I was disappointed to hear about Scott Lobdell’s behaviour towards cartoonist MariNaomi at the the Prism Comics panel at the Long Beach Comic-Con. While it's good that he apologised, it's a pity that it's only an apology for his "attempt at humour" and his "presence" and not an apology for any of the crappy things he actually did. You get the impression that he doesn't quite know why he's actually apologising.
I recently dropped his Superman to make way on my pull list for Superman/Wonder Woman, but it was with some regret. He’s a messy writer. He tries to write natural sounding dialogue, a flawed Superman, and wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey plots, and I'm all for all of those things in theory, but he’s just not a mature or subtle enough writer to pull off any of them successfully. But, he did make Superman a fun, unpredictable, action packed book, and he’s really good at coming up with entertaining threats for Superman to face and super feats for him to perform. So I admired his work on Superman and defended it a number of times. It’s such a shame to hear that he indulges in such awful behaviour towards women. I don’t need or expect creators I admire to be saints but it’s still saddening to hear about something like this happening in an industry that produces work that means so much to me.
I've got a lot of respect for MariNaomi for discussing this incident publicly, because obviously this isn't just about Lobdell. This clearly goes on all the time behind the scenes in the world of comics. Lobdell wouldn't have just decided to be a sexist/racist dick one day out of the blue. He works in an industry where behaviour like this is the norm and has been for years. I shudder to think what kind of things other male creators I admire get up to, and what kind of crap the female creators I admire have to put up with.