Originally published August 12, 1994, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1082
The problem with being a fiction writer is that it’s so dámņëd difficult to keep up with the real world.
The way in which the events in the news develop have a staggeringly high factor of “Huh?” So much so that one wonders if one can ever top reality with mere fantasy.
What’s it like out there?
Originally published August 5, 1994 in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1081
Look! Up in the sky! It’s a grim, gritty metropolitan setting, where skyscrapers are set against a stormy sky, and no amount of imminent rain can wash away the grime and the crime.
Hold on! The movie camera is careening forward at high speed, vaulting over the building tops, zipping in, swooping out, all at dizzying speed, eventually coming to rest on a mysterious man in black whose head whips around as he stares malevolently and significantly into the camera.
This can only mean one thing:
Originally published July 29, 1994, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1080
“Things change.”
–Penguin to Batman, and vice versa
Batman Returns
A decade ago, when Carol Kalish was running Marvel direct sales, and I was her assistant… the market suffered from growing pains. There were any number of times when we would come into conflict with distributors over policy decisions; over actions taken by other arms of Marvel (Marvel Books landed us in hot water quite a few times); over opening up new distributors in order to prevent a situation where a handful of distributors controlled the majority of the market (a strategy that ultimately failed); over all kinds of things.
It was also a time when expectations were different. When X-Men (there was one mutant book at the time; what a concept) sold, as I recall, between a quarter million and 350,000, and was the pinnacle of success at Marvel. There was X-Men and there was everything else. When we solicited for the New Universe titles, we pegged sales for the first issues at somewhere around 125,000, and lo, we were thrilled.
There were arguments and disagreements and occasional feuds between all parties. Any number of times there were face-to-face confrontations at distributor meetings, back when such meetings consisted of get-togethers in cramped New York hotels and the editorial presentation consisted mostly of editors talking about what was coming up in their books while distributors took notes.
There was even the occasional blow-up, from which it seemed there would be no way back. But eventually such things would pass over, and all would settle back down to business as usual. Sometimes feelings remained bruised, but we pushed past it and moved on. Because we could afford to.
Things change.
Originally published July 22, 1994, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1079
I debated with myself whether to write about this, since it has nothing whatsoever to do with comics. But it’s an interesting little saga in my life, related to my getting older, and also provides a cautionary tale for anyone who finds him- or herself in similar straits. So I relate it to you now:
Originally published July 15, 1994, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1078
Two things this time around.
First, I received a good deal of positive response to my letter about the Self article. In case you’ve forgotten, this was the half-witted piece chock full of misinformation, designed to terrorize unknowing readers into thinking their local comic store was a haven for pørņø comics. Plus, Self included a forum where readers could write and state whether they felt a congressional investigation into comics, a la the 1950s, was warranted.
I also got the following from Self itSelf:
Originally published July 8, 1994, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1077
When I was a kid, every Friday night was The Flintstones. The animated family was a part of my life for, literally, as long as I could remember. I looked forward to Fred giving that opening bellow of “Yabba dabba doo” and sliding down that bronto tail at the beginning of the show.
(Curiously, unlike contemporary catch phrases that work their way into vernacular such as “D-oh!” or “Isn’t that special” or even “I didn’t inhale,” we kids didn’t actually go around shouting “Yabba dabba doo.” I mean, we knew the phrase, and we knew it was Fred’s, but we didn’t try to imitate it. Maybe we just didn’t want to talk like cartoon characters. Nowadays that doesn’t seem to be quite as true. I hear “huh huh huh” from kids and even, God help us, adults, in imitation of cartoon characters whose animation is so pathetic that it makes the limited animation Flintstones look like Fantasia. But I digress…)
Originally published June 24, 1994, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1075
As a writer, one takes a certain perverse pleasure in using words to elicit emotional responses from people. What is writing, after all, but using the printed word to get reactions? When people say to me, “I read such and such of yours and it made me cry,” I feel I’ve done my job… at least, if sorrow was what I was attempting to put across.
Which is probably why I’m having real trouble with this installment of “But I Digress.”
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