Rolling Comic Books 2020 Visions

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.

I hate that Marvel and DC do that too, but I have to blame the readers for supporting those giant crossover events. (In recent times, shit like Absolute Carnage, War of the Realms. I found DC's events a little better self-contained, but still kind of bad. Even DCeased can't just be a single straight miniseries at a time!) As long as the books keep selling, they're going to keep doing it. Gotta give the people what they want, I guess. Except consistency.

I don't totally disagree with what you're saying, but it almost makes me feel that the business model deserves to die if those problems are truly insurmountable. Let most comics go digital. Last year an owner was complaining to me how insane it was that Marvel and DC alone were publishing ~75 floppies a month EACH, I don't see how that's sustainable for readers or shops. They can't even properly advertise all the series they're publishing.

That's interesting to know about Walking Dead and Saga though - I thought Saga was doing great.

...And also, I guess, be thankful Immortal Hulk hasn't had any major delays.

Everything's a blur to me but Saga's last issue was sometime in 2018 and it's not on the horizon. People will have just forgotten about it if/when it comes back.

If comics go digital the format will change/die - there's no incentive to do 12 issues and deal with all the staffing/delays/etc.. Everything will be original GNs on an intermittent schedule and all the smaller publisher stuff will just not exist.

12 monthly issues

I say that with some certainty because all the major events end up getting stretched and delayed for one reason or another and they only keep doing it because of the relationship with comic shops. Acting more like a book publisher (but really just building IP for the mass entertainment divisions) would let them cut a ton of staff costs.

I skipped around the Steve Bissette interview on Cartoonist Kayfabe (it's enormous) and he talks about his plans for Tyrant. He still definitely wants to do it.
I didn't know anything about his aborted trilogy of Swamp Thing novels.

I have to admit, while I am a big fan of Ed Piskor's work, I can't stand listening to or looking at the guy. Something about him.

That's harsh, and I love his voice! Maybe there's tons of slightly Mitch Hedberg sounding guys wherever he's from but it's a novelty to me.

I'm continually astonished how well an independent comic from the early 90s could do.

Also very interesting was Bissette talking about when he was deciding to give up comics, about a distributor that would have been much better than Diamond but died because Image chosen Diamond along with DC.

...one that wasn't Capital? No-one else had the same level of infrastructure.

It was Capital.

Yes, their big guns in the exclusivity wars were the moral victories of Kitchen Sink Press and whatever name James Owen was publishing Starchild under at the time.

Before the DC right-to-buy deal memo broke.

Fascinating mystery in here. At the 13 minute mark there is a japanese magazine celebrating american comics, with cosplay and japanese artists drawing some Marvel heroes; but also this "what in fuck is that?!" moment, something completely unfamiliar that I doubt is even american but looks amazing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4vu7NmQowA
I just love the stuff with flipping through trashy and obscure comics so much. In my days of back issue shop hunting I didn't see nearly enough stuff I didn't already know about but it was great when I did. Finding a Glenn Chadbourne comic was a special moment and there were some odd small press british comics and a ratty sword and sorcery comic I wish I picked up.
I'll never love most of this stuff completely but I feel some love has been reinvigorated and I should give some of the really bad 90s comics more credit because there's still things about them I really like, and a feeling that there was serious potential from these types of comics that was never really realized and a slightly different audience that could have been cultivated.

So much great comics-adjacent artists, too bad they had to all be on instagram (which I think is a pain in the ass to browse and you can't save images). Probably too many of them draw eyes similar though.

https://www.instagram.com/julimajer/
https://www.instagram.com/lilisignorini/
https://www.instagram.com/bl00mfield/
https://www.instagram.com/slimesistren/
https://www.instagram.com/annadegnbol/
https://www.instagram.com/odaiselin/
https://www.instagram.com/____gage____/
https://www.instagram.com/magsmunroe/

not a big fan of the paul pope inspired stuff but Oda Iselin's work is pretty intresting

A lot of these artists seemed to spring up after Jonny Negron and Lala Albert came on the scene and they all share some similarity, usually the eyes. Post-manga or something.

i thought this was fun in a repurposed batshit rightwing images sorta way
http://www.thenation.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Carlesgod_StaySane_Web-img-3.jpg

hashtag radiohead social media prophecy

I'm glad Print-On-Demand is becoming more prevalent in comics, half the books I read are POD these days. Seen Rick Veitch say it wouldn't reproduce pencil art that well but I hope it keeps evolving.
The Carter Ryder comics and public domain comics are the main things I'm aware of going POD, is there much else notable yet?