MattBrady
06-17-2003, 10:36 AM
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<center>A THOUSAND FLOWERS</center><center>Comics, Pop Culture, and the World Outside</center><center>Installment 20</center><center>by Stuart Moore</center>
Three Myths
<img src="http://www.newsarama.com/flowers/mimic.jpg" width="300" height="468" border="0" hspace="2" align="right">Comics people tend to take every setback in the field -- like, say, the decline in sales that followed the early ‘90s speculation boom -- as paranoid evidence that the “outside world” doesn’t respect comics. There’s a certain romanticism to this worldview, a sense of living and working in a very special little unappreciated place, kind of like Professor Xavier’s School for Smarter, Better, and If-The-World-Only-Knew-How-Powerful Youngsters. Not only is this beautiful garden unappreciated by the rest of the entertainment world (the theory goes), it’s actively under siege -- faced with obstacles both (a) unique to itself and (b) greater than those confronting any other kind of entertainment.
This, to be blunt, is a bunch of crap.
Another myth of the industry is that creative people are treated unusually badly -- more so than any other entertainment field, by virtue of a combination of poor pay and lack of respect for their rights. There’s no doubt that options for ownership were pretty limited prior to about 1980, and that there’s still plenty of room for improvement. But relative to the rest of the world, this myth is also crap.
I’ve also remarked on the tendency for comics people to blame all their troubles on the supremacy of superheroes -- and to claim that no other art form has so severely limited its own possibilities. This is a particularly common stance in indy comics, where subsistence-level sales are the norm and where Marvel and DC form a convenient scapegoat for the ills of the industry. And this, too, is crap.
A few communiques from the “outside world” have reinforced those beliefs for me lately. So let’s try a few thought-experiments.
First up is an article in Publisher’s Weekly, the trade journal of the book industry. The magazine recently held a summit where book people at various levels of that industry spoke about the woes facing publishing. You can read the whole thing <a href="http://publishersweekly.reviewsnews.com/index.asp?layout=article&articleid=CA301155" target="_blank"> here</a> and I encourage you to do so -- it’s fascinating. But here’s just one taste, from the first speaker at the summit:
“John Marmaduke, president and CEO of Hastings Entertainment…who was addressing the view from the retail market, emphasized that books have entertainment competitors whose suppliers are doing a better job at servicing retailers and reaching consumers than book publishers. In addition, high prices relative to other forms of entertainment and a ‘command’ marketing approach by publishers are hurting the sales of books.”
The thought-experiment: Try substituting “comics” for “books” and see if it sounds familiar.
Marmaduke particularly chastises publishers for getting their product to market (and providing reorders) too slowly. Interestingly, when he talks about pricing, he’s not advocating across-the-board reductions, but a shift to the DVD-and-music-industry model of discounting hot, best-selling products to move them faster and get people into stores. Food for thought as graphic novels become a bigger and bigger part of the comics industry.
One of Marmaduke’s suggestions for bookstores is commonly followed by many (though not all) comics retailers: the “new book” (or comic) wall, where a variety of new books in different genres are displayed. “That’s where publishers win or lose the battle with the consumer,” he says.
Some of the suggestions made by Marmaduke, and others in the PW article, are applicable to comics, and some aren’t. (Some are pretty bad ideas for the book trade, too.) But the point is: The fight to attract entertainment consumers isn’t one that comics fight in a vacuum. Cable and network TV, advertiser-supported websites, CDs, DVDs, theatrical films…they’re all in the same boat.
And the proliferation of entertainment options means that each medium, each publisher, each individual work, has to fight all the harder. Yes, cable TV has had widespread penetration for twenty-odd years. But I’ve now got 200 channels, and a few of them (like BBC America, or TechTV) actually deliver me interesting content that I didn’t have available before. You want me to read Thor? You’re not just competing with Action Comics, but with Manchild and Fresh Gear. (Neither of which are S&M shows, though they both sound like it. Hmmm…)
So myth #1: crap. On to #2:
<img src="http://www.newsarama.com/flowers/clove.jpg" width="174" height="268" border="0" hspace="2" align="left">A few years ago, Courtney Love wrote a fascinating article called “Courtney Love Does the Math” for salon.com; it can be found <a href="http://dir.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/love/index.html" target="_blank"> here</a>. Love penned it as a response to music-industry complaints about file-sharing piracy, in an attempt to point out that far worse damage is done to artists by the record labels themselves. Now, Love has her lapses in the areas of judgment, good taste, and public behavior. But this is an exhaustive, nuts-and-bolts analysis of where the money goes in a typical new artist’s recording contract. Again, I highly recommend it.
The economics of the music industry are very different from comics’ -- most significantly, it costs a hell of a lot more to record, press, and distribute an album than it does to publish a comic. Love analyzes the way a band can wind up with almost nothing to live on and no profits even after having a chart-topping CD, and having been advanced $1 million to record the thing.
The article is a bit one-sided, and completely ignores the fact that most first records aren’t chart-topping hits, leaving the record company to take a loss on all or most of that $1 million (plus pressing and distribution costs). But check out what Love says about ownership:
“Worst of all, after all this, the band owns none of its work...they can pay the mortgage forever but they'll never own the house…When you look at the legal line on a CD, it says copyright 1976 Atlantic Records or copyright 1996 RCA Records. When you look at a book, though, it'll say something like copyright 1999 Susan Faludi, or David Foster Wallace. Authors own their books and license them to publishers. When the contract runs out, writers gets their books back. But record companies own our copyrights forever.”
Again: Try substituting “writer/artist” for “band” and Your Favorite Evil Monolith Comic Company for Atlantic Records. Then see if the sentence rings a few bells.
I’m certainly not suggesting that, because other industries have it just as bad, comics creators should shut up about their problems. But we all have to consider the bigger picture. If you’re going to be a professional writer, artist, or recording artist -- if you’re approaching it as a career in addition to a calling or an art form -- odds are you’re going to have to make a few compromises somewhere along the line. The trick is weighing the options, pushing for what you can, and deciding the value of a specific kind of exposure or a certain lifestyle.
On to the third myth:
You may have heard of a book called Mcsweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, edited by Michael Chabon, author of the Pulitzer-Prize-winning comics-themed novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. The Treasury originally saw print as a special issue ofMcsweeney’s Quarterly, an eclectic mixed-media magazine published by Dave Eggers, author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.
<img src="http://www.newsarama.com/flowers/mcswcover.jpg" width="300" height="467" border="0" hspace="2" align="right">The Mcsweeney’s Treasury grew out of a challenge that Chabon made to a number of prominent fiction writers, both literary and genre-specialists: Write a plot-based short story in any of the numerous genres that once flourished in pulp magazines, and have since died out in short form. Chabon describes his “semi-coherent, ill-reasoned, and doubtless mistaken rant on the subject” as follows (in part):
“Imagine that, sometime about 1950, it had been decide, collectively, informally, a little at a time, but with finality, to proscribe every kind of novel from the canon of the future but the nurse romance. Not merely from the critical canon, but from the store racks and library shelves as well. Nobody could be paid, published, lionized, or cherished among the gods of literature for writing any kind of fiction other than nurse romances…Instead of ‘the novel’ and ‘the nurse romance,’…try it with ‘short fiction’ and ‘the contemporary, quotidian, plotless, moment-of-truth revelatory story.’ Suddenly you find yourself sitting right back in your very own universe.”
Now try the same substitution with “comics” and “superheroes.” (Given Chabon’s affection for and familiarity with the comics field, I doubt the parallels have escaped him.) Just as Raymond Carver and a few others came to dominate the short-story medium, Jack Kirby and a number of other superhero practitioners took over comics. (And, unsurprisingly, Carver and Kirby both outshine most of their imitators.)
I tend to think we’re in a period of adjustment right now in comics. Other genres are rising, gaining in both popularity and artistic maturity. (Given their level of sophistication, 1960s-70s “mystery” comics weren’t going to drag in massive new readerships, any more than The Metal Men did.) But the answer isn’t to banish or dump on superheroes -- it’s to publish a variety of good work and fight to get it noticed.
The Mcsweeney’s Treasury, incidentally, is excellent, and beautifully illustrated in neo-pulp style by <a href="http://www.newsarama.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=00020 8" target="_blank"> Howard Chaykin</a>. Uneven, of course, like almost any anthology; but a great sampler of contemporary fiction writers, and a very successful experiment besides.
Good works and experiments that take chances. That’s what all the fields need: books, CDs, short fiction, and, yes, comics. Comics creators are playing in the deep waters now -- let’s not act like all our problems are special and unique. Let’s get out there and make some noise.
**
Stuart Moore has been a writer, a comics editor for Vertigo and Marvel Knights, a kitchen worker, a book editor, and the nighttime manager of the Lawrenceville, NJ Woolworth's curtain department. He has won the Will Eisner award for Best Editor 1996 and the Don Thompson Award for Favorite Editor 1999.
My current comics work: JUSTICE LEAGUE ADVENTURES #22, coming in August, features a nice stand-alone story spotlighting Green Lantern and Hawkgirl; details and a great cover image at <a href="http://www.dccomics.com/comics/dc_display.html?cm_dc_itemCode=jladv22&month=August" target="_blank">http://www.dccomics.com/comics/dc_display.html?cm_dc_itemCode=jladv22&month=August</a> . Next up is LONE, a new future-western series from Dark Horse/Rocket Comics in September. More details on these and other new projects, including GIANT ROBOT WARRIORS, VAMPIRELLA, and PARA, at: <a href="http://www.newsarama.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=00026 1" target="_blank">http://www.newsarama.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=00026 1</a> and <a href="http://www.comicon.com/cgi-bin/pulse.cgi?http%3A//www.comicon.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi%3Fubb%3Dget_topic%26f%3D3 6%26t%3D001073" target="_blank">http://www.comicon.com/cgi-bin/pulse.cgi?http%3A//www.comicon.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi%3Fubb%3Dget_topic%26f%3D3 6%26t%3D001073</a> . See you in two weeks…
<center>A THOUSAND FLOWERS</center><center>Comics, Pop Culture, and the World Outside</center><center>Installment 20</center><center>by Stuart Moore</center>
Three Myths
<img src="http://www.newsarama.com/flowers/mimic.jpg" width="300" height="468" border="0" hspace="2" align="right">Comics people tend to take every setback in the field -- like, say, the decline in sales that followed the early ‘90s speculation boom -- as paranoid evidence that the “outside world” doesn’t respect comics. There’s a certain romanticism to this worldview, a sense of living and working in a very special little unappreciated place, kind of like Professor Xavier’s School for Smarter, Better, and If-The-World-Only-Knew-How-Powerful Youngsters. Not only is this beautiful garden unappreciated by the rest of the entertainment world (the theory goes), it’s actively under siege -- faced with obstacles both (a) unique to itself and (b) greater than those confronting any other kind of entertainment.
This, to be blunt, is a bunch of crap.
Another myth of the industry is that creative people are treated unusually badly -- more so than any other entertainment field, by virtue of a combination of poor pay and lack of respect for their rights. There’s no doubt that options for ownership were pretty limited prior to about 1980, and that there’s still plenty of room for improvement. But relative to the rest of the world, this myth is also crap.
I’ve also remarked on the tendency for comics people to blame all their troubles on the supremacy of superheroes -- and to claim that no other art form has so severely limited its own possibilities. This is a particularly common stance in indy comics, where subsistence-level sales are the norm and where Marvel and DC form a convenient scapegoat for the ills of the industry. And this, too, is crap.
A few communiques from the “outside world” have reinforced those beliefs for me lately. So let’s try a few thought-experiments.
First up is an article in Publisher’s Weekly, the trade journal of the book industry. The magazine recently held a summit where book people at various levels of that industry spoke about the woes facing publishing. You can read the whole thing <a href="http://publishersweekly.reviewsnews.com/index.asp?layout=article&articleid=CA301155" target="_blank"> here</a> and I encourage you to do so -- it’s fascinating. But here’s just one taste, from the first speaker at the summit:
“John Marmaduke, president and CEO of Hastings Entertainment…who was addressing the view from the retail market, emphasized that books have entertainment competitors whose suppliers are doing a better job at servicing retailers and reaching consumers than book publishers. In addition, high prices relative to other forms of entertainment and a ‘command’ marketing approach by publishers are hurting the sales of books.”
The thought-experiment: Try substituting “comics” for “books” and see if it sounds familiar.
Marmaduke particularly chastises publishers for getting their product to market (and providing reorders) too slowly. Interestingly, when he talks about pricing, he’s not advocating across-the-board reductions, but a shift to the DVD-and-music-industry model of discounting hot, best-selling products to move them faster and get people into stores. Food for thought as graphic novels become a bigger and bigger part of the comics industry.
One of Marmaduke’s suggestions for bookstores is commonly followed by many (though not all) comics retailers: the “new book” (or comic) wall, where a variety of new books in different genres are displayed. “That’s where publishers win or lose the battle with the consumer,” he says.
Some of the suggestions made by Marmaduke, and others in the PW article, are applicable to comics, and some aren’t. (Some are pretty bad ideas for the book trade, too.) But the point is: The fight to attract entertainment consumers isn’t one that comics fight in a vacuum. Cable and network TV, advertiser-supported websites, CDs, DVDs, theatrical films…they’re all in the same boat.
And the proliferation of entertainment options means that each medium, each publisher, each individual work, has to fight all the harder. Yes, cable TV has had widespread penetration for twenty-odd years. But I’ve now got 200 channels, and a few of them (like BBC America, or TechTV) actually deliver me interesting content that I didn’t have available before. You want me to read Thor? You’re not just competing with Action Comics, but with Manchild and Fresh Gear. (Neither of which are S&M shows, though they both sound like it. Hmmm…)
So myth #1: crap. On to #2:
<img src="http://www.newsarama.com/flowers/clove.jpg" width="174" height="268" border="0" hspace="2" align="left">A few years ago, Courtney Love wrote a fascinating article called “Courtney Love Does the Math” for salon.com; it can be found <a href="http://dir.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/love/index.html" target="_blank"> here</a>. Love penned it as a response to music-industry complaints about file-sharing piracy, in an attempt to point out that far worse damage is done to artists by the record labels themselves. Now, Love has her lapses in the areas of judgment, good taste, and public behavior. But this is an exhaustive, nuts-and-bolts analysis of where the money goes in a typical new artist’s recording contract. Again, I highly recommend it.
The economics of the music industry are very different from comics’ -- most significantly, it costs a hell of a lot more to record, press, and distribute an album than it does to publish a comic. Love analyzes the way a band can wind up with almost nothing to live on and no profits even after having a chart-topping CD, and having been advanced $1 million to record the thing.
The article is a bit one-sided, and completely ignores the fact that most first records aren’t chart-topping hits, leaving the record company to take a loss on all or most of that $1 million (plus pressing and distribution costs). But check out what Love says about ownership:
“Worst of all, after all this, the band owns none of its work...they can pay the mortgage forever but they'll never own the house…When you look at the legal line on a CD, it says copyright 1976 Atlantic Records or copyright 1996 RCA Records. When you look at a book, though, it'll say something like copyright 1999 Susan Faludi, or David Foster Wallace. Authors own their books and license them to publishers. When the contract runs out, writers gets their books back. But record companies own our copyrights forever.”
Again: Try substituting “writer/artist” for “band” and Your Favorite Evil Monolith Comic Company for Atlantic Records. Then see if the sentence rings a few bells.
I’m certainly not suggesting that, because other industries have it just as bad, comics creators should shut up about their problems. But we all have to consider the bigger picture. If you’re going to be a professional writer, artist, or recording artist -- if you’re approaching it as a career in addition to a calling or an art form -- odds are you’re going to have to make a few compromises somewhere along the line. The trick is weighing the options, pushing for what you can, and deciding the value of a specific kind of exposure or a certain lifestyle.
On to the third myth:
You may have heard of a book called Mcsweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, edited by Michael Chabon, author of the Pulitzer-Prize-winning comics-themed novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. The Treasury originally saw print as a special issue ofMcsweeney’s Quarterly, an eclectic mixed-media magazine published by Dave Eggers, author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.
<img src="http://www.newsarama.com/flowers/mcswcover.jpg" width="300" height="467" border="0" hspace="2" align="right">The Mcsweeney’s Treasury grew out of a challenge that Chabon made to a number of prominent fiction writers, both literary and genre-specialists: Write a plot-based short story in any of the numerous genres that once flourished in pulp magazines, and have since died out in short form. Chabon describes his “semi-coherent, ill-reasoned, and doubtless mistaken rant on the subject” as follows (in part):
“Imagine that, sometime about 1950, it had been decide, collectively, informally, a little at a time, but with finality, to proscribe every kind of novel from the canon of the future but the nurse romance. Not merely from the critical canon, but from the store racks and library shelves as well. Nobody could be paid, published, lionized, or cherished among the gods of literature for writing any kind of fiction other than nurse romances…Instead of ‘the novel’ and ‘the nurse romance,’…try it with ‘short fiction’ and ‘the contemporary, quotidian, plotless, moment-of-truth revelatory story.’ Suddenly you find yourself sitting right back in your very own universe.”
Now try the same substitution with “comics” and “superheroes.” (Given Chabon’s affection for and familiarity with the comics field, I doubt the parallels have escaped him.) Just as Raymond Carver and a few others came to dominate the short-story medium, Jack Kirby and a number of other superhero practitioners took over comics. (And, unsurprisingly, Carver and Kirby both outshine most of their imitators.)
I tend to think we’re in a period of adjustment right now in comics. Other genres are rising, gaining in both popularity and artistic maturity. (Given their level of sophistication, 1960s-70s “mystery” comics weren’t going to drag in massive new readerships, any more than The Metal Men did.) But the answer isn’t to banish or dump on superheroes -- it’s to publish a variety of good work and fight to get it noticed.
The Mcsweeney’s Treasury, incidentally, is excellent, and beautifully illustrated in neo-pulp style by <a href="http://www.newsarama.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=00020 8" target="_blank"> Howard Chaykin</a>. Uneven, of course, like almost any anthology; but a great sampler of contemporary fiction writers, and a very successful experiment besides.
Good works and experiments that take chances. That’s what all the fields need: books, CDs, short fiction, and, yes, comics. Comics creators are playing in the deep waters now -- let’s not act like all our problems are special and unique. Let’s get out there and make some noise.
**
Stuart Moore has been a writer, a comics editor for Vertigo and Marvel Knights, a kitchen worker, a book editor, and the nighttime manager of the Lawrenceville, NJ Woolworth's curtain department. He has won the Will Eisner award for Best Editor 1996 and the Don Thompson Award for Favorite Editor 1999.
My current comics work: JUSTICE LEAGUE ADVENTURES #22, coming in August, features a nice stand-alone story spotlighting Green Lantern and Hawkgirl; details and a great cover image at <a href="http://www.dccomics.com/comics/dc_display.html?cm_dc_itemCode=jladv22&month=August" target="_blank">http://www.dccomics.com/comics/dc_display.html?cm_dc_itemCode=jladv22&month=August</a> . Next up is LONE, a new future-western series from Dark Horse/Rocket Comics in September. More details on these and other new projects, including GIANT ROBOT WARRIORS, VAMPIRELLA, and PARA, at: <a href="http://www.newsarama.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=00026 1" target="_blank">http://www.newsarama.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=00026 1</a> and <a href="http://www.comicon.com/cgi-bin/pulse.cgi?http%3A//www.comicon.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi%3Fubb%3Dget_topic%26f%3D3 6%26t%3D001073" target="_blank">http://www.comicon.com/cgi-bin/pulse.cgi?http%3A//www.comicon.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi%3Fubb%3Dget_topic%26f%3D3 6%26t%3D001073</a> . See you in two weeks…