Thursday, April 29, 2004
COMICS: Every day almost it seems as though the comics industry is heading for a very profound split, the kind I've talked about before where the direct market comic shops continue to be just superhero centered and irrelevant to the larger culture and the rest of the world gets their non-superhero comics from elsewhere. Here are this week's pointers toward the schism.
DC announced that they are bringing back Hal Jordan as Green Lantern. For those who don't follow Green Lantern (which includes me really but I can't help but pay attention to this story because it's emblematic of exactly the type of wrong-headed nostalgic crap that superhero comics are known for) Hal Jordan is the fanboy's One True Green Lantern who was given a rare chance to actually change and become something different about a decade ago. His home town was destroyed and in a fit of rage at being unable to change this, he went crazy and I believe killed all the other Green Lanterns. He became a very powerful villian who was eventually stopped and killed. Then he became the new Spectre character and was given a chance to help others for redemption. For a superhero comic, this was change akin to the asteroid that helped kill off the dinosaurs. And of course, fans of the dinosaurs were none too happy. The new Green Lantern, a young modern mammal, was almost universally reviled by the people who wanted their lumbering giants back and some of the fans more in need of medication actually raised money for ads asking DC to put everything back how it was and pretend nothing had actually changed. And so, after a decade of trying to resist the insecent pull back toward the past, DC has relented and announced that they are bringing Hal back. Of course, they assure us, nothing will really be the same but I think anybody who has spent any time around superhero comics knows that's really not going to be the case. This, on top of Marvel's attempts to undo anything new and interesting with the X-Men comics now that pesky forward-thinker Grant Morrison is gone, is just one more push toward the complete insularity and irrelevancy of the superhero market.
The pointer in the other direction, away from corporate trademark service and toward creative freedom and artistic relevance, comes from the always great Permanent Damage column by Steven Grant. Mr. Grant points out a great response from Steve Gerber, creator of Howard The Duck, to a fan who wants to write the duck. I'm going to reprint it here because I want to have an archive of it for myself.
One thing I really don't understand. Haven't you "always wanted" to write your own character? What's so damn special about the duck? That he comes prepackaged? That you have someone else's creativity to leach on? Shouldn't you be trying to write something that's special to you, not me?
This may sound harsh, folks, but if any of you really want to be writers – &@$* THE DUCK AND THE SPIDER IT RODE IN ON! HAVE AN ORIGINAL THOUGHT FOR ONCE!
It's not so hard. Hell, if I did it, anyone can.
And, in the end, you'll find it's more rewarding to yank your own crank than somebody else's.
This may be your last opportunity to "get it," people. Chances are, no creator in the comics industry will ever be this straightforward with you again... Stop and think for a moment where comics would be right now if Siegel & Shuster, Will Eisner, Jack Cole, Stan Lee, Gardner Fox, Steve Ditko, Joe Simon, Jack Kirby, etc., had only wanted to write and draw the stuff they grew up with. No Superman. No Spirit. No Plastic Man. No Marvel Universe. No Justice Society *or* League – you get the idea.
You'd still be reading "Maggie & Jiggs", "Gasoline Alley", and "Flash Gordon". Because no one would have invented anything.
All the stuff you love would never have been created.
The point of non-corporate writing and art, even – no, especially – if it has to exist in a corporate context -- is to create something new. Was it Gauguin who said that "art is revolution"? Hey. No revolution, no Green Lantern.
Which, incidentally, is pretty much where we're at in comics right now."
Those last two bits are the crux of the issue right there. Comics wouldn't be where they are today without reinvention and revolution but the problem is that the majority of comics people, fans and creators and companies, all want everything to stay the same. The schism is going to come when it's possible to leave those people behind and still do comics. I think we're coming to that point very quickly and the surprise is that everyone will be much happier when it happens. The superhero fans won't have people talking shit about their dumbass desire to see Hal Jordan in the GL costume again and people like me and companies like Oni will actually be able to buy and sell comics they want without having to compete with Captain Spandex and the Nostalgia Squad. I can't wait.
Friday, April 23, 2004
COMICS: Matt Fraction has a great chart he made of comics sales from last month that everyone should look at. In his words "That's the skijump of fucked, right there."
Basically the chart shows that a lot of people bought the #1 comic sold in comics shops and then nobody else bought anything other than that. More than half of the Top 300 books sold are being seen by less people than go to a single concert by a marginally popular band. If you sold a comic to everyone attending a single Dave Matthews Band concert you'd be in the Top 100 in terms of sales. If you sold a comic to everyone attending a professional football game you'd be in the Top 25. That's not a healthy sales curve for any industry.
Thursday, April 22, 2004
BOOKS: I've been on a history kick with my audiobooks recently, mostly from getting them all via the library rather than renting them. I just finished a "biography" of the equation E=mc^2 which everyone knows and nobody really understands outside of physics students and physics fans like me. Not that I really understand it, mind you, but I'm a phyiscs fan. I'll definately have to listen to the book again when I can really concentrate on it. I listened to good chunks of it while at work and while I can listen and do some of my work at the same time, with a book like this it doesn't help comprehension. I did get a lot out of it though, such as an excellent description of the nature of light as a process, not an object. If you're a phyiscs fan, I recommend it.
I just checked out a new book about the craziness surrounding the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary, which for a word person like myself is one of the Holy Grail's that I hope someday to be able to afford. I'll listen to that one soon, it sounds interesting.
I haven't started Beowulf as of this writing but I'm looking forward to it, mostly. I saw mostly because I can't determine if it's the whole book or not. The back of the CD says 'Unabridged selections' which to me means they cut parts out and those parts are unabridged. Not exactly what I'm looking for. But then Amazon says [UNABRIDGED] very clearly so I'm confused. The 2.5 hour length of the reading is my biggest indication that it isn't in fact the whole book. We'll see.
I also just finished reading 'Mind Wide Open,' a brain book by the guy who wrote Emergence, a book about emergent behavior that I really recommend. I'm a fan of both topics and while Emergence didn't tell me much I didn't already know, Mide Wide Open was filled with interesting stuff. The new brain scanning technology such as the fMRI scan that can show your brain actually working rather than just static pictures makes me agog at the possibilities.
Tried to read Palomar a few weeks ago and I'm probably going to be kicked out of comics for saying this but I just couldn't get into it. Not that it isn't a supreme achievement and if the slice-of-life, small town story is your thing definately get it. The library edition I read was a giant beautiful hardcover that if I were a Love & Rockets fan I would covet as if it were gold. I'm just not in the mood for that type of story right now and couldn't make myself go through more than the first half. Someday when I'm in less of a science/ideas/fast-moving story mood I'll definately check it out again.
The constant shifting of my reading "moods" is the reason I have 3 or 4 very interesting looking biographies sitting on my To Be Read shelf. At the time I bought them I had probably read a couple of biographies and then I moved on to something else. I always come back around though so I'll get to them. Someday.
Tuesday, April 13, 2004
COMICS: Augie De Blieck has a great column up about Marvel comics new Icon line of creator-owned books and what it means for the comic book industry. It's the most "this industry (including its fans) is completely broken" essay I've seen from Augie and the look works on him.
My favorite part of the article is the 'Blame The Readers' section because in the end, that's who it all comes down to. No matter how much effort retailers put into pushing a great book like Powers, if the readers are going to ignore it for unfathomable reasons, it's not going to sell. I have a feeling that Augie's audience is mostly superhero fans and I really hope they read this section of the article at least. The idea that sales of Powers are going to go up because Bendis moves the book from Image to Marvel is abso-fucking-lutely insane, to steal a phrase. I don't pay that much attention to the music industry but I have a hard time believing people would say "I'll buy 50-Cent's new album if he moves over to X Record Label" but comics readers say "I won't buy Powers because it has an Image logo on it even though I read everything else Brian Bendis writes." It's impossible to have a rational business when your customers make totally irrational decisions. There is no way to defend that position. None. If you have an attempt, please use the Comments link below. I'd love to hear it.
In the end though, I'm glad this happened. It probably means more money for Bendis which is good for him. Any time a talented writer has a chance to make a few more bucks in comics I'm all for it. However much it points out how hopelessly stupid the comics industry is it also means that more people will be exposed to and read a great comic. I hope what also comes out of this is that a lot of corporate superhero comics fans are exposed to the idea that creator ownership is good. There are far too many Marvel and DC readers who think all creator owned books are navel-gazing suckfests and seeing a book like Powers under the beloved M logo will help refute that. It also points out one of the many benefits of creator ownership. If you don't like your current deal, take your book and go elsewhere. When a popular writer of a corporate book sours on the owner of a book he/she writes their only option is to leave that book, which in most cases pleases neither the writer or the fan.
But, in any case, I'll still be reading Powers and so should you. If you weren't reading it before because of the big I in the corner you'll punch yourself when you find out how good the book is. And you'll deserve it.
Friday, April 09, 2004
DESIGN:
I just stumbled upon a new favorite website: This Is Broken. It's a blog devoted to pointing out things that are broken for some reason or another. Arrows that point the wrong way, buttons on elevators that are confusing, confusing signs, etc. I'm into design and making things work properly so this is exactly my type of website. My friends and family are I'm sure sick of me going on about things like doors with pull handles that you have to push on to open, hard-to-reach buttons and levers on household items, etc. With this site, now I can take my compulsion to talk about this stuff to a whole new audience. Thank you Internet!
Thursday, April 08, 2004
COMICS: Wow, that sucked. I said yesterday that I hadn't read anything by Chuck Austen. Well, that's been remedied as of today and oh, how I wish it hadn't. I told my comic shop guy to stop pulling New X-Men for me as of Grant Morrison's last issue but he didn't and I figured I'd try it out to see what the deal was with everyone hating Austen's work. Good lord.
It's one thing to replace one semi-talented writer with another semi- or less- talented writer, as Marvel does seemingly every month. It's another to follow up a groundbreaking and seminal run by one of the best writers in comics with a complete hack. It's like driving on a smooth, brand new freeway and crossing over a bridge onto a pothole riddled dirt road. First, I don't think Austen even read Morrison's run to see what he had done with the title. He's made Emma Frost, the first villain-turned-(almost)hero that I actually believed as a character, into some other random wailing woman. She actually has the line "What about the children!" for god's sake.
Then there's a search through the mansion's basement to find Cassandra Nova which directly contradicts what Morrison did with the character (it's not completely spelled out directly that Ernst is Cassandra re-educated in the alien shapeshifter Stuff's body, granted, but he doesn't even address it which makes it again seem like he hadn't even read the book or asked anyone about her whereabouts). In true "Return to Old Superhero Cliches" fashion the search leads into the discovery of Random Violent Robot and a fight. During the fight, I almost had the idea that Austen actually did understand one of the places Morrison took the New X-Men which is and end to all the old expected superhero crap like explaining what you're doing during a fight. The Beast begins explaining to Cyclops (who Austen must believe has a healing factor of some kind because Random Violent Robot smashes his head through at least two concrete walls) what he's trying to do to the robot and Cyclops replies that he doesn't need the play-by-play. If Morrison's Cyclops had said this line I would have be sure Morrison knew why he was saying it, as a nod to the old ways which are now over. Just as he had Wolverine say he was glad they got rid of the spandex costumes at the beginning of his run. Austen, however, obviously does not understand what this line should mean since Beast goes on to keep explaining. He uses it as just another superhero fight throwaway joke and completely misses any chance to keep the book on the high road it was on before.
The only man in the world brave enough to review every X-Men comic cluttering the shelves, Paul O'Brien, has labeled Marvel's new three-steps-backward "reload" of the X-Men titles "Everything Old Is Old Again" and from what I've seen, once again the man is on the spot. It's as if Marvel got one too many letters from old-school X-Men fans who couldn't understand Morrison's run on the book and they've decided that while his run was nice and critics seemed to like it, that now it's over and they can go back to the same non-threatening spandex fight scenes the old fans want to see.
As much as I like Joss Whedon's work on Buffy and Firefly, I don't imagine being able to stomach more than a couple of issues of his seemingly back to 1980s Astonishing X-Men, even given art by John Cassaday. Since the X-Men were one of the two books that got me into comics in the first place (the other was Batman) I have a soft spot in my heart for them but I won't spend money on a book that look out from its lofty perch and decides that rather than fly higher from there it wants to climb back down to the ground where it's safe.
Wednesday, April 07, 2004
COMICS: Hmm, I wonder why superhero comics are laughed at and ignored by mainstream audiences? Could it be things like this? Have we gone back in time to the early 90s and nobody told me? There are so many things wrong with this book from this barely disguised press release that it's hard to know even where to start. I can't comment on the author, Chuck Austen, because I've never been interested in anything he's written (but others whose opinions I respect, like Paul O'Brien, have nothing good to say which is enough for me) but the startling lack of originality in every aspect of the book, from the story to the art to the character designs, just makes me shake my head in embarrasment. I mean, come on. The leader of the team is called 'Warrior Princess' and she's not even wearing enough material to completely cover one of her grotesequely oversized breasts. If you're going to go out and create your own new comic, what is the point of creating something so intensely hackneyed and unimaginative? I see nothing different here than all of the comics I've seen with Chuck Austen's name on them alongside the Marvel or DC logo.
But, in keeping with what I was saying yesterday about the change-averse superhero comics audience, the first comments to the story are "This looks GREAT!" and "King Pharaoh. And he's wearing an Egyptian headdress. That's so sweet."
Good for you Chuck Austen, you're giving your existing audience exactly what they want and not scaring anyone by attempting something new. Congratulations. You're part of what is going to kill superhero comics.
Link found on Thought Balloons.
Monday, April 05, 2004
COMICS: This post by Sean Collins reminds me of something very funny. In it, Sean continues a discussion he's apparently been having about the perrenially fun topic of superhero comics dominating Direct Market comics shops. The point he makes is that since DM comic book stores are, and always have been, superhero focused that non-superhero comics won't sell there. He's right, of course. What's funny to me about this is how closely this follows what Warren Ellis has been saying recently. As much as people like to bash Warren, the general thinking among those few people who bother to think about comics tends to hew pretty closely to his ideas. Whether people actually do listen to Warren despite their own protestations (not that Sean himself has any thoughts about Warren Ellis, he's just the one who made me think about this) or whether nobody listens to Warren but he's always ahead of the curve is for somebody else to figure out.
What Warren has been saying, and what I've been agreeing with for quite a while, is that the fight for opening up the DM for non-superhero comics is pretty much a lost cause. The people running the shops (barring people like James Sime who actually care about making money, not talking about Green Lantern with their buddies), the people doing almost all the shopping, and the companies selling most of the product in the DM are all adamantly against anything new and against anything that isn't superhero making any inroads. When faced with a brick wall of such gigantic preportions, you can either chip your way through it bit by bit or you can walk around it. Manga has not only helped open up a new road around the brick wall of the DM for non-superhero comics, it has paved, painted and lit it. It's now up to publishers to get on the road and finally move toward the future.
The recent discussions of this topic always leads me to think about the book from a few years ago called The Innovator's Dilemma (I've made this point before so excuse me if you've heard this). One of the points of that book is that the road to ruin for a lot of companies has been following exactly what their customers want. The problem of Giving Them What They Want is that you get too comfortable with your current customers and make no effort to look into anything new. Then when something new comes along, your competition (who either aren't large enough to have the large existing customer base in place that you have or are new to the industry) sees the new thing as a new way to get customers, gets a lot of new customers who didn't want what you were supplying and you eventually whither and die as your customer dwindle or move to the new thing. The parallels with the DM are pretty clear if you think of super-hero shops as one entity (which I'm comfortable doing since you can walk into 90% of the comics shops in the US and know what they're going to have the same as if they all had the same franchise name above the door). Superhero-focused comic shops have a large and generally change-adverse audience that is keeping it alive, albeit barely. These customers by-and-large do not like non-superhero comics so those shops have no reason to stock them. This suits both parties just fine. The shops keep their audience and the audience keeps the product it likes. Now comes bookstores and an increasing number of mainstream stores that stock non-superhero comics for people who didn't read comics before. This is the crucial element. People buying manga and non-superhero comics didn't frequent superhero shops before so these new shops aren't taking customers away from the superhero stores so their impact is largely ignored by those shops. Hence the wishful thinking of a lot of people in the DM of ignoring manga or thinking it's a fad. The problem for the DM is the same for all businesses where new technologies or products come along, most people end up wanting the new thing, no matter how you repackage, rethink, give away, or promote the old thing. The old audience just becomes life-support, keeping you going in the short term only until there's not enough life left even for the machines to puff up.
To bring this monster of a post back around to the original point, the DM is a sinking ship and if you look at history, it's almost inevitable that it be this way. The new mainstream comic shops and stores are where non-superhero comics need to be, not in the DM.