Do Not Siege Walled Cities - 228
Universal Appeal
WELCOME TO THE SPRINT
Normally, I take a day and just sorta putz about writing this newsletter between answering emails or eating soup.
But today, I’ve got a true ton of work to do. So instead of a Sunday morning constitutional, we’re doing a 40-yard dash. I’m well. Hope you are too. Now let’s go!
HOW ARE WE DOING?
Everyone is talking about the closing of Jim Hanley’s Universe Manhattan store. It was a respected shop and a nice alternative to the bigger spots. NYC is a bubble and I’m not sure how many people outside of it actually know about JHU, but it became a larger conversation when Mark Millar weighed in.
Millar is becoming the voice in the wilderness on this topic. Pundits have been beating this drum for almost a decade, but the pros always circled the wagons and claimed the industry was in good health. The word gaslighting comes to mind.
Now, is it perhaps true that Millar cares more at this exact moment because his Netflix deal may be ending and he needs comics more than the past few years? Yeah, that is possible. But self-interest doesn’t disqualify a statement.
As previously discussed at length, he’s 100% correct about the fact that the Big Two’s fortunes dictate the direct market’s health. And as discussed, that fact sucks.
But until we get 100% cooperation from retailers (many of which are diehard Big Two fans themselves), indie and creator-owned books need the Big Two superstructure to survive.
I say a lotta wild shit in this newsletter that may preclude me from working at these companies. And as an individual, I’m comfortable with that. I’m not malicious and only say things I believe to be true, so wherever that lands me- I’m at peace with it. But I should caveat that I’m also a member of TEAMS. I have true creative partners and they deserve better than sharing a suicide vest with me. I don’t want something I say, harmless though it seems to me, to impact them in a negative way. So, to the editors reading this, please know that I want good things for you, hope someday our creative visions overlap in some way, and most importantly- I don’t speak for my partners.
Ok, so that outta the way, what would it take to put the Big Two in good health?
Here’s the major complaints every honest person has had about corporate comics for years:
bad talent.
bad distribution.
bad promotion.
bad scheduling.
In reverse order, let’s tackle them as honestly as we can with the understanding that these are incredibly difficult systems to change from the bottom or the middle. This require real leadership.
Bad scheduling means books are running into and up against each other in ways that break the ‘hobby’ of comics. If a storyline reveals something and the followup series or spinoff or event is announced in such a way that it undercuts that reveal… that’s a failure to plan. And if a book has some momentum or is righting a ship after a bad run, and a crossover event barrels in to derail those efforts… that’s a failure to plan. And if a reader drops off a longtime subscription because he/she looks at an upcoming schedule and it says he’s gotta read 30 titles to follow the story… that’s a failed plan. The answer to all these things is “someone will have to explain to management that we won’t have great numbers this quarter because we’re setting up something bigger. Oh, and it’ll have to be whichever one of us hasn’t used that as a lie previously.”
Bad promotion means that despite “the biggest internal ad campaign in Marvel Comics history” nobody seems to know what G.O.D.S. is, and they ordered accordingly. If things don’t feel seeded in an organic way within the in-progress stories, you’re relying on whatever cheap hype you can manufacture. And trust me as a guy who works in music, relying on hype is like betting on hope. It’s not a plan. The answer to this one is, again, “we’re gonna have to think longterm, commit, and reframe hype as a goal rather than a force we pray randomly blesses us.” And notice addressing promotion here is still thinking WITHIN comics. There’s a whole argument that we’re in a battle against contraction because we don’t promote OUTSIDE of comics. But I just admit I’m out of my depth on that topic. I cannot see a cost-effective solution, though one may certainly exist.
Bad distribution means comic shops are the exclusive market for periodical comics. Bad distribution means Spider-Man the character is one of the most recognizable intellectual properties on the planet but SPIDER-MAN the comic has only 2000 retail outlets. There was all this talk for years about how comics were stuck because Diamond had a monopoly on distribution. Now that’s changed and we’re left without someone to blame. Additionally, “getting back to the newsstand” has been a point of interest for many of us for a long time. Some thought it would cure things. But now there is no newsstand. There is no easy solution here because comics are too expensive to compete as entertainment on a rapidly dying print newsstand. And while digital subscription services are The Future™, they would have to explode in the next few years to offset the dropoff in print periodical sales. My take is not sexy: There is no quick fix. This will have to be dialed in on the content level, striking a balance between what excites the direct market and what will sell perennially in book market. That’s obviously the existing goal, but the Big Two fail spectacularly at this and actually end up widening that gap.
Bad talent means either the creators working in comics are crap, they aren’t permitted to do good work, and/or they aren’t put on books that compliment their skills. This is where most people’s minds go when they try to identify problems in comics because it’s the most tactile. You read, you feel. You read bad work and you feel bad about comics. Now we can (and I do) blame bad promotion for some of these Big Two creators never getting excitement around them. But even in the most restricted corporate space, your name is still your name and doing bad work is something you wear. So what to do? This is where we return to Millar, who believes the way through is back. Get old talent to save the day. But this is not a solution. Respectfully, it’s a solution for Millar, who could ask a lotta money to return to either company. But for the industry? It’s a single summer ad campaign. Period.
I remember when the pandemic was causing uncertainty and old-head pros thought “a Marvel/DC crossover is what we need!” It was very basic, very dated, thinking from creators whose solutions are ‘of a time.’ Bringing back the creators who priced themselves outta the publishers is that same level of cheap pop. So what is the real solution?
I think the intuitive answer may be the right one. “Stop doubling down.” It’s ok to admit you made a mistake. And sometimes even good creators can’t do anything on a book or in a system. Saying, “yeah, that wasn’t what we were hoping for” is alright. It feels like corporate Kafka-thought to continue hiring the wrong people to cover up hiring the wrong people. As if stopping is an admission of something and admitting something is a form of death. I don’t wish any of these creators bad luck. If they were exited from these books, I hope they’d make their ways in something that flatters their sensibilities. But something’s gotta be done. And I’m not saying this from any type of self-interested space. I don’t assume I’m on the list. In fact, I assume I am not. It’s just time to flush the pipes. “We’re starting over” would provide the same cheap bump as Millar’s plan, but would also allow for a sustained upward mobility. Of course it would require commitment. You couldn’t keep anyone. And you’d have to brace exciting creators for the online talk around that type of thing, because you could safely predict that fans would call it a purge and be celebratory in a potentially mean-spirited fashion. But it can be done. And I think at this point it’s the only means of marrying the type of spike these divisions need to justify themselves to their superiors with the potential longterm positive trend they’re looking for.
Alright, all obvious stuff, I fear. I’m just following my train of thought to the station.
IN RELATED NEWS
Some discussion on related topics from the Cartoonist Kayfabe guys. What they dial in at 7:19 is a thing I’ll be talking about later in the newsletter: there’s very few comics that convey, if not a complete story, at least a complete idea.
And from there they get into some salient talk about how we’re not building rabid fanbases the way manga is. A short little talk that articulates the points many of us are thinking about a lot.
SEMIOTICS FOR KIDS
This is just a thought that’s been swirling in my brain lately. My stepson is 9. Smart kid. Not terminally online, though very committed to Roblox. He was showing me something in the game today and referenced a player’s Doge avatar.
There is no way he knows what Dogecoin is. I’m a grown man with some understanding of cryptocurrency, and I couldn’t really tell you what it is. But he knows ‘Doge.’
I think writing about the internet sucks. Maybe that makes me old, but it’s just one of those things that feels tired on the premise level. Before character. Before world. Before tone. “Oh, this is about the internet? Pass.” But I would be curious to see someone with an interest or understanding of symbols, like Moore, explore the way children process fractured information that almost uniformly does not have meaning.
For example, my stepson knows Andrew Tate’s face and name. My girl does not approve of Tate and questioned her son about his knowledge of the subject. As it turned out, literally ALL he knew about Tate as his face and “Top G.” The human being Andrew Tate is a meme without context for a kid.
There’s something there. I don’t know what it is, but the idea that kids are absorbing rootless concepts as nothing but easily referenced icons is something. Again, get a genius to write about it. I’ll read it.
HAPPY XMAS (STRIKE IS OVER)
I am happy the WGA and the studios reached an agreement. Primarily happy for the writers’ sakes, but also happy for myself because discourse on the topic was cluttering my feed.
I write a lotta things and I may someday be pulled into the WGA, but I think comic writers should be honest with ourselves. This guild does not like us. Producers optioning our work is the less ideal outcome than a guild member selling an original script. We’re a net benefit to the bad guys and a minor inconvenience to the WGA. So, c’mon. Happy any time a writer gets paid, but let’s not embarrass ourselves pretending we’re WGA pledges waiting to be upstreamed to the big show.
The one WGA demand that really puts me at odds with that guild is the writers room minimum staff requirements. That’s not because I don’t want people to work and get credits and learn. It’s only because art doesn’t work like that.
And we can paint me as something I’m not or dismiss me as anti-union, but it wouldn’t change the fact that a clear authorial voice is what makes good art. Ten guys eating pizza spitballing new ways to find a dead prostitute on Law & Order is fine and I’m happy everyone is employed. But it’s not the same as one or two people having a vision and executing it without the aural clutter of additional voices.
This is on my mind because I don’t care for television. There’s some decent shows of course, but as far as media options go I’d place it towards the bottom of the list. But my girl and I watched an episode of something the other day that was just perfectly constructed. It worked on the formal level of ‘story’ but that’s a cold scientific thing that can’t be the whole of it. And it worked on the emotional payoff level, which is more important. Just a good little episode.
And it was manifestly one person’s vision. The show has a writers room but this episode evidenced how silly that concept can be. Authorial voice is just the apex of what we seek from art. Now entertainment? Put all the idiots in the world in the same room and see what happens. But art, maybe not.
It’s been interesting watching guild stalwarts like Craig Mazin have to put ‘solidarity’ over what he knows in his heart. He experienced the most success of his career with Chernobyl, a series that was exclusively HIM. A revealing bit from his interview in Variety:
One of the WGA’s proposals is about staffing minimums — a minimum number of writers that a studio must hire depending on how long a season is. How do you feel about that point, as someone who tends to write alone?
No one needs to be too upset on my behalf. Mike White [creator of “The White Lotus”] and I became the poster children for the lone wolf. My understanding — and it’s not just an understanding; I talked about this at length with Chris Keyser and with staff at the WGA — is that minimum staffing would not necessarily impact the way that I write. It’s about employment. It’s not necessarily about who sits in a room and does what.
The truth is, I am one person in a union of 9,000. I may not agree on everything that the union is looking for, but then again, if you agree on everything that your leaders put forward, you’re probably just a robot. Republicans don’t agree on everything the Republican Party says. Democrats don’t believe everything the Democratic Party says. It’s really just, in general, are your principles and philosophies aligned? And in this case, my principles and philosophies are aligned with the Writers Guild in the large general way. So we’ll see what happens. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m borne by the tide the way everyone else is, just waiting for the companies to stop it. Literally, it’s all I keep thinking to myself. They’ve just gotta stop it. It’s on them to make this right.
Aligned in the ‘large general way.’ My least favorite type of thinking, large and general. “Studios are bad. Guild is good. I’ll ignore the writers I get saddled with. I have permission. Shhh.”
In the tug of war between art and commerce, this is commerce resting its balls on art’s forehead. But, hey, I guess if the supernumerary staff members are comfortable collecting a check to do grammar checks on someone else’s scripts, more power to’m. Though at that point, why not get a job that gets you outside a little or gives you time with your family?
LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT REVIEW
So here we’ve got a very pretty, very airy, action-adventure Batman story. How could you be mad?
I’m talking about BATMAN: LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT issue 31 featuring the story ‘Family’ by Jim Hudnall and Brent Anderson. It’s a single issue story. A self-contained little “oh, Alfred why don’t you go on a holiday” thing.
I’ve read only a little Hudnall but I have seen a lotta Anderson in my life. And I would put this issue up with my favorite page from him.
Pages are both well-constructed and clever. His work feels dated to young people, I fear, but it’s a rare combination of great draftsmanship and cartooning. Characters are expressive and distinct. It’s almost like Neal Adams meets 1960s advertising art.
Now in terms of story, this may or may not be the best place to bring in a new criteria. An editor friend hit me recently and suggested I talk about how well these stories manage to tell us what we need to know. His contention is that in this moment creators are failing the readers by not supplying them with critical information. The who, what, where, and why to anchor our interest in a series and keep us reading.
This being a single issue story, the rules are the same but the scale would have to be weighted a bit differently, I think. My read on this issue is, “yes, it certainly does provide us everything we need to know and literally anyone could pick this up and follow/enjoy it.” However, the process isn’t pretty.
Between Anderson’s throwback style and the amount of dialog needed on some pages, I would expect some disinterest from a certain type of reader.
And again, the truncated nature of a single-issue story costs us something in the way of depth. Here’s the most we get from the villain. We know who he is as a hurdle for Batman, but we don’t know who he is. And of course, he’s not the point of the story -Bruce and Alfred’s connection is- so whatever. But still not a lot to hold onto.
So was this a fun issue for someone like me who loves self-contained stories and Anderson’s old-school style? Definitely. Anyone else? I’d likely hand them a different issue of this series.
ALRIGHT THEN
This one took longer than anticipated. But I guess I did break to assemble some mobile multi-unit planter thing for my girlfriend. So we’ll call it a moderately productive morning. Now onto the real work. Have a good week. Do for self.