Do Not Siege Walled Cities - 233
I'm Spiraling Bro
HOPE YOU FIND THIS WELL
Hello! Hope you all had a productive week! I was surrounded by loving family, but still found myself a bit agitated. I think I’m feeling more alienated than I have in many years. I can’t find anything new in media to really connect with. Which could mean I’m getting old, or could mean I’ve put myself on an island in terms of my interests. I’m not sure.
It should not really matter, as there’s infinite things from previous eras that I could potentially connect with. But as a person who makes their money creating things, it’s somewhat disconcerting that I can’t generate a feeling for any of what’s coming out.
I may not be looking in the right places. If you know of something I should be consuming, let me know.
LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT
While I may be struggling to find value in other people’s work, I am enjoying the shit outta the work I’m part of. Look at this beautiful page from Marco.
I assure you, it all makes sense.
ANTIOCH has become a beautiful trade and I am excited for you to get your hands on it.
BRAND DISLOYALTY
Steve Ditko’s was born on November 2, 1927. Saw the usual acknowledgements online, and one reminded me of this most remarkable quote of his:
"When I do a job, it's not my personality that I'm offering the readers but my artwork. It's not what I'm like that counts; it's what I did and how well it was done. I produce a product, a comic art story. Steve Ditko is the brand name."
Whenever Ditko is written off as a loon, my fur raises and I want to start swinging. He was a loon. But, so what? That fact negates not a single great thing about him. More creators could do to adopt his particular form of insanity. Principled weirdo is not the worst thing to be.
It’s been bubbling in my head the past few days. “This is not the arena.” Social media is not the place we make comics. Personas outside the page are ultimately worthless. It’s the page that matters.
Anyway, happy birthday and salute to the memory of Steve Ditko.
GOTTA TRY I GUESS
I may or may not have mentioned Vault Comics free book promotion thing. Basically retailers had to pay shipping, but otherwise got the first issue of a new series for free. This meant very dishonest headlines for the book. “Ships 130k copies!” or whatever. But ‘ships’ and ‘sells’ are clearly not synonyms.
The speculation is that Vault has burned through the money their new majority-stake owner brought to the party and is looking to pump its circulation numbers before selling to a larger entity. This theory is supported by the fact Vault recently reached out to a number of creators looking to lockdown projects. Lockdown meaning “publisher able to announce” and not “we can expect these books to make it to print, surely.”
Is this corny? Eh. I mean you gotta try shit.
Is it dishonest? For sure.
Is it working? Well, anecdotally, no.
The retailer boards are harsh realms to begin with, but they were particularly unkind to this effort. Retailers were put in a weird situation by it, because it was announced it would be free (to retailers) and perhaps some customers may ask why it’s not also free to them. And some retailers did give it out for free to pullbox holders. But there were reports of “not thanks” from customers who did not even want it for free. That’s tough pill.
Gotta try shit. But if a retailer can’t sell something, all you’ve created is waste. It may not have cost them anything (besides shipping) but a book you can’t sell is still a book you can’t sell.
On to the next scheme or gimmick, comics! Don’t stop now!
GENERATIONAL THING MAYBE
Watch this video with the great Kelley Jones, wherein he’s asked why he didn’t pursue creator-owned work. His answer is his and I respect him, but also genuinely crazy to me.
He says Batman was the top of the mountain as far as he was concerned and they let him do a lot with that character, so why shift focus away from that work?
The answer, for me, is “Batman is a borrowed concept that you can only renew. You can never create.” Truthfully, I’m 1/100 as creative as Kelly Jones, so I defer. And he’s done some KILLER work, so I defer. But I think for people my age there is some misallocated in a lifetime corporate career.
Also, I’ve gone my entire adult life believing it was ‘Kelly’ Jones rather than Kelley. I must have seen his name hundreds of times and still somehow excised the offending vowel each time.
THE FIX IS IN
An article in Variety about the recent stumbles and upcoming challenges of the MCU have opened the floodgates. You are now allowed to point out what has been manifestly obvious for years. The same thing is happening in comics, but since we don’t have any meaningful media that covers us, there is no floodgates. It’s just a leak that’s been going on for a couple years and now the room is nearly flooded and people can (almost) talk about things honestly. Here’s hoping we get to full honesty before it’s too late.
After this MCU article, a lotta people had a lot to say. So much fake insider stuff. So much ‘I told you so.’ And that’s all fine, but something major was overlooked.
EVERYONE noticed the insanity of the highlighted bit above. Blade, an action movie about a violent, tough, hyper-masculine half-vampire was headed in a direction nobody on Earth would hope for.
But what NOBODY put together was the following conspiracy, which I’m exposing for the world here for the first time:
Disney executives and outrage Youtubers are in a profit-share or affiliate program of some type.
I am convinced and I cannot be shaken from this viewpoint. Because nothing else makes sense. I’ve done all the the Sherlock Holmes “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth” here and arrived at this simple, unavoidable conclusion.
Run the test in your head. Put a million of the worst screenwriters on typewriters. Tell them they have infinite amount of time to deliver a Blade script. None of them, not a one, would organically come up with “let’s sideline the title character, elevate a new character the audience didn’t come to see, and deliver some homespun wisdom about how to live.” It would never happen. You could grab the dumbest writers from the professional and amateur spheres and they could not manage this.
No. This is a setup.
“Who benefits,” is always the cop question, right? So who benefits from a movie where Mahershala Ali sits on his thumb while nobodies show him how to Blade properly?
Youtubers with bad haircuts.
The ONLY party that gets anything outta something like that is angry guys with Youtube channels. That’s it. ANY alternative would be better for Disney. But it’s the BEST POSSIBLE OUTCOME for someone who feeds their family by talking about how shidded-on pop-culture is in 2023.
How the money is changing hands (and why a C-suite executive making $8-$20M needs another $1500), I don’t know. But the truth is out there! Someone crack this case!
HOW MUCH FIRST HAND EXPERIENCE DO YOU NEED?
Muslimgauze was the alias of a British fella who made electronic records about the middle east, and often Palestine. Where vocals appear at all, they are typically indecipherable or looped field recordings. There are no lyrics. But the albums are nevertheless explicitly political. All 90 of them.
The British fella died at a young age and never made it to the Palestine. During his life he said it would be wrong to visit occupied lands.
I think many of the records are real art. And his fixation on the topic of Palestine and the broader Arab experience is part of what makes them real art.
But that doesn’t mean the records are informed in any real way. You could argue they have a fundamental ignorance to them. No ‘lived experience’ as people like to say these days. ‘Orientalism,’ if you’re being reductive.
His focus is so sustained and sincere that there is no faulting it. The work is great so there is no reasonable means to dismiss it.
But you also have to acknowledge that the work is a partial truth.
And then you have to reconcile that truth isn’t the measure of art. Being ‘accurate’ is the purpose of good reporting, not the province of good art. Everything you consume and process is delivered back to the world with your lens. The relative authenticity of what you dish out is of no consequence.
Would this art be ‘better’ if the Englishman had actually seen the things he made songs about?
No.
It would make him a responsible reporter, but not a better artist.
MEDIA CONSUMPTION FOR THE WEEK
Trying to get through the BODIES comic but finding it a touch dated. The lead is a cop and… dun dun dun… a muslim! That’s some real 2014 energy. “Can you believe there’s marginalized people who must navigate contradictions within their personal and professional lives?!” Yes. I’m an adult. Thank you.
Alright, comic. I’ll play along. From the Met’s website:
So we’re supposed to be mind blown by the reveal that she’s one of 200? Cue the I am Not a Rapper disbelief meme.
A dated meme for some dated sentiments. If comics are gonna borrow techniques from television the whole “assuming your audience is about as worldly as a Kansas fencepost” thing is not one of the ones we should adopt.
There’s some good talent on the book and I’ll try to see it out to the end. I’m just easily turned off from material that goes for the easy stuff.
Finished CRAZY FOOD TRUCK. True trash-ass manga. It’s ostensibly about how food brings people together, but it’s really about tropes that aren’t expanded on meaningfully. Call it fun at best.
Watched the first episode of the new season of SELLING SUNSET. This is my favorite reality program because the women dress like Batman villains to go to their real estate jobs.
Read some Brian K Vaughn BATMAN collection. Really just a few random issues he worked on collected to grab a few bucks at the height of his SAGA success. The issues of BATMAN and DETECTIVE COMICS and whatever else are fun and fine. Vaughn makes sure there’s a lot happening on every page. Also notable for Batman doing blackface.
THAT’S IT FOR ME
This week is gonna be all work and I’m excited. Having my in-laws in town was nice, but very little got done. Now I have an opportunity to get ahead on a number of projects.
Hope we both get a lot done this week. Have a good one. Be grateful for your family. Do for self.