Tom over that Comics Reporter has spent a great deal of time thinking about assumptions that he has had in regards to comics, and put together a rather thoughtful column about them. While we both have come to comics from a similar perspective, I find that my idea of comics has changed radically in the last 20 years to encompass both my experiences with becoming a professional in the comics industry (and all the revisionist/disillusionment that comes from that), as well as having children and watching them come to comics from a number of different angles rather than one direction: the spinner rack.
We hold these truths self evident: That comics will come out each week in a serialized periodical format in the corner drugstore. Well, yeah. 30+ years ago. One of Tom’s sacred cows is that the serialized form of comics will continue, and yet he scans one of the lovely paperback books that collected Peanuts in the “foursquare” panel format, a format that was in all the bookstores of the 1970’s and had a lot to do with the continued availability of the older Schultz works while other comics artist’s work languished and disappeared from the public consciousness. To me, the serialized work makes little difference in the impact of the work. My own daughter reads each issue of wonder Woman as it comes out and sees no difference between that and the New Frontier work, which to her is only two issues long. All she knows is the TPB version of New Frontier and it makes absolutely no difference to her whatsoever. It makes little difference to me know except that I can see the seams of the collections: the artificial breaks ever 22 pages to cliffhanger out, the occasional change of artist as the story arc needs a break.
Whereas Tom found himself reading and collecting the Celestial Madonna storyline, yet was even more intrigued by the Kree/Skull War, I found that it is hard to imagine loosing my science fiction cherry to anything by the Thanos War. Instead of the making the Kree/Skrull war into more than it was in my head, I can’t possibly extricate my childhood brain from being melted by Thanos’ desire to use the Cosmic Cube to become God. I can’t be nostalgic for someone else’s loss of virginity while experiencing my own.
The Kree/Skrull war also finished completely unspectacularly, whereas Englehart actually got to finish the Celestial Madonna storyline in much better fashion.
Tom talks about wanting comics to fashion as an entertainment for a child, which is something that I agree with, having two daughters, but in writing the sentence “Whether or not there are comics for kids, I still want comics to function as a pastime for a child.” Tom falls into the trap of seeing “comics” as a thing, not as a medium. Try substituting “movies” for that sentence and you’ll see how quickly it falls apart. More than ever before, I want comics that entertain my children and comics that they can move to as teenages and comics that we can discuss as adults. I want my children to love the cinematic form enough to go from Nemo to Harry Potter and Star Wars and then on to countless movies after that. Same with books, same with comics. The medium should make no distinction between ages. The material presented in the medium is the distinction, that’s all.
Tom’s last point, about material lasting forever is an interesting one. At what point have Superman and Batman run their course? There have been plenty of other characters that have had their day and since moved into sustained existence only in the presence of back issue bins and Yahoo chat rooms. That last great new Doc Savage book? Didn’t buy it. Same thing with the last new issue of The Shadow, Tom Mix, Furry Freak Brothers and Longshot. Had the discussion with my wife the other night about why Neil Simon’s work seemed to work so well in the 1970’s and not so much after that. There are times when the artist’s work finds favor with the current cultural zeitgeist and then peters out and the nostalgia factor starts to kick in. I don’t know where I stand on this, given that I prefer stories that have beginnings, middles and ends (and to do this with my favorite Marvel characters, I just pretend that the book ends at a certain point and move on. Should I like the direction that a book goes later, I’ll just pick it back up.) but then I get used to having those different artists and writers moving in and out of the books, so its easy to abandon that completist mentality that I used to have. Captain America seemed like a great idea in 1940, wasn’t relevant again til Kirby made him fun in Tales of Suspense, made some interesting points in the 1970s with Englehart and then pretty much dropped off of the radar of interesting (Stern/Byrne aside) until the Brubaker/Epting run.
Nothing lasts forever. Great stories do last though, and maybe one of the reasons that they last is satisfactory conclusions that leave the audience feeling, well, satisfied. Satisfied that they got the story, whether they liked the ending or not.
Showing posts with label tom spurgeon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tom spurgeon. Show all posts
Monday, October 12, 2009
Monday, May 04, 2009
The Direct Market Fails Yet Again
Excellent post by Tom over at The Comics Reporter regarding the disaster that is the direct market the way that it exists today.
Little did we know that the eventual ghetto-ization of comics would mean a further reduction in the number of people reading them, nor would we know that financial hi-jinks o fthe mid '90's would lead us to the disaster that we have now: a monopoly in bad financial straits giving us and the retailers that we would like to keep around less and less incentive to actively order or stock anything new or different.
Same ol', same ol'.
As Tom mentions, the idea of a specialty store seemed like a great idea, until the people ordering for that store ran into a few obstacles: namely, the conservative nature of the standard comic goer (a distinct unwillingness by a huge chunk of the audience to move beyond the comic format and type that they were used to, which creates its own problems along the way, as they grew up... and the X-Men didn't, which led to the storytelling dilemma), the conservative nature of the usual comic book store owner, and the general rattiness of the post superhero market in the 1980's.
Part of the difficulty here is the store owner needing to potentially branch out to a new audience that will come in asking for what, essentially, Borders is trying to do by mere proximity: sow the rest of the world that there are a ton of comics out there other than Marvel and DC. And your average store owner has neither the time, budget, knowhow or ability to get to that public. And Diamond, the sole survivor of the distributor wars, is doing less and less to help grow that audience.
This is part of the slow suicide of Diamond. Shrink your bloated entity of a catalog down so that the is less diversity, less reason to get new customers, less choices for shops already selling the same product to the same customers week after week. Eventually these shops will close down, as there are less and less people to keep them open. Thanks Diamond, your smart short term solutions are working as well as Phil's idea to take them out of the 7-11's. Only the fall out will be faster, because this whole process is speeding up in this economy.
And because there are a whole host of other places that people can get their comics now. The fact that you're reading is part of that revolution, since i never would have had a voice in the old media.
So quit bitching you say, what's the answer? There are no easy answers here, except that the Direct Market, or really, Diamond needs to be different. Period. And the shops that can only get their stuff from Diamond have to be unhappy with the current climate. Eventually it will have to be different, there are simply too many different places to get the comics, and too many other possible business models that can come to exist, and the minute that one of them over takes the others, it will mean more comics for the rest of us, and a lot of pain for the small businessmen in the trenches of comic retail-dom. And, as Tom predicts, the revolution won't have to be large and noisy, but it will be swift in places, so swift that it will be like the newspapers: where suddennly the reading/buying habits change all across the board and those left standing behind will wonder what happened. And you won't notice it that much until the day that Marvel jumps in.
Now, Brian Hibbs from Comics Experience has joined in with a post over at Savage Critics that discusses consumers as well as retailers and publishers in connection with the Direct Market, as well as making suggestions that Diamond might want to consider. Many of which I agree with, but, as always, whenever I get into Brian's blogging, I find something to disagree with.
Yes, you get it. Trades have taken over. So, no, its not their fault. And, yes, if you do get it, then you get to stay in business, as opposed to closing your doors, because you're giving your patrons what they want.
How to keep the buying habit you ask? Good question. Taking a look at other media shows that they don't expect the retailer to solely market their products. Warner Brothers will actually market a new CD and not expect that the owner of Bob's records to have the budget or time to promote that one new CD in favor of the other 87 that came last week. How do people keep coming back to other stores? With different frequency is probably the right answer, even if its not the answer that you want to hear.
I blame the consumers for much of the newspaper problems, but in this case, I don't blame the consumer one bit. They've spoken and the retailers might want to listen.
Look, saying that "alternative" and "art" comics are a lost cause sounds a lot like someone giving up really. You ceertainly have more press being generated these days in the San Francisco Chronicle (someone in their Datebook section really does like comics and comic book culture) by alt comics, even if it may not drive the numbers in to your shop that X-men do. I'm not a comics retailer, and i don't access to your figures, but i refuse to believe that given the very nature of superheroes (i.e. most people outgrow them) that there can't be something more to those sales, a sense that you might continue to build another audience.
Look, Brian's comments on publishers and Diamond slimming down their catalog are right on, but the reality is is that there has to be a better way to do this. So we can all get our comics.
I know that Warlord of IO is only one comic book, but a long time ago that what's the Direct Market was set up to do: give people a chance to buy the one comic book they wanted to buy... It's one thing for an evolution in the marketplace to replace a high-end delivery system with something better: more efficient, with more choices for the consumer and greater reward to the artists. But whatever gets the chance to replace a system that's this broken won't have to be anything special at all.No, it won't. The "direct market" as we have it now is a monopoly that is continuing to serve less and less the people who were the ones that had clamored for the market in the first place. 1977, and those of us who loved comics had to travel to 4 different locations to get the next issues of the books that we loved. (In my case, the 7-11, Guasco's Market, Stop N' Go and a fourth place whose name has completely escaped me) Getting specialty shop that would actually bring in the books that we loved as well as other things that we didn't know that we would need but soon couldn't live without seemed like a dream come true.
Little did we know that the eventual ghetto-ization of comics would mean a further reduction in the number of people reading them, nor would we know that financial hi-jinks o fthe mid '90's would lead us to the disaster that we have now: a monopoly in bad financial straits giving us and the retailers that we would like to keep around less and less incentive to actively order or stock anything new or different.
Same ol', same ol'.
As Tom mentions, the idea of a specialty store seemed like a great idea, until the people ordering for that store ran into a few obstacles: namely, the conservative nature of the standard comic goer (a distinct unwillingness by a huge chunk of the audience to move beyond the comic format and type that they were used to, which creates its own problems along the way, as they grew up... and the X-Men didn't, which led to the storytelling dilemma), the conservative nature of the usual comic book store owner, and the general rattiness of the post superhero market in the 1980's.
Part of the difficulty here is the store owner needing to potentially branch out to a new audience that will come in asking for what, essentially, Borders is trying to do by mere proximity: sow the rest of the world that there are a ton of comics out there other than Marvel and DC. And your average store owner has neither the time, budget, knowhow or ability to get to that public. And Diamond, the sole survivor of the distributor wars, is doing less and less to help grow that audience.
This is part of the slow suicide of Diamond. Shrink your bloated entity of a catalog down so that the is less diversity, less reason to get new customers, less choices for shops already selling the same product to the same customers week after week. Eventually these shops will close down, as there are less and less people to keep them open. Thanks Diamond, your smart short term solutions are working as well as Phil's idea to take them out of the 7-11's. Only the fall out will be faster, because this whole process is speeding up in this economy.
And because there are a whole host of other places that people can get their comics now. The fact that you're reading is part of that revolution, since i never would have had a voice in the old media.
So quit bitching you say, what's the answer? There are no easy answers here, except that the Direct Market, or really, Diamond needs to be different. Period. And the shops that can only get their stuff from Diamond have to be unhappy with the current climate. Eventually it will have to be different, there are simply too many different places to get the comics, and too many other possible business models that can come to exist, and the minute that one of them over takes the others, it will mean more comics for the rest of us, and a lot of pain for the small businessmen in the trenches of comic retail-dom. And, as Tom predicts, the revolution won't have to be large and noisy, but it will be swift in places, so swift that it will be like the newspapers: where suddennly the reading/buying habits change all across the board and those left standing behind will wonder what happened. And you won't notice it that much until the day that Marvel jumps in.
Now, Brian Hibbs from Comics Experience has joined in with a post over at Savage Critics that discusses consumers as well as retailers and publishers in connection with the Direct Market, as well as making suggestions that Diamond might want to consider. Many of which I agree with, but, as always, whenever I get into Brian's blogging, I find something to disagree with.
CONSUMERS: Honestly, a fair chunk of the issue is your own fault -- you, collectively, have decided that you aren't as interested in buying serialized comics as you once were. That's fair enough, and I Get It -- there's more being produced than you can possibly keep up with, and the Collected Edition is (nearly) always a better package: no ads, no waiting for the Rest, typically cheaper than its components, and so on. Like I said, I Get It.As someone who does retail as the main paycheck these days, and not comics, I can honestly have a business owner's take on this: Blaming the consumer, unless, like with newspapers, they want something for nothing, is complete bullshit. The people are your lifeblood. They have the power as a market to keep you in business or in that new tent city springing up in the parking lot of Pac Bell Park. As every business in the last 100 years has proven, you can't tell people who want a new fangled "horse-less carriage" that should stick with their horse and buggy. Those people will want their automobile and they don't want the old product. Shockingly, there are few horse and buggy dealers on the 101.
Yes, you get it. Trades have taken over. So, no, its not their fault. And, yes, if you do get it, then you get to stay in business, as opposed to closing your doors, because you're giving your patrons what they want.
How to keep the buying habit you ask? Good question. Taking a look at other media shows that they don't expect the retailer to solely market their products. Warner Brothers will actually market a new CD and not expect that the owner of Bob's records to have the budget or time to promote that one new CD in favor of the other 87 that came last week. How do people keep coming back to other stores? With different frequency is probably the right answer, even if its not the answer that you want to hear.
I blame the consumers for much of the newspaper problems, but in this case, I don't blame the consumer one bit. They've spoken and the retailers might want to listen.
Look, saying that "alternative" and "art" comics are a lost cause sounds a lot like someone giving up really. You ceertainly have more press being generated these days in the San Francisco Chronicle (someone in their Datebook section really does like comics and comic book culture) by alt comics, even if it may not drive the numbers in to your shop that X-men do. I'm not a comics retailer, and i don't access to your figures, but i refuse to believe that given the very nature of superheroes (i.e. most people outgrow them) that there can't be something more to those sales, a sense that you might continue to build another audience.
Look, Brian's comments on publishers and Diamond slimming down their catalog are right on, but the reality is is that there has to be a better way to do this. So we can all get our comics.
Thursday, November 01, 2007
To Critique or Not To Critique: Who The Hell Cares Commentary
Occassionally I find myself trying to define exactly why I started this blog, and realized very quickly that the mission statement was a fuzzy one. I realized that I had been writing this blog in my head for twenty years, and was happy that there was now a forum to get the words out of my head and into the world. But had I crossed the line into being a critic? Was I still an artist while I was commenting on other people's art? What were the criteria for being able to be a critic, or a commentator anyway?
Do we have a novel length answer here? How about a short version. The blogs and the internet have given many of us, who had never thought to write critically professionally for the comics industry a voice. Sometimes a measured voice, some times (many times unfortunately) a shrill one, some times an authoratative one. In An Interview with Tom Spurgeon I ran across this comment and it made me stop and think:
The audience these days will decide who they like and who they don't. And if I get 3 readers a day I'll still write and hope that I can entertain and inform the 3 people who show up. Fortunately I get more than that, so I can feel good about hitting "post" on an entry and have it matter just a little more, but I sure as hell don't get the hits that Valerie D'Orazio gets on her blog, but then she's a ten times better writer than me so she deserves those hits. I guess that I don't feel the need to generate a particular CV to justify my critiques: You'll either get my point from the review and respect it (or enjoy my snark) or not.
Do we have a novel length answer here? How about a short version. The blogs and the internet have given many of us, who had never thought to write critically professionally for the comics industry a voice. Sometimes a measured voice, some times (many times unfortunately) a shrill one, some times an authoratative one. In An Interview with Tom Spurgeon I ran across this comment and it made me stop and think:
Q: I think with the Internet, and God knows I’m guilty of it, there’s a tendency to write quickly and get it out fast and you don’t read back what you’ve written.A: Yeah, I think there’s a tendency, but that’d be like me calling someone hefty. I can’t throw that knife because I write really quickly and all of my Internet writing has probably been a lot quicker. It kind of demands a certain productivity that doesn’t flatter it in terms of going back considering things.
I think that’s true. I think there aren’t always considered arguments. But we talked about having an honest reaction to something and building on that, more than trying to craft a impenetrable little diamond of a review. If a quick review that’s sloppily written has an insight into a work then it’s infinitely more valuable to me than something that’s well written and constructed and entertaining on those levels.
and I had to agree on the second paragraph, as my own poor typing skills have accounted for many a typo that has snuck out of the blog, but the thinking and the opinion I'm expressing remains valid, even if the grammar (or spelling) is somewhat suspect.
The audience these days will decide who they like and who they don't. And if I get 3 readers a day I'll still write and hope that I can entertain and inform the 3 people who show up. Fortunately I get more than that, so I can feel good about hitting "post" on an entry and have it matter just a little more, but I sure as hell don't get the hits that Valerie D'Orazio gets on her blog, but then she's a ten times better writer than me so she deserves those hits. I guess that I don't feel the need to generate a particular CV to justify my critiques: You'll either get my point from the review and respect it (or enjoy my snark) or not.
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