MWEntIndustries

It's been a while since we gave one of our biweekly updates. Lots of good stuff to share.

Our big announcement at the start of this month was the official launch of our premier superhero line, We Are Legion. Previously known as MW Central, we felt the need for something new, something unique instead. With our official launch has come an explosion of art, and there is a flurry of announcements we'll be running over the next month. We've also launched a blog, dramatically overhauled our wiki, and have generally been improving things where we can.

Once again, we are returning to our biweekly schedule for posts, Wednesdays and Fridays. Any new journal entries will be reposted to our blog and Discord server, so you don't have to ferret around for info on the goings on of our studio. We'll be posting about three pieces of art/short stories here on DeviantArt per week for a few weeks. That should keep things around here nice and fresh.

Thanks for reading, and we hope you enjoy what we're working on.

(TW: Sexual assault, the Holocaust)

Thumbnail image from Maus, by Art Spiegelman

Hello, everyone. It's been a while since we've done a journal here on DA. That's due to a lot of things going on behind the scenes, as well as, y'know--every awful thing going on in the world at large. Today, I wanted to talk about some things lately that have been causes of concern personally, and among the team at our studio.

You've probably already heard about how the seminal independent comic and biography/semi-autobiography Maus by Art Spiegelman was banned from Tennessee public schools in McCinn county due to its "crude language" and like two or three panels of nudity. If you are familiar with Maus--as you should be if you're a fan of comics, or art in general--this should be EXTREMELY TERRIFYING, because Maus is one of the most important works depicting the horrors of the Holocaust. Maus showed how even those who'd "survived" the Holocaust (like Art's father, Vladek Spiegelman, who is the primary subject of Maus) had their lives irreparably changed by it in ways that are never discussed in textbooks (ex. Vladek became particularly frugal til the day he died because he had to live on a sliver during the Shoah). It's a story that manages to veer from light banter between Art, Fraçoise Mouly (Art's wife), and Vladek to devastating depictions of hangings and a memory of Art's mother Andzia Spiegelman calling him Richieu (the name of Art's brother who was killed by the Nazis before he was born)--because it is trying to feel disarmingly real, and those moments of levity show how everyone in this book is either a real person, or based on one.

In other words, contrary to being banned, this comic ought to be mandatory reading for students in the way that War of the Worlds (in which the protagonist murders a priest to prevent him from alerting the Martians to their position) or The Cask of Amontillado (in which the protagonist murders a dude and buries him alive in a catacomb) are. In other words, you'd have to be a fucking Nazi to try preventing children from learning about the Shoah from this masterpiece. That, or just a fucking dipshitted liberal (as the saying goes, "scratch a liberal, and a fascist bleeds").

So, yeah. Fuck that nastiness.

In more recent news, today a community member and Matt Allen, a former developer for the independent video game Kynseed, both came forward to discuss how the game's composer raped said community member and how the company's leadership behind Kynseed, PixelCount Studios, stuck their heads in the sand and did little to prevent the composer from continuing his abusive behavior (even after he began targeting another developer from PixelCount, and began hoping for the studio's downfall). The guy's publicly admitted to having raped multiple women, and the founders of PixelCount just pretended to not have known about what they'd been alerted of months and months before. This community member put themselves through hell, terrified that if the story broke out it'd hurt PixelCount and Kynseed, and the leadership of PixelCount have seen fit to return that dedication by doing fuck all. JFC.

I hope we've made crystal clear in the past that we seek to protect our collaborators from this and other harmful behavior. Currently, we're in the process of trying to come together and figure out additional ways to attempt to curtail these kinds of things from happening again in our studio--and what we can learn from to better act if something like this does come to pass under our team's noses. Nevertheless, we'd urge you to at least read Lynn's account of the situation if you are able. It is a terrifying, detailed, and thought-provoking read.

Have a nice day, and please, stay safe out there.

- Matthew Werner

Hello, all. It's been a while. A lot of things have been going on--such is the way of the twin hellyears that are 2020 and 2021--but we're still plugging away in the background. We've got some cool things to share soon enough, but first, there's something we need to address.

Remember how a good while ago, we had to cut some guy off because they were a parasitic loser who ignored everything that we are as a studio for literal years before deciding to aggressively harass me about it? Yeah, so they decided to wait NINE MONTHS to send us a cease & desist email threatening to sue us. For what? Well, that's a fun story.

See, back when I booted this nerd (December of last year, for those keeping tabs), I told this clout-chaser to read through the wiki for anything they wanted removed. After all, I cannot tell what they do and do not want to be publicly available there. They decided NOT TO (because they're a lazy, inattentive git who leeched off free work from our artists for nothing), and blocked me. That's fine, I was going to block them anyways, but I basically repressed the memory of this person in my mind because they--honestly--piss me off. It seems like every time they want to talk to me, they want to do so by pretending to be nice and reasonable while threatening me because they didn't pay attention to something I told them to.

What's even more amusing is the fact that I was not reading the emails at the time--I had no reason to check the account they were messaging to--but I did a routine pass of the wiki because Fandom did a complete redesign during the few months in which I was dealing with personal problems (one of them is an entirely unrelated discrimination lawsuit I'm filing!). During that check, I removed every mention of this person which implied that he was currently still working with us. Not only is this just correct, I too wish to have no association with this cock goblin, because then they will finally stop waiting over half a year to find new reasons to harass me.

Never mind the fact that you cannot sue We Are Legion or MW Entertainment Industries, as they are not registered corporations--we're a publishing front. This person would, in actuality, be suing me. But the fact of the matter is that nothing on the wiki can even be sued over--the only inclusions of their name are simply crediting their previous work with us, and any others have been rightfully purged. It would be entirely unethical to remove these credits, and such credits do not hint at a current association with someone.

Remember last time, I said that I wanted to make this into a larger statement of how we take creators who wish to sever ties with us seriously? Well, this time, I want to make this into a larger statement about harassment and unprofessionalism. It is ENTIRELY UNREASONABLE to wait 3/4's of a year to then toss a C&D letter at someone via email, and then expect them to respond in 2 DAYS, like this person did, before threatening nebulous legal action. Drawing this inanity out for years is stressful, petty drama, and genuinely angers me. Oh, and the kid gloves do come off when you act like this to me and my colleagues--all of whom this person has exploited in one way or another.

That all said, harassment does not justify harassment in kind, so I do ask again that everyone reading does not attempt to seek this person out. Especially not in my name, because I want to forget that this loathsome nerdling exists.

- Matthew Werner

Alright, so, let me say this to anyone reading: MW is not a DeviantArt page compiling a bunch of art, it is a creator-centric publisher of comics from various labels (such as We Are Legion and Jettison Zone). For whatever reason, some folks do not seem to understand this by seeing the whole spiel about us being a studio in our bio, so I'll try to be as crystal clear as possible. We publish comics, prose, and other works of art. If we have an agreement with someone to post their works here, the understanding is that we also will be publishing the comics featuring the characters or worlds involved at some point, or will be partnered with those creators (and likely publishing previews of their comics in our own). We are not a social media page that you go to to share your characters--though there is nothing wrong with that inherently, it is not what we do, and has never been.

I know that this reads, so far, as passive aggressive at best and genuinely hostile or acrimonious at worst. We have just broken off with someone who has been with us for over three years due to the fact that said creator entirely misunderstood who and what we are, and became pretty nasty over it. Three years ago, I offered this creator to join our studio and to share their creations with them being the helm of their own autonomous imprint within our studio. For years, this creator has had a section in our internal studio Discord server just like other imprints, and yet did not recognize that we were under the impression that this person had agreed to having their imprint being under the MW umbrella, and so they believed that we were taking claim of their creations because their characters were listed on our Wikia--where they've been for literal years at this point, because we believed that this creator wanted their imprint at our studio after agreeing to join it and have us promote their creations on our studio's page. Forgive any bitterness, but we do not appreciate being made out to be sketchy or possessive, when we were clear about the agreement from the outset and have been operating under the assumption that a business deal was a business deal for years with no problems. With all due respect, this reads to me as this person not having paid attention to the initial agreement or anything else in the intervening years, and this tracks with their other actions with the studio.

Back in May, we announced the launch of our premier imprint, We Are Legion. But we had been planning to do this since December of last year, so we had an agreement with this person to illustrate one of our core characters created by someone who they are friends with (and may continue to be after all of this). When they posted their art onto DeviantArt, they leaked the name of We Are Legion in the post despite having been told clearly that they were not to do this and that we were saving the name as a surprise announcement. Thankfully, they did quickly amend this post, but it was stunningly unprofessional and belied a general lack of attention.

While the vagueness of this post may seem to be aggressive in the vein of "vague-posting," the truth is that we do not want to be too bitter about the break away--and certainly do not want this person harassed or mocked for doing so. DO NOT attempt to play internet detective and out this person. Rather, this post serves as clarification and to show that we take seriously the notion that creators' wishes ought to be heeded under all circumstances.

- Matthew Werner

Hey, everyone. In case you missed it, we're going to be foregoing new biweekly journal entries for the time being in favor of focusing on our massive secret project. News which should be coming within the next two weeks or thereabouts.

Any who, after a few years, we finally have funded a small print run for THE ODYSSEY: INITIATION #1 on Kickstarter. If you missed it, you can always pick up a digital copy on your preferred comics-buying site (Drive-Thru Comics is good if you don't want to give Amazon money) or wait for our Kickstarter campaign of #2, where we'll have stretch goals to fund another print run of issue #1.

I know this is shorter than usual, but it's always good to take a victory lap when you can.

- Matthew Werner