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Right in front of the hotel I was staying in this last July, right next to El Burrito, which had the best chile relleno burritos with handmade tortillas I’ve ever had. Sean Collins pointed me in the direction of Zak Smith’s essay on Bronze Age superhero comics and DnD. It’s worth a read. I perhaps didn’t have the revelation that Sean did because this is kinda familiar territory for me. Smarter people than me, awhile ago, pointed out that “respectability will kill superheroes” and they’re right. Grant Morrison also said it when he said that “superheroes are inherently goofy.” And yet they’re not entirely goofy. They’re entirely capable of addressing mental spaces and concepts that are too squirmy and uncomfortable to look at otherwise. But then there’s the time that they’re simply gloriously, as Mr. Smith recalls in the quote “The future burns all around you, Amazon!” What the hell does that mean? Who knows? Why is Man-Thing a tentacle-faced monstrosity with blank ruby pools for eyes and Alec Holland is almost recognizably human? Same character, only not. What’s the psychic nerve that’s being drilled into, producing not pain but an ecstatic sense of wonder? And why is that largely being discarded. A friend of mine, sitting in a very much smaller Grant Morrison profile panel at SDCC in 2004, I think, used the moment not to ask a question, but to make a statement. “I don’t know what I’m reading half the time, but I can’t stop reading it.” Now, I don’t know what’s going on maybe only ten percent of the time, but all the same, I can’t stop reading it. Brandon Graham’s work does something of the same thing. So does Paul Pope when he’s really hitting it. Why does everything else make so much damn sense and, consequently is often pretty dull (or callously manipulative in an effort to “mean” something)? Why indeed? Twitter didn’t work for me so well on the show floor, and my phone wouldn’t take the strain anyways. So here’s the first half of my imagined tweets from the floor. The second half of this may or may not ever appear. — The triple chili-cheese at Tommy’s is unnecessary. Structural integrity starts low and slides from there. This rental really is no damn good, even if it’s brand-new. Bottom-end is essential in city driving. AGENTS OF ATLAS #2 is apparently impossible to find in this town. Kearny Villa Drive is not the same as Kearny Mesa Road. The sky outside is like the opening to NEUROMANCER, only much brighter. I know times are tough, but a quarter to go take a leak? Isn’t that against the law? #neverbeentoeurope This trolley is fuller than it will be on Saturday. #utterlyweird All due apologies to Mr. Grant Morrison, from whom I nicked the above title. In turn, that phrase came out of his notes that constantly writes to himself, or at least pretends to when the documentary camera is turned upon him. Yes, I’m fanboy enough that I went to that panel. But I’m ahead of myself already. Personally, this was a weird year into which was thrust the annual gathering of the tribes, the nerd prom, all invectives you can possibly imagine that you could possibly hurl at this endeavour. To which a new one was added this year: “Douche prom.” Yes, it’s coarse and crass and unforgivable, but there’s times that you find yourself stepping into a shoe that happens to fit you perfectly. The annexation by Hollywood and Other Distasteful Media Personages of SDCC continues apace. But it’s what comics seem to want, or it’s emblematic of what comic companies are becoming. I said last year, at my end-of-the-decade wrapup, that the biggest single story of the time was also the biggest story of the year, that being the October Surprise of Marvel being bought out by Disney, followed rapidly by the the long hand of Warners reminding DC that they’re a subsidiary of Warners. And it continues to be so. Only we now get to see that in the after-hours scene surrounding SDCC. Parties purportedly put on to celebrate comic-related properties or comic companies often to seem to remember to invite everyone but the people who created the comics upon whose backs these new properties are borne wealth undreamed. Or all-too-easily-dreamed and reaped. I said reaped, dammit. So, I have a question. Are monthly comics really monthly comics or are they just chapters of larger books? I suppose you could boil this down to the “writing for the trade” versus “writing for the issue” debate. But it seems like there’s a little bit more to it than that. Let’s rewind a bit. Forever and ever ago, it was that the only way you could get your comics was to get them in single issues. There were no trades, unless you counted the odd collection that showed up in bookstores or the like. Marvel did several of these through the seventies and eighties before the age of the trade collection even started. And, truthfully, it was one of the ways that I found myself primed to be turned into a Marvel zombie when I hit comics around 1980 or so. ORIGINS and SON OF ORIGINS and BRING ON THE BAD GUYS all served as my basic Marvel primer, and really you could do a lot worse as an introduction to Marvel comics of the time. That’s just what happens to be playing right now. I can imagine that it’d be good for clearing rooms, though I find it kinda soothing once I get past the jangly bits. Returned from sudden trip back to the ancestral Maxwell family homeland of Redlands, California. And yes, it was that kind of a sudden trip. Ended up staying longer than I’d intended, but it gave me a chance to catch up with family, offer support and even get a solid day of writing in *and* make a lightning trip into Los Angeles and shoot some pictures. More on that later. Rounded what I pray to Cthulhu is the halfway point on the current project. It actually should be more than halfway, but I suspect it is right in the middle. Good thing, as it’s due in October and that’s a firm deadline. Much of July will be shambles between an upcoming (planned) family vacation and then SDCC about a week after I get back from Oregon. Once I survive the summer, however, I go back to something resembling a normal, human work-week of six hours a day of uninterrupted work time. Yeah, I’m a weirdo for being happy about this, but after a year of three hours of work time (given my daughter’s schedule). Will post some pics once I get a chance to winnow through the chaff. But then you probably don’t want to see pictures of overpasses and scrubby, industrial landscapes, do you? Off to re-read Morrison’s DOOM PATROL, which in so many ways is my ideal comic book. I look at it now and wonder how the hell it even got published. “WHAT DID I TEACH YOU?” Oh, ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, my love for you, it is not a healthy thing. Though the callous among my critics may accuse me of simple nostalgia, and in truth there is nostalgia there, that is not the whole story. That is not the whole of my love for you, o Manhattan island turned over to ruthless convicts and grimy ne’er do wells. The nostalgia trip works on some flicks, but ESCAPE shrugs that right off of its shining black zippers at the collarbone shirt. If anything, ESCAPE is just as visually arresting as it was some thirty years ago, where the US was staggering out of the seventies and into the eighties with a hangover and the bill collector screaming on the phone that you’re not only behind in the rent but that it’s all coming due right now. In that, it shares a great deal with the spate of near-future dystopias that populated sci-fi entertainment for the decade before and after. Whereas BLADE RUNNER became the visual template for cyberpunk and everything else, both lush and rich with decadence gone amok to decay, ESCAPE is starker, leaner, meaner. It’s the Stooges’ FUN HOUSE compared to SGT. PEPPER’S. No gentle, candy colored psychedelia, but all black leather and sweat and amphetamines. And mean. You see interesting stuff pop up on Twitter and get to blog about it before other folks do. Like this stuff here. Which is the DC Comics app for the iPad and phone. I’m downloading it now. My understanding is that DC has been pretty aggressive about releasing recent comics. I have to admit that I don’t keep up on the numbers that religiously to know at a glance. Looks like they have some famous runs lined up, “Hush”, “Batman: Year One” and some of the Morrison Batman, Sinestro Corps War, a couple of Vertigo titles, SANDMAN in particular. Funny thing is, nobody was talking about DC having a digital initiative ready to hit the ground. Or maybe I’m just not paying attention. That could be. However, this does mean that both of the Big Two are now officially putting pinkie toes, if not entire feet into the pool. But who will jump in along with them? And yes, it appears that the ComiXology front end is being used to drive the DC online shop. ComiXology won the comics platform war. Seemingly without firing a shot. All I can say is good for them, because even on the iPhone, they handled things in a natural and easy-to-use manner. On the iPad, it’s even better.
Title by Neko Case. Picture by me. So yeah, why not fire it up again? Why not indeed. Where did we leave off? Isn’t this where we came in? Oh yes, four dollar books. Four dollars for a chapterlet. And they wonder why the run of the mill title is shedding readers? Because the value isn’t there. Yeah, I’ll cross the street and be happy to pay four bucks for a four dollar Grant Morrison Batman book. But not for a chunk of personal drama masquerading as a superhero comic. Talking while punching? That can be fun. Talking over coffee or wine in the kitchen or living room? Yeah, I guess it’s important because we’re being told it’s important. Pass. Four dollars for CRIMINAL? Yeah, sure. Four dollars for CURSED PIRATE GIRL or KING CITY? No problemo. Okay, that’s that horse beaten. Good comics don’t cost too much. Average comics cost way too much. Crap comics always cost too much. There. Done. Moving along. Like where the hell have I been? Where’s that second STRANGEWAYS book? Funny that people are talking about this being the month of four dollar comics, since the first comic I paid four dollars for was back in 2002? Can’t recall. Pretty sure it was an issue of THIRTY DAYS OF NIGHT. I can’t find it in my longboxes to verify, but I recall being put off by the price. Wanted to read the story, so I took a chance on it. This thing has been coming for a long time now. Don’t act all surprised. Particularly when the corporate management of Marvel basically said that their audience was inelastic, and even given a drop of say twenty percent, the thirty-three percent jump from three dollars to four would yield a net profit (and maybe even shave a little cost off printing and distribution.) If you’re counting beans, this is a no-brainer. If you’re trying to expand the market for reading comics, it’s not such a swift move. But then, single-issue-comics haven’t really been able to make inroads into increased audiences, have they? So if you’re trying to maximize profits and you understand that the profit center isn’t the monthly books, then yeah, let the monthly books languish a bit while you squeeze the audience harder. Reading over Tom’s piece on the recent price threshold, I nod my head and agree that raising prices and not adding any perceived value in a time when the economy is putting the bite on everyone will do nothing but reduce the numbers of regular comics readers (at least in the DM.) Profits might edge up, but numbers go down. My biggest problem with the current pricing structure and presentation also reflects Sean’s position that when I’m buying a comic today, almost without exception, I’m buying a chunk of a story. An act. Maybe even just a long scene. A part. A piece. Not a whole thing. Sometimes that’s okay. And sometimes that’s just a completely unsatisfying experience. Given that almost everything is collected now, I usually just wait. There’s almost nothing that demands my attention in such a way as I have to go buy it right then. But I’ll buy SCALPED nearly as soon as it comes out in trades. The single issue is no longer the main product. It’s a big piece of the publication puzzle, but it’s not the whole piece. It’s a piece of the story, but it’s not a whole piece. And at four dollars per piece, there’s precious few stories that really move me to put up with the inconvenience of going to a store six times over six months to buy the whole thing. Part of that is dissatisfaction with much of the stories in general. Part of that is dissatisfaction with the way they’re packaged. Part of that is the price. Honestly, I guess I know how people will shell out however much it cost to get most of the story cloud of BLACKEST NIGHT, but I’ll never be one of those participating in the story in that manner. I’m pretty sure that I’ve talked about the loss of disposability, how comics went from something that cost not a lot, and you wouldn’t feel bad about rolling them up in your pocket or laying your copy of DAREDEVIL 171 on the grass while you played tag with friends from the neighborhood. (Nevermind that you didn’t have to make a special trip to get the comics in the first place and could get them at the drugstore.) The whole of the direct market basically enshrines the concept of preciousness over disposability. People (not me) order their comics three months in advance. They dance around spoilers on the internet. They get bags and boards at the cash register. Sure, a lot of these people will complain about a price hike, and some will silently continue buying them. They’re hardcore. You can always depend on the hardcore sticking around and playing the game. Until they don’t. And a lot of them will just stop or will keep whittling down until they’ve effectively stopped. Not everyone wants to be hardcore. Sometimes people just want something to read. Make it hard enough and they won’t want to read comics as presented by the DM. For four dollars, most single issues offer no “hand” (as coined by Brian Hibbs), meaning no weight, no feel. They don’t satisfy, because they’re incomplete, for a variety of reasons from widescreenosity, to being decompressed, to being written for the trade, because they value moments instead of stories. I won’t get into content, as that’s a whole other set of issues, but that’s a very real consideration. The market wants to make more hardcore, habitual readers. That’s what it’s evolved to. The hardcore will pay for a four dollar ticket. Everyone else will end up getting shook out. Or going digital. Or simply finding something else. Or maybe, if publishers are lucky, buying trades, assuming they can make that leap and be patient enough. This, however, is not a move that will get anyone new reading any more comics, which as I’ve said and continue to do so, is the single most important issue facing the format today. |
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