When you grow up reading comics, it’s easy to get lost in the world of colorful heroes and tales of adventure—to imagine what it would be like to have such great power and with it, of course, tremendous responsibility. It calls out to the better angels of our nature and inspires us to aim higher and become, if not heroes in our own simple ways, at the very least better versions of ourselves.
If you grow up reading comics as an aspiring artist or writer, you may imagine what it would be like to help create the comics you love—to join the ranks of Lee and Ditko, Claremont and Kirby. Too few of us, sadly, ever get to live that dream. Many that do, find the dream short-lived.
A few years ago, we found ourselves with an opportunity to live the dream. We had been approached by Will Caligan and Alpha Dog Studios to work on Will’s crowning achievement, Gun Ghoul—a supernatural force of justice doling out punishment to the wicked. It was a fun gig and, for us, a dream come true. Will was a good boss and someone we considered a friend. We still do. His vision for making old school comics that were fun and unburdened by overly and overtly political commentary was refreshing. Make no mistake; we are proud of the work we did on Gun Ghoul and of our time with Alpha Dog Studios as it existed at that time.
As we said, however, often the dream is short-lived. When Will Caligan was boycotted for comments made on Facebook, we chose to stick by him and ride out the storm. It wasn’t a matter of agreeing with Will’s comments. It was a matter of believing he had the right to make them and that, as he had been kind and generous to us, we would be kind and loyal to him. At the time this Facebook drama led to Alpha Dog Studios being dropped from its connection to Short Fuse Media, Bob and I were working together on a Gun Ghoul spin-off that I had pitched to Will and he had approved. Crimson Hood, a villain I scripted in issues 3 and 4 of the Gun Ghoul miniseries, would be recast as a comical but deadly antihero. We were midway through the art for the first issue and had 8 more issues plotted when we were dropped by Short Fuse Media. Will asked that we be patient and keep working while he found a new source of funding.
Unfortunately, that funding eventually came via Vox Day. We won’t say anything about Vox or his followers other than this: an association with him was not something we were interested in. We voiced this concern to Will Caligan and made it clear that, if Vox Day was to become the money behind the machine, we wanted no part in it. And, when that deal was finalized, we thanked Will for his kindness and friendship and left Alpha Dog Studios behind feeling a bit defeated—our excitement for the Crimson Hood book dashed to pieces.
Recently, Vox Day announced a Comicsgate imprint (which some sources claim is unconnected to the larger Comicsgate movement) whose first release will be a trade paperback featuring the work we did on Gun Ghoul. We fully acknowledge that Gun Ghoul is Will Caligan’s creation and his to do with what he will. Bob and I were work-for-hire on the mini-series and nothing more. But as our names will now be in the credits of a book launching Vox Day’s new Comicsgate imprint, we felt the need to make it clear that we, in no way, support Vox Day or his acolytes. The work we did on Gun Ghoul we did for Will Caligan long before Vox Day’s involvement with Alpha Dog Studios. In an industry at war within itself, we chose to remove ourselves from the conflict and to disavow men like Vox Day whose rhetoric we cannot support.
We remain thankful to Will Caligan for allowing us to briefly live the dream and wish him the best, but we want to make it clear that we do not support Vox Day or his positions in or out of the comic book industry.
Perhaps one day the dream will live again.
J. Patrick Lemarr
(co-writer/scripter for Gun Ghoul: Raising the Dead #3 and #4)
Bob Raymond
(penciller for Gun Ghoul: Raising the Dead #1 thru #4)
