What’s SHOOT THE MESSENGER?
Well, AICN COMICS: SHOOT THE MESSENGER is your weekly one stop shop for comic book news that’s dropped in the previous week. Thanks to Newsarama, CBR, Wizard, etc. for reporting it as it breaks. Click on the links for the original stories. This column cuts the crap to run down all the vital information for those of you who don’t follow it as it comes in, and serves it all up with that special ingredient of @$$y goodness. It’s also the place for interviews, previews, and special reports.
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Hey folks, Ambush Bug here. Luke O’Neil had a chance to talk with Neil Gaiman about a myriad of things over at Metro Newspapers, but O’Neil had a ton more info from the interview that wasn’t used, so we thought it was something you guys would like to take a look at. Let me pass the mike over to Luke for the interview.
A lot of the time doing interviews with well known artists (particularly big time actors and musicians) can be like pulling teeth. Rotten teeth, that is, since most of the quotes you end up getting are barely passable as coherent thoughts. But every now and again you find that rare interview that's not only extraordinarily talented, but also capable of reflecting on, and talking about his or her implementation of that talent in full, thoughtful sentences. When we interviewed Neil Gaiman for the Metro Newspapers last week, he was, unsurprisingly, just that.The original interview can be found here.
With its swirling, dream-like blend of mythology, fantasy and horror, Neil Gaiman's seminal THE SANDMAN series remains one of the finest achievements in comic book history to date. When it first appeared twenty years ago it combined a literary credibility with a crossover appeal and radically changed the pop culture landscape for years to come. Metro spoke with the British ex-pat about its legacy after the recent release of the fourth THE ABSOLUTE SANDMAN COLLECTION .
LO: Has the genre ghettoization of graphic novels and literature abated since then?
LO: Do you think it was sort of a Trojan Horse, sneaking literature in through the back door?
NG: I don't think it was exactly a Trojan Horse, but whatever it was, the magic of it was that it was happening in a place that nobody was looking. We didn't get written about in the New York Times until SANDMAN had been over for ten years. Eighteen years after it began. Which is not that I ever wanted an article in NYT. I think part of the strength and the power that it had was that it existed in the gutter. Nobody looked and nobody cared, and that in itself is a wonderful and empowering sort if thing, because it gives you complete freedom. It wasn't like I was trying to sneak in literature through the back door. What was much more fun was just that I got to tell my stories, and people let me.
NG: I think that's very true. There was a point where SANDMAN was a little indie band. It loved being an indie band. Nobody told us what to do, because nobody had done anything like this before. There weren't any rules. It was amazingly empowering.
LO: You could probably trace the explosion of more serious, or adult, imprints like Vertigo directly to SANDMAN. Then there are of course the books that are obviously indebted to your influence like LUCIFER and FABLES to name two. What do you think of the scope of your creation -- your Dreaming if you will?
NG: It's always really, really hard to figure how much real influence you had on the world. I read an article the other day on one of these online blogs called "Five Ways that SANDMAN Changed the World." And I thought 'well I don't know about that.' I'm all of a sudden much more critical and harder to impress than the people reading it. So it said 'Ok, SANDMAN started the whole neo-superheroes thing' and I thought no. I think the most important thing SANDMAN did, and it did create some important things, was that it was the first mainstream comic ever to finish a story. And I think that cannot be underestimated. The idea before that had always been that if you were writing a monthly comic, let's say Superman or whatever, you couldn't finish it. You weren't ever allowed to do the last one, to have the story mean anything. You had to turn back to the soap opera.
NG: Exactly. The great thing bout SANDMAN was it was the very first time that anyone ever said, we have this comic, it's selling better than anything else is selling, and when it's done, it's done. And that, in many ways, changed a lot of things. On the other hand, I still get complaints from comic store owners who blame SANDMAN for the graphic novel collections, and for many ways destroying their business. They'd say, look, in the old days if you wanted to read a comic, and it was something that had been published a while ago, the only way to read it was too pay extortionate prices for back issues. These days, if you're interested in what happened, you can go and pick up a trade paper back, which is pretty much everything now that has been reprinted. When SANDMAN began, the idea that what we were doing was not going to be collected, but was going to be in print, was enough. Comics were things that if you wanted to find out what happened in an old comic, you'd rummage in the clutter bin. That was where and how you found out.
LO: There are no stakes in a Spiderman comic. You know no one is going to die.
LO: How have you adapted with the way producing comics over the years has changed? It must be a lot different now than mailing pages across countries…
NG: Well actually there were definitely wonderful things about the world of mailing pages back and forth across countries. Because you could use Fed Ex, as a writer, and everything had a 2 or 3 days buffer zone. These days when people say they want something now, what they mean is email it to me. You could write up to the point that the Fed Ex would come! But overall I love the instant gratification. I am writing my first mainstream periodical comic years, doing Batman, just really mostly to keep my hand in it and find out if it was fun. One of the strange things about that is that I get emailed these glorious pages, and they come in and I look at them on screen, and I think, I would have never have seen this level of detail if they had faxed them to me in the past. It's kind of cool.
NG: Well, one of the things that attracted me to it was when they asked if I would be interested in writing the last Batman story, so that's what I'm doing. The last Batman story.
LO: Movie adaptations are of course a big deal lately. A potential SANDMAN film has been in discussion for years. Do you think we'll ever see it come to fruition?
NG: I think for years the biggest problem that everyone had with the film, which honestly is no less a problem today, is that it was never cheap. By its very nature a Sandman film is going to be filled with special effects. But it also has to be intelligent. You can't turn it into a regular blockbuster, and it's also much too deep. You can't do Sandman in the same way you do Spiderman and say "ok here's one of the villains." Or even Batman. “Everyone loves the Joker, so let's have fun with a Joker story.” SANDMAN doesn't really work like that. Warners has been aware for fifteen, twenty years, that they have something that is one of the jewels in their crown for filming.
LO: Do you think hundreds of years from now some of our comics will have evolved into myths that we use, the way we think about the ancient stories of gods and so forth now?
Thanks, Mr. O’Neil and Mr. Gaiman for the cool interview!
Hey folks, it’s your old pal, Ambush Bug again. OK, let’s spin ye Olde Spinner Rack and see what comes up, shall we?
First we have a preview for WILDCATS, a book I haven’t been keeping tabs on, I must admit. I think the last time I looked at it was back when Jim Lee was on the title…man, I’m old. But this one is written by Christos Gage (who is proving to be a pretty strong writer), so it has to be some kind of cool. And it’s got art by a guy who has a fun last name, Neil Googe. Check out what the Gage and the Googe have for us in issue #6.
Looks pretty damn good. And I especially like the Googe’s artwork here. Check out WILDCATS #6 this Wednesday.
Next up is Vertigo’s critically acclaimed DMZ series by Brian Wood. The book is a harsh and realistic what if… story that is closer to the world outside our window that many of us would like to think. Here’s a preview to issue #37. Enjoy.
You can check out DMZ #37 when it hits the stands on Wednesday!
And finally, here’s our monthly preview of a comic that certifies your insanity if you don’t have it on your pull: GREEN LANTERN CORPS. Peter Tomasi is kicking @$$ on this book, keeping pace and sometimes surpassing Geoff Johns’ awesomeness on GREEN LANTERN. Let’s see what issue #31 has for us.
If you’re planning on getting THE BLACKEST NIGHT crossover next year, then this book should be required reading. Pick up GREEN LANTERN CORPS #31 this Wednesday.
One More Washington
A. Bug on $3.99
Well, lately, my church’s collection plate has been taking a lot out of my wallet and I thought it was about time to rant about it.
It appears that, right under our noses, Marvel and DC have been putting out more and more $3.99 comics. As it is, $2.99 is a hefty price tag to pay. But it’s been like that for a while (not sure when the change actually occurred) and I’ve been somewhat ok with it. Lately, though, I’ve seen my weekly donation to the comic book collection plate rise and the amount of books I am buying lessen. After further inspection, it appears that normal issues (sometimes anniversary/special issues, sometimes not) have been upped a dollar to 4 bucks, without so much as a warning. A lot of times I don’t even notice the price hike until after I read the book when I’m home. This, my Faithful Talkbackers, sucks balls.
What Marvel and DC want to do is get the consumer used to spending $3.99 for a book. That way, like a ninja on a sleeping pirate ship, they can sneak in one comic after another until their whole line is raised a dollar and not just special issues. Comic book readers have proven to have a zombie/sheep/idiot mentality when it comes to this. Instead of making a stand, they shrug their shoulders and fork over the cash for lack of anything better to do.
But I don’t want to encourage that.
There’s something special about holding a comic in your hands. Feeling the weight of it. Risking a puncture wound from a misfolded staple or a paper cut from a rapidly turned page. Now that’s excitement!
More people downloading comics, fewer new readers, and a fanbase dropping like flies from heart attacks and sugar comas won’t hurt bigger stores like Wal-Mart or convenience stores, but who buys comics there? It’s only going to hurt the comic book store owners--the comic book industry’s unappreciated bastard step-children who get screwed time and time again. Ask your LCS how they feel about the price hike. Any owner with sense will know rising prices makes that bankruptcy death knell they hear in the distance ring ever closer.
“We looked around and saw cover prices creeping up and up all around us,” noticed Top Cow Publisher Filip Sablik. “It seems wrong to raise your prices on customers during these tough economic times. Once we knew we were going to hold the line on our prices, it made sense to call attention to it. Hopefully, it will encourage some fans to try our titles.”
“Our content pages will remain the same as it is now and in fact we're adding more and more added-value pages, including interviews, back-matter articles and preview art,” said Sablik. “We want to be the value and quality leader in the industry.”
Of course, this doesn’t include extra page annuals, specials, variant editions, and anything else the company deems “worth the extra buck!” But I’m glad Top Cow is doing this and it makes me more likely to check out their product for taking the extra steps taken to empathize with the reader. This is a bold move and I hope other comic companies will follow suit in this considerate stance towards the fans.
This isn’t the first rant about the rising process of comics. I’m sure it won’t be the last. I’ve talked to folks who remember when comics cost a quarter and how they expressed outrage for the raise to 30 cents. Check out the prices on the covers of some of the comics in this article to see how they’ve varied through the years. I’m sure everyone has to tighten their belts (including the comic book companies) in order to keep up with these times of economic doldrums and price hikes are inevitable, but a whole dollar? Why not look for ways to compensate that don’t alienate readers?
If you’re not on a budget and aren’t really affected by this price hike, well, congrats Richie Rich, you’ve got one up on me. But as for myself, and pretty much everyone I know, money is a bit tighter these days. Raising prices on monthly comics will only result in one thing: less comics bought. Less comics bought hurts the companies. Less comics bought hurts comic stores. Less comics bought hurts consumers who will only have the choice of reading books Wizard Magazine deems popular at the moment because quality books with lesser characters written by up and coming/tried and true comic book talent don’t meet the ever rising sales quota. Less comics bought means lesser tier comics with a steady but small fanbase like SHE-HULK, like X-FACTOR, like SPIDER-GIRL, like LEGION OF SUPER HEROES, etc., and so on, ad pukity-puke are more likely to be cancelled and less likely to even happen in the first place. Less comics bought means stagnant, boring, safe comics.
I don’t want monthly comics to become extinct, but it looks like the companies are moving closer and closer to that inevitable outcome. Regular sized comics are still $2.99 right now and I hope it will stay that way for the foreseeable future so I can continue to buy as many comics as I can. But the change seems to be coming. Books deemed “important” all bear a $3.99 price tag. Guess what: pretty soon, if your favorite comic is bearing a $2.99 price tag, it’s a pretty sure bet that it’s on the chopping block. DC and Marvel think we’ll just deal with it. And we are dealing with it--just not in the way they may want. Comic books are becoming easier and easier to download (legally or not so much). Trades are on the rise. Readership and sales are decreasing. Whether these changes mean the end of monthly comics or the dawn of a new age in funny-bookdom is uncertain. Sadly, it’s in the hands of the people willing to make their product even less accessible by upping it a Washington.
Ambush Bug is Mark L. Miller, reviewer and co-editor of AICN Comics for over seven years. Check out a five page preview of his short story published in MUSCLES & FIGHTS 3 (AVAILABLE NOW at Muscles & Fights.com.) on his ComicSpace page. There you can also see a five page preview of his short story in MUSCLES & FRIGHTS! Bug was recently interviewed here and here at Cream City Comics.