I Believe Stuff

(the following might not make sense)

I believe a lot of things. And some times, I talk about them. I’m not very good at talking or communicating ideas; it’s why I don’t write prose that well. Hell, I’m not good at getting ideas out of my body, whether it’s writing or drawing or whatever. It just doesn’t work for me. There’s some sort of bizarre disconnect between my brain and my muscles that makes it impossible to adequately share that I want to share.

Some guy posts a comment on a forum about how Americans are all dicks who act like “it’s my way or the highway,” which is blatantly untrue.  Yes. There are Americans who act like that. Guess what? Nearly every European I’ve met acts that way. Maybe it’s cultural differences or something, I don’t know, but foreigners generally act like dicks. When I say foreigners, I mean Americans who go to England or Germans who go to Canada or whatever. I call it the tourist effect. Maybe I’m right, maybe I’m wrong, dunno, but from my daily experience with Americans, I see a massive variety of people who all lead their own different lives and each deal with things in their own particular ways. If Americans are all fat, loud jerks, then I might as well make the argument that all Europeans are rich assholes who think they’re better than everyone else, and I’m sure that isn’t true.

Anyways, I’d posted something saying that I felt American corporations might actually deal better with corporations from other countries due to the fact that American culture is so vastly different from the culture of most countries. I described it as a megaculture (multicultures are societies with multiple cultures that function together rather than achieving any sort of assimilation or homogenization), saying that I felt America had an advantage over other countries (the topic of discussion was Japan, a country noted for its very strong culture) in that they had a part of practically every culture all jumbled together. The idea might have been flawed, but I was responding to a statement that said “Of course American companies are so hard to work with; they come in and make everyone do what they want or they get all bitchy,” and offering a different viewpoint.

It was 4 AM and the guy was hitting a pet peeve. I probably should have kept my mouth shut and said nothing and let the guy spread the stereotype, because I know it isn’t going away soon.

Anyways, some new guy popped in and took a big issue with my statement, reading too much into my “advantage” statement; he basically said that I was proving the other guy’s point. If his logic was that “because you disagree with the guy, you’re proving his point,” then it’s flawed. You can’t say “these people always act contrary,” because if they don’t, and they disagree with you, then it might appear to prove your point. It doesn’t, though, if you’re wrong. However, I think he took more of an issue with my “US has an advantage,” statement than anything.

It was funny how he goes “my country is really multicultural (not the same thing as what I was saying) too; we have a bunch of Dutch and French and German and Nordic culture…” Why do I find it funny? Well, because having a lot of European cultures isn’t exactly the same thing as having a lot of global cultures. America has a huge Central American, European, Asian, and African influence that most countries do not. Sure, I’m sure there are Mexicans living in England, but they don’t have the impact on England the way they do on the United States.

That aside, it seemed like he made the mistake of assuming that when I said advantage, I meant that the United States was somehow superior. This was not at all what I meant, and I apologized for it, but he went off on some “this is why the world hates you, oh yeah and you elected bush 2 times and dropped some nukes on japan and shit.” Some people called him out for it. I, however, still feel bad. Reading this book, Fearsum Endjinn, by Iain Banks… I can see the inadequacy of my prose. Writing that five pages of comic script the other day? It’s not as awesome as I see it in my head. Nothing works. Nothing gets out. Everything stays stuck in, and I end up looking stupid because I can only give people half-thoughts and stutters and dysphasia and stuff.

…and yet through all of this, I still find people insisting that I think I’m better than everyone. Dicks.

Idiots and Percieved Similarities

One of my biggest pet peeves is when people say that something looks like something else, due to some small similarity. The Book of Eli, a neat-looking film starring Denzel Washington as the heroic Eli and Gary Oldman as the villainous Carnegie, is the most recent sufferer of these claims. Many people are claiming it looks like Fallout 3, a video game which was released just before. On an io9 article, I’ve recently become involved in a conversation with a poster who has made this very point.

“They took all these great things and made it look right, and when these film makers obviously let themselves be inspired by both F3 and other things (A Boy and His Dog springs to mind, f.i.),”

It’s highly unlikely, given that the film started shooting just three months after Fallout 3’s release (meaning that art design, scripting, and the like, which would all contribute to the film’s imagery, had been done at the same time as Fallout 3.), that Fallout 3 has any effect on The Book of Eli. To see comments on youtube, such as:

“this looks like a fallout themed movie, for those that played fallout 3 it’s evident… even the bridges remind me of the ones in fallout, but it also has a mix of fallout 2, with the “holly GECK” and all… i was really waiting for something like this and considering that Denzel is starring in it, i think it will be great”

…and…

“This and ‘The Road’ reak of fallout, they look awesome….can’t wait!”

Here’s the thing. The Road was based on imagery from the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, and pictures of desolate highways are quite common in post-apocalyptic imagery. To say that Fallout 3 somehow influenced either of these works is an insult to everyone who worked on them. I remember a time when Bethesda, the developers of Fallout 3, had just released the first teaser trailer, and people started making immediate comparisons to Bioshock, a game about a destroyed underwater utopia. By their reasoning, just because 50s music was playing, and things seemed in ruins, Fallout 3 was a Bioshock clone. Now, the game’s been released, an no one’s making that comparison. They are, however, claiming that every apocalyptic-themed story is now an obvious clone or homage of Fallout 3. While I’m glad that more and more people are becoming introduced to science fiction through apocalyptic stories, I am disappointed that they all feel it comes from one major, very new source.

Personally, I see more Mad Max and wild west influences in The Book of Eli than anything else.

Stop! If You Continue, The Comics Industry Will DIE!

(I was up until 7 AM writing this, so if you spot errors, blame someone else)

You know what’s funny?

Spider-Man’s three films made $2,496,346,518 while in theatres, according to Box Office Mojo. Each movie, regardless of critical acclaim, has drawn in roughly $800 million each worldwide (oddly, Spider-Man 2 was the underperformer). So Sony’s gone off and finally decided to make another, but people are kind of getting a little tired of it, so it’ll likely be one of the last ones. Generally, movies don’t come in franchises. Sure, before the advent of the television there were movie serials, but generally, many sequels exist to tell one complete story (Matrix, Lord of the Rings).

I'd swear he's just getting up from a glass floor!

Yes, in the blockbuster era ushered in by Spielberg’s generation of filmmakers, sequels became more common, but Star Trek and Rocky are still oddities–most franchises end at three or four titles. The audience watches a movie, enjoys it, and then goes on and does other things. Star Wars had to be rebooted, as did the Batman film franchise, mostly due to the fact that people really don’t want to pay attention to things for that long. With the exception of The Simpsons, Cops, and news/talk shows, most television shows don’t last longer than nine seasons. In general, audiences start to wane somewhere between seasons seven and nine, and the network cancels the show. The pattern that emerges is people generally getting tired of something after about ten years or so. I’m getting ahead of myself, though.

It really did kinda suck.

Why is this funny? Well, in contrast to the comics industry, where icons like Superman and Batman have been around for a good seventy years, it’s kinda interesting to note that the film industry makes a helluva lot more money than the comics industry does. Of course, that might not have always been the case; I recall reading a Christian Science Monitor article (I was a librarian, and an article about comics caught my eye; that was the only time I’ve ever read it, honest!) talking about comic books and how, back in the 40s and 50s, the biggest comics were selling upwards of 1,000,000 issues a month. Since then, the US population has doubled, and like most entertainment mediums, it would be logical to expect that comics have at least doubled in circulation since then.

Funny thing is that these days, the best-selling comic books (if you don’t already use icv2 to check your sales figures, rarely, if ever, manage to approach 150,000 issues in a month. This article makes an interesting point: “Marvel’s $3.99 titles continued to slip,” a point which I’ll expound on shortly. It also goes on to say that “Over-all, it was a bearish month on the comic chart, with sales on 19 titles out of the top 25 declining vs. the previous issues, and only five increasing.” If you’ve been tracking comics sales, you’ll notice that overall, they continue to shrink.

When movie franchises like Spider-Man and Batman are making so much money, and the characters themselves are pop culture icons whom nearly every American and many people worldwide can recognize, one would assume that comic books, the place that they originated from, would be quite popular too, and yet they are not. Why is this?

It says he's an M.D., so you know he won't lie to you!

Part of the reason is because of Fredric Wertham’s The Seduction of the Innocent, which convinced many people that comics were bad for children. This subject has, however, been examined time and time again, so it is not necessary to discuss it here. Another part of the reason has to do with people viewing comics as a children’s medium, thus falsely assuming that comics are not worth their time. In addition, comics, like every other art form, are never loved universally; even in the fifties, when Action Comics was selling over a million issues a month, another hundred and forty-nine million Americans weren’t buying copies. Things like these can’t be changed, except maybe with a lot of time travel and the elimination of Doctor Wertham and the comics code. There are, however, several things that can be changed in order to increase sales; if a few people would take the necessary steps, the comic industry could recover some of its former glory.

The Comic Book Shop: In ye olden days, comic books were sold on newsstands, where they were available to everyone. Today, they are generally sold in comic book stores (I once spotted a mylar bag on my local grocery store’s newsstand with two issues of a Justice League Unlimited-based comic; the tagline was something along the lines of “More adventures featuring the heroes from your favorite television series!” but only once); in my town, which is the largest in the state, there is only one comic book shop that I know of. Going into the store for the first time (I had been buying TPBs at one of the several Barnes & Noble stores around town), I was greeted by a herd of loud early teens playing a round of Magic: The Gathering, and a pair of unkempt, incredibly obese nerds. Wandering around the store, with its poor lighting and sagging shelves, I stumbled across a couple of other unkempt older men in the back. I felt out of place, with my clean clothes and barely-groomed appearance. With the exception of cosplayers, I have run into every possible nerd stereotype in that store on my few trips there. When the fat, snuffling man behind the counter looked up from his Taco Bell burrito at me and said with a perfectly nerdy disdain: “pff, we don’t sell Boom! titles here,” I knew I wouldn’t be coming back.

You can't parody something that doesn't exist. This guy definitely exists.

A few hours’ drive north of here, at the state school I’m planning to attend, there are a couple of comic book shops, one of which I managed to visit once. It was fairly nice, although the selection was abysmal and the store itself was one room in what appeared to be a repurposed old house. The paint on the windows had been peeling, and someone had attempted to put a garish purple or green or something over it, but the two people in the store were quite polite and generally unrepulsive. Maybe comic book stores in my area just suck, I don’t know. What I do know is that in my area, new customers aren’t generally going to spend their time in comic book shops because the only stores available provide consumer experiences ranging between poor and utterly terrible.

Even if people don’t absolutely hate going into comic book shops, there’s still the convenience factor. With the exception of stores like Gamestop, which compete with bigger stores like Wal-Mart and Best Buy in the video game market, specialty stores aren’t exactly common. People are more likely to fill all of their entertainment needs at Best Buy or Wal-Mart or Barnes & Nobel than they are at some little hole-in-the-wall store that is 90% old fiction books. The convenience of getting comic books, by putting them back on newsstands or by having them up by the cash registers, will greatly increase sales just by being there.

The Bad Stories: Remember earlier, when I mentioned movies and television and how they didn’t last longer than a decade, usually? Well, there’s a reason for that: it’s because when people start recycling plots, audiences stop watching. Television shows can usually get away with this by being weekly and having things like seasons and such, but eventually, recycling your plots will get a show killed, unless it happens to be a soap opera or it makes people laugh. People don’t like getting the same thing over and over and over again. They do enjoy watching movies they’ve seen before, as well as the occasional remake or reboot, but people would have dropped Casablanca long ago if Hollywood had made a new one every year, with only slight changes to the “Ilsa and Rick meet up, romance, beautiful friendship,” plot.

This time it's Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore.

Comic book writers, however, manage to get away with this. Well, okay, they aren’t getting away with it, seeing as how comic sales are down 90% from sixty years ago, but whatever. Comic writers often recycle old stories, sometimes just because they want to recapture the excitement of their youth, and other times in the name of deconstruction. Geoff Johns is one of the worst at these, and as a result, his books are highly praised by a bunch of comic book fans who read the same stories as kids. There’s nothing wrong with updating something old and making it appeal to a modern audience; however, most comic book rehashes don’t appeal to new audiences as much as they appeal to old audiences who’ve grown up a bit.

In comics, nothing ever really ends, nothing ever really begins, and ultimately, most people want a complete story, with all the peril and stuff that contains. People like stories with a beginning, middle, and and end. It’s hard to start reading Spidey when there’s nowhere good to start (actually, it’s one of the few exceptions; start with the amazingly good Brand New Day!), and you have to explore years of continuity for anything to make sense. I picked up Detective Comics a few times before Rucka started his Batwoman story and found it to be really bland; no one stood out or interested me enough to convince me to buy any more. Often, characters are worn and poor; most of the characters in comics have been around for decades, and most of those characters have roots from back before the medium matured. Generally, they aren’t really worth much or are too outdated to serve any real purpose, and when they are updated, things usually get retconned out again.

He actually did drugs for a while.

In addition, the vast majority of comic books are superhero stories. New things often get weeded out because titles like Action Comics or Amazing Spider-Man already have a dedicated fanbase and aren’t going anywhere. Ultimately, nothing ever changes, no one ever grows, and the comics are basically “the ongoing adventures of that guy who stops crime!” If there were more variety in the stories and they had limited runs, maybe that would help comics sell better. There’s no real way to solve this problem other than for writers to stop recycling plots and characters and for the industry to try and include a lot more variety in their titles (Image and Dark Horse are great at variety, DC and Marvel are not).

The biggest problems with comic book stories are primarily limited to the biggest books: The headliners are never in real peril. Captain America came back, Superman came back… hell, I can’t think of anyone who hasn’t come back or won’t be coming back that isn’t someone who died in an origin story. The other big problem is that the comics get drip fed so slowly but forced into big arcs that in one year, you might get two complete stories out of a series.

The Format & Price: Comic books are expensive. If you want to buy ten different comics, each with about twenty-three pages of story in them, you’re going to have to shell out at least $30 before tax. Comic prices have been climbing, though, so you’ll likely be paying even more. The problem with high comic prices is this: by increasing the price, publishers are often decreasing the number of issues a customer can buy, and the customers are likely to keep buying familiar titles out of brand loyalty or because the top creators usually work on those books, making them quite good. $120 a month in comics is ridiculous, especially when you consider that you can spend more time watching television, which is usually a fraction of the cost, if not free. If comics were cheaper, people could buy more titles, which would allow them to expand their horizons, which might allow comic book quality to increase.

For $3.99, I would have expected that at least one of the titles in the series would have delivered some sort of ultimatum. I didn't get my money's worth.

The problem with reducing comic costs are that comic book shops (they’re evil, remember?) make more money percentagewise off of the more expensive titles. I recall being linked to a forum discussion about reducing comic costs, and one of the people posting finally linked an article with Matt Fraction, who said something about getting threats from comic book shop owners. Apparently, they weren’t going to carry his $1.99 book Casanova because they didn’t make as much money on it when compared to the $3.99 World War Hulk or whatever. In addition, when you make a comic book cheaper, you’re paying the creative team less, and I doubt it would be profitable for them or you to sell comics at $0.99, especially when you’re only publishing twelve issues a year.

Did I mention that the print medium is dying? Warren Ellis has been tracking magazine subscriptions for quite some time, and there are numerous discussions on how to save newspapers from death at the hands of the internet. Why is it that comic publishers stubbornly insist on printing single stories in overpriced pamphlets? Back in the day, when comics were selling like hotcakes, they were usually printed as anthologies. Whether it was Wow Comics or Action comics, they weren’t all individual stories in one pamphlet. That predominance came later.

How can we save comics?

The industry will never really die; there will quite likely always be SOME market for comics, especially as the internet spreads and webcomics/pop culture take hold. Then, of course, there are the movies, and the fans that come from those movies and want to write comics. There are, of course, comic strips that are published in newspapers, but if you think it’s bad now, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. It’s going to get worse. There is a way to save comics, though, a way to bring them back into the public eye and to increase circulation. The main problems can be solved simply, and in three different ways.

Digital Distribution: If a Steam-like service (with a built in comic reader, comic-specific navigation, and so forth, but with Steam-sized sales) existed that would allow comic readers to purchase comics online, they’d solve the availability problem AND the price problem. After all, without printing and shipping costs, a comic is going to be cheaper to produce and thus it can be cheaper to purchase as well. Ultimately, the comics that sell well can be printed and published in tpb format, where the price is a lot lower than it is for monthly issues. If a comic is cheaper to publish and the customer feels less risk when buying an issue, then that means more comics and titles can be published, leading to a wider variety in comics published, thus making the industry easier to break in and more accessible to people overall. If you could download and read all 12 issues of All-Star Superman for, say, $4.99, would you? Ultimately, by digitally distributing comics, the pamphlet can be phased out, and comics can be released solely in trades, which are far more profitable than the pamphlets, from what I hear.

Magazines: While magazines are unfortunately going the way of the dodo, they’re still a lot larger than most comic books, cost less, and could feature more content than the average comic book. This would allow for better color printing than the manga format would, as well as cut out the middlemen like Diamond and the comic book shops, but with the magazine’s imminent demise, this might not be the best choice.

Manga Format: Personally, I feel that the best choice is to publish comics like manga. After all, the largest market for comics in the world is Japan, and more and more American youth, people who would never buy a normal comic book, are purchasing them. Shounen Jump! is available at every newsstand I’ve seen in my hometown, as well as at my library. Over on Kris-Korner, there was a discussion about this (and the price of comics), and the OP was berated for suggesting manga because “they’d never fly.” To an extent, the posters were right: it’d never fly with current comics fans, which is a market that’s been shrinking for decades. They want their pamphlets and it’s the only way they’ll buy their comics, but it’s bad business sense to cater to fans. Generally, fans are terrible judges of what’s good and bad, and catering to them tends to lead to inferior products. The industry shouldn’t be focusing on retaining current fans as much as it should be focusing on getting new ones. Trying to plug all the holes in a sinking ship isn’t as effective as going back to dry dock and getting the hull repaired–or buying a new ship entirely. Okay, so the metaphor’s flawed. Whatever.

There are several benefits to the manga format: Stories need to be shorter, which gives the artists more time to work on the art. Since there are a number of titles in one book, new titles can be introduced without much risk, since people would already be buying the comic for things they know. Naruto and Bleach might carry the books they’re printed in, and people will buy them to read those titles, but other, newer talents also get the opportunity to publish their work alongside the more popular titles, which means that the customers will get exposure to stuff they might not purchase otherwise. Yes, colors aren’t exactly great on newsprint, but that can be dealt with later in the trades. Speaking of trades, invididual titles are often republished in the trade format, and since manga magazines are very disposable, most people will ultimately repurchase the comics in trade form if they really like them. The disposability of manga actually benefits their creators by causing people to purchase the stories twice, and benefits the customers by making manga cheaper overall.

Yes, I know that one draw of comics is their collectibility, but comics are a storytelling medium. Sure, collecting them is fine and dandy, but if you focus on the collectible aspect of comics, you’ll only ever appeal to the fringes of pop culture entertainment, and avoid appealing to the masses who just want to be entertained.

I’m no comic book professional, and I definitely don’t know everything, but I do have an interest in business and the entertainment industry, and I think it would be wise to start trying to attract new readers by making comics more readily available and cheaper to buy.

Comics & Time

I’m writing this big long post about why the comic industry will die and this bit didn’t quite fit in, so I’m posting it here instead.

One limitation of the comic format is time: if you got to watch one episode of House per month, would you still be watching House? I wouldn’t. Comics, which actually take less time to read than a 45 minute-long episode of House, cost far less to make (Hugh Laurie alone gets paid like $400,000 an episode) but take forever to come out. Why? Well, artists are slow. It’s not their fault; drawing stuff takes time. Japanese artists have gotten around the time limitation by having teams of artists work on stories that are somewhat shorter than the standard American comic–I think Naruto runs around 12-15 pages a week. Granted, their level of quality often suffers, and titles like Gantz and Blame! were both monthly due to the fact that solo artists were working on them, so it’s not like Japanese manga are superior to comics in every way or anything.

Abara is vastly superior to nearly every Western comic ever in nearly every way imaginable.

How do you get around the time format? Well, the most obvious method is to release comics like the Japanese do: in big weekly anthologies with several shorter stories. By printing on newsprint and not necessarily adding color (although most comic strips in my newspaper have color, so it is possible) until tpbs/tankoubons, they’d also be a lot cheaper to sell, which might increase circulation, thus paying the creative teams more. Another obvious method is to change artists (and possibly writers too) frequently, like Marvel does with its tri-monthly Amazing Spider-Man. The third and final option is to release comics in “seasons,” much like television shows. This would allow the comic to be published in a rapid manner without forcing the artist to keep up with the publication speed. For six to twelve issues, one arc or two arcs of the comic could be released bi-weekly or weekly, and when they’re finished, the comic would cease publication until another season is ready, and then bam! Publish ‘em again!

The biggest problem with this is that most artists are stuck at the pace of drawing twelve issues a year, and several are even slower than that, so varying artists or using art teams is still the only way to go to actually increase output. I dunno how artists for Western comics feel about working in teams, though, but since it seems to work for the manga-kas of Japan, I see no reason that it couldn’t work here.

I have no idea where to work this next bit in, so I’ll say it here: Whenever I read a comic and get through all the back issues and catch up to publication, I tend to drop the book. Being drip-fed six issues (after I just spent the day reading four or five times that)… sucks. It simply cannot keep my interest for long.

How I Will Run DC Comics, With Tongue Planted Firmly In Cheek.

One day, I will be running DC comics. It’s an inevitability. Why? Because I’m just fucking awesome. How do I know this? Well, I had a great Thanksgiving (and by great, I mean that I wasn’t stuck at home with my Dad eating cold pizza and getting lectured about how bad Pixar is), got to talk to some cousins I haven’t seen in ages, and some of them were really helpful and far more encouraging than anyone I’ve spoken with in a while. It was good! No one argued with me about eating turkey, even! I got a philly cheese steak sammich instead! Those family members who were recently incarcerated are hopeful, and some of the leading experts on false memories have apparently been in contact with our family regarding the falseness of the allegations. The letters said family members wrote were upbeat and actually kinda funny. I just got my paycheck, which means now I can buy an online course and start doing school again! I’m excited!

So, on account of being totally awesome, and encouraged by a friend, I am going to list all the changes I am going to make to DC comics so they can get ready for me when I take over from DiDio.

1. Wildstorm. I’m not super positive on this yet, but I think it might be good to split Wildstorm up into two divisions. The Wildstorm universe should be kept separate from a lot of the other titles (the excellent Red Herring, Desolation Jones, and so forth). I’d also grab Garth Ennis and ask him to spend at least 36 issues on a Kev book, and I’d do whatever I could to get Warren Ellis back on Desolation Jones (he promises it’ll be back soon–here’s hoping. Speaking of keeping universes separate…
2. Hypertime and other Universes. The concept of hypertime–that all stories are like a bunch of little rivers running together and can connect and disconnect at any time without any continuity problems–would be reinstated. It’s great to see Simone completely ignoring everyone else on her Wonder Woman run–if the character didn’t suck so much, the title would be a lot more excellent than it is now. Hypertime would also allow fan-favorite bad writer Geoff Johns to keep writing comics without running the entire DCU. Regarding other universes, like the Shazam! stories, Elseworld’s, and the like, I’d keep them apart. Captain Marvel, for instance, works best in a pseudo-50s universe, not in the main DCU being written by Judd Winnick
3. Shazam! Like I said, Captain Marvel needs to be in his own universe. I’d have him published under the main DC imprint, but keep him separate from the DCU. A team like Grant Morrison and J. H. Williams III would be interesting.
4. All-Star. Speaking of Captain Marvel, I’d like to put Gail Simone and Ryan Sook on a 12-issue All-Star Captain Marvel series. She seems like the perfect person to write a book about a bunch of kids getting superpowers and having fun with them, and Sook’s an amazing artist whose Mary Marvel study was really delightful. Also, I’d grab Lee and Miller and ask them to hurry up and finish All-Star Batman and Robin. Finally, I’d put Adam Hughes’ All-Star Wonder Woman on priority and do whatever it took to get that thing published. Hughes is a great artist and a funny writer (his Gen13 was awesome!), and I know his Wonder Woman would be special.
5. Wonder Woman. Joss Whedon. Some artist guy, maybe Drew Johnson. Wonder Woman. I’d give Whedon the costume, the name, and the mission statement (to bring peace to the world), and then let him do whatever he wanted to reboot the character. Sure, Perez or someone rebooted her a good 21-22 years ago, but it’s time for a change. Personally, I’d love to get rid of the “I’m an amazon born on a perfect island” stuff, even if it IS central to her character, and go with Stan Lee’s interpretation (yes, he wrote her once) of the character, which is very much in line with what I’ve always wanted to for the character. That said, I’d leave it up to Whedon.
6. Superman. Mark Waid. Superman. Whatever the hell he wants to do with the book, he can do. I’d also see if Peter David wanted to finish his Supergirl story, as it was leagues better than anything anyone else has done with the character. The only thing I’d mandate would be that Superman act more like a human; he was raised by humans, after all. There is no reason for him to start calling himself Kal and such.
7. Batman. As much as I dislike the status quo of most comics, Bruce Wayne is Batman. I’d have to bring him back, if DiDio hasn’t already done so by the time I become Editor in Chief. The entire DC trinity of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman might stand to benefit from character reboots.
8. Milestone. Blood Syndicate and Static need their own books. Minority characters in general should be included more in the DCU (Maybe Milestone should be separated from the DCU? Dunno, need to read more), but they should never be there for the sake of just being a minority. Basically, I’d ask that a more realistic representation of ethnicities be present in the books.
9. Women In Refrigerators. While better than they used to be, DC could still stand to be better at this. Women should spend no time in refrigerators. That’s where food goes!
10. Vertigo. I like Vertigo’s books, I really do… but, eh. They used to be better. The art and overall book quality has gone down quite a bit in recent titles, especially books like Fables. Greg Rucka and Pete Milligan should be writing crime books here. One thing I’d definitely want to do is grab Neil Gaiman and ask him to write a new long-form comic.
11. Neil Gaiman. His reservations about comics largely stem from stuff like them not being “his own” and it being far more profitable to write a novel than it is a comic because DC’s so stingy, he gets like 3% of profits or something, as opposed to a far, far higher number (it was on his blog a few months ago, but I can’t remember the figure; closer to 20-80%, if I remember right) that he gets for his novels. So, I’d make good with him, basically giving him a creator-owned comic that he can do whatever he likes with. Also, I’d try to work with him on developing a three-part Sandman film trilogy or a tv series for HBO.
12. Television and movie deals. I’d like to set up a dedicated task force to work with Warner on creating more DC movies and TV shows. Their movies have generally sucked, and even TDK could have been a lot better. A department that works with the movie guys on crafting excellent stories for film would be great. These Direct-to-DVD features are neat, but lack the acclaim of the DCAU. DC needs to advocate the DCU, as well as other titles, for TV. Fables would make a great television show, for instance, as would Planetary. If DC Comics could work with people to develop projects, maybe we wouldn’t have another Global Frequency disaster (speaking of GF, WB is reconsidering it).
13. Public Awareness. I read something one time that said that Archie comics regularly sells more than the highest-selling comic books. If possible, I’d like to work on creating a comic that could be put on newsstands, up by cash registers at stores, and so forth. I’ll write an article some time about how the comic book store killed comic books, but for now, I’ll just say that if comics were more readily available, easy to read without continuity problems, and cheap, they’d start selling better. Imagine some small anthology with Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman stories in it, as well as some other, possibly original titles.
14. Digital Distribution. I’d work to forge the way, hopefully with Marvel Comics, for a digital distribution service for comic books, not unlike Steam. Platforms would include the PC/Mac, iPhone, and Android phones. If possible, maybe a deal with Amazon and Barnes & Noble could be made that would allow comics to be sold on ereaders like the Kindle, but they’d have to get color first. Comics should be cheap and readily available for everyone, and since digital media is slowly overtaking print, it makes sense to explore different methods of comic book distribution.

There is one final point I’d like to discuss, but I don’t have a name for it. Hell, I’m not even sure how to begin approaching it, so I’ll start with this: my buddy Dom said that some time in the early 2000s, DC Comics lost its balls. At one time, they were publishing edgy and unique titles like Human Target and H.E.R.O., but that’s all been neutered now, and any DCU title you pick up is likely to be very in love with both itself and the Silver Age. Where Marvel is constantly hiring new writers to write their comic books, DC is often using guys who grew up reading Silver Age stories as their creative teams. There’s nothing wrong with liking the Silver Age, but everyone is far too self-indulgent. DC’s got a small talent pool that’s in love with retelling the same stories over and over, and as a result, they’ve got  a shrinking customer base that pretty much consists of, well, people who like the same old stuff. DC needs to start pushing boundaries again, giving us titles like Sandman, Animal Man, and Shade, the Changing Man  (…why do they all end in -man?), and it needs to start publishing stuff that’ll appeal to new readers.

Oh yeah, and there should be an event book every year that is really just an exciting opportunity for characters who aren’t normally together to work together. No tie-ins, no “change the status quo but then not” stuff: they’d just be giant exciting blockbuster stories you can read and then be done with.

What I Like

I like psytrance or whatever you’re supposed to call it, especially music by Beat Hackers, Space Cat, Indra, and the like. I also enjoy Infected Mushroom’s stuff. Their latest album, Legend of the Black Shawarma, is surprisingly enjoyable, but it’s sort of evolved into this rockish, trancish music that no one seems to be able to quantify. You know what? It’s good. It’s damn good. When I see people saying “this isn’t psytrance” on Youtube comments, I have to laugh. As if that’s any reason to dislike it; I mean, I’d never hop into a Nickelback thread and say “this isn’t rock.” Sure, they’re Southern rock and only occasionally enjoyable to me, but I’m not going to insult them by stating the obvious. Infected Mushroom is damn good.

Do yourself a favor and listen to Infected Mushroom’s “Elation Station” as done by the Beat Hackers. It’s incredible.

Television’s awesome. People often knock it for being somehow inferior to the movies, and yes, the production values and acting are often disappointing in comparison, but it’s still cool. The concept of telling an hour-long narrative once a week for a few months every year is captivating. I know a lot of people take it for granted, but television shows offer something you can’t get anywhere else. The sad thing is that many of the good shows are canceled due to low (but not necessarily accurate) Nielsen ratings, while shitty procedural crap stays on the air. Of course, this is most often the case with science fiction; people just don’t seem to enjoy the genre that much. Wait, that’s not quite true; after all, the biggest summer blockbusters usually tend to be science fiction flicks. I think a big part of the problem is that most people can’t just set aside an hour every Thursday to catch their favorite show.

A solution would be to start streaming television on the internet, allowing people to select shows they want to watch and have them streamed to their TV via some sort of wireless box. Hulu’s cool, but nobody really wants to watch all their TV in front of a computer, not when they could be relaxing on the couch, right? Just imagine a little box you can navigate with a remote; something that would allow you to watch TV shows for free with commercial interruption. Perhaps you could have an option to allow networks to see the shows you watch, thus giving the networks a better understanding of their audiences’ needs than the Nielsen ratings currently allow. You could queue up a list of favorite tv shows and perhaps rent old ones that aren’t airing (although, I suppose you could again watch them with limited commercial interruption). Networks wouldn’t need the FCC’s stupid guidelines on content either, meaning that any show could be aired. Toss in some parental controls that let you lock out shows or shows with certain ratings, and you’d have a pretty nifty device. The only people that would hate you are the cable providers.

I like video games. They’re fun, a great way to relax, and an AWESOME way to vent my frustration. Right now I’m playing Borderlands and Dragon Age, and excitedly waiting for Left 4 Dead 2 to come out. When it gets cheaper, I’ll probably throw down some cash for Modern Warfare 2, assuming I still have a job by that time. Lot of people are going to get laid off after the Christmas rush, I hear, and in spite of all my good stat, my 2% high error rate means I might not get rehired. My new supervisor is looking into it and seeing if there’s anything she can do to help me; looks like my previous supervisor might not have been doing everything right! It’s sad that some people see the future of video games leaning towards multiplay and social networking; I really enjoy solo games and feel that there should always be a place for them. They’re often the superior storytelling experiences, after all.

Regarding Charlie

So, I saw Fringe, Season 2, Episode 2. In it, evil!Charlie has a bigger role than skepticop. In fact, I’m not even sure she was in the episode, and I’m definitely sure that she didn’t matter. I can see why they had to kill off Charlie; he’s a close character who had the least visibly important role (as Olivia’s partner who was never really around), but I think it would have been more interesting if skepticop had been the one that got replaced. That way, you’re not eliminating Charlie’s mentor/brother role, and your new character (who has been pointless for the past two episodes) has a reason to be around.

Also, whenever someone gets replaced in a tv show, someone else eventually notices that the evil person isn’t acting quite right. With skepticop, no one knows her, so any personality change wouldn’t be noticed. By introducing evil!Charlie and killing off Charlie!Alpha (Fringe Universe’s Charlie; The other universe’s Charlie!Beta still exists as far as we know.), we’ve introduced the standard “I’m not who I am and you’ll find out because I’m different” cliche. I hate cliches. It would have made sense for skepticop to be the bad lady, since she’s new, and in adding her as the villain, we don’t lose anything, but by trading Charlie!Alpha for evil!Charlie, we’ve lost that mentor role, which is frustrating to me.

I would really enjoy it if we discovered that the agent is in fact Charlie!Beta, but I’m really sad that they chose to kill Charlie!Alpha off so fast. After only one season, this good, likeable guy gets killed off and replaced all cliche-like. Every time we see him from now on, there’s going to be evilscary music, and we’re going to be reminded that a guy we like died for no really good reason.

You Know That Thing You Did That Time?

So I was chatting with a friend the other day, and she read my “Be Different” post. Interestingly, I’d forgotten that the pit thing was originally her idea, not mine. It’s kind of embarrassing when stuff like that happens; you see or hear something, and then years later forget exactly where it came from, and presume that it must be you. Sure, I might have developed the idea further, but the idea was originally hers, which brings me to an interesting question: “Do creators have the right to claim something as their own if someone else took their idea and ran with it?” Naoki Urasawa has actually written about this question in his manga Billy Bat, and the Kirby family is suing Marvel comics for the rights to all of their characters, including Spider-Man, for whom Jack Kirby had drawn some art (some of his ideas may have been retained in the story by Lee  and Ditko, but Lee and Kirby had worked on Kirby’s sketch… so no one’s really sure how much influence, if any, Kirby had on Spider-Man).

Anywho, sorry to Chiaki/Ilhan for taking credit for what was originally her idea. I’d completely forgotten where it came from.

Why Do They Like It So Much?

The Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ superhero epic that allegedly changed the world, is not nearly as important as everyone claims it is. In some cases, it is downright bad. Earlier tonight, I was browsing io9 in an attempt to find out the title and author of a comic book that I couldn’t remember (found it later; it was Fletcher Morrison’s “You Shall Die By Your Own Evil Creation!”), and I came across an article on The Watchmen. A shocking number of people really seem to like it, and I have no clue why.

When I was first getting in to comics back in 2006, I discovered Wizard’s list of 100 best Trade Paperbacks, and thought I’d go ahead and read the Watchmen. After all, V for Vendetta had recently been released, and while I hadn’t seen the movie, I had read the comic book and liked it quite a bit. Another book by the same guy? Oh, there was no doubt in my mind that it would be great. But… it wasn’t. Actually, it was pretty disappointing and self-indlugent, its meticulous attention to detail and the characterization of Rohrshach aside. Yet time and time again, I hear comics fans proclaiming it as the best comic ever written. Now the movie’s come out and failed, and nerds can’t help but wonder just why this is, and I can’t help but wonder how they could be so deluded.

Although they won’t admit it, most fandoms are insecure about their existence and feel the need to be validated by popular culture. Comic books are consitently seen as a childish, unintelligent art form that no serious person would ever consider reading critically. The Watchmen was different, though. It made it on to several best-of lists and even won a Hugo award. Comic fans have since become obsessed with idea that the Watchmen has had some sort of influence on popular culture, with Alan Moore actually claiming that Watchmen was part of a culture of 80s comic books that shaped modern popular culture. Here’s the reality of the situation, though: after it was published, the world pretty much forgot about The Watchmen.

The Watchmen was a book about superheroes, which are really only relevant within the comic book sub-culture and, to a small degree, Hollywood. It was a poorly-written mystery story that attempted to give the world realistic superheroes. The biggest problem that Moore faced when he wrote it, though, was that “realistic” apparently only meant “dark and sexual.” Asking who in their right mind would dress up in garish costumes is a fair question, sure, but Moore took it to the darkest places he could, when he didn’t really need to. Batman dressed up like a bat to scare the crap out of people, but most superheroes were simply characters inspired by Superman, who wore an outfit that was designed partly to make him stand out, and partly to make his costume seem alien. Superheroes were bright and shiny characters, living in fantastic world of wild colors and larger than life creatures. Moore wasn’t deconstructing superheroes. He was fucking them up.

The story itself was pretty bad, and in spite of its 12-issue length, I feel pretty comfortable recapping the thing in one paragraph. Basically, someone killed a hero named the Comedian, because the Comedian had figured out what that someone was planning. Unfortunately, the omnipotent Doctor Manhattan was unable to see this, because in spite of his god-powers, someone was shooting a lot of neturinoes or something at him, and this kept him from seeing the future. Anyways, the story winds through the different pasts of all the characters, while also telling how Rohrshach, the only superhero who didn’t STOP being a superhero when the politicians made it illegal, finally figures out who the bad guy is and what his motives are. Turns out that one of the other superheroes was planning to (and succeeded) kill a bunch of people in order to stop the cold war, by making humanity band together against a united front. Oh yeah, and he also made Manhattan leave the galaxy so that no one would be left to stop him.

Okay, there are a lot of problems with that. Never mind the bad science behind the neutrinos/time bit, because for all we know, it was a reference to the bad science that is all-too common in comic books. Let’s work on the people bit. Still, Doctor Manhattan’s character is relatively interesting, so let’s focus on him for a bit. The whole point throughout the comic is that Manhattan is slowly drifting further and further away from humanity; in fact, he’s pretty much an entirely alien being in the first issue. Hell, he even makes a big point about how death doesn’t really matter (which is kind of odd, given that dead people don’t posess sentience, and sentience is an incalculably rare thing indeed), but the moment he’s confronted with an ex (who he dumped, by the way) who is dying from cancer, he freaks out and goes to the moon, where he has a flashback about his origin story (thus allowing us as readers to learn where he came from), then starts being cold and distant again, and finally decides he’ll go play god and make some of his own life somewhere else. Moore seems to find himself incapable of determining whether or not Manhattan is human or not, switching him between human and inhuman solely to try to move the plot forward. There is no logic to his actions, no genuine humanity in the character.

Ozymandias, the smartest man in The Watchmen’s world, apparently thinks that he can create world peace by scaring the shit out of everyone. He makes a guess that the death of millions might cause humanity to band together against some unseen threat, because of our instinctive drive for survival. To his credit, that is very likely what would have happened, except that someone was eventually bound to find out what he had done and humanity would have ended up right back where it started. Even if no one found out, you can only cry wolf for so long, and unless he genuinely threatened the earth, it is unlikely that humanity would remain united against such a perceived threat forever.

Look, it’s possible that since the creature only “attacked” New York, it might not be as hostile against the Communist nations (if you look at a list of human rights-violating nations, you’ll find that Communist nations are usually the worst; if not, it’s Islamic ones), and they might band together in an attempt to stop it. In fact, it’s conceivable that in their human foolishness, the Soviet Union, the Chinese, and the other Communists would not only band together, but actually use it as an excuse to assault the West. If that was the case, it’s entirely plausible that Ozymandias would have made the world worse than he found it.

Hell, for all the humans know (especially if they waited several years after the events of the Watchmen and the ruse was not discovered), the supposed alien creature was flying through space and crashed into New York and accidentally killed people. I can’t actually think of a single outcome where humanity would band together forever and Ozymandias really ends up having saved the world. If anything, he only managed to delay the inevita–oh. Wait. See, here’s the thing.

Humanity didn’t destroy itself.

Here it is, 2009, and humanity is still spreading across the face of the earth. Sure, there is still violence and chaos and wars and stuff, but how much of that is going to result in an apocalyptic destruction of the planet? Remember what I said about humanity’s survival instinct? We as a species are incredibly survival-oriented, which the reason why the human race does a pretty good job of keeping itself alive. We’re built for it. It’s hard-wired in us. Cannibalism and murder are often viewed as morally wrong simply because those activities, if wide-spread, would jeapordize the human race. People who kill often suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, and humans typically find it hard to kill another human being. We don’t eat our babies (and some would argue, have a built-in drive to protect them) because it would hurt our future as a species.

The Cold War happened, but it never would have become World War Three. Humanity would not have wiped itself from the surface of the planet. Ozymandias killed a bunch of people for no reason. If World War Three had happened, then I suppose Moore would have been right, and the moral that the story had been building up to for twelve issues would have been justified. It wasn’t, though. I remember thinking this after I read The Watchmen, and earlier this year, I read the same sentiment in a movie review, which went something along the lines of: “What does The Watchmen matter? The point that this film was trying to make was that people are all screwed up and that we’ll destroy each other if we don’t look out. But we aren’t all and we’re better off now than we were a hundred years ago.”

I really don’t give a rat’s ass about how good the deconstruction in Watchmen supposedly is. Okay, so he’s got an issue that mirrors its paneling structure, and he quotes a lot of poems, and the book’s got a lot of literary/comic influences. The story itself doesn’t hold up, and if the story doesn’t hold up, then it can’t be the greatest comic of all time. Just look at how many movies are well-made but have poor stories. Look at Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, which is a meticulously crafted tale with one of the dumbest scripts I’ve heard. Hell, the relationship between Silk Spectre II and Nite Owl II was artificial and juvenile, written as if Moore didn’t understand how humans worked–Well, that’s the way all of his comics are. None of his characters have really seemed truly human or organic; they’re as genuine as Shinji from Evangelion or Mikaela from Transformers. A good writer understands humanity and displays this understanding in their works; this is why William Shakespeare is considered the best writer in the English language, if not the best writer of all time. Moore’s characters, on the other hand, are stiff and contrived things that really only exist to move his plots forward. Sure, you’ll get the occasional Evey, but she’s an exception to the rule.

Now What?

I’ll be 21 soon.

I’ll be all grown up, to hear my parents talk about it. I’m not really sure how you can wake up one morning and suddenly be a mature adult, but I think I’ve done a pretty good job of things. I hold down a job, I’m making my payments, I keep myself showered and my clothes cleaned without needing to be told to (sometimes, my mom tries to wake me up an hour after I’ve already woken up, but that’s more her failing than it is mine). Soon, I’ll be a full-fledged adult. Will things really be that different? Will I really have evolved into something that’s serious all the time? Will I become someone who doesn’t crack jokes or tell stories or enjoy the beautiful colors in life? Will I really have to become a tie-wearing office drone who does nothing but work all the time? If my parents have ever taught me, it’s been by example, and all they’ve ever lead me to believe is that adults are joyless, miserable people who exist solely to work all the time, unless, of course, they’re sleeping?

Is it really that immature of me to crack a joke about wanting to get a career in television just so I can answer the phones at my local PBS station during pledge drives? If I’m the one making plans about where I want to go and what I want to do, and working up budgets and scenarios and everything, is it really wrong of me to want to lighten the mood with a joke? Am I wrong in wanting to take a break? Is it a crime to have an imagination? According to my parents, no good can come from any career that I want to do, whehter it’s as a journalist, a professional pilot, a filmmaker, or really pretty much anything. Whatever I want to be, it isn’t what they want, but at the same time, they’ve never made it clear to me what I need to be.

For my entire life, my parents have tried to lecture me, to control me, to make me responsible and more adult. They’ve forbidden most movies over forty years old, refused to allow us to call the extremely limited selection of video games by that designation (we had to call them simulators), and ultimately clamped down on everything that made us children. I had a wild imagination, and they could never control that, but they did try. Once, they took every electronic I owned and force me to destroy them, calling my writing blasphemous and evil. They deleted almost all my high school work, ranging from essays to science lab reports. They stole my library card and destroyed it. They forbade me to read many books, even the non-fiction ones. They always claimed to be protecting me, which is probably why popular culture has infected me like smallpox. They isolated me from everything, and tried make me an adult at every chance they had. They took almost all enjoyment from our lives, and tried to force us to relive their childhoods.

Now, my childhood has come to an end.

I feel like I never had the chance to experience it.