Rolling Comic Books 2020 Visions

irl tee hee

https://www.instagram.com/p/CAn6ZGDB6h6/

I've been following this case closely for a number of reasons and was surprised to discover that Chris Cooper, the (unrelated) guy opposite Amy Cooper in the recent racially-motivated Central Park birding kerfuffle, happens to be an ex-Marvel editor who introduced the first openly gay characters to the canonical Star Trek universe back in the mid 90's

everything that is fetishy or seems like it could be in science fiction and fantasy

Fixed that for you.

Interesting thing about this stuff on deviantart and similar sites is that something really niche can flourish on one of them but can't be found at all on the others.

I had this really weird amazing dream that I was holding this Daredevil Annual from the 80s written by Frank Miller with artwork by Art Adams that of course does not really exist. In my minds eye memory it had this cool cover where Daredevil is swinging by on his billy club being chased both by Hand ninjas and Venom.

Been reading a bunch of horn head comics (to use the Stan vernacular) but not the Miller issues, the later part of the original run and the earliest issues, neither of which I read when I was a kid. Venom does show up in the 'Fall from Grace' story, so that must have been part of it.

http://i.imgur.com/Ze2Ratv.png

Gary Panter - https://www.instagram.com/p/CA9fbNHl0Ul/

i...don't get it?

it's offisa pup
https://artduckomagazine.wordpress.com/2016/02/24/krazy-kat-spotlight-by-erica-lambright/

nhex, ilxmail me and i will send you some Krazy Kat cbr
or just do this
https://joel.franusic.com/krazy_kat/

I don't really "get" this particular appropriation / recontextualization of Offisa Pupp, but whatevs

pupp represents control, structure for the sake of structure rather than truth and dumb power; he claims to protect but doesn't care what his constituents actually want and is fast to throw ignatz in jail for upending order
panter is a noted obsessive drawer and hand drawing waves of baton-raised lockstep pupps to cope struck me as pretty brilliant

yes

Seems kinda reductive, but ok

Panther has been posting these giant tapestries of classic comic characters on his Instagram for ages, you don't even have to see it as a political statement if that doesn't work for you.

Love the Panter, thanks for sharing forks

seems almost quaint now, since offisa pup never had a riot shield or helmet

good share, thanks forks

Been seeing quite a lot of cool drawing/painting and comics stuff appearing on my youtube recommendations (what taken so long?)

I don't know if I've ever seen Shinichi Sakamoto's work. I still find the idea of drawing digitally really disconcerting but I am impressed how well he works with his assistants and how seamlessly he can place on a bloody readymade wig onto a character. Maybe I'd notice the seams if I was reading. I often notice artists drawing over 3d models and I don't like it most of the time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDpn9fdsRbY
The channel is generally interviews with japanese creators in different mediums.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haaZ4X_hyeY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRqIYbg18sY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVKFvdHgc3s
Loving Ed Piskor and Jim Rugg's Cartoonist Kayfabe channel. The interviews are lengthy; they do interesting commentaries of Wizard and Comics Journal issues; I hadn't heard anything about Octobriana; they've got a Kaze Shinobu video; liked the videos about "outlaw" and bootleg comics.
Thing I enjoyed most was probably the Tim Vigil interview. Sad that there hasn't been collected editions but he wants to do one. I get a kick out of seeing 80s/90s/early 00s alternative comics getting collected even if I'm not into them but I'd probably get a Vigil collection. Sad that it pretty much always ends up being a crowdfunding thing that gets them going.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIVSjH-srqM

Below is the link to a Google doc list of all the titles suggested by members of the CSS Facebook Group in response to a request for comics/graphic novels addressing racism, policing, and social justice.

I'd like to build this list with member and comics community input, so if you have more suggestions please add them and include a link, and then we can share it more widely as well.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1a6RYz3NkT_SOhMr_GKfdYv0SmgHWstYPGGUPhHDFCRg/edit?usp=sharing

RE: Octobriana - Bryan Talbot incorporated her into his Luther Arkwright strip, I believe (the link above may mention that, haven't watched it yet)

I also have that Octobriana and the Russian Underground book - 1971 UK h/c £3.90 - there isn't much actual comic strip content, but the big stylistic influence appears to be Barbarella.

Yeah they did mention the Arkwright thing and a few other comics even did that.

Gary Groth interview was good. He's publishing Barry Windsor Smith's Monster soon, which I assumed died many years ago but he was working on it for something like 3 decades. A story about living with Jim Sternako. And talking about a couple of really impressive sounding upcoming graphic novels by first timers.

Man, DC really wants to kill print comics.

Black history
https://www.yoebooks.com/upcoming-books/215-invisible-men-by-ken-quattro.html

Man, DC really wants to kill print comics.

^^ Pulled out of Diamond altogether, switching all their periodical distribution to two mail-order companies, no international distribution to comic shops.

In normal times, this would definitely be a case of pointing and laughing when, like Heroes World, the plan flops. This seems so much more speedily doomed to failure that the only thing that makes sense is that it's intended as a strongarm move to get better terms out of Diamond.

However, decisions from DC that make sense have not been a core business strategy for about the last 15 years.

If it's all just feeder content for the eventually digital content mill of whatever the final Frankenstein's monster of HBO Max, CBS All Access, and DC Universe will be in a couple of years... comics are a pretty cheap loss in comparison.

Yeah, I think they'd genuinely be happy if print died and they could just farm content for TV and movies until the superhero boom is completely over.

DC can exist as an imprint that keeps Watchmen in print just to fuck with Alan Moore.

Also of note in the Groth interview: Eisner, Joe Kubert and Gil Kane being unable to do "serious" work well, and funny story about Mark Waid.

Tbf Diamond looks like an absolute basket case of a company to be associated with

tfw you intentionally create a monopoly for your exclusive trading partner and then get confused when they act like a monopoly for 25 years

Diamond should be tarred and feathered just for forcing owners to put up with the ordering software. It's clunky as hell and decades out of date.

I am a bit concerned that shops are going to be hurt since their shipping costs will effectively double, but that's the price of losing a monopoly.

Shops will be destroyed - what's the incentive for the two retailers who have been handed the new distribution duo-exclusive to make terms favourable to the competition?

To say nothing of English-language shops in Canada, the UK, Australia et al

Didn't realize - DC's preferred distributors are also direct-to-consumer retailers - DCBS and Midtown Comics. Leading to fears of Amazon-style behavior where they use order data to give themselves a competitive advantage.

(Normal bookstores will go with Penguin/Random House.)

There's still a monopoly, really. There's no competition between DC's two distributors, they're not going to offer better discounts to get your business.

They figured out, I think that they couldn't mandate regional exclusives but they strongly suggest one or the other. Also points to how little thought/effort was put into this, DCBS is shipping from either Indiana or Mississippi so everyone on the West Coast is going to get all their DC books from there. Should be no problem at all!

If by no other means, you can tell this year is a swirling miasma of shit by the fact that the impending death of the direct market is like fifteenth in my list of pressing concerns.

I've never really understood why comics completely quit the same distribution system that magazines and other periodicals use. I'm guessing it's too low volume, but the way the comic book dealers ship, it's no returns. There appears to be plenty of esoteric magazines out there that have to have fairly low sales numbers, why are comics different? I'd figure that would be great for whoever distributes magazines.

don't remember the exact reason but i don't think it made much sense
specifically talking about the no-return system, but pre-order-in-almost-exactly-three-months system is also awful

Again Cartoonist Kayfabe, the David Choe interview was nuts but I didn't know much about him before. He hasn't done much comics but he has a lot of stories about comics people he knows.

Comic shops have to handle subscriptions and special orders week in and week out, customers demand books be all but mint conditions, anything past like Spider-Man and Batman requires salesmanship. Shops need a hub where they can special order that book from three months ago for someone - not an issue for a store that carries Time.

Periodicals are just there, it's a different model.

The ordering in advance is also how they're unlike other periodicals - like, one issue of Teen Vogue isn't going to be a blockbuster because they revealed something on page 47. Batman will be. So orders go in to set print runs, then are adjusted again a few weeks before actual shipment.

I respect that this system is difficult for the shops to run it as well. But in my experience - as someone who stepped away from floppies for about two decades and came back to the fold about two years ago - I am trying my *Damndest* to help keep my local shops afloat with subscriptions and advance orders, spending a lot of extra time to find things to pre-order, selling myself. Holy shit it is awful compared to just, you know, buying books, films, or anything else in life. (Some of it is specific to my local shop, I'm sure...)

For example - If the store doesn't order WAY too many issues of an issue, then they get shorted (which can easily happen if your store ordered like only one copy of a low-selling book like Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen, or even like an issue of something like Batman that suddenly gets really hot), then you have to hope a reprint happens...three months later. God help you if you try a random new book or miniseries and want to catch up. If I see something advertised on Comiclist (these are official press releases and solicits) with on-sale dates... nope, Diamond's garbage Windows 3.1-era-looking software isn't letting you order it yet, try again in a few weeks, maybe it'll be available, maybe not.

Meanwhile - and I'm talking about TPBs, manga, hardcovers here - I can just one-click pre-order on Amazon a year in advance and forget about it. I rarely do this anyway, but I feel like I have to play all these games when ordering from an LCS. Too much of the time I end up filling issues from eBay or Midtown Comics online down the road. It makes the hobby frustrating when there's a million other things competing for my attention and money.

shortened point: returns should be allowed, ordering should be easier.

Too much of the time I end up filling issues from eBay or Midtown Comics online down the road

great news for you!

sigh

Temporarily at least. I'm laying odds on DC completely bailing on print by this time next year, which would take down print comics in general IMO and Midtown/DCBS with them.

There are a couple of conversations I know are happening this week with the retailers a level under Midtown/DCBS that will demonstrate their commitment to print under the new system.

All the problems you're talking about are real but many of them are unavoidable, like pre-ordering and not carrying everything that's available mail order. It's just not possible for brick and mortar of any kind to compete on selection or price with mail order/Amazon. Retailers basically have to hope they have what you want and if not c'est la vie. I don't think there's a system in existence that can change that. I've never found an issue with ordering something once it hits Diamond's system - that's not a software problem or a Diamond problem, it's publishers not communicating hard and fast details about publish dates and everything to Diamond so that it can be entered into the order system. No one can go on press releases.

Returnability isn't really that great a deal - you still have to have the cash flow to make the initial buy and in bookstores it comes back as credit rather than that cash. DC has had a lot of returnable books over the last year and they're months behind on letting them be returned. I don't think it would radically change the industry, except that it would bankrupt some shops who got trigger happy planning to recoup the unsold merch in 8 weeks.

I dunno, just from the inside I can't imagine being mad at anyone but Marvel and DC for making it impossible for readers to just walk in and buy a random comic off the wall and get a complete narrative, constant reboots and rejiggering and crossovers and EVENTS. Image to a lesser extent for not keeping anything on a regular publication schedule. Walking Dead remained huge up to the end because it came out every damn month come hell or high water. When a book takes a six-plus month hiatus it loses most of its readership. Saga's awesome but whenever it starts publishing again, half as many people will care.