Rolling Comic Books 2022

Sorry if this has already been covered upthread, but why haven't the big comic companies tried to get back into grocery and drug stores? Why not bring back the spinner racks? There's a huge built in audience from the movies, why aren't they taking advantage of it?

I don't know about the Westvind and Luis Garcia books but a lot of the others I mentioned seem to have been abandoned during the process. That Kaluta book was promised for several years (went from Desperado to IDW) and then no word. I'm tempted to email Kaluta about it but I'm scared it will be the thousandth time for him.

xp because people buying periodicals is just, dead

I could see the convenience store in my neighborhood that’s a block from the high school selling a few copies, but I also remember my middle school classmates giving me a great deal on comics they’d “already read” and it took me way too long to figure out they were just pocketing comics from the grocery store and making a quick buck (or less, this was when cover prices were $1.25 or less)

the distribution chain broke a number of years ago and it’s not coming back. I haven’t seen more than a couple tabloid diet/celebrity things at grocery stores for years, and I don’t think the large commodity chains really have a full rack of magazines. comics are collections and/or niche

My toddler love magazines and comics and not-screen things, so do most other kids and teens I know.

Yes, it's about the collapse of the periodical and mag distribution industries (and the relentless optimisation of grocery store shelf space as family grocery stores and newsagents get smaller and smaller), but it's also about the way the floppy publishers stopped marketing/making comics for kids (or do a crap job of it).

E.g. A manageable sum for a low-quality Marv Wolfman/Jim Aparo Batman comic vs. £4.99 for a part 1 of 6000 modern DC batcomic with characters being skinned alive in loving detail

xp yeah, I didn’t mean to imply the demand isn’t there, but all of the progressive closing of the distribution chain and the business decision to get out of accepting returns probably burned a lot of bridges

wld love to see Cow_Art pitch Perlmutter on the concept of returns

I agree that the system is too fucked to be fixable at this point

I just ordered some stuff from MyComicShop for the first time in years. How many of you still track stuff down at dedicated back issue sites/stores? There isn't that much I really crave badly, I mostly just hope for reprints or anthology pieces turning up on blogs.

I spent a huge chunk of my teenage years writing and rewriting checklists for things I lost interest in.

I read all the Swamp Things a while back, and I had to hunt down a lot of single issues.

a huge built in audience from the movies

I didn’t mean to imply the demand isn’t there,

It might be safe to just say it. Three of the top twenty graphic novels sold in mainstream outlets last year were Baby-Sitters Club books, and the top twenty include Attack On Titan, My Hero Academia, and Demon Slayer. Sales on those range from 313,000 to 150,000.

Marvel's top-selling title, on which the major plot thread of their Avengers films is based, ranked at #892, with 10k sold.

There's TONS of Marvel interest with the kids I work with and they all obviously see the movies, and given how graphic novels/comics/manga are super popular in with kids in general - maybe even more than before, because comics aren't really "uncool" anymore - can't help but feel Marvel and DC are really missing the boat. Walking Dead capitalized on it, right?

and given how graphic novels/comics/manga are super popular in with kids in general

I don't think you can bracket them like that - graphic novels (mostly YA stuff) are self contained stories, manga is serialized sure but usually has the advantage that you can start with a Volume 1. So both are easier to access than US superhero comics and both also provide better value for money. I don't think US comics are super popular with kids at all, in fact what I hear from art teachers and such is that manga is universally adored, western comics (not just DC and Marvel either) mostly ignored and the graphic novel stuff that's popular bases itself on manga, in style and storytelling.

Yeah I think there's a reason everybody reads Watchmen first.

I mean obviously DC and Marvel have published many (or at least several) outright masterpieces that can be read as discrete stories and enjoyed by non-comics audiences (the Miller run on Daredevil springs to mind) but good luck finding them at a comic book store at an affordable price

A counter example might be Grant Morrison's JLA's run - it's incredible! But there's a lot of DC continuity tied into it, and I can't imagine a new fan being patient with Howard Porter's dreadful art

I did think those manga sized reprints published in the 2010s by Panini in the UK, of Claremont's X-Men run, were a pretty good attempt but they didn't seem to take off at all

I mean ultimately most of these comics and pieces of shit that you had to be young to enjoy and still be sentimental about. Like, I don't think David Tennant's Doctor Who ever resulted in a mass audience run on Castrovalva DVDs

*are pieces of shit

Growing up in Portugal my access to US superhero comics used to be these Brazilian paperbacks, kind of Archie digest format, and being used to that the first time I found out what US issues were like was a real "lol why the fuck would anyone bother?" moment.

Now I'm remembering the last gasp of Marvel on the newsstand... via Archie Comics. I guess that Marvel Comics Digest lasted eight issues in 2017 before they canned the experiment.

I don't think you can bracket them like that - graphic novels (mostly YA stuff) are self contained stories, manga is serialized sure but usually has the advantage that you can start with a Volume 1. So both are easier to access than US superhero comics and both also provide better value for money. I don't think US comics are super popular with kids at all, in fact what I hear from art teachers and such is that manga is universally adored, western comics (not just DC and Marvel either) mostly ignored and the graphic novel stuff that's popular bases itself on manga, in style and storytelling.

Yup 100% the US floppy format kinda sucks ass and is so expensive. Only benefits are getting regular material every month (hopefully) in color and on nice paper compared to manga

I know we're likely sort of using "Big Two/Image/DH/etc." as shorthand for US comics en total, but that's really not true anymore. You have to include Scholastic as a major publisher and very representative of the industry at this point (as well as companies like First Second, Boom, etc.)

and yes, also 100% every series being discrete/being easy to pick up is a huge reason why these YA series and manga are doing well, i mean look at the Babysitter's Club series and flippin' jankass Dog Man. (lots of books also that aren't really manga style, closer to Cartoon Network/Disney TV, many current animators putting out GAs) there is ZERO reason American superhero comics can't be produced like this and DC is at least trying with their standalone YA books with Batgirl, Raven etc.

we have tons of checkouts in my school of the low-effort "ready to read" paperbacks in Marvel and DC, they love the MCU movies and cartoons, but sadly few decent comics actually aimed at the audience (age 5-11). (The Marvel Adventures stuff is clearly B and C-tier work, and DC seems content reprinting old Batman Adventures comics from 20 years ago.) Meanwhile these same kids are reading everything put out by Jennifer Holm and Raina Telgemeier while constantly asking me for manga like Jujutsu Kaisen and Toilet-Bound Hanako-Kun which we're never going to buy for them (lol)

so - yeah, i get that it's not completely fair to bridge YA material with standard superhero comics, but trust me, the audience and interest is there. they are just completely blowing the opportunity on a massive scale OR choosing not to understand it

A counter example might be Grant Morrison's JLA's run - it's incredible! But there's a lot of DC continuity tied into it, and I can't imagine a new fan being patient with Howard Porter's dreadful art

I mean ultimately most of these comics and pieces of shit that you had to be young to enjoy and still be sentimental about. Like, I don't think David Tennant's Doctor Who ever resulted in a mass audience run on Castrovalva DVDs

no idea what's in Marvel Adventures these days, but these digest collections c. 16 years ago were great* - about six bucks, fun all-ages superhero stories with jokes in. basically the only way that C21st superhero comics should even exist.

https://i.imgur.com/YcU3n6J.jpg

* I mean, eventually I bought one that wasn't primarily written by Jeff Parker and tapped out - probably the third one - but kids don't need them to be as funny as I did.

lol ok, but tbf the Doctor Who 2000s reboot actually DID get me to watch a bunch of the old serials

Ha yeah I was quite happy to revisit Happiness Patrol and Paradise Towers but I didn't see a lot of Tumblrs posting Kandyman and Richard Briers gifs

It's interesting how incomprehensible continuity is often brought up as the #1 reason the comics don't get more new readers but at this stage going to see a MCU movie w/o having seen the last thirty or so must be equally disorientating and yet ppl love it.

I dispute that a bit - the continuity is huge but the movies (or at lest the successful ones) usually work well as simplistic and discrete units -- like, no one who missed the first 45 minutes of Ragnorok is going to have trouble fingering out who the good and bad guys are, or whatever the MacGuffin is this time round.

But, like that's a way smaller measure of difficulty than DC's obsession with deep cut characters ("who are these yellow headed men and why are they suddenly in my Animal Man comic") or, like, trying to fathom the fuck of what happened in Secret Empire (I still don't get it), or why this Bendis can't ever start or finish a story etc.

Or, e.g. I loved the Hickman revival of X-Men but it just became a TOO MANY COMICS headache and who has time

this is why I said "at this stage" - try going into Doc Strange 2 not having seen anything except Doc Strange 1.

agreed on the Hickman thing, i was really sad that it eventually just turned back into your standard overpublished morass

i had some big problems with Dr Strange 2 (mostly regarding how it followed up Wandavision) but at its core it's still a very watchable/fun theme park ride that people can just show up for and see CGI pew-pew and some funny jokes

Lol, I was considering watching Doctor Strange 2, as I had finally caved to a years-long MCU apathy and watched Doctor Strange 1 a month ago and thought it wasn't bad. I guess that's a fool's errand, huh?

Also enjoyed House of X/Powers of X, but gave up after too many side-projects came out.

That may have turned me off of superhero books altogether, although I make an exception for Swamp Thing.

nah, go see it! it's totally fun. and if you haven't seen Wandavision it definitely won't bug you the way it did me
i do think it's a little more restrained than the first Doctor Strange was, ironically, at least with the wacky VFX set pieces

but at its core it's still a very watchable/fun theme park ride that people can just show up for and see CGI pew-pew and some funny jokes

Sure, but you can also pick up a continuity wank comic and enjoy it for the cool battles and grody art. A generation of X-Men fans happily read entirely incomprehensible comics for those reasons.

ha, fair enough!

I haven't seen Doctor Strange 2 yet, but 'more restrained' is not what I'm looking for there!

xp I remember starting to read Marvel comics, specifically the X-Men, during one of the worst on-boarding period (early 90s) and part of the draw was figuring out what the hell was going on, who these characters are, and why they're battling each other

There was a huge audience boost at the time! It's still really funny that they had a semblance of an entry point with X-Men #1, with Chris Claremont/Jim Lee and Claremont's overly verbose "this is who this character is, their powers, and what drives them" excessive text boxes, and managed to completely blow it up after six or seven issues.

My initial experience with comics as a child was buying random issues off the spinner racks in 7-11, just plopping down in the middle of a story and forgetting about it again for several months before grabbing an issue and finding new incomprehensible action and drama.

When I was trying to seriously get back into comics a few years ago, I tried this tactic. I wanted to recapture the chaos. I would just walk into my LCS, grab a bunch of issues off the wall, semi-randomly. I was also storing them in accordion folders, as a little rebellion against bags and boards. After a while, I concluded that this was not a satisfying means of reading or storage for me and switched to bags and boards and pull-box.

i feel like i'm unintentionally misleading a bit. DS2 is NOT more restrained in most ways! It's more like i feel there's nothing quite as cool looking as the "glass" effects in DS1, but there's PLENTY else to watch in it, especially going in as a horror or Sam Raimi fan

on occasion i do like to pick up random issues of stuff i've never read just to try, and it's just not really how comics are built nowadays

Yeah, I really have to get in on a first issue or if something I missed has been getting a lot of hype, I'll go pick up a trade and start from there.

at this stage going to see a MCU movie w/o having seen the last thirty or so must be equally disorientating

will report back in a week or three

like, no one who missed the first 45 minutes of Ragnorok is going to have trouble fingering out who the good and bad guys are, or whatever the MacGuffin is this time round.

fingering out your mum morelike tbf I was fairly bemused by the first 45 minutes of Ragnarok because I had no idea who was being introduced for the first time and who was from one or three or eight other films

Beyond wanting decently scanned reprints of DC and Marvel (hopefully people are torrenting good scans), I'm kind of glad that people are looking to other things, but I bet Disney owns some of them too. I don't have high hopes for this Disney Must Pay thing, I'd rather people didn't work for them.

the whole point of Disney Must Pay is that the people didn't work for Disney. you're free to agitate instead on a case-by-case basis, hundreds and hundreds of times over, for eg Alan Dean Foster to not write the Alien novelisation in the first place because he will receive royalties for 40 years, and then Disney will buy 20th Century Fox, but it might be less practical than the current movement.

Of course there's many more issues than the royalties situation.

I got this little series Knighthawk in the mail
https://www.comics.org/series/5322/covers/
Because there was a Filipino special issue of Comic Book Artist in their Top Shelf era that cited Knighthawk as some of the most accomplished Xtreme 90s comics, a highlight for Nestor Infante and the picture shown looked pretty good. It is nice but Neal Adams really dominates the thing, sometimes it looks like he's doing most of the work.
I forgotten how much adverts break up the mood of a comic when they keep interrupting the story.

This was the issue, really worth tracking down, it was probably my favorite of all the ones I read
https://www.topshelfcomix.com/catalog/comic-book-artist-vol-2-4/209

Neal Adams is the only one credited on first issue of Knighthawk.

Re: "is there a Gorilla on the cover?"
It even features another variation of the gorilla robbing famous novels from a library in order to take over the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpLBzGfuk1s
It doesn't mention any of the possible racist undercurrents that have often been discussed around giant or humanoid ape stories. There are a bunch of french stories that predate Planet Of The Apes, including this one
https://thebedlamfiles.com/fiction/balaoo/

Even after hearing some explanations, I'm still a bit mystified that gorillas were so popular with children. I don't remember kids ever being that excited about anything like that.

I own this history of comics hardcover and I remember a non-comics geek friend leafing through it and just being reduced to hysterics by an issue of Tales Of The Unexpected featuring a guy frantically gesturing at a green gorilla and the gorilla saying "no you fool, none but you can see me!".

Sorry, I know, wrong medium but I Can't find any talk of Owen Kline's Funny Pages, I thought it might be well received on ilx. Has drawings by Johnny Ryan and a couple of others, feels much like a Zwigoff film. Really worth seeing.

Felt really bad for the Miles character throughout.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXDeAcyt8Ng

was hoping for a local theater release, but i guess it came and went

oh actually it's currently playing still. i might get lucky