Looking to the new year Article by aviewaskewed, 01:48 AM 25th Dec Disclaimer: The following column is entirely the opinions of the author (even at that we aren‘t sure), any similarity to the opinions of any other staff or affiliate of theendlesscrew.com is entirely coincidental and unintentional. Unless specifically noted otherwise, all creator comments have been gleaned from other sources and no creators have actually endorsed any aspect of this column. So Rich Johnston challenged comic book sites and columnists not to take Christmas off, and he’d plug the ones who didn’t. Those are the magic words “challenge” and “plug” people. So I thought with 2009 rapidly approaching I’d look at some things I believe will happen in 09, might happen, and probably shouldn’t happen. Also some events that I’m looking forward to or dreading. Let’s see where that takes us. Periodical comics at Marvel jump to 3.99: This is one that I know everybody has commented on, and it’s just a sad fact of life. Sometime within the next 12 months Marvel at least will jump all it’s books to 3.99, they’ve been testing the waters on this with special projects, and it’s just a matter of time before it’s line-wide. This is to me a very, very bad move for them on a lot of levels. Periodical sales already work as a loss leader to the trade market, the periodical at 3.99 without big changes is frankly going to look even worse to average readers now with this increase. Let’s not forget the economy causing everybody to tighten their belts, people will cut back. Books that were fringe for people will now be off the radar. Not to mention competitive publishers (hi DC) could use this opportunity to keep their wares at the more “standard” price, and perhaps regain some of those lost consumers (they won’t, DC traditionally just does whatever Marvel does either because they somehow believe that shows their competitive and playing in the same league, or more then likely they figure if Marvel is going to scam and bilk the readership a little harder they want some of that action too). Another thing to consider is what this will most likely do to trade prices, as a periodical increase would probably also expand to that market, and with many bookstores already in trouble, and what could wind up being companies needed to lean on the direct market just a tad bit more again, it really doesn’t seem the time to start raising prices. Bottom line, looks like a short sided grab to make the corporate bottom line look good, and while I can’t see it turning off readers in droves, I do see it having some impact on sales. Titles that previously were on the fence with cancellation will probably get bumped off, and I think the numbers for events will take a hit. If prices increase, they are going to have to give customers more bang for the buck, and really change some of the practices we’ve seen lately. Which moves into the next thing that needs to change this next year. Deadlines, stick to them!: I think some writers, artists, editors and publishers need to have someone get them a dictionary for Christmas. With said dictionary in hand, I want them to turn to the definition of deadline. Deadlines are not a suggestion, they’re not negotiable, they are what they are: the time the work must be done. If you publish a monthly book, it needs to come out monthly, not whenever the author feels like it. It’s one thing if you work on a poorly maintained website where no one is drawing a paycheck (um…not that I know of any places like that personally or anything) but it’s quite another when you’re being paid to do the work, and people are investing their money and their time in the product you produce. I know it’s not always the most fun thing in the world to sit in front of a word processor and commit your thoughts down. There’s editing, there’s the creative juices sometimes not firing, there’s also all the myriad distractions out there (video games will probably destroy many, many promising writers and artists in the years to come) but if it’s your job to write or draw a monthly comic book, you must overcome and get it out. ON TIME! But publishers are guilty here too as they should demand that deadlines be adhered to. Just because the creators in question are “stars” does not mean they should have carte blanche to do whatever they want, this is one of the problems of course with the market as it exists now today. If everything is written for the trade and eventual collection, nobody wants to have to collect six issues of Amazing Spider-Man where you had to do one or two of said issues with a fill-in artist, and risk the consistency not holding up and the reader hating the end result. But either publishers have to take that risk so they can keep consumer confidence and expectations maintained, or they need to simply try to get any incoming creative crew on a book working far enough in advance that nothing is disrupted. Blowing deadlines is sloppy, unprofessional, and the customer should not have to put up with it. Will it change? Nope, most likely not, but dreams are good. No more blown deadlines in 09! Geoff Johns leaves JSA: Oh I am torn on this one. I have absolutely loved what Geoff Johns has done with the concept and the history of the Justice Society of America. Not since Roy Thomas was playing with these characters have I seen stories brimming with such love, literacy, and the ability to clearly point out to the reader why these heroes and their history matters and is still relevant. I think Geoff’s run on the prior Justice Society series JSA should be more widely heralded as a modern classic then I hear in some quarters (I feel it is at least the equal of what Morrison did with the JLA). Johns managed to during his tenure not only unsnarl the complicated Post-Crisis history of Hawkman and make him understandable again, but he launched a moderately successful Hawkman solo-title and the character is still a mainstay with both of DC’s premier super hero franchises, that’s an accomplishment all by itself. But Geoff went further, he resurrected such beloved characters as Hourman (beloved to me though, your mileage may vary. So please take that with the bias I hold factored in), and helped to cement the new dynamic of the team as the older generation teaching the new. Because of the work of Johns primarily, and his collaborators like David Goyer, there will now ALWAYS be a JSA book at DC now (least under the current regime) and that is something that has never been a guarantee before. Johns should be viewed as one of the three most important JSA writers ever (perhaps second only to Gardener Fox the initial writer of the team). These are the reasons why it would seem a no-brainer that I’d be upset Johns is leaving, and for all these reasons indeed I am. But there’s a flipside here too. I’ve felt since the re-launch of the title following Infinite Crisis that while Johns has been doing good and competent stories a lot of the action has been missing. The character work that he’s famous for has been solid as ever, but I wonder if with all the extra work Johns has been doing over the past year he’s sort of hit an overload. The series has felt for awhile like he hasn’t quite gotten out of first gear with it and that we are now at the two or three year mark now and it still feels like this is a team that is finding itself and really hasn’t been challenged or tested. This current sequel to Kingdom Come has sure taken a long time to really build or get anywhere, and now we’re doing spin-off titles at the halfway mark? Expensive spin-off one shot titles? This just isn’t the kind of work I’ve come to expect of Mr. Johns, and it’s really begun to disappoint. So from that perspective, as much as I’ll miss the work, I think perhaps after a good run of just about 8 years it’s time for him to move on, and somebody else to move in. It’s the end of an era for sure, and that’s certainly sad for fans, but it could also be the start of a wonderful new beginning as well Events no more?: Is 09 finally the end? Maybe not totally, but with all the problems DC continues to have with Final Crisis, it makes one wonder if at least they won’t be cutting back (Dan Didio has hinted the word “Final” in the title means just that). On the other side of town though it looks like Marvel is still full-steam ahead with “Dark Reign” (and considering one of my favorite characters Norman Osborne is a central figure, I’ll probably be following this one pretty closely) and there’s a couple issues I take with that and why I really feel like events have to be put back into the drawer. It’s not an event anymore. Look at something like 52, 52 was a weekly DC event that told a year’s worth of time in the DCU with mid-level characters and it did massive numbers, I followed every issue and absolutely loved it. Then came Countdown, universally reviled, same format, slightly different approach, I read just about every issue and hated the thing. It’s a year of nothing of logic or really good or fun import happening. But they were both weekly events, so why did I like one and not like the other? It was basically the same kind of thing, a weekly event! YOU SHOULD HAVE LIKED IT MAN!!! Oh, I’m sorry, someone over at DC Editorial beat me up and stole the column for a second there. But that’s my point here. 52 worked because you had several of the absolute best writers in the industry working to tell a very fun story with almost no interference week in and week out for a year. That’s it, that’s why it worked. The weekly gimmick had nothing to do with it, all the shipping schedule meant was fans could get 52 on their pull list, go to the store every week and say “well, I’m not sure what else I’m going to get today, maybe something good, maybe something bad, but I’ll get 52 and that’s a fun ride!”. But see publishers seem to think people are in for the gimmick. That’s why DC pumped out Countdown and now Trinity, they think the weekly gimmick matters and sells. No it doesn’t. They think that having this big already plotted out story will draw people in. Only if they like what they’re reading guys. I did up to Infinite Crisis, wasn’t a big fan of the ending, they got me back with 52, then lost me with Countdown and after Final Crisis mysteriously dropped from my pull list I haven’t gone out of my way to get it back on the list because honestly? I don’t care. You know part of why I don’t care? Because my emotional investment is in the JSA and they have been effected not a jot by this. That’s another problem with your event, if you aren’t showing across the board effect, you’ve kind of failed haven’t you? DC has done that for me. But Marvel hasn’t. I missed Civil War and after hearing scathing reviews on the ending had no desire to go out of my way and get it. That’s a personal choice I made. But there was one thing that came out of it that effected me: Hey, we’re going to put a bunch of super villains onto a government funded team and the Marvel U public will think they’re heroes (my ears have perked up, I’m intrigued, tell me more) and Venom and Bullseye are part of it (hmmm, I think I need to buy this book because this is getting way better by the second) and Norman Osborne runs it (buy on sight!!! One of my favorite villains involved? The leader? Oh I must get this). So this to me is successful event marketing. They sold a bunch of copies, they fundamentally changed the way their storylines will work, and they’ve re-created something they’ve published currently that now has enticed new readers aboard. Great work Marvel! I’m going to happily try this book. So I did, and I LOVED it!! (I did write a very glowing review for PWIPop that will be posted over here soon for archiving purposes soon enough). Then we had Secret Invasion and they raised them to even higher prominence, wow this is fun, this tweaks both the reader enjoyment and that little kid impulse to see your favorites do good (we all have that, and that’s not just exclusive to comics. Same reaction when I read of my beloved NY Yankees signing the top three free agents this year). But wait…the way it ended has made my favorite Norman Osborne more prominent. Ok, well, I like that, we’re still gonna get my Thunderbolts as I’ve enjoyed them right? Well, we’re gonna kill one of them, the guy you didn’t like. Ok, I’m with you so far. Then we radically change the roster, like, completely. Wait, WHAT?! Now we’re at the dark side of the event. Because the new event following on the heels of the last threatens my enjoyment of a book, just a little. Suddenly the reader they’ve picked up in this case, a reader who in this day and age has made the ultimate commitment in saying “I will buy the book monthly vs. waiting for the trade” is questioning that. Oh, sure, I’m going to probably add Dark Reign, and I’ll try Dark Avengers, but that’s maybe about it. Right now, that’s 4 more books I can be sold. But if I don’t find them to be quality, I’m bailing, and that’s a problem. See, change is good, I’ve called for change over and over, but sometimes it’s good to just get comfortable and explore things for awhile. Marvel to me feels like it’s 100 MPH right now and it’s becoming where one event works as a prologue to another (Secret Invasion got massive hype and such, but with it’s ending is reduced to being the point A that gets us to Dark Reign’s point B, and what happens then? Is Dark Reign existing just to get us to a Point C we don’t know about yet?) event. Now it’s not really an “event” anymore is it? It’s just a really bloated mini-series and story that effects the lives of many of our characters, but not everybody. But worse? Worse is that in another few months, that whole story is just going to fade and no longer be important because we have this new story to dominate our time and even worse. You can’t keep the dial ratcheted up to 10 because eventually it’s like having it turned down to 1: It all becomes normal. It all becomes background noise and it’s almost like going down and buying the next chapter in the saga of say Spider-Man each month. But as long as it sells, it won’t change. It’ll keep on a-rolling because hey, I get the scam here, maybe you do to gentle reader. But if we plunk down the money and get on the ride, who wins? They do, and we have sent them the message that either we don’t get the scam, or we like it. Maybe we do though. We keep paying for it. Maybe I’m just the lone guy on the mountain here this time, and that’s fine. I do hope the event gets put back in the box though. The reason we talk about Pre-Crisis and Post-Crisis is because that was a major shift, it changed the paradigm of an entire company and nobody has done that since and I want to see that again badly. I want to see an event that radically changes everything…then we back away from events for awhile, explore this new status quo, and then we can come back and mess around with that in a few years. Stunt serving story, not the other way around, that’s what I really want at the end of the day. Can they give it to us? We’ll see. Bottom line time: 09 probably won’t be terribly different then 08. Because that’s comics, it’s very rare that we ever see anything truly earth shattering happen. But we can dream can’t we? Sure we can. One thing’s for sure, I’ll still be talking about comics in 09, I’ll be writing about comics in 09, and a lot of other people will too. That’s the greatest thing to me about comics, the boundless love we the fan base have for them. May your comics reading in 09 be the best you’ve ever had. Regulars and new readers: Tell me what you thought of this column, send me your comments, your complaints, just anything. One thing I’d love to see happen for TEC in 09 is to expand our community and keep bringing in fun and new voices. If this is your first visit I hope it’s your first of many, if it’s your 50th, hopefully there will be a 51st and beyond. Thank you to everyone for a great 08! Happy Holidays. Back to Rants