He Holds With Those Who Favor Fire

Todd Allen points out a not-completely unlikely "doomsday" scenario for printed comics in 2009. It's described as a perfect storm, but unlike the series of interconnected events hitting newspapers right now this seems more like one of Dagwood Bumstead's sandwiches: a bunch of stuff stacked on one another. They could all happen or none of them could happen. It seems to me that we're still in some sort of recessionary period that hits a company owned by Steve Geppi harder than it hits a company owned by Chris Oliveros, so something peculiar is going on and I'd consider everything fragile enough to be on the table in terms of future lousy outcomes.

What's distressing to me is that there seems to be enough money and health for people to be investing in the future and fortifying the present. This would be a great time for Marvel and DC to shatter once and for all their culture of haphazard scheduling in a way that would make it easier for their books to move through the market. It would also be a good time for a joint program even if it ran on nothing but combined good will that was designed to take advantage of peculiarities of a down economy (lots of people out of work, cheap rents) to encourage the opening of direct market stores where there aren't any. It would be a good time to figure out the long-term need or lack thereof for cheap, entry-point serial comics as a feeder mechanism and as a significant market that serves the hardcore fan. What where getting instead is nonsense like a Batman & Robin variant endeavor seemingly designed to boost a top-end comics sales figure in order to seize a win in the shadow contest of month to month DM market share and PR battles. It's to shake one's head in wonder.
 
posted 8:10 am PST | Permalink
 

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