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Showing posts from 2012

For Love or Money?: Thoughts on Before Watchmen

First, some news: Cartoonist Stephen Pastis (Pearls Before Swine) has been chosen to create a new Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, continuing the adventures of the boy and his tiger. Musicians Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr have decided to make a new Beatles album, replacing John and George with Eric Clapton and Jeff Lynne. Universal has announced a prequel to Schindler's List, to be directed by Clint Eastwood. Okay, breathe.  None of these are actually happening. Your reaction to these news bits might have been roughly equivalent to the news that, after 26 years, DC are going to publish new stories about the characters from Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' classic Watchmen . The new comics will arrive as a series of mini-series under the banner Before Watchmen . As in my fake news examples, high quality talent is involved, but somehow that doesn't ease the blow of an acknowledged, put-to-rest classic getting an addendum, does it? Watchmen is a landmark in comic book

Living in the Bottle City

"Every generation thinks it's the last Thinks it's the end of the world"  - Wilco, "You Never Know"   * I monitor the comics news sites ( Comic Book Resources , Bleeding Cool , Newsarama , The Beat ) pretty closely. I've been alarmed lately at how often and how quickly any conversation can turn to the death of the mainstream comics industry. There's a palpable feeling among many comics fans that the hobby they love is in the final stages of a long-suffered illness. Honestly, it's pretty easy to fall into this mindset. There are seemingly signs of doom everywhere. But I've decided that those signs are misleading. Here's why: No doubt we're living in wildly transitional times. A small handful of years ago no one knew what a smart phone or a tablet or an e-reader or streaming or an MP3 was, and now they're all greatly affecting the way we purchase and consume our entertainment. The music, film, and television industrie

How DC Comics Lost a Loyal Reader

In August 2011, the DC Comics universe started over. Iconic characters like Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, the Flash, and Wonder Woman saw their titles go back to the beginning in both number and concept. Costumes were redesigned, origins tinkered with, history redefined. In the history of the big two superhero publishers, there was only one precedent for what happened: John Byrne's The Man of Steel in 1986. This mini-series completely reset Superman's origin and status quo, blowing off many years of accumulated characters, complications, and contradictions in an attempt to streamline and modernize. DC's "New 52" reset was The Man of Steel writ large, across an entire universe of characters. Many fans hailed it as a bold, necessary move to attract elusive new readers to comic books, a hobby that is seemingly becoming more and more antiquated by the day. Others, predictably, balked. What about the continuity you're throwing away? Why are the new costum

A Comic Book Addiction Manifesto

I've decided that drastically dialing back my comic book buying habits will greatly benefit my love of comics. Here's why: I've been thinking a lot lately about comic collecting as an addiction. With an addiction, you need a constant new supply, you spend a lot of money, energy, and time angling to get that supply, and you get cranky and out-of-sorts when you can't get it. An addiction to something that doesn't destroy your physical health or ruin your interpersonal relationships doesn't have to be a bad thing, but it does have to be called what it is. Like drug dealers or tobacco companies, comic companies have become very reliant on their customers' addictions. They count on buyers need for a weekly fix of new comics. They rely on the loyalty of fans who have been following their favorite characters for 30 or 40 years. They bank on the small, strong community of their customers, and the peer pressure that comes along with that, i.e. "You've