Category: Comics

Newsarama posted an open letter from ComicsPRO, an association of comic book stores, to distribution-monopolist Diamond following the massive shortage of books to West Coast stores last week, including the super-duper-hot Civil War. It offers several good solutions to prevent problems like this in the future: It only seems fair to suspend all shipments, at least to the affected area, instead of rationing books in such severe amounts.

The only real mistake is making this an open, public letter. Store owners certainly have a problem, but it’s a problem with their distributor. What they’re doing now, quite publicly, is involving their customers: Instead of a relatively small number of customers who won’t be getting their books, ComicsPRO would rather no one got their books. That’s a perfectly sensible solution from their business sense, but it’s a pretty lousy one for fans who aren’t affected by the original problem. While the lukewarm reactions to the letter generally support the retailers, they’re also fairly united in wanting their books as soon as they can get them.

ComicsPRO seems to be making a mistake in assuming retailer concerns are automatically customer concerns, and that’s not always the case. As a fan, and more importantly as a consumer, I’m going to buy what I want when I want; if a store can’t provide it, I’ll go elsewhere, whether that means going to another store or online. I don’t pre-order books, but I’m not sure even that would prevent me from going elsewhere; if I’ve got an arrangement to buy a book from a retailer that cannot provide the book that I really, really, want, I’m going elsewhere.

Diamond seems to be a pretty fucked up organization and it’s almost certainly an unhealthy influence on the industry, but it’s not really my problem as a consumer. Retailers are right to demand action on lousy business practices, but this issue in particular would be better dealt with in private: They could reach an agreement with Diamond to hold back the books like they want, but file it all under vague “shipping delays.”

Diamond’s shipping problems have resulted in enough annoyed consumers without dragging the other half of the continent into the problem.

What the world really needs now is Grant Morrison and Darwyn Cooke on All-Star Challengers of the Unknown.

Just try and tell me that wouldn’t be awesome.

(inspired by recent purchase Absolute New Frontier and Showcase Presents: Challengers of the Unknown. And Morrison being a crazy person, naturally.)

Never before has a webcomic so accurately expressed my thoughts on the aging process and the application of the Real World and maturity on my life.

Go and read today’s Dinosaur Comic. It’s funny because it’s true.

So, yeah, it’s January. New year. Yadda.

Whatever. I’m back at work and my brain is bleeding. Only a little, mind you – nothing life-threatening. It may be shrinking, too, so that’s probably less blood to lose.

Anyhow. Today’s ray of sunshine comes by way of John Rogers – the cover to Blue Beetle #14:

Cully Hamner: No longer the interior artist, but still kicking some ass.

Rogers has a pretty nifty blog, too.

I’ll be coming up with some Best of 2006 lists in the next week or two, but I have to say that Blue Beetle might be my “monthly” favourite book that actually comes out every month. It’s not the best, but it’s still very enjoyable.

You know I love you, right?

You do such great stuff. An “Oni Press” label on a book means, at the very least, that it’s worth looking at. Both Queen & Country and Local are on my very short “Run to the Comic Shop on the day they come out” list. You brought the wonder that is Scott Pilgrim, to the world, and followed it up with Sharknife‘s mad-ass craziness. (I admit I didn’t try Side Scrollers – it looked like you were going back to the same well once too often)

I know you’re not in an easy position: You’re competing for shelf space in a superhero-dominated directed market and fighting for bookstore shelf space with heavyweights like Tokyopop and Random House. A lot of your creators have higher-paying work with bigger publishers, or maybe they just have “real” jobs that keep them busy.

But still: You’ve got to pull yourself together. I can’t think of any other publisher that has such a tendency towards books that are so late I wonder if they haven’t simply disappeared. Queen & Country has had enough problems without considering the two Declassified spinoffs: Even though Declassified III didn’t seem to have any problems on its own, it got held up by the massive delays to Declassified II. Despite enjoying the first issue of III, I never even bought the remainder, since I flat-out forgot about it. The first issue of II disappointed me, but I still would have bought the next issue if it hadn’t come out so late that I forgot all about it. Delays on the main series are bad enough: With complex plots, intrigue, and countless acronyms, the book becomes difficult to follow when it’s coming out every 4 or 5 months.

And that’s not even counting the books that simply seem to disappear. My Inner Bimbo and Strangetown both debuted back in the spring, and neither has seen a second issue yet.

It doesn’t help that you just don’t seem to communicate. According to your website, the fourth issue of My Inner Bimbo will be in stores… August 30, 2006. Queen & Country #32… September 27, 2006. Local #10 is still listed as November 15, even though #8 still hasn’t even come out.

Like I said, I understand: Creators have lives, and other projects that may take priority. But it really wouldn’t hurt you to tell us about it: Set up a corner of yoru website for updates. They don’t have to be exact – something like “Queen & Country #32 should be out early in January 2007″, or “My Inner Bimbo won’t be out any time soon; we hope to resume publishing it by summer, 2007.”

I don’t really know how you can fix some of the delays: Do more OGNs, perhaps, or make sure you’ve got multiple issues in the can when you’re doing a series with creators who have other significant commitments. But really, late books don’t bug me as much as simply having no idea when I’m going to see another issue. If you’re really unsure, just solicit books one issue at a time, as they’re done. I won’t mind. (Except for Queen & Country, where the story really benefits from being kept fairly close together.)

I want to love you. I want to buy your books and tell all my friends how awesome they are. Stop making it so difficult.

According to Wood, Local #11 is going to be set in Toronto.

Right on.

This story over at CSBG is just so awesome, cute, and sweet that I feel I should mention it: A little girl, her favourite author, and a comic book.

I think I’m out of my funk now. I still need to spend less time blogging and more time working (not working at my job, mind you), but more blogging should resume shortly.

No, I didn’t think I’d ever write that, either.

But absurd though it may seem, the success of Britney Spears may be amusingly relevant to some of the controversy surrounding DC’s Minx line.

The primary concern (beyond institutional sexism) is that female writers are better suited to writing to a female audience, whether artistically or commercially. Britney obviously can’t speak to anything artistic, but it’s fair to say she knows a thing or two about commercial success. And Baby one more time, an album that was quite popular with a young, female audience, was written and produced entirely by men. Several of the songs sung by this nubile young schoolgirl were penned by Jorgen Elofsson, a Swedish man in his late thirties. Britney’s second album boasts the same story: A completely male production team. Teenagers may have loved to hear Britney sing, but they were hearing the words and music of a bunch of old men. Examining the songwriting credits of neary any teen pop diva’s albums will yield similar results.

Comic books aren’t quite the same thing, as the writer’s name is visible on the cover. And I would hope that Minx is shooting for higher artistic standards than the early pop hits of Britney Spears. But it does show that people in general, and teens in particular, will buy any message as long as it speaks to them and it’s packaged attractively; they really don’t care where it comes from. While I’d normally be loathe to use Britney as evidence of anything, it does seem commercially relevant when you’ve already hired a top marketing agency to sell a product to teenage girls. Teens won’t swallow anything you give them, but when they do they usually do it gusto.

Making fun of Wizard is like complaining that Maxim doesn’t spend enough time discussing Margaret Atwood. It’s like pointing out that the films of Michael Bay don’t spend enough time on quiet character development. It’s like walking into a pornography store that’s plastered its windows with semi-naked women and posters with titles like School Bitches in Heat and then being offended at the videos inside.

It is not only beating a dead horse, it is continuing to beat the horse’s coffin during the funeral, digging up the horse two weeks later and setting fire to it, and then shooting the ashes out of a howitzer.

Wizard is a pretty crap magazine that exists to deliver hype for superhero comics for an adolescent (whether in body or mind) male audience. It sucks that it’s the most prominent and widely-read publication devoted to comics, but blame the market for that. Can we stop pointing out how sucky it is? It’s pretty obvious to anyone who cares to look.

Stuart Immonen is even better than I thought he was. And I thought he was pretty darned good already. He’s not J.H. Williams, but man, he’s good.

The tenth issue of Nextwave sees the team members re-imagined in Forbush Vision. While Warren Ellis gives them each an alternate reality backstory (with narration inspired by Brendan McCarthy’s issue of Solo), Immonen turns chameleon for each story: Monica’s story is done in the story of Paul Pope, Machine Man’s tale of bureaucracy has a Dan Clowes influence, and Elsa Bloodstone appears in a perfect Mignola homage. I’m not sure who he’s emulating for the Captain’s story, but it’s pretty darned good, too.

I’m really going to miss this book. And I’m torn over whether to follow Immonen to Ultimate Spider-Man. On the one hand, he’s a great artist and I want to see more of his work. On the other, it just feels like he’ll be wasted on a fairly straightforward Bendis book. He should be working with Grant Morrison or Alan Moore on stories that let him spread his considerable artistic wings.

Ah well. Two more issues of Nextwave goodness remain.