A happy birthday to the Occasional Superheroine and the President of Friends of Lulu herself, Valerie D’Orazio!
(No, we’re not telling you how old she is. She is timelessly and eternally young– in other words, younger than all the principals of ComicMix. And much cuter than Mike Gold.)
While we wait for Cloak and Dagger to come out, go read her current piece on the Doomsday scenario in comics distribution. And let her know we said hi.
We are back and barely unpacked from New York ComicCon 2009 and we brought you some surprises already starting with the coolest Comic iPhone app so far, plus DC revives The Doom Patrol yet again, Mike Gold talks comic economics plus The Five Cool Things in comic shops this week. Not enough? Then wait until you meet The Great Cat!
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Stop worrying about Super Bowl and let’s deal with more pressing issues like why is LOST looking backwards? Elizabeth Mitchell (Juliet) and Michael Emerson (Ben) give us their perspective. MAD Magazine is slowing down (and Mike Gold isn’t happy) – but on the bright side, TORCHWOOD hits NYCon and today we get music from WATCHMEN
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Norman Mingo’s iconic image of Alfred E. Neuman was first used by Mad Magazine back in 1956 as comment upon the Eisenhower / Stevenson election or, more to the point, in parody of the typical Time magazine cover of its time. Mingo’s Alf is still in use to this day; as is the struggle between the donkey and elephant also depicted on that cover.
We’ve had presidents and presidential elections in comics since the staple was first applied to cheap newsprint. Recently we’ve had Lex Luthor as president in the DC universe, and Stephen Colbert running for the same job in the Marvel universe. The president is one of the most important of the American icons, perhaps even moreso than Alfred E. Neuman.
Tomorrow is Election Day, and you will be asked to pick from at least two clear and distinctive voices. Whichever candidate wins, his impact on our future will be immense. Your voice is needed. As an American citizen, voting is your highest obligation.
I don’t care who you vote for (well, actually, I do, but that’s not the point right now), as long as you make your voice heard. You might think your state is already committed to one candidate or another. History shows us you are wrong. You might think your one vote doesn’t matter. History shows us you are wrong.
Even if your candidate has no chance of winning, make your voice heard. For example, let’s say you are a Libertarian interested in voting for Bob Barr. You probably think he doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning. You would probably be right. But if the Libertarian Party gets noticeable support at the polls, even 5% of the popular vote in your state, we will have taken a significant step towards freeing ourselves from the two party system that severely limits our choice and our future.
You might think all of the candidates are idiots; that none of them deserves your support. Fine. Make your voice heard. Vote for the person you think best represents your point of view, even if that’s a write-in. You might think Bun E. Carlos would be the best person for the job (he’s my #2 choice); fine. Make your voice heard. (more…)
It was the very end of summer, I had just turned 11, and – heaven help me – I was just beginning to tire of comic books.
Not that I was considering getting that four-color monkey off of my back. My enthusiasm was waning. The Superman books were beginning to get silly, the Batman titles had already become silly, and Julie Schwartz’s books like The Flash and Green Lantern were beginning to feel repetitious. I had exceeded the five-year point in my comic book reading life, that moment when the publishers felt you were on your way out, trading comics for sports, girls, and/or life. Being a precocious reader, I was at that portal at an age somewhat younger than the norm, but there was no doubt about it, comics weren’t quite as exciting to me as they had been.
At that time, DC had the market on super-hero titles lock, stock and barrel. Few new titles were launched; indeed, DC’s two debut books – Showcase and The Brave and the Bold – often recycled previous unsuccessful attempts like Cave Carson: Inside Earth and the original Suicide Squad to give them another shot at the marketplace. Each run generally consisted of three issues, so at best there would be four debuts each year, and most of those (like Cave Carson and Suicide Squad) were not of the super-hero genre. Today, of course, we get four such debuts a week.
So when it came time to drive my sister to college, my father did something unique. He stopped at a drug store – one of those places that actually had a massive wooden rack plus two comics spinner racks exclusively dedicated to comic books – and told me to pick out a few for the ride, in the hope that I would not be a bother. He then dashed across the street to pick up a dozen bagels at Kaufman’s, the original one on Montrose and Kedzie in Chicago. They boasted the best bagels in the country, and they were right.
When he returned to the drug store, I had nothing. Absolutely nothing. I had read each and every superhero title in the vast expanse of rack space. Even Lois Lane. Even the war comics, about which I was ambivalent at best, although I was not ambivalent about Joe Kubert’s art. (more…)
“Ah, you kids today, you’ve got it easy.”
I’m sure over the past several million years that line started more lectures than all the speed freak professors at all the Ivy League schools combined. It also inspired more than a few comedy routines, too, including a classic from Monty Python. But when it comes to comics, you kids today, you’ve got it easy – if you’re lucky enough to live within travelling distance of a friendly neighborhood comic book store.
For the first 40 years of this medium’s history (much longer for Archie Comics), comic book sales were dependent upon spinner racks like the one pictured above. They appeared at local candy stores, drug stores, toy stores, newsstands, train and bus stations, and even some grocery stores. They were low-profit, high-labor efforts that gave parents some place to park the kiddies while they were buying cigarettes and Sal Hepatica.
As comics fans, we rarely had any idea when new issues would appear and we hardly ever knew when brand-new titles would pop up. A handful would be advertised within the comics themselves, but the on sale date wasn’t necessarily accurate. Distributors received the books two to three weeks prior to release date, and sometimes would pass some of them along early if there was space on the truck. Or if there wasn’t, sometimes not at all. Some stores never received books from certain publishers: Harvey and Charlton were particularly difficult to find in my neighborhood.
But for the dedicated comic book collector, it was a way of life. Every Tuesday and Thursday, I’d be at the drug store across from my grammar school with my lunch money in hand. Every weekend, my friends and I would walk one mile down Chicago’s Devon Avenue from Kedzie to Western, stopping at seven different stores that carried comics. Oh we did a lot of other, more annoying stuff as well, but we never passed a spinner rack up. (more…)
Reporter/Journalist Bob Andelman, known to many as Mr. Media, has interviewed our own Mike Gold about the full range of what ComicMix is all about.
While regulars here certainly know much of this, Mike expands on our goals and where we’re headed.
Interested listeners can check out the audio at Mr. Media.
So we’re headed straight into another 1930s-style depression, or so our politicians and the media would have us believe. Maybe that’s true, although the attempted cure – the socialization of our investment bankers and the insurance industry – just might work. It’s the perfect solution in the Age of Irony: our neocon president nationalizing the very companies that control so much of our economy. Franklin Roosevelt must be rolling over in his grave.
But the real question that concerns us is – how might this affect us as comics and popular culture enthusiasts?
First, I’ll address the most obvious. If you lose your job, you will have less discretionary income and, despite our self-image, comics and movies and action figures are more discretionary than the rent, electricity and food. Even if you’re 45 years old and you live in your mother’s basement, if she’s living off of an annuity and her insurance company goes blooie, you might be cutting back on those X-Men titles.
If enough people find themselves in that position, the friendly neighborhood comics shop will go blooie as well. If enough comics shops go down, the smaller publishers (the “back of the catalog” people) will see retailers order their wares more conservatively than they did before. Some publishers will vaporize. It’ll certainly be tougher for creators to sell those more interesting yet less commercial projects.
Movies… well, that’s another matter. Movies have this rep for surviving the 30s Great Depression, but only among those who aren’t aware how many movie studios got sold, went bankrupt, or almost went bankrupt at the time. Today’s movie-going experience is a lot more expensive than it was for our grandparents. Even in constant dollars, $10.00 tickets are a lot more than 25¢ tickets… and our grandparents didn’t have to spend as much (relatively speaking) on popcorn and soda. More significant, most were able to walk to their local movie house. Today, we have to drive. Even the low, low price of $3.50 a gallon would crank the entire movie going experience up to $50.00 for a couple; more, with dinner. A movie date will cost you a cool hundred.
Television is no longer free. Sure, only a few people will need to get those digital adaptors for their rabbit-ears this February, but most of the rest of us get our fix from cable or satellite (or, in the case of my bestest friend, both cable and satellite). If food, rent, gasoline and utilities cost a family of four two grand a month or more and either one of the breadwinners is no longer winning bread, those premium channel packages are going to look real expensive.
Comics retailers order their stuff from Diamond on a non-returnable basis and, literally, bet the rent each month on their order form. They will have to be even more conservative. They’ve already been ordering what they know will sell; now they have to factor in the fear factor: how many of their regulars will lose their jobs, how many will be so afraid of losing their jobs that they’ll make immediate cut-backs in their purchases? I already said the “smaller” publishers would suffer; so would those companies that manufacture licensed material – action figures, posters, tie-in apparel, (more…)
So I read via Colleen Doran’s blog that the LHC, the Large Hadron Collider, has gone bust, at least temporarily. Apparently it, like the Internet router Monday morning at the Riggs Residence, suffered some sort of electrical malfunction. Our router’s fine as of the typing of this column, but the LHC will take a bit more time to get going again on its way to possibly wiping out all known life. Which is pretty much okay by me; I have at least four months’ worth of DC comics still unread!
Now, for anyone unclear on what the heck the LHC is supposed to be doing, some wacky and geeky scientist types have put together this handy-dandy hip-hop ditty:
But fairly heavy rotation in our Science and Discovery channel viewing meant Robin and I were more or less up on the basics of dark matter and so forth, and had already mocked them mercilessly. See, here’s what we tend to think of these scientists. We can’t fault them their enthusiasm to find the binding tie that will create a grand unifying Theory of Life, The Universe and Everything (42, by the way). But for scientists, whose chosen profession demands that they question everything and rely primarily on the empirical evidence of their senses, this arrogant certainty doesn’t sit well with me. It’s as if, as Robin observes, the theoretical quantum physicists sat around saying, “Hmm, what can we postulate to make our sums add up?” (more…)
Back in my DC Comics days, I was sitting in my office pretending to work when Mark Waid stuck his head in. “Hey, do you know when Paul McCartney wrote ‘Silly Love Songs?’” he asked.
“Pretty much his whole damn life,” I replied without looking up.
That about summed up my feelings about Paul McCartney. I was a John Lennon guy, although I’ve come around to really appreciating George Harrison’s stuff even more. He spoke softly but carried a big stick. “Taxman,” “Piggies…” great stuff.
I’ve had cause to reflect recently, and I think I’ve done Mr. McCartney wrong. He did this great song called “Give Ireland Back To The Irish,” which took a stand on the England / Ireland situation that one might expect from a guy named Mc-anything. And the BBC, owned by the British government, promptly banned it. So did Radio Luxembourg and ITV, effectively removing it from all venues of British broadcasting. His record label, EMI, said they wouldn’t release it. They wanted safe little silly love songs that said nothing and inspired no one but the vapid.
McCartney followed “Give Ireland Back To The Irish” with a reggae version of “Mary Had A Little Lamb.” It got lots of airplay.
So it is with this community. Comics creators used to work out of their need to earn a living. The pulps were dying, they couldn’t get work as illustrators (particularly if their last name sounded Jewish), newspapers started their half-century of death throes by slowly dropping continuity comic strips, the type that bring the readers back the next day to find out what happened. Writers and artists like to eat, sleep and reproduce, and therefore must earn a living. It was tough, particularly during the 50s when their efforts were equated with those of child molesters. Not to say that their heart wasn’t in their work; often it was, with some of the creators.
Today, creators have greater luxury. They have more options; they have a wider range of creative opportunities. They can work from the heart and pay the rent at the same time. Few will get rich, but, hey, that’s show business.
So when I fall across what, at first, might seem like a truly stupid idea for a comic book story, these days I think about all those silly love songs I so callously dismissed. We have a wide range of creative fare out in the comics medium these days, greater than we’ve ever seen in America. We don’t have to look at movies or television for legitimacy. We can look to the reviews in major publications, we can appreciate the fact that works in this medium are receiving serious, contemplated analysis and acceptance by the world at large.
We can make a statement when we want to, we can tell a rip-roaring story when we feel like it. And as readers we can enjoy a work that says something directly, indirectly, or just indulges in pure escapist fare. As Jules Feiffer said in his play Little Murders, that’s all right.
This is the golden age of comics, folks, where our choices can range from a reggae version of Mary Had A Little Lamb to something as bold and – to some – as offensive as Give Ireland Back To The Irish.
And don’t forget to support your favorite rabble-rouser.
Columns / Glenn Hauman / News
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