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To Be Continued #16
Why Don't We Talk About Comics, Anymore? Before we get started, I want to apologize for my Bizarro column last week. I was horrified to log on and find it riddled with misspellings, dropped sentences and &endash;my favorite- backward apostrophes. Apparently my new Microsoft Random Error GeneratorTM software worked perfectly. Either that, or after I accidentally kicked the cord to my computer out of the wall, I mistakenly threw out the good file and kept the corrupt one. I suppose the mature thing to do is to accept complete responsibility for my mistakes and to promise you I'll be more careful in the future. Nah, let's blame Microsoft. Okay, on to new business. I have a confession to make, I spend a lot of time on Usenet. Whenever someone walks into my office and catches me online, I usually just pretend I was looking at porn. But the truth is I'm reading newsgroups. Worse yet, comic book newsgroups. Let's just keep this to ourselves, okay? I revealed that shameful secret so I could ask you the question you'll find highlighted in bold, somewhere up at the top of this page (unless you're on a Mac and are looking at this in Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.5, in which case the title isn't in bold, isn't at the top of the page and you probably can't read this anyway, because the Java applet just froze your machine. I'll wait here while you reboot and try again). While I'm on the topic of internet stuff that bothers me, I want to offer this public service message to those of you who have music on your web pages: Cut it out. Do you have any idea what it's like for me when I'm happily surfing the web, Miles Davis' Sketches of Spain wafting out of my computer's speakers, only to be assaulted by somebody's .WAV of a synthesized cover of that Madonna song from Austin Powers? You could at least put an off switch at the top of your page. I'm serious, don't make me come over there… …What was I talking about again? Oh yeah, Usenet: Thousands of comic book fans, gathered together to talk about, near as I can figure, anything but content. Recent topics of debate include such behind-the-scenes ephemera as; Mark Waid's relationship with Batman editors (it seems that he may have worked for some of them! This is somehow bad, I gather). An examination of the Statement of Ownership numbers printed in some comics once a year (Newsflash: sales are down). "AOL and Time-Warner announce merger" (okay, I admit that I filtered this topic out without looking, because I was sick of reading about it on the FAIR bulletin board. Little did I know that it was actually about new comic book formats, a topic I'm very interested in. I could have used it to keep my Genus Grant thing running another couple of weeks). Steve Gerber on why paper comics are dead, dead, dead (have I gushed yet about how incredibly great I think Gerber is? There's a future column…). A frustrated young writer who wants to know how to break in to comics. Somebody says that Grant Morrison is upset at DC because they treat him badly (as I read this, I was reminded of the time I was complaining to my brother about my really awful sinus headache. As I spoke, it gradually dawned on me that the guy I was complaining to was in the process of recovering from kidney surgery. If I ever meet Grant, I'm going to tell him a few stories about just how badly DC is capable of treating someone, when they put their mind to it. Note to DC: I want my kidney back. Or at least my virtue). A proposed ad slogan for the industry: "Comics are cheaper than movies!" (Nobody liked my counter-proposal: "A fraction of the cost, a fraction of the entertainment value!") Anger that Marvel is about to raise their prices 26 cents a copy. (Again, I'm ahead of my time. I once raised the price of my comic book line 75 cents a copy!) And so on. There's tons of this stuff online and it's almost entirely "inside baseball." We almost never talk comics anymore. We don't talk about story lines, or which artist is cool or even, God forgive me, who would win a fight between Batman and Captain America.* I'm guilty of this myself. Looking at the last four months of my column, only about half of it has been about content. The rest has been equally divided between me explaining why you'll never, ever break into comics and my Chicken Little reports on the state of the industry. This has to change, at least until I think of something new to bitch about. So you guys are going to help me get back into comics. E-Mail me and tell me what I should be reading and why. In two weeks or so, I'm going to the comic book store with a couple of hundred bucks and a buy list made up entirely from your suggestions. Then I'll report back. I guess this is going to be a contest. Whoever suggests the book that I like the best will get a prize. I'm not sure what it'll be yet but I promise something substantial. Unlike the McDuffie Genius Grant, this prize must be awarded. Even if I don't fall absolutely in love with something you guys suggest, I'll award the prize to the patron of the book I like best. In the event of a tie, the prize will go to whoever wrote the best recommendation. This is a good time to inform new readers and remind old ones that when it comes to graft, I have a very liberal policy: I accept graft (and any reasonable obligations implicit in my acceptance) cheerfully and without question. It's genetic. I've got a lot of cops in my family. So publishers, if you want me to write about your publications, send me free stuff. This is going to be particularly interesting, since it's been about two years since I made a serious trip to a comic store. I'll also report to you on that experience. Until then, this is, as always, To Be Continued… *Captain America, obviously.
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