Alright...
I think I've got enough time invested in 2003 to see where it's headed. Now, you have to understand that (as always) this is from my specific perspective, and certainly other people are going to have different experiences, but here's where I stand on the matter:
2003 is going to have to be fought for, tooth and nail.
The undesirable aspects of comics have become the most prevelant again, the worst aspects of our happy little medium and industry receiving all the attention, blocking out (or actively trampling) the smaller and more important bits. Comics 'news' journalism is a joke, and feature journalism is sorely lacking with the occasional bright spot. On the industry side, the corporations are now agressively and obviously moving towards corporate ownership, and not even bothering to pay lip service to the wacky fucking notion that people who create an idea from scratch should own that idea. And everybody is, despite the obvious arguments against it and despite the fact that the rest of the world is moving in the opposite direction... everybody is returning to the safe, warm, hollowed-out corpse of superhero fiction. With Vigor.
SPIN MAGAZINE is set to run an article on Peter Milligan and Phillip Bond's VERTIGO POP: LONDON, a four issue creator-owned mini-series that is, quite possibly, one of the best things they've both done in a while (and one of the best things on the stands). A complimentary article, too. VERTIGO POP: LONDON is ordered by retailers lower than every superhero book that Marvel prints, including the Bill Jemas atrocity MARVILLE. So, the real world thinks Z is great, but retailers don't order Z because they've got to make sure their stock is high on Superhero A through Superhero Y because there's no overprint, despite the fact that even their customers are starting to not care about A through Y...
...and aside from being clever, the reason I used placeholder variables as opposed to book names? Because, Z isn't just VERTIGO POP: LONDON, Z is every very good, very acclaimed title with an audience outside of comics that could make everyone a lot of money but just doesn't get the orders. Z is a book like POUNDED was ordered abysmally despite a similar SPIN magazine promotion and a hell of a lot of hype surrounding it's launch. Z is the near-entirety of the Time Magazine BEST GRAPHIC NOVELS OF 2002 list, which was actually quite good this year, and yet I'd say 8 of the 10 books combined (discounting the 9-11 and SPX anthologies) were probably ordered at less than 20,000 copies total through the DM.
Z is the entirety of manga, which on a monthly basis accounts for less than %5 of Diamond Comics Distributor's totall business, but accounts for better than %90 of all graphic novels sold through bookstores, week-in and week-out.
This isn't an anti-retail rant, the entire industry is designed to sell mediocre superhero books as hard as posslbe. DC, arguably the publisher of the finest 'mainstream' mature readers books, the things aimed at the smart 20-something market with cash to burn, books like VERTIGO POP: LONDON and THE FILTH and Y - THE LAST MAN and all that, they hide the these books at the back of their listings every month, after they've run through the 50 superhero titles they publish, and then the other universe's 15 superhero titles. Hell, I'm looking at the solicitation for the new printing of ROAD TO PERDITION, the graphic novel that the movie was based on, and it was the last comic that they solicited, even after the Vertigo books. Of course, this is the same company who decided that this month, action figures based on their superhero characters were more important to promote to comic book retailers than any single comic book they were printing...
To sum up: The entire industry is fucked.
Now, back up to the top. "2003 is going to have to be fought for, tooth and nail."
There are opportunities here. Increased visibility of comics as a medium is a reality, even if the sales to support show that visibility aren't (yet). That visibility and watchful eye translates to opportunities. For everyone. For you as a reader, for creative people and retailers and even the plodding, mammoth publishers are slow to do anything but retreat. There is the ability to do brilliant things, if you're willing to put the time and energy into accomplishing them. The opportunity will come easily, the pay-off will require a great deal of work, of effort on the parts of the right people. I'm telling you here, do not let this race go to the slow and the dim, simply because of a lack of effort on your part. If you're reading this, chances are you should know better.
It's time to stop trying to change or save the comics industry. Sincerely, fuck the comics industry. It's time to be so good and so effective and so (dare I say it?) FABULOUS that the rest of them can't help but catch up and follow down the road you've created. Nothing succeeds (at changing people's minds) like success. So this year, I'm telling you to stop writing articles or columns or whatever imploring folks to... well, stop writing articles like it was 1999. Stop writing anything like it was 1999, it's over. Activism, of that sort, is over. Now it's the time to act on all the intelligent things that folks have said, and to shine.
2003 is going to have to be fought for tooth and nail, but it can be won.
Best,
Christopher
