I read a lot of webcomics...

I read a lot of webcomics daily, 58 at current count, so here are links to individual strips that made me laugh out loud recently:

http://mitchclem.com/mystupidlife/89/

http://www.scarygoround.com/?date=20080828

http://www.threepanelsoul.com/view.php?date=2008-08-26

Why did Virgin even try?

Heidi MacDonald talks about Virgin's death and how it came as a surprise to no one.

Everyone's commenting (with more than a hint of smug comfort in their voices) on the inevitability of failure when a company views comics as a stepping stone to movies. But what amazes me isn't that they couldn't compete with Marvel and DC, but that they attempted it at all. When Virgin Comics was first announced, there was a lot of chatter that they might be able to bypass the direct market entirely, distributing through Virgin Megastores. And using Virgin Group's vast treasury, they could have had an unprecedented ability to market comics to a wide audience. Instead the company played the game that's set up to sell Batman books.

Webcomics, woo!

Hey, folks on this blog! Comment or post with your webcomics links!

I'll start. This list is haphazard- it's got gag-a-days next to complete literary comics next to experiments in the medium. Everything, though, I love or have been meaning to love.

A Softer World
Amazing Adventures of Bill
Back Stage
Cat and Girl
Copper
Dinosaur Comics
Freak Angels
Garfield Minus Garfield
Hold Reset
Immortal and Fear, My Dear
Jellaby
Nowhere Girl
Ojingogo
Order of the Stick
Perry Bible Fellowship
Queen of Wands
Questionable Content
Something Positive
Templar, Arizona
Unshelved
Vulcan and Vishnu
We, the Robots
When I Am King
xkcd

Kirkman's Call Out Fallout and (my attempt at) the State of the Industry

Two weeks ago, Robert Kirkman (Walking Dead, Invincible, newly made Image partner) released a video statement encouraging the stars of the industry to focus more on creator-owned work. Very specifically it suggests if you've made a name for yourself in DC and Marvel and you want to work on your own projects, you should go ahead.

This struck me as odd because it seemed so obvious that it didn't need to be said. Of course DC and Marvel pay better and they have fun toy boxes of characters, but what artist would only aspire to work on others' creations? That's like being a captain who doesn't want to explore uncharted waters. And I don't know what successful work-for-hire creator (excepting perhaps Johns) hasn't also done a hefty share of creator owned works. It seemed to me like Kirkman was pussy-footing around a rather benign (and obvious) call out, both in his video and in his followup interview with Word Balloon.

Apparently though, anything that resembles an attack on the mainstream ruffles feathers. Robert Scott responds as a retailer with some interesting and valid comments on problems of small press, but misses the point.

Firstly, Kirkman's advocating to creators, not retailers. He suggests writers and artists who can sell books based on their reputations should cash in on their own names, rather than let companies do it. Financially, owning your IP means an investment in yourself. WFH pays bills, but, as Millar tells, it doesn't work as a long term strategy. And creatively, freedom is worth a lot. Restrictions have their place and everyone has a Batman story they want to tell, but I've never known a writer who's isn't brimming over with their own ideas.

But secondly and more broadly, the industry needs very desperately to focus more attention on strong material that will attract new readers. From the Word Balloon interview: "I see problems and everyone else sees problems. And everyone seems to be waiting for someone else to fix them... we should be talking about it." The industry is teetering. It's heading into a transitional stage and people should think very hard about what comics will look like in the next few years.

Here's where we stand right now (in my estimation):
-DC character breaks virtually all movie records, DC comics fail to capitalize
-Marvel's movie studio has huge successes
-Marvel events continue to dominate sales, but fail to capture Civil War numbers
-Tokyopop takes big losses, Virgin closes up shop, Platinum may be in trouble
-"Independent comics" score a number of a huge successes, including Walking Dead, Y the Last Man, Fun Home, Fables
-The graphic novels are big business, often bypassing the direct market entirely
-Popular webcomics attract hundreds of thousands of readers, many launch succesfully print books off of web success
-Watchmen print run of 900,000 copies after a 2 min trailer, currently in legal battle to exist
-Big companies joining the digital game, Zuda attracts (mixed) attention

I guarantee I'm being short sighted here and missing some large factors, but the question is: what's bringing new people into comics? Movies, the web, and a handful of (usually more literary) independent series. What's not? DC and Marvel whose business strategies seem be based primarily around cannibalizing their existing customers by tying together as many of their books as possible.

If we care about the future there's a lot that needs to be done:
-Companies need to figure out a suitable strategy for online distribution. I don't know what it'll look like, but it won't resemble their paper distribution (and probably will be distinct from current web models for long form comics like act-i-vate).
-The entire direct market (but I'd place the onus on Marvel, DC, and retailers) needs to court new readers and present them with easy entry points. The focus should be on turning public attention (such as movies bring) into book sales as well as better marketing at children.
-Creator owned comics, including webcomics, need to hoist themselves to professional standards. As Scott points out, this means better marketing, realistic distribution schedules, and strong editorial backing.

And I'll tell you what we don't need:
-Incentive covers. Seriously, did we learn nothing from the 90s?

Too Good, Too Bad

From Kiel Phegley’s coverage at CBR of a DC panel at Toronto’s Fan Expo

The idea of killing, reviving and rebooting characters multiple times became a central focus of discussion after a fan asked Didio why DC was constantly second to Marvel Comics in terms of sales. Didio took the question as an opportunity to address what he thought was one of his company’s problems over the past few years, which in his words was “My problem with us is that we reboot the characters too much.

“What happens is that if a character doesn’t work, we go, ‘We got a brand new direction to put him in! We’re moving him into something new! We’re going to try something brand new and different! We’re going to throw everything out and start over again!’ We make that mistake, but what that does is, it alienates fans.

“Our biggest mistake is that we don’t continue and build on…what we should be doing is let it sit for a while and then come back with a good strong story with what’s going on. That’s what Geoff [Johns] does. That’s Geoff’s secret weapon. He doesn’t throw it all out and start all over. He builds on what’s existed and makes it better…We get too worried about the minutia…all we should be doing is telling great stories with our characters.

D.C. has run into a glut of good fortune lately, and I’m betting that it may all lead to a problem and serious decision making very, very soon. On the one hand, you’ve got the Batman: R.I.P. story arc, written by Grant Morrison. Morrison’s one of the current gods of the fanboy pantheon, and one of the few who’s been working recently for DC and not Marvel. He’s one of the company’s big guns right now, and they need to continue to be thankful they can somehow get him to work for them. I haven’t been reading the story regularly myself. I’ll admit that Morrison’s good, but not at the top of my personal list of preferred writers. In addition to that, my constantly held belief that 22 pages every one or two months is a frustrating and ineffective way to tell a story holds even more true for anything Morrison writes. It’s all complicated in such a carefully designed manner that it often feels like nothing’s happening until it’s almost over and the pieces start to come together, so I’ve already decided to wait and catch this one in a trade collection.

But the problem with the arc isn’t how dense the plot’s become. The problem is that it’s crashing head-on into the wild success of the Dark Knight, the motion picture event that’s put Batman back into the eye of the general public and pushed DC’s superhero properties front and center on the stage of upcoming Warner Bros. films. With public interest in Batman at what may be an all time high, DC would probably want an accessible version of Bruce Wayne’s dark, brooding hero available on the shelves for fans of the film who aren’t that into comics to pick up. After all, Marvel’s had a fair amount of success timing the new launch of an Iron Man series to coincide with the success of their biggest summer blockbuster. But instead, DC’s got Morrison’s Batman: R.I.P., which is quite possibly the worst introduction into the comic universe to give someone whose most recent exposure to the character was Christopher Nolan’s film. They’d read one or two issue, have absolutely no idea what’s going on, and then stop paying attention to the character all together. What’s more, the upcoming plan for the aftermath of the series seems to be another arc, entitled “Batman: Battle for the Cowl”, in which various other figures will attempt to take on the role of Batman as Bruce Wayne is out of commission. Exactly the opposite of the direction Didio seems to be encouraging his creators to take in the above quoted sections. And how did fans react to this at the same event?

When pressed on the issue of new DC buttons promoting Nightwing possibly taking over the role of Batman, Didio again asked the audience which of the supporting Bat-characters should replace Bruce Wayne as the Dark Knight. The majority of the crowd agreed Bruce should not be replaced, and then Didio admitted, “I have no idea what those buttons mean.”

I don’t know what DC’s options are into terms of what’s been completed in their production schedule and what can still be altered. And I’m not usually one to argue that comics characters should never be changed. I’m usually on the side that says real, meaningful change happens far too little in these storylines, and I’d usually be applauding an effort like Morrison’s. But this is clearly, at least from a business standpoint, terrible timing for DC. If they want to ride the coattails of the Dark Knight into a lasting increase in readership for Batman, they need to put Bruce Wayne back under the cowl and return to roughly the status quo as soon as possible. The success of the Dark Knight has at least something to do with the fact that Batman is one of the few DC characters the company had gotten mostly right to begin with. Or else they’re likely to alienate fans in just the way Didio speculates they will.

(This will eventually be crossposted at my other site, www.holdreset.com, as I plan to do with all comics related posts)

Lunchtime Reading, part 3

Uncanny X-Men: I've always wanted to like the X-Men more than I've actually liked them. Social awareness interwoven with costumed melodrama has a certain appeal to it. It's a shame that I came in during the hologrammed angst-fest that was the 90s. I've been meaning to approach the classics for a while (and of course Morrison's run), but haven't gotten around to them. I enjoyed bits and pieces of the Endangered Species backups, but Messiah CompleX failed to hold my attention.

All this is leading to say again that I love golden boy Fraction and really wanted to be excited by the new direction. 500 came. Sentinels and Magneto. However the issue was dressed up, it didn't bring anything new to the table. 501. They're excited to be somewhere new, but people still don't like them. Ho hum. Also, they have a lot of money and nice stuff. Sigh.

For the record, here's what I want to see in the San Franciscan X-Men: X-Men are welcomed into the city. They declare their new home a mutant haven. Mutants from across the globe endure great stresses trying to reach them. This causes clashes with those that hunt them (justly or unjustly) including foreign governments and federal agencies. They're welcomed, but infighting occurs quickly. Not everyone can be saved. Clashes break out and, because these are mutants, the scale of the destruction affects San Francisco. The city is concerned they can't control themselves. And they can't. Hmm... Maybe I do miss the angst-fest.

Astonishing X-Men: Normally, I don't complain about artwork, but Bianchi isn't doing it for me. The figures are fine, but in issue 1, the new X-base (whatever it's called) seems more like something out of a high tech science fiction story set thousands of years in the future. The spaceship graveyard and the scavengers living off it is the kind of brilliantly aware idea that should be fueling superhero universes (of course world governments need a place to abandon downed alien crafts and of course impoverished people will be living off the scraps). The characters, despite Ellis's best efforts, do still sound like an Ellis characters.

Wolverine: Fun. Superhero western. Old, pacifist Wolverine (and blind Hawkeye) travel across a future wasteland shipping mysterious cargo. Descendants of the Hulk rule as hick land barons. Superhero cults survive where superheroes failed. But as I believe Dave said, "Millar's great as long as you can keep him away from fight scenes."

Fantastic Four: Uh... I don't really have anything to say here. Millar continues to be ridiculous and bring a good time. I've never read much FF4, but I'm digging it.

Kick Ass: While we're talking about Millar... this is doing what it sets out to do really well. Better than I expected. Kid decides to be a superhero. Gets hurt horrifically and repeatedly, but attracts a cult following. It's not great, but there's something really satisfying about it. Perhaps, the horrible satisfaction in watching someone fail and the genuineness of that failure making their endurance that much more sweet. I still don't know if this book can keep it up. The follow through seems doomed to fall short of the setup. I'll keep reading to find out, though.

Batman: Gotham After Midnight: I'm very much a writer's reader. I have a vast appreciation for inventive artwork (even more than for skillful artwork), but I'm usually more impressed by words than pictures. This, however, would thrill me if I ignored the words. OK, maybe it thrills me more when I ignore the words. The haunting cobblestone streets of Gotham, full of shadowy criminals and a horror-movie Batman. Beautiful.

Femme Noir: There's more Will Eisner in this book than in The Spirit these days. Pulpy goodness.

Rasl: I think the story and the art are beautiful, but each issue feels sparse on content. I'll be excited when it's finally collected, but reading it scene by scene over the course of months will just frustrate me.

This looks like a job for breathing!

Chris and I were discussing how frost breath really is Superman's oft-forgotten, D-list power and I thought: Wouldn't it be great if Superman teamed up with a hero whose only power was frost breath?

Just imagine: Superman flies in, punches the giant robot through a wall. Mr. Coldy breathes frost at it. Superman shoots his heat vision. Mr. Coldy breathes frost at it. Superman breathes frost at it. Mr. Coldy sighs, "I hate you so much."


Then again, I'm holding out for more super-weaving.

Lunchtime Reading, part 2

My introduction by way of collected opinions continues!

Invincible Iron Man: A few days ago I would've said, "This book is fair - not amazing, but issue two was fantastic."But now issue two has gone and broken my heart. You see, in it we see a group of Filipino super-heroes taken down by suicide bombers. I was enamored by the concept that of course the rest of the world has its heroes, we just don't usually read about them in our American comics. Even if they we meet them just before they're lost, it felt like it was bucking the usual trend towards Eurocentrism. And the funeral scene following was beautiful.

But then I came across the message boarders (such as here) who point out that the depiction of the Philippines failed to be accurate at any level. And that's sloppy work on both Fraction and Larocca's parts. Sloppy to the point of disrespectful. This is especially disappointing to me coming from Fraction, not only because I have immense respect for his work (Casanova is magic), but because he's known for doing meticulous research (with works like Five Fists of Science) and has mentioned a desire for more diverse voices to be represented in mainstream comics.

So I'm not certain how to feel. The idea behind the scene is at odds with its execution. It's especially disheartening when that idea was the high point of the comic thus far.

Final Crisis: Rogues' Revenge: Phew. Let me mention something I'm digging. Geoff Johns is a writer I never paid much attention to until just very recently. He's working entirely within the bounds of the supers genre (and not pushing the bounds or stepping outside it like Ellis or Morrison or my usual favorites) and producing gems. I realize DC aficionados will wonder why I'm catching on so late, but, like I keep saying, I'm not a huge genre fan and am eager for compelling super hero stories.

Final Crisis #3 Addendum: Finally, something's happening and the disparate stories are starting to point somewhere. I may actually keep reading after this month.

Anna Mercury: Here's the problem I've been having lately with Warren Ellis. He's prolific and writing totally different characters in totally different settings, but somehow I feel like I'm reading a single story.

God, I'm focused on the negative here. I understand why message boards a reduced to such smarmy hate-fests: it's easier to focus on what's wrong than the praise what's working.

So let me try again: There's a lot that's compelling about this book, both in terms of the writing and the art. In fact I kinda wish it were more focused on its pulp roots. The action sequences are enticing and our titular heroine with her vast red tresses is sexy. I like the idea of base control watching over her like an astronaut, but don't really want to hear their story; I just want to follow hers.

Comic Book Comics: Industry history from the Action Philosophers folk. This is especially interesting to read after having just finished The Ten Cent Plague. Where that book glossed entirely over super heroes and was academic in its approach, Comic Book Comics is more than happy to tell Kirby anecdotes in its madcap style. If you're looking for an in depth analysis of those early years, I'd recommend Hajdu's book, but if you're mostly after entertaining juicy bits, this is a lot of fun.

Batman: Morrison has a mad and noble goal with Batman as well as All Star Superman. He's dissecting the characters with the assumption that every issue of backstory happened. He's not rejecting "continuity" or even brushing it under the carpet. This isn't simply a matter of parading out old cast or events, but trying to understand the mind of someone with such an array of experiences. Superman gets presented as someone for whom the extraordinary becomes routine and Batman, well, Batman is more complex and layered than ever.

The narrative has been hard to follow at times. This could be that I'm missing plot on the pages of other bat-books or it could be Morrison's arcane style, but, honestly, it's mostly been engrossing even when I'm completely lost. Well, maybe, those latest RIP issues have been pushing my tolerance for confusion.

Lunchtime Reading, part 1

As a teenager in the 90s, I'd read a small number of hologrammed X-Men comics and followed the death of Superman (then attempted and failed entirely to follow his rebirth), but, despite my well-rounded geekiness, I never thought much about comics. It was 2003 (perhaps) when a friend handed me Watchmen and then Dark Knight Returns. These being heroine of the sequential art form, I was hooked fast. In the ensuing years, I was introduced to other classics like Transmet and Sandman, but, even when I set my sights on writing comics, I was never a Wednesday regular.

One year back, I started working at Midtown Comics' cavernous warehouse and lunchtime gave me unfettered access to new books. If I ate quickly, I found I could read two, sometimes even three issues in a sitting. The simple act of reading comics in issues (rather than trades) was new and startling and it suddenly hit me that this was how most mainstream comics fans did it, consuming snippets of story week by week. Never having been the biggest superhero fan (or as I'm fond of saying these days: I'm very interested in superheroes, just not when they act like superheroes), it took me some time to figure out what I liked amid the sea of titles.

Now, soon to be saying farewell to Midtown, I offer my thoughts on what I'm reading these lunchtimes.

Amazing Spider-Man: As stated, I didn't grow up a fanboy. When I thought about superheroes, I thought about the X-Men or Batman (or perhaps derisively of Superman). I did not think about Spider-Man. When I started at Midtown, One More Day was underway and my co-workers were writing angry letters. I wouldn't have been surprised if they'd been tossing bricks through Quesada's window. They described the story to me and I agreed. It sounded dumb. It sounded like a cop out.

Then I met Dan Slott in a writing class and the man was thoroughly entertaining. He had an obvious passion for the character and it was impossible not to get swept up. So I picked up an issue. And it was fun. The hard reset button on continuity seems like a fine notion to me now, kicking the character back to the basics and keeping it focused and entertaining. I can't remember who asked the question, "When did comics stop being a world you wanted to escape to and become a world you wanted to escape from?" but Amazing with its current team manages to capture that classical sense of wonderment without being cheesy. It hasn't all been gold, but I'll repeat myself: fun.

Screamland: Classic horror movie monster ennui. I'm sold right there, but for the rest of you: Mournful, tragic, and hilarious this beautiful Image book follows the lives (ahem) of Frankenstein's Monster, the Wolfman, Dracula, and the Mummy. Their heydays as movie stars playing themselves are over and now they're wrestling with their dying careers and their own egos. The last issue disappointed, but a trade appears to be slated for October and if the image of a bitter and alcoholic Frankenstein's Monster in therapy provokes a reaction then I heartily recommend.

Secret Invasion: Marvel's summer blockbuster. I'm reading it, but I'll admit I have trouble caring. As Chris said, it's like watching the Marvel universe play a game of mafia. It has a few moments, but the skrull goal of confusing Earth's superheroes succeeds only in confusing me. The fanboys seem very keen on discovering who's a skrull, but I find it artificial and unsatisfying.

But what really amazes is that Marvel sees this as a story to welcome in new readers, to bring in the non-comics superhero fan. I find that goal... misguided. It's playing off several years of continuity and the primary appeal seems to be in watching the payoff of seeds planted long ago. But their sales are strong, so what do I know?

Final Crisis: I love Grant Morrison. I love him mostly for his iconoclasm, but the likes of All Star Superman prove he can work his magic within the mainstream. But I defy anyone with less knowledge of continuity than Morrison to make sense of this book. He's always been a writer better at packing a story with fascinating ideas than coherent narratives, but he should know when to pull back. I want to like it, I really do, but even with the aid of annotations, I fail.