- Last week’s wrap-up of Superman & The Golden Age Legion in Action Comics was really, surprisingly enjoyable and probably the best comic Geoff Johns has ever written. I can now actually recommend a Geoff Johns comic. Who’da thunk it?
- On the Secret Retailer Forum, I’d been watching and not one retailer out of the hundreds that participate there was asking for more copies of Secret Invasion #1. Apparently no one at all sold out. And yet… due to “demand” Marvel is releasing a second printing a week later. I’m curious where the demand was… I couldn’t see any. Does anyone believe that story anymore?
- Hibbs kicks Wizard in the teeth and deservedly so. Go read it.
- I have no problem at all selling manga, specific manga, to non-manga readers at the comics shop. Stuff that would otherwise fit their tastes of course… But I will never sell a manga to a “superhero” reader, because I don’t think they’re interested in the medium of comics so much as the superhero content via any delivery system. Maybe this is obvious, but the sales of recently-completed series’ Death Note, Dragon Head, and Drifting Classroom to a wide array of people who would say or have said that they “hate manga” really put that into perspective for me.
- I’m personally aware that producing regular single issues and competing in the direct market is not “the way” for alternative and art comix, but at the same time I miss having weeks where every single new comic on the stands wasn’t a superhero/fantasy/zombie genre book. No more Love & Rockets, no more Eightball, and a minimum of a year between issues of everything else… I think that except for Young Liars #2 and Ganges this week*, every other comic book is a mainstream/direct market/fantastical element sort of thing, and that’s just a little disappointing…?
– Chris
*: I totally forgot about Criminal #2, which I just read, and was fan-fucking-tastic. Best book of the week. Faith in comics: Maintained!
Secret Retailer Forum?!?
5. Weird, what would you classify Criminal as?
Perdro- I would classify Criminal has having completely slipped my mind. Awesome comic book that was. Amended!
Being a superhero guy myself, I can’t really say I understand the tunnel vision aspect of that fandom… as there are superhero themed manga that are REALLY good, and deal with the superhero concept in innovative ways… such as JUNK: THE LAST HERO (which is commerically available), ZETMAN (by admitted Batman fanatic Katsura Masakazu, artist of I’S/DNA2/SHADOWLADY/VIDEO GIRL AI/etc etc), HAKAIMA SADAMITSU (Masahiro Nakamira), AKUMETSU (about a violent young vigilante that kills corrupt politians and business men while wearing a mask… a sort of Socio-Economic Punisher), KAMEN RIDER (arguably the first Japanese Superhero, by the amazing Shotaro Ishinomori, who created almost the entire genre in Japan himself), etc etc.
My guess is that it’s even less the CONCEPT of the superhero they enjoy, and just the actual specific characters, maybe? It’ll be interesting to see how that BATMAN mini-series by Yoshinori Natsume does… it seems pretty faithful to the contemporary North American Batman, rather than the Micheal Keaton one, which is the only Batman the Japanese really seem to acknowledge (check out the trailer for GOTHAM KNIGHTS… at least three of those shorts look like Micheal Keaton).
1. Little homie Geoff Johns is kind of getting there. David Uzumeri kind of points out, http://www.popcultureshock.com/alternate-current-geoff-johns/43602/, that Geoff’s been trying. I don’t agree but I do feel like Johns is actually trying to get better as a writer.
4. I’ve have a very interesting experience vice versa with my younger brothers who wouldn’t touch anything non-manga. I just had to try the right superhero books.
I think it was Dick who made an interesting point in regards to Superheroes vs. other genres is that Superheroes is more of an occupation vs. an actual genre like crime and romance. These cycled off very much pre-code and none lasted forever because the reading audience got sick of them.
I can’t understand why people make the assumption that manga itself is a genre instead of just a particular style of art, and even then that’s not so right.
I personally can’t stand the hell out of Death Note. I should have listened to everyone who warned me how bad it was going to be.
Chris, the 2nd print is a variant cover. In some shops there is always “demand” for those. 😛
I think Derek sorta nailed it. All too often I’ve heard people stop or start reading superhero comics almost entirely based on which character was in it. It’s rather depressing to hear of someone who stops reading something like Captain America not because they’ve stopped enjoying the story, but merely because Steve Rogers isn’t there anymore.
The only counter to that is the fact that putting Batman or Spider-Man on a title doesn’t always guarantee popularity. It sure as hell works a lot better than using someone like Nova or Booster Gold though.
Pedro>Just out of curiousity, why did you dislike DEATH NOTE?
1) Comics writers and artists have always had to live with the unfortunate fact that unlike in other pop-culture media, it is the characters who are the stars, not the writers and artists who create them (at least for the most part). I think one reason (among many) that the superhero genre has dominated comics is that they are such unique and identifiable characters. Whereas with noir detectives, cowboys, or space explorers, one character pretty much seems like any other, and when the artist changes, they don’t even look like themselves.
2) I think it was Warren Ellis who pointed out that manga is not a genre, or even a style — it’s an idiom.
3) The cost differential between small-publishers and large publishers with regard to printing is the main thing driving indie comics to the trades and the Web. Only the Big Two can get printer discounts low enough (and ad buys large enough) that they can sell full-color pamphlets for $3. Even Image and Dark Horse have to charge $4. And as inflation pushes the cost/price of pamphlets up, readers are getting more price-sensitive. Eventually I think pamphlets as we know them will only survive to carry the most popular Big Two characters, and everything else will be web-comics and trades.
My LCS (admittedly a small one) did sell out of Secret Invasion #1 and did re-order. He told me he ordered more than he usually would, based on the buzz, and sold out in 3 days. I haven’t checked the other shop in town yet (I don’t go there much, because they treat me like an ignorant female, never mind I’ve been reading comics longer than they’ve been alive).
Death Note’s is really bad after the big thing that happens mid way through. Even before then it was taking a nosedive in quality. Near and Mello are just never interesting characters. They take the two aspects of one of my favorite character’s personality and exaggerate them greatly to show us the balance is needed. This ideal didn’t appeal to me at all.
Reading the chapters featuring them became a slog. I just didn’t care about a single character in the book and the plot just felt super thin after awhile. How does Kira get out of this now? Oh don’t worry, he’s set up the situation with increasingly insane coincidences to barely pull his ass out of the fire. Don’t forget the 1960’s Batman level leaps of logic in regards to clues.
It came off less as jokey or trashy and more as badly written. I read the legit copies and not the “fanscanalations” so maybe that’s on the fault of the translator but once I got over the game of who could outdo who more, (which is the tennis match. It’s so outrageous that even if I know how silly that sequence is, I love it.)
I know a lot of people liked it, but every girl and my little brother kept telling me it was the most boring manga they have ever read. It strengths my opinion that the most popular stuff in any medium is not gonna be the good stuff.
i agree with pedro, the insane “logic” is what annoyed me the most because the fans kept saying it was genius, intricate and complex but it was all lies and coincidence. Another thing that annoyed me was how the two brats commanded the fbi and yakuza type gang. I liked it at the beginning but as time went on things got ever more ridiculous. It certainly didn’t help that most people i knew were singing nothing but praise about this title.
As a superhero reader and a fan of manga, I’d recommend against dividing your house (both on general principle and since any mech, magical girl or ninja manga is guaranteed to deal with superheroes just as much as Iron Man, Wonder woman or Iron Fist comic).
Hey Chris,
This is probably not actually worth posting on the site, but I thought you might get a kick out of this:
http://www.mondomagazine.net/?p=834
We’ve been running lists of contributor’s favourite Marvel characters and we asked J. Bone if he’d like to weight in on his feelings. He did and the list is really sweet.
Hope you enjoy.
Miles