The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log

Tony Lee has been posting on the 2000 AD forums, Matt Badham tells me – nothing unusual in that, perhaps, a comics writer who contributes to the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic commenting in their forums about positive and negative reaction to his series Stalag #666, which, as Tony notes, has divided opinion – some readers love it and some can’t stand it. Like most writers he would like everyone to love his series but knows some won’t and that criticism is part of the game. But some utterly worthless little maggot trying to pass himself off as a reader and fan has gone to a quite disgusting and utterly uncalled for extreme. This person tracked down an address for Tony and sent him a package, an envelope full of rather nasty opinions on the series, copies of negative reactions from the forums and reviews and more. Presumably someone who has no social skills and far too much time on their hands.

I mean posting a negative reaction on a forum is fair enough and free debate and exchange of opinions is to be expected (preferably decently done, with logical, thought out reasons, not just mindless ‘you suck’ postings) and Tony, like most of us, accepts that and that it means you will be exposed to both the good and the bad in the opinion stakes. But tracking down someone’s home address and sending material like this? And in fact what are you doing tracking down a writer’s real address in the first place? That’s practically stalking.

And it gets worse – this was an out of date address this despicable little person found and sent the parcel to. Tony did stay in it once, but not any more – someone of his acquaintance does still live there (Tony wisely doesn’t say what their relationship is to him – friend, family – because he is trying not to identify them). And they thought I better open it and send it on to him. And among the bile of negative words and copied reviews and criticisms this disgusting little creep wiped their bum on it. No, I’m not kidding, not making some bad taste pun on the phrase ‘crap writing’, this loathsome little punk coated it with excrement. And then sent it to someone in the mail to open.

“Okay, I get it. You hate this bloody story. But then they read the kicker out to me.

“get the message?” It continued. “F*ck off out of comics. Go back to working in KFC or wherever you threw up from. I can shit better scripts than you can write.”

And the following page? THEY HAD WIPED THEIR ARSE ON A SHEET OF PAPER. They had wiped excrement all over it. It stank.

AND THEN THEY HAD POSTED IT TO ME.

What the f*ck? I mean, SERIOUSLY, what the hell is f*cking wrong with you if you’d hate a story so much you’d shit on a piece of photocopy paper and send it to a writer as a protest?”
Well whoever you are, and I know you obviously read this forum as you cut and pasted from it, I hope you’re happy. Because I didn’t open this, someone else did. Someone who didn’t deserve to wake up this morning with such a terrible surprise. How would you feel if your elderly father or mother recieved something like this for you? What about a brother, sister, your TEN YEAR OLD NIECE opened this letter up, sent to an address you no longer live at?”

I don’t think I can adequately explain how bloody angry this makes me, how utterly disgusted I am that someone who pretends to be a serious comics fan would commit this kind of act. When it comes to freedom of expression I think most of you know where I stand, I’ve pretty much nailed my colours to the mast (and taken some serious flack) over my committment to the freedom of expression. We have the right to freely express ourselves, whether the words coming out of our mouths make us sound wise or sometimes make us sound like arseholes. But I do not believe such freedom extends to what comes out of an arsehole. This person is not utilising their freedom of expression, they’re committing a form of attack, of assault and it is utterly despicable. I feel absolutely furious and simultaneously damned sorry that Tony and the person who was unfortunate enough to open the package had to be exposed to such a thing. I think pretty much all of us would extend our support to Tony and the 2000 AD team and our utmost contempt to the loathsome insect who committed this deplorable act.