To Be Superhuman

I’ve never been superhuman, nor would I care to be, given the opportunity. In fact, unless they’re amusing, like, say, Spidey, I’m not really much of a fan. In fact, I tend to really dislike people with powers, be they Storm or Jean Grey or Green Lantern. Then there are the “specials,” those superhumans whose power transcends even that of the people around them. Naruto and pretty much any shounen main character leap to mind, as does Superman. I suppose that one reason for this is that I, unlike so many people I’ve met, have a distinct dislike for characters who aren’t genuine. There can be time travel and giant robots and semi-intelligent lizards, but the moment a character comes into play that isn’t believable at all, I find myself not caring.

It’s ruined my enjoyment of so many comics and movies that sometimes I think it’s a bad thing, but then I remember what truly great writing is: that which is genuine. When your character is a deeply human individual, your story posesses merit that the wish-fulfillment characters like Superman or Naruto (people with tremendous powers who everyone likes because they’re so awesome) can’t grant. There’s a weight to those “real” characters that no one else can match, and I think that’s why I hate the unreal ones so much.

So, I was sitting here, musing to myself about superheroes in real life. Many books have dealt with this topic, but all of them tend to result in the superhero being, well, Superman. I actually can’t think of any specific books that have done this, although I know that there have been many and that I’ve read several of them. None of these books and their characters have mattered; they all end up being card-board cutouts of people who simply haven’t got very many superheroic friends. Do you know what would really happen if there was a superhero with all the powers of Superman in a world like ours? He’d quickly find himself without anything to do.

See, in a “real-world” situation, where one and only one super-powered being exist, there aren’t going to suddenly be alien invasions and evil government conspiracies and all sorts of heinous crimes. There are going to be bombings and robberies and rapes and car crashes and with the exception of the occasional natural disaster, this superhero would have waaaaaay more power than he or she actually needs. They’ll spend their time pulling kittens out of trees when they’ve got the strength to shatter the moon! What good is all that super-intelligence if they can’t create a cure for cancer–and what kind of superhero figures out a cure for cancer? Sure, they could fly around and disarm all the world’s nuclear weapons, but unless they’re prepared to rule with an iron fist, there’s nothing they can do to prevent people from building more weapons.

…what kind of superhero could tolerate a world that doesn’t really need them?

None.

So imagine this person who has all this power, all this skill, and all this talent–and there’s nothing out there to oppose them. What are they going to do? My guess? Create opposition. People yearn for challenge, often creating challenges when they find that life isn’t challenging them enough; the drive to be challenged is what helps our species grow. So if there’s a deeply human character who becomes the world’s only super-powered being, they will, sooner or later, find themselves creating challenges. At first, it will be entirely innocent; accidents designed to make ther hero look good to others, because people always want to look good in front of other people. That will, for a while, be enough to lift their spirits. Perhaps robots will come next, hulking machines with basic artificial intelligence that all but require the hero’s powers to defeat. Ultimately, however, the hero is going to create a villain.

It’s not the crazy comic book logic that’s going to do this, though. The existence of a superhero isn’t enough to make a villain; the villain will have to be manufactured. Perhaps the hero grants a serial killer powers, or perhaps they give powers to a friend and then do their best to drive the person mad. Either way, a villain is created, and that villain faces the hero, and there are really only three ways the story can end.

First, the hero defeats the villain and everyone loves them for doing so, but this leaves the cycle open.
Secondly, the villain kills the hero and proceeds to be evil, possibly finding themselves in the hero’s position and creating a hero to oppose them.
Thirdly, the hero defeats the villain but then realizes that everything they have done has made THEM the villain, and they commit some form of superhuman suicide.

Finally, I suppose, the hero could defeat the villain, realize that they are indeed the villain, and take over the world, creating semi-powered people who can never beat them, but are still a bit of a challenge. This would be the ultimate example of “absolute power corrupts, absolutely.”

My Worst Fear (As A Creator)

My worst fear, as a creator at least, is that I won’t know when to quit. If it’s not that, then it’s still having ideas after I’ve quit. They’re both bad. Being blissfully ignorant of one’s utter, utter failure would be terrible. I wouldn’t want my name smeared, having people boo my works because I’ve somehow gotten too senile or old. I don’t want to be the next Claremont or Morrison or Moore; I want people to see books with my name on them and go “That’s a good book because he wrote it.” If I didn’t know when to quit, people might begin to be wary of the good stuff, and I couldn’t bear to know that I no longer bring happiness and excitement to my audience.

Then again, let’s assume I’ve quit. I’ve caught on that my ideas suck (hey, I’ve got ideas now that suck and I haven’t even begun!), and I know, for the good of my fans (HAH! All two of them) and my name, I’d better stop. But then the ideas come, and they keep coming. I’ve got to get them out or I feel as though my head’s going to explode! That would be pretty bad. Right now, I have ideas every day; tons of ideas raining on me like the debris from Mt. St. Helens. I try to catch them all, because a lot of them seem pretty good to me, but it’s incredibly stressful for a guy like me, who’s told stories all his life, not to be able to tell them to anyone. So being old and knowing I could only write some absolute shit with no hope for awesomeness, while a constant torrent of ideas comes… that would be horrible.

But the worst thing would be running out of ideas.

…or, y’know, becoming incoherent, like I’m writing things at 4:05 AM. Which is when I’m writing this. Best not to publish until later, even if these are random notes and not a bloody essay.

Right Here, Right Now.

Here are the stories in my head at the moment.

 

1. Superheroes. Yes, yes, I know. I want to write comics, so I must right about superheroes, right? Well, uh, sort of. The idea spawned from me watching Harry Potter and thinking about how all the wizards were jerks. I’d just read House of M as well. This lead me down a line of thinking that was essentially: “what would it be like to be a normal person in a world dominated by superhumans?” The answer, of course, is that you’ll experience a kind of racism that you’re powerless to prevent. Ongoing.
2. Black. It’s a story about a man, known solely by his last name, Black, who functions like a consultant for the police. He’s really just an extremely intelligent office worker who happens to be the friend of a policewoman. It’s more interesting than it sounds, mostly because I’m not telling everything. Miniseries, with potential for more minis to follow in a Hellboy format.
3. Hell. A hospital that corrupts its patients and staff. 6-issue Miniseries or 24/36-issue ongoing.
4. Conspiracy/Alien Invasion. Think X-Files + Ghost in the Shell + Private Detective in 2027 or so. It would last 120 issues over all, but it would be split in half, with the two series running concurrently. The first series is different in tone and style from the second, but they are both part of the same story. There are two different alien species. Two sixty-issue ongoings.
5. Post-Apocalyptic West. If you like Cowboy Bebop, Black Lagoon, or Firefly, you’ll like this story. It’s a tale of a family unit who own and operate two helicopters in the Wild West. Six-issue mini, with the potential for a Hellboy approach lasting no more than sixty issues, but most likely 36.
6. Time Travel. Imagine Jason Statham and John Neville as time travelers. There are giant spiders. Six-issue mini.
7. Ninjas. I want to take a sort of Naruto-approach, by having a world that’s somewhat of a mix between the past and present, but much more mature. It would be a three-part series. The first would focus on one ninja, culminating in his death. 36/60 issue ongoing. The second would focus on several different ninjas all affected by his death, though they might not have known him. 36-issue ongoing. The third series ties it all together. 24/36 issue ongoing. I’ve been writing this story off and on since 2006, about the time I was introduced to comics, so it’s always on my brain, like the superhero story.
8. Crime story. One crime. Four issues. Black and white. Funny. If I wanted to, and it sold, I could do more. You know the drill–Hellboy approach.
9. A Journey. Post-apocalyptic, people are sick and dying, but the massive space ship that caused the crash and destroyed society in the first place still sits, like the corpse of a whale, washed up on the beach. The only people who might even have the technology to help cure a disease are the aliens that came in the big ship (I’m thinking somewhere in the range of 50 km long). So a girl sets out, all by herself, to go meet the aliens (she’ll be the first human to have done so, as the aliens avoid people, and people tend to avoid the aliens; people might not even have SEEN them before), and find a cure for her sister. The story isn’t trying to be anything big, new, or important. It’s just a story that should look fucking IMPRESSIVE. Four issue miniseries.

 

As you can probably tell, I don’t like short comics. With the exception of Doctor Thirteen, Flex Mentallo, and a few other comics, I’m not a fan. The best comics I’ve ever read; they’re all sixty issues or so in length.

Stress and Storytelling

Stress makes me think. Fast. It doesn’t mean that what I’m saying is helpful; more often than not, stress-driven thoughts can be insane ramblings that might not be the most intelligent things to say. Those last four posts about what’s wrong with the comics industry? Took me a couple of hours to write, and during that time, I was unable to think of anything else. I dunno why I’m like that. My brain works like a cloud, with little particles floating about in their wonderful Brownian motion, hitting and sticking to eachother until you get raindrops, and those raindrops must fall. Sometimes, however, they don’t fall, and an updraft pulls them up into the sky where they get more water and become hail until finally a ball of ice the size of a boulder comes crashing down in an intense–

Right. Pointless idea snowballing right there.

What often happens is that the more important an idea is, the more difficult it is to write. Good writing should be challenging, sure, but this? This is madness. Who the fuck am I to talk about what the industry should do? I’m a twenty year old kid who lives in a trailer, and not a trailerpark trailer, but the kind you find at a campground. Before that, I was living in my church library! I’ve got no experience, no knowledge of how things really work, so my ideas are invalid. But… it’s easier for me to be consumed by asking things I probably shouldn’t ask about than it is to do productive things. It’s easier to waste time. Tonight, I read a bunch of articles on io9, some new comics, and played that new Wolverine video game for a bit. Did I do anything worthwhile today? No. I went to work, worked for a couple hours, and then they sent us home.

But then I try to sit down and write, and… things get stuck. I know that writer’s block exists, but this isn’t a block in some pipes somewhere. It’s like I’ve got the whole fucking Hoover Dam in my brain. I know that part of this has to do with my extreme creativity; give me any object and I can usually make an entire story from it. Most of all, however, it’s just sitting here in a trailer, knowing that at any minute, someone can burst in and demand that I clean up the trailer, or clean up the house, or go buy something I can’t afford, or… anything. The fact is that I can be interrupted at any minute by people who can’t know that I write stuff, because if they DO know, they’ll take everything from me. It makes writing painful. Writing brings that stress into focus.

…and it’s pissing me the fuck off.

What’s Wrong With Comics, Pt. 4

Okay, so, this is the last bit, and it starts out as a confession.

In that rather embarassing (because it made me look stupid) discussion I had with Kris, she said one thing that, as I thought about it more and more, I had to agree with completely. The future of comics is digital.

Believe it or not, there are tons of forums and other locations to download comics for free. Of course, these aren’t magical wonderlands of happiness and glee, no, they’re places for people to avoid buying comics. I’m talking about piracy. I download untranslated manga to read (because I can’t read Japanese and some titles aren’t released in the United States until years after they’ve been published), and through this met people who pirated comic. I myself will pirate a comic on occasion just to see what everyone’s talking about and if it’s worth buying. If a comic is out of print and impossible to find, I’ll pirate it too to give it a read. But I’m not trying to talk about piracy as much as I am trying to point out that a sizeable number of people don’t mind reading comics on their computer.

See, that’s the biggest argument I’ve heard against digital comics: “I don’t like reading them on my computer.” Sure, it’s a valid one. I love being able to read comics in person; they’re so much more… I dunno, but I do know I like them. That said, I can’t afford to buy comics anymore, and my LCS guy is an complete dick (the chick who worked there was pretty nice, though). In addition, I live on a foam mattress in a church library. I’ve got nowhere to store comics. Even minimal amounts of searching will reveal lots of people who like reading their comics on their computer, and would prefer to keep copies there instead of storing them and caring for them.

…so digital sounds pretty good. Here are some of the advantages:

• They fit on a hard drive, sharing space with your computer instead of taking up unnecessary space.
• Splash pages look so much better when you can see the whole image.
• Printing and shipping costs are gone, as well as distributor and comic book shop fees. This means that the comic book is cheaper to produce.
• In one town I lived in, the nearest comic book shop was over an hour away. The internet is almost everywhere; using it as a delivery method would mean that people who can’t normally get comics, can.
• Since we don’t have that pesky “owner doesn’t want to risk putting a book on his shelf” problem, it would be less risky to try new, original ideas. AWESOME!

Marvel’s gone digital, and that’s well and good, but what the industry really needs is a unified system. The problem with Marvel’s system is that you can’t buy DC books on it, and the whole “new guys can try stuff out” thing doesn’t work.

If you’ve heard of Steam, a content delivery platform for video games, you’ll understand what I’m talking about a bit easier. If you don’t know what I mean, do a google search for “Valve Steam.” Essentially, people download the program, Steam, for free and set up an account with it. They can then buy video games for this account and download the games to any computer they want, the only catch being that they can’t access the same game simultaneously on two machines. Game publishers from all over the world have their games released on Steam, and it’s proven to be a successful way for indie game creators to get their content heard.

That’s the model I’ll be using for my sequential art distribution platform.

• It’s a free program where users set up an account and buy comics from a variety of publishers, which they can download and read.
• The comics are stored in encrypted, compressed files when put on the machine, meaning that it would be difficult for someone to simply copy the files and put them on the internet for anyone to pirate.
• Comics can be sorted by writers, artists, editors, publishers… whoever. That way, if someone goes “Hey, I like Seaguy,” they can immediately search for comics by Grant Morrison… or Cameron Stewart… or Vertigo Comics.
• Entire runs of comics should be available.
• Flex Mentallo MUST be available.
• The program has a “scrobbler” system, similar to last.fm’s recommendation service.
• As long as the comics are tied to their account, customers can redownload them whenever and wherever. That means that if, say, their house burns down and their computer was in it, they can buy another computer, log into their account, and redownload all of their comics without a problem.
• Regular sales would occur. For instance, an older comic book run of 25 issues might suddenly go on sale for a Wednesday and only cost $10, all bundled together.
• A diverse team of intelligent, responsible individuals (editors) using an high standard will screen indie comics that use this program as a self-publishing tool. Basically, not just any fanboy with great TV-tracing skills can come along and write a story about his knockoff DBZ/Ninja story. These comics could be released for free and voted on a la Zuda, or perhaps sell for a low price. Think of how Audiosurf, an indie game, sells on Steam for 9.99 when compared to a AAA title video game’s 49.99, or how the best of the best mods (there are hundreds of video game mods) are allowed on Steam. This would allow more people to get their content released.
• Merchandise, like shirts and stuff, could be released as well.
• Webcomics COULD be hosted, provided that they were good.
• Foreign comics, which are usually a risk to translate and publish, could be released on this service first, to test the waters. If they sell well in other markets, then they could be released in collected format there. Say the Japanese or French get a translation of Proof and it sells like crazy–then maybe the TPBs could be translated and Image could partner with a foreign publisher to release them. This would not be an initial release thing, since assembling a team of translators to translate all the titles in Shonen Jump within 24 hours would be impossible, plus, the system should start and be proven locally first.
• Pricing would be on a tier based on primarily on the publisher’s wishes. Since the books aren’t being printed on paper, shipped, sold through Diamond AND a comic book shop, they MUST cost less. Also, older books, like, say, Thor 32 (never read it) should cost less.
• This should be operated by a third party. That way, the costs come from distribution, the people who actually MAKE the book, and the publishers who allow the book to be made.
• Uh, if people sent in their barcodes or something, maybe they could register their hard copies online, so they wouldn’t have to buy the same issue twice.

I’ve got more ideas, but it’s 4:35 AM and I’m fuckin’ tired.

For this to work, at least three of the Big Four (Dark Horse, DC, Image, and Marvel) would have to jump on board.

EDIT: A built in comic book reader would be great. Also, allowing people to download the files in multiple image resolutions. The ability to download comic podcasts and stuff would be welcome, as would an art library for artists (that goes through the rigorous proving session I mentioned earlier). Lots more stuff is in my brain, but I can’t find the note I wrote down the other day.

What’s Wrong With Comics, Pt. 3

It is here that I feel I should emphatically state that what I am saying is all hypothesis. I don’t know that these are the solid facts. I’ve only been to two comic shops in my life, and I don’t have years of experience working with comics that the professionals do. I could be entirely wrong. That said, I’ve had jobs working as a salesman (door to door and in store), I’ve worked for a private university’s business department and had discussions with the professors about business, and I’ve taken more than just the basic business courses. I’ve also had the typical ECON 101 course that all college students have, and I often watch business news. My parents have started their own business, my father also is the head of a lab and responsible for getting the funding, generating customers and the like, and we have talked at length about this. In addition, I have spoken with a well-known and wealthy Venture Capitalist on the subject of business, not because I had to, but because I thought it sounded like fun. In other words, business, and people, are a hobby of mine, and while I may not have all the facts right, I’m not just some guy spouting his opinions either.

Now, on to the comics being broken thing.

As I see it, there are two basic ways to help the comics market grow. The first I asked Editor-lady Kris about, and I think it pissed her off a bit. She didn’t really answer my question about in in depth, so for all I know, she was upset by it because it was a very different way of doing things with comics. I suggested the manga method. See, here’s how comics are made in the US (this is a very basic understanding of it and should not be taken as the holy grail of comic creation):

1. There are basically two ways a comic gets produced. An independent creator(s) gets five completed art pages together with a pitch and sends them off to a publisher, like Image. That proposal gets either accepted or rejected. If accepted, go to step 2. The other way is that a writer is either assigned or asks to be assigned to a well-known title (like, say, Batman), and the Big Publisher either accepts or rejects it. If accepted, go to step 2.
2. The book gets published in a monthly, bimonthly, or quarterly format of a single, 22-page issue, unless it’s the one weekly series DC publishes or Amazing Spider-Man. With indies, it can often be a case of “whenever the hell the team finishes the next issue.” The team on the book usually is a writer, penciler, inker, colorist, letterer, and editor, and if it’s DC comics, the editor usually does the writer’s job and the writer just puts in dialog. If the book is published by one of the “Big Two” publishers (meaning most comics out there), it’s very likely that this comic is part of a long run that a lot of people have worked on over the years, and nothing truly refreshing will be written. Occasionally, it’s a mini-series based on a longer run, but most original stuff is from the indies. It is my understanding that most of the money comes here.
3. After an arc is completed, the book gets collected into a trade paperback, provided it sells well enough.
4. If it sells really well, it gets printed as a hardback.

Here’s how they do it in manga-land. I’m not super clear on step 1.

1. There’s usually a contest or pitching process. Sometimes shit gets self-published as a doujinshi, and comes out however the hell the creator feels like. Usually, though, there’s just one creator, who does both the writing and the art. Sometimes, there is a team of artists, especially after a title gets famous, to allow it to be published faster, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
2. The manga then gets published as chapters weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, or bi-monthly in a magazine which collects a LOT of mangas. These titles can vary in length, from single strips (Azumanga Daioh), to 16 pages or so (Naruto). The magazines are often published in black and white on newsprint, and are ultimately disposable. The other thing about mangas is that they often end. This makes the stories easier for new readers to get into, and allows for entirely new creators to come in and get their work published. It is apparently easier for new creators to get their start in manga than it is in comics.
3. When a number of manga chapters are published, they are collected in a tankobon, which is basically a trade paperback. This is ultimately where the creator gets his money from, as his work is his own, not a part of some larger work where the rights are not his, but the publisher’s.

Neil Gaiman recently wrote on his blog that he wouldn’t be writing another comic like Sandman, partly because he hardly gets any money from its continued publication, and partly because he did not feel that the comic was his own. Apparently, he gets a LOT more for the novels he writes, and of course he has no one riding him about continuity the way a publisher would. If Gaimain worked in an industry using the manga method, he’d have a significant amount of control over his creation.

I get bored waiting 30 days or more to read a book that lasts me a matter of minutes. In fact, unless I really, REALLY like the book, I won’t buy it in monthlies anymore, because spending 50 or 60 dollars in a week is foolish. If I really want to read it, I’ll just wait for the trades, but that could be six months or more, and by that time, I’ve very likely stopped caring about the book entirely. Imagine what would happen if you had to wait 30 days for every new episode of your favorite television drama, except that the drama was only a quarter of an hour long. Would you give a shit about it? Not bloody likely. If a story comes out weekly or bi-weekly, however, and includes more content, well, it’s easier to keep an interest in.

So, here are the advantages I see with a manga format:

• They’re cheap.
• They’re mailed to you, so they’re easy to get.
• The stories always have a beginning and an end, so they’re easy to get into.
• The stories always have a beginning and an end, so once a story is done, the space it takes can be taken by a new story.
• The creators have more control over the story, and are more likely to make a living with their story than they would in the West.
• That constant rotation of stories and creative teams ensures that fresh talent is always available.
• That constant rotation of stories ensures that creative teams don’t get stuck writing the same damn story for the rest of their life.

I would love to see Warren Ellis writing all his ongoings in one book. That’d probably make it easier to read them, since he’d be writing a bunch of shorter scripts, and maybe his books would suffer fewer delays. That’s just a pipe dream, though.

…but what’s this other suggestion I had?

What’s Wrong With Comics, Pt. 2

If the industry were healthy, it would be growing. Instead, less and less people buy comics every year. Why is that? I’ve got some ideas. (Do note that I make generalizations here)

• Cost. I can buy a DVD for $10 at some places, and a good book for $15-20. I can buy one comic for four dollars. The DVD might last two hours, and the book might last me two or three days (I’m a speed reader). Buying comics isn’t a smart investment for most people.
• Availability. I fucking hate my comic book shop, but it’s the only place to buy monthlies around here. There are a couple random comics on the Barnes & Noble bookshelf (The Borders up in Lawrence actually had an entire shelf full of comics, which surprised me, but it’s a three hour drive from here), but if I want to buy comics anywhere, I’ve either got to buy them online and pay stupid extra shipping, or go into a shop that carries a shitty selection of books because of their personal preference.
• What sells. The problem with a LCS is that the owner is a businessman and more likely to put some piss-poor 3.99 crossover on his shelves than a title no one’s ever heard of, because he doesn’t know whether it will sell or not. This makes it even more difficult for new creators to get in a market that’s already shrinking.
• Ease of Accessibility. There are, what, 600 issues of Thor? 500-something of Spidey and the Uncanny X-Men? 900 of Batman? 600 of Action Comics? That’s an intimidating number of comics to get into, especially if you’re someone who wants to read it ALL! It’s nearly impossible to collect a bunch of comics just to read, partially because some don’t exist anymore, and partially because comic book collectors have caused the prices on many older comics to go up.
• Stagnant Content. Proof is a fucking excellent comic book, and hardly anyone reads it. Jeph Loeb’s Hulk, on the other hand, is basically an exercise in one-upsmanship. What can the Red Hulk destroy next?! The biggest comics are nothing innovative, but it’s a risk for those store owners to stock smaller ones, which means that less people read them, which means it’s less likely for a book to get stocked… and the cycle worsens.
• Incorrect Perceptions. People think comics are about Superman or Batman or Spider-Man and that they’re for kids. They’re dismissed as being some sort of trash medium with no depth or substance to them, and because of the accessibility and price problems, no one wants to go out of their way to buy them for kids.

Comics must be easy to acquire, like movies, television, or video games. If you fix this, you’re well on your way to increasing sales. Okay, okay, I learned my lesson in talking with Kris at Shadowline comics, so let me add this little tidbit: that’s a simple rule we learned in econ. The harder you make someone work to get something, the less likely they are to buy it. It’s a rule that’s been reinforced to me the years I’ve spent as a salesman as well. If you make something simple and low cost, people are more likely to buy it than something that’s either hard to get (”Yes, I’d like to buy that, I’ll take it right now. What? I have to ORDER it?”) or something that they perceive as being of little value (”A hundred dollars for this anti-virus program? I don’t need it!”). So, what needs to happen?

COMICS SHOULD BE EASIER TO GET AT A LOWER COST

Here’s the most important thing I learned from Kris: Comics aren’t written for the customers, they’re written for the stores that sell them to the customers, because the stores are the one who make the initial purchase. Now, the comic book shop is a holdover from back when comics were still selling rampantly because people were either reading them (the 50s) or people thought that they’d be worth something (the 80s). It’s an old way of doing things. Specialty stores just don’t work; that’s why the record stores are dying or dead. That’s why Blockbuster just went bankrupt. In a day and age where people can download their music and movies or buy them at the Barnes & Noble, there’s no reason to have a store dedicated to their use. Comic book stores, however, are the primary way to get comics. They require effort to find and often unusually nerdy people to deal with. The average guy doesn’t want to do that. In addition, the comic book stores buy the comics that they feel will sell, and in some cases, the comics they don’t like, which is apparently the case with mine.  This makes it difficult for fresh and new stuff to get published.

It’s like… a bunch of different titles come out, and the nerds all gravitate towards their Captain America or whatever. Because of this, the owner goes “oh, these new titles are a waste of space,” and doesn’t devote as much space to those titles. The less space those books get, the less chance they have of being noticed, and the less likely the owner is going to give them a chance next time. By being unable to afford the risk, the owner ensures that the market for new content and new creators is only going to get thinner, which leads to less new readers coming in, and so forth. So, what needs to happen?

THE COMIC SHOP IS BECOMING OUTDATED AND NEW METHODS OF DELIVERY SHOULD BE ATTEMPTED.

Just what are these methods, and how can they expand awareness for comics, as well as make them easy to acquire and lower their costs? I’ll get to that in the next post.

What’s Wrong With Comics, Pt. 1

There’s this pretty cool board called “Kris’-Korner” out on the internets somewhere. I go there on occasion to seek advice, or to read some pretty awesome discussions. I’d spend more time, but since I’m not all together in my brain and haven’t been for a while, it’s probably not a good idea to introduce myself to people just yet. They’d think I was insane. Of course, I was stupid and went there earlier this week to ask a question that had been bothering me for some time, especially as I had recently completely re-evaluated my spending habits. The question was supposed to be simple: “Why aren’t there more $1.99 comics on the shelves?” The answer, too, was simple: “Because comic book shops make less money on 1.99 comics.” Given some presuppositions on my part, and the fact that I was pretty incoherent, much of the material in between wasn’t worth reading.

However, it did get me thinking.

Firstly, I got the impression that I had unintentionally insulted the industry. Her industry. It’s like telling an engineer that you don’t like the way airplanes are made. You may be talking about an unsafe workplace or the fact that most of the people running those unions are assholes who are crippling the industry, but it’s going to come across as an insult to their particular livelihood! So, should Kris ever read this, I’d like to apologize here too.

That’s not really what I came here to say. What I’ve got to say is about the business model, and why it’s broken and needs to change. It all started with a statement from Kris, that the industry was in a bad way. Of course, everyone’s been whining about how horrible the economy is, so it would seem reasonable that comics, especially as one of the smallest forms of entertainment in terms of customers, would be doing poorly. (Funny story*) That thought hadn’t occurred to me, but having looked at sales figures, I already knew that comics were in a downward trend. Marvel dominates the industry; last I checked, they were selling a third of all comics out there, as opposed to DC’s fifth. That said, a third of all comics now is not a third of all comics twenty years ago.

Here’s how I suspect the industry began to die:

1. In the 1950s, a book called The Seduction of the Innocent was published. Basically, it convinced a lot of people that comics were bad. Before then, hundreds of thousands of comics were being sold each week. 
2. By 1962, 90% of all US Households had television sets.
3. In the early 60s, Marvel Comics, under the direction of Stan Lee, began publishing superhero stories where the protagonists were more human than their other golden age counterparts.
4. In the 70s, Chris Claremont’s X-Men (among others) began emphasizing the “story arc,” and the more mature comic themes of the comic book Bronze Age. Multiple stories in a single by different artists and writers had pretty much stopped being published, and quite a bit of genres were beginning to die out.
5. In 1985, what Marvel had begun culminated in the “mature storytelling” of The Dark Knight and The Watchmen.
6. In the late 80s and early 90s, comic speculation nearly killed the industry.
7. Today.

I’ve spoken with dozens of comic fans, and nearly all of them tell the same story: “As a kid, I found these comics books and I’ve been loving them ever since.” Comics, however, don’t appeal to kids anymore. In fact, if you go into a comic shop now, most of the people you will find aren’t kids. In fact, the youngest person I noticed in my LCS the last time I went there was fifteen or sixteen, and he was playing Magic: The Gathering while waiting for his dad to buy comics. The way most people have gotten into comics was when they were young, but young people aren’t being exposed to comics as much. Manga, however, has a much bigger market, and there’s good reason for this.

First off, most of the cartoons with maturish themes that adolescents find interesting are animes. These animes are almost always based on a manga. Manga has a better exposure to the teens because of the animes that are based on them. Go with anyone younger than that, and you’re not going to find many people interested in comics. After all, what kid is going to ask for a few pieces of paper with some brightly drawn characters on him that costs three or four dollars? Not many. When I go to comic shops or see pictures from conventions, most of the people I see are either adults/older teens–people who have been in this a while. 

Some fans die, others grow out of it, and some people just can’t afford it anymore.

So where are the new fans coming from? Firstly, a lot of people I’ve seen introduced to comics find it through the internet. They’re the people that haunt the forums online because they’ve really got nowhere to go in life. Most of them are, quite frankly, losers. Me, I’m a schizoid individual, a person who basically prefers to spend time by himself, regardless of how well he is received by others (I tend to be a very popular guy when I show up at places, but I don’t generally like hanging out with groups of people, so I don’t do it very often). Of course, it’s very hard to find people like me; only 1% of the general population is considered schizoid, so it’s probably not the best place to go looking for new fans.

Basically, LESS people are being introduced to comics as MORE people GO AWAY.

…and that’s a problem.

Life Hates Sully

Life hates me. It’s as simple as that.

I am not the world’s most knowledgeable, intelligent person. Often, my words don’t come out the way I wanted them to. Sometimes I do and say things so moronically stupid, that I wish I could be struck down by some omnipotent force. But, fuckit, that’s me. It’s one thing to deal with people face to face; I’m amazingly good at that. Maybe I’ve got some sort of honesty or charisma that people like. Often, I’ll walk out of interviews with the other individuals more psyched about me than I am. Online, it’s a different story. I’m a mess right now; have been for the past two or three years.

It’s largely my parents’ fault–even as an adult, they still try to convince me that the world is evil and that masonic rites were committed as man’s first act on the moon. Right now, because of them, I’m living in a church library, on a three inch thick foam pad that’s only about five feet long. I’m nearly six feet tall, and I’ve got allergies. Sleeping this close to the floor? It’s a fucking BITCH.

So, I’ll come here, psyched up and ready to go about my business, but I’m not. Not really.

No, what’s really going on is that I’m living every waking moment in constant fear that someone is going to burst in the building, screaming that they know I’m hiding pornography from them, and now they’re taking my computer away because of it. And when I’m not thinking of it while I’m awake, I’m thinking of it while I’m asleep. I’ll wake up in the middle of the night, having just dreamt that my dad has discovered that I like rock and roll, and it makes me afraid.

A guy shouldn’t have to take his belongings to his workplace because he’s afraid his family’s going to try to go through them, but I do, because they have.My parents have, several times, rooted through my belongings in an attempt to find proof that I was doing something “evil.”

If I wrote a biography, it’d sound like a bunch of absurdist nonsense from a deeply disturbed individual. I’ve lived a weird, insane life, and I’m stressed and frustrated by it but I’m so confused I can’t even be coherent. It’s painful, it really is. So when I say “I’m back,” it’s a hollow promise not to you, the reader I probably haven’t got, but myself. I’m just trying to psych myself up, to tell myself that dammit, I’m still that bright, intelligent young man that everyone really likes. Bear with me, would you? It’s been a rough couple of years. In four months, this should all be over, and I’ll be out on my own again and relatively sane. Hell, maybe I’ll be able to make sense again.

It’s Done

I’ve tried–God knows how hard I’ve tried–to be creative and be interested in creativity. With a family who would rather I do something more “noble,” and two jobs, as well as teaching music lessons, I’ve felt completely sapped. I needed the magic bullet, that mystical magical wonder-book that would remind me what it’s like to read, the rush of reading a good story, because that’s why I like to write. I like to write because I want people to feel what I feel when I read something truly good. That devotion to the story, the sense of wanting to know how it’s going to end and being truly excited about all the little details–I want to instill that in my readers.

That magic bullet happened to come in the form of a manga, something I’d stopped reading long ago. If I’d known it was written by the same man who created Monster, a book I consider to be the finest manga ever written, I would have read it earlier, but I didn’t. I’m a curious person by nature, but I don’t know why I waited until now to read it. I’m glad I didn’t, though; if I had, then that magic bullet I needed might not have been there to save my creativity.

And now I’m back.

I can’t say I’m as strong as I was, as great as I should be, or anything like that, but what I can say is that I’ve been spurred into action. Out of half of a bajillion creators out there, I’ve decided that I want to be like Naoki Urasawa (Creator of Monster, 20th Century Boys, Pluto). See, he does something that not that many people do: he consistently releases well thought-out, quality stories, not focusing on too many at once (Warren Ellis, anyone?), yet retaining a sense of intricacy that avoids appearing too complex (you know, like Grant Morrison in his prime). They’re long stories too, not pointless minis that are ultimately forgettable. His works are like fine steaks, and right now, I’m gobbling up what might be his most popular work.

I’m glad I waited to read 20th Century Boys. Now I’m ready to create again.