Does the Word "Blacklist" Make Anyone Else Uncomfortable?

Via Brandon Graham, I came across this post from Frank Santoro, which I've quoted in its entirety below:

Before Watchmen blacklist
Here’s a handy list of all the comics makers who participated in Before Watchmen. I refuse to buy or read anything by these folks: Neal Adams, Rafael Albuquerque, Michael Allred, Brian Azzarello, Lee Bermejo, Jordi Bernet, Tim Bradstreet, Massimo Carnevale, Cliff Chiang, Michael Cho, Amanda Conner, Darwyn Cooke, David Finch, Gary Frank, Richard Friend, Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, Michael Golden, John Higgins, Adam Hughes, Phil Jimenez, Jock,  J.G. Jones, Dave Johnson, Michael Kaluta, Chip Kidd, Andy Kubert, Joe Kubert, Jae Lee, Jim Lee, John Paul Leon, Joshua Middleton, Phil Noto, Kevin Nowlan, Olly Moss, Joe Prado, Paul Pope, Ivan Reis, Eduardo Risso, P. Craig Russell, Steve Rude, Chris Samnee,  Bill Sienkiewicz, Ryan Sook, Brian Stelfreeze, Jim Steranko, J. Michael Straczynski, Jill Thompson, Bruce Timm, Ethan Van Sciver, Len Wein——————————————————————————————————————————————-for context please read this article by David Brothers http://www.comicsalliance.com/2012/04/18/creator-rights-before-watchmen-avengers-moore-kirby/

And... I don't know. I understand the impulse, certainly-- although I think it's better manifested simply by not buying any of Before Watchmen-- and its possible that I'm resisting because I like Allred, Azzarello, Chiang, Cooke, Pope, Risso, Rude, Samnee, Steranko, etc. and don't really want to have a moral hangup over buying and enjoying their work. Still, this strikes me as a little extreme, and I'm not quite sure I understand the moral principle behind it: is blacklisting creators really something that we want to get involved with, particularly with our "handy" list by our side? The blacklist is absolute, after all, and I wonder where it ends-- should we boycott any shops that sold Before Watchmen? I bought Minutemen #1 because, frankly, I was curious -- should people be boycotting me and my blog? Or, to put a finer point on it: if you expand this principle just a little, we should blacklist Jonathan Hickman, because he's worked on the Avengers, and Fraction, because he worked on the Fantastic Four. And so on. Very, very quickly, you've boxed out a lot of people, people who like comics and people who are just trying to make a living.

Look: the comics industry is sick. Very sick. Maybe even more sick than most industries, although I doubt it. The abuses that Moore and Kirby suffered collectively represent a very serious moral breach. Comics' wizard and its king have made some extraordinary work, and it seems unlikely that anybody quite like them will ever come around again, even though people have been aping them for decades. But focusing on them obscures the problem: nobody should be treated like that, and comics'll do it to anybody. As consumers, it may very well be that it is our responsibility to work against that, but a blacklist is too easy, and too righteous. And it never does anyone any good.

Wednesday's New Thing: Guardians of the Galaxy 0.1

Although I long ago understood that the numbering of comic books has little meaning outside of marketing, Marvel's .1 initiative has always seemed sort of goofy. Whether or not a book's number is actually important in any way, it certainly appears to have market value; that's why the comics person sometimes seems, from the outside, like a peculiar sort of counter, trying to piece everything together by completing a collection. So, although the .1 books were designed as "good jumping on points!," they actually make everything more complicated simply by bearing such arcane numbering. I have a feeling that this scared off new comics readers, that is, the sort of person that Marvel was ostensibly interested in attracting with the initiative.

This Guardians of the Galaxy issue, though, is particularly silly seeming. Since the series hasn't even really started yet, it reminds me of an old George Carlin joke about airplanes: "preboarding? What does that mean? Do you get on before you get on?" Look: the #1 is the ultimate in jumping on points, because every reader is starting from the first position together. The fact that comics sometimes run into the dozens, even the hundreds, of issues is precisely why the industry thinks it needs good jumping on points. That said, many of my not-comics friends have told me that one of the great things about serialized books is the ability to pick one up without the slightest idea of what came before and then enjoy the damn thing anyway, and it may be that a certain percentage of new readers are happy to start anywhere. Assuming, however, that issue numbers in the hundreds do put some people off, the companies seem to think that they are compelled to start new books (or, I guess, renumber old ones) after awhile. And, so, even though this issue is sort of a prologue to the upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy ongoing, this particular .1 strikes me as unusually silly; if it's important to the story, why not just start here? Or why not make it a one-shot? Prologue to Guardians of the Galaxy: Peter Quill: Starlord #1! 

The dearth one-shots is frustrating for me, in part because I think that a publisher dedicated every month to putting out two or three books that are tied only vaguely to stuff that came before or that will come out later is a publisher dedicated to innovation, or, at least, to trying new things. I expect that the big companies don't make the single serving books because they don't sell as well as the ongoings, but I suspect that they also aren't motivated to go do it, because trying something different would force them to seek new ideas. This isn't something that Marvel and DC are very good at; instead, they prefer to recycle old things and then trick people into believing that they're about to read something new, hence Guardians of the Galaxy #.1 and the ongoing growing pains of the New 52. Of course, one-shots really are a hard sell, innovation or not, and it may just be that the market doesn't really want them. That's a shame, but its not very hard to understand why; there is, after all, a certain joy in reading a book that's a specific part in a longstanding story.

I'm sort of vaguely interested in Guardians of the Galaxy, because I like Steve McNiven's art and also because I'm curious about how Marvel makes comics that tie-in to its movies, and so I have a feeling I'll pick this up when I go to the store in the next few days. I do wonder, though-- will it sell the same way that the #1 will next month? And, if it does, does it mean that we asked for all this?