Comic book artist Mike Perkins has been part of the industry since 1993, with his most notable work from the Ed Brubaker’s run on Captain America. Perkins is currently working on Carnage and his indie book Rowans Ruin from Boom! will be out in trade paperback form in December.
The first annual MegaCon Tampa came together over the weekend, and Perkins took the time to talk with us about the epidemic of internet trolls in the comic book industry and how as a nerd culture we can move past it.
“I think there is more of a freedom of speech on the internet, on the message boards and that doesn’t necessarily mean its a good thing. Because of the anonymity of it, they are more embolden to harsher opinions in a way. I think that is a problem. I don’t really read the message boards because you usually read the message board or read reviews or something on the message boards and everyone hates your work. But then you realize it’s only perhaps 20 of them who keep going backwards and forwards and all this kind of stuff. I think it is more of a problem with the entire message board activity, rather than the actual people,” said Perkins.
“I don’t know if we can (drowned out the negative on the message boards). A lot of the times you come across these people at conventions, and they are sweet people. But you put them with this mask behind them and it’s just like, ‘everything is rubbish, and everything is bad.’ They just have that cage in-between them and the person that they are affecting, and they don’t understand that they are real people. It’s scary, really. I don’t know if there is anything we can do about apart from reminding people that the people they are criticizing are real people and they have feelings,” said Perkins.
Perkins makes some great points and as long as this conversation continues we are making progress.
Perkins does keep himself well insulated from the negativity as the artist only has a Facebook account and is not part of Twitter.
How would you fix the issue with internet trolls? Comment below.
