The Shame of the Past

I gotta say shame on the Comics Journal if they really are going to print a 13 year-old interview with Colleen Doran in which she criticized the actions of "a dirty old man" on the convention circuit, a man who recently died. If this man is the one Franklin Harris suspects, I have a couple of things to say. Heck, even if he isn't, I have something to say about this.

I have always given a little more leeway in such areas to old men who formed their initial views of the world before the world underwent a paradigm shift. The prime example I can think of is William Hartnell, who was already very old in the sixties when he took on the role of the Doctor on Doctor Who. He was known to be a racist, because he was raised in that environment. While I don't excuse his behavior, some of which was terribly distressing to people around him, I at least understand it.

Same with this guy. Before I met him, I knew what he was like. That didn't detract from his accomplishments, not for me, but it was something that detracted from him, as a person. What he needed was someone to explain the pain it was causing, to call him on it. Guys like that need to have things explained to them. They don't understand. There's a gap there, an inability to see what they are doing as anything more than harmless fun.

Now, Colleen was willing, thirteen years ago, to come out and say that what the guy was doing was wrong. She was willing to call him on it. And they never printed it, so it never did him or anyone else any good. Had the Journal printed that interview back then, maybe he would have realized just how much hurt he was causing, and maybe he would have apologized directly to Colleen and modified his behavior back then, instead of only apologizing to her agent shortly before his death.

Dredging up the interview now does no one any good, and seems to me to be in bad taste. Perhaps the Journal ought to focus on the living instead of ripping on the dead.