A frank discussion about the Rippa situation

After seeing Eric conducting himself a bit better over all these years as the face of Rippaverse while others have implode I though, eh fuck it, for old times sake let’s update this thread, because it didn’t sit well with me how I categorized Eric and Rippaverse in the end in light of recent events.

To be fair to Eric, he’s grown a ton. He was new to this, and earlier in this thread I pointed out that he was going to hit speed bumps and there would be growing pains. No matter what you’re doing, you will always think your first efforts are incredible and it takes a long time to let go of preconceived notions. Would Eric learn to be a little more humble? Would he learn to find the right talent and let them loose to do their thing and supplant them where necessary so the campaign as a whole can be greater than the sum of their parts?

I’m surprised to say Rippaverse hasn’t just survived, but it’s doing quite well! And I’m hearing the comics are quite good. Eric was criticized hard for not being able to take feedback. But it appears that couldn’t be further from the truth. And now it’s everyone else sucking wind just going through the motions and refusing to grow, refusing to try to take a chance or do something exciting like Rippaverse. It’s truly impressive how Rippa went through some truly trying obstacles and is now coming out ahead after some painful learning experiences.

And there’s something else that Eric was able to do that others in this sphere haven’t even really attempted and he doesn’t get nearly enough credit for. He dreamt big, and he came up with great ideas that people were excited for and he was able to sell those ideas. This stems from earnest excitement and passion for comics. We could argue about the quality of the art, the originality, the writing or whatever, but there’s something to be said for just fucking giving the readers what they fucking want.

Is Horse Man just a rehash of batman? Absolutely. Is that a bad thing? I don’t think so. It’s nice to see someone hyping up and giving people what they want this day and age.

For all the shit Rippaverse has gotten, the rest of the people in this sphere have kinda stumbled when it came to building a big IP, a brand, a universe that people could rally around and buy into, and have that universe elevate the other products and lead to more sales and merchandizing. There were absolutely some speed bumps, and at the time I was turned off by a lot of Eric’s behavior and took a bit of joy in seeing this comic see some resistance.

But despite how fucking hard it was to hold his tongue, be humble as so many people were making it their entire lives to demonize and attack the dude, he eventually learned to play it smart and be the bigger man. And that’s actually pretty damned respectable, so hats off to Eric.

I’ll say again that I hope everyone in this sphere is able to grow and find their passions and find a way to come up with cool new projects that people are excited about, with epic futures and possibilities that make people hopeful for the future again, we NEED that.

Sitting around and bitching and moaning and pointing fingers is getting old fast. We’re in a new era now. We don’t want to be angry, we don’t want to be tearing each other down. We want cool shit. We want optimism again. We want to see badass studios with huge ambitions and talent taking on awesome new shit!

I know this thread got really fucking negative, we all were going through some shit and trying to defend the fragile things we love in entertainment and that can often spiral out of control. If anyone wants to say more snide shit, whatever, I’ll take it, I feel as though I was wrong about a bit of this and underestimated July in some ways, but I do think overall I was pretty spot on. I’m very happy I was wrong about the future of Rippaverse though, it makes people happy, so who am I to judge?

Rippaverse looks to have a bright future now. If they can build up more characters around horseman and find away to connect top artists and writers to build an interconnected world that bleeds greater and greater quality year over year as they push through these growing pains, this could be an awesome venture to look forward to seeing grow year on year.