The Four Color Media Monitor

Douglas Ernst has a comic called Soulfinder that's doing really well on IndieGoGo.

Curious why you are promoting this one. It looks like a soulless Sonja imitation, recycled storyline and derivative artwork.

The Comicsgate comics are marginally better than what Marvel and DC are offering but not by much. Nearly universally, everyone involved in American comics today is putting out material that would be unpublishable 20 -25 years ago. The fall in quality I'm sure is highly correlated to the unspoken drop in pay. It doesn't seem to matter whether an sjw or a non-sjw is working a comic, the result is something that isn't very good. It's not good as what came in the past, and it's not entertaining or even interesting. A crappy comic from the 1970s is better than almost all the output out today. Social justice propaganda is a great cover for lower pay and lower quality.

Manga, remarkably, has maintained quality across the board. It is facing demographic and financial challenges but not as much as American comics because they are doing their best to keep their audience happy. Then again, they have a real audience, not a literary/academic market of "mature readers" (librarians) or " Middle school" children. (librarians).

" It looks like a soulless Sonja imitation, recycled storyline and derivative artwork." The original Red Sonja comics from the 1970s were well drawn and told stories.

It's hard to even make anything derivative of that without a good foundation of writing and art. I don't know what this trying to be then daring to make the lead attractive instead of a dumpy scowling butch lesbian. It's Greg Land. Greg Land is not an sjw creator but he's still bad. He's part of that anything other than photorealism is bad school of art. Sjws dropped the sex appeal but kept the timid, stiff photo referencing that artists like greg land and tim bradstreet pioneered that looks way too ready for a low-budget Netflix adaption.

I would agree except for the point of comparison; 1993-98 was the low point for Marvel comics. There had been a brief upsurge in quality in the early 1990s, as writers and artists who had fled from Jim Shooter did work for them again, but 1993 - 98 was a comic book catastrophe leading to their bankruptcy. Even Stn Lee was critical of the storytelling quality of the art, and the ugliness of some of the more brutally violent comics Marvel published then.

There are lots of good comics on the web and in bookstores outside Marvel and DC though, beyond the blatant cynical stuff meant to cash in on right-wing backlash.

Mike, you actually think that librarians would waste countless dollars buying this stuff to read when some better uses for this trash are for toilet paper, firewood, or wallpaper?

"you actually think that librarians would waste countless dollars buying this stuff "
They already are. The vast majority of librarians are very liberal.


They already
are.


https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/libraries/article/57093-how-graphic-novels-became-the-hottest-section-in-the-library.html


How else can you explain how alternative comics can justify issuing trade paperbacks when they have a very small audience?

Why do you think DC's Vertigo comics claimed, for years, that their trades paperbacks sold better than their comics when very few people are aware comic books still exist?

How else can you explain how someone like Ed Piskor is getting REGULAR work at Marvel? When did indie cartoonist tier art become acceptable to superhero readers?

How else can you explain the rise of social justice in comics? SJWs claim the majority of comic "readers" are female...most librarians happen to be female.
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20101120171126AAij8dv&guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9kdWNrZHVja2dvLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAChrBlAu_AhDUuJraDAJuAFstchGIVatDCgptZWC26LiJHhNFEFvt1TfzmrwCtDjnnDay5fRi2mhSUxBimNZ0aFyGIxecN85E-zKGtBSrf1Rk6fv0yaNSqU-7ZngptN8yrvzOwYZpEyoyXAvvWww3Flo8-1NzUxo_z4Llk74fLKN
and liberal...and queer sympathizing
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/mitchellkuga/librarians-drag-queen-story-hour-lgbt-safe-spaces

http://www.ala.org/acrl/publications/keeping_up_with/critlib

And you think librarians actually read these trades instead of using them for other purposes?

Look I realize that you have bad memories of schools and education in general, but don't you think those memories are affecting your judgement and reasoning?

The librarians are buying and reading classier comics that have some thought and intelligence to them. They are not reading Ardanna!

Alternative comics - and alt comics are now mainstream - issue trades because they sell better than the floppies at the small press level, they can be marketed to bookstores outside the comic shop ghetto, and they have a longer shelf life.

Indie to DC and marvel has been a standard career route since the 1970s.

There is very little actual social justice in comics. There are a lot more female heroes and heroes who aren't WASP, but that is out of an effort to sell comics to a bigger audience, successful or not. Don't mix up social justice with capitalist marketing.

And what kind of manga are you talking about here? Some sort of boring wishy-washy cookie-cutter crap that's manufactured a dime a dozen? Or some of the more radical stuff that "decent respectable members of the community" wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole?

Now that I think about it, I remember reading on Green's personal website about some manga he personally recommends. But Ranma 1/2, Sailor Moon, and Ikki Tousen honestly contradict a lot of his personal beliefs and ideas given his past behavior on this blog with the subject matter and content they contain.

I think that last guy has something here, I mean, can you honestly see Green watching or reading any of the stuff on this page considering all that he's both for and against?

http://avigreen.somee.com/columns11den2108.html

Alright so I'll need an objective opinion here: how good or bad is Soulfinder? I don't want some super-preachy and tasteless bible story that keeps beating me over the head with idiotic lessons.