My Latest Nemesis: James Allen

Mark Trail is a syndicated comic strip ostensibly about nature and conservation. Originally written by Ed Dodd it was passed on first to Jack Elrod and then to James Allen. Being a climate-change denier who can't draw or write, James is possibly the least qualified person the syndicate could have chosen. Also he really, really wants you to know that he is not even angry, he's laughing actually.

Make yourself a cup of tea, this is going to be a long one.

Until recently James had basically only used Twitter to yell at politicians and journalists he disagreed with. But a recent strip happened to catch a little bit of attention and he took the time to respond.

Many, including Josh himself, assumed that this was a dig at Josh Fruhlinger, the Comics Curmudgeon. James says it's not, but as is about to become painfully clear, James cannot handle any form of criticism.

But it also became clear that he can't even recognise criticism unless it's incredibly blunt, so maybe he does actually love Josh's site - because he doesn't realise he's being made fun of.

Enter Marty Schneider with a bit of background for those who came in late. This time James realised that he was being criticised and he did not like it.

You'll notice that James seems to place a lot of importance on how many followers and likes people get and whether or not they get paid for what they do. It actually seems to be the only thing he actually cares about and the only criticism he ever makes of anyone else. The idea that people might be tweeting (or doing anything) for reasons other than to get paid just does not make sense to him.

This is basically where the "I'm not angry, you're angry! Also I don't even care what you say because you're reading my comic and anyway I welcome criticism!" begins, which is very sad and transparent. Also he seems to think he's scoring points here by accusing Marty of not having read strips that haven't been published yet.

Also note the fact that he claims to have restored the strip's dignity. It makes for an interesting contrast with a later tweet where he talks up his predecessor - who apparently left the strip in an undignified state?

He literally cannot tell when he's being mocked. He actually seems to have a great deal of difficulty interpreting written communication in general - which is reflected in the quality of his own writing and the often awkward layouts of his strips, as Marty points out.

If you're wondering why I cut the conversation off there it's because I didn't. James never came back to respond. And that's pretty much how all his interactions go. He makes one response where he (deliberately or otherwise) misinterprets the criticism and then when it's stated more plainly he just ignores it.

I say "deliberately or otherwise" in reference to his misunderstanding everything, because of course he's the type to never admit to a mistake. After saying specifically that he was going to post each day's comics to Marty's "page" he then went on to not do that. And that's where I came in.

Who does he think he's fooling? Also I believe this is the first instance of him referring to Marty as unemployed on the basis that I guess people with jobs don't have time to tweet? Anyway, Marty did in fact show his proof.

Here's where he brings out the big guns in his arsenal: you can't criticise anything unless you could personally do it better. Note that at no point has anyone in this discussion suggested that they can draw better than him, nor will anyone do so - although I'm pretty sure I could since he's just tracing photos anyway.

But he's not thin-skinned! Oh no, he loves criticism!

Once again demanding that his critics produce their own superior work in order to be taken seriously. Not that it would make any difference since it's clearly just a deflection tactic. And this is why I find it so difficult to tell when he's actually being dumb and when he's only pretending to be dumb to avoid engaging with questions to which he has no answers. He does both so frequently that they're indistinguishable.

Is he actually as dumb as he seems? He can't be, right? How do you even manage to read fiction, much less write it, if you don't understand that tone can be conveyed through grammar and word choice? Does he think that it's not yelling unless it's WRITTEN IN ALL-CAPS?

A nice guy, but apparently not someone James actually respects. He's got to make sure we all know that it was secretly him doing the comic even while Jack was alive. And I say "doing" rather than drawing because back then it actually was literally copied and pasted, presumably because James couldn't even delude himself into thinking he could successfully pass his own work off as Elrod's. Also remember how he "restored the comic's dignity" by taking it over from this great guy whom he misses so much. So not only is he dumb, thin-skinned and bad at his job, he's also a real piece of shit.

A new player enters the field: "one of the good ones". And what did he do to get banned from Comics Kingdom? Unfortunately we'll never know since they've stopped posting from their moderator account, but they actually do have live moderators so you literally cannot get banned from "false-flag" reports. You can have your comments temporarily hidden pending moderation, but to have your account banned you actually have to come to the attention of the moderators and break the rules repeatedly. And he definitely knows what he did.

He's holding himself back to preserve his reputation as a nice guy, but also he doesn't mind criticism and it doesn't bother him at all. He can't even keep his story straight in a single comment thread. He's definitely not angry though.

What does this even mean? Giving someone enough rope to hang themself means letting them get themself into trouble by taking something too far, right? What trouble was I supposed to be getting into. He literally doesn't know what words mean. He's also friends with just the best people.

"Feel free to share my work"? It's already on the internet, with handy buttons for sharing on various social media platforms. No one needs his permission to share it. Also, that's a really backwards way of asking someone to advertise for you.

The screenshot above is a compilation someone made from versions of single character's face from Allen's other comic, Edge of Adventure. And immediately James "I love criticism" Allen suggests that I should stop criticising him and follows it up with what can only be intended as an insult. And it's once again focused on the fact that I'm not as successful as him. He clearly looked at my blog, but the only criticism he had of it was that it's not popular. No criticism of the actual content, because he's clearly not capable of it. To him, good and popular are the same thing. He also took the time to retweet his own tweets insulting me (for his 43 followers?), but without tagging me - either because he didn't want me to see that he'd done it or because he still hasn't figured out how to.

He even started bringing my name up in unrelated discussions with other people.

But he's definitely not angry!!!!

So am I not making a difference or am I actually helping? Also, how do you write an educational comic about nature and not know the definition of "parasite"? That collage of faces obviously really got to him though because he actually came back to it to post another "rebuttal".

And finally he decided he'd had enough. So did he just stop responding to me? Did he stop inviting criticism on Twitter? Of course not. He just blocked me.

I'm not really sure why that was the straw that broke the camel's back, or what exactly the "silly shit" was. Correcting him, I guess. Honestly, I don't understand why he even bothered to let it go on this long. What was he getting out of it? What was he hoping to achieve? All he managed was to make himself look like a thin-skinned idiot. Well, even more so than he already had.