing a “domestic terrorist handbook,” she compared the comic (that she has not even read) to “The Turner Diaries” and “Mien Kampf.” The article also claims Baron’s previous graphic novel “Thin Blue Line” was a propaganda comic that told the story “about vigilante police officers who ‘have to’ go on a killing spree in black communities.“
As proof that Mignon has never read the “Thin Blue Line” graphic novel, the story is about an Hispanic single mom police officer. Her partner is black. Their job is protecting the town’s mayor during the riots. Nor has the writer read “Private American.” Only the creative team, our legal counsel, and a few members of the press have. [emphasis in original]
Baron has already put Daily Kos on notice that if it did not remove the article and issue a blunt retraction, it would be included in his lawsuit for defamation.
Since none of Baron’s accusers had actually read the comic books in question, nor did the editors at Daily Kos, there was no way they could make the accusations they did based on any knowledge. I also expect that when a jury compares those accusations with the actual comic books, the jury will find that the accusations were lies and slanders.