Tag Archives: Comic Books/Graphic Novels

Books/Literature, Comic Books/Graphic Novels

Yet more signs of the times…

A while back I noted, with great sadness, the closure of my local go-to comic book store, Villains (you can read the post here), which previously was known when owned by different people as Starship Enterprises.

The sadness was related to the fact that in that location a comic book store existed for some 30 plus years, and after my trip to California over the summer I was saddened to find that Villains was gone.

Even worse, and to the best of my knowledge, there are NO comic book shops anywhere around/near me which I can now go to to get books.

And yet…

Since the closure, I’ve found myself getting more and more into digital comics via either Amazon.com or ComiXology (which, it should be noted, is an Amazon company).

I was already into getting digital copies of various favorite books of mine, but since the loss of Villains, my only real choice for getting the latest comic books or graphic novels is via the internet and Amazon/ComiXology.

I have to say, it has turned out to be a pretty good thing.

ComiXology often has sales on books from various companies and, very quickly, I found myself not only finding stuff I loved from the past and wanted to re-acquaint myself with, but increasingly I’m finding newer works that I didn’t even know existed and which, sadly, a small store like Villains simply couldn’t keep up with.

To date I’ve spent entirely waaaaay too much money on these various works, discovering some “new” favorite authors (I particularly like much -though not all- of what I’ve read from Jeff Lemire) and new -as well as some old and recently “printed”- favorite works.

I’ve noted before that I used to love going to the local Borders, before that store chain closed down, and couldn’t imagine not going to a bookstore at least once or twice a week.

Now, I have neither a bookstore or comic book store close to me to visit and… its ok.

If anything, I’ve spent even more time than before finding and reading new and interesting works because so damn many of them are available at my fingertips via Amazon or ComiXology.

But…

I do wonder if the younger souls out there who are not initiated on books or comic books and the love of them will ever get that same kick I get out of reading in general. Is it possible there will come a point in time where younger generations do not get into books or comic books like previous generations did?

Its a worrying thought and ironic given the moment in time we’re in. Never before has there been such easy access to so many wonderful works, be they novels or short story collections or comic books, yet only in the digital environment.

As I said above, perhaps more signs of the times.

Comic Books/Graphic Novels

Comics… here today…?

It’s no secret that comic book sales are on a steady decline.

This saddens me tremendously.

As a very young child, I was wowed by movies, by TV shows, by books… and of course, I was blown away by Comic Books.

To this day, over forty years later, I still love the medium and still feel it has tremendous possibilities.

But the reality is that today, the comic book medium is in trouble.  So much so that during the San Diego Comic Con, there was a panel with DC Co-Publishers Jim Lee and Dan DiDio where they talked about their plans to “save” the medium.

The below link is to an article about that panel.  It is written by Charles Pulliam-Moore and is found on i09.com

DC Has An Epic Plan To Save Itself From the Comics Apocalypse it helped create

As you can tell from the headline of the article, Mr. Pulliam-Moore (or perhaps the editors of i09.com) aren’t feeling a tremendous amount of love towards these folks, noting that many of the problems in the comic book industry today could be traced to many of the things they themselves were involved in.

This, sadly, is very much a fact.

Jim Lee and Dan DiDio aren’t country bumpkins who just last week “showed up” at the comics industry and are just now realizing how screwed up it is.

Regardless, and giving them something of the benefit of the doubt, I’m pleased they’re finally realizing something I’ve felt has long been a problem with comic books: Continuity.

When Marvel Comics under legends Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Steve Ditko essentially re-created and re-invigorated the comic book industry in the very early 1960’s, one of the biggest things they brought to their books was the idea of continuity.

What happens in Spider-Man #5, for example, may be referenced in Fantastic Four #10.  Hulk may wander away at the end of an issue of The Avengers and we find his wandering took him to the next issue of Daredevil.

It was a thrilling concept for its time, something that wasn’t seen in most comic books to that point, but like all good things, it set the groundwork for problems to come.

The fact is that Marvel became very continuity devoted and DC, which eventually decided to follow along with the concept of continuity, created a fun “history” of their characters but a history that, over time and following so many years of issues which followed, became convoluted and silly.

Inevitably, the continuity history became too hard to handle and the companies had a desire to “clean things up”.  The famous 1980’s mini-series Crisis on Infinite Worlds was meant to do just that, to restart DC comics continuity and have everyone be in a “year one” situation.

Image result for crisis on infinite earths

But, while certain titles did try to go with a “new” mentality, big problems were created with -ironically enough- other continuity issues.  I won’t get into all the details but, essentially, the series removed the idea of a “multiverse” and had all the characters merge into one world… which ironically enough created all kinds of other continuity problems.

Marvel, for their part, branched off into “Ultimate” versions of their characters among other things, essentially trying to create their own multi-verse.

Another problem Crisis, and Marvel’s company-wide crossover Secret Wars created was a sense that big events made for big sales.

So we had continuity going nuts, company-wide crossovers selling big, and big events being viewed as a way to goose up sales.

It was a recipe for big sales in the short term and big problems years down the road.

Eventually, these big company-wide crossovers and big events would get… tiring.

Worse, expecting readers to shell out big bucks for a whole host of books they might not otherwise bother with to get the “full story” of the latest event was silly and burdensome.  Eventually, readers realized that these big, continuity altering events were not quite all they were cracked up to be and, it was no big surprise, these events became less than interesting.

So Mr. Lee and DiDio seem to want to move in the opposite direction, releasing big event books that are self-contained, perhaps like graphic novels, and whose continuity is self-enclosed.

I’m all in favor of this but I suspect, rather strongly, that this is yet another example of how the movie/TV industry shadows over the comic book industry.

The fact of the matter is that making a comic book of this type, with a complete beginning, middle, and end, is a pretty damn good way to do a story you can then present to those big-wigs in the movie/TV industry.

I fear that comic books are becoming just that, a relatively cheap way of pitching movie/TV concepts and, because the real money is there, that’s what Mr. Lee and DiDio are pushing.

The demise of the comic book industry is not a new thought.  There were many in the 1970’s who thought it was on its way out.  Then in the 1990’s.  And now today.

Perhaps the industry survives.

I hope so.

I like the industry.  I like reading well written and well-drawn books.  I’m dismayed by much of what is published today, but if I’m honest, there has been plenty of what I feel was “bad” material published in the past as well.

As with so many things, we’ll see what happens…

Comic Books/Graphic Novels, Movies

The Politics of Creation

With advances in computer image technology, what was once only imagined can now be put on film.  Before these advances, I would argue that the most imaginative visual works were found in comic books and art in general.  After all, where else could you actually see worlds of wonder created on a budget limited only by an artist’s drawing skills?

It wasn’t all that long ago, after all, that the tagline for the original Superman film was “You’ll believe a man can fly”.  Back then, creating the sense of a man in flight without showing strings or using a very obvious blue screen effect was that big a deal.  Today, we see entire worlds of digital wonder, creations that in the past would have required intricate miniatures or matte paintings, at the very least.  Flying?  That’s absolutely no big deal in modern cinema.  There are almost no limits to what can be shown.

Because of this, it is little wonder that superhero film have became big business in recent times.  Films with big time, envelope pushing effects are often the subject of Hollywood’s summer “blockbuster” productions.  Not all are based on comic books, of course, but those that are doubtlessly make a lot of money, or else we wouldn’t be seeing quite as many of them appear each year.

In the wake of all this success, unfortunately, there are those left behind.  Usually, they’re the ones you figure stand to gain the most from the success of comic books characters translated to the screen.

I’m talking about the comic book creators themselves.

Back in the mid-1970’s, when interest in the then upcoming Superman film was becoming very hot, Superman’s creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster began a public relations offensive against DC Comics, the company that held the copyrights to their creation.  The duo had infamously sold their creation back in the 1930’s for $130 (the actual check was found and can be seen in this article) and were seeing Superman come to the big screen and potentially reap big rewards for everyone…but them.  In the end, DC Comics, the owners of the Superman character, agreed to restore credit to Mr. Siegel and Shuster for the creation of the character.  They also offered a monetary yearly bonus and health insurance.  Though both creators passed away in the 1990’s, their families continue the fight for the rights to their creations.

They’re not the only one.

Back in the early 1960’s, Marvel Comics was a company that seemed to be going nowhere.  That is, until editor/writer Stan Lee united with artists/co-writers Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko and, together, the trio created a plethora of well known comic book characters that have now made their way to big screen success: The Fantastic Four, Spider Man, The Hulk, Iron Man, etc. etc. etc.  The song, alas, remained the same.  Both Mr. Kirby and Ditko left Marvel in the mid and late 1960’s and, to this day, have not collected anywhere near the financial rewards one could argue should be due to them for their creations and co-creations.  While Mr. Ditko, co-creator of Spider Man has been given credit for the creation, it is my understanding that despite the success of the films, he hasn’t made anything off them.  Mr. Kirby’s heirs, on the other hand, have fought Marvel Comics for years to either gain control over some of the characters he created or be given some kind of recompense for his many years of work.

Most recently, some in the comic book community have expressed sympathy to the plight of Gary Friedrich.  I’ve never met the man myself, but his name popped up on some works during the 1970’s that I read and enjoyed, published by Marvel Comics (his first work at the company began in the 1960’s).  He was also the creator (although there is some dispute over some parts of this) of the Johnny Blaze incarnation of Ghost Rider.

Mr. Friedrich brought suit against Marvel Comics claiming the character’s rights were his and not Marvel’s.  He felt particularly slighted, I suspect, because in spite of the financial (if not critical) success of the Ghost Rider film and the upcoming sequel, he had not been given either credit or money for his creation.  In the end, he lost the lawsuit and was ordered to pay Marvel $17,000, something he is unable to do.

Comic book writer Mark Evanier offers some great insight into Mr. Friedrich’s situation here, and I couldn’t agree with his opinions more.  It would seem counter productive for a company such as Marvel or DC to hire lawyers and spend great quantities of money fighting off people who could probably accept less money than that to settle their claims of character ownership.

On the other hand, I can see the company’s perspective…to a degree.  The fact is that many of these creations were made at a time when one didn’t think the characters and stories would achieve the level of success they did.  Comic books have been considered disposable entertainment for years.  Original artwork which might be worth hundreds of thousands -perhaps even more!- dollars today, for example, were routinely thrown out.  Likewise, artists and writers didn’t know or realize their creations would endure as they did and find a second life in film, TV, reprints, etc.  Further, the company that made the investment on the artist and/or writer to produce their product was the one taking the monetary risk.  While they hoped their current publication would succeed, it is doubtful many of them had to foresight to guess that some of the work they commissioned back in the 1930’s to today would eventually become such a bonanza.  They took the financial risk, shouldn’t they reap the reward?

So what’s the solution?

I think Mr. Evanier’s article scratches at that.  While his involvement with the later Mr. Kirby and the estate preclude him from making too many comments regarding that particular situation, he does note that creators and the companies that own the creations should find some kind of common ground instead of becoming antagonists.

I suppose its human nature to fight what you consider yours, whether you are the creator of a concept or the one who owns its copyright.

The awareness of these fights, by the way, hasn’t gone unnoticed.  Ever since the late 1990’s, I’ve realized both DC Comics and Marvel have had very few “new” character creations appearing in their various books.  It appears few authors and/or artists want to suffer what Mr.’s Kirby, Ditko, Siegel, Shuster, etc. etc. have faced and are content to write stories featuring established characters and villains while not going out of their way in creating any new characters they might eventually “lose”.

I find it a shame but not a surprise.

I suppose they’re no real moral to this story, except that a creator should be careful with his or her creations.  Especially when those creations may become the property of someone else.