Random Comics News Story Round-Up

* the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund raised over $29,000 through a call for action in the January issue of Diamond's Previews magazine. It looks like there were memberships offered and various incentives.

* Naruto Vol. 28 did indeed roar up the USA Today book charts in its second week of eligibility; there had been some question if last Fall's stacked publication of Naruto volumes would have a beneficial or detrimental effect on the single volumes when the series went back to a slightly more sane release schedule.

* Dirk Deppey beats on a comics start-up with eyes on that sweet, sweet Hollywood development cash.

* go here for one dour assessment of the modern superhero comic.

* Valerie D'Orazio muses on the ability of comics media people to both cover the various comics industries and participate in them.

* I'm going to have to re-read Steven Grant's essay on the state of comics, because while I agree with several of its suppositions, I'm going to have to be convinced that this somehow leads to fewer comics of more surpassing quality being produced. In fact, I think we're on the cusp of seeing increasing numbers of shitty category-fillers from many people putting comics projects together. Because the profits for comics come elsewhere now, there's even less of a bottom-line, cut-off incentive for people to stop making lots and lots of comics -- for potential Hollywood development, for a book contract, for the love of their peers, whatever. I think things would probably be lot better off if this were the case, or if the industry were structured in a way that inconsequential books were better kept from having a dragging effect on some of the more vital marketplaces, but my wishing doesn't make it so.

Building on such issues, I have to say that this sounds like a dismal panel. Are people really still talking about the canard of mainstream acceptance? Who cares? Comics have always been mainstream, just not all comics and not all the time. I really think seeing the market on those terms pollutes the argument over the value of comics art. The generic reach of an abstract medium should never take precedence over the qualitative impact that individual cartoonists can have on readers. I know that it means we have to talk about hard issues like industry reform and business ethics rather than magic bullets and what really has broad appeal and anecdotes from what our sisters' kids are reading, but give me 300 cartoonists that can make a living from doing what they want over three cartoonists appearing on the Oprah Winfrey Show every single time. I always feel like such discussions, maybe in an attempt to be nice, maybe working off some sort of lingering collective psychic trauma from being made fun of a long time ago, end up equating the achievement of having a few hundred thousand people read a cynically produced piece of packaged corporate entertainment with the much, much greater achievement that Joe Sacco makes enough money from one comic to do another one.

* the major cuts at major, until-recent-memory stable newspapers continue to amaze me. Not only can't this be good for editorial cartoonists in the near future, these staffing levels really make it look like newspapers are beginning to commit to some sort of Internet/print hybrid model -- or are reducing staff to the point that may become the only viable option. Since there has yet to develop (after 15 years of looking) a viable, transferable sales model for newspaper strips from publication to publication if those publications withdraw even slightly from print, I would say this is going to hit newspaper strips at some point. My guess would be "not as soon as you think" and "harder when it comes."
 
posted 9:30 am PST | Permalink
 

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