Before I go any further, I want to point something out. A lot of people don't bother to read books on philosophy because they think it's a bunch of arrogant elitist intellectual bullshit. These people are spot on. I've read philosophy (or, in the case of some, TRIED to read philosophy) and came to the conclusion that philosophy is to the real world what masturbation is to sex. It takes a lot of will power for me to not punch someone in the head when they talk about Adam Smith and free market economies.
One such person you hear bandied about is John Stuart Mill, creator of Utilitarianism. Mill theorized that criminal law was fundamentally worthless. Outlawing certain activities did nothing to dissuade people from committing acts against society. What DID persuade them was social justice. That they would be excluded from the group. That they would be treated like shit. In other words, it was the people around them that made them afraid to commit crimes, not because the people would fight back, but because they would ostracize him. Man is a social creature, after all.
This ties in with Mr. Bissette. Bissette is beyond outraged at Marvel. He points out that, for his role in the creation of John Constantine (hi, teach), he got a check for $45,000 for the use of the character in the Constantine movie. Kirby created far more than that and got nothing.
Bissette is calling for a boycott of anything from Marvel that is Kirby derived. He's not suggesting not buying anything from your local comic shop, they need the cash. Just take the cash that would have gone to a Kirby-derived Marvel comic and put it towards something else in the shop. Indie comics. Back issues. Non-Marvel movie DVD's. Continue to support the shop, but don't support Marvel's exploitation of Kirby.
To read Bissette's logic (and it is very hard to argue against it), please visit his blog here. Read through it, try to hold back the tears until you finish. A lot of people, from Ub Iwerks on, have been shafted by corporate interests over the years. And the only recourse is the social justice that JSM wrote about.
Unless there are other options. I'm open to hearing them.
