I’m probably going to expand upon this in “But I Digress”, but…
I was at a playground yesterday with Caroline. There was a little boy there, seven years old, named Steven. He was talking to other kids about Spider-Man, and what a big Spider-Man fan he was. He was showing off his Spidey sneakers very proudly.
And I said to him, “Do you read Spider-Man comics?”
He looked at me oddly and said, “No.”
“Why not?”
“I watch the movies,” he said. “And I play the video game. I beat Doc Ock,” he added proudly.
“Okay, but…Spider-Man’s a comic book character. Aren’t you at all interested in reading the comic?”
He shook his head. His ten year old brother said, “Why should he?”
I said, “Well, because you keep watching the movies, it’s the same story. What about new adventures, new stories about Spider-Man?”
The big brother shrugged and said, “He watches the cartoon.”
“I watch the cartoon,” Steve echoed. “And the movies. And play the game. I’m a Spider-Man fan!”
Spidey’s biggest fan…except for, y’know, the whole comic book thing. That he really doesn’t care about.
And why should he? How many have you, in the past five years, have seen a James Bond movie or played the video game? Now…how many of you have read a James Bond book? Seen a Sherlock Holmes film or a repeat of the Jeremy Brett TV series? As opposed to reading Conan Doyle or any of the many pastiches?
Comics used to be the only venue for following the adventures of iconic heroes, just as books were once the only means of keeping up with literary heroes. And now the heros’ popularity has outstripped any need for literature…or readers.
And you wonder why comics are hemorrhaging readers.
PAD
• 
“3)most comics have overly complex storylines and subplots from 50 issues before and that is too much for most kids to handle.”
I don’t think that it’s too much for kids to handle if they have been there from the beginning. The problem is there isn’t really a beginning place anymore. Mega crossovers and continuing storylines might keep most current readers, but it does nothing to attract new readers.
My young niece, age 8, reads Archie comics. I’d absolutely love to get her hooked on a truly kickass heroine, someone to help counteract the Barbie and Bratz influence in her very pink life. Where is the young Buffy of comic books, minus the gore?
I can think of two, though neither one seems to be producing new material right at the moment.
1) Trina Robbins’ GO GIRL! (distributed by Image, I think)
2) James Robinson and Paul Smith’s LEAVE IT TO CHANCE, which I can’t recommend enough. (This one’s definitely Image.) I keep hoping some new material’s going to be produced one of these days.
Mark:
Well, you’ve got one advantage: you are a lot more established in life and career when you started with the kids – we started right away on all of it – while still trying to retire debt.
This is true, though having just bought a house and moved cross-country we’ve got an awful lot of debt all of a sudden. (The house debt is fine — it’s all the credit-card bills we piled up for trips east and for the move-related stuff.)
I wonder if you could have a comic book on Socrates?
Well, he’s not likely to shift around and make it fall off. Lumpy reading surface, though.
TWL
Mangas – UGH! 🙁 My husband likes Mangas but they just put me off. I find them extremely sexist. I often leave when he puts them on, I just can`t bear to watch them. They are also often extremely violent, unnecessarily so. Not to mention that I find the extreme style of huge eyes and piggy bank lips extremely ugly.
How exatly do you watch a manga? Put it on a table and keep an eye on it in case it moves?
Seriously, if you want one reason why people don’t read comics, it’s because they can’t separate the medium from the content in exactly this way, and their view of the medium is reduced to a crude stereotype. (In the case of American comics, it’s that they’re all about steroid cases and DDD-chested bimbos in tights beating each other senseless.) If a surprising number of comics fans can’t be bothered to understand the rudiments of a related medium, why should we be surprised that the general public won’t do the same for the medium we like?
(This even extends to comics professionals, BTW. I lost all respect for Bill Watterson when I read the “Calvin & Hobbes” 10th anniversary collection. After pleading in the introduction for people to separate medium and content and appreciate the potential of the comic strip as art, he then reprinted a strip with Calvin reading a superhero comic book, giving basically the assessment I gave above, and adding the comment “Comic books are stupid.” Mote, beam, eye.)
Hmm.
I don’t really buy comics anymore. They take up too much space, take up too much time to get organized so you can read them, and (for the cost) they’re rediculous. I occasionally buy graphic novels these days, although I’m as likely to either get them from the library or else read them at Borders while sipping a coffee.
But the price thing is interesting, because another fandom I’m involved in – role playing games – also has arguments about price. It’s getting to the point where books that used to cost $30 in the 80’s now are costing $50, and people are finding that they’re just not willing to buy books at that cost… even though a $50 book, used for 4 hours of enjoyment for a couple of months, is cheaper than a lot of similar hobbies.
I doubt I’d be as likely to buy per-issue comics if they were cheaper – there’s other reasons I no longer like them. But it strikes me that there’s a real problem there.
I wonder if you could have a comic book on Socrates?
Try Action Philosophers – It isn’s Socrates, but it is Plato (among others)
Action Philosophers
You weren’t kidding. I’m not sure if I should laugh or cry (or both!)
A few years ago I took a course on philosophy in Sci-Fi. If philosophical ideas can often be part of sci-fi stories, can’t they be part of comics too?
Socrates was a capable soldier in the Peloponesian war. Plato says that courage is knowledge, understanding what not to fear. Are Vulcans immune to fear?
I wonder if a writer in Peter David’s calibre, or his collegues would enjoy writing comics that would appeal to 7 year olds or wider audiences than the current readers? Would they like to write in different format than the one now common in comics?
Would the people on this thread want to read such stories?
Is there room in the market for stories adapted to different ages?
Although, the holy grail is something like Harry Potter, which seems to work for everybody.
I personaly gradualy dropped Marvel’s X titles and such for Crossgen. At a certain point I stopped caring about the next twist. My sister became a comic book reader through Crossgen, although she was a little into fantasy before. After Crossgen we both moved to darker comics like Vertigo and Fallen Angel. But I do sometimes miss the old X titles. I just don’t know if I have the patience for all those repeating twists anymore.
but I have had success burning CDs with tunes I’ve downloaded from ITunes
One issue I have is the complete lack of ability to use the music program I prefer (winamp) to play the music.
If you buy a CD, more than likely, it’s going to work on 99.9% of CD players because they are standardized.
Digital media is entirely hit and miss, without resorting to throwing away money, time and discs to burn a cd, then rerip it into a more useful format.
My iTunes collection consists of just under 80megs of files. Nothing like wasting a 700meg disc on that.
That, and iTunes policy is that you only get to download tracks once. Even MLB.com isn’t that draconian, allowing 3 downloads in case something happens to your files.
Here’s a perfect example of what I was talking about earlier. Today, I picked up _The OMAC Project_ #4, one of the DC mini series that ties in to the upcoming _Infinite Crisis._
SPOILERS for this series and _DC Countdown_ follow:
In _D.C. Countdown_ Max Lord murders Blue Beetle. In _OMAC Project_, Batman learns that Beetle is dead (but not at whose hands), and that a satellite surveillance system he created is no longer under his control. By issue three, Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman are all aware that a new incarnation of Checkmate are somehow connected with Beetle’s death, the satellite problem, and other factors. All three vow to look into matters. Max Lord, who’s watching on various monitors, takes certain defensive steps, including, apparently using his powers of mental control to control Clark Kent.
That’s how issue three ends. How does issue four open? A montage of five rectangular panels of Supes fighting Wonder Woman, Max ensnared in her lasso, and Max saying “kill me.” Turn the page, and we have a splash of Wonder Woman standing over Max’s body, with a shocked Supes, a bloody hand clutching his throat, asking what she’s done.
Max, for his part, clearly has blood trickling from his nose, indicating he’d used his powers to make Wonder Woman kill him (the nosebleeds are a side effect).
Now here’s one of the main problems I have with this. A reader who picked up this issue without having seen any of the previous three issues isn’t going to know _why_ Superman and Wonder Woman were fighting; a reader unfamiliar with Max Lord won’t know the significance of the nosebleeds; there’s no explanation of what happened to Batman to cause him to be bandaged and hooked up to an I.V.; and a new reader isn’t going to understand most of what else going on in the issue.
After reading it, I went back and looked at the last page of #3, which told me to read three _Superman_ books and an issue of _Wonder Woman_ to find out what what happens between _OMAC Project_ #3 and 4. Fair enough; but again, what if #4 was someone’s first issue, and their store no longer had #3 on hand? Would it have been so hard to have a one or two sentence re-cap on the first page of #4 basically saying what Max had been up to and _why_ Supes and Wondy were fighting? Would it have been so hard to say “See titles X, Y and Z for the full story.”? I don’t think so. It would have made the issue a bit more new reader friendly.
Now here’s another question. Inevitably, _OMAC Project_ will be collected in a trade format. But will this trade include those three _Superman_ and one _Wonder Woman_ titles set between issues three and four; or will readers of the trade be stuck wondering what happened that led to Max lying dead at her feet?
Even the cover to #4 isn’t very new reader friendly, since it doesn’t depict the events of the story.
To be fair, if someone read _DC Countdown_ and issues 1-3 of _OMAC Project_, they’d understand _most_ of what’s going on and who the players are (they’d know, for example, that Sasha Bordeaux has some connection with Batman, but not what that connection is, or any background on who she is, or how she came to be in the position she’s in). But again, that presupposes they’ve been with the series from the beginning.
But you can’t assume everyone is going to read a comicbook series (regular or mini) beginning with the first issue. DC (and Marvel, and everyone else) has to remember that _every_ comicbook is _someone’s_ first. Again, someone picking up _OMAC Project_ #4 as their first issue, perhaps because they liked the cover, is going to have a _lot_ of unaswered questions. Especially if issue #3 had already sold out.
Sheesh. Is DC _trying_ to keep new readers away?
On a completely unrelated note, does anyone else look at that “got milk?” ad with Batman sporting the milk mustache and think the “mustache” makes him look like Jim Gordon in the batsuit?
Rick
P.S. I also picked up _Hulk_ #85. I liked Banner’s “memo.”
You know what else I liked? The capsule summary on the first page that told me what I need to know about this “House of M” tie in (which I’m not reading) in order to understand what’s going on with Banner and the Hulk. There are a few things going on in _Hulk_ that might still confuse a new reader, but overall, that issue was _much_ more new reader friendly than _OMAC Project_ #4. Kudos to your efforts in that regard, PAD.
Having just come home from the bar, and having just skimmed thru these posts, this may have been covered. I noticed some posts about Superman’s death. I believe the situation with comics today would be better if Supes had actually died(and stayed dead). And if during the Scarlet Spider arc, Peter should have been the clone and left for good or died. Things like this would have allowed writers ‘to start over from scratch’. Maybe other readers, like myself, are tired of reading stories that we know will have no impact on the ‘status quo’. No matter how ‘shocking’ a story arc is, we know things will go back to ‘normal’.
O.K., I hit the enter key something like 20 times after I said spoilers would follow. Why do said spoilers thus appear only _two_ lines below?
Rick
How many folks out there ARE reading SOULSEARCHERS? It’s one of my favorites! Heck, I enjoy EVERYTHING Claypool publishes! If you haven’t given SOULSEARCHERS or DEADBEATS a try, you owe it to yourselves to see what I’m talking about. Great art, fantastic stories, and more story than 3 or 4 issues of most “mainstream” comics. They’ve been under the radar of most comic readers for YEARS, but they give you more bang for your buck than most comics.
Seriously. Ask your local retailer — they’re worth a shot!!!
Derek
St. Paul, MN
Y’know, the resolution may have come during my economically-enforced comics hiatus, but the last I saw of ol’ “Ben Reilly”, he was headed out West. Has that ever been followed up on?
“Mangas – UGH! 🙁 My husband likes Mangas but they just put me off. I find them extremely sexist. I often leave when he puts them on, I just can`t bear to watch them. They are also often extremely violent, unnecessarily so. Not to mention that I find the extreme style of huge eyes and piggy bank lips extremely ugly.”
*sigh* Alright, I’ll TRY to keep this brief, since it’s kind of a digression…
First, let’s just get it out of the way that manga is just the print comics. Anime is the animation.
Now to the important part. To make such blanket statements about manga or anime is lazy thinking and stereotyping, exactly the same thing you run into with people who don’t actually know anything about western comics. They see Superman and Spider-Man and think that’s all there is.
The anime and manga market have a huge range of art styles, subject matter, and quality. For every Dragonball, there’s a Grave of the Fireflies. For every Ninja Scroll or Wicked City, there’s a Kiki’s Delivery Service or an Azumanga Daioh. So, your hubby likes violent action and harem comedies. Nobody’s forcing you to watch, but instead of disparaging the entire art form (which is, frankly, insulting to a great many talented writers and artists), you might look up some lighter fare or shoujo, and likely be pleasantly surprised.
-Rex Hondo-
Sign of the times…
From a strictly arithmetical point of view, this youngster actually knows less than 5% of his hero’s adventures, which makes him a poor fan indeed.
From a social point of view, then, those parents probably need a serious kick in the rear end who raise their children with TV as the baby sitter. Reading requires an effort and it needs to be taught early to really master it then appreciate it. Just imagining that in thirty years these kids will be in charge of the world sends shivers down my spine. And you thought GW Bush was bad? Wait till you see the MTV generation in charge.
From the comic book point of view now I see two problems. First one is contents. Serialization is not really an issue, since Stan Lee made it successful in the 60’s. Readers were hooked with a cliffhanger at the end of each issue and were coming back for more. Comics were fun and good entertainment value compared to movies. Now price raises and decompression changed that. Today’s comics are written by competent dialoguists who thing they are screenwriters or novelists. A comic book is read in 5 minutes tops and hardly anything sustains attention, no recap of past issues, no cliffhanger worth coming back for the casual reader.
Comics as the americans know them will die as readers wait for the trade.
Comic books are going the way of the adventure comic strip, for the same reasons, into oblivion. Indeed it is time to switch format to face the second problem, which is distribution. Years ago MAD made the right move switching from comics to magazine to reach a wider audience. As a french reader I can easily imagine a weekly BATMAN magazine which would contain serialized stories as well as news about the related DC characters in all other licensing venues, including toys, movies, video games… If magazines about Star Wars or Buffy or Smallville sell, then why not Wonder Woman or Avengers?
Blue Beetle.
Didn’t Blue Beetle die in the whole Superman Dies bit?
And, talk about your useless “superhero”, I thought Blue Beetle fit the bill pretty well. 🙂
I think the solution to that would be to give the kid a comic.
It’s much easier to get a kid interested in something if they actually have it in their hand, than if they have to go to the store and convince their mom to buy it for them, when they’ve never bought one before.
I think we should give the 7 year old a pass. Kids that young don’t really read anything
7 was the age when I really started getting into comics. And I was reading other stuff before that.
Comics are a lawn and comic book shops are the sprinklers.
I’d say comic book shops are the nozzle. Did you buy your first comic in a comic book shop? Me neither. Hardly anyone has. You first get into the hobby through casual purchases at a non-specialty store, then you graduate. But sometime in the ’90s, we unscrewed the nozzle and threw away the rest of the sprinker. Now we’ve got a new sprinkler (bookstores), but there’s still some tightening that needs to be done before the water reaches all the spots it needs to.
Did I kill the metaphor yet?
Aside from the Justice League comic based on the animated show, I can’t think of a mainstream superhero title that I can easily find and toss at a budding reader to hook ’em.
Spider-Girl
“Didn’t Blue Beetle die in the whole Superman Dies bit?
And, talk about your useless “superhero”, I thought Blue Beetle fit the bill pretty well. :)”
He got his face slammed in a car or something, hurt real bad, but ‘e got bett’r.
Useless? He’s Spider Man and Batman, all rolled into one quipping bug-eyed package. Or, maybe he’s just a lighter-hearted Batman. Or a more gimmacky Spider Man.
Blue and Gold should have had their own series…
Haven’t read all the thread, so sorry if this is a repeat:
My kids read like crazy (my wife and I had a discussion this morning that perhaps my daughter reads too much… she prefers the written word to people because people die and words don’t…). My son loves comics, my daughter thinks the pictures get in the way and slow things down (maybe a gender/visual thing).
I will not shell out what they are asking for comics today. I used to get them free when I was in the biz, and paying ridiculous prices for them ain’t gonna happen (I understand better than most what goes into making them, but it still only takes 10 minutes to read and THAT is where the cost has to balance).
I like online comics, but again I’m not paying much for them. If there was a site I could pay five bucks to download ten or twenty comics, I’d do it. Beyond that, nope.
Well, I am afraid us old fogies remember when all comics were 12 cents, so as a kid, it took 6 soda bottles to get one comic book… 😎
I think the serial vs. stand alone issue is a valid one. When I was 7, I was reading comics, but only DC. The Marvel long term continuity thing turned me off. I liked to have the start and finish of the story in the same mag, not have to wait till next month just to get the next little part of the story.
Then, when I got older, I started appreciating the more involved story lines. Of course, I was also reading hundreds of books a year at the same time…
Charlie
Just a last remark about the Manga/Anime topic: Of course I am not an expert and why should I try to become one when that genre is not my cup of tea? Of course there are various shades of styles when looking at artwork and stories but I don`t find the vast marjority very appealing. Well, for example I have watched in full Ghost in a Shell, Wicked City, Armitage III, Street Fighter and OEDO 808 (something like that). The last one is, by the way, the only one I liked in spite of the strong violence and the language. But I liked the artwork a lot, the stories were interesting and the music fitted very well.
I have seen more, I just don`t remember the titles.
Nevertheless, I resent it to be told that because I don`t LIKE something that it is insulting to whoever wrote Manga/Anime and who provided the artwork.
People are completely justified to say that they don`t like superhero comics or westerns. I don`t like Anime/Manga even with rare exceptions of the rule. But I can imagine, even people who don`t like the environment of superhero comics or western might find a story here or there they find appealing for one reason or another.
I may have missed it, but no one seems to have hit what I believe is the real issue. It’s not continuity, or literacy, or even price. It’s impatience.
When I read, say “Incredible Hulk”, I get ten minutes of great story. Then I have to wait a full goldarn month for the next ten minutes. It takes half a year to get a full hour of entertainment (and that’s if I read slow). Even shows like “Lost”, with their interminable summer reruns, gives me much more enjoyment over the course of a year. (And is free, after all…)
I think trades will help this, but then you end up waiting months or years between trades for each storyline. Trust me: If “Smallville” came on for ten minutes every month, or ran a new hour ever six months, no one would bother following it either.
(Yes, you can reread comics, but now kids can rewatch any show they tape, so that’s a wash.)
Not sure what the solution is: I know you can only draw so fast, but this pace will never win anyone over…
Clayton, interesting take, but how then to explain the success of the Clone Wars shorts? They lasted like 7 minutes each, and you had to wait a week for the next one. And 1 of those minutes was always spent in recap. 6 new minutes of material a week, in serialzed form, and people liked it and followed it well enough.
Granted, one of the things that got me out of comics was that I lacked the energy to follow all of the storylines in all the books I was collecting at that point. But you get the same kind of long wait between books and movies. We had a 2 year break between episodes 1-3, each 2 hours long. That’s a longer relative period than the 30 days between comic issues. And some book series have breaks even longer, 3, 4 years or more, between what are effectively chapters of one long story.
While I think delay of story may drive some folks out, that goes back to the serial nature of stories today. If more comics had slef-contained stories, there’s less of a disconnect between issues.
Clayton, interesting take, but how then to explain the success of the Clone Wars shorts?
Well, if you already have at least expanded basic cable, you didn’t have to shell out extra each week to watch them.
So, not a great analogy.
They’d never heard of the series even though it had been coming out for over a year, had gotten rave critical notices, and I’d been pushing it endlessly everywhere I could.
That’s my target audience, and even THEY weren’t trying it.
But the majority of comic readers don’t read the fan press or go to cons or do any of the fan stuff, so how would they have heard of it?
Now excuse me if I am misunderstanding your words (I’d hate to be accused of being John Byrne again), but you appear to be suggesting that your fans are at fault because they have not have heard of some of your more obscure work. Surely this is a failure of the industry to make potential customers aware of a product they would buy?
“Well, if you already have at least expanded basic cable, you didn’t have to shell out extra each week to watch them.
So, not a great analogy.”
Craig, maybe I’m missing something? Clayton specifically excluded price as a factor…his point was that impatience with the product was a barrier to new entry or longevitiy with the comic field. My point is, cost notwithstanding, people have demonstrated in other media that breaks between installments are not a large barrier.
To elaborate on that, the cliffhanger ending was practically invented by the serial format. What better way to ensure continued consumption (whether it involves a monetary exhange or not) of a product than to withhold the ending of the story until next week/month/year? Drag this out too long, though, and you get mounting frustration from the delayed resolution…or what I like to call Robert Jordan Syndrome.
Baerbel,
Nevertheless, I resent it to be told that because I don`t LIKE something that it is insulting to whoever wrote Manga/Anime and who provided the artwork.
I don’t think that’s really the point they were making — it was more that you were lumping all manga together, saying “it’s all like this.” That part, I can see the creators finding as insulting.
I’m not that fond of most manga or anime myself — there have been some exceptions (What’s Michael? is hilarious, Shadow Star is interesting, and I adored Akira when it was first coming out in the US quite a long time ago), but most of it’s just not to my taste.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you saying “tried it, don’t care for it.” I think people were pointing out that it’s a lot more varied in content than your initial blanket assessment was making out to be.
TWL
*Nods* It’s fallacious to refer to manga or anime as a genre, any more than movies or television are genres. It’s an artform, across which all genres are represented. The titles mentioned can hardly be considered an accurate cross-sampling. It would be kind of like saying that since I didn’t like Friday the 13th or the Freddy movies, I have no reason to EVER go to the theater, or assuming that ALL comic books are about super heroes. It’s simply basing a decision on a false assumption.
-Rex Hondo-
Actually, this got me thinking about something, and I’d like to know what people, especially PAD think about the marketability of a Star Trek anthology series similar in format to Star Wars Tales.
Given the relative lack of new Trek in the wake of years upon years worth of new material and ideas, I’d say the Trek universe is wide open to let various authors and artists have at it, go nuts. (within reason)
I know that a few months ago, Tokyopop was in talks to publish a Trek book. I don’t know what ever happened to that, but it seems to me Tokyopop would be in the perfect position to publish a project like this. I just get a little giggly thinking about an S.C.E. story written and drawn with the technical proficiency of Kenichi Sonoda, or the New Frontier crew in some of their lighter moments getting the Ken Akamatsu treatment.
*shrug* Maybe my dream will mix things up too much, but sometimes good things happen when you get your chocolate in somebody else’s peanut butter.
-Rex Hondo-
Craig, maybe I’m missing something? Clayton specifically excluded price as a factor…his point was that impatience with the product was a barrier to new entry or longevitiy with the comic field.
If you’re going to make such a comparison, I just don’t think that comparing something on tv to something you go down to the comic shop and buy every month to be a very good analogy.
My daughter is 5 years old. Her favorite comics are “Teen Titans Go” and the new “Marvel Adventures Fantastic Four.” Old favorites that she asks to have read to her again and again are the “Gotham Girls” mini-series and “The Incredibles.”
I’m sure the pattern here is pretty obvious– she wants to read these comics because she saw them first on TV or at the movies. (Okay, I didn’t take her to see Fantastic Four because it was PG-13 and I didn’t get to check it out myself first, but she got caught up in the hype from the TV commercials, the happy meal toys, her friends all wanting to play FF, etc.) So I always get her the latest issues and read them to her. Every Wednesday she asks me if there were any comic books for her this week.
The two can go hand in hand. My mother was always frustrated that I wanted to read Star Trek books instead of Arthur C. Clarke, but she still bought me the books anyway because I was at least reading. And as I grew older I moved on to Clarke and Asimov (and some guy named David) on my own. (Although now that I think about it, I think I started reading those Apropos and Arthur books by that David guy because I liked his Trek books so much…)
So, if my daughter only wants to read comic books based on what she’s seen on TV– hey, she’s still interested in reading, and that’s where it all starts.
– Fer
I dislike most rap…but I like Luke Ski.
So I have to admit it’s not rap I dislike.
I just don’t identify with the culture much of it is immersed in.
I haven’t seen/read much anime/manga.
I’m not a big fan of extreme violence, so if those titles listed fall in that category, I probably would agree. However, I enjoyed PAD’s Spyboy M.A.N.G.A. And Ranma 1/2.
I don’t think impatience is that big of a deal. The huge waits between Harry Potter books and the ever-growing readership of those same books would be the counterpoint to that. And for a comic-specific example, way back in 2001-2002 Kevin Smith started that Spidey-Black Cat miniseries with a bang, got about 3 issues into it, and has since left all of us hanging while he stopped writing to make “Jersey Girl” (the bášŧárd). The really, really sad part? You bet your bottom dollar if and when he gets around to finishing the series, I’ll jump right back into it. Despite the “real world” frustration of the delay, I really liked the story and hope I get to read its conclusion someday… someday soon…
“Now excuse me if I am misunderstanding your words (I’d hate to be accused of being John Byrne again), but you appear to be suggesting that your fans are at fault because they have not have heard of some of your more obscure work.”
It’s not a matter of fault. It’s that my work on characters who are not tried, true and familiar is “more obscure” specifically *because* they’re not tried, true and familiar. That which isn’t simply doesn’t sink in for the vast majority of fans. They see an ad or promotion for “Fallen Angel,” and it goes right past them. New projects, unfamiliar and strange new characters, is like so much white noise. They just don’t distinguish it.
It’s as if you’re in a crowded airport, and you’re not paying attention to anything that’s being said around you, and suddenly you hear your name. Even if it’s not being said any louder than anything else, your ears still prìçk up.
Same thing. Fans respond to the familiar. In the airport of comics marketing, they’ll respond if they hear “Spider-Man.” “Superman.” “Mutants.” But anything else is a crapshoot.
Again, no “fault” involved. It’s just the way it is. And it’s frustrating.
PAD
“If you’re going to make such a comparison, I just don’t think that comparing something on tv to something you go down to the comic shop and buy every month to be a very good analogy.”
Ok, but to be fair, I didn’t initiate it. Clayton included TV shows in his original post.
I’m not trying to beat up on anyone. I think Clayton’s hit on one of the reasons that keep some people out of comics. And there’s been numerous people noting how the attention span of Americans seems to be about 3 minutes.
“I dislike most rap…but I like Luke Ski. So I have to admit it’s not rap I dislike”
See, whereas I like some rap, but cannot stand Luke Ski. Admittedly, some of that stems from the way he bills himself: “The Great Luke Ski.” I’m sorry. If you’re a singer and you’re preceded by the words, “The Great,” then the name following it dámņëd well better be “Sam Cooke,” “Roy Orbison,” “Nat King Cole,” or something like that.
PAD
It’s as if you’re in a crowded airport, and you’re not paying attention to anything that’s being said around you, and suddenly you hear your name. Even if it’s not being said any louder than anything else, your ears still prìçk up.
Same thing. Fans respond to the familiar. In the airport of comics marketing, they’ll respond if they hear “Spider-Man.” “Superman.” “Mutants.” But anything else is a crapshoot.
Okay, I agree with you there up to a point. I have that problem with books as well as comics, but it’s worse with comics because they are so transient and may only be on the shelf (if they get that far) for a couple of weeks.
The point where we part company is that one of the familiar things as far as I am concerned (and on which a lot of book and comic promotion is based) is author identification. With such a sea of choices, the first thing I do to reduce the noise is to look for favourite writers and artists. But even so I find that I miss things by people whose work I would order sight unseen if I was aware of it.
I know there are plenty of fans who will only buy Marvel or only buy Spider-Man or whatever other clique they are a member of, but you were talking about fans who said they read everything you write, which didn’t sound like Marvel zombies to me. Were they interested in your work outside comics? Did they read your Star Trek novels? If the answer is yes then it seems likely that they would have been interested in Fallen Angel or Soulsearchers if they had been aware of them.
There are ways of keeping fans up to date with a creator’s publications, and blogs and newsletters are great for fans that have computers, though one more disenfranchisement for those who don’t (but that’s another issue). Now if only you could get every work you publish to include an URL that keeps an up to date list of your current and forthcomig work. Then they’d have no excuse for the blank stares…
M
“DC (and Marvel, and everyone else) has to remember that _every_ comicbook is _someone’s_ first.” — Rick Keating
“New projects, unfamiliar and strange new characters, is like so much white noise.” — PAD
See, that’s the funny thing. I picked up FALLEN ANGEL because it WAS new. Because it was starting from the beginning, and I would be able to follow the whole story without getting hopelessly lost because I wasn’t reading the book twelve years ago. That shifted me out of graphic novels and into monthly comics.
I think if adult-intended comics simply orchestrated the occasional starting point, a place where you can jump in and understand what the frapp is going on, and market them as such, they’d do a lot better at pulling in new readers. It can be done, and fairly effectively, without alienating your continuing viewers. It just takes good writing, and we know comics have got that. 🙂
Picking up on points that a few other people have made…
***
From Rick Keating:
Here’s a perfect example of what I was talking about earlier. Today, I picked up _The OMAC Project_ #4, one of the DC mini series that ties in to the upcoming _Infinite Crisis._
Yes, I know exactly what you mean. I dropped “Robin” a year or so ago, for similar reasons. (SPOILERS follow for that old storyline.) I liked the character, I enjoyed Bill Willingham’s work on “Fables”, so I was looking forward to his run on this title. “Robin” got pulled into the whole “Gang War” crossover that was going throughout the Bat-books, so I read the other comics that Willingham wrote for those couple of months, in an attempt to keep up, but since I was getting less than half of the overall story, it was a bit confusing, and not very satisfying. That said, since Robin (Stephanie) got killed off in one of the Batman comics, it was basically necessary to read that in order to understand the ongoing “Robin” title. Then I picked up an issue where they said that Tim’s father had died. Whuh-huh? I don’t remember that! I had to go online to find out that his father had been killed off in an unrelated miniseries (“Identity Crisis”). So, it’s bad enough that the title didn’t stand alone, but they didn’t even refer to the other books (e.g. having a footnote that would say “See Identity Crisis #2 for details”).
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From dj anderson:
How many folks out there ARE reading SOULSEARCHERS?
I am, but I’m seriously considering dropping it, because it’s always hit and miss about whether my local shop will actually get the issues through. For instance, I’ve missed 1 out of the last 3, which makes it a bit difficult to follow the ongoing storyline (especially when it’s a bi-monthly comic). That said, I really did enjoy the “League of Incidental Characters” (or whatever the LOEG spoof was called), and that was the first issue in a long time where I thought “Wow, this is a really good comic that I enjoyed in its own right, rather than supporting it out of loyalty to the writer”. I was meaning to write in to the letters column with flattering comments, but then I didn’t get round to it before the next issue came out (ditto for my “Robin” comments above, that I was meaning to send to DC when I dropped the title from my pull list).
***
From Jonathan (the other one):
Y’know, the resolution may have come during my economically-enforced comics hiatus, but the last I saw of ol’ “Ben Reilly”, he was headed out West. Has that ever been followed up on?
I don’t remember him ever heading off into the sunset, although I took a long break from the Spider-titles (I came back when JMS started, then dropped them again when he was arsing around with “Rising Stars”, and I’m waiting for PAD’s new title before I start again). Basically, after he came back into town, he became the Scarlet Spider, then became Spider-Man. He then got killed by Norman Osborn (saving Peter’s life in the process), which left Peter to become Spider-Man again.
I might be a little weird because I read my first comic book (Peanuts, to be precise, followed by an old Legion of Superheroes in spanish) at the young age of 6 because my parents got tired of their little girl reading a hundred page books a week.
Getting comics wasn’t easy back then, because we didn’t had a single comic book store in the whole city until Superman had the decency to die in 1992. If we wanted american comics, it was mail orders or, sometimes, Samborns. Our best bet were the translations of Batman, Superman, the X-Men and Spiderman (And those were old stories. Dark Phoenix Saga was published in 1989 if I remember correctly). So we could understand why people thought that Tim Burton’s Batman was a remake of the old Adam West series.
Still, I remember how hard it was for me to get in continuity with my favorite titles. When the X-men were getting Gambit as a member, I hadn’t even had time to digest that at some point Magneto had been the leader. New Mutants who? And don’t make me get started in the whole Jean Grey/Madeline Pryor/Phoenix/Goblin Queen thing.
So everytime someone asks me about a comic because they liked a movie, I draw a blank because how can someone start reading Spiderman right now? Or X-men?(There are some exceptions. LoEG, Sin City and From Hëll, just because they’re short and don’t depend on thousands of back issues to be followed)
Still, I agree that it’s harder to get people hooked up in new, non tried formulas. I tend to buy whatever hits my fancy, but most of my friends stay on the ‘safe’ side of comics (Or manga. And manga readers can be as rabid in their set ways as comic readers) and only try new stuff when they’re loaning my comic collection. Which is sad because then I never have the back issue handy.
Of course, I can’t say anything about distribution for the international thing. I found that it was easier to try and get Soulsearchers and Co. at San Diego each year than hoping against hope that my comic book store will carry it.
Now, if you want to hear something sad about how people in general are not reading, I meet a couple of guys here in Mexico who didn’t know Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory were books before they were movies.
I was away yesteday, but I just wanted to jump back on and say that I think Bobb has interpeted my argument correctly. I do think it’s fair to compare all forms of entertainment — when deciding whether to watch TV, catch a movie, or read a comic book, I don’t think they consider the media, as much as whether it’s interesting to them.
Bobb also makes a good point about Clone Wars, and someone mentioned Harry Potter books. One is as short as a comic, but you only have to wait a week for the next installment; the other has years between installments, but it takes hours to finish. There must be a balancing act involved: The relationship between how much entertainment you get per dose, versus how long you have to wait between doses. I don’t think comics have hit that balance.
To Craig’s point — I did exclude price for the sake of this argument, but you’re right: you’d have to be naive to think kids aren’t willing to put up with a longer wait for less if they’re getting it for free. It’s always hard to say “no” to anything free, even if it’s doled out annoyingly slowly.
Finally — someone mentioned that stand-alone issues would eliminate this problem. Yes, to some extent they would, since you wouldn’t be waitihg for a resolution; but you’d still be waiting for your next dose of “Invincible” in general, and that’s still pretty frustrating.
This has been an interesting thread. Haven’t had time to catch up on it ’til now, but I’ve got a few thoughts to throw in on various things:
Fallen Angel was published, in its first run, by _DC Comics_. Unlike, say, Soulsearchers – which I hear so little about, even here, I’m never sure that it’s still being published (hearing that it is, I’ll have to see if I can get it at my store) – this was a title being published by one of the “Big Two”. It should not have been that obscure. I don’t remember exactly how I first heard of it – possibly I just saw an issue of it at my comic shop of the time – but it is frustrating, and dsicouraging, that so many self-declared big PAD fans hadn’t even heard of it. Bad.
Re: the Spider-Man clone saga: YUCK. Perhaps some permanent changes to characters can go over well(though some characters are so iconic change may never be accepted by at least some of their fans), but this “storyline” is a perfect demonstration that change for change’s sake is not a good thing. Readers were told that the Peter Parker whom they’d read about since Amazing Spider-Man # 150 was “just” a clone (though they did publish the “Spider-Man: the Parker Years” one-shot retrospective in a slightly belated attempt to pay tribute, in the midst of that mess), that everything which they’d read for the past close to twenty years – the large majority of the character’s adventures at that point – was essentially a lie. And people reveiled it, and fled in droves (wasn’t this around the start of the big crash in the industry, too? Coincidence?). I believe it was Peter, and Mary Jane, who actually went out west, to leave Ben Reilly, the “true” Peter Parker, to carry on as Spider-Man. Then, seeing how BADLY many readers reacted to this drastic change, the Spider-creators worked out the storyline (many of us find it hard to believe that it really was “the plan all along”, as was half-heartedly claimed afterwords) which revealed that Norman Osborn, resurrected by his “healing factor” (at least for me personally, this would have worked better if they hadn’t used the exact same phrase for accelerated/superhuman healing so prominently associated with Wolverine), was ultimately behind the whole thing. And Ben Reilly was killed, so that his clone body could disintigrate, proving once and for all that our Peter had always been THE Peter.
I totally agree with Rick Keating’s endorsement of footnotes and continuity references. They WERE very commonplace “back in the day”. I remember, for example, reading an issue of Avengers – #2thirtysomething – 37, maybe – in which the guest-starring Spider-Man said “Hey, that’s Moonstone! I’ve tussled with her before!” – because there WAS no asterisked footnote telling us where and when. Back then, that was so unusual – a reference to a previous event without telling us the issue title and number – that it was a memorable occurrence. Although aesthetically I haven’t always liked the full-page text recaps at the start of some titles – such as the late, lamented Captain Marvel and Joss Whedon’s impressive Astonishing X-Men – some sort of recapping is a good idea for both new readers and someone who may have somehow missed an issue of a title. (Sounds like that OMAC Project could certainly use a recap page.) Maybe these reference notes are part of the reason I could pick up Uncanny X-men #177 or Avengers #222 as my first issue of these series as a kid and not be scared off by decades of continuity.
Another thing which probably helped, actually, was the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe (Deluxe Edition, with its extended History recaps, in particular). Along with Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars, which came along when I was nine-ten years old, this provided a good look into both the present and the history and backstory of the Marvel Universe. And in case anyone doesn’t know, Marvel is publishing new Handbooks now, as a seies of one-shots: Women of Marvel 2005, Avengers 2005, Spider-Man 2004, Spider-Man 2005, etc. Finally rivaling the Deluxe Edition in overall quality – and with the added bonus of some “signifcant issue” listings for each entry at the back of the book – these are a good tool for catching up on Marvel continuity (or attempts at same), and a LOT more than “ten minutes” of reading. (Mentioning those end notes reminds me of a question which ocurred to me while reading this thread. At least a couple of limited series in recent years which dealt seriously with past continuity, Spider-Man: Hobgoblin Lives and Avengers Forever, had very detailed – page by page – past issue references on their inside back covers and/or letters pages. Very appreciated. But – were these reproduced in the trade paperback versions? Or did the TPB purchasers miss out on this very nice feature?)
garbanzo – very glad to hear that comics – at least Marvels – will be returning to 7-11. Last year, I went into a 7-11 for the first time in – well, more than a decade (I live in the only area I’ve ever visited with NO 7-11s, the Central New York/Syracuse area) – and was surprised and saddened to find no comic books being sold. I have many childhood memories of 7-11 comic book purchases, and hopefully returning to such a widespread retailer will help bring more young people into the medium.
I don’t know how much other insight I can offer into creating comic book readers, as my story may be somewhat atypical. I, like my brother after me, was a young reader – by or before 4 years old. I don’t rememember exactly how I got into comics, but I recall being in a store in what had to be 1980 or ’81 – when I was six or seven. I rarely read any comics aimed at children even at that age; any more mature references generally just went over my head, and I was entertained, while my imagination was encouraged and my vocabulary increased, and I was rarely disturbed by much I read. (Spider-Woman #50 was a rare issue which I can recall which did bother me a little, at the age of nine or ten, with Spider-Woman’s astral form being trapped outside of her body and a spell cast to cause people to forget her existence. At my Mom’s advising, I ended up throwing it out, and – while I would be curious to read the [giant-sized final] issue again today – I came through unscathed and pretty well-adjusted :). Even some of the super hero titles are even more mature now than they were then, I realize; but I do think many young readers could get good, and challenging, material from many of the books which may be not necessarily be aimed at their age group even today.) But then, I grew up – from ages four to fifteen – in what may have been comic-reading mecca: the Metro Denver area in the 1980s. Several branches of Mile High Comics, even then the largest comic book dealer in the country; ubiquitous 7-11s, including one across the street from my ninth grade high school; and King Soopers, a nearly as omnipresent local grocery store chain with a dedicated comic book rack in every branch. So I was VERY well set-up to be a comic book fan in my formative years :):) Not as sure about what to do for other kids today ….
Luke K. Walsh:
Personally, I never read the “clone saga”, but I read _about_ it. And from what I read, there was a better way to handle it: Let the reader know up-front, via a conversation between unknown characters lurking in the shadows, that Peter was the original, and Ben was the clone. It would have become clear that they intended to disorient Peter and take away his sense of identity by convincing him that _he_ was the clone. The readers would know this, but the characters wouldn’t, thus creating the “when’s he going to find out, and what’ll happen then?” style of tension.
I expound in more detail on this point in CBG #1600, page 109.
Rick
Rick Keating – for what it’s worth, what I’ve read of the Clone thing was pretty much from other people’s copies – someone at college, maybe a trade paperback later. About all I own of it is the aforementioned Parker Years one-shot, and Peter Parker: Spider-Man #75 (?), where Peter was finally re-established as truly Peter, and, for better and/or worse, Norman Osborn came back. Your idea, giving the readers the knowledge that someone was manipulating Peter and Ben from the beginning, sounds MUCH better than what they did, telling us Ben WAS the original Peter Parker, and subsequently pulling what then appeared to be a retcon to get out of it. Your idea might actually have been a much more interesting story.
But did they always intend to return Peter to his starring role? It sounds as though you may be in a better position to know than I; but it really did seem as though they were trying to endear us to Ben, while at the same time de-valuing Peter. One example of this which I can remember (as I said, I don’t actually own most of this stuff, so I can’t go back into it for reference) was actually something I meant to include in my post yesterday, as another example of why the Clone Saga was so BAD. At some point when Ben’s buddy Stewerd Trainer was “testing” Peter and Ben’s DNA to “discover” which was the clone (it was later revealed he rigged the test – I can’t recall exactly why he was indebted to (?) Osborn, but the Spider-Man 2005 Marvel Universe has some details on it), Peter became overwrought, and angry. So … he SMACKED MARY JANE ACROSS THE ROOM. Now, they did have him feel remorseful about it a panel or two later (and then split the scene). BUT … STILL. Peter Parker would never have done that. Never. Ridiculous. And, disgusting, too. Now, did they do it to help reduce Peter in our eyes, to show “he’s not that great; he’s just a clone of the true hero”, as it felt like they were doing at the time? Or was it just an example of some really crappy writing, totally breaking with who a character is and what he might possibly do in order to create “drama”? Either way, one of the lowlights of that much-reveiled era.
Luke K. Walsh:
Actually, I’m _not_ in a better position than you to know whether they (Marvel) intended to return Peter to his starring role in the end. But I can hazard an educated guess that if the fans had wholeheartedly accepted Ben, Peter would be gone. As Andrew “Captain Comics” Smith said about the recent return of Hal Jordan, if the Kyle Raynor incarnation of _Green Lantern_ had been a huge seller, DC wouldn’t have brought Hal back as GL.
One of the points I made in CBG #1600 (as a letter to Captain Comics’ column, to be precise) was that it made didn’t make sense for Marvel to pull the rug out from under readers almost two decades after the original 1975 clone story. To quote what I wrote:
I can’t help but wonder why the powers that be at Marvel would think readers would willingly embrace the idea that, since the end of the 1975 clone storyline, readers have unknowingly been following the adventures of the clone, not the real Peter Parker.
“Hey, guess what? All these years you thought it was the real Spider-Man who web-slung off into the sunset that day? Well, you thought wrong!”
Yeah, right, and J. Jonah Jameson will one day be heard to say, “No, Spidey. I… am your father.”
Again, as I indicated both in my previous post here, and in CBG, I haven’t read the “clone saga”, and I learned about the original 1975 storyline from _What If_ #30. I don’t know how Marvel initially revealed that the clone was A) not dead; and B) also survived being tossed in an industrial chimney to be cremated, but under _my_ idea for how to tell the story “right”, the reader would have known almost immediately that Ben Reilly was the clone. What’s more, Ben truly believing he was the original, while the readers knew otherwise, has a certain tragic quality to it.
Going that route might even have made him more acceptable to readers, since they’d know all along that he wouldn’t _really_ replace Peter. My understanding is that Ben was very unpopular.
To my way of thinking the _only_ acceptable way to get away with telling readers that the Spider-Man whose adventures they’d been following was actually a clone would be to do so almost immediately after the original clone storyline. Say at the end of a three-part follow-up story. And even then, there should be “hints” dropped that “Peter” is somehow “off”- so that like dropping clues in a mystery, Marvel was actually playing fair with the readers.
Let’s face it, readers would be more accepting of a “surprise! Spidey’s not really Spidey!” revelation if the ersatz Spidey had only been occupying one book for three issues, than if they’re asked to accept that they’d read nearly 20 years (across several books) of the “wrong” Spidey.
Rick
Rick –
Thanks for the details. I was curious to read your referenced bit, but, frankly … I wasn’t sure where to look to find CBG 1600. Anyway, your idea would have been much preferable – too bad you weren’t running the Spider-titles in the mid ’90s 🙂
(And, as someone named “Luke”, I also appreciate someone who realizes that the line is NOT “Luke, I am your father” !)
Luke
I have to take exception to the comment that 7-year-olds don’t read anything. My son reads 30 to 40 minutes a day, which is quite a bit when you consider the attention span at that age. And, among his “Juniper P. Jones” and “Charlie and The Chocolate Factory” are well-worn copies of “Teen Titans Go,” “The Batman Strikes” and “Justice League Unlimited” comics. The main issue with 7-year-olds reading comics is that, unlike the silver and bronze age books I read growing up, the stories aren’t really suited for young children. In fact, I would hazard a guess that grim, gritty and decompressed superheroes mainly appeals to older fans tired of the white bread heroes of our youth. DC gets the nod over Marvel for now for at least producing (and aggressively marketing) a series of kid-oriented books that tie directly into the cartoons, movies, etc. most kids see. Marvel Age comics are much more spotty, and since I wouldn’t let my son read how Gwen Stacy had a kid out of wedlock I can see why younger ones aren’t seeing the mainstream Spidey issues.