Random Comics News Story Round-Up

* I'm sure the principals are nice people, and that they're savvy folks that know their comics, but the announcement that Disney is going to mine its back catalog for comics titles seems to me almost completely divorced from one important factor: any chance of making the publishing line a success in terms of providing some audience such comics. Maybe it's just me, but it seems like they could meet all of their stated goals while storing all of their books in some empty warehouse somewhere or tossing them all into a bonfire.

* in an equally weird story, a retailer suggests stores stop buying low-selling American mainstream titles in order to better serve their customers during difficult economic times. I'm not even sure what to make about some of the implications of this advice. I don't really understand why a retailer can't do well in their store with a title that "only" sells 15,000 nationwide. There are successful stores that do well with single titles that sell much more poorly, and I would have to imagine that local sales results have to be more important than national sales results. At the same time, the general doomed, dopey fecklessness of new title creation at the American mainstream publishers seems to me accurately described. It's a rigid, ossified market and there's really no such thing as a surprise hit unless expectations are scaled way back, and maybe not even then.

Let me put it to you another way: I strongly suspect that this market would not allow for a Hate, would not allow for a Love and Rockets Vol. 1, would not allow for a Bone, would not allow for a Sandman, would not allow for a Preacher and would not even allow for an Uncanny X-Men to move from back-bench to company-defining franchise but would keep it a Runaways-level hit. This can't be good.

* the writer Sean Kleefeld has love for the transformation of Image Comics under Erik Larsen. I think he's right in that they have a greater percentage of quality books, but they still publish so much stuff that I find cynical and depressing that I wonder after their overall impact as a market force.

* the critic Dick Hyacinth picks his 10 best of the year so far:

1. Little Nothings, Lewis Trondheim
2. Paul Goes Fishing, Michael Rabagliati
3. Criminal, Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips
4. Jessica Farm Vol. 1, Josh Simmons
5. Ganges #2, Kevin Huizenga
6. Three Shadows, Cyril Pedrosa
7. Never Been, Stuart Kolakovic
8. Aqua Leung, Mark Andrew Smith and Paul Maybury
9. Haunted, Philippe Dupuy
10. Achewood, Chris Onstad

That's a good list. Off the top of my head, I think Cul De Sac is still really good, and he hasn't read it yet but Bottomless Belly Button is as good as advertised. What It Is is a formidable book.

* Bully reminds us that that second, traditional suitcase solely devoted to free books picked up at BEA is no longer free.

* Dirk Deppey punks a Marvel claim that Iron Man books are selling out so I don't have to: basically, if you don't significantly overprint and you sell non-returnable to stores based on pre-orders, just about everything you do is a sell-out. While there are probably slight margins that allow Marvel to make such a claim -- there's likely some measurable they can point to that makes the Iron Man books different than the latest minor X-Men book or whatever -- it's not a claim worth making in a dedicated press release.

* Snikt! Ribbit!

* finally, the writer Valerie D'Orazio spotlights another writer's analysis of the American mainstream comics industry. I would say that there are structural problems with American comics that kind of trump these issues in terms of the way progress is frequently impeded -- they sort of result in these issues, actually. The main problem can be described as a general unwillingness to engage fundamental problems of fairness and access to the marketplace and ethical business conduct that might foster slow, sustainable growth, buoyed by a culture that resists rewarding that kind of investment, in favor of competitive advantages and hot-shotting. Hey, I didn't say it could be effectively described. Basically, I always felt that comics suffered more from the equivalent of diabetes and less from the equivalent of broken limbs, and the industry tends to think in terms of soft casts vs. hard casts when it might benefit from a focus on lifestyle change.

I think D'Orazio is right to point out that companies aren't being progressive in terms of providing on-line content despite significant indications that this is the future. Still, I'm always a little bit unconvinced that this has anything to do with whether or not the existing market can be made to work more fairly and effectively. Part of me thinks that because I am way too broke-ass to be backseat driving for people that make millions of dollars doing what they do, and part of me simply feels that the logic is faulty -- that if comics pundits ran all media, there would be no radio or theater now.
 
posted 7:30 am PST | Permalink
 

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