You all checked out my posts on John Jakala’s manga reviews, the chilling effects of overly broad child pornography laws, and Corner Comics vs. the IRS, right? Right.
Sometimes I forget that Eve Tushnet just started reading comics regularly this year, because she writes about them so passionately and so well. Then again, I myself gave up on reading comics regularly for my entire college career, and only started reading them again when New X-Men debuted, so I guess it’s easy to lose yourself in the medium when what you’re reading rewards your interest. As a fangirl of relatively recent coinage, Eve’s thoughts on how she “got into comics” and good comics for new- or non-readers are must-reads. (My own recommendations for newbies may be found here. Great holiday gifts one and all.)
Look out–Shawn Fumo is back! The comicsphere’s resident manga expert has returned to blogging with a vengeance, announcing that Radio Shack has begun selling manga, pointing out predicitons of a manga-driven comics Renaissance… from six years ago, and much more. Start here and scroll up.
Take it from me, Rich Johnston: Getting things banned is never a good idea. I’m not going to go in-depth on this, but please, trust me on this one. I know what I’m talking about.
NeilAlien responds to Dirk Deppey‘s comics-fan j’accuse by saying, basically, “nuh-uh!” (This tends to be how these things between Dirk and Neil go.) I think Neil might be right to say that it’s too much to lay all the blame for the sorry state of the Direct Market at the feet of the customers. The DM’s spectacular failure to capitalize on the manga explosion shows that the retailers and publishers should shoulder much of the blame. after all, this audience is out there, and the DM has completely neglected to attract them into the shops; the people buying JSA every month have nothing to do with it. On the other hand, most retailers who do attempt to stock non-superhero comics of any kind will tell you that such titles die a death on the racks. The DM as it stands has an audience that not only does not reward diversity, but seems intent on actively policing against it. You can see hints of this even in intelligent fans like Neil, whose occasional disses of altcomix are as sloppy as they are undeserved (Bill Sherman sums this angle up quite well).
Let’s look at it this way: Imagine that the record-store industry had only 250,000 or so regular customers. Now imagine that around 90% of them only bought records by the artists formerly known as teeny-poppers: Britney, Justin, Christina, Beyonce. This pop genre totally dominates the industry, and the bulk of what it yields is, well, crap. When challenged, the consumers of these works will say, “Hey, it’s not all crap: Somtimes they work with the Neptunes, or Timbaland, or the DFA, or Fischerspooner. That’s an intelligent alternative to the usual pop fare.” Of course, they’d be right–but only to a degree. There is indeed some variety to be found amongst these popsters: In my opinion, “Crazy in Love” and the original version of “Boys” are pretty great. But it’s still the pop genre at heart. If that’s as far afield as these hypothetical 250,000 consumers were willing to go, and they consistently shunned anything and everything else, what possible incentive would there be for the record-store Direct Market to diversify, aside from taking a longview that will almost surely soak them in the short term?
That’s essentially what we’re facing in the comics Direct Market. It’s a very small set of consumers, and the vast majority of what they buy is superhero stuff. Occasionally they’ll opt for superhero crime, or superhero sci-fi, or superhero noir, or superhero fantasy, or superhero satire, or superhero slapstick, or superhero teen drama; and occasionally (hell, even semi-often) the stuff’ll be terrific; but it’s still superhero stuff in the end, and it seems that nothing else will do. Now that it’s apparent that the DM must diversify or die out, is it any wonder that the loyal audience can be seen not as a boon, but as an obstacle?
Finally, thanks to (cough) certain real-world events vaguely referenced above, it looks as though I’ll be switching to buying only trade paperbacks whether I like it or not. I can’t see this as being anything but difficult for me: Even though I’d weaned myself off of several titles I wasn’t really enjoying in their monthly installments, there were still a ton of books I jonsed for on a week-to-week basis, and I’ll miss them. But my bottom line will be a lot healthier, and as I truly do feel that collected editions are superior to floppies not just logistically but aesthetically and literarily, I’ll be reading comics in their ideal format–the better to judge whether or not they deserve reading in the first place, perhaps?