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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. I LIKE YOUR SMILE AND YOUR FINGERTIPS So I bought an iPad with the money that I’d made from convention sales over the last year or so. And I’d be lying by omission if I didn’t say that part of the reason was to read comics on it. Specifically. I suppose this makes me a philistine. But then I was accused of being such when I pointed out that, hey, trades make it much easier to read comics. This was in the 90s, when you could still count the number of trades out there with the fingers and toes of just a couple of your closest friends. In the 2000s, I said that, and then was told that if I wasn’t buying single issues exclusively, that I was killing comics and that I probably called single issues “floppies” and had to turn in my Team Comics membership card, don’t let the door hit my butt on the way out. That’s okay, I’m used to it. When everyone was eating up whatever superhero books DC was putting out, I was digging SLASH MARAUD and HAYWIRE and THE SHADOW. I don’t plot well on the curve. It’s something you just sort of live with. YOU’RE LIKE A KITTEN WITH A BALL OF YARN I missed a big thing in my post of yesterday regarding the goings-on at Wonder-Con, so let me try to tie this up. One of the most interesting developments from the show was the abrupt announcement that Greg Rucka was ending his working relationship with DC comics. And this is interesting because he’s been a quiet cornerstone of the company since he signed exclusively with them back in what, 2003? 2004? He was central (perhaps surprisingly so given his writing collaborators) in 52 and had turned in runs on all of the marquee characters at the company (as well as helping establish GOTHAM CENTRAL as a must-read book, alongside Ed Brubaker and Michael Lark and a host of other artists.) Most recently, he wrote and co-created the new Batwoman character with JH Williams III in the pages of DETECTIVE. This book, and I’ll go out on a limb here and say primarily because of JH Williams’ art, was one of the best that DC’s put out in the last several years. And we’re not going to see the story completed, at least as I understand it. It’s easy to indulge in master narrative construction and say that it was an obvious move by DC’s newly-invigorated corporate ownership to move a quietly and stubbornly “controversial” author like Mr. Rucka to one side. That this is just part of a larger scheme to whitewash the mainstream DCU books and make them as uncontroversial and widely appealing to the largest number of people possible. And who knows, perhaps there’s a measure of truth in that. More likely, however, I’d bet that this wasn’t so much a conscious move to push Mr. Rucka out. Instead, it may have been a simple matter of finding that the stories that he wanted to tell were better told away from the strictures and structures of a corporately-owned franchise character (or characters.) But either one of these isn’t a particularly rosy scenario. I mean, what’s Mr. Rucka done that’s particularly controversial (if that’s indeed the basis)? Suggested that DC should tell more stories about characters of nonwhite ethnic origins? Suggested that maybe gay and lesbian characters ought to be on an equal footing with heterosexual characters and not just a sideshow? I suppose that is rocking the boat, but not in a particularly violent or stupid fashion. Looking at this, it’s clear that Batwoman was his baby (if you’ll pardon the double entendre) and for him to simply walk away, drama or no drama, is not a small deal (even if insisting that it’s not a big one. However, if it’s simple friction in the day-to-day of heightened expectations on the basis of someone’s new boss, then that seems to me just as much a potential problem down the road as does being kicked out for being an agitator. Either way, I don’t see it as a good sign for creative freedoms, in particular at DC. At a time when that sort of thing is needed most, to break away from the long period of both literal and figurative necromancy that DC’s been practicing, you couldn’t be blamed too much for thinking that this looks like another round of wagon-circling. Taken in conjunction with DC’s limited appearance at the show floor (as noted yesterday), it felt like a couple of big steps in the wrong direction. Geoff Johns’ genial panel presentations and new title notwithstanding. WONDER-CON 2010: THE MORE THAT I TRY TO ERASE YOU, THE MORE THAT YOU APPEAR
Remember that tired cliché about real estate: “Location, location, location.”? Well, turns out that’s mostly true. This should come as a surprise to no one who’s gone to a comics show. There’s always an aisle that people find themselves in and realize that the only way they’ll make it through with their souls intact is to immediately turn their gaze downwards, eyes on the concrete never engaging with the vendors on either side. These vendors that are so feared, so reviled? They’re not the cult celebrities (Hell, the Honky Tonk Man is downright approachable and will happily let you pose with his championship belt). They’re not the workers of plasticine or macramé, handcrafted pop culture goodness. No, this purgatory of the convention center, this artistic hinterlands, this no-persons-land that even angels fear to tread is what we call “Small Press.” And don’t tell me that you haven’t behaved the same way, cringing from the earnest purveyors of amateur publications, sticking to the middle of the aisle and scrutinizing the epoxy-sealed concrete as if it had all the significance of the Rosetta Stone. Don’t tell me that you haven’t done that, because I have been there myself. I have seen the folded tabloid pages saddle stitched into something approximating respectability. I have seen the creators who start earnest and engaged on Friday and beaten into senselessness by Sunday. I have seen it because I too have been there. So let me preface this by saying that Wonder-Con 2009 was the best single convention I’ve ever sold at. In one weekend I sold about one-third of the copies that I sold in the entire initial DM sales of STRANGEWAYS: MURDER MOON. And I’m not alone in that assessment. Many retailers I talked to had great weekends in 2009. And maybe they did in 2010, if they were in their old location. I, however, was not. I was in one of the outside lanes (the one closest to Fourth St. if that helps, the highest numbered aisle on the outside.) This is the aisle that people don’t walk down unless they’re trying to get somewhere else. This is the Ninth and Hennepin of convention aisles, home to fan clubs (both AVATAR and FIREFLY) and small presses. On Friday, it was easy to attribute this to being simply Friday and not everyone getting out to the show or wanting to spend money immediately. |
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