Preamble - the "comics what?"

The first, biggest and silliest argument of the day was over this one word/phrase. My original preamble referred to the "comics industry." Most others, particularly Dave Sim, wanted to replace it with "comics medium."

I felt that the Bill was an industry document and that the preamble was merely an indication that this wasn't an attempt to set any one type of agreement in concrete – a purely industry-oriented point – before laying out what principles we felt were essential to any agreement. Our artistic statements were in our work, in other words, not in the Bill; which was just the shield we were building to protect that work from being corrupted.

"Comics" was the compromise, but it wasn't the end of it for me. A few months later Dave Sim was interviewed in the Journal and explained the conflict by observing that it was all just because he (Dave) was a "medium person" and I was an "industry person."

*Sigh...*

Fortunately, Understanding Comics was already half-done by then, so within the year I had my answer ready.