"A Really Interesting Day in the Comics News Business"
Jun 20From Warren Ellis’ Bad Signal e-mail list;
If what I just heard is true, then it’s going to be a really interesting day in the comics news business.
If it is true, it’ll probably break on http://www.comicbookresources.com/ first, so curious parties might want to keep an eye on that during the day.
If it’s not, well, then, I just wasted seven seconds of your time. You’ll live.
I’m calling it now: DiDio is OUT. Do it now; have someone new in place before San Diego. Wait much longer, and DiDio (and by extension DC) are gonna have one shitty summer schlepping from town to town just to get yelled at by nerds.
While you’re refreshing CBR, go check out Ellis’ webcomic Freakangels which is fantastic stuff.
(Comics) Journalism Is Dead. Long Live (Comics) Journalism.
Jun 17Heidi has an interesting post up over on The Beat (“…on the upbeat, till a man comes along, he says…”) about the state of the New Newsarama, and comics “journalism” in general:
So what’s to be done? Comic Book Resources still has the best columns in the biz, and is stepping up in the news department, but every site out there still has to deal with threats to their access, and given the what fans want to read (previews and interviews, apparently) there’s just no way anyone can gain enough independence anymore.
Which brought to mind Kevin Huxford’s recent musing on the death of Tim Russert, and how there’s no one even comparable in the comics realm:
Man, I wish there was someone that comic notables felt that they HAD to submit to being interviewed by and could press for firm answers (without being spat upon by half of the fans out there).
All of which, honestly, hits me with a sorta big DUH.
Journalism as it should be practiced, and as we’ve come to know it over the past hundred-odd years, is effectively dead. ESPECIALLY entertainment journalism.
In other words, they’re kicking a rotted, maggot-ridden corpse. (Not that it doesn’t DESERVE the kicks, but still.)
Oh, Comics Drama!
Jun 16If you’re into editorial intrigue and behind-the-scenes dirt at DC Comics, start here, then travel here, and end up here, where I’m guessing the comments section will light up today like a Christmas tree on fire.
Me? As usual, I think Greg Hatcher’s right, and anyone who’s paid any attention to the customer-facing machinations of DC over the last year or two probably knows exactly what Chuck Dixon’s talking about in the comments. None of Todd Allen’s candidates really unwrap my Twinkie, but maybe the secret one Heidi teases about will be revealed?
And now you know everything I do. Yes, literally EVERYTHING. Scary, isn’t it.
Links to the Past: Star Tours, Arcades, and Apocalipstix
Jun 13A few relatively random links that have been gathering dust in my mailbox:
* We may finally have a new ride movie for Star Tours at Disneyland. I hope it involves Lucas chasing $100 bills.
* A great story from the Chicago Tribune on the closing of one of the oldest arcades in the region. I don’t remember this one in particular, but I was an occasional visitor to Friar Tuck’s in Calumet City, and our local Showbiz Pizza was of course a frequent favorite spot, back in the day when pizza arcades had mostly video games, and not ride-on toys and plastic ball pits.
There was also this fantastic arcade someplace in the northwestern suburbs where you could pay like $5 to get in, and play row after row of vintage arcade games for free. Maybe this is the arcade of which they write? Perhaps that place is long-since dead as well? I only made it up there a handful of times in college, but man, it was a trip.
* Cameron Stewart’s new graphic novel from Oni, The Apocalipstix (with writer Ray Fawkes), looks right up my alley.
Four-Color Critiques #5: This Column…ADVANTAGEOUS!
Jun 03I recently spent the better part of a weekend trapped deep in the bowels of my ancestral home in South Holland, IL, helping my parents clean their basement in preparation for a move.
This involved a couple things: I inhaled whole spoonfuls of mold and dust, I disposed of stacks upon stacks of Choose Your Own Adventure books and college mixtapes, and I sorted the last of my teenage comic book collection into two “keep” boxes and two “ditch” boxes.
Boy, was that a trip down memory lane. I came up in the speculator era; my most enthusiastic reading period was from about 1989 to 1994, or from age 13 to 18. This is the exact target age group for marketing ploys like “HOLY SHIT THIS COVER GLOWS IN THE DARK AND IF YOU SCRATCH OFF GHOST RIDER’S FACE MAYBE YOU’LL SEE JESUS OR TOM DEFALCO.”
Which means I found piles of quadruple and quintuple copies of many, MANY comics. I even somehow bought doubles of random issues in the midst of runs–like I have two copies of stray issues of Detective Comics, out of nowhere. Did Wizard tip me off that these would be “hawt” comics, or did I just buy them on accident? Who knows?
Spider-Man 1 was published in 1990 with something like fifty thousand slightly different covers, all of which I purchased, and some of them multiple times. As of this writing, I own three different versions; I’m keeping one, and consigning the rest to the dustbin of history.
The early issues of that Spider-Man title define the nineties’ EVENT COMIC. Written and drawn by Todd McFarlane, the debut issue of what was at the time the FIFTH Spider-Man book quickly became the highest-selling single issue of all time. As I understand it, X-Men 1 would come along just a year later and shatter that record.
I decided to sit down and re-read Spider-Man 1-5, or “Torment,” McFarlane’s first arc as writer-artist on the book, mostly because these comics exist in my mind more as EVENTS than artistic product. It’s one of those things where everyone somehow collectively decides, “Okay, we don’t give a shit if this is any good; we just all LIKE IT A LOT, and we will BUY A LOT OF IT. Hooray.” (Or more accurately, some shadow council of old white men sit in a semi-lit room and determine what we will like, and then commit massive resources of money and manpower at MAKING us like those things.)
But really now, are these comics truly the nadir of the speculator era’s emphasis on style and outrageousness over substance?
Probably. Damn, though, if they weren’t kinda fun to read.
