(Potpourri) Another day, another collection of news and interesting links from the world of comics and cartoons. Here's what's up:
- The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund has joined the fight to keep the state of Michigan safe for comic books and graphic novels geared to adults, by signing onto the lawsuit filed Tuesday in a U.S. District Court seeking to overturn a nasty bit of censorship signed into law last November. According to CBLDF executive director Charles Brownstein, "This law renders classics of the graphic novel
form such as A Contract With God, Stuck Rubber Baby, and Sandman vulnerable to unwarranted prosecution. If enforced, this law endangers the First Amendment rights of both sellers and readers of
graphic novels and prose books." It occurs to me that now would be a good time to renew my CBLDF membership, don't you think?
- The fight to charge royalty fees on rented manga volumes in Japan (first reported back in October) took another step forward yesterday as a government panel reported to the education ministry's Council for Cultural Affairs that the plan deserved to be implemented. The royalty fee is championed by major manga publishers, who view the emergence of book rental stores as a principal reason for the recent slowdown in Japanese sales revenues. The newspaper Asahi Shimbun has details.
- Chester Brown's historical graphic novel Louis Riel has placed seventh on Canadian publishing magazine Quill & Quire's bestsellers list for non-fiction hardcovers. The Pulse has the Drawn & Quarterly press release.
- Here's a quick update to a story from yesterday, concerning the death of Indian editorial cartoonist H. Khenthang. It turns out that Khenthang was killed in an automobile accident involving a government advocate named Tahir Ali. According to E-Pao.net, The Sangai Express is reporting that representatives for Ali and Khenthang's estate have come to a mutual understanding, and that no civil actions will be taken in the matter.
- Those of you looking forward to Peter Bagge's take on The Incorrigible Hulk are advised to forget about it -- the comic-book oneshot has been cancelled.
- Newsarama's Matt Brady spoke to DC Comics president Paul Levitz about the recently announced publishing deal deal the company signed with renowned European imprint The Humanoids Group.
- Former Guardian editor Peter Preston offers a short remembrance of that paper's 1960s editorial cartoonist, Bill Papas, complete with an online gallery of Papas' work.
- In theory, Google News tells me that there are three news features about comic books in today's edition of The Denver Post. In practice, the website has been inaccessible all night. If the site ever comes back online, write and let me know if they were any good, okay? Actually, never mind. (Bonus hint: the first link apparently involves Will Eisner.)
- Ohio alt-weekly The Cleveland Free Times names -- who else? -- Harvey Pekar as Clevelander of the Year.
- The Tennessean's Ken Beck pontificates upon the 75th anniversary of Popeye. Or did Christi Mathis write the piece? It's hard to tell. Continuing on the same theme, Steven Wintle continues Popeye-blogging, with more links and a picture of the man who allegedly inspired E.C.Segar's spinach-eating creation, Frank "Rocky" Fiegel. Damn, he really does look like Popeye.
- Over at Broken Frontier (temporary link), Shawn Hoke sings the praises of Highwater Books.
- From our Department Of Reed Richards Looking At The Thing's Naked Pictures: Dave Intermittent notes that the list of comic books in songs referenced in Monday's entry totally bypasses The Wu Tang Clan, who've referenced a ton of comics. I can't believe I forgot hiphop. Hell, the number of comics-related references made by Kool Keith (a.k.a. Dr. Octagon, Dr. Dooom, Keith Korg, Keith Turbo. Black Elvis and the half-dozen pseudonyms he probably dreamed up in the time it took me to write this aside) alone would require a part-time archivist to fully annotate.
- John Pierce reviews the Mac OS X shareware program Comictastic, which allows you to read select webcomics without visiting a lot of webpages.
- Writing for The Comics Waiting Room, Marc Mason compares the "waiting for the trade" argument to music singles and albums.
- Speaking of which, John Jakala wants you to decide whether or not he buys The Moth Double-Sized Special or simply waits for the trade.
Finally, Stuart Moore responds to my comments in yesterday's entries about his most recent column for Newsarama:
"You know, I'm getting used to the fact that every two weeks, you totally mischaracterize the thesis of my Newsarama column. What's irritating is that you seem to skim for something you disagree with, and pay no attention to the rest of the piece.
" 'Superheroes aren't holding the Direct Market back after all, and the fact that superheroes dominate the comics shops is just peachy-keen'? That's a hell of a long way from my point, which is that superheroes aren't the gigantic barrier to comics' public respectability that internet pundits paint them as. As a side-issue, the column explores the risks and rewards involved in going outside 'safe' genres, in any entertainment medium. I think my only mention of the direct market at all was an observation that superhero comics dominate its charts, which somehow doesn't strike me as too controversial.
"As for your little let's-you-and-him-fight moment, I think Greg overstates the public's disdain for superheroes (see above), but I don't disagree with his basic points. Manga is popular in bookstores; teenagers like manga. Nobody's arguing with that. The question is how transferrable that bookstore interest is to western comics -- LOVE & ROCKETS and TOP SHELF ASKS THE BIG QUESTIONS, as much as BATMAN. From all evidence I've seen, that remains to be determined."
I'll start off by apologizing for misunderstanding your point, Stuart, though truth to tell it's sometimes a bit difficult to ascertain exactly what your point is in the first place. First, I think your "side-issue" involves something of a bait-and-switch, since the principal difference between comics in the Direct Market and other entertainment media is that other entertainment media tend to be capable of selling more than one genre of storytelling. The difference, I would argue, is profound enough to invalidate the comparison altogether.
I disagree more vehemently with the following quote from your essay:
"Fine, the response goes, but there's a much larger market out there that isn't buying comics. Why not go after them?
"Well, the answer is that you are -- but slowly. You can't expect that hypothetical audience to just push aside their current, preferred entertainment for your wonderful new comics. You could publish Terrorism Stories: The Comic Book, telling dramatic tales of the Department of Homeland Security, and it might be a terrific book. But there's no reason to expect people who like the TV show 24 to find it and embrace it in big enough numbers to support your comic. They're busy people, and they're already getting their counterterrorism-thriller fix in a more familiar form.
"If, instead of Terrorism Stories, you write a solidly-researched Flash arc where he becomes involved in counterterrorist operations, you're bringing an existing readership with you to something new. And you may revitalize an existing comic by bringing new subject matter to it. (Flash is chosen purely at random here -- I'm not saying it needs revitalization.)
"I'm emphatically not saying we shouldn't publish straight, non-superhero stories; I'm working on several of them myself. But at this point, they fall between markets, which makes them long shots. You can't be surprised if they don't pay off, especially in the short run."
We have in fact had the better part of a decade to watch and see how the post-crash superhero fans reacted to comics which mixed superheroes with other genres, and the response has been pretty lackluster so far. More to the point, though: there's no way in hell this is going to grow the Direct Market, for reasons I enumerated here.
Why not go after new readers, you ask rhetorically. In point of fact, many publishers are doing just that -- they've just largely given up on finding them in most comics shops, is all. Take DC Comics as an example. How many Elfquest volumes do you think they expect to sell to Direct Market superhero fans? How many Enki Bilal albums? The answer, most likely, is "not many," but then you don't sign deals with WaRP Graphics and The Humanoids Group if you're expecting to sell their work to comics shops in the first place, now do you?
As for the artsier publishers, at this point most of them are on record as stating that at least half of their sales are already coming from bookstores. Given how pitifully most of their wares sell to the Direct Market, that may not be saying much, but then given that a distribution network dedicated to prose works can easily and without trying sell as many non-superhero graphic novels as a distribution network ostensibly dedicated to selling exactly such wares, I would argue that it does say something significant. Hell, there are any number of non-genre graphic novelists whose works do quite well in bookstores -- Chester Brown, Joe Sacco, Craig Thompson, Chris Ware, Art Spiegelman, Marjane Satrapi, Daniel Clowes, Jim Woodring, and the list goes on. From all the evidence I've seen, the case has been made fairly effectively. Indeed, I feel comfortable in standing by what I first asserted over a year ago: we are in the midst of a sea change for comics every bit as profound as when Phil Seuling first laid the groundwork for the Direct Market back in the 1970s.
Superheroes aren't a "gigantic barrier to comics' public respectability," they're a gigantic barrier to the Direct Market's public respectability. In this respect, I think Greg Rucka actually undersells the dilemma that a steady diet of superheroes-and-nothing-else poses for comic-book stores. All the Free Comic Book Days on the calendar won't keep potential customers from noticing that the only thing on the menu is spam, after all. Comics are a growing medium again -- everywhere except in comics shops, which seem stuck to their rapidly-aging fan base, sacrificing longterm growth for short-term stability and exhibiting neither the desire nor the ability to do anything about this state of affairs. Given this, I hope you'll forgive me for not immediately seeing the difference between "things aren't all that bad" and "things are peachy-keen," but frankly I'm not convinced that there's a difference to be seen in the first place.
