So, I suppose the big comic-related news from the weekend is Micah Wright's confession. The writer of Stormwatch: Team Achilles and a WWII-propaganda remix book made much of his Army Ranger past, talking about his secret missions in Panama and other parts of South America, and using it when debating people who held views contrary to his own. He was featured in the Guardian, Fox News, and the Washington Post, his book has introductions by none other than Howard Zinn and Kurt Vonnegut, and he is currently working on another book of remixed propaganda posters, this time featuring Greg Palast. He's a military man who turned against the current government after seeing some of the horrors carried out in its name.
Except, on Saturday, he admitted that he never was a Ranger. It was a lie he made up eleven years ago, and he never got around to telling the truth. Until a group of Rangers, suspicious about his background, got in contact with the Washington Post, which led to a Freedom of Information Act request against his name. The truth took several months to come out, but yesterday, the Post published the truth, a few hours after Micah's confession on his forum. As you can imagine, the comic community has spent the last 48 hours talking about it (to be honest, it's something of a welcome diversion; previously, the most interesting thing people were talking about was whether Snapper Carr will be killed in Identity Crisis. And yes, that's as geeky as it sounds).
I'd like to say I wasn't taken in, but I was; he did sound fairly convincing when he talked about his past, although whenever he talked about military technology or tactics, he tended to be corrected by other forum members, which I found a little strange. His recent obsession with Skull & Bones conspiracy theories lead to me tuning him out in the same way that I did with Warren Ellis during his "Stalin" period. I'm not really shocked, or angry, or supportive, like some on his forum. The only thing that keeps coming back to me is this bit from Quiz Show:
I'm happy that you've made the statement. But I cannot agree with most of my colleagues. See, I don't think an adult of your intellegence should be commended for simply, at long last, telling the truth.
Stormwatch has already been already cancelled, so this won't affect that in any way, but Micah's second book has just been pulled by his publishers, and his new comic series, Vigilante, supposedly launching in November, looks like it may not appear (DC is refusing to comment at the moment). Plus, he's got a bunch of Rangers annoyed with him. And I hear they're not the forgiving sort.