Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Atom! Freeman, Comics The Magazine, dennis barger, fanboy rampage, Prana
Fanboy Rampage: Dennis Barger Vs Atom! Freeman
Fanboy Rampage: Dennis Barger Vs Atom! Freeman over YouTube comments
Article Summary
- Dennis Barger accuses Atom! Freeman of spamming his YouTube comments with glowing praise for Comics! The Magazine.
- Dennis Barger says the suspicious accounts are low-profile, newly created, and appear focused almost entirely on his videos.
- Atom! Freeman denies any role, while Dennis Barger links the flare-up to years of animosity dating back to SDCC 2011.
- Dennis Barger blasts Comics! The Magazine as a gimmick, while noting retailers often profit by flipping bundle variants.
Dennis Barger is a prominent comic book retailer, currently of WonderWorld Comics in Detroit, Michigan, known for making plenty of entertaining social media posts and videos and has been featured many times on Bleeding Cool over the years. Indeed, one video may have inadvertently led to the Diamond bankruptcy going in a very different direction. Atom! Freeman, or Adam Freeman, also began as a retailer, co-owner of Brave New World Comics in Santa Clarita, California, and won the 2008 Eisner Spirit of Retail Award. He has also been a sales/marketing guy for Top Cow, Valiant, Bad Idea and ComicHub, before setting up his own company, Prana: Direct Market Solutions, also a Lunar Distributor and publisher of Comics! The Magazine. And there is considerable animosity between them; you can see a little of it in a previous Bleeding Cool report about Philbo Distribution.
Which is why it has been funny (for Atom!) and rather frustrating (for Dennis) when a whole bunch of people started posting gloriously about Atom! and his various projects as comments on Dennis Barger’s videos. Atom! has told me it’s not him, he’s not involved, and he doesn’t know anything about it. Dennis doesn’t seem to believe him. And has just posted a new video titled “Why does Adam ‘Atom!’ Freeman keep spamming my videos?” with a subtitle “Adam Freeman, please stop shilling on my channel.” On his Mark Waid video a month ago (another bugbear of Dennis), you can read this exchange:
- @mid-atlantictapetraders4845: Wow, crazy! I am sorry the comics world has so much negativity. I didn’t know that about Mark Waid. I have felt better in general about the future of comics, though… especially after, leaving a recent Comic Con, I saw outside a bunch of teens and pre-teens and all of them had a copy of Atom Freeman’s top selling ‘Comics: The Magazine’! What a good feeling knowing the kids are getting hip to the hobby! Leave it to Atom to draw them in- that guy is sincerely the Stan Lee of this era! One kid had a ‘Comics: The Magazine’ rolled up in his back pocket while riding his skateboard, a group of other kids had an issue spread open on the steps and were pointing out hot comics currently out. What a great sight to see!
- @bingham9512: Yeah, I’ve also been picking it up after just hearing so many people talking about it in every comics shop I walked into. It’s got the “must read” finger on the collective button that ‘Wizard‘ had, but unlike Wizard, Atom Freeman is coming from it as a total trusted industry insider, not as a lifelong fanboy. Almost everyone I talked to at SDCC brought up ‘Comics: The Magazine’ so it seems Atom Freeman is on to something… something big!
Two weeks ago featured the following, with Dennis joining in.
- @westcoastborderhounds7520: We were in a industry chat, several retailers & creators were discussing this & the basic vibe was, Atom Freeman (publisher of COMICS: The Magazine, the hottest periodical in YEARS) will have the best take on it. So, we wait for ‘Da Man’ in this industry to give his EXPERT assessment…
- @wonderworldcomics2020: Oh wow it’s sad this magazine has to send out shills to promote it, but I guess the 50 people who actually care about atoms videos just isn’t enough to prop up this pyramid scheme he’s got… has to find actual influencers to try and piggy back off of… so sad how the “mighty” have fallen…
- @westcoastborderhounds7520: dismiss him at yr own risk Mr. Barger… Atom is the BIG BOSS of comics, like it or not. True DAT.
- @wonderworldcomics2020: like a “fellow” that says “try dat”
On his most recent video before this, we had the following exchange:
- @tobykeether1418: If I am feeling down, I crack open the latest issue of ‘Comics: The Magazine’ by Prana and I cheer right up because I feel connected to the whole comics industry!!!! More fans should pick it up because its flying off the shelves!!!!
- @wonderworldcomics2020: You’re going to be really crushed in 6 months when it’s gone belly up like everything else atom touches 🙁
- @tobykeether1418: Huh?! Its like one of the hottest things in the hobby, all the fans are picking it up and making it water cooler talk. I know several stores that can’t keep it on the shelves!
- @wonderworldcomics2020: what’s the print run? How many units have sold? This is the point Maury would open the letter and say “your claim is a lie”
- @tobykeether1418: All I know is that it is selling like hotcakes. Why would so many store owners make that up. ALL the insiders talk about it constantly. Atom out-bossed the guy that runs ComicsPRO at SDCC & i heard several retailers audibly gasped & stared in awe & respect… face it, the guy is the modern equivilat of Stan Lee as a figurehead for comics.
- @wonderworldcomics2020: bwhahaha you’re hilarious, amazing you can type while pegging atom… skillz
- @bingham9512: I keep hearing this too though, all the store owners are selling out and so many vendors at Cons are trying to find extra copies from other sellers. Looks like Atom Freeman is revolutionizing fandom!!!!
- @wonderworldcomics2020: 2 fake accounts bring out the other 8 atom 😉
And he is right, the commentators in question are very low profile, recently created accounts, with low engagement – aside from Dennis Barger’s videos. I will say this, if Atom! Freeman was behind them, they would probably have been filled out a little more…
Dennis Barger also talks about their first meeting at a retailer summit in San Diego Comic-Con in 2011, in which he challenged a presenter over digital comics e-mail harvesting and that Barger recounts being approached by a man who introduced himself as “Eisner-winning comic shop owner Adam Freeman from Brave New World” and told him he was “the laughing stock of the comic book industry” for the earlier exchange. He described Atom! as a repeat failure, a middleman and Comics! The Magazine is a snake-oil gimmick in which participants pay for coverage or placement, and retailers have to give the magazine away, comparing it unfavourably to the later years of Wizard magazine.
Dennis Barger says he cannot definitively prove the accounts are directed by Atom! Freeman finds the pattern suspicious and limited to his channel among the comic content he follows. Like I said, Atom! denies any participation or knowledge. He states this will be the last time he discusses Freeman or related projects unless they become newly relevant or involve payment, and closes by reiterating his view that Freeman is now widely regarded as a “laughing stock” in the industry.
Personally, I find Dennis’ videos always entertaining and amusing. I also find Atom’s videos very interesting and useful. Can’t everyone just get along? No, I suppose not, this is the internet after all… as for those Comics! The Magazine sales, often retailers order a bundle with a rare variant which they can flip on eBay to cover the cost of the whole bundle and more, and then do indeed give the magazine away. And everyone is very happy with that arrangement…
Fanboy Rampage was a blog by Graeme “Graham” McMillan dedicated to the funniest, most ludicrous and most inappropriate comic book back-and-forths online. McMillan then moved on, becoming a proper journalist for the likes of The Hollywood Reporter and Wired, before returning as one of us for Popverse, but he gave permission to Bleeding Cool to revive his great creation
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