The inestimable Beau Smith has issued a challenge to Marvel and DC to spend a year telling nothing but done-in-one stories. You can read it here:
http://www.comicsbulletin.com/busted/121341903078446.htm
Of course, the thing is, when you’re issuing a challenge to someone, there should be some reciprocity. Like when a politician, for instance, issues a challenge to others to have campaigns that focus purely on the issues rather than dirt. There’s something at stake for the challenger as well, since he has to abide by the same rules or risk looking like a hypocrite.
What’s Beau putting on the line? Nada. He’s not saying that if Marvel and DC do this, then he will donate ten grand to the CBLDF or climb into a dunk tank or give up his column or something. It’s not like when I threw out the challenge to Marvel to maintain “Captain Marvel” at its then-current cover price and in exchange I would drop my writing fee to $20.99 until sales went up. Beau’s challenge is just, y’know, thrown out there. What’s at stake for Beau? Nothing, really.
What would Marvel and DC have at stake? Well, quite likely plummeting sales across the board. I mean, Marvel already DOES lines with done-in-one, easily accessible stories. They’re called “Marvel Adventures.” I’ve written a bunch of them. They sell for crap. For that matter, “Fallen Angel” exists in its own universe and has had any number of done-in-one stories. Yet when it was a DC title it was cancelled, and as an IDW title it still isn’t burning up the sales charts.
The harsh fact is that crossovers sell and independent stories devoid of contact or context with each other don’t, or at least not as well. Rather than issuing challenges to the companies to change what’s working for them, why not issue challenges to the readership to change their buying habits? And Beau can start by pledging to get subscriptions to every single issue of “Marvel Adventures” titles and to “Fallen Angel.” Sounds like a good way to put one’s money where one’s mouth is.
PAD
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Otherwise, you’re asking for a very constrained, very stylized art form…which, in and of itself, imposes limitations on acceptability to outsiders.
ROGER TANG wrote: “Otherwise, you’re asking for a very constrained, very stylized art form…which, in and of itself, imposes limitations on acceptability to outsiders.”
Actually, you’re talking about an art form that used to be pretty much for everyone from 1933 to about 1980, but is now is apparently only for the select few who know the secret handshake in advance.
I find it odd that I, who, at times, have been labeled here as a conservative, am espousing what I think is a more inclusive version of the comics art form, while those who have previously been labeled here as liberals, are arguing for what I think is a more exclusionary version of the comics art form.
Go figure.
I agree with you that the current environment isn’t as friendly to casual readers as it was 30 years ago. Reading comics nowadays requires different buying strategies and a more deliberate approach.
When I’m interested in a comic, I try to borrow the first issues from a friend. If I like them, I buy the first trade online. If I REALLY like them I buy all the trades and catch up to the current issue and only then I start buying the monthly title.
It is also perhaps more cost effective to buy the trades anyway, once you know you like the comic. It would be a good strategy by publishers to make the first issues of all titles available for download online, so people could sample them and then buy the trades.
Yes, it isn’t a market that favors the “channel-surfing” guy that just wants some quick entertainment.
I also think that a big problem is that comics are becoming too expensive to appeal to casual buyers. It’s more cost-effective to buy a DVD box from a TV show than a trade paperback. Perhaps they should take a page from Japan and publish cheap, thick, black-and-white volumes in cheap paper so people could catch up quickly.
I can’t think of a reason to believe conventional publishing will ever stop being cheaper than print on demand, or conventional color printing. If people are going to go so far as to print out comic book pages, it’s going to be cheaper for them to buy the mag.
R. Maheras: One-and-done stories were the norm in comics for more than 45 years, and the norm when average comic book circulations were 10 times what they are today.
Peter DavID: 00Post hoc ergo propter hoc. You can’t draw any connection between the two. With all the shifts between then and now–ID distributors going out of business; newsstand not wanting to bother carrying comics anymore because they were high maintenance/low profit items; spiraling cover prices; the rise of cable TV, the internet, and video games as competitors for consumer dollars; the overall depression in the publishing industry;–it’s preposterous to say that continued stories had anything to do with it. Especially when one considers that early Marvel comics regularized the notion of continuing stories and they sold far more copies than now.
Luigi Novi: Then why do you emphasize the fact that done-in-one stories, including ones you’ve done “sold for crap”, and that Marvel and DC would face plummeting sales if they accepted Beau’s challenge?
Because the relevant factors PAD is looking at HAVEN’T changed–not the times, not the distribution, not the competition, not anything else. You’re looking at apples and apples, not apples and oranges.
Posted by Mike at June 16, 2008 11:39 PM
“I can’t think of a reason to believe conventional publishing will ever stop being cheaper than print on demand, or conventional color printing. If people are going to go so far as to print out comic book pages, it’s going to be cheaper for them to buy the mag”
Well, just to kick the ideas around a wee bit more, the reason will be if people can make money off of it. Remember, cost and profit are not the same thing. Same argument that says it’s pørņ and entertainment that have financed the development of the internet as a video delivery system…
By the same token, ‘on demand’ is always more cost effective as a marketing solution. Hëll, your local store already orders its books based on what they figure the demand will be.. This is just streamlining an existing process to a point where they can just be sure of selling everything they order, while also making every comic published in a month available to every reader.
Conceptually it’s no tougher than I-tunes selling music or video downloads on demand and at much lower costs than buying the CD or DVD.
Local printing is impractical at the moment because of technology constraints. The kind of printers needed to produce comic books as we know them are too costly to install in local comic book stores, the printers that currently attach to PCs are too slow and too poor a quality to deliver a saleable product. That’s why I put in the caveat about needing to look at “low cost, high speed, high quality printing and binding technology”. Installing an IBM 3800 laser sub-station isn’t practical, something in the size and cost range of some modern commercial Xerox printers might be, especially if they can be leased from the publisher as opposed to needing to be purchased outright. (IBM started by leasing office equipment long before they started selling Big Blue boxes).
On reflection though, the only real benefits of that approach are to keep local comic shops in the loop and to deliver to market an end product that (reasonably) closely resembles today’s comic book.
(Digression; why not just go for online comics? Because, personally, I just don’t like reading online A4 comics… The ergonomic experience is just not what I’m conditioned by years of experience to think of as reading a comic book. I want something I can carry around with me, read in bed, or in the bathroom, or with my feet up in the garden. I love Phil Foglio’s Girl Genius, but I wait for the trades because I just don’t enjoy reading and looking at his art style on a PC screen. My daughter, on t’other hand, does enjoy reading ’em online, so this may be evolution in action and we’ll see a generation who are quite happy to get their comics fix online)
Having Googled the current state of ‘e-paper’, I’d actually now back something that might well end up being called the I-pad; an A4 sized screen device to which you download and display pages in exactly the same way as you download music or video to an I-pod, with the same purchase forever or rent and view marketing structure. The downside here is that it would not bode well for the local comic book store…
BTW, either option above would not solely benefit the comics industry – the technology would also enable delivery of newspapers, magazines, books, etc, etc, so it’s not as if just the big publishers need to fund the technology development.
Cheers.
As far as advances in printing technology and streamlining are concerned, the horizon is only going to move for everyone. There’s no technological advance the on-demand industry is going to benefit from that conventional publishers aren’t going to stay ahead of.
With conventional publishing, vanity publishers may make money, but you don’t see conventional publishing participating. Vanity publishers are mining “long-tail” content — where a single sale from 5000 individual represents 5000 sales to them. But the overhead from 5000 sales of 5000 individual authors is always going to be higher than a publisher selling 5000 copies of the same thing.
For our lifetimes, the first virtue of mining long-tail comics publishing won’t ever be to make money.
You seem to have opened and closed your own issue.
The future of music now seems to be what Radiohead and Prince are doing, which is to essentially give the music away for free, then make your wage from the live shows people become interested in because your music is floating around.
In more general terms, the notion is being explored by young artists of taking advantage of the lowering of the barriers to access to generate a following of a thousand patrons willing to spend $100 a year — which adds up to $100k a year.
Our host has a readership that supports, just from his take alone, a professional writing career that supports a household with a van with a GPS service. Someone buying 2 of his titles is already spending $72 a year on books with his name. If he can figure out how to get those readers to visit and frequent here, and somehow get the people spend… but I don’t even think we need to go that far.
I think Peter can go to an art class at any community college and find and collaborate with a student to whip something up that generates a huge readership — and they can simply harvest the ad revenues. It could be something as thin as Peter reviewing Wally Wood’s 22 panels, passing thumbnails to his collaborator, and his collaborator making something cohesive and attractive from them. It’ll be a new punk rock.
I even think Peter can get away with not paying his collaborator. He’ll keep a queue of volunteers who want the exposure of being associated with something successful. Just split any contingent publishing rights.
You mentioned the “Marvel Adventures” stories. I’ve picked up a couple of them on a lark, and I’ve found that I really like them.
For one, its just nice to see the Hulk as a member of the Avengers just because he’s THE HULK! (i.e. one of the most powerful super-heroes in the world on a team of the most powerful heroes on earth). Sometimes it can get silly (a blunt-toothed Venom, for instance), but they are an enjoyable detour from the angst-filled universes that Marvel and DC have become recently.
A post arriving too late to join a dying thread?
I, for one, don’t want done-in-one stories. Not as a standard. And I the idea that it’s either done-in-ones or endless events / crossovers is nonsensical. I love and buy Fell, but dropped Dini’s ‘Tec 6 issues in. Gave it a good chance, didn’t like it.
I pay for stories, not technical exercises in conforming to format. Someone mentioned it above – Imposing a 1-issue structure is as artificial as imposing a 6-issue structure. 1, 2, 4, 6, 7 issues – who cares, as long as it’s a good story; good writers follow the story and let it breathe.
As for reader friendliness (Mr. Maheras) – the market accomodates new / casual readers nowadays more than ever with the TPB; Infact, the ‘singles’ are increasingly regarded as not much more than promotional material for the collected edition, and are designated mainly for pull-list people; maybe (with all due respect), instead of yearning for trends gone by and demanding the market conform to “The way I’ve always bought comics” – you should be less rigid about it and enjoy what the present has to offer (if you’re interested in reading comics, that is). So yeah, you can’t jump into Fables by picking up what happens to be on the stand – but you can sure pick up Fables Vol.I and take it from there if you like, as the collected volumes are pretty much always in print. Overall, this system allows for better storytelling than the medium has EVER known.
Titles like Fables, Ennis’s Punisher, Fallen Angel, and Ultimate Spidey (to point out a few) are, in fact, a GREAT way to run a business.
As for the book analogy, let me add to what HMC said and mention not only Jeroslav Hasek’s Schweik, but Thompson’s ‘Fear And loathing In Las-Vegas’?
And elsewhere, if comics are losing younger audiences – that has to do with cultural trends and not with storytelling format. Kids read less, and don’t drag Harry Potter into this, it’s an anomaly. Let the well-funded publishers implement literacy programs, free supplies of suitable comics to school libraries, free-comic-with-your-burger and whatever else they can come up with, in order to hook’em young.
G Valley,
Excellent points. I would simply argue that A.) I should be able to pick up a single issue of “Fables” and have some idea what’s going on. If you can ONLY understand it by picking up trades, that’s either poor storytelling or evidence it should be issued in GN format only. People who enjoy the singles/floppies should get value for their entertainment dollar as well.
Also, I strongly feel less kids read comics because they are not exposed to them as much and parents many times do not know they still exist or where their closest comic store is – if they are even aware such stores exist.
If there was comic book version of Borders, many more people would be reading them.
If there was a comic book version of Borders, it would be a higher-maintenance version of a smaller organism that starves.
Yeah, if you stuck a mall-sized comic book store in a neighborhood, more people would read them. But that doesn’t mean the weight of its own overhead wouldn’t amount to subsidizing comics. There are lots of expenditures you could make to increase comic readership. You could simply buy them and give them away.
GVALLEY wrote: “So yeah, you can’t jump into Fables by picking up what happens to be on the stand – but you can sure pick up Fables Vol.I and take it from there if you like, as the collected volumes are pretty much always in print.”
I’ve actually recently done that with “Bone.” When “Bone” was originally published, I had no access to it, so, like “Cerebus,” for me it went unread. That changed recently when I picked up several of the “Bone” collected anthologies.
The problem is, I do not have unlimited funds to buy large quantities of TPBs or hardcover collections. Which is another reason why I think comics are not customer friendly: Taken en masse, they are far more expensive then they have ever been. Not even considering the added expense to fans incurred by TPBs, hardcover collections and graphic novels these days, the last time I did some hard research, I noted that since 1969, the average price of the pamphet-style comic books has increased at a clip that is four times the rate of inflation.
When I was 14 years old in 1968, I had two paper routes and could buy every comic book on the rack that I wanted. As a matter of fact, I frequently bought multiples of first issues or hot titles so I could later sell or trade them to fellow fans. Fourty years later, I make about far more money than I did as a teenager, but even if I was a hermit living in a shack down buy the river, getting everything I wanted each month these days would be problematic.
When I was 14, comics were cheap and most were not serialized, allowing me to sample new titles and still buy everything on my want list. I don’t believe young and/or neophyte comic book readers have that freedom anymore.
Comics are too expensive nowadays.
The trends towards decompressed storytelling, better paper quality, better graphics, make it so we’re paying much more money for much less story.
The comparision is outrageous when you think of other forms of fiction. Just to stay in the superhero genre, you can buy the Season 1 Heroes DVD for 48 dollars, and you’ll have about 16 hours of stuff to watch.
Compare that to the 59 dollars you got to spend to buy the first 3 volumes of Ultimate Spider-Man TPBs. You can probably read them all in 4 hours or less.
In the realm of prose novels, you can buy the newest Wild Cards novel (400 pages) for 16 dollars, and you’ll probably have more than 4 hours of reading material too.
The sad truth is that comics aren’t cost-effective.
I always liked long-range epics like Chris Claremont’s X-Men back in the 70’s, appreciating how things gradually fit together. The big difference there is that I was always satisfied with the single issues as chapters in the story. There was enough action and characterization that I felt I’d read a good story and was only to happy to follow it through to its continuation.
My problem with comics today isn’t the long storyarcs, but that the individual comics aren’t entertaining enough in and of themselves, instead merely serving as puzzle-pieces to help assemble one cohesive tale. I gave up on Bendis’s Daredevil because I was tired of getting to the end of an issue with a sense of “that’s it?” I knew the story was heading somewhere, it was just a very boring ride. Way too many comics have that problem. Even talented writers like Ellis or Whedon can only be enjoyed in trade form for the most part, which is pretty sad.
Comics don’t have to be “done”-in-one, but at the very least they should feel like “one” instead of a fraction of a bigger whole.
Posted by Rene at June 19, 2008 11:17 AM
“Comics are too expensive nowadays.”
“The sad truth is that comics aren’t cost-effective”
Weeeell… Comics are expensive for the typical teenager – is there such a creature? – but saying ‘too’ expensive and that they’re not ‘cost-effective’ is not easy to prove.
Sure the bucks per reading hour ratio is against them, but someone could well enjoy 4 hours of Spiderman ten times as much as they enjoy 16 hours of ‘Heroes’, and I’d argue – swine that I am – that it’s the pleasure we’re paying for…
I’m advocating that reducing the cost of delivering the experience is one good way to increase the readership base and suck in the vitally needed next generation of fans.
Cheers.
Yes, Peter. But assuming hypothetically that there is a comic, a TV show, and a novel that you more or less enjoy equally. Say, a Spider-Man TV show that is sorta the same as a Spider-Man comic and a Spider-Man novel? The comic is the medium that gives you less bang for your buck, nowadays. Much less bang.
We could hypothesise until the cows come home. (Possibly even until dangerous Skrull type cows come home, which would be bad…)
In your own theoretical we then have to lambast DVDs for charging 3 times what the paperback does for the same bang… (That’s without going into relative production costs, profit margins and total number of units shipped)
Realistically, respectfully, your argument depends on quantifying a subjective value that varies across individuals into something you can hang a generalisation off of…
I remain – politely – unconvinced. 🙂
Cheers.
Rene,
You have valid points. But I don’t think comics, in general, are too expensive. They are just not placed in locations that make them an impulse buy.
One example that I always remember is that when “Tomb Raider” #1 came out, they had a spcial cover for the first issue that sold exclusively at Tower Records. So if someone were buting a $60 video game, or a $15 CD, it was not a big deal to spend the extra three bucks. heck, even with tax, getting a CD and the comic meant you likely got change.
This played a large role in “Tomb Raider” #1 being the best-selling comic of that year.
Stores would lose profits from items optimized for impulse-purchases if they sacrifice key shelf-space for the sake of protecting an industry. It’s hostile to a free market.
Mike,
I wasn’t talking about stores sacrificing shelf space for the “sake of protecting an industry? Did you not read my “Tomb Raider”/Tower records example? In that case, the market worked really well and I see no reason why it couldn’t again.
As a latecomer to this conversation I’m commenting on the subject of Golden Age SF and Dickens/Tolstoy etc. serialization vs today’s serialization in the form of floppies.
Bear in mind that the older examples came with other stuff which you wanted independent of the specific story in question. As a first-timer you might be getting chapter 46 of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol but you’re also getting the day’s news. You might be getting chapter 12 of Asimov’s latest but you’re also getting a short story or two (“done-in-one”) plus chapter one of some other multi-issue story. Whereas today’s floppies are just themselves. It’s like buying part 3 of The Green Mile without buying parts 1 & 2 because you heard good things about 1 & 2.
Comics are too expensive?
All things being equal, it might be true. But all things are NOT equal. We buy them because we love them, and because we maintain that the comic medium can give us an experience we can’t find in games, DVD’s, or novels.
And while I think the $-per-entertainment-time equation is ridiculous, I wish comics cost less, as well (though I would probably not be spending less, but buying more). Never mind 1969 – the average cover price was 2,25 what, 2 years ago? Maybe 3. This is 33.3% inflation!!!
But this is what it is and it’s not going to change, so one can make decisions based on budget or simply STOP purchasing comics altogether until publishers come up with a more viable / affordable format, which we all know exists in more than one way.
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Mr. Maida saID: 00″I should be able to pick up a single issue of “Fables” and have some idea what’s going on. If you can ONLY understand it by picking up trades, that’s either poor storytelling or evidence it should be issued in GN format only.”
I think singling Fables out is unfortunate… but the book IS a good example. There is a certain brand of title (Preacher, Transmet, Lucifer, Powers…) where the single is just part of one chapter in a very long, deliberate story. I think that when you grab a single in these cases, you can get SOME idea – stylistically, thematically, artistically, quality-wise, what the TITLE is like. It’s not poor storytelling (far from, in Fables’ case), it’s a creative choice with pros and cons; maybe it WOULD be better served as a series of OGN’s – but there are commercial concerns. I, for one, am happy to pay in installments while I still can.
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Mr. Maheras saID: 00″The problem is, I do not have unlimited funds to buy large quantities of TPBs or hardcover collections.”
OK. So check this out: the average, long-term, regular comics reader buys multiple titles every week – I know NOBODY that buys 1 single per week. I will hazard a guess and say that on average, if one dropped ALL their singles and switched to TPB’s only, they could get one 6-issue TPB a week and it would cost pretty much the same or LESS than they’re spending now.
So we have 4 TPB’s a month, 48 a year.
Taking into account that most (Not all – dammit, BND) serialized books amount to 2 TPB’s a year, that gives us 24 ongoing series that one could regularly follow for about $15 a week.
Double that figure, you have 48 ongoing series and minis you’d be buying per year – which is more than I follow, but for the same money I spend on an average month.
No issues missed, 1 purchase = 1 satisfying story.
But Mr. Maheras, you are not a regular comics reader. If we take Fables as an example – you could, very easily, by walking into a shop – any comic shop – once a week and getting one Fables TPB, be up to date with the series in about 1.5 months; then you wouldn’t have to buy another Fables book until the next volume came out in a few months, and could start exploring other books and catching up to them – always by getting only one TPB a week. You DON’T have to have unlimited funds. $15 a week – 24 series a year.
Your denial only confirms my observation, which was relevant to the quote it was responding to.
GVALLEY wrote: “But Mr. Maheras, you are not a regular comics reader. If we take Fables as an example – you could, very easily, by walking into a shop – any comic shop – once a week and getting one Fables TPB, be up to date with the series in about 1.5 months”
Oh, but I AM a regular comics reader. I’m just not a regular “Fables” comics reader. I decided to try it based on a recommendation.
During the course of a year, I probably average about $150 a month for comics-related material — a drop in the bucket compared to what I would spend if I had unlimited funds.
NOTE: This does not count money spent on convention expenses, which, unlike other professionals, I can’t write off as a business expense because I don’t make a living creating comics.
As far as the cost of trades, may I suggest your local library? If they don’t carry the trades you want, you can inquire about inter-library loan.
It’s not only comics where there are some titles that new “readers” can’t start in the middle. Would you recomend that someone starts watching Lost or Battlestar Galactica when they come back next year, or would you recomend first watching the previous seasons on DVD (which may also be availible at the library).
David
Well, I don’t think the dollar-per-entertainment-time equation is ridiculous, because it has had a definite effect on my buying choices.
I love fiction, with no particular preference for any one medium.
Once I started buying paperback prose novels and discovered many writers I love, my purchase of comics dimished somewhat, because I couldn’t stop noticing how much more expensive comics were for a lot less story, all other factors (like my enjoyment of certain specific comics or novels) considered.
When the trend for serialized TV shows gathered strength, together with the booming of the DVD market, it was another source of serialized fiction for me, that also felt a lot cheaper than comics. And the number of comics I bought regularly declined even further.
Why is the idea so ridiculous? I have a limited budget. I have these three media I enjoy equally. But one of these three media offers me a lot less entertainment time per dollar. Is it so outrageous that this had an effect on my buying choices?
Jerome Maida said, “I don’t think comics, in general, are too expensive. They are just not placed in locations that make them an impulse buy.”
I don’t know that I’d agree about the not too expensive part, but comicbooks definitely are no longer impulse buys (for the most part). I used to be able to buy comics at 7-Eleven and drug stores. Not today. Nowadays, if you want to buy a comicbook (without using the Internet), you go to a store that specializes in them.
With one or two exceptions. Such as Borders, which sells individual issues as well as trades. Or at least one Borders I know of does.
One day in the early 1980s, I was at the drug store with my Mom. As she did her shopping, I noticed a spinner rack of comics and saw Ghost Rider #58. Intrigued by the cover and bemused by the fact that this guy with the flaming skull was called Johnny Blaze, I bought it.
Also in the early 80s, when visiting my cousins in Pittsburgh, I walked up the street to 7-Eleven. There I bought an issue of Spectacular Spider-Man. I don’t recall if I went there specifically to buy a comic, or if that purchase was in addition to whatever food and/or drink purchase I might have made, but at least I had that option.
Comicbook stores are destination spots. You go to them specifically to buy comics and/or ancillary materials, such as bags and boards. Nothing wrong with that in and of itself; except that if you’re a kid, dependent on your parents to get you to said store, it comes down to whether its worth their while to make a special trip. My Mom didn’t go to that drug store so I could get a comicbook; she went there to go shopping at a place that happened to sell comicbooks.
I should say that either my Mom or Dad did make that special trip with me every Saturday in the early 1980s, first to a flea market where a retailer sold new comics; and then to the store that retailer later opened (B’s Comic Stop, later Rock’s Comics). Both trips were more than 10 miles, one way.
And they couldn’t easily combine those excursions on my behalf with shopping trips for groceries or anything like that.
Can you imagine how much less likely it’d be for a parent to make such a special trip these days, given the price of gas? A kid today who might be inclined to read comics might not get the chance because a store is too far out of the way.
By the way, sometimes when I’m already in my local comic shop, I’ll pick up an issue of a particular title on impulse, but again, I made a special trip there. It’s not like checking out the spinner racks while doing other shopping.
On a somewhat related note, has anyone ever looked into the relative success of comicbook stores located in or near malls, or shopping centers anchored by a supermarket, compared to comicbook stores in other locales? I would think the former might be more successful. While the parent’s at Kroger buying groceries (or at Hudson’s, buying clothes (for those who remember Hudson’s), the kid pops in at the nearby comicbook shop.
gvalley wrote, “I know NOBODY that buys 1 single per week.”
Actually, since I buy only a handful of titles these days, and some of them are on non-monthly schedules, I often (but not always) only have one title in my pull bin in a particular week. Some weeks there’s nothing.
And, as I said on another thread, I’ve decided to switch to buying trade paperback versions of those titles already being collected in trade format. Such as Fables. It might very well turn out that as a result of this decision to move to trades with most of the titles I get, Fallen Angel becomes the only title in my pull bin the week it comes out.
As I said elsewhere, I’m making this switch to trades with titles available in that format because of the high cost of individual issues. As well as the bags and boards that go with them. Yes, I do put two comics in a bag, one on either side of the board; but I replace those bags and boards every seven years or so. And as I keep buying individual issues, the number of bags and boards I’d have to buy in a given year increases.
Going to mostly trades is more cost effective for me.
And speaking of individual issues, R. Maheras is right that he should be able to pick up any issue of a title and have at least some idea of what’s going on. At the very least a comic should have a “what has gone before” summary of a few sentences on the inside cover or first page.
And as I said on a thread back in 2005, it wouldn’t hurt to have text narration and/or footnotes, as needed. To use the hypothetical example I gave then:
Spidey prepares to meet Doc Ock in battle. “I’d better bring along some extra web cartridges,” he thinks. “Last time I tangled with Doc Ock, I nearly ran out because I was too busy worrying about what he’d do if he found out Aunt May’s planning to leave him for the Rhino.”*
*The Rhino Special #1- Smilin’ Stan.
That’s how it used to be. Anyone wanting to learn more about the Aunt May/Rhino romance would know where to look.
On the other hand, in a comicbook today, Spidey’s thoughts as he prepares for his battle with Doc Ock would likely go something like this:
“I’d better bring along some extra web cartridges. I won’t make the same mistake twice.”
Yes, but what mistake? When? Under what circumstances? A new reader would have no clue. Spidey’s thoughts don’t tell us, and there’s no footnote to direct us to the comic that gives us more info.
Little things like a brief summary of what’s happened so far and or occasional footnotes or narration would go a long way toward making a particular issue accessible to a new reader.
Rick
DAVID SERCHAY wrote: “As far as the cost of trades, may I suggest your local library? If they don’t carry the trades you want, you can inquire about inter-library loan.”
Great resource, and one that my oldest daughter — a comics fan with far less discretionary spending money than I — has utilized quite heavily over the years. As a matter of fact, some of the material she’s borrowed I ended up reading because I’d missed it in the past (several Eisner graphic novels, for example).
I do go to the library occasionally to go through the comics-related stuff, but probably not as often as I should.
It’s been years since I visited a library, but Brazilian libraries don’t have a tradition of carrying comics, unfortunately. But I dunno, it’s been only recently that Brazilian issues of TPBs became popular and widespread.
First off, Mr. Maheras – I completely misunderstood your situation (not a regular poster here) based on what you said in this specific thread – apologies.
I thought you were a once-reader mourning the fact it’s difficult to get back in, and tried to offer a financially viable solution.
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$-per-time: Like I said, I don’t think all things ARE equal. I’m on a very limited budget too; I love novels, movies, and serialized TV too; every one of those media offers me a completely different experience, and I make my choices based on which experience I want the most. If I went by $-per-time, and seeing that I’m living in Holland these days, I could buy some really great weed and a 2nd-hand copy of the old testament, get very stoned and ride that demented book for (probably) 2 months on 15 Euros… doesn’t work like that for me.
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Back to topic: I have no problem with heavy serialization. It’s where the medium grew organically. I think that judging artistic processes based on pre-determined ideas of what a medium “is” because of where it once was is wrong. It stops evolution and kills creativity.
I agree that some measures can and should be taken to insure singles, while they’re still here, are as beginner-friendly as possible (recap page, URL, whatever), but it should not come at the material’s expense.
Fallen Angel is a great example of how a book should be executed – no padding (though much PADding, heh), no strict arc-length – but let’s be honest: read most random FA issues and you get nothing much more from it than the title’s overall “flavor” – – which, though, allows the creators a wider and deeper canvas to work with. Quid pro quo.
This can sometimes be (and is) abused by hacks and/or less experienced / more self indulgent writers, but that’s the price the medium pays for masterpieces like Preacher, Transmetropolitan, Strangers In Paradise, Cerebrus – and, yes, Fables… And it’s well worth it in my opinion.
If, as a rule, comics were to regress back to done-in-one (or two), I – for one – would simply stop reading them.
(And speaking of Fallen Angel, Peter: would it KILL you to regularly slap a ‘continued’ or an ‘End’ at the bottom of the last page? PLEASE?!?)
Mike,
What are you talking about? You never responded to my Tomb Raider/Tower Records example at all.
Smith’s challenge is a head-scratcher. Everything and everyone in superhero comics has been ginning up for the summer crossovers. It doesn’t take an insider’s view of the industry to understand why.
Jerome, this thread still seems to be taking comments, but won’t post my reply to your question. Submitting this to gauge the extent of the screening.
I don’t think I’ll be able to respond to your question until I agree to study the mystic arts.
In some cases TPBs are actually cheaper than the
single issues. IDW’s Transformers: Devestation was a six issue arc each single issues was $4.00 @
for a grand total of $24 and if you throw all the
alternate covers for all six issues that’s another
$24 so lets say that hypothectically I bought all six issues and all six of the alternate covers I would have paid $48 for a six issue arc and not including sales tax,and gas needed to get the nearest LCS.
Then IDW releases the TPB for $20 that has all six
issues and all alternate covers plus a sketchbook,
interveiw with the writer, Simon Furman.
I’m going with the TPB over the single issues, because I’m on an extremely tight budget and in the long run it’s just cheaper to buy TPBs and hardcovers than single issues for me these days.
In some cases TPBs are actually cheaper than the
single issues. IDW’s Transformers: Devestation was a six issue arc each single issues was $4.00 @
for a grand total of $24 and if you throw all the
alternate covers for all six issues that’s another
$24 so lets say that hypothectically I bought all six issues and all six of the alternate covers I would have paid $48 for a six issue arc and not including sales tax,and gas needed to get the nearest LCS.
Then IDW releases the TPB for $20 that has all six
issues and all alternate covers plus a sketchbook,
interveiw with the writer, Simon Furman.
I’m going with the TPB over the single issues, because I’m on an extremely tight budget and in the long run it’s just cheaper to buy TPBs and hardcovers than single issues for me these days.
In some cases TPBs are actually cheaper than the
single issues.
Take IDW’s Transformers: Devestation mini-series
for example, it was a six issue arc each single issues was $4.00 @ for a grand total of $24.
Now if you throw all the alternate covers (I HATE
those things and don’t collect them) for all six issues that’s another $24.
So lets say that hypothectically I bought all six issues and all six of the alternate covers I would have paid $48 for a six issue arc and not including sales tax,and gas needed to get the nearest LCS.
Then IDW releases the TPB for $20 that has all six
issues and all alternate covers plus a sketchbook,
interveiw with the writer, Simon Furman.
I’m going with the TPB over the single issues, because I’m on an extremely tight budget and in the long run it’s just cheaper to buy TPBs and hardcovers than single issues for me these days.