Creators: Jock (cover), Adam Freeman, Marc Bernardin, Bruno Redondo, Sergio Arino Publishing Information: DC/WildStorm, comic book, 32 pages, November 2008, $3.50 Ordering Numbers:
Man, what the hell happened to the WildStorm imprint? There was a time I think about five years ago that between the efforts of writers like Joe Casey and Alan Moore it looked like Jim Lee's company had become a decent little publishing duplex. Renting out one side you had a handful of high-end creator-owned projects. Living in the other half you had the shared superhero universe that by emphasizing its interstellar war elements had seemingly sidestepped the problem that universes not ground in Jack Kirby's imagination seem to have of cycling through all potentially interesting plotlines and wider sagas within a few short years. Most of what I see from them these days is videogame adaptations and comics that draw on such generic ideas and plotlines they read like role-playing game manuals from 1986 or so.
Push #1 falls into that latter camp. I guess it could be in the first camp; I honestly don't know. As for the book itself... I hate saying this, because creating is hard, and people almost always work on things with the best of intentions and with as much integrity as they can muster, but this is almost a parody of a certain kind of comic book. The government has an agency of psychic beings with special powers, which we see displayed on a mission that involves taking out a facility that seems to be populated solely by husky, armed guards. There is tension at the agency over the uses of these beings, and we meet a few in a way that fills us in on the first line or two in a future character profile. On a subsequent mission our lead -- loyal to the agency for personal reasons, of course -- finds out that there may be more to the eye in terms of the missions than we might expect. It's like a syndicated TV show that someone might have put together blending the X-Men movie and Alias that runs on WGN at 5 PM on Saturdays, or something that a machine might make cutting and pasting from old Caliber books and grocery store serial adventure novels. It might make for a good film or television project because it's certainly a blank slate of comfortable plot elements that someone could make come to life. But as a comic, particularly a comic for anyone who's read any type of similar work and doesn't have a bottomless appetite for seeing one more book working that same neighborhood, it almost makes a case all by itself that comics are a creative dead end.
Your Thoughts On Why OK-Selling Superhero Comics Have Stand-Alone Series In Addition To Regular Ones
Here are a few of the fuller responses to my wondering out loud yesterday as to why a series like Kevin Smith's Batman: Cacophony #1 is a stand-alone series instead of streamed into the regular title.
Gardner Linn:
This is a response to your recent post on Batman: Cacophony, and the general phenomenon of character-specific miniseries. Please note I am not a comics historian, nor an economics expert, nor someone with special knowledge of the inner workings of DC (or any other company), merely a reader with opinions (and, as this response might show, more of a fanboy than I care to admit).
In the case of Cacophony, I think the stock answers are, to a large degree, the answers. The two main Batman series -- Batman and Detective -- are both in the middle of extended runs by (relatively) popular writers, and are both currently in the middle of a semi-major storyline ("Batman R.I.P.") that is itself leading to another major storyline(s). I haven't read Cacophony, but from what I understand it literally doesn't fit in the current continuity, and may even contradict certain elements of current Batman continuity. It would seem, then, that if DC wants to have a Kevin Smith Batman book on the stands sooner rather than later, it makes sense to shunt the story off to its own miniseries. (And while I think it's possible that Cacophony would sell more if it was part of the regular Batman series, I think it's doubtful that it's going to cannibalize much of the regular Batman audience, so DC is probably making more money off the character by running the story as a mini. Again, not an economics expert, so anybody with actual figures is welcome to prove me wrong. And of course if you publish too many of these minis over the course of a year, you probably will start to lose exhausted readers.)
Also, Kevin Smith is a draw (though perhaps not as much as he was five or ten years ago), and DC probably feels that his name will lure readers over to a miniseries. And for casual readers who may only be interested in Kevin Smith books, a three-issue miniseries with a big obvious #1 might be less intimidating or confusing than Batman #682-684 or whatever.
Like I said, I'm no historian, but I wouldn't be surprised if The Dark Knight Returns was the beginning of these sorts of things. It's worth noting that while Year One ran in Batman, DKR did not -- it was a separate series. And I think the reason for the difference--and a large part of the reason for the continued preponderance of separate miniseries -- is continuity and canon.
As a flashback, Year One may have literally been out of continuity, but in a larger sense it was in continuity -- it was intended to be the actual canon origin of Batman (please someone who wasn't 8 years old in 1987 correct me if I'm wrong about that being the intent). In contrast, DKR was more of an "imaginary," proto-Elseworlds story, though over time I think it has become, for many readers, an official piece of the Batman canon.
I think for characters or franchises like Batman, there are three levels of stories. There are the "regular" stories, ranging from forgettable one-issue inventory stories to multi-year Grant Morrison runs, that go in the main book. Then there are "special" stories -- special because of the creators involved, or the unique nature of the story told--that run as miniseries (or, occasionally, graphic novels). Then there are the "really special" stories -- the stories that have that unique thing about them, but are also intended to be official canon -- that run in the main book. These are your Year Ones, or the upcoming Neil Gaiman-written "Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?" which is running in Batman and Detective when it could easily stand as its own thing. Running a story as a miniseries instead of in the main book creates a different set of expectations for the reader; stories in the main book "matter" in a way that miniseries don't. (Though of course publishers want you to think miniseries matter too, in that they want you to spend money on them, but they matter in different ways.)
(The big exceptions to this are in-continuity, crossover-related miniseries like Secret Invasion: Fantastic Four or Final Crisis: Rogue's Revenge, which seem to operate under different rules. Fantastic Four and Spider-Man got their own Secret Invasion minis because they were tied up in their own special creator/continuity situations [Millar/Hitch and "Brand New Day," respectively], whereas, say, Black Panther's SI tie-ins ran in that character's main book. I'd also imagine that Marvel thought FF or Spider-Man could support two books in a way that Black Panther couldn't. As for Rogue's Revenge and other Final Crisis tie-ins, I think it's likely that DC thought giving Rogue's Revenge the Final Crisis imprimatur would draw more readers than running it in the moribund regular Flash book.)
As shared-universe superhero comics have trended toward tight continuity and long-form storytelling and away from "done in one"s and the "every issue is somebody's first" philosophy, I think miniseries like Cacophony have become more popular because they provide a home for stories that don't fit into the grand plan (as we acknowledge that those plans are shaky at best) but may nevertheless garner an audience, or at the very least keep somebody within the company happy. I think it's also possible to make the argument that the publication of such miniseries is a short-sighted attempt to wring as much money as possible out of completists.
I don't think the TV analogy holds up too well, however. For one thing, TV doesn't have a situation analogous to Batman/Detective or Superman/Action, where two different simultaneous series feature the same characters. The CSI and Law & Order franchises are more akin to the various titles in the X-Men franchise, each sharing a similar premise but with largely different casts. More importantly, it's much more cost-effective for DC to publish a couple of simultaneous Batman series than it is for NBC to air, say, two ER series every week. You don't have to pay Batman any extra money to appear in another series, and there are no limits on his time. You do, however, have to pay Maura Tierney more money to play her ER character on another show, and she is bound by the laws of time and space. If a network has a hit show, it's going to squeeze as much money as it can out of it -- so if NBC thought it could get higher ratings for less money by creating ER Tuesdays, they would. In fact, they did, with the recent Thursday editions of Saturday Night Live, which I believe have been NBC's highest-rated scripted shows this season. And they were going to do it with Heroes: Origins, until the writers strike scuttled it. (And then of course there are the occasional show-related TV-movies, like last year's Battlestar Galactica: Razor, or the upcoming 24: Redemption, which serve much the same function as Batman miniseries, except both of those examples aired/will air between seasons of the parent show.) I think the only thing keeping networks from exploiting their hits the way DC exploits Batman is not that they think it's a stupid idea, but that it's financially and logistically nearly impossible to produce two different shows with the same cast every week.
Jeez. If you made it this far, sorry for rambling. I think my main point is that a greater reliance on/adherence to continuity has given rise to more and more miniseries like Cacophony.
Tom Bondurant:
Just a few thoughts on the above-referenced post....
-- This is admittedly a nitpick, but Batman: Year One was actually in-continuity. It was the equivalent of John Byrne's Man of Steel miniseries or George Perez's revamped Wonder Woman origin, but the thinking was that Batman didn't need as radical a makeover. It resulted basically in minor changes to supporting characters: Barbara Gordon had to become Jim Gordon's adopted daughter (because the Gordons' first child being born was a "B:Y1" plot point) and Alfred was the Wayne Family's butler, as opposed to being someone who showed up (in both the Golden and Silver Ages) after Dick Grayson moved in. Accordingly, it was appropriate subject matter for the Batman title, just as "Year Two" (in Detective) and "Year Three" (back in Batman) were.
-- That said, for years I have wondered why DC has a specific Batman anthology like Legends of the Dark Knight or the current Confidential, and still thinks it necessary to publish separate Batman miniseries. JLA Classified was publishing upwards of eighteen issues a year just to burn off its inventory. If the Kevin Smith thing (which I am passing on, since I heard how bad it was) is designed to reach a particular audience, why on earth isn't DC trying to sucker that audience into buying a regular Batman title? (Maybe I answered my own question with the JLA Classified example....)
-- I agree completely with the TV comparison. I would extend it further to supporting-character ongoing series like Robin and Nightwing. Not every supporting character can stand on his own. (However, I think Lois Lane is an exception, especially these days.)
-- The increasing ratio of miniseries to regular series bugged me so much over the summer that I did a series of Grumpy Old Fan posts on it:
Admittedly, it's more of an overview than anything else, but basically I think DC is pinning its hopes for expansion on miniseries. They're arguably better suited to being collected, and there's not as much commitment as with an ongoing series.
-- As for your specific question, though, I don't know precisely when DC started to go so miniseries-happy. Certainly the numbers have shot up during the DiDio years, but I haven't looked back much farther than 2001.
Nat Gertler:
I'm going to have to try to send in comments more when I agree with things, so it doesn't just sound like I'm disagreeing with things. But here I am, disagreeing with things.
The switch to add-on miniseries is not some growth of the last 20 years. When Batman: Year One ran, it surprised people that it was not a separate miniseries, and some saw it as an aggressive move on DC's part to build the audience for the regular series. DC had done stand-alone Batman limited runs before, not only with the different format of The Dark Knight Returns, but in standard comics format like The Untold Legend of the Batman, or the Batman Special one-shot. At around the same time that they were doing their Batman reboot within the series, John Byrne was doing his Superman reboot as the Man Of Steel miniseries.
As for why TV doesn't do such things: You're asking that the same week that A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All! will air, featuring the same character from The Colbert Report but run with a separate time and title. Now we could have a discussion of whether Battlestar Galactica: Razor was more like Batman: Son of the Demon than it was like Untold Legend of the Batman, and whether Extreme Makeover: Home Edition: How'd They Do That? was really more Detective Comics, but then I think the varsity jocks would be legally required to beat us up and take our lunch money.
My Response: Thanks, guys. I was more looking for information than staking out a position, so I don't think it's necessary for me to argue against anything that's just been said, but I did want to clarify a few things.
I do understand that television utilizes stand-alone mini-series and holidays specials and bridge mini-series with divergent content featuring popular shows. What I'm talking about is more specifically stand-alone mini-series that could with only superficial changes be woven into a regular series on titles that aren't big hits -- or even run as an event within that title. And while I understand the ability to make money or to capture market share is an achievable goal under these conditions with that strategy, I'm questioning whether or not it points out something that's broken in the market. Also, by continuity I meant the more general sense of it continuing a storyline, not whether or not it was canonical, which is my bad. Overlapping series is a different issue, although I'm not sure that's not also ultimately a dysfunctional aspect of the market as forged by the big mainstream companies.
In general I worry about the mainstream companies reducing their investment in a Direct Market based on an appraisal of that market's health that comes while they're doing things that help make it, over the long term, slightly sick. It seems crazy to me that our best established and most well-funded industry members are frequently among the least thoughtful and engaged with the long-term health of certain markets, and equally crazy that comics actors will treat every market except the homegrown one with deference and delicacy.
Creator: Scott Morse Publishing Information: Red Window/AdHouse Books, hardcover, $12.95, November 2008. Ordering Numbers: 9780977471522 (ISBN13)
This is my favorite of the Scott Morse books to date, which I admit isn't the strongest recommendation because Morse's work -- Southpaw, Magic Pickle, The Barefoot Serpent, primarily -- has never been my cup of tea. By that I mean while I recognize he's a fully-formed talent and can wrap my brain around someone's positive reaction to many of Morse's past works, at the same time I'm seemingly unable to appreciate them on that level myself. Some artists just don't work for some readers. It's like a bad date: you can get into details, but it doesn't speak to the reality of your reaction any more effectively than the apologetic smile and shrugged shoulders you give the next day at lunch to the friend who set you up. All you know is that you had that reaction and you think you were right in having it.
That said, I think in this comics short story from his own press and Chris Pitzer's AdHouse, Morse smartly and effectively plays to his strengths. It's built from single images rather than more complex comics pages, it depends highly on deriving mood from the colors and the blend of those colors on the page, and the story told is both right there on the surface in terms of a clear progression of events but holds within itself a number of ambiguities in terms of tying the two narrative threads together and what exactly they and some of the contributing sub-elements mean. Like most of Morse's book -- and Pitzer's, for that matter -- the presentation and design snaps. It's slight as a stand-alone book and I can't totally get past the feeling that it deals in easy, romantic generalities, but there's a delicacy to Notes Over Yonder and even a kind of messiness that I found appealing.
This Isn't A Library: New And Notable Releases To The Comics Direct Market
*****
Here are the books that jump out at me from this week's probably mostly accurate list of books shipping from Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc. to comic book and hobby shops across North America.
I might not buy all of the works listed here -- I might not buy any -- but were I in a comic book shop tomorrow I would likely pick up the following and look them over, and as a result, my retailer might put in for a government bail-out.
*****
SEP080042 GOON #30 $2.99
Thirty?
SEP080194 EX MACHINA #39 (RES) (MR) $2.99
Thirty-nine?
AUG080231 HELLBLAZER #249 (MR) $2.99
Oh, never mind.
JUL080159 JACK KIRBYS THE DEMON OMNIBUS HC $49.99
I'm not sure that $50 judiciously spent wouldn't get you the whole series in comic book form, but I enjoy those comics very much so I'm not going to quibble. It's sort of like The Demon doesn't have any of the quantifiable things that other series of that period offer -- it's not thematically ambitious, it's not the best written, it's not the most visually splendid -- but it's Kirby at that point in his career where if he stood up too quickly a planet fell out of his pocket, and that's more than enough.
SEP088005 SPIRIT SPECIAL #1 $2.99
This is the book that retailers asked for to give to anyone that might ask about the forthcoming Frank Miller Spirit movie, so it will be interesting if it does well. Believe it or not, a low-cost book that retailers can put in someone's hands like this is a rare thing in comics.
SEP083987 SKITZY HC $19.95
The "Whoa, are you serious?" entry of the month -- apparently a reprint of the 1950s comics story by book illustrator Don Freeman.
SEP083754 FREAKANGELS HC VOL 01 (MR) $27.99
This is the print edition of the Warren Ellis webcomic. Ellis is maybe uniquely poised to take advantage of the full power of on-line marketing, so it should be interesting to see how well this does. I assume very well.
SEP084030 FUZZ AND PLUCK SPLITSVILLE HC $24.99
Ted Stearn's oddball sort-of adventure comic may be the last of its type we'll ever see. I almost can't imagine anything this weird and almost doggedly anti-commercial being published in serial form and then collected in the old-fashioned manner. I quite liked it.
AUG084107 ISADORA DUNCAN GRAPHIC BIOGRAPHY HC $18.95
This is another one of those graphic novels of the kind that book publishers seem to really get behind.
JUL083998 LAGOON HC $14.99
Lilli Carre's version of the Peter Lawford of the Classic Monsters set, the Creature of the Black Lagoon, takes on as its recurring thematic element the comforts of sound. That isn't something you see a lot of cartoonists engage.
JUL083999 PETEY & PUSSY HC $19.99
If art comics had ended up being built on the model of MAD instead of the springing out of the single cartoonist-focused aspect of the undergrounds, John Kerschbaum would be one of the potent heavy-hitters of whatever the biggest hit magazine there was right now. His comics are the kind of funny that makes me uncomfortable.
AUG083893 LEONARD STARRS MARY PERKINS ON STAGE TP VOL 05 $24.95 AUG083894 STAN DRAKE HEART JULIET JONES TP VOL 01 $24.95
Hello, gorgeous.
SEP084091 STANS SOAPBOX THE COLLECTION TP $14.99
You know you want it.
JAN088699 SWALLOW ME WHOLE $14.95 JUL084290 SWALLOW ME WHOLE $14.95
I don't know which one is the Nate Powell book from Top Shelf, or if both codes work, but it's a compelling book by an interesting talent just now beginning to do longer work of this type.
JAN088700 VEEPS HC $19.95 JUL084291 VEEPS HC (MR) $19.95
The other Top Shelf project of interest, this is a rare foray for that publisher into something other than comics, in this case illustrated non-fiction.
*****
The full list of this week's releases, including some titles with multiple cover variations and a long, impressive list of toys and other stuff that isn't comics, can be found here. Despite this official list there's no guarantee a comic will show up in the stores as promised, or in all of the stores as opposed to just a few. Also, stores choose what they carry and don't carry.
To find your local comic book store, check this list; and for one I can personally recommend because I've shopped there, albeit a while back and probably a bit high, try this.
The above titles are listed with their Diamond order code in the first field, which may assist you in finding comics at your shop or having them order something for you they don't have in-stock.
If I didn't list your comic, it's because the voices in my head told me not to. Voices that all sound like Jim Backus.
King Features Launches Comics Kingdom
No one's going to believe me, which is fine, but I swear I knew nothing about this beforehand. King Features today formally launches its own web-based comics application, Comics Kingdom, that works with newspaper sites in order to enhance their comics offerings and facilitate traffic in their direction. On first glance -- and I reserve the right to change my mind on this -- this seems to me to stand in stark contrast to United Media's just-announced Comic.com revamp, whereby a ton of material including extensive archives is put on-line at the syndicate level, with the idea that there's an eventual boost for the individual strip and their newspaper clients from the increased exposure and ability for individual readers to sample and subscribe.
Obviously, I have no idea what will work in the long run, and I'd suggest no one really does, even when they bluster and use capital letters and a well-placed, funny insult or two. It's just that my gut and my head together find encouragement in a strategy that works with newspapers and their sites and directly addresses the issue of ad revenue for such sites. In the end it just seems to me that with people winnowing down their basic on-line destinations that there's a greater likelihood of comics finding a place with something that ties into people going to their local or most vital newspapers as opposed to those same folks all of the sudden catching Drabble fever just because more of it is out there now. It also keeps the syndicate in partnership with newspapers in a way that should protect the remaining millions of dollars that are available to made through print, which figures indicate has significant reach no matter how poorly it's constructed to meet the challenges of the current market or how many people are performing last rites (or in the cases of the businesses running newspaper, seppuku). It also ostensibly allows for other strategies to be tried without having to move away from free, which is one difficult move.
So I guess we'll see how it goes, and how it's executed, but theory-wise I'm encouraged by this. I also think it's good I'm finding out about this in USA Today. I'm a bit disappointed neither United Media nor King Features chose to contact this site and sites like it beforehand to give me a heads-up on this release or to point me towards their test project or to offer up principals for interview. I'm not surprised, though. The syndicates frequently display hostility towards/disdain for/discomfort with new media that I find increasingly ludicrous as the years pass, but at least in terms of the overall announcement it's clear there's some publicity going on with Comics Kingdom.
Updated: I got a press release on it from KFS at 10:43 AM ET.
I've mentioned this before on this site, but my vote for fascinating, recurring feature story of the decade goes to the space that Doonesbury's Garry Trudeau has carved out for himself as a friend to soldiers and an advocate for their issues -- or, perhaps more accurately, as a sympathetic conduit for a point of view held by many serving. This despite being demonized by some for his political views in general and his opposition to the Iraq War specifically. He's just penned a piece for Stars and Stripes talking about that aspect of his work.
The Latest I Have On S. Clay Wilson
Again, it's a Steve Duin report. I'm happy that Steve has done such an attentive job with this story because it reduces the amount of noise and hassle experienced by Wilson's friends and loved ones in a time that's no doubt very trying for them. Anyway, Duin reports that Wilson is off the ventilator -- this wasn't a sure thing -- that he won't be put back on one, and that he hasn't otherwise significantly improved. More as it becomes made known to me, and with a story like this it's entirely possible that there's progression that's taken place before this was even posted.
Here's Something I Can't Figure Out Like many an on-line reviewer, I received a copy of Batman: Cacophony #1 from its publisher DC Comics, one guesses for consideration as a subject for criticism. I lack the necessary exposure to mainstream comics to make the kind of easy distinctions required to write a good review of such a comic without reading it a half-dozen times. It seems no better or no worse than just about any DC Comic I read during 1998 or so when I read every title the publisher put out because my job allowed me to. It seems that there may be a more overtly sexualized undercurrent here, including a bizarre scene where Joker proffers his backside to a mystery assailant. The dialogue also read oddly to me, like the characterizations weren't quite as sharp as they are in your standard writer-driven, editor-approved DC effort. It also stars Maxie Zeus.
And yet I understand all of those things. What I don't understand is why this title gets to be its own comic book. I don't get why this can't be part of a regular Batman series. I mean, I know the stock answers here, too: writer Kevin Smith has a specific fan base, the story doesn't fit into regular-title continuity, there's so on and so forth. Then I'm reminded Batman: Year One didn't fit into continuity, either, and Frank Miller had a specific fanbase, too, and that title ran through four issues of a Batman comic book just fine.
Clearly something has changed in the last 20 years where it makes sense at several times during the year to put out competing mini-series -- not on hit books, but on any books. I mean, I understand how a popular reality show can have a "results" show, but this seems more to me like taking that recent episode of ER where Anthony Edwards returns as Dr. Sad-Faced Baldy Guy and running it on Tuesday at 9 PM as ER: Spotlight because that way you get two doses of ER's not-great-anymore ratings. This doesn't happen in TV because it's stupid. Does anyone know when this happened in comics and what convinced companies of this not being stupid? Am I wrong in thinking the market is just a bit broken that this is a viable strategy?
And They Will All Live Like Cartoonists: The US Economy And Comics, Post #7
* the writer Sean Kleefeld looks at exchange rates and how they might rapidly exert an influence over the North American comics industry.
* the retail manager Chris Powell of Lone Star Comics speaks to the WizKids cessation and economic issues in the Dallas/Fort Worth area in general, noting that economic hard times haven't quite hit that area yet in a way that they've seen an effect on their business.
* the cartoonist and artist Stuart Immonen wrote in with one last set of ideas regarding inflation and comics:
I thought I had freely admitted that my figures were also skewed, however to the high side. I don't believe I "mixed and matched"; rather, I took prices as they were in a given year (as provided by Rich), and applied the Consumer Price Index rate of inflation to project where they "should" be the following year. So I stand by my figures as valid, but only from one year to the next. It's unusual for manufactured goods (as opposed to raw or wholesale items) to have their prices increased annually based on the CPI. More often -- and this is the case with comics, as the chart shows -- the price is flat for a time, then sees a jump well beyond the CPI as both a recovery against the years of no gain as well as against future increases.
In Column 8, I've tied the increases directly to the CPI, and fed those results (not the actual cover prices) into the formula for succeeding years. So in the universe where comics and everything else increased retail prices exactly as proscribed by the CPI, even in the late seventies days of double-digit inflation, the prices are modified by mere pennies. Thirty years on, the result is very close to Rich's, but I would suggest slightly more accurate.
But retail prices don't go up by pennies in any business -- if we ignore the real-world scenario I posit comics have actually followed ( big jump followed by (and following) no change), and take the same formula as in Column 8 but apply a "ceiling" (which is what Excel calls it -- it's more like a "floor") of increases no smaller than five cents, the final figure changes dramatically. It's still nowhere near the $2.99 level, but the changes from this point on increase exponentially.
Now I've given up on numbers, too. Back to work.
* I don't know enough about the major non-North American comics industries to do a lot of commentary about how a worldwide economic recession would have an impact on those countries, but occasionally something will catch my eye. If I'm reading this article correctly, Editions Milan -- which I believe does both traditional BD and translates manga for the French-language market -- may be working its way through some staffing changes in order to reduce costs.
* the reviewer Don MacPherson points at a couple of comics that he believes may fuel the dissatisfaction readers will begin to feel about serial comics. I think it points to a certain volatility in the serial pamphlet market that's unique to that format. Why wouldn't you wait until the trade, wait for the library or skip certain books altogether if you couldn't trust the solicitation information and you might get stuck with something you clearly don't find worth the money?
* finally, the retailer Brian Hibbs talks about the forthcoming potentially deepening recession and how that might have an impact on comics. He suggests something smart, which is that with readers deciding to participate or not in certain kinds of comics there's going to be a psychological component of certain price points vs. certain expectations of quality. Like Lone Star's Powell he notes that economic downturn has failed to hit his store in any significant fashion thus far. On that last point, I think it's important to note that even if you toss out the most severe predictions and ignore the Mad Max ones entirely, there's still enough belief out there we could easily be heading into a recession of early-'80s length (a couple of years) or more. So the first wave of consequences could be yet to come, perhaps starting with massive layoffs come the New Year.
Obviously, I have no idea what will work in the long run, and I'd suggest no one really does, even when they bluster and use capital letters and a well-placed, funny insult or two. It's just that my gut and my head together find encouragement in a strategy that works with newspapers and their sites and directly addresses the issue of ad revenue for such sites. In the end it just seems to me that with people winnowing down their basic on-line destinations that there's a greater likelihood of comics finding a place with something that ties into people going to their local or most vital newspapers as opposed to those same folks all of the sudden catching Drabble fever just because more of it is out there now. It also keeps the syndicate in partnership with newspapers in a way that should protect the remaining millions of dollars that are available to made through print, which figures indicate has significant reach no matter how poorly it's constructed to meet the challenges of the current market or how many people are performing last rites (or in the cases of the businesses running newspaper, seppuku). It also ostensibly allows for other strategies to be tried without having to move away from free, which is one difficult move.
Like many an on-line reviewer, I received a copy of Batman: Cacophony #1 from its publisher DC Comics, one guesses for consideration as a subject for criticism. I lack the necessary exposure to mainstream comics to make the kind of easy distinctions required to write a good review of such a comic without reading it a half-dozen times. It seems no better or no worse than just about any DC Comic I read during 1998 or so when I read every title the publisher put out because my job allowed me to. It seems that there may be a more overtly sexualized undercurrent here, including a bizarre scene where Joker proffers his backside to a mystery assailant. The dialogue also read oddly to me, like the characterizations weren't quite as sharp as they are in your standard writer-driven, editor-approved DC effort. It also stars Maxie Zeus.
I thought I had freely admitted that my figures were also skewed, however to the high side. I don't believe I "mixed and matched"; rather, I took prices as they were in a given year (as provided by Rich), and applied the Consumer Price Index rate of inflation to project where they "should" be the following year. So I stand by my figures as valid, but only from one year to the next. It's unusual for manufactured goods (as opposed to raw or wholesale items) to have their prices increased annually based on the CPI. More often -- and this is the case with comics, as the chart shows -- the price is flat for a time, then sees a jump well beyond the CPI as both a recovery against the years of no gain as well as against future increases.
