An op-ed about the Andrew Farago scandal, and a bit more research

Lavender Hotels has an op-ed about the invasion-of-privacy scandal caused by ousted SF Cartoon Art Museum curator Andrew Farago, and makes some important points about what's happened, though unsurprisingly, they won't allude to any of his online antics, and there are some leftist biases here too:

The downfall of Andrew Farago happened inside a space meant to be entirely safe. For over two decades, Farago was the public face and institutional backbone of San Francisco’s Cartoon Art Museum, a beloved cultural fixture celebrating comic strip history, graphic novels, and animation. He was a respected historian, an author, and an award-winning pillar of the tight-knit independent comic community.

"Beloved" and "respected"? If these writers would pay more attention to what Farago was writing on his social media pages, which was pretty cavalier, such descriptions could be considered disputable. A vital query to be made is: does being rude and calling everybody you disagree with "nazis" make you a better person? No, it does not. Unfortunately, Farago seemed to think otherwise.

For decades, the alternative comic and animation industries have marketed themselves as progressive, inclusive safe havens for outsiders. This case exposes the structural vulnerability inherent in organizations built entirely around tight social bonds and informal networking.

When an institution relies on a single individual to act as its gatekeeper, historical curator, and community liaison, professional boundaries inevitably blur. Farago began his tenure at the museum as a volunteer in 2000, rising to a paid role in 2001, and taking the mantle of official curator by 2005. Over 21 years, he curated more than 100 exhibitions. He was embedded in the personal lives of the artists he championed.

This level of integration creates a dangerous shield. Power in small cultural non-profits rarely looks like a corporate hierarchy; instead, it manifests as social capital. When an influential figure hosts a party, the attendees are not just friends—they are peers, subordinates, creators, and families whose professional fortunes are intertwined with the host’s goodwill.

As the former curator of the museum, I assume he was in charge of selecting the projects for exhibition. Something tells me that, if a right-winger wanted to develop an exhibition there under his management, Farago would've vehemently refused and shunned the conservative figure on the spot. For all we know, he probably didn't even include Chuck Dixon among the interviewees for his Batman history, and recalling Ethan van Sciver was blacklisted from DC as a result of Farago's machinations, it wouldn't be shocking if the latter had no role in Farago's book writings either. Also, what's this about "social capital"? Is the columnist implying capitalism is to blame here? If so, that's distasteful and making it sound like "progressive" and "inclusive" are inherently positive notions also obscures more serious issues to consider here.

The defense strategy in digital voyeurism cases frequently relies on the destruction of immediate evidence. Farago’s defense will likely lean heavily on his prompt deletion of the recordings and his self-issued written apology, attempting to frame the event as an isolated, impulsive lapse in judgment rather than a systemic pattern.

Digital forensics tells a much harsher story. Deleting a file from a commercial smartphone filesystem rarely removes the underlying data blocks immediately. Modern law enforcement extraction tools can routinely recover deleted media caches, unallocated space fragments, and temporary database thumbnails. The seizure of twelve separate electronic devices indicates that investigators are looking far beyond a single afternoon's recording.

The true legal exposure for Farago rests on what those remaining eleven devices contain. If forensic analysts uncover evidence of historical recording, distribution, or the involvement of minors across older datasets, the current requested 20 misdemeanor or low-level felony counts of invasion of privacy could escalate into severe structural charges carrying mandatory prison sentences.

The Cartoon Art Museum faces its own reckoning. The institution must now audit decades of internal operations, off-site workshops, and youth education programs managed under Farago’s direct supervision. The immediate termination was a necessary public relations maneuver, but it does not absolve the broader cultural ecosystem from ignoring the risks of concentrated, unchecked social authority.

Trust inside small arts organizations cannot be managed by a handshake agreement or shared progressive ideals. It requires strict operational protocols, background evaluations, and independent oversight structures that treat cultural icons with the exact same skepticism as any corporate executive.

No doubt, the museum will suffer from a drop in attendance as a result of this scandal, and of course, Farago's history books are bound to lose audience too. But hey, as mentioned before, they probably aren't the most dedicated, let alone accurate, since he may have forcibly omitted anybody he despised from his narratives. The article's right though, that educational programs the museum may have run will have to be investigated to figure out whether Farago abused any of its students over the years. For all we know, there could turn out to be more witnesses than previously thought. And what if Farago has more than one single online cloud storage where he kept disturbing materials? The market for online storages is very competitive, and it's always possible to register multiple accounts on different servers. The police will need to investigate that too, and it wouldn't be surprising if plenty had their own tools for data recovery to help police with investigations when needed.

In addition to the above op-ed, if there's more to say about the now disgraced Farago, well first, I discovered that, if there's any social media pages he didn't get rid of so far, it's his Threads page (although that could change soon enough), and if there's something I noticed here worth commenting on, it's the following:

Geez...was Farago giving a hint what he really thinks of invasions of privacy/sexual abuse, and even Identity Crisis from 2004? I get the strange feeling he simultaneously doesn't like Terry Long, and from what I know of him so far, it doesn't sound like he ever spoke out against DC's worst directions since the turn of the century. If not, that too speaks volumes about his MO. And then, there's this:

When I noticed this post about GI Joe, I couldn't help wonder if he was imitating video filmer Richard Meyer, since I recall the latter once did a video about a GI Joe annual (yearbook) nearly a decade ago, and what Farago says sounds oddly similar to what Meyer said. Was this Farago's way of expressing spite for somebody he doesn't agree with, and likely never met? All that aside, seriously, I doubt Mr. Farago is a GI Joe fan.

I also thought to try and do some research on past writings of his, and found that in 2008, the Los Angeles Times quoted him on the late artist Michael Turner:

“He was definitely one of the most popular and influential comic-book artists working right now,” said Andrew Farago, curator of San Francisco’s Cartoon Art Museum. “He was very, very much in demand as a cover artist on high-profile projects.”

If Farago's a woke male feminist these days with a sex-negative viewpoint, then depending how you view this, he had a pretty different position back at the time. What are the chances he'd come within even miles of saying anything positive about Turner today? Perhaps next to none. He's surely the kind of leftist who simply "goes with the flow" and accepts what they consider acceptable positions, and in Farago's case, it was quite possibly because he thought it would make a great shield from scrutiny.

Here's also an older interview he gave to the Comics Reporter and the late Tom Spurgeon in 2011, where he tells that:

I'm very fortunate in that I often find myself in situations where I can't believe that I'm getting paid for this. Joining the National Cartoonists Society and meeting about 90 percent of the strip cartoonists I grew up reading in a social context has been incredibly cool. It changes your perspective when you flip through the comics section and realize that you've got good drinking stories about half the artists on the page. I've had dinner with Gahan Wilson, walked around Rockefeller Center with Larry Hama (which would have made 12-year-old me's head explode), toured the offices of Mad Magazine, Marvel Comics and DC Comics, shingled a roof with Jeff Keane, given museum tours to Art Spiegelman and Mo Willems, had tea with Hayao Miyazaki, and went to a Simpsons script read-through in Los Angeles earlier this month thanks to Tom Gammill, whom I met through the NCS. I've honestly given up on ever making a wish list of comic/cartoon things I'd like to do, because I've gotten to do so many amazing things as a result of this job. If I'm hanging out in a pub with Alan Moore and Scooby-Doo next year, I don't think I'll be all that surprised.

On the downside, when you're working for a non-profit that you really believe in, it's easy to find yourself working 50 or more hours a week, tackling extra projects on weekends, and never quite being off-duty. And there's a lot of paperwork, fundraising and grant writing, which balances out the more exciting aspects of the job. My family are the only non-cartoonists in my address book, so I feel like I'm on the clock even when I'm hanging out with friends.

I wonder what any and all of these figures he speaks of think, now that the mask is off, and Farago turned out to be so repulsive? Some of the professionals he spent time with are leftists, of course, so what they think is quite possibly the most interesting part of all. Presumably, if they've heard the news about Farago's crimes, they're shutting the door on him now. But did they ever notice anything fishy about him years ago? And if so, why'd they want anything to do with him then? That aside, a terrible shame he was paid for anything. IIRC, Hama was blacklisted by Dan DiDio years ago, and Farago did nothing to help him. And why does a leftist like Spiegelman matter so much?

I then found a post on Peter Laird's blog from 2014, of the history book Farago wrote about Ninja Turtles (Ultimate Visual History), and Laird hints he's dissatisfied, if anything, with how it's put together, in a way that's very sloppy:

However, I was disappointed that it also contains a number of mistakes, inaccuracies, and some weirdly inconsistent editorial decisions with regard to art credits (sometimes there are, sometimes there aren't, with no discernible rhyme or reason). I used up about half a package of Post-It notes while carefully going through the book so I could put together this list of comments.

Here goes…

End pages in the front of the book: I was sort of baffled by the odd choice of art for this, out of all of the TMNT artwork available -- a drawing of a Turtle in boxer shorts? With this image begins a strangely inconsistent treatment of crediting and/or describing the illustrations -- in this case, no artist is cited as having drawn that image, either on these pages, or -- as would be more likely in a book like this -- on one of the pages to follow. It kind of looks like a Mike Dooney drawing, though I cannot say for certain.

First glossy page, right hand side: This reproduction of the very first group shot of the TMNT, penciled by Kevin Eastman and inked by me back in 1983, with a slab of mottled green superimposed for some reason, is not credited anywhere that I could find. It's also an odd place to put this uncredited drawing, in my opinion, when a far better location would be on page 20, where it is described in the section about the creation of the TMNT.

Following page, left hand side: This full-color piece by Kevin is also uncredited, as least as far as I could tell.

Second page following, left hand side: Another full-color piece, this one of a leaping Leonardo, again by Kevin, is uncredited.

Two page spread following the "Contents" page: This unusual full-color piece by me is also uncredited, and no information about it is given at all, which to my mind is extremely weird, given the curious nature of it, with the Turtles wearing costumes that are very different from the norm. [...]

Page 28: Four of my black and white TMNT pin-up sketches are printed on this page with no artist's credit or description.

Page 31: There are no artist's credits listed for the insert. This, as I recall, was penciled by Kevin and inked and toned by me.

Page 33: The image of April on the right hand side of the page is described as "April O' Neil as she appeared in Eastman and Laird's original comics." I don't understand why there is no mention of which issue and what page this panel is from.

Page 34: There is no information describing what the insert card in the lower left hand corner is.

Page 35: This image is described as "The Turtles preparing to engage in combat with the deadly Triceratons." Why not say which issue it was from? (I think it was TMNT Volume One, #6.) [...]

Page 40: In the second paragraph on this page, it is said that "… Eastman and Laird knew that the time was right to take the Turtles to the next level." The obvious implication here is that we were actively looking around for ways to grow the TMNT business in the direction of licensing and merchandising, and that's simply not true. It's not that we were averse to it -- we'd already proved that by striking deals with Dark Horse and Palladium Books and a few others -- but these are things that came to us, not deals that we went out looking for. We were focused on trying to get the TMNT comics out on time and with a decent level of quality.

Also, Kevin is quoted as saying that we'd been approached by other licensing agents wanting to rep the TMNT before Mark Freedman showed up. I have no memory of any agents other than Mark Freedman ever approaching us.

On the bottom right of the page is a reproduction of a large TMNT group shot that I penciled and inked; again, no artist credit.

One of the commentors also said:

One thing I was extremely disappointed with the book is the coverage on the 2003 cartoon, since it is my personal favorite incarnation of these characters. Or seemingly lack thereof...A very limited amount of text for 7 seasons of my personal favorite (if added, maybe a 1 1/2 pages at most)...and even the pictures/art used were disappointing. One pic of Mikey from the very last season for 1 whole page? And then one pic of Shredder from the very last season for 1 whole page? No pics of the 4 of them in action, or the 4 of them together, or even villains like Agent Bishop, or artwork/pictures to show people the darker tone/aspects of the cartoon & how it pushed the show as far as it could go for a cartoon, which I very much appreciated (whether it be samples from episodes like Same As It Never Was or Bad Day, or the hallucination/nightmare of Leonardo stabbing through Splinter, Baxter Stockman's body falling apart, etc.), no comments from any of the voice actors of the show...the 2003 cartoon portion of the book I was honestly very disheartened about. But hey, what can I say. I'm just a guy named Matt from Iowa who just loves the 4kids show to death, lol. It's very partial to me and it's what got me back into the characters.

Well, this is telling something. It sounds like this history book isn't the well-researched, accurate overview the establishment would have us believe it was. And now that Farago was arrested, it'll all be seen as moot and badly aged. If there's not enough history books about TMNT on the market to date, let's hope somebody with a better moral backbone will take the time to do the research, and not rely upon anything Farago may have written in his now worthless book in order to try and develop an improved history of how the Ninja Turtles came to be. If anyone's considering buying the Farago book, please, look for another one, or try to develop a research book of your own. Farago doesn't need our money, and besides, what if he uses any dough he gets to pay his legal bills? Let's not finance that.

And then, let's not forget the horrid political side of Farago, which Fandom Pulse reminds everyone about:

Alongside that professional record, Farago maintained an active social media presence that was consistently and combatively left-wing in its orientation toward comics industry controversies. He was a vocal opponent of the Comicsgate movement, describing its participants as bigots and comparing them to racist fictional villains. In February 2024, Bleeding Fool documented a series of his posts, including one stating: “Never forget that everyone in ComicsGate took personal offense when Superman took a stand against the Klan,” and another drawing a comparison between Comicsgate creators and the X-Men villain Graydon Creed, writing: “Watching the X-Men cartoon again. Graydon Creed, the shrill, screaming bigot seemed so over the top and ridiculous back then, but today he’d be running the Mutants of TikTok social media account and would be cranking out a dozen YouTube videos a day about the Woke menace.”

Farago took to The Daily Beast where he was quoted by the media at length in his attacks on ComicsGate: “[Comicsgate] is made up of people who were into the Gamergate thing and when that ran out of steam they noticed that they hadn’t made comics miserable for enough people yet.”

Look who was talking - somebody who doubtless turned a deaf ear and blind eye when DC and Marvel under Dan DiDio and Joe Quesada turned the comics miserable and worse, and because Mr. Farago didn't want to alienate them, he likely said nothing in history books, and didn't take any objective view of the issues involved. Utterly shameful indeed.

Also, the Comics Journal themselves posted some news about this, which is likely an indication he's no longer employed by them as a contributing writer. Again, whatever he wrote for them now stands as meaningless, and from what I've read from his resume, I don't think he could write his way out of the proverbial wet paper bag.

Anyway, these are the clues I could find from his resume so far that he's not the genius he'd surely want everyone else to think he is. Some could argue Farago's favoratism for Batman could hint at what's wrong with how folks like him approach the whole medium, and I'm sure some will continue to look for whether his leftist MO turns up in any of his writings. And whether Farago serves a prison sentence for his lawbreaking, it's possible he'll find himself a very lonely man, with reason, and his fortunes will hopefully be diminished by the legal bills he's surely paying now.