* Your quote of the day comes from Grant Morrison:
Of course, the floor soon opened up for a lengthy fan Q&A where the first question drew out “Grant Morrison: Fiction Theorist” as a young man asked how old characters like Bruce Wayne and the various Robins were supposed to be. “It doesn’t matter. You must understand these people aren’t real,” Morrison said to laughter. “Batman is a mythical figure. I’m being funny, but I’m not being funny. They don’t live in the real world. It’s like this theory I’ve been developing – you know what they always say about kids? That kids can’t distinguish between fantasy and reality. And that’s actually bullshit. When a kid’s watching ‘The Little Mermaid,’ the kids knows that those crabs that are singing and talking aren’t really like the crabs on the beach that don’t talk. A kid really knows the difference.
“Then you’ve got an adult, and adults can not tell the difference between fantasy and reality. You bring them fantasy, and the first thing they say is ‘How did he get that way? Why does he dress like that? How did that happen?’ It’s not real. And beyond that, when you’re dealing with characters, they exist on paper. They’re real in that context. I always say they’re much more real than we are because they have much longer lives and more people know about them. But we get people reading superhero comics and going, ‘How does that power work? And why does Scott Summers shoot those beams? And what’s the size of that?’ It’s not real! There is no science. The science is the science of ‘Anything can happen in fiction and paper’ and we can do anything.
“We’ve already got the real world. Why would you want fiction to be like the real world? Fiction can do anything, so why do people always want to say, ‘Let’s ground this’ or ‘Let’s make this realistic.’ You can’t make it realistic because it’s not. So basically Batman is 75 years old, and Robin is 74 years old. They don’t grow old because they’re different from us. They’re paper people.”
* The Infinity Gauntlet is gonna be in a Marvel movie, Thor most likely.
* Marvel Studios now has the rights to the Punisher.
* Jeff Parker talks Red Hulk. I’ll give it a shot.
* In non-Con news:
* Frank Santoro waxes rhapsodic about Matt Kindt’s Revolver.
* Every time someone from one of the big publishers chides someone for analyzing publicly available sales numbers because they’re supposedly wildly inaccurate, I think “Okay–release the real numbers, then.”
As someone who’s been dealing with the available sales figures for six or seven years now, I find the most tiresome part of the discussion are (1) claims that the figures are “wrong,” and (2) claims that the figures are “correct.”
Yes, the figures are wrong, and yes, the figures are correct. No, the figures aren’t wrong, and no, the figures aren’t correct.
It’s utterly meaningless to debate the merits of these sales figures in terms of “wrong” or “correct,” because the figures are estimates (which makes them “wrong” by definition) for a very specific market segment during a very specific time period (which, on the other hand, they cover with a very high degree of accuracy). And these are only the most obvious qualifiers.
Even if the estimates were 100% accurate, you couldn’t meaningfully compare the Diamond figures with the total sales that editors or creators typically refer to. They don’t even necessarily cover the same time period or market segment.
The relevant question is whether the figures provide a fair reflection of the major market branch for North American comic books and the trends therein. From what I can tell, they do. I’d like to hear what Tom Brevoort and other people with his kind of insight think about that. Maybe one of these days, more of them will share their thoughts.
Sean, I really hope you caught the part of my Morrison panel writeup where he said how much he liked the Great Ten mini.
Marc-Oliver: They’re certainly useful for trends. Less so for trying to make the argument that the dissolution of Mary Jane and Peter’s marriage has brought Amazing Spider-Man sales to an all-time low irrespective of sales across the board, which is the kind of shit Tom is dealing with all the time, so in all fairness to him I can see why he gets grumpy about it.
Kiel: Goddammit.
Revelation:
Marvel should have Garth Ennis & Robert Rodriguez do the next Punisher movie.
Tell me that wouldn’t be so
fucking
perfect!
I did forget to mention in my writeup that I actually got to meet Kiel for the first time this year, which was pretty cool.
Hi, Kiel!
Sean: Yes, I know, and I agree.