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[Büge]

I'M NOT MADE OF MONEY

CRIPES

[Büge]

Besides, you said I could come over and read yours :3c

[Mongrel]

Clearly this means you're not people.

SAFE AT LAST.

[Thad]

Well regardless, people ain't buyin'.

...the guy faking the retainer lisp in that video wrote five of the ten bestselling graphic novels* of 2010.

Granted, that's because they got made into a TV show.  And four of the other five got made into a movie.  So we're still seeing a huge problem with monoculture here, but the monoculture isn't superheroes, it's stuff that's been adapted for movies or TV.

Alan Moore isn't singlehandedly propping up American comics, Hollywood is.





* As noted elsewhere, I hate the term "graphic novel" when used in its typical, I-am-to-cool-for-Spider-Man sense, but I use it here in the sense of "shit people buy at bookstores instead of comic shops".  Not to put too fine a point on it, THAT'S the market that matters.  At least until digital takes off.

[Mongrel]

I think Powell may be right in the sense of "Who cares if non-superhero-stuff graphic novel sales outperformed superhero graphic novels, if monthly superhero books totally dwarf those graphic novels in sales".

I mean, I don't think your point is invalid, but I also think that at least on some level a comic is a comic is a comic, regardless of whether you want to call it a comic, sequential art, bande dessinée, or whatever. Writers of good books sometimes deride terrible authors by saying those lesser works aren't 'books', but that's not really accepted as a valid form of dismissal either.

But again, this isn't the author's responsibility. If there's a demand for trash, then trash shall be produced.

[Thad]

My point is more that specialty shops are a niche and bookstores are not.  Sure, it takes specialty shops to get a book like The Walking Dead or The Goon enough exposure to get a TV or movie deal, but once it's off the ground that's not where the money is.  And I think it's fair to argue that Scott Pilgrim never needed specialty shops at all.

[Royal☭]

I like how Eric Powell complains about superhero comic book, but then offers no tangible solutions.  It's nice of him to bitch, what with the Goon taking a year between issues.

[Mongrel]

I thought the same thing but then I remembered wasn't he trying to make that movie?

My point is more that specialty shops are a niche and bookstores are not.  Sure, it takes specialty shops to get a book like The Walking Dead or The Goon enough exposure to get a TV or movie deal, but once it's off the ground that's not where the money is.  And I think it's fair to argue that Scott Pilgrim never needed specialty shops at all.

Well, I suppose here we could go into the fifty year old (older?) debate about comics not getting any respect in North American bookshops anyway.

[Bongo Bill]

What we need are digitally-distributed anthologies - and I don't mean just to the iPad (honestly some Kindle love would be nice but without color it's understandable that they don't want to limit themselves to grayscale).

[Thad]

Well, I suppose here we could go into the fifty year old (older?) debate about comics not getting any respect in North American bookshops anyway.

Well, sorta; the things we now call "graphic novels" go back at least to Rhymes With Lust, but reprint collections being sold in stores is really a 1980's phenomenon.

I don't know that I'd say comics don't get respect in North American bookshops at this point; they've all got comics sections.  Granted, "comic books" is still treated like a genre, but a hell of a lot more people are buying the likes of Scott Pilgrim, Walking Dead, and Watchmen at Barnes and Noble than their local comic shops.

(Oddly, the local B&N has Walking Dead tucked away in a corner and a bunch of DC & Marvel books displayed prominently.  That probably falls under the problem of people associating comics with superheroes, but as much as anything it's just poor marketing.)

We've reached a point where bookstores are more important to the long-term success of a book than specialty stores, and indeed where the mass market is not at all a reflection of the specialty-store market.  Specialty stores are still necessary (and I happen to like them, quite a lot, I just happen to think most of the people who shop there must have terrible taste based on the books they're buying), but they're becoming less and less so.

What we need are digitally-distributed anthologies - and I don't mean just to the iPad (honestly some Kindle love would be nice but without color it's understandable that they don't want to limit themselves to grayscale).

What we need is a standard format that allows you to save files locally and copy them across devices.  For starters.

Some agreement on a reasonable price point would be neat too.  ($2 is good; $1 would be better.  And yes, anthology pricing, by all means, like the track-or-album model on iTunes.)

And the publishers need to stop focusing on same-day digital releases.  It makes comic shops nervous and doesn't help them get any new customers; the people who know comics come out on Wednesdays are already your fucking customers, and the people who just want to read a Batman comic don't know if it came out on Wednesday or Thursday or a goddamn month ago.  The only benefit to same-day release is when they pull big marketing pushes like this past week's Fantastic Four to try and pull new people into the comic shop, which incidentally is invariably a big spoilery "fuck you" to the existing fans.

[Mongrel]

I agree with you that things are better than they used to be, but comics as a whole are still extremely closely associated with superheroes in North America. Other media don't suffer from the problem of being so completely pigeonholed in the minds of people who aren't familiar with that media form. If I rarely watch movies, that doesn't mean I think "most movies are sci-fi action flicks" or if I don't read books I think "they're all harlequin romances, right?".

The difference nowadays being that most people would hazily concede that, yes, there's definitely other stuff in comics. But unless that person regularly buys more than one funnybook, the old assumptions of "Superheroes/kid's stuff" are generally still there.

I don't really know what the solution is. I suppose comics and media companies with comic properties could market non-superhero stuff more aggressively, but I don't really know how well that would work. Progress has been made and mores are slowly changing, but we may simply have to wait a very long time before attitudes drift enough that comics are treated the same as similar forms of media (books & movies).


Only somewhat related: I actually find it one of the most profound ironies the the best Western-genre comics in the world are generally French.

[Zaratustra]

comics almost nearly fell out that hole in the 80s, but rolled right back in again.

[Thad]

Other media don't suffer from the problem of being so completely pigeonholed in the minds of people who aren't familiar with that media form.

I can think of one other one.

The difference nowadays being that most people would hazily concede that, yes, there's definitely other stuff in comics. But unless that person regularly buys more than one funnybook, the old assumptions of "Superheroes/kid's stuff" are generally still there.

I'll agree.

I don't really know what the solution is. I suppose comics and media companies with comic properties could market non-superhero stuff more aggressively, but I don't really know how well that would work.

Walking Dead is, once again, currently the best example.  Bone stands a good chance of being a breakout hit too, I think.  The Goon is going to be trickier as animated movies for adults are usually such a tough sell.  Tintin could be huge; it's not American but I doubt that the average American will make that distinction.

Other than those, I don't know what's coming down the pipe but I do know that both the TV networks and the film studios are all looking to comics for the next big thing.

Only somewhat related: I actually find it one of the most profound ironies the the best Western-genre comics in the world are generally French.

I read an observation recently to the effect that people who live outside the American bubble are better able to see what makes American genres tick -- Sergio Leone is a pretty classic example.

[Büge]

Other media don't suffer from the problem of being so completely pigeonholed in the minds of people who aren't familiar with that media form.

I can think of one other one.

I'm guessing it's either videogames or tabletop games.

[Thad]

I meant video games.  Not entirely sure tabletop games count as a medium per se, though they certainly occurred to me as another example along the same lines.

Moving back a bit:

But... how do you tell if a book is creator-owned? And furthermore, what if you can't find any creator-owned books that you'd want to read?

Marvel's creator-owned imprint is Icon.  Most of the stuff out of Image and Vertigo is creator-owned, if I'm not mistaken.  Warren Ellis publishes his creator-owned stuff through Avatar these days; his work tends to be a smattering of neat high-concept stuff mixed with witty dialogue (see image at left) which runs until he gets distracted.  In fairness, he probably completes as many books as he drops off in the middle of.

Not sure if you're a Mark Millar fan or not, but CLiNT is a good showcase of British creator-owned books, and it's big, pretty, and a pleasantly cost-effective way of getting ahold of those books.  The main drawbacks are (1) if you ARE a Millar fan, you've probably already read half the shit in there; (2) the articles are goddamned embarrassing.

It's worth looking through the Free Comics thread and seeing if there's anything you like; I think most of the stuff in there is creator-owned.

[Mongrel]

Personally, I don't think it's critical for a comic to be creator-owned comic in order to actually be any good. It helps, certainly, but it's not the be-all end-all.

Changing an across-the-board (producers and consumers) culture happy with terrible derivative work is much more important. But that's not a really a battle you can fight, so we see calls for more creator owned books. Still, that's a laudable goal for several other reasons, so I don't think it's a bad stand to take.

Also, I really don't think video games are genre-pigeonholed as badly as comics (in North America). But they still have plenty of stigma, so I'll let that one slide.

[Thad]

The two issues are pretty damned closely intertwined, though -- if you're going to do something original, you go creator-owned; if you're going to do something derivative, you, rather by definition, work on someone else's property.  The best way to break out of the same old crap is to support creator-owned work.

[Mongrel]

See at first, I might be inclined to agree, but there were and are many European works which were technically owned by the production studios or publishers, but treated as a creator-owned book might be here.

The dynamic is different, in the sense that there's more appreciation for the wishes and intentions of creators across the board. If an artist dies or moves on, usually they are not replaced unless they give their consent or pick a successor. People at a higher level than the immediate editor rarely make content decisions and even editors work much more closely with their authors over there (or at least give the impression of that being the case). It's not some kind of perfect candyland and there are certainly instances that look more like the North American standard, but that implicit respect for the artists and authors is built into the comic publishing culture there. I'm not even sure if there are actually more creator-owned properties there or not.

I don't know, maybe it's just the ingrained European reverence for fine artists, but they seem to know know that too much meddling will ruin a good book and tend to act accordingly. Or at least, moreso than we do. Here the process is so heavily commercialized that company-owned properties are managed with a heavy hand.

It's also worth mentioning that -anecdotally - the European artists and writers are much more serious about professionalism. While more than a few North Americans are known for putting out for low quality work or being terrible with deadlines/generally unprofessional, those types of workers not tolerated in Europe. The impression I get from North American editors is that they manage as if they were managing children. That's a broad generalization and something I'm not as well informed on, so you can throw it out as an unsubstantiated fact, but I figured I could throw it in there.

[Thad]

I'm just talking about America. 

Hell, there's been plenty of great corporate-owned stuff in America too -- there's no greater example than EC's output -- but what I'm saying is, people doing original stuff, in America, at this point in time, are generally keeping the rights.  Because they can.  If you want a steady paycheck, you do a Big Two superhero book; if you want to do something new or unconventional, well, you CAN sell it to a publisher if you want, get money upfront and maybe a little bit of promotion, but in terms of risk and reward you're generally better off keeping the rights yourself.

[Mongrel]

I'm just talking about America.

Fair enough.