Today we're going to talk about controversy in comics and webcomics, why it can be good and why it can turn around and bite you.  Hard.

Warning: this topic really will likely offend, so if you're the sensitive type, I'm not going to be offended if you skip it.  But if you're willing to chug on, then let's get started.

There is a webcomic out there (not linking it for our younger readers, sorry) called The White Knight.  It's about a clean-cut, hardworking, earnest superhero fighting to keep his city safe from evildoers.  It takes a visual bow to the 40s Fleischer Superman cartoons, and has some of the nicest art you'll ever see in an independent production.  There's just one problem.

The titular character is a foul-mouthed, racist, one-step-short of a card-carrying-KKK-member white supremacist.  In the first five pages I read through, the story starts off with "everyone's beloved hero" beating a criminal to within an inch of his life.  The criminal, by the way, is of African-American ethicity, so you can just picture the "witty banter" the White Knight is quipping (hint: the words rhyme with pigger and boon).  Once our "hero" has captured the criminal, the White Knight dutifully hands over the bruised and bleeding criminal over to the police.  As the arresting officer is also African-American but the White Knight has a (grudging) respect for minorities in uniform, he cheerfully comments, "Look, a black and blue for a black in blue."

Needless to say, I did not bother going to page 6.  I'd had enough of this garbage, and I was going to fire off an email to the creator to tell him exactly what I thought about his Neo-Nazi Recruiting Comic.  So, I hit the CONTACT button, ready to go to the email address….

…only to see a picture of the author.  The author, an art and psychology student creating his first work, a study in seeing if "good" can be "evil" and yet still be considered good.  He welcomed commentary and criticism on the work, and mentioned that he planned to work through the idea for as long as he felt was necessary; but that assuredly, this was not his main work and that once done with his experiment, there was a webmanga idea he was itching to try out.

Oh, did I mention said creator is black?  Yup.  A Black Briton (he's from Manchester) with a fondness for American cartoons and superheroes – but obviously not of racism – he thought he'd give the idea a whirl.  He wasn't trying to troll anyone, he explained on his contact page, he was just working on an experiment in literature.  An experiment, I must admit, both shocking and daring for its premise.

Not so for Shintaro Miyawaki's 1982 "satire" series The Rapeman. 

I'll paste in the Wikipedia summary here for you:

The main character, Keisuke Uasake, is a high school teacher by day and dispenses a surreal brand of "justice" at night as The Rapeman under the business "Rapeman Services", which is co-run with his uncle, a former surgeon. The business' motto is: "Righting wrongs through penetration."

Clients call on The Rapeman to handle cases such as the revenge of a jilted lover, forming parental bonds through a traumatic crisis, making disruptive co-workers more docile and other things of that nature. When engaged in his night trade, The Rapeman wears a black leather ski mask shaped like the head of a circumcised penis, but no trousers or underwear. In the middle of a rape, if the woman becomes unresponsive or expresses enjoyment, he uses special techniques such as "M69 Screwdriver" or "Infinite Loop" to apply more pain to the victim. Despite regretting some of the contracts he fulfills, he always does the job.

My, doesn't that sound fun?  It's stuff like the above that just makes you want to fire the Orbital Friendship Cannon.

So what's the difference between the two?  Well, The White Knight, despite the rougher parts, tells a definite story, courting controversy in search of a higher goal.  The Rapeman, on the other hand, well….hehhehheh…boobies….hehehehe…..  You get the point.

Closer to home, today (by coincidence) I had an interesting discussion about series with a fellow writer.  His series is superficially similar to ours in that "soldier of fortune" way, save that his takes place in the modern day and that his is decidedly more violent than ours.  The part where we vehemently disagreed was in the level of "grittiness."  For example, both of us have story arcs where a woman is kidnapped, and the kidnapper wants to get the team's attention, especially since said victim is a sister of one of the team members.  My thoughts: show her bound and gagged, maybe with the outlandish villain (at most) pointing a gun to her head and making threats.  His suggestion?  Have her brutally raped and have it filmed, then broadcast it so that everyone could see it for maximum humiliation of those involved.

Obviously, we're going for two different audiences, but even still…dude, really?  His thought was that it would "draw the reader in."  My thought was that if I did something like that – assuming I would even want to, much less getting Ayne to agree to it – we would lose our core audience real quick.  That's controversy for controversy's sake, and in my opinion it's stupid as hell.

But does every work out there have to have a higher, more noble goal when they court controversy?  Of course not.  But the key is to be prepared for it, not just doing it for its own sake.  If you do the former, at best you look good or at worst, well at least you tried.  For those doing it for its own sake, more often than not that doesn't work and good luck weathering the storm.

Even more so, you have to be prepared for it.  Good controversy (at least for terms of planning it in your work) should be more like the deliberate methods of The White Knight and less "I'm bored, let's go lynch somebody."  Not saying that the latter can't be done well, only that it can't be done well often.  I supposed you could say there's a method to the madness.

Ultimately, only you can decide whether or not you want to court controversy, but please, do it well.  You've probably got more important things in mind than dealing with blowback because what you meant was clearly and grossly taken out of context, but if you court it and do so without a plan, you have no one to blame but yourself when it all goes pear-shaped.

Tomorrow: Day 14 – Research, Research, Research!