Category: General

This is a fanboy post, but I needed to get it off my chest:

Simon Jones on the Icarus Comics blog posted news last week that a manga-ka who passed away may have committed suicide after reading a harsh review of his work online. [Edit: Simon pops up in the comments to remind me and you that this is just a rumour, and an unverifiable one at that, and that this is just a sad state of affairs all around. I agree with him…]

It made me stop to think about the sorts of things I’ve posted and the reactions to them. I just realized that I didn’t name names in my last post regarding who the most awful perpetrators of terrible graphic novels are… I’m not worried about them offing themselves or anything, it’s just because it’s all very obvious. I mean, do you need me to point-and-scream, Invasion of the Body-Snatchers style, every time some lifeless “inspired by the hit film!” piece of tripe hits the stands of your local comic book store? The problem is not the individual books so much as the thinking… or rather thoughtlessness… behind them.

That said, I just read the new Amazing Spider-Man, #552, and it’s awful. That’s no surprise, I read about 20 comics this week and half of them were pretty bad, but this one is written by Bob Gale, who wrote Back to the Future. Why is that important? Other than the failure of the writer on this one, there’s the failure of the editor as well for hiring him… This is the same Bob Gale who wrote Daredevil #19-25 (current series). A story-arc so mediocre that they didn’t even bother to collect it in trade paperback, and considering Marvel was collecting nearly everything at that point, including every Daredevil story, that’s saying a lot. Maybe the creative abortion that was DC’s 52 inspired editor on both projects Steve Wacker to plug-and-pay his writers on the new Amazing Spider-Man like he did with the artists on 52 (and let’s not forget, that story was _so_well_written_ that it necessitated a four-issue mini-series to explain what happened between the 50th and 51st issues, AND a six-issue mini-series afterwards to explain what happened to the bad guys of the whole series), but it didn’t work Steve. This was bad superhero comics, and this is speaking as someone who’s enjoyed AND promoted the new series in store. What made you think this was a good idea? Was it the fact that Gale hasn’t written comics since 2001, the year of his Dardevil run that Marvel have never reprinted?

I thought this was your flagship book?

– Christopher

One of the greatest joys of my job is not hauling each week’s shipment of new comics and graphic novels up to the second floor of the store to count, sort, and pull them. I’m the guy at the store that puts that order together every month, and no one knows better than me that 2007 saw a record number of new graphic novels hit the stands (hence why I don’t want to be lifting them…). Now though, there’s proof. According to ICv2.com, there were 3314 graphic novels released in 2007, a figure that’s up 19% over 2006’s 2785 books.

Almost all of them are awful.

Seriously, I don’t usually come right out and say this sort of thing (inference is a blogger’s best friend) but man there are a lot of downright horrible graphic novels released every year. By that I mean all of it, Superheroes, educational books, “art comix”, tie-in books, licensed books, shitty adaptations of shitty movies. Manga, especially manga, which despite being cherry-picked out off of a tree that includes some _truly_ wretched material, is often terrible thanks to its formulaic blandness. Even A Monkey Can Draw Manga was not funny, it was a warning.

Almost every manga in print, in English, is better than the awful, awful movie-pitches-masquerading-as-a-graphic-novel that make up more and more published books. Man, I LOVE comics, and I can think of no greater insult to the medium than for it to be a comfortable slum for movie and TV writers between projects; adaptations of works that have already failed out of Hollywood. I know that the “Hollywood Game” of generating material that might be optioned in Tinseltown is what pays for my open-bars at the San Diego Comic-Con every year, but… ugh. I am the Lorax and I speak for the trees: stop printing vehicles for Sheia Fucking Lebouf on my goddamned trees.

I’d take a hundred noble failures, poor, deluded creators who’ve poured their heart and soul into truly terrible works of crap, over one more transparent plea for a Hollywood producer’s attention.

Not that I want another hundred noble failures of course. I’m kind of getting sick of the noble failures too. And of the creators with more marketing plans than actual talent; no number of press releases in my inbox will teach you to draw or write. And licensing… fuck. You know, I know the Udon guys. They fucking LOVE Street Fighter. Love it. Eat, sleep, breathe, own all the games, the toys, all of it. They are fully invested in producing Street Fighter comics, and they want to make them as great as possible. If you as a publisher or licensor do not possess that level of dedication (and the talent to match), then why bother? Why are you wasting all of our time? Slapping together an extra 48 pages with a movie, cartoon, or toy line’s logo on it takes less creativity than being a mime. And you’re wasting the Lorax’s trees.

So yeah, most of the 3300 graphic novels released in 2007 sucked. Godwin’s Law Sturgeon’s Law is that 95% of everything is crap, and that’s about right in this case. Of course, the fact that there’s a “Godwin’s Law” “Sturgeon’s Law” at all should tell me that this is no surprise to any of you, but I just feel like someone had to come out and say it: There are a lot of awful, awful graphic novels coming out these days. Whoever’s guarding the gate, be it retailers, journalists, “journalists”, whatever, I beg you; be discerning in your praise, don’t pass along PR without having vetted the project yourself, stand behind your recommendations and, if you can’t, own up to your mistakes.

– Christopher
Edit: I confused Godwin and Sturgeon.

http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008/03/report-gary-gyg.html

– Chris

At his Journal, Neil Gaiman has posted a letter from a retailer talking about how free downloads hurt independent retailers. The twist in this case? It’s an independent bookstore retailer, talking about Gaiman’s and Harper Collins’ recent plan to give away a free audio download online reading copy [Thanks to Mr. Gaiman for the correction] of Gaiman’s bestselling novel, American Gods.

“As a bookseller, I am a bit surprised by your recent comment about free books and the HarperCollins download. … Our situation improves as more non-readers become readers, but we can’t survive when the readers go elsewhere. I am not at all against free literature–I firmly believe that the more people read the more people read–but somehow, if we independents are to survive, we need to be included somewhere in the formula.” – Bookseller Don Muller, Old Harbor Books

Gaiman’s response is, as one might expect, a smart, considered, and articulate one. Essentially “I am giving away a small portion of my intellectual property, so that you will be able to sell all the rest of it.” To be honest, that’s really all that needs to be said. The book has been out for years now anyway, it’s been through three or four diffferent sales cycles. I applaud Gaiman for letting people [read the book online] to increase awareness of his work and help create new fans, and I do so particularly AS a bookseller with a good four shelves of his work in the store. For those keeping score at home, I’m all for creative people doing what they like with their content, and I like that they’re playing fair by, oh, I don’t know, not releasing it for free on the internet for the first time before retailers who have purchased said material non-returnably have a chance to sell it. Biiiig difference there, one that I really hope BOOM! figures out some day.

Meanwhile, what struck me enough about this discussion to actually post about it was Gaiman’s description of some of his experiences with independent bookstores. Note, these are “real” book stores, and not those exclusively devoted to comic books:

“My local bookshop (now deceased) was physically arranged so that finding a book and then buying it was harder than walking around around the shop and going back out again; the bookseller mostly sat at the cash register in the middle of the shop playing online chess, and he tended to be unhelpful, vaguely grumpy and to treat people who wanted to buy things as nuisances (he was nice to me, because I was me, but still); he didn’t stock paperback bestsellers because “people could always go to Wal-mart for those” and when the she shop closed its doors the final time they put up a note on the door saying that it was Amazon.com that had driven them out of business, when it manifestly wasn’t — it seemed to me that they didn’t work to entice people into the bookshop (which is what those paperback bestsellers were for), and didn’t give them a pleasant experience when they were there…” – Neil Gaiman

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

I have to admit that it stings when I see negative depictions of booksellers posted anywhere. I try really hard at my store to be positive, upbeat, have a good selection, and even keep things as orderly as possible given the fact that we outgrew out current space 2 or 3 years ago. But I have bad days (bad weeks) and sometimes I’m grumpy at people, or have had such a miserable day that if I don’t defocus my eyes playing a round of Scrabulous I’m going to lose my shit… But the customer doesn’t see that, obviously. They just see some jerk that’s being a dick behind a counter. So it stings and I resolve to leave my bad mood on the internet, where it belongs. (Of course, if I were a certain breed of contemporary comics retailer, I’d likely start a petition to ban negative depictions of comics stores from the internet… or suffer the consequences!)

But I digress.

Gaiman’s response is, as I said, quite lovely, and addresses not only the letter he prints, but much of the thought and reasoning (and fear…) behind it. I do recommend checking it out.

…and to see me at my most articulate and lovely as a comic store employee, Christopher Bird has transcribed the most accurate and… dare I say it… realistic account of a conversation I’ve ever had with a customer at the store, over at his blog. Heh.

– Christopher

I try not to do “wacky Japanese” posts, but… holy shit. Thanks for the heads-up, Peter.

From Japanese retailer Mandarake’s auction site.

– Chris

I got to work 3 hours early this morning, after arriving 4 hours late yesterday. My sleep schedule is a nightmare right now, and my 2 half-finished posts are on the laptop at home. Look forward to a review of the film adaptation of Taiyo Matsumoto’s PING PONG and my final Japan travelogue post sometime this weekend. So what to write about, seeing as it’s been a few days?

Count me among the surprised that Reed Elsevier is selling off their magazine/print division (Reed Business International) but not their very profitable convention business. Their stated reasoning (not wanting to be tied to the cyclical nature of advertising-driven magazine publishing) makes a lot of sense, but at the same time the power of having the vertical integration to a) be the leading mouthpiece for your industry, b) say nice things about your conventions, and c) have those same people cover the conventions after they’re over? It’s like if Wizard was remotely successful. At any rate, I hope PW and their Kids Bookshelf and Comics Week suppliments are on for the foreseeable future, as I enjoy reading those every week. As for the soon to be Mrs. MacDonald: we have every confidence that The Beat will land on its feet whatever happens.

Weaksauce:

However you feel about Novelty T-Shirt Company threadless (Like: Designs and shirts, Feel Sketchy About: Their Artist Contract), Hot Topic ripping off one of their designs isn’t cool. Espescially when that design is by beloved comics creator Jess Fink. Take it away, Jess:

SO I got an email back from the people who run the design company that designed and sold their rip-off of “Lil’ Soap” to Hot Topic. Basically they are not taking much responsibility and blaming it on the fact that they hire freelancers from time to time… I’m sorry but I really don’t think this design is coincidentally or simply inspired by clip art. Things right down to the pose of the character and the look of the feet and hands are the same, even the color.

I’m glad so many folks are rallying to her aid, it’s great that artist communities can work to get each other’s backs against corporate behemoths. At this point, Hot Topic seems to be refusing to comment on the situation (wall of silence) but, much like the other bottom-feeder scam-artist scandal from last year, all it will take is the right amount of pressure on the company for them to “realize” their “mistake”. So get to it:

http://community.hottopic.com/insideht/talktous.asp

Hot Topic Inc.
18305 San Jose Avenue
City of Industry, CA 91748
tel: 626.839.4681 fax: 626.839.4686

—

– Christopher