The Adventures of Dysfunctional Dan

It’s been a tough week online for the comics industry. The brilliant comics writer Chelsea Cain was tweeting about her disappointment at the end of her  Mockingbird  series, canceled by Marvel. She shared an alternate cover for the final issue: Then the abuse came. This is Chelsea’s take on it: Overnight, I had lost thousands of followers. (I’d gone to bed with about 8500.) I had gained a thousand new followers. I had been tagged thousands of times. Comments were coming in, fast and furious, every second. I’d never seen anything like it. I saw a few of them – a lot of support, a lot of people yelling at one another – a lot of people mad at me for being too quick on the block button or too critical of comic book readers or being too feminist. A lot of them just seemed mad at women in general. I deactivated my account. I got up. I walked my dogs. You might not believe that in 2016 this sort of thing happens. It does. Here’re a completely real screenshot of just one pe...

You may have seen the news of gorilla Kumbuka escaping from his enclosure at London Zoo. The male Western Silverback got out into a secure keeper’s area and was quickly tranquilised. The public was never in danger and the situation seemed to have dealt with very well by the London Zoo staff. The events have led to an organisation called the Born Free Foundation releasing a statement saying “it could have ended very differently” and was a “startling reminder” of the risks of keeping wild animals in captivity. The organisation wants to see zoos phased out, something which I disagree with. In terms of their opinion of the events of the London Zoo incident, it seems frankly wrong. It was extremely unlikely that it would ever have ended any differently thanks to the zoo’s safety procedures. The animal never escaped into a public area, the public were evacuated quickly and the gorilla was tranquilized and moved back to his enclosure remarkably quickly. It seems clear to be that London...

You may have seen, intentionally or not, the latest news about Kim Kardashian. She was in Paris and was robbed at gunpoint. I’m not full of sympathy towards her. OK, that’s not entirely true. I have sympathy in terms of the fact it must have been a traumatizing experience and one I wouldn’t wish on anyone, even someone I don’t like.  I really don’t like Kim Kardashian. I struggle to think of one redeeming feature for her. Everything about her is image and that’s not what life is about. She has become a millionaire on the basis she is good looking. I don’t even view her as good looking because it’s impossible to tell what she would actually look like without the various fakery which makes her look like she does. She doesn’t appear to have any personality whatsoever. She chose to marry perhaps the most arrogant man in the world. I could go on.  It puzzles me that she has become something of an idol to so many girls and young women. They want to be Kim Kardashian and that’...