Capeworld Comics

Starting with a shout-out to Jim and his wonderful site. It’s a wonderful source of information on Journey to the West, both for the text itself and its position in world culture.

 

What Death Battle has done to Jim is probably the most scumbag thing the show has done.

 

Their researchers used Jim’s research, cited Jim’s research in debates, and yet when Jim goes to them with questions, when he just wants to talk to someone, they give him the cold shoulder.

 

Now, the right thing to do in this situation would have been to talk to Jim and invite him on the podcast. They’ve devoted enormous sections of the podcast to hearing asinine comments from irrelevant people, they could’ve spare a few minutes to talk to someone whose work helped them put their episode together. Jim would have made a wonderful guest. His passion for Monkey and Journey to the West would have made the podcast exciting in a way it’s never been. And his knowledge would have made the podcast educational. When’s the last time you learned something about world culture from Death Battle?

 

Putting Jim on the podcast would have been the right thing to do.

 

The almost-right thing in the “Mr. Potter hands George a check at the end of the film because he’s shamed by everyone else doing it” sense would have been to edit an acknowledgement of Jim’s contribution onto the video, a brief black box somewhere. They have room in the videos to share schizo babble about how James Bond can move as fast as light, they have room to say “Special thanks to Jim McClanahan.”

 

But say they didn’t want to edit the video, because editing is hard and they have work to do (though after seeing the models in Bond vs Wick, I’m not sure where that work is going). They could have given him a shoutout on twitter, a little acknowledgement. Have you seen the kind of stuff Swank tweets? And he can’t even give Jim a retweet?

 

But Death Battle didn’t do the right thing, or even the almost-right thing. They did the wrong thing. They completely snubbed Jim.

 

He’s tried to talk to Louxi, he’s tried to talk to Swank, he’s tried to get the ear of anyone and they’ve all ignored him.

 

It’s inexcusable.

Swank and friends have time to go into their discord and talk to their sycophants and lickspittles about how James Bond totally moves faster than his own car, they have plenty of time to say “Thank you, Jim. Thank you for helping us do our job.”

 

I encourage everyone to reach out to Death Battle and tell them to do the right thing and talk to Jim.