The Four Color Media Monitor

A writer at Big Hollywood presents another essay written by famous artist Steve Ditko on the comic book world and philosophy.

Labels: good artists

The Boulder Daily Camera of Colorado follows the example set by the Boston Globe, and provides their own local fluff-coated coverage of store sales:

In the comic industry, superheroes are saving stores from the economic downturn. With a leap and a bound, sales have increased an estimated 1 percent at specialty retailers during the recession.

Only one percent? That's asking a lot from the readers then to believe things are really as great as they'd like to think.

The estimate provided by industry tracker comichron.com -- which doesn't include revenue at big-box bookstores -- shows sales reached $324.6 million between January and September.

At Time Warp Comics and Games on 28th Street, where Batman and Spiderman logos glow on the storefront windows, sales mirror the national trend. The owner credits the uptick to the loyal buying habits of collectors and several events hosted to celebrate the shop's 25th anniversary.

Carlson, a regular customer of Time Warp, said he drives up to the Boulder store twice a month. Collectors are a loyal bunch, he said, but some are irked that comic giant Marvel has increased the price on its comics from $2.99 to $3.99.

"Marvel has upset a lot of fans," he said. "They're trying to test the market."

Wayne Winsett, owner of Time Warp, said sales at his shop have increased about 8 percent since last year, and he's hoping for a busy holiday season.

Just because one store might have a boost in sales does not mean all stores across the country are having the same upturn in fortunes, and I assume the sales stats they provide from the industry tracker haven't been all that different from the past several years, if the earlier report is any indication. It could also have more to do with the price increase providing a temporary boost in sales than an actual increase in consumerism.

And Marvel has upset fans for much more than that, as their destruction of Spider-Man should tell.

"Collectors are an odd breed," Winsett said. "Once they start, they have a hard time stopping. It's like an addiction."

And that's just what ultimately sank the industry later on! Because they started pandering more to these collectors who aren't interested so much in storytelling as they are in trying to turn a profit on their collections. But I suspect even that can't be relied upon much longer. Plus, some collectors who are in this for storytelling value, such as myself, are starting to come out of it as the stories plummet in quality.

Like soap opera fans, he said, comic book readers follow their characters.

And when they're subject to character destruction, they stop following them. I know that I did in the past couple years.

John Bonner, owner of Halley's Comics in Fort Collins, said the industry tends to fare well in tough economic times.

"It's a good value for your dollar compared to other forms of entertainment," he said.

If only I could concur there, but the claim of surviving well in hard economic times, alas, is greatly exaggerated.

Labels: marvel comics, msm propaganda, sales

The fifth issue of Flash: Rebirth has finally, after 3 months of delay, gone to press, and they belatedly give us an explanation for why the retcon: as the following review on Speed Force tells:

We now know that Professor Zoom went back in time, killed Nora Allen, and framed her husband for it. Or rather, we now know for sure. Not only that, but he’s been jumping through time, messing with Barry throughout his life: pushing him down the stairs, burning down his house, letting his dog out to get hit by a car, and probably drinking the last of the milk when little Barry could really use something to wash down those cookies. Eobard Thawne is a mean, petty, vindictive bastard. But then, he has a history of obsessing over Barry Allen and stalking Iris.

So any discrepancies in the flashbacks, from the blazingly obvious (weren’t Barry’s parents alive?) to the not so clear (weren’t Barry and Iris already dating by the time he got his powers?) can be explained away by Professor Zoom traveling through time.

That doesn’t make them any less retcons, though, unless Barry finds a way to *ahem* reverse them all next issue. It just makes them retcons with in-story explanations…just like retcons explained by Crisis on Infinite Earths, Zero Hour, Infinite Crisis, etc.

It also doesn’t make them any less cliche. There are plenty of super-heroes out there who have childhood traumas associated with the death of a parent (or both parents). It still seems pointless to tack on that kind of trauma to the Flash.

This is correct. It's still a retcon, and a cliche. Especially if it remains intact after this is over. But even if Geoff Johns does revert things back to normal at the end, which is possible,* that's not going to wipe away the bad taste this was done in, nor how it's a cheap replacement for real storytelling. I thought to myself earlier that, even if Johns is just pulling our leg, it's still not appropriate, because of how this kind of plotting laced with violence has taken the place of decent storytelling. Besides, the story was padded out for trades, when it could've been told in just 3-4 issues, and been written with brisker pace.

It's also worth noting that Johns suggested earlier that Barry Allen would be going through darker storylines as a forensics scientist, which tells that even if the end of this miniseries isn't a darkness-laden stinker, there's still going to be potentially gruesome storylines waiting in the wings, just like a lot of Johns's other past works at DC, the Flash included.

I've wondered if the reason this took so long to come out is not because Ethan Van Sciver is a slow artist, but rather, because they decided to change the storyline when they realized the audience was unlikely to accept something vicious for Barry's background. Obviously, we'll never know, but considering there were originally supposed to be just 5 issues for this mini, it's probably worth wondering.

* I'd like to think this is what'll happen at the end of Blackest Night, but even if it does happen, that's not going to excuse how DC wasted more than 5 years with limp storylines and other dreadful ideas.

Labels: dc comics, Flash, violence

Further signs that the industry is sadly weakening: ICV2 reports sales have dropped 14 percent since last year, and:

Sales on the top 100 graphic novels dropped 30% vs. October 2008, producing an over-all decline for the top 300 comics and top 100 graphic novels combined of 17%.

The year over-all has been near flat in comic stores, with a 1% decline in comic sales, 10% in graphic novels, and 2% over-all through the end of Q3 despite some months with significant declines.

So what were the Boston Globe and their quoted sources saying again? They'd do well to consider the crossovers and the trades published from them, which I suspect are part of the reason for the decline.

And in the main sales chart for last month, I see that Marvel has dropped considerably in sales. And, as I predicted, sales for both Titans and Teen Titans have begun to drop below 30,000 units. And they're like to drop even further with the direction the former is about to go in, if the following synopsis for issue 22 is any indication:

DC fans won’t want to miss this finale of the two-part "Fractured" story! As the remaining three members of the team are evicted from their New York City headquarters by General Lane, they wonder if there’s anywhere on Earth they can still call home. The answer will surprise you! This issue closes this chapter in the life of the classic Titans team and ushers in an exciting new era in JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA and March’s TITANS ANNUAL that’ll blow your mind!

What this strongly suggests is that, not only are the Titans being forced out of their own book, they're either being forced underground, or off of Earth as part of the next crossover plot that's likely to affect the entire universe! I most certainly will want to miss this nonsense.

Labels: crossoverloading, dc comics, Justice League of America, marvel comics, sales, Titans

The Boston Globe writes about the opening of a comics store in the city, and turn out the gazillionth whitewash of the industry and how it's doing:

The publishing industry is in a freefall, but comic books are doing fine. You may not recognize them, however.

They're not doing fine, in sales or storytelling, but they did get the latter right: I don't recognize the famous superheroes and their supporting casts anymore; their personalities, if anything, have been rendered absolutely awful.

They couldn’t find a single financial backer willing to risk a penny on a comic book store, but the pair knows something about their kind: namely, that comic book fans, who number more adults than kids these days, are serious about their reading material. Look no further than the man who posted a comment on the store’s Facebook page praising the recommendations of the “in-house sommelier.’’ Reed has faith that the business, which has seen heady peaks (hello, Stan Lee) and crushing lows (television nearly wiped it out half a century ago), is poised for another revival.

Um, isn't that admitting something is wrong? If there's far more adults than children these days, and even that's diminishing, that shows how there's not much of an audience to look for. And thus, there's no telling if there'll be another revival.

“The writing has gotten so much stronger,’’ Reed says, “and I think people really want these stories again.’’

When they make that superficial claim, you know they're blowing it.

It’s hard to generalize to what extent superheroes on the screen inspire moviegoers to seek out the source material. Henry Scagnoli, co-owner of New England Comics, a chain of eight stores, says there’s always a bump when a new film hits theaters - sales of the graphic novel “Watchmen’’ exploded when the film version came out in March - but that it varies wildly in size and duration. Moreover, the vagaries of the comics business are far more complex than fallout from a film.

“Readership changes but that’s more a function of storytelling. Each comic has its own ebb and flow. It’s like a TV show: If you have poor storytelling the popularity goes down,’’ says Scagnoli, who founded New England Comics in 1983. “To stick around this long you have to ride with the flow.’’

And that's just why Spider-Man, among many other mainstream comics, have been losing so much audience for 2 years now, because there's more than a bit of poor writing abound. How did that elude the people involved in writing this article?

...according to John Jackson Miller, a longtime industry analyst who runs the website Comichron.com and is himself a comic book writer, it’s the bound volumes of collected stories, called trade paperbacks, that saved the comics industry after a deep depression in the 1990s. They can be found in mainstream bookstores and malls across the country.

“We invented a new way of selling,’’ Miller says. “It’s like a DVD release for a movie, a second life. Publishers realized that it can help finance production, and it also allows Hollywood to see reader-tested stories. We’re up right now by about 1 percent over a year ago. Almost by accident, comic books are the healthiest magazine in the industry.’’

But not at the big two, which still carry much of the overall output. Over there, storytelling has been tasteless for years now, and their recent sales have reflected this. And if the bad crossovers start to take up the bulk of what you see on shelves at the store, that's why even sales for trade paperbacks may be declining now too.

More people are reading comics than at any time during the past two decades, yet readership is split among hard-core customers, who spend an average of $1,000 a year or more on comics, and a larger pool of casual consumers, who routinely spend only a few hundred dollars annually, says Milton Griepp, the publisher of ICV2.com, a website that covers the industry. The spread is bigger, but profits are not. And there are other challenges, especially for independent store owners. Tony Davis, owner of Million Year Picnic in Harvard Square, counts the ways in which a shifting commercial and cultural landscape is eating away at his business.

“We used to sit between Tower Records and WordsWorth Books - it was media city - and with those gone, foot traffic patterns are different,’’ Davis says. “Like any bookstore we’re facing online competition. There’s illegal downloading. And our customer base is graying. There used to be all these 12-year-old boys running around in here, and that’s a rarity now. The male adolescent fantasy has moved from comics to video games.’’

I'm afraid the part about casual consumers is very ambiguous, as it could just as well suggest people who're already used to buying comics, and are doing it now in hopes they'll find some simple slice of entertainment. But even that's becoming hard to find.

At least they admit what's become sadly clear for years now: that youngsters are becoming fewer and fewer at their stores.

Labels: crossoverloading, msm propaganda, sales

An article in the Chronicle Journal of Ontario, Canada, about another comics reader and physicist who's studying the physics of the superhero world.

In this short news item on WBDJ7 about the Roanoke Valley Comic-Con, they tell that:

The promoter says over time he's noticed the comic book hobby is attracting an older age group.

And that's another sad sign of how less children are into the hobby.

Labels: conventions

James Hudnall at Big Hollywood is talking about the death of the printed medium and how that's affecting even the comics business, not to mention the 4 dollar price they've already reached. He's also suggesting that going digital on the web may help give them some new life.

Now their is some truth to this, that the internet may yet help save the comics industry, and at the same time, trade paperbacks can also help. But there's still a few things here I'll need to take issue with, such as:

To complicate matters, the stresses of running a comics distributor in this economy has hurt the last remaining company. They have had their share of layoffs and warehouse closings. If that wasn’t scary enough for comics pros, Marvel just got bought by Disney, DC just reorganized under Warner Brothers, and long time publisher Paul Levitz was moved out. There is now a Hollywood person running DC. The future of the direct market may be uncertain at this point.

This situation is reminiscent of the industry in the late 70s. Newsstand distribution for comics was dying off and Marvel and DC were on the ropes. DC was looking to go to reprint material. No new stories. But a couple things happened that saved comics at that point, the birth of the “direct market” and the success of “Superman: The Movie,” and a few years later, the movie “Batman.” These re-energized the business in a big way which lead to a new boom in the early 90s.

The problem is, the direct market later proved to be the medium's downfall: comics left the bookstores and other forms of newsstand almost entirely and ended up doing what we call "ghettoization". They took to pandering to a smaller audience and even now, they're not making any serious attempt to bring in new people. Nor did Paul Levitz make any serious effort on his part to turn that around.

And while it's not such a great thing that a Hollywooder is running DC now, I can't feel too sorry to see Levitz leave after he gave Dan DiDio the keys to the kingdom and let him ruin the DCU's common sense and continuity, something Hudnall sadly but unsurprisingly doesn't bother to mention. Because that too is something to consider: the future of the industry depends on good storytelling as much as it does on visibility and availability to the wider public. If DC and Marvel's storytelling is poor, how do they expect the "big two" to survive?

It could take more than just the internet for veteran companies to get an audience today. Also, I've personally thought that it'd be better if comic books were to go for a format more in tune to trade paperbacks, which could help them to avoid the folly of crossovers and publicity stunts, another thing that's been killing them off. For comics to survive, that's why they have to cut out those stunts that are taking the place of real storytelling and making it impossible for writers to have real freedom, and to tell stand-alone stories.

Labels: dc comics, marvel comics, technology

Here's an article in the Cumberland County Daily Journal about the Newfield Library promoting readership with their growing expansion of graphic novel supplies.

Labels: libraries