The Four Color Media Monitor

The Birmingham News wrote about a specialty store that also serves as a tattoo parlor, that's moved downtown. Though I'm honestly not happy the store also has to function as the latter:

The nature of the comic book business makes the transition easier, he said.

“We have a dedicated, loyal clientele and they’re going to follow us,” Gregg said. “We have a regular clientele that we see every week. They’ve been in already. We’re hoping to grow and increase what we can offer everybody.”

Hamilton, the tattoo artist, also knows comic books.

“We’ve both worked in comic book stores over the years,” Gregg said.

“I’m strictly a comic book guy,” Gregg said. “I love comics but never learned how to draw. I can only tell you about comic books. We’re both knowledgeable in the comic book area. He also manages the tattoo side over there. I don’t have a lot to offer him over there.”

Well tattoos are honestly a bad, unhealthy influence. Injecting one's skin with all that ink, colored or otherwise, does damage that's difficult to remove later, and risks infections. Why is it quite a few people are willing to abuse their skin these days? I think many who're getting tattoos should reconsider.

Comic books have provided fodder for dozens of blockbuster movies, and that is reflected in the comic book business.

“It affects it a great deal,” Gregg said. “There’s a new Deadpool movie coming out, so we have a lot of people coming in looking for Deadpool comic books.”

While comic books may seem to some like a relic of a bygone era, the industry is still going strong, he said.

“The comic medium is in really good shape,” Gregg said. “The two heights of interest in the medium were probably in the sixties and seventies, and there was a huge revival in the nineties, huge print runs of comics in the nineties. We’re not quite at those historically high levels. We have a lot of eager readers coming through.”

This looks like one in plenty of articles where I wish they'd be more specific as to who and what's in good shape. As I've said before, one needs to consider where the Big Two stand these days, though as far as pamphlets are concerned, nothing's really doing well today, yet you wouldn't be able to figure that out so easily on sites like ICV2, which stopped providing clear sales figures at least a few years ago. It's dishonest, because how can one form an opinion or take an objective position if nobody will provide sales figures?

“When you think of comic books, you think of superheroes,” Gregg said.

“You’re going to have Batman, Spiderman, your big names. Those are your big sellers. But, we have a lot of alternative publications that are really heavy hitters. There’s one by Brian K. Vaughan and (illustrator) Fiona Staples called “Saga” (a space opera and fantasy comic). There’s an author named James Tynion who’s doing a lot of really good horror comics now that are just breathtaking works.”

And this is where they disappoint with the usual cliches referencing the horror genre, rather than the comedy genre. Not to mention sugarcoating Tynion's woke leftism, which only perpetuated the ruin of the mainstream. Even Saga, from what I know, is pretty PC to boot.

How many more specialty store managers are going to recommend all these dispiriting cliches? If that's all they're willing to recommend, it's no wonder the medium won't fare as well as they'd like everybody to think in the long run.

Labels: dc comics, indie publishers, marvel comics, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, politics, sales, violence