Remember the Spike pages I put up here a while? Well, they’re up and lettered and everything over on Newsarama.com, along with a short interview with me about the comic. Feel free to check it out.
PAD
Remember the Spike pages I put up here a while? Well, they’re up and lettered and everything over on Newsarama.com, along with a short interview with me about the comic. Feel free to check it out.
PAD
• 
That was great. It could very easily have been from an actual great episode of Buffy or Angel. It really captured the voice of the series. Well done again, sir.
I have to try this one more time. BID-PAD: I just recently read “The Haunted” and I loved it!! Did the second series ‘Gray Matters’ ever come out?
Peter, there is a wonderful new function in HTML called a “hyperlink”. It makes it easy to go to sites referenced online, especially if the URL isn’t typed out in full.
I ordered the book. However, $7,50?!? WTF?!?
Cool I like spike only cause he hails from where I currently live. The actor of course.
So PAD if I start buying Hulk again will your run on it be long enough to justify me buying em?
Oh, that looks great.
When I got to the last panel of the third page, I swore aloud as I realized where you were going with that. Oh my.
I’m going to have to read this when it comes out.
Peter,
This is a lot off topic, but I’m wondering your thoughts on the health of the comic’s industry. I was just informed that the last comics store and the only place to find even half the title available on the market is closing it’s doors today. In a market of at least 200,000+ they couldn’t keep their doors open and had been there since 1984. This was our last outlet and finding any at local book stores or newstands is impossible. Is the comics industry killing itself off?
Brian Peterson
Indiana
I HATE going to Newsarama – probably the worst slowdown I’ve ever seen on the web (yeah, maybe it would be better if I had Roadrunner or something, but I’m not gonna spend $50 or $60 a month to get better access to one site) – but it was worth it for the interview and preview! Looks very good (so much for my pet theory that Spike got his nickname by attacking the snobs at the party, but oh well 🙂 )! And the FA ad (they should list SOMETHING else in the “From the author of”, though; if they don’t want to mention other comic companies, why not “the [however-many times] New York Times Best-Selling Author”?); and – a Spike LS?? I haven’t gotten that many of the BtVS/Angel comics in the past, but I am definitely there for this project(s?).
Yes, Haunted: Gray Matters came out, back in 2002. I found it available at Westfield Comics. Search for either Peter David or Haunted: Gray Matters. Hope that helps.
http://westfieldcompany.net/wow/order_main.html
thanks Jeff.
Pad,
Looks Cool! I’m there! But you should know that anyway!
Brian Peterson,
“Is the comics industry killing itself off?”
I know you asked PAD this question, but I just had to respond, because it’s a question I hear a lot. I follow the industry both for pleasure and professionally and I have to say…absolutely not.
I am sorry about your store. But the store I go to in the Scranton area is doing tremendously well. It is an area of about 100-150,000 people, if you take the surrounding communities. And he is planning on moving into yet a bigger store because he needs the space.
The Scranton area is able to support FOUR stores that have been in business at least a decade, which is almost as many as Philadelphia, where the good stores are growing and the bad stores are shrinking.
Do I wish there were more stores so more comics would be accessible to more people? Yes. But until a cotrporation opens up a chain or something, that is unlikely to happen. I really wish those with cash and a love for comics would open up more stores.
Until that happens, stores need to adbertise more, take advantage of stuff like Free Comic Book Day and the movie, which heighten mainstream awareness and attention, to a fuller extent.
And please, abandon the dámņ “clubhouse mentality”. Some stores I’ve been in are downright hostile to newcomers and/or ignore young kids. They’re too bust debating whether or not the best Hulk/Thor fight happened in “Incredible Hulk” #255 or “Incredible Hulk” #440.
People also need to quit bìŧçhìņg about the prices and being so negative about the product on shelves in general. Every other form of entertainment has gone up. Yet people will still bìŧçh about $2.99 a pop being too much for kids who think nothing of spending $50 for a video games, $60 for a replica jersey and, hëll, $1.99 for 32 ounces of Gatorade.
The New York Times is a dollar a day, yet somehow comics are still supposed to sell for 25 cents in many people’s minds. And if the people who follow, understand and appreciate the hobby are constantly bìŧçhìņg that the price is too high and the books “aren’t worth it”, then why would a newcomer pick one up and think it’s worth it?
I think the quality of books, both writing and artwise, is better than it has ever been. You have old pros, young guns, Hollywood writers giving a fresh take and crossovers that are actually thought out.
In short, if you can’t find anything to your taste today between the revitalized Big Two, Top Cow, Dark Horse and various other independents, I don;t think you’re trying very hard.
And are you sure the store is closing simply because of community apathy? There could be many reasons.
Talk to your mayor and tell him you think you need a new bookstore and/or comic store in the area. Seriously, you may be surprised.
Until you get a knew one, I would recommend Mile High Comics. They have great discounts and carry everything:)
Later,
Jerome
Jerome,
Wow, what a dissenting opinion about the health of the industry. I hate to say it, but the way things are for you is in no way indicative of the health of the industry as a whole. I don’t want to go too far off topic (TOO LATE!) so I’ll keep this brief.
Truth is, Diamond (the distributor for all things comics) is operating in “crisis mode,” with so few shops open coast to coast (under 1800 accounts?) that they’re barely keeping afloat, and struggling to get more people to open more shops, often in areas that can’t support them. (My shop owner hears about it every time he talks with his Diamond rep…heck, the guy brought a map and a red pen to the shop and tried showing him places where “it would be nice” to open a second location…nevermind that the owner barely has his finances together enough to keep the one shop going.) Some of the bigger comic shops, like Mile High, are in big debt to Diamond, but Diamond can’t cease distribution, as without them and similar big-name shops, they’d go belly-up overnight (forcing DC to cancel half their line, at the least…which I don’t quite get but there it is). Shops are closing, in record numbers, and prices in the industry continue to climb. They’re poised to reach $4 per book within the next two years…Diamond can’t say with any authority they won’t.
Seems like the next inevitability is Diamond going bust. The question becomes…what happens then?
Marvel needs to advertise outside of comic shops. DC needs to advertise outside of comic shops. (And I’m not talking about the movies you see in the theatre as propaganda.) Comic shops themselves, if their finances aren’t too dire, have to advertise sales and Free Comic Book Day in newspapers, on TV (as one shop nearby does). Comics need good P.R., period….as it is, it’s an insular industry and isn’t getting any less so.
(Dang…not so brief. Sorry!)
The TV Guide promo for the Spike book is a decent step. I know I’ll be plunking down my $$ for the one-shot, and Fallen Angel, and other good stuff coming courtesy of PAD and other quality creators.
~G.
Addendum to the above:
Diamond is also trying to convince retailers everywhere to cease giving discounts of any sort to customers to make up for the high base cost/low discount to shops. I guess it’s already happened in California and the trend is creeping east. Diamond also doesn’t want shops to be opening more online outlets–don’t ask. And those overpriced variant covers to your favorite books? Yup, Diamond says they’re specifically tailored to making your shops gain extra income they don’t have to use to pay them back.
~G.
Gary Miller,
Wow! You make valid points, and you really know what you’re talking about. Cool. Let me say, however, that in no way am myopic to the point where I feel that the experiences in my neck of the woods is reflective of what everyone is going through.
Comics are at a crucial stage, in my humble opinion. But the question I was responding to was that the comics “industry” was “killing itself off” and price was cited as a major, if not main, reason.
Truth is, many shops are run by fanboys, not businessmen, who refuse, for example, to try and capitalize on the high-profile movies, refuse to promote stuff they personally don’t like, refuse to advertise to the casual reader.
As for advertising, well, it would be great if there was a true ad for the comic during or right after trailers to the “Fantastic Four” movie or “Teen Titans” cartoon. But the government, under pressure from soccer moms to have their children stop harassing them to get something to actually – gasp! – read, passed a law prohibiting such common sense synergy during the heyday of “G.I. Joe”. To my knowledge, it has not been rescinded. Which is a dámņ shame.
We need more shops, period, whther they be independently owned or a national chain.
On the bright side, “Midtown Comics” in New York City opened up another store. That, plus the fans gaining interest or awareness of the industry due to Hollywood types like Reggie Hudlin and Joss Whedon, is huge.
Time will tell, but I’m optimistic.
I’m wondering if we are to take this story as an alternative to the Buffyverse. “Cecily and Halfrek and indeed one-and-the-same, he’s going so far as to reveal in this one-shot they always were” says the Newsarama description of the Spike one shot. I always heard that what made it to the screen was canon. So are we to take this as a fantasy or as canon?
Hostile17 wrote:
“I’m wondering if we are to take this story as an alternative to the Buffyverse. (SNIP). I always heard that what made it to the screen was canon. So are we to take this as a fantasy or as canon?”
Since the question of whether Halfrek and Cecily were one and the same was never addressed on screen, there’s no reason why this story _couldn’t_ be canon. After all, this is obviously a licensed title. I doubt Mutant Enemy would approve a story in which Hallie and Cecily are the same person if their intention is to establish that they’re not.
Like I said, the issue was never addressed in the series. However, Spike’s and Halfrek’s reactions at seeing each other at Buffy’s birthday party indicates that they’d met before. Said meeting could very well have taken place when Hallie was playing the role of Cecily in 1880s London.
Anyway, that works for me.
Rick