Obama gets the 90's superhero vote!!!

Dark Knight made Robert Downey Jr feel dumb

in a recent interview for moviehole.net, star of the Iron Man movie, Robert Downey Jr stated that he felt the Batman movie the Dark Knight was to fast and intellectual.

He then cursed DC comics.

I'm happy that giving the box office numbers not to many people share Downey's dislike of the latest Batman film.

But I think it's funny that we get a Batman movie that is closer to the comic then say the 60's TV show and people (who normal see comics as being dumb kids fair) think the film is to smart (or in most cases violent)

why teens/young adult like manga over american comics

it's not news to people who know comics that comics (at least American) sells to teens has been lagging for sometime.

while Manga has gone through a big explosion among teenagers (of course that peak may or may not have been reached yet)

there has been much talk about why that is among both comic pros and comic fans.

wanting to find a good answer, over the weekend I did a very unscientific poll to find the answer.

last Sunday I posted a question on yahoo answers to find out what do teens and young adults find appealing in manga/anime that they don't find in American comics.

I got a 6 responses back

3 young ladies said they like manga because it is more diverse then american comics which they feel are just super hero titles.

2 people out of that 3 think manga's art is better.

one person says that he like manga because it is more violent and risque

and one guy who thanks american comics are over used and doesn't like all the different universe versions of characters (like the ultimate marvel line) He also doesn't like the fact that you have to follow more then one title to get the story. He also stated that he feels american comics have to much talking and not enough action.

and one guy who made fun of everyone else who answered.

I put the question up for voting (if you haven't used Y!A people pick the best answer to a question). right now the guy who mocks everyone is in the lead which jacked up what I was hoping for since I really wanted to find which of those response people agreed with the most.

yes we who read comics know it is more then just superheroes but giving that half of the respondents didn't know that I think that shows a big problem comics have and that is getting the public to know comics are more then just men in tights.

DC gets a new Milestone

the character from the Milestone comic book company will now be part of the DC universe.

I'm a bit mixed on this news.

one part of me is jumping up and down because I loved (ok still love) the comics that Milestone made in the 90s.

But I am a sad because I'm a little nervous that way heroes of color get treated in comics sooner or later a crappy writer will get their hands on a milestone character and jack them up.

and on the business end I wondering does this mean the guys who owned milestone sold their characters to dc? Does this mean one of the first Black comic book companies is no longer black owned.

Dark knight

saw the last batman movie yesterday and I have to say it has been the best batman movies I've seen in a long time (though I didn't watch batman begins because I was still to scared after watching the batman movies before it)

Ledger was great as the Joker. For a guy who says he didn't read many comics as a kid he really did pulled off the madness of the joker seen in the comics.

and this movie did something that I think the Joel Schumacher failed to do (and suffered greatly for it) and those was to take time and actually develop the villain characters.

the Joker doesn't need any real back story (and luckly they didn't give him a reason for being)

but it was a good thing that the movie made harvey dent a real character.

folks at Stan Lee Media try to make theirs marvel...er I mean make marvel theirs

James Nesfield and other shareholders of Stan Lee Media (but not Stan Lee himself) are suing Marvel saying that they hold a financial interest in the characters Stan Lee created for Marvel.

Motley fools point out that this may all be due to a miss understanding when Lee said that when is contracted with Marvel was cancelled in 98 (when Marvel when bankrupt) he could do whatever he want.

More likely it he meant that he could now work for other companies outside of Marvel.

But he people behind the lawsuit seemed to think that the ownership when back to Stan.

Of course even if that was true, there is a big difference about the rights of the characters going back to Stan Lee and them going to a company he started, but no longer is in charge of.

DC big event season change

A few days ago I talked about the fact that DC’s Final Crisis wasn’t doing as well in the sells as most people expected it to and how much more Marvel’s Secret Invasion sold.

And the I released that for the most part Marvel always out sales DC and with the big events that is also usually the same. The last time DC had a book at the number one spot was when it released Infinite Crisis.

The reason it was the number one title when it was released was the one-two punch of being a big even mini series and the fact that Marvel didn’t have a big event at the same time.

If DC is going to keep doing big events maybe they should rethink the ideal of having it in the summer but instead pick another time of year to do so when Marvel is not release their big event.

Truth be told I am not sure why the big events still usually happen in the summer. Sure I understood why they used to be in the summer. It was the time period of highest sales due to kids being home from school. But giving that today most of the comic readers are adults and spending is pretty steady throughout the year I don’t see why the big two still focus their events to come out during the summer.

Do them in the spring or fall instead.

But back to DC. The reason I say they should think about going off season is because they usually don’t come out on top when they try to go toe-to-toe with Marvel. By putting out a big event series when Marvel isn’t you nearly insured that you will get the top spot in the sales charts.

And when Marvel switches it’s game plan to have it’s event to come out whatever new season you did last you can just switch and put out your events at yet another time of year.

DC sales crisis

well Marvel's big cross over event has sold a lot more copies then DC cross over event

people on the net are giving there reasons.

Secert Invasion had more multiple covers
Count Down sucked and so everyone is scared to pick up Final Crisis
There is a large anti Morrison fanbase (who are these sick people?)


put looking at the over all sales chart I notice that Marvel in general seems to be more popular then DC. the majority of the top 20 comics are from marvel...actually most of the top 50 books seem to be from marvel.

I think a big factor might actually be that their are more Marvel fans in this current comic book market then DC fans. So with both companies having big cross events at the same time you can expected marvel to have higher sells because marvel in general has more fans.

I think that is the base of the problem (though I would be suprised if some of the things I listed had some effects on sales)

OK the Manga market is over flooded…so what’s next?

Ok recently Tokyo Pop had to make cuts in its line of manga and their staff.

The reason is a combination of the economy doing badly and also the fact that Tokyo Pop flooded the market with it’s manga and manga like products, such as the American made manga and comics from other Asian countries.

The bad economy couldn’t be helped but the later is something that happens in the comic book industry time after time. When a market gets big everyone jumps into and floods the market. Even though Tokyo Pop was an early adopter into the American manga market they did extend their line widely because of the success of manga as other people where also trying to cash in the manga craze (such as DC’s CMX line) and it seems like they might be the first to take a hit.

Now I don’t think this is the end of the market for manga titles in America, in fact far from it. I just think right now is a time for a correction.

Looking back similar things have happened time and time again in the comic industry. In the 80’s there was a boom of black and white comics. After the success of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles the market was flooded with B & W comics and after a while that market crashed. Now Black and White comics didn’t go away, they are still a mainstay, they are just not as big a force as they where.

And then in the 90’s the market was flooded with a bunch of new comic book companies, most of which where super hero lines. Even though most of these companies are now gone, super heroes are still around and there are still even some that are being done by people outside of the big 2.

Which makes me wonder since manga looks like it’s cooling off and is no longer the hot new thing everyone wants to jump on and now just a format/genre like any other, I wonder what will be the next thing everyone wants to jump on and over flood the market.

There might be some time before we can tell. Those type of books may or may not already be on the market.

Right now it could be anything. Horror comics, Furries, Slice of life, or prawn porn.

Marvel and DC please take a break from crossovers

Recently it seems that the big two have been running endless crossovers back to back.



I have to be honest I feel a bit burned out about them, actually to be honest I’ve been pretty much burned out on crossovers for nearly a decade and that was when the big two only had big company wide crossover events once a year.



But now they seem to be having crossovers back to back with out a break. Screw back to back DC has just finished a year long crossover event and that was just to kick off another crossover event.



But it doesn’t even end there.



Marvel and DC not only have endless crossovers they also have lots of spin off specials and mini-series to tie into them.



I know they do them because they make money. The crossovers are usually at the top of the sells chart and they can give a boost to the titles in the crossover. BUT CAN THEY GIVE IT A REST!!!



I’m not saying they should never do a crossover but please give us a break.



DC and Marvel can you gives us 5 years with out a crossover. Hell if that’s to long how about a year or two.



Just let the creative teams us this time to tell good stories and allow them to do so organically.



Take all the time and money you guys use on the crossovers and use them to do other things. Example all the resource the company uses to hype their crossover event can be used to hype their normal titles.



The time used on plotting their next crossover and how it will effect the their other books could be used in coming up with new ideals for comics. Maybe think of things that will reach new audiences or at the least give the fans sometime good to read.



I know, I know it’s just a pipe dream but sometimes I wonder if sooner or later enough fans will be like me and just get tired of all of these crossovers.



Already I know of many people who don’t read the crossovers (or at least stop buying them in the middle of the their runs because they didn’t like them)



Many of the countdown crossover titles didn’t sell that well.



And even because people are spending so much money on the crossovers, some fans have cut back on their other titles.

Dixon speaks

and it doesn't look like he is setting the blame on his leaving DC on Morrison...sorry conspiracy theorist on scansdaily

Chuck Dixon leaves DC...

Chuck Dixon is no longer writing for DC.

I haven't seen anything that gives a reason why but on scandaily a lot of people want to blame Morrison and his Batman RIP story.

Some think Dixon left DC because Batman's RIP is effecting his book.

of course currently Morrison has had his worked effect by a number of cross overs that DC has running right now.

If the reason Dixon left DC is because of his stories being effected I think the issue lays more with the editors then his fellow writers.

and with all the errors caused by editors keeping writers out of the loop, I think we will need yet a neither crisis mini-series to "fix" everything.

stalwrat cover

a while back I found some comics I did when I was a kid (I think I did these while I was in Jr. High) and thought I will post bits of them up from time to time.

now I have to warn you that these comics are crappy, they look like they were done by a kid...mainly because they where done by a kid.

which is why I am going to name the tags for these comics crappy comics I did as a kid.

because these are just comics I did as a kid I don't really feel like digitaly inking them so I am only going to post pencil drawings (though I will try to see if I can easily make them a dark enought to read)

to start off I'll post the cover for my anthology comic that I created for my younger self called stalwrat:






more to come sooner or later

Why the comic book industry is like the American car industry

I think a large part of this has to do with the fact that I am from Michigan but for a long time I have notice a few big similarities between the American auto industry and the American comic book industry.

I know it might sound crazy at first but let look at it.

They were both invented in America and become popular world wide, to start off with but that is not what I see that makes them similar.

No the similarities are see are much oblique, because I was not around for there heydays but instead long sense they have passed by.

And that’s where I see their similarities, they both are doing poorly for similar reasons.

Both cars and comics have a problem with adopting to what the people want and in doing have lost lots of market share.

The American car industry likes to make big cars. When I was a kid in the 80’s they where slow to realize the market for power cars was going down, which lead the room for smaller Japanese cars to come into the American market.

They then where slow to realize the demand for small eco-friendly cars and focus mainly on SUVs and again paid the price when people started to by Japanese cars.

For the comic industry the big car is the superhero book. Many retailers and publisher focused so much on the superhero book that they let other genre all but die out.

For years the comic book has been losing readers and in the past decade the Japanese have came in and grab much of the market that the American comic book industry could have been reaching out to.

Luckily both industries have been trying to make changes. The American car industry has been focusing on smaller greener cars and there many comic book publishers that print non-cape books.

The sad thing is one wonders if they can ever get their new heydays or not.

I hope they will but like I said I’m a comic book nerd in Michigan and having both industries back at the top would be a great thing for me.

Why did genre diversity die off?

I ran across an old overstreet price guide the other day and flipping through it’s kind of interesting to note just how diverse comics where (at least in terms of genres being published) back in the 40’s-50’s.

Even looking at the big two (or the companies that would become the big two) and a large part of there out put wasn’t superheroes but other genres such as romance, westerns, horror, sci-fi, funny animals or comedies.

I can’t help but wonder what happen to these books. Why did the industry turn their back on so many different types of comics.

I know horror was thrown a big blow in the anit-comic wave of the 50’s lead by the likes of Fredric Wertham and his book Seduction of the Innocent.

And westerns fell out of favor in pop culture.

But I wonder why the large publishers turned way from romance, funny animals and comedy tittles and I guess to some lesser extent sci-fi comics.

These still remain popular genres in every other from of media, why not comics.

All I know is that some say when comic started to get sold primarily in comic shops and not on the new stands these genres started to die off because many of the comic owners where superhero fans and that is what they order.

And of course many of the people working at the big publishers where fans of superheroes and maybe not so much the other types of comics.

Which makes since but giving the size of the market that was around for those old comics it hard to believe that even though the gatekeepers the time didn’t care for anything other then superheroes, that they should have withered away like they did.

Giving that there where at least as many fans of romance comics as superhero titles, I’m surprised that there wasn’t just as many romance fanboys and girls to start romance center comic shops in the early start of the comic shop market.

Same goes with the funny animals and humor.

silly logic: not ording low selling comics will mean stores will sell more

in a recent ICv2's Confessions of a Comic Book Guy column, Steve Bennett is asking retailers to stop ordering comics from the big 2 that sell less then 15,000 copies.

His reasoning is that he thinks that this might help increase sells on other titles and he doesn't understand why DC and Marvel put these books out.

Let me break it down for you steve

The reason Marvel and DC keep putting out new titles is because they think they can sell. These characters either have fans or the company thought they might be able to create something new and build a fanbase for it.

this is a good thing.

Now as we can see a lot of things don't sell as well as they would hope. But people still buy the books maybe not as many people reading x-men or JSA but they have there readers.

as long as book has enough readers it should still be printed, now once it doesn't make a profit...then I say kill that sucker.

Now the ideal of stores not ordering these low selling titles will help increase sells of other books is something I am having a hard time following.

there might be a slim chance of the fan on these low selling books will simply buy another book if the book they like is no longer published but really that is not 100%.

The fan might already be reading some of the big selling titles and not pick up a new title to replace the one he was reading or that low selling book might be the only comic this fan buys and once that is gone he has no reason for returning to the store.

so canning the book could lead to a retailer making less sales not more.

and as you stated retailers now what they are doing, the reason these title sell so low is because the retailers knows that there isn't much demand for them but they are sure they can sell a few copies of the book.

Rory Roth: we will miss you

I am sadden that my first offical post has to be about bad news but Rory Roth has passed away.

for those who didn't know Rory Root was the owner of THE comic book store Comic Relief. he was a ground breaker in comic book retail and a very nice guy.

I've never meet the man in real life but he did post on some forums I go to but even though I only kinda of knew him I am still saddened by the news of his death.

the last part of the link trilogy will I do a prequel?

maybe? but for right now lets see how much space I can fell here first

this is the space in between the panels

this is the space in between the panels

links

I'm just setting a few pages a side for links