It seems that I have been taken to task for something I’ve written over
at Peter David’s website,
specifically, for daring to suggest that the Comics Journal piece on
Carol Kalish was somehow less than worthy of being in first place at Google, in an introduction to the reprinting of Peter’s eulogy of the woman he just named his daughter after.
Dirk Deppey gives an understandable defense of his employer, Gary Groth, at the Comics Journal’s iJournalista! weblog. I have no idea if Deppey ever met Carol.
Groth’s essay– which I’m intentionally not
linking to here, as per my earlier comments; if you want to get there
you can do so by cutting and pasting
http://www.tcj.com/2_archives/e_groth1191.html– is a true charmer, and
shows why Gary is so loved the world over. While rereading it, I get
the same feeling I got when right wing commentators who disliked Paul
Wellstone made disparaging remarks about his funeral, coldly calculated
to bestow some political advantage and personal glory to their own
positions. It is mean spirited, it mocks other people’s grief and
shock, and it belittles her memory and achievements.
I could spend hours going over Groth’s column to rebut his points
(“Like JFK, the adoration heaped upon her has proved far more voluble
after her death than during her life…” no kidding, dope, who expects
to be giving praise for a lifetime of work at the age of 36, when it’s
reasonable to expect that she has decades more to go?) but I recall
that many letter writers to TCJ and the Comic Buyers’ Guide did so at the time– letters which, alas, don’t show up on either website. You can find references to them here.
Instead, I’ll just address the first error I come across in his– why,
that didn’t take long at all. Eight words in. “Carol Kalish died on
September 5 from heart failure at the tragically young age of 36.”
Carol Kalish didn’t die from heart failure. She died from a sudden
brain aneurysm.
Really, how seriously can you take an essay entitled “Lies We Cherish”
that commits factual errors in the very first sentence? It makes one
wonder exactly whose lies are being cherished.
If Mr. Deppey believes that it’s inappropriate to hope that an article
like Gary’s is not the first thing people find when looking for
information on a person, then I can only hope it doesn’t happen to him.
I just finished reading Gary Groth’s comments and though he may have a
point about some of the duties Carol performed on behalf of Marvel. But
it is lost in the anti-Marvel sub-text (if you can call a baseball bat
to the head sub-text).
He seemed unable to go beyond what he considered “unsavory’ duties that
Carol performed for Marvel. Which is truly sad.
Huh? “Desparaging remarks about Wellstone’s funeral to bestow political
advantage”? Dude, is the sky blue in your world? Did you notice who
were using that funeral for political advancements? “WE WILL WIN!! WE
WILL WIN!!” Good grief, you only reinforce the fact that the left are
children compared to the right. You might as well hang a sign around
your neck saying “I don’t get it.”
Glenn, right wing commentators didn’t make any disparaging comments about Wellstone’s funeral.
They criticized the Democrats for turning
the funeral into a political rally.
Your moral relativism nauseates me. You are a traitor, on the level of
Hanoi Jane. Move to France, you stupid piece of shit.
I would like to thank you for letting people who didn’t know first hand how Carol died. I myself didn’t know until I sent Peter David an email last year asking that question.
Fact-finding isn’t one of Groth’s strong suits. Fillibustering anti-Marvel diatribes seems to be, along with chewing sour grapes because Marvel outsells Fantagraphics year-after-year!
For those who didn’t read Peter’s brilliant “Chalk Board” parody of a Tom De Falco/Gary Groth debate should hunt down a copy of The Best of But I Digress! It’s an absolute scream!