October 23, 2003
October 30: Chris Allen will be off this week due to complications from the California wildfires (don't worry--he and his house are fine) but will be back next Thursday.
The column is pretty packed this week, even without the interview (Johanna Draper-Carlson next week, True Believers), so I won’t take up much time with an introduction. We’ve got reviews of Mark Millar’s highly anticipated WANTED followed by first issues of HULK: GRAY and SWORD OF DRACULA, Steven Grant’s and Mike Zeck’s DAMNED; John Byrne’s SUPERMAN: MAN OF STEEL VOL. ONE (don’t call him Supes, sez Johnboy!); Greg Sadowski’s marvelous B. KRIGSTEIN 1; and the long-delayed continuation of my looks at the various HELLBOY trades.
The Firsts
WANTED #1 (OF 6) by Mark Millar and J.G. Jones. Top Cow. $2.95
Mark Millar is on a tear these days with a brace of new creator-owned titles. What’s somewhat surprising is that given the extra freedom, he’s chosen to still mainly explore the seamy side of superheroes, as he has been doing with THE AUTHORITY and then THE ULTIMATES. That’s what’s happening in this new miniseries, which follows Wesley Gibson, a twentysomething loser whose hypochondria is exceeded in loathsomeness by his choosing to ignore his girlfriend cheating on him with his best friend. But there’s a chance at some kind of happiness, maybe, because Wesley stands to inherit fifty million dollars from his dead supervillain daddy, The Killer. The one condition is that he follow in The Killer’s blood-and-cum-soaked footsteps, joining his dad’s old team (thinly-veiled versions of Batman’s Rogues Gallery). Wesley finds he somehow has inherited some incredible marksmanship from his father, and where the series goes from here is anyone’s guess, though mind would be that he not only solves his father’s murder but has to go against the supervillains all by his lonesome.
Though it’s fair to question Millar’s evergreen enthusiasm for depicting superpowered characters engaging in all sorts of depravity and excess, particularly his Chaykinesque obsession with fellatio, the fact remains that this is one very funny, cool, exciting bit of filth. Jones’ realistic artwork is here going the route of casting real celebrities in some of the roles, using Millar’s script suggestion to use Halle Berry, prophetically, in the Catwoman part, and Eminem as Wesley, an inspired choice for a character who has to take on a different persona to succeed, though Wesley himself seems to be more self-aware. Although Millar isn’t breaking new ground here, it’s an extremely entertaining, well-structured and good-looking book, well worth a look.
SWORD OF DRACULA #1 by Jason Henderson and Greg Scott. Image Comics. $2.95
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Just in time for Halloween…and well in advance of Pearl Harbor Day…is this fun horror/military hybrid, wherein an elite team of operatives, led by one Veronica “Ronnie” Van Helsing, searches the ends of the Earth for vampires, and in this debut issue they take on the Moby-Dick of bloodsucking, Dracula.
The characterization is light so far, with Ronnie standing out mainly because she has the most lines and the others interchangeable, distinguished only by different speech patterns in the manner of war/covert ops comics from SGT. ROCK to the recent reboot of THE LOSERS. Hopefully, we’ll get more development on that end, but as an action-packed opening salvo, this series delivers, with gloriously detailed, photorealistic art from Scott, including an excellent rendition of Dracula’s hidden castle, and a good design for Dracula himself. The “Sword” part of the book refers to Dracula’s clever manipulation of blood into hard shapes, the sword being an extension of himself, formed out of a cut finger, while the entire castle is also made up of his vast store of blood. Of course, this might be even more impressive if the book was in color, but a little imagination goes a long way. Good start to a book I initially was going to pass on. Check it out.
HULK: GRAY #1 (OF 6) by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale. Marvel Comics. $3.50
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Loeb and Sale, at this point in their partnership, are a little like Siegfried & Roy, only with less makeup. They’re seasoned performers who always put on a show, but they’re not exactly pushing themselves at this point. It’s a very smooth show they put on—layering Cold War comics plot material with modern psychological shadings and a more sensitive artistic approach, but there doesn’t appear to be much effort at stretching, at adding new elements to the routine. Maybe someone needs to get mauled.
Oh, I don’t mean literally, of course, but I’m just saying that while both are well-suited to this kind of thing, DAREDEVIL: YELLOW and SPIDER-MAN: BLUE both suffered from a feeling of only reaching for goals the creators knew they could attain. A certain complacency and going-through-the-motions because of the success of YELLOW and the promise of a subsequent color-themes franchise of miniseries. This is less true of Sale, actually, who creates a mostly-effective fusion of an obvious Frank Miller influence and the Steve Ditko influence seen to good effect in BLUE. He’s less effective at recalling the power of Hulk co-creator Jack Kirby, though, rendering General Thunderbolt Ross as a kind of fascist Muppet and the gray-skinned Hulk as a lumpy, unimposing golem. I can appreciate that he’s not merely incorporating easy Kirby tropes for effect, but he hasn’t offered anything dynamic in their place. His layouts are impressive, however, for their efficiency, and the coloring choices—monochromatic gray-greens—are inspired.
I haven’t touched on the story much, but there’s not a lot there yet. Banner recounts that fateful gamma bomb explosion to Leonard “Doc” Sampson, and Loeb embroiders it to give some dimension to Rick Jones, the General and his daughter Betty. So far, all I remembered was a curious line from Ross about how Betty was getting emotional over the missing, presumed obliterated Bruce, and that reminded Ross of her mother: “and we can’t have that.” Seems almost incestuous. But so far, Loeb seems to be mining a lot of the psychoanalytical material Peter David did with Banner/Hulk, and it remains to be seen what he brings to the table, as well as what the main thrust of the story is beyond Hulk missing and on the run from Ross.
Graphic Novels and Trade Paperbacks
SUPERMAN: THE MAN OF STEEL VOL. 1 by John Byrne. DC Comics. $9.95
In 1986, one of the most popular comics creators of the day, John Byrne, was given the awesome task of revamping Superman for the reset DC Universe, stripping away more years of goofy continuity than Byrne had been alive in order to, hopefully, arrive at a fresh but reassuringly familiar version of the most famous superhero of all time. Byrne succeeded.
Coming off a frustrating end to an acclaimed run on Marvel’s FANTASTIC FOUR, Byrne dove into the Superman work with wild enthusiasm balanced with a respectful goal to “see what (he) could keep.” Gone were the multiple variations of kryptonite and all the other creatures who somehow escaped the destruction of Krypton to wind up on Earth as well. With near-perfect judgment, Byrne eliminated any elements that detracted from Superman’s legend or that were too campy for 1986, keeping the essential parts of the character and the major players in his supporting cast, and giving him some villains who presented a real challenge. But, well, some of this, and more, was accomplished later on in the monthly titles SUPERMAN and ACTION COMICS, so let’s focus just on what Byrne did in this six-issue miniseries.
The first issue briefly but dramatically presents the death of the planet Krypton, with its cities and citizens Jor-El and Lara being some of Byrne’s best design work. Jor-El is a visionary alone, planning ahead for the cataclysm by finding a world suitable to send baby Kal-El. And in a nice touch, for all that Kryptonians lack emotion, Jor-El and Lara have a final moment together that is clearly loving.
Byrne then shows Kal being found by Kansans Jonathan and Martha Kent, by way of flashback. Kal, now Clark, is guided by his second father to use his burgeoning abilities for the betterment of others. The first attempt, saving a failing experimental rocket, is successful but also a warning to Clark about the demands placed upon one who is idolized, which helps make up his mind to find time for a private life as just Clark Kent, as well as becoming the inspirational hero people need, Superman. The full-page of a flying Superman to end the issue remains my standard of what Superman looks like, and Giordano does great work throughout the series, keeping Byrne’s style to the forefront but with enough of Giordano to recall more of a classic DC look than Byrne would manage if he’d inked his own work.
The second issue is the only one where I disagreed with one of Byrne’s choices, that being Superman granting the likeable but dangerously driven Lois Lane an interview, then scooping her as Clark Kent in order to land a job at The Daily Planet. It seemed a bit cruel and too reminiscent of those 50s stories where Superman was always keeping Lois in her place. It achieves the goal of setting up the animosity Lois has for Clark, in contrast to her crush on Superman, but perhaps there could have been another way to get the same result. One nice thing here is that Byrne is very judicious in showing Superman using his powers. He’s not throwing buildings around, but stopping crooks with invisible heat vision or by merely crushing their guns. It nicely establishes that this might be a Superman to whom they can relate.
Byrne explores Superman’s relationships with other heroes later in ACTION, but he uses the third issue of this miniseries to cover the most important one, Batman. It’s a well-thought-out clash of methods and minds that uses bluffing and intelligent debate rather than the easy route of a slugfest between the two. They solve a case together and part with mutual respect if not friendship. The case involves Magpie, the first new villain created for the book by Byrne, though aside from an offbeat, birdlike design, she’s rather thin on motivation and easily defeated. It is interesting that today, when people talk of how late 80s comics like WATCHMEN and THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS birthed dozens more dark, violent imitations, Byrne is always let off the hook, though here his Magpie obviously blows someone’s head off off-panel. It works, though, and shows that Superman’s new world is a bit more realistic than before in regards to criminals and violence. Some may be interested to know that this issue might contain the first example of Byrne’s computer art, in this case a pixilated cloud of kryptonite gas.
Lex Luthor, the richest man in the world, shows up in the next chapter, hoping to win Lois’ affections through a staged ambush on his pleasure cruiser, that Superman ends up foilng. Though Luthor has no powers, his vow to Superman that he will destroy him is still chilling, and thus a nemesis is born.
The chapter after that finds Luthor trying to have his own, controllable Superman created for him, but it turns out to be a hideous, flawed version: Byrne’s new take on Bizarro, which is fine, especially free of the kitschy “Me am” dialogue the character had prior to this relaunch. The story is okay but gets ridiculous when the falling ashes of dead Bizarro somehow cure Lois’ sister of blindness.
Byrne wraps things up in time for the ongoing series with Superman being visited by a holograph of Jor-El, learning his Kryptoniam heritage and the dangers his powerful body can be. Clark also has a very good scene with lifelong friend and unrequited lover Lana Lang, who comes to terms with losing Clark to the world. An excellent end to a strong beginning, arguably the most successful reboot in comics history, as so much of what Byrne did is still in use.
While Byrne writes a good text piece about the gig in this trade, following Ray Bradbury’s Introduction, those wanting some more details on what Byrne brought to the Superman revamp and what Marv Wolfman did, go here.
DAMNED by Steven Grant and Mike Zeck. Cyberosia Publishing. $19.95
Mick Thorne made a promise to a dying friend and fellow inmate: he would find the man’s sister and give her a message. Even Mick didn’t know what the message meant, but that was fine. Just get to New Covenant when you get out of prison and pass on a message. Honor your commitment.
As is made abundantly clear, Mick is a man of honor, and that’s going to cause problems for anyone, not least an ex-con on parole whose promise will lead him right back into the criminal world as perfected by one King Silver, a pony-tailed 90s crimelord but underneath, the same old scum.
Grant has said his preferred writing method is to throw a bunch of characters with different agendas together and see who’s left at the end of it. It’s an organic approach that can lead to strong results, such as the rather surprising replacement of murdered Parole Officer Farage with the sexier, sharper Charlotte Dahl halfway through. A lot of writers would have run with just one of these characters from start to finish. Choices and twists such as this keep the book gripping despite the restrictions imposed by the original publishing format of four monthly issues with cliffhangers and the like.
The 90s feeling does hang on the book a bit, with some of the fashions and decorations, but it doesn’t get in the way of a strong story that could have taken place in the 40s, today, or any time between. Grant takes the honorable—and that doesn’t mean “good”—man and keeps throwing him challenges to that rigid code of honor.
Zeck has long been an underrated artist, and part of this is probably because he doesn’t do anything flashy. He’s right for DAMNED because he can capture the grittiness of the story without making a fetish out of it. He just tells the story as dramatically but efficiently as he can.
To call this a classic would be overstating, and it is a bit overheated in order to get everything in there in four issues. More should have been done with Charlotte as well. But it is a very solid, entertaining thriller with some surprises, shocks, laughs, and one of Grant’s most compelling protagonists. And this is a nice way to get it, too, as Cyberosia not only gives Zeck a nice section of sketches and commentary on the four painted covers he did for the miniseries, but they also commissioned a new six page ending from the creators, which wraps things up with a shinier bow than the original ending.
Note: if the scan looks bad, it’s because the copy I received looked like it had been lying face down on someone’s garage floor, or maybe propping up a table leg. It adds to the pulp novel feel, though.
Red Right Hand: The Hellboy Saga Parts II & IV
Many months ago, I followed up a series of reviews of almost every Matt Wagner GRENDEL trade with the beginnings of the same kind of thing for Mike Mignola’s HELLBOY. I reviewed the first trade, SEED OF DESTRUCTION, which was scripted by John Byrne, and then had to skip ahead to THE CHAINED COFFIN & OTHERS with a Part III like nothing was wrong. The problem was that the second volume, WAKE THE DEVIL, was then out of print. I scored a copy, but now I learn the entire line of five trades (not counting novels, short story collections or other spin-offs) is being re-released February 4th with new covers, in time for the Guillermo del Toro film, and so I wanted to get back to my original plan of covering just about everything before the movie comes out. So let’s get back into it.
HELLBOY: WAKE THE DEVIL is Mignola’s first extended outing as both writer and artist, and he clearly has a ball with it, further mining the rich “monster-and-Nazi-busting” vein first struck with SEED OF DESTRUCTION. It seems that Hitler had toyed with the idea of a division of vampires as part of The Final Solution, but changed his mind and had them destroyed, or so everyone thought. Some have survived, and Hellboy must put them down for good, while fighting Rasputing and the pull of his demonic destiny.
In his Introduction, Alan Moore makes explicit Mignola’s connection to Jack Kirby’s dynamic storytelling, and Mignola truly is one of the few creators today able to come close to Kirby’s anything-goes excitement without slavish imitation. With Mignola scripting for himself, the plot is more engagingly loose. And in this volume we first see the interesting conflict Mignola has, wanting a rich, epic saga of good and evil but being very afraid of being pretentious, so he makes his first attempt to wrap up the big plot of Hellboy facing his destiny.
THE RIGHT HAND OF DOOM is the fourth HELLBOY volume, and like CHAINED COFFIN is a collection of shorter tales—shorts from DARK HORSE PRESENTS, a DARK HORSE INSIDER serial completely redrawn, some one-shots and the two-part BOX FULL OF EVIL. This story, along with the shorter “The Right Hand of Doom” that precedes it, deal once again with with the power Hellboy stands to inherit in Hell if he ever makes a claim for it. In his notes on these stories, Mignola says he wanted to put a definite end to this storyline, which almost seems like Mignola is denying his own destiny, as this is the whole engine of the series. Or at least, that ongoing plot is another dramatic element to the series, and without it we have a number of exciting but interchangeable stories.
The collection is uneven, as some of the shorts are too, well, short to be anything more than “Hellboy shows up, makes wisecrack, and kicks ass of Monster X,” but even the least work in some interesting folklore, while the best are thrilling and genuinely creepy. “Box Full of Evil” is excellent, as good as WAKE THE DEVIL at a fraction of the size. And the two-page “Pancakes,” in which a young Hellboy’s first taste of the breakfast treat sends shockwaves of pain and disappointment through Hell, is a delightful example of Mignola’s willingness to subvert the Gothic horror of the series for a good laugh. The book finishes with a generous and stunning sketchbook section.
Note: the enjoyable HELLBOY: WEIRD TALES bimonthly series, wherein other renowned creators take a crack at doing stories of Hellboy and his supporting cast, has its first trade paperback, collecting issues #1-4, coming out on November 26th.
The Essential Comics Library:
B. KRIGSTEIN by Greg Sadowski. Fantagraphics Books. $50.00
Berni Krigstein’s complete story has yet to be told, but in this lavish, insightful volume, readers are presented with his early days and the fruits of what is arguably his most beloved and remembered work, the comic book artwork created for first Atlas Comics (which would become Marvel) and EC Comics. Krigstein is depicted, by Sadowski’s text and also copious letters to his wife during World War II, as a decent man and loving husband, driven to provide for his family, but also such a principled, striving artist that his creative growth often damages his career. As the reproduced panels, pages and complete comics stories show, after a brief period of admittedly rushed “hackwork” to make ends meet and learn the craft of drawing comics, Krigstein became uncompromising, almost incapable of taking the easy way out or following a script to the letter or prescribed house style if he didn’t agree with it.
His time at Atlas, illustrating some poor Stan Lee-scripted shorts, found Krigstein elevating this dreck with his innovative approach to layouts, dictating the speed at which someone would read the stories through a multitude of panels at various, carefully chosen dimensions. His perfectionism and request for more and more pages to tell the story his way didn’t sit well with Lee, and by the time Marvel explodes and begins its new approach to superhero comics in 1961, Krigstein is practically out of the business.
But we’re getting beyond the scope of this book, which culminates at the indisputable height of Krigstein’s career in comics—the years at EC Comics. Krigstein was energized by working with people whose talents he respected; people like Harvey Kurtzman, Johnny Craig, Al Williamson, Wally Wood. But this book is ultimately about the frustrations of a visionary artist whose vision is not shared by others, and so when Krigstein is not confounded—he greatly admires Kurtzman’s writing but finds the man’s precise layouts so confining they only work together once—he finds he must always drink from a glass half-full, doing the most inventive, daring work he can with a rigid page length and on scripts by the wordy Al Feldstein, a talented writer and artist yet whose philosophy of good comics was at odds with Krigstein’s. And Feldstein was the editor, so Krigstein could find little relief. Despite, and as these things probably often work, partly because of these tensions, the two did manage to create a masterpiece, the short and still-unsettling Nazi story “Master Race.” Due to Krigstein’s insistence on extending the length of the story, it was a little too long to comfortably fit in an issue with two others, so it was several months after completion before it was finally published, to little notice, as EC was disintegrating in the wake of the scandal and trial over the negative effects of comics—particularly the lurid horror comics that were EC’s bread and butter—had on impressionable children.
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While the comics form a large portion of this volume—and several complete stories, including “Master Race,” are reprinted here, as recolored by Marie Severin—the book is also a valuable biography of Krigstein the husband, father, and even crusader. He was one of the first comics artists to attempt to form a union, without success. The book also features many examples of Krigstein’s wonderfully haunting paintings, some quite disturbing for the 40s and 50s, and even during his most prolific period in comics, he never abandoned painting, which would stand him in good stead later in life as he pursued commercial illustration.
A rich, rewarding book, easily the best biography-slash-critical analysis of any comic book creator, it provides a wealth of well-chosen images as evidence of the iconoclast’s brilliance and lasting contributions to the lexicon of comics language. Simply put, there is more invention in almost any Krigstein eight-pager than in most complete graphic novels today. For that alone, this is an essential addition to any comics enthusiast’s library.
For more on Krigstein, including several complete comics stories, go here.
Full Bleed – Misconceptions in Comics, Part One
Something I’m always thinking about, aside from how The Thing gets his rocks off, is how many silly, wrongheaded, limiting, damaging misconceptions many people have about the wonderful medium and struggling industry of comics. Realizing I may not know more than anyone else, I’m still going to tackle a few of these misconceptions as they occur to me. Feel free to chime in with your own and we can make this an ongoing feature.
Imprints or Comics Lines Should Be Launched All at Once - This one always bugs me, so much so that apparently I couldn’t come up with a less-unwieldy title. A new publisher like CrossGen debuts with several new books in a month, or an existing publisher like Wildstorm starts the “Eye of the Storm” imprint, and expect comics readers, often strapped for cash as it is, since comics aren’t cheap, to somehow pony up for three or four or six new series. Marvel’s Tsunami or Mangaverse lines might have made it, Image’s recent superhero line might have done better, with a slower roll-out of titles, getting readers hooked on one or two, then another and another, just like Stan and Jack did in the early 60s. Not that this was a conscious decision on their part, but nonetheless, it worked. I remember a couple years ago when Kurt Busiek’s POWER COMPANY launched with something like five or six one-shots in one week, before the ongoing series even began. When given the choice between getting on-board for six new comics, looking at them carefully and trying one or two, or not getting any, most potential readers will walk. And it’s not just the added expense that causes so many of these series, imprints, and whole companies to fail, of course.
I don’t mean to kick CrossGen Entertainment when they’re down, but they’re a good example of the kind of guts/hubris/audience misperception that often spells a company’s doom. In CGE’s case, they banked on the idea that there was a waiting audience for fantasy and science fiction comics, and one that would support an entire line of them. It probably wasn’t a bad idea to make these books contain many of the same trappings as superhero books, because the people already buying superhero books are pretty much the only ones who would even hear of a CrossGen. In their defense, the company tried a number of initiatives to increase their audience beyond the small and stagnant direct market of guys in their 20s, 30s and 40s, from webcomics to comics in schools to approximations of manga trade paperback formats that were succeeding elsewhere, at least in selling manga. Their second and third waves of new series also attempted other formats, from detective fiction to horror to samurai action to swashbuckling adventure. Whether the books were any good is arguable, and not something I want to get into here. What matters is that in trying to be one of the big boys—I believe Publisher Mark Alessi’s goal was for CGE to be the fourth or fifth largest comics publisher within three years of inception—they asked for more commitment than potential consumers were willing to make.
How does a publisher know when it’s too much? How do they generate enough interest to make a line of books successful? I’ll get into my theories in a moment. First, another example.
Dark Horse’s Rocket Comics imprint doesn’t seem to have caught on at all. Sure, it’s early in the game, but just like the opening weekend of a movie release, order for first issues of comics series are reliable indicators of success. Somewhat like CrossGen, Dark Horse ventured into science fiction properties that, unlike STAR WARS, the company itself owns. And also like CrossGen, the titles have elements familiar to fans of superhero comics, but also with the addition of manga-inspired artwork on some of them.
So what went wrong, or is going wrong? Are the lackluster sales due to a mental suggestion placed in a reader’s mind by the pointed-down rocket in the logo? Nah, nothing so deep, but I do think publishers tend to misunderstand how intelligent readers are these days (yes, I said that), and they fail to understand how to overcome readers’ preconceptions. Myself, I remember being briefly interested when the imprint was first announced, but my armor went right up when I saw names like Keith Giffen, Brian Augustyn and Jim Krueger paired with unknown artists. Now, all three of these gentlemen have written some good comics in the past, and they may still do good work in the future—Giffen’s latest Justice League miniseries was fun. But I wouldn’t call any of them great writers, and in very recent memory they’ve all done some awful work. But my opinion aside, no one would argue that they’re A-list talent, and I think at least one or two A-list talents are needed to make a go of an imprint or new line. And I don’t just mean the writers; you need some really good artists, and bar none, there’s no one drawing a Rocket book that is doing top-caliber work. They’re young guys, hired cheap, and maybe some will turn into something, but I think readers can sense a lack of confidence from a publisher who does this, or they just plain don’t want to wait for the excellence to happen. Certainly Marvel’s Tsunami and Epic imprints, exist in part because the creators are willing to work cheap, and either not on their own creations or on creations they essentially sell to Marvel. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with these guys for going this route, and I’m not saying any company is obligated to offer creator-owned arrangements, but publishers have to understand that few people are dying to read unknown creators doing second-tier or new derivative characters. With past imprints like Legend (Byrne, Miller, Mignola, Chadwick), there was a feeling that something really special was going on, and it helped that the books had great production values and nice covers. Rocket, by contrast, looks cheap and gaudy, while Dark Horse’s horror line has lots of HELLBOY product by Mignola and other top pros as well as red-hot Steve Niles work and the very cool THE GOON by Eric Powell.
What that horror line, or Eye of the Storm, have in common besides some famous names (Brubaker, Palmiotti, Phillips) is a similar tone and vision. THE AUTHORITY is currently unreadable, but still, the worldview in it is similar to the one in STORMWATCH: TEAM ACHILLES, 21 DOWN and SLEEPER, and that helps readership spread across titles. CrossGen had that as well with their first wave, but it also became clear that the titles were designed across the board to stretch their plots for as long as possible, and you can only pull that so long in this fickle marketplace.
A final example would be Image’s superhero line, and really, one could extend this criticism to almost every series they launch. Basically, it’s the old “throw it at the wall and see what sticks” marketing plan, dumping book after book on the market with poor promotion, leaving it to the creators (who are essentially partial self-publishers in Image’s business arrangement) to drum up interest. But narrowing my criticism back to the superhero (non)line, it really comes off half-baked, with no real connection between the books, and more importantly, very little new or special about them. Robert Kirkman (INVINCIBLE, TECH JACKET, BRIT) has gained some attention for being entertaining, funny and prolific, but as yet it hasn’t translated to significant sales, and rather than Image recognizing what’s getting good reviews and really pushing it, they allow a Kirkman book to fight for dollars against every other non-performer they’ve got. If SAVAGE DRAGON doesn’t sell anymore, why would you publish a generic superhero book drawn by a Larsen clone?
Before I end up ripping every struggling creator and hard-working publisher, let me just summarize what I think is essential for an imprint or new comics line to get a toehold in the current marketplace:
Don’t Bother - That is, really consider your reasons for publishing a whole line, rather than putting every creative and marketing effort into making one or two books successful and building upon that success. And realize that one good book and three mediocre ones in an imprint will only serve to harm the good book.
Get Some Names - Far be it from me to attempt to erect more barriers for prospective creators to overcome; hey, I want to make some comics myself. But look, it’s a tough market, and few readers want to sign on for some new line created by unknowns. Publishers have to spend money to make it, and that means paying for the participation of some people who’ve already done books readers have liked and bought.
Creator-Owned - Not essential, but when it’s the creator(s)’ property, I think that increases the perception among readers that the work will represent their very best effort, i.e. stories they simply had to tell, rather than stories to put food on the table.
Shared Vision - In other words, branding. Eye of the Storm is a recognizable brand. You may not like everything they put out, but most readers will have an idea what the books are like, from the art to the tone, and that’s a big part of the battle for sales. CrossGen had pretty good branding, especially in the similar styles of art and coloring. Just because not enough people wanted the books doesn’t detract from the smart ideas they had. A company like IDW also has good branding with the preponderance of art and covers by Ben Templesmith and Ashley Wood, plus IDW is now known for media tie-ins like CSI and THE SHIELD, but even they will make a misstep here and there like the upcoming Wein/Wolfman superhero book GENE POOL, which not only doesn’t look like usual IDW fare, it looks like all the other big publishers’ usual fare, which is counterproductive.
And finally…
Slow Roll-Out - No one is going to jump on four or six new books in a month these days. It doesn’t matter if you’re Bendis or Millar or Jim Lee, you’ve got to spread the new books out and give them a chance to grow. Otherwise, you’re just competing with yourself. Now, Millar’s new MILLARWORLD books are all coming out in December, I think, but this is a little different, in that they’re miniseries and a one-shot. Only one will still be going three months later, so it’s less of a burden on fans. And even so, there will be many fans of THE ULTIMATES and ULTIMATE X-MEN who simply can’t afford this much new product even if Millar’s their favorite writer, and they’ll have to choose among WANTED and CHOSEN and RUN and THE UNFUNNIES. Play it smart. Don’t put all your eggs in one PREVIEWS.
Next Week: Eh, I dunno, maybe we’ll look at how comics retailers can get women interested in comics using pimping as a model, exploiting those bitch-ass ho’s and getting them turned out on comics ‘til they beggin fo it. First taste is always free.
Chris Allen
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