If you're familiar with comics, you're probably familiar with the LPC bankruptcy story that broke a few weeks ago. Likely you heard about it in the context of Top Shelf Comix nearly going bankrupt as well because a $20,000 cheque from LPC bounced and they were about to find themselves royally fucked. Fortunately, due to the work of a few good people, Top Shelf was saved and looks to be in a healthy position for the next several months (which isn't to say you shouldn't consider getting out and buying a bunch of Top Shelf books right away, just in case).
But how did the situation come about? Well, I've just come across an interesting intepretation of events, in the form of a very well-written article at CounterPunch.org. Basically, a bank that LPC Publishers Group had a loan with rescinded the loan and took possesion of all assets. Except, LPC had no assets, but they did have 1.2 million dollars that was the legal property of the publishers it distributed. What this means is Bank One seized the money illegally, is demanding more money, and won't release the funds it seized. Illegaly.
You really ought to read the article. It's frustrating and obnoxious and _hopefully_ it'll inspire some of you to do something about it. There's quite a bit of contact info at the bottom of the page...
In what has to be the most amusing turn of events in months, Marvel has decided to stop telling retailers and customers what the stories in the books are going to be when they solicit them. Yes, that's right. Now retailers will order the books based solely on the cover art, the creative team, and the format. Occasionaly, they may show some interior artwork as well.
Now, just sitting here, I can point out flaws like "The cover of the book is rarely, if ever, indicative of either the story in the book or the actual artist illustrating the interiors", for example. Or, I can say that "Marvel's line is frequently so late and they're cutting so close to deadlines, that often the artist solicited on the book isn't even the artist who ends up doing the book, let alone them having the artwork ready to show four months in advance."
But it's easy to pick apart Marvel. So I won't, I mean, life's too short to spend bitching about people like that. I will point out that I do this little thing called Previews Review every month. I link to the newest one just over on the right there, actually. It's a fairly modest column, it gets about 1500 people reading it every month, and in it I talk about the importance of pre-ordering your comics and point out great books that you might be missing out on. Marvel has just made it effectively impossible for me to recommend their books. I mean, sure, I'm only one guy with 1500 people reading.
But what about the retailers? The good retailers who get excited about projects (even Marvel ones) and push them to their clientelle? Is this really going to make them want to support Marvel? I can't imagine it would.
At any rate, I hope the people involved take a good, long look at what's happening here. I hope Marvel realizes that they've made a pretty unfortunate mistake, and I hope the retailers out there who're pissed off at this take the opportunity to vote with their wallets, and their businesses. Apperantly, Marvel doesn't care what you have to say, so maybe you need to $peak in a language that they under$tand.
Just a quick note to say that Frightening Curves, the novel written by Antony Johnston with gorgeous full-colour illustrations by Aman Chaudhary has taken home the 2002 Independent Publisher Book Award (IPPY) for Best Horror Novel. Antony was one of the co-founders of PopImage (with me) way back in '99, and Aman is the illustrator of the PopImage Volume One book cover (that I editted), not to mention it's published by Cyberosia (who I'm too involved with to go into here) so I'm extremely gratified to see my friends getting this award. Particularly outstanding as it's their first novel, and first collaboration. Congratulations to both.
What? Not every entry has to be relentlessly snarky.
There probably aren't enough people reading this to make that big of a difference, but here's to hoping. Saturday, May 4th is Free Comic Book Day. This is a day when any civilian off the street can walk into pretty much any comic book store, and get a free comic book. Companies are providing the books free or at cost, retailers are taking up a lot of slack, and regular customers are expected to bring a friend or two of theirs into the store with them, so they can get their buddies into reading comics as well.
It shouldn't need to be said, but this is a good idea.
Should it have advertisements on TV during Survivor? Should not only comic book stores be participating, but book, shoe, and lingere stores as well? And how come they aren't giving away free trade paperbacks? Huh?
Fuck off.
This is year one of the first and only comics outreach program ever. The last time this many publishers got together to work on something, it was to form the Comics Code Authority to fuck over another publisher. The event will likely be quite successful, it will quite likely grow in size in the years to come, and things will probably improve all around. But for a first shot in the dark, this has been a fairly impressive undertaking, and I'm quite disgusted at the naysayers and nervous nelly's who can't fucking wait to predict DOOM for the entire scenario. Unless you're doing something comperable to this, even if it's on a local, or individual scale, unless you're out there putting books in the hands of people who don't already read them, you can fuck right the hell off with your pessimism and doomsaying.
Idealism is the order of the day, and someone needs to put the fucking boot in on the whinging twits who're standing in front of the march forward.
I'm going to keep this short, because I could literally go on for 7000 words about this idea, and that's not what this is about.
This week in his column Poplife, Matt Fraction talks about why he's doing comics, and what he loves about them. Basically, it comes to a love of creating stories, and a desrie to see them pop and 'crackle' on the page. Big ideas, new ideas, smart people doing wonderful and insane work. Movies on paper. He's written a very good column, and it's exactly why I'm doing this "newswire" as someone called it yesterday. I'm sick of comics aiming low, I'm sick of the best and most inventive work getting the least coverage. Quite frankly, I want comics to be faster, smarter, and better, and I want to be those things as well. So I'm going to seperate the wheat from the chaff here folks. If someone is doing something wrong, or against these goals, I'm going to point you at them and tell you why. If someone does something right, I am going to fucking celebrate them and push them on you like no one's business. The medium of comics is so big, too big to be as small as we are.
'Every little bit helps' said the old woman, as she pissed into the sea.
Positive press for the comic book medium is as rare as a fanboy who bathes. Usually, we're entreated to articles of the "POW! BIFF! BAM! Comics not just for kids!" variety, or perhaps more insipid "Marvel isn't bankrupt any more! Hey! Look over here!" thinly-disguised press releases. Quite happily, Andrew D. Arnold over at Time.com got it right yesterday with a well-researched, thoughtful, and intelligent article focussing on Wataru Yoshizumi's Marmalade Boy, and Osamu "God of Manga" Tezuka's Astro Boy. Discussing the benefits and tribulations of reading "backwards" manga, explaining the culture that surrounds manga in easy terms, no glaring inaccuracies... One of the best pieces of comics journalism since Comic Book Resource's interview with Paul Pope. Is this the beginning of a bold new era of factual, fair, mainstream coverage of comic books and graphic novels? Nah...
Scott McCloud is a man whom I greatly respect. Afterall, he wrote two books that honestly changed the way I looked at the comic industry. Yes they had their flaws, and yes Reinventing Comics seems humourously out of date in sections, thanks to the online crash in 2000, but he's still a smart guy, and he's still treading forward where many would prefer to suckle at the malformed teet of the familiar. So when he says that the Eisner Awards (the most prestigious awards in comics, natch) should have a category recognizing the achievements of cartoonists who prefer to work online, I think the man just might have a point.
"...These are cartoonists struggling for recognition, fighting a raft of thick-headed prejudices, and in most cases *giving* their work away to a fast-growing audience of loyal readers; at times numbering in the tens of thousands.
"I objected last year when The Eisner Awards included no category for online comics. I hope others will join me this year in doing so again.
"I understand that it's a difficult job balancing the many competing interests in this industry and I don't doubt the good faith and hard work of everyone involved in putting these awards together. But whether intended or not, the decision to continue handing out awards for Lunchboxes and Action Figures -- while steadfastly ignoring one of the most vital, innovative, hard-working and creative groups of cartoonists comics has ever seen -- is an Insult."
You can lend support to his position (and you should) at the comicon.com thread linked above. For more on Mr. McCloud, visit http://www.scottmccloud.com.
Marvel did their regular press conference thing with a bare minimum of the fuckery that's followed every public announcement they've made for the past month or so. That was more welcome news than anything in the actual press conference, to be honest, but at the same time the fundimental problems with their way of thinking still rear their heads. Now I'm going to be quoting the relevant parts from Newsarama, but you may want to go and re-read the entire thing anyway. I'd hate to be considered biased.
"Concerning issues surrounding Black Panther, and asked whether or not the 40-plus issue lag between the monthly series and trade paperbacks may be keeping potential readers away, Quesada said: "Would [the book] be better served at this point by a number of trade paperbacks that bring you up to snuff for the first forty-some odd issues, or would it be better served by talking a look at the character, and streamlining it a little bit, and going from this point forward? I really think the latter is the way to go."
Bill Jemas: "Let me just add one thing to Joe's answer. It is interesting that a year ago, on a call like this, Joe and I spoke about accelerating the flow of trade paperbacks so that a trade paperback would follow hot on the heels of the end of the story arc in the monthly. One of the concerns expressed by the people on the telephone call was 'won't this ruin the sales of your monthly books?' "
It must be difficult to get around, sometimes, when you only see things in black and white. I think all any intelligent person ever did was question why there wasn't more balance in how and when series got collected (and this goes for DC and Vertigo as well). Collecting something the week, or the month after the final issue in the serialization does, in fact, hurt the monthly issue sales. It's been circumstantially proven with the slide in X-Force numbers (for examlple) versus the relative health of the trade paperback program. Likewise, when you get 12, 24, or 36 months behind on collecting a series, readership and interest drops off because consumers feel that the company doesn't believe in the book. I mean, if there were Black Panther trades coming out every 6 months on the nose, do you honestly think the cancellation rumours would dog it so persistantly?
Anyway, the point of this is that there is what's called a "Happy Medium". It seems that with it's Sybil-like PR moodswings, it hasn't found that happy place yet. Considering these days that it seems the fates of 3 books and the livelihoods of many of the creators working on hang on Marvel finding a middle ground, I sincerely hope they at least start looking for it soon.
This weekend at Wondercon, DC's mature readers imprint (ignore the fact that Wildstorm is essentially a mature readers now) Vertigo gave a preview of their plans for the second half of 2002. Thankfully, not a one of the books was coloured in muddy shades of brown (which is a delightful surprise to these tired eyes, which wondered why even the ultra-pop Codename: Knockout was relegated to a lovely smear of faded brown and grey for the first several issues). Maybe I'm just overly sensitive because I'm colourist myself, I don't know, but I'm tired of Vertigo's books looking so OLD.
Case in point, this past week I flipped through the much bally-hooed Midnight Mass, and damn if it wasn't ugly. The art was unconvincing, the colours washed out, I didn't even want to read it after flipping it open... But it's not fair to pick on the new guy. After all, several other books have suffered under some resoundingly terrible colours lately. Someone needs to post a memo on the net that while dusty browns and faded colours will work for, say, a Western like Preacher, it doesn't work on the techno-sci-fi-thriller Accelerate terribly well. Let alone Codename: Knockout.
But getting back to the article, for a moment. The new Judd Winnick/Tomm Coker mini-series Blood and Water looks ace! It's got a high-gloss finish and a pitch (man dying of 'numerous diseases' discovers that the catch-all cure is Vampirism...) that promises a great book. Morrison and Weston's The Filth is bright orange. Brian Wood and Denys Cowan's Fight For Tommorow is done up in subtle blues and yellows, and sounds a little bit like an easier to follow Bulletproof Monk, which will be welcome. Ty Templeton has a 'darkly humourous' (yet coloured in %100 cyan) preview of his new graphic novel Bigg Time. Plus vividly illustrated biographies of P.T. Barnum, H.P. Lovecraft, and even Edgar Allen Poe round out the lineup of new material.. Oh, and that little graphic novel that Ellis and Colleen Doran are putting together looks alright as well (wink, nudge).
And when even new Hellblazer and Sandman projects sound fresh, you know something's probably up.
Vertigo, specifically Sandman, Death, and The Invisibles, changed the way I looked at comics, and to them I'm ever grateful. I'm very glad to see the quality of and enthusiasm for the work in the Vertigo line increasing, because it likely means that some other Claremont X-Men-addicted 15 year old might find something better to read. It looks like for the first time in quite a while, the future of the Vertigo line looks a little brighter... Not to mention better-rendered. I couldn't be happier.
I think I liked it better when my comic writers were bugfuck in more interesting ways. Party all night, do a lot of drugs, stay in your hotel room with Peter Milligan all weekend, fucked out of your mind. I find that endlessly fascinating, and I don't mind mentioning it to my friends. However, comics writers these days seem to be bugfuck in entirely boring, fanboyish kinds of ways. Witness: Kevin Smith, a respected and fairly successful filmmaker spending hours of his time responding to posters on the Newsarama boards. I suppose it's cheaper than therapy, but I'm sort of sick of Marvel's fanboy sideshow. I'm glad a few intelligent people are effectively boycotting anything that gets as ridiculous as the David/Quesada/Jemas gangbang last week, although of course the word 'boycott' hasn't been uttered... yet...
Just so you know, I've moved the majority of the links that were on this page to comics.212.net/resources.shtml, and if that isn't clickable from the menubar up top, it soon will be, I promise. That's likely where that page will stay... forever... so feel free to bookmark it if you like.
Welcome to comics.212.net, a very unique little comic book website. We'll be telling you more about the site and what we aim to do in the next little while. For now, enjoy the links. - Christopher Butcher, owner and proprietor.
This weekend at Wondercon, DC's mature readers imprint (ignore the fact that Wildstorm is essentially a mature readers now) Vertigo gave a preview of their plans for the second half of 2002. Thankfully, not a one of the books was coloured in muddy shades of brown (which is a delightful surprise to these tired eyes, which wondered why even the ultra-pop Codename: Knockout was relegated to a lovely smear of faded brown and grey for the first several issues). Maybe I'm just overly sensitive because I'm colourist myself, I don't know, but I'm tired of Vertigo's books looking so OLD.