Writer Eliot Rahal on Black Lives Matter protests, living in a pandemic and sexual abusers in comics

Eliot Rahal is not a saint.

He’s not a hero.

He’s just a guy — albeit one who can write some great comics — who lives 15 minutes away from the Minneapolis Police Department’s Third Precinct, the den of corruption and indifference that became the epicenter of protests after George Floyd’s death at the hands of three MPD officers.

Rahal watched as police amplified and aggravated their presence as the righteous chaos and anger spilled from the Third Precinct to nearly his front door.

“It’s weird standing outside, listening to the helicopters and the sirens,” Rahal said, “and watching tear gas waft like a fucking ghost.”

In this “one hell of a summer,” Rahal finds himself rethinking his place in this world as ley lines of injustice and misery seem to converge around him; racial prejudice, a global health crisis and a comics industry reckoning with sexual harassment and abuse all demanding a meaningful response. 

“It’s really difficult for privileged people to wrap their minds around the fact that your institutions are net evil,” Rahal said to me. “And they were designed to be that evil, designed to be good for you but specifically bad for one group of people. And you know they’re bad because you see it all the time. But grasping that reality and grasping how much work there is to do, it’s just an overwhelming feeling.

“I’m not trying to get a gold star here. You asked how I felt about it — I’m telling you.”

I talked with Rahal for two hours in June about these times and his books. What follows is the first part of an edited and condensed account of our conversation.

He’s open. Honest. 

And he says he’s no good guy.

These months, Rahal said, “make you take a look at your entire life and think, ‘I’m a monster.’”

Let’s start with the most recent thing: the George Floyd murder and the protests. What’s it like being there and watching all of this, and then watching as the world watches you? And how is everything now?

That’s a big question that I think has a lot of different answers. On an unemotional objective level, right? The timeline of events was Mr. Floyd was murdered and then the next night the community burned the Third, right? And that was like, I watched that happen live. At the time, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I’ve just never seen anything like that before, especially something that was so close.

Hindsight upon reflection, that thing fucking needed to go. This whole month, two months, has changed my life. There were only like three nights of “destruction” right? And then the fourth night, the energy was still out there for a fight, you know? Everyone was looking for a fight and it didn’t happen, thank God. The cops still fucking tear gassed a bunch of people for no reason, but at least there wasn’t a brawl. I mean, there was a brawl, but there wasn’t, 

It was impossible for me to see outside of Minneapolis/St. Paul, but I understood in the back of my head that this was an international moment and still is. And that’s good, but it was so difficult to see outside of it because I’m waking up every day trying to figure out what I can do to help out.

It was a fucking dystopia. 

You’re going outside, all these neighborhoods that you visit, or that are nearby, are all boarded up. Which is fucked up. Some of these buildings are smashed, which only adds a bleakness to the picture. And then you’re watching the news of these armed National Guard guys stationed everywhere, and the cops are already essentially armed like the National Guard. So it’s like, OK, cool, I guess.

And I watched it happen on TV. The protesters and the demonstrators, they’re very well organized. It’s clear that they’re very well organized, but their organization is on a grassroots civilian level, right, and that is impressive — don’t get me wrong. The fact that they’re able to do that. 

But I saw what fucking happened.

There’s a bridge, right? And you see this crowd of protesters, and the bridge has essentially created a line of no return. Basically the cops say if you cross that line, we’re going to fucking beat the shit out of you. They didn’t cross the line, they’re smart enough not to do that. But you see a group of a thousand people and then all of a sudden you see a smaller, but much more tactically organized civilian “public service” armed to the teeth.

And it was like watching, this is how they’re going to do it, man. This is how you invade an American city. I just watched it happen. You see the protocol: They shut down the highways, they put down a curfew and then they use the tactics that they used in Fallujah, in fucking American cities. What is happening right now? Regardless of the righteousness of the cause — and it’s one I believe in and I have been participating in — when there is so much chaos, and that’s what it was, it becomes a hellmouth for more chaos. Chaos invites chaos.

***

I have trodden the winepress alone;
from the nations no one was with me.
I trampled them in my anger
and trod them down in my wrath;
their blood spattered my garments,
and I stained all my clothing.
It was for me the day of vengeance;
the year for me to redeem had come.

Isiah 63: 3-4

***

Regardless of that dystopia, I’m going to move into a spiritual phase of this conversation. But what we experienced was God’s wrath. God’s wrath working through humans.

And I don’t mean that God came down and struck a lightning bolt on the city of Minneapolis and then that fire spread everywhere else. If the idea of God works through humanity and through the spirits of people, what we experienced was a version of a plague, like the closest thing to His wrath. Because this is a self-incurred wrath. We did this. Our complicity and our inaction and our blindness to racist institutions or our willful ignorance of them. 

With no one else to blame but ourselves. 

And that was a lot. I’m never going to feel the pain of what Black people have experienced in this country. But I felt something, right? I felt something that I have never felt before and that feeling has changed my life, and I’m trying to take steps to make sure I keep that feeling by making sure I commit to my community regularly. 

I’m too chaotic, right? And so I’m trying to be lawful. So I’ve joined a service organization and stuff like that.

You said that everything had given you this new feeling. Is it a kind of sadness or anger or what is it?

I personally think it was like a spiritual reawakening feeling. It was like a lightning bolt for me. I’ve already been thinking about my relationship with the spiritual realm. So I’ll admit I was little bit primed. But I felt a feeling that I had never felt before, and it was very intense. I believe in the collective unconsciousness between human beings, and the closest thing I can compare it to is fucking “Star Wars.” When the Empire blows up the planet Alderaan, and Obi-Wan Kenobi has that weird little brain aneurysm. He says, “I just felt like a thousand voices cry out at once.”

And that’s what I felt, and it’s a very powerful feeling. It’s beyond sadness and it’s beyond grief and it’s beyond anger. It’s all of these awful feelings at once. 

I’m going to pat myself on the shoulder, like I’m the real hero here, but I’m having a hard time finding a place to volunteer because there are so many people who are out trying to help. And it’s powerful. Hope exists within wrath, and anger exists within that, they all exist within the same space. Humans like to take things one at a time because we’re flesh and blood, and that is not how things are, though. 

Let’s take a step back and look at the other overwhelming problem right now. I don’t remember when it was the last time we talked, but I don’t think we were quite in the global pandemic yet.

No, we were not.

How have you been dealing with that at a personal level?

Oh, the pandemic? Or are we talking about all the fucking shitty monsters in comic books?

That’s the next question we’ll get to.

I’m already a nervous person, and we’re already at home with our thoughts all the time. But I got a lot of feelings about the pandemic, but I’m exercising as much caution as possible. One because I live in the city. Two, I have an elderly mother-in-law who lives by herself and she cannot afford to get sick, nor could her body necessarily take it, from what I understand about the effects of the coronavirus, and how severe it is.

It sucks that we can’t do anything, but my wife and I have just been trying to find things that we can do and enjoy those things and really work on enjoying something small, like eating hot dogs in a car or playing tennis or going on a long walk or we’re going to go camping. We finally feel good about going to do something outside of our house, in the phase that we’re in. We’re still going to exercise a lot of caution, and we have our own little Airbnb, we’re not going to touch anybody, but we just need to get away from the city for a second. 

But it makes me angry if anything.

I don’t understand why we let it get so bad. I’m not here to necessarily blame Donald Trump, because this pandemic would have occurred regardless of his leadership, but we are living in a failed state, right? Our government has failed entirely and it’s just like, “Oh, here’s a $1,200 check and a really complicated loan form for you to figure out, while we give a million billion dollars to Shake Shack.” Go fuck yourself. Why are we still paying taxes? Your police are killing innocent civilians. What are we paying for? What the fuck are we paying for? It makes you angry; it makes you really angry. 

But the only blood-soaked silver lining here is that it is teaching me to pull back, take my time and allow the beauty of a small moment to fill the room. I’m not going to call that a positive, because 140,000 fucking people are dead, for no reason, right? I mean how many of these deaths were preventable? 

Right now, the vaccine feels like the equivalent of the 25th Amendment. The thing that’s going to save us that is not coming.

The only thing we can do is hope for a vaccine. I don’t want to blame people here, but it would be nice if we had messaging from our federal government to tell everyone, “Hey, we get it, protest, but otherwise, stay the fuck inside.” I wish we just had more messaging on that level because we’re not even out of the first wave yet. People are talking about a second wave, and I’m like, “We’re not even done with the first one.”

Here’s the galaxy-brain thing: You can’t have a second wave if you never leave the first one.

Think of how many lives are being ruined a day: 1,000 people dying a day is ruining 10,000 lives — 10,000 lives are being shattered a day. People are dying because someone thinks, fucking, like, “I want a haircut.” 

What the fuck are we doing?

After the fourth night of the uprising in Minneapolis, my wife and I were both exhausted by a lot of crying and just tired, so we decided to go to Hudson, Wisconsin, just across the state line to chase down some pierogies and ice cream. That was great. But we go there, and we literally just left our city 20 minutes ago, and it’s boarded up, broken, everyone’s angry and pissed and wearing masks and cops are everywhere. We now have to leave Hudson so we can make sure we get back into the city before curfew. Then we go to fucking Hudson, and no one’s wearing a mask. It’s like nothing ever happened and everything’s fine. This place is only 15, 20 minutes away. That also did not help. It made me feel, “What is this?”

“Why am I going through all the trouble to stay at home, to torture myself and my brain, to have every single anxious thought about, ‘Well, goddamn it, I guess now is the moment when I have coronavirus. And nobody else is doing a goddamn thing?”

It’s maddening.

But we’re here, and we’re just doing what we can. I am tired of predicting what I think is going to happen. We have now entered the phase of, “OK, cool, anything can happen now.” That is both liberating to surrender yourself to, but also, “OK, fuck, that’s scary.” 

I know the last time we talked, part of it had been about you getting into going to smaller cons and developing relationships with folks that way. The smaller cons are going to be the ones to come back first. Where are you thinking right now in terms of going to an in-person con?

I love small cons. I love small shows for a variety of reasons, but I’m just not going to do it this year. I wasn’t going to be able to do Super Con, which is my favorite show in the Midwest in Sioux Falls, because of a dear friend’s wedding that I hope is still going on. It was very small to begin with and in the middle of nowhere. So I hope that still gets to happen.

But even if they decide to forgo that wedding and I have the opportunity to go to Super Con, I’m just not going to do it. I want to do it, but it’s irresponsible. It’s just what it comes down to. I will be fine, right? I do have a secret fear of getting the COVID-19 and having a heart attack. But I’m also the type of person who gets a headache and I think, “Oh, I’m about to have a brain aneurysm.”

I don’t want to bring that shit back home and then give it to my wife. Then maybe she gives it to somebody and then they give it to somebody. Or I give it to my mother-in-law or whatever. Would it be great to go and make some money, and see the retailers that I love and the friends that I’ve made and the community organizers that I’ve grown close with over the years? Yeah, that would be great. But I would rather go next year and be able to actually give somebody a hug.

I’m just not going to do it. It sucks because it is a part of my income. I make, on a nuts-and-bolts level, I make about three or four grand a year doing small, regional shows. That’s not a lot of money, but when you’re not making much money to begin with, that’s not nothing. But it’s fine. Because we’re still financially fine, because we’re not, aside from giving money to people who need money right now, we’re not fucking spending anything. So it’s fine.

What am I supposed to do here? I will go to comic book stores and put on my mask for an hour and sign if I need to do that. But man, not until there’s a vaccine. It’s just not smart. I wish there was another answer.

I totally get you when you’re like, “If I have to do a con, and if it’s meeting people and engaging with folks, and I have to do it in a full body suit and feel anxious the whole time, what’s the point?” No half measures, right? Either you go and you enjoy yourself and you do everything you would do normally at a con, which right now is irresponsible, or just don’t go.

Right. It’s just comic books, I hate to put it that way. Come on, let’s see the bigger picture here. It’s just comic books. They will find a way, because we will make them find a way. That’s what it comes down to. I mean, you can’t read a comic book if you’re dead.

Yeah, I had a conversation with my mother. She came over to the house a couple of weeks ago, and she said, “I’m going out to eat. I’m living my life.” And I said, “You can’t do any of that shit if you’re dead, Mom.”

The rural and city divide is crazy. It’s just crazy. It feels like Parisian-style revolution times, where the cities are in open rebellion, and the countryside is not. They have a totally different opinion about it. It’s crazy.

Well, if we’re done talking about the pandemic, let’s talk about assholes in comics. It’s hard to even know where to go with this conversation because it can’t be focused on the assholes and it can’t be talking about, “Oh gee, golly I’m going to miss reading his books.” But it gets to a point where at least I’m almost numb to, “Oh, well, there’s one more asshole.” I can’t be surprised anymore. That’s sad, I think, that there’s such a widespread problem at the highest levels.

I don’t get it. I’ve never had a table or a booth at cons. I am not some high-roller, famous dude, but to try to wield that to get young women into my hotel room, it’s just fucking gross.

It’s disgusting. Listen, that was another thing, just seeing all these women coming forward. Some of whom I know, some of whom I admire, some of who are strangers and it’s like, “Fuck, all these women are putting themselves out there,” and then you realize what they’ve been experiencing. 

***

“Under the guise of mentorship and camaraderie, Warren Ellis insinuates himself into his targets’ daily lives, building trust and forming patterns of attachment. Once the target thinks of him as their best friend or trusted confidant, he escalates the relationship into sexual territory, usually conducted online and through intense periods of communication, but sometimes in person. When his needs are no longer being met, or he seems to be losing control in the relationship, he abruptly cuts off contact, leaving his targets with enduring emotional trauma. Many suffer a loss of self-esteem, trust in their own instincts, and in some cases, their support networks.” – Statement of more than 60 women and nonbinary individuals targeted, harassed and abused by Warren Ellis

***

Again, we’ve always known, we’ve seen elements of it, but it’s just how pervasive it is. And listen, I’m not going to say I’m innocent. I’ve never done anything awful, but I’ve been a boy, right? I’ve been a 16-year-old boy, I’ve been an 18 year-old boy, I’ve been 22, saying stupid things and regurgitating stupid opinions. I am going to be ashamed of those things forever. But I didn’t know what grooming was until this past week and like, “You’re doing what?”

Fuck all these guys, fuck them all. Dang it, we don’t need them. They’re not that good. Your work isn’t that good. Anybody’s work is not that good. From whomever, from the most respected to the fucking indie guy who everyone likes for a second. You are disposable.

You see all this pain, that, with like what’s going on in Black communities, maybe it’s pain you didn’t see before, and you just want to be there for your sisters. These are American voices. There’s an expectation that if you’re an American, you’re not afraid to speak up. What about all of the other women who aren’t in a theoretical free republic? What about all their voices? And then you’re like, “What the fuck?” It makes you so profoundly sad.

*** 

“Charles and I attended the bar-con of comic-shop retailers and creators. I saw that he was getting exceptionally intoxicated and excused myself for the night. When he returned to our room, I could smell the whiskey from under the covers. I was wide awake and extremely tense, but pretending to be asleep. I heard the sound of him kicking off his shoes in the middle of our room, undoing his belt, taking off his clothes and climbing into his bed. I was fully clothed under my sheets. I did not sleep that night, nor the other two that followed.” – Former CBLDF Development Manager Shy Allot describing ex-Executive Director Charles Brownstein’s practice of arranging to sleep in the same hotel room as her on multiple con trips

*** 

I have been a boy. I’ll admit it. And I know I’m hard on myself about that. But when you’re reading these things that these guys do, and you’re just like, “Oh my God, how could anybody ever do something like that?” 

It comes down to listening to women, let their anger be angry because they’re allowed to be angry. They have every reason to be angry. 

But two men are having this conversation.

I want to go back to something you mentioned. I think this does tie in with the Black Lives Matter moment and movement because really this is a problem with the white male system. That’s the overall problem in comics. Your higher editorial staff is white men. The creators creeping at cons, they are white men. 

It is all men. It is all men who are doing it.

And maybe that’s a change that could happen. I’m not in a position of Big Two editorial, to stop a meeting and say, “Oh, hey, we should bring some women onto our books. We should bring nonbinary people onto our books. We should bring people other than, perhaps, misogynistic white men onto the books.” But it seems like someone could do that.

You would think that would be what you would want to do in an industry that is already branded as archaic. Like, “Oh, let’s get some new blood in here.” Here’s the thing: Everyone’s always talking about opening up new markets, or expanding the market. And on a nuts-and-bolts level, you’re all fucking idiots because there are two very large markets that have been unexpanded into. What, 13% to 15% of the U.S. population is Black. There’s natural expansion there. Fifty percent of the world’s population are women. There’s natural expansion there. It feels like comics is talking about expansion into markets without really thinking about it. It’s like when Donald Trump says, “I want to expand my base,” and it’s like, “Dude, you’ve maximized the expansion of your base. You cannot get any more white dudes. There are just no more white dudes. You got them all.”

Take all of the ethics out of it. Take all of your high-mindedness out of it. On a cynical level, if you focus on good storytelling, and you focus on democratizing who is involved in books on a creative level, who’s involved on an editorial level, and who’s involved on a decision-making level, and who’s involved on the retail level, when you focus on what everybody can do in those spaces individually, that changes the culture. The things I can do are hiring, making sure every book I do from now on has at least one woman, or person of another gender on it. I have not always had a woman on every single one of my books. That is true for some work coming out now. That is true for one piece of work about to come out, or about to be announced, but I’m looking at it now and there’s just no excuse.

From now on, I’m making sure I can do what I can do. A lot of young creatives can only go to war with the armies they have, and I understand that, and I’m not going to judge people for doing that, but I have gotten to the point in my career where I can say no. And I can stand up and say, “I want this,” and I can walk away if I need to walk away.

***

“So Jason asked me to go to his car. I declined. He asked me again if I would like to go with him to his car. I declined again. I started getting nervous. The group next to me was still deep in conversation, mostly with their backs turned toward us. Jason sat down on the right of me, and talked to me closely about me being attractive. Then he grabbed my head with both hands, so hard that the best I could do was turn my head to the side so when he tried to make out with me, he missed my mouth and instead kissed my cheek. Then I remember I froze, he let go, and I leaned away from Jason and fully leaned into the back of my friend on my left, who was still deep in conversation and joking with my friends sitting on the floor. Jason left. I remember looking around, and no one had seen this happen, so instead of interrupting a conversation to explain this event, I just stayed quiet.” – Artist Bridgit Connell describing a June 4, 2011, sexual assault by Jason Latour

***

That is a power I need to exercise, and I fully recognize it, and the errors of not doing so. Because, you’re taught as a freelancer, just be thankful and keep your fucking head down, but that’s a culture of complicity. That’s a culture of silence. I’ve got to stick to that. I have another AfterShock book coming out that doesn’t have the representation on the team that I’d like, but I’m going to fight really hard to get a woman as the variant cover artist. I think that’s something I can do.

You’re talking about the patriarchy, the beginnings of capitalism. Capitalism created racism as we know it.

And OK, how do you take that apart? It’s going to take a fuck-ton of work, and we all have to be on the same side, and we have to be supporting everyone we can. But we’re fortunate enough to live in a theoretical democratic republic where change can come within. But democracy is being attacked all over the world. How do the marginalized people in those communities who don’t have legal rights to exercise their displeasure with their governments, how can they change? How does that happen? And usually the answer is they don’t, or extreme violence. 

When you take away all the peaceful routes, there is only violence left.

It’s what we saw. You push people to the point of no return. And I mean, that’s what we saw in Minneapolis. You can only push so much more.

I would really appreciate some sort of disclaimer … or maybe putting this as a second part so that you can show everyone that Eliot is not trying to tell people how to live. I’m just reacting. “You just don’t want to virtue signal. You want to virtue practice.” 

That was a quote from my friend Alex Paknadel’s grandfather. And that is something I’m really trying to take into my heart.

Goddamn if Alex is not the smartest man around.

It’s crazy.

Well, we got anything else to say about society’s ills?

I apologize if I didn’t say all the right words. 

I’m doing my best here.