Digital "driving readers to print"?

The big publishers pay a lot of lip service to their expanding digital offerings "driving new fans into the comic shops".  You wonder if they actually believe that this works.  Personally, I have a very hard time seeing a new comic fan who was first exposed to comics digitally saying, "I hear those comic shops are full of single men!  I must seek one out and buy products made out of dead trees!"

Can't imagine that'll happen very much.  There'll be a LOT more migration in the other direction as some fans who bought paper comics begin to desire digital for it's better organization, portability and lack of clutter.  I'm certainly in that second camp.

But, I have found an area where digital-to-print works pretty well: GI Joe comics.  Let me explain a bit because there are two things at play here.  One is that the current GI Joe comics are pretty damn good. This Cobra Civil War story is great stuff!

However, the thing that is pushing me to print has more to do with the fact that GI Joe is a licensed property.  In my lifetime, GI Joe comics have been marketed by a few different publishers: Marvel, Devil's Due/Image and now IDW.  Can you buy those old Marvel issues on the Marvel iOS app?  Nope! Does Marvel put out a GI Joe Omnibus?  Nope!  IDW has published collections of the old Marvel series because they now have the license.

Nostalgia as an older person?

I've recently had an interesting experience in my comic reading.  I read all the X-Men comics.  From the sales numbers, there seem to be about 35,000 of us out there who will read any additional title that says, "X-Men" on the cover.

Didn't they forget a few of these story lines?

So, of course, I've been reading Uncanny X-Force by Rick Remender and (sometimes) Jerome Opena.  The comic is getting a TON of positive press from the blogosphere.  "Best comic being published by Marvel right now" is a common refrain.  And that puts me in a funny position because I think it's okay, but I hardly think it's the best thing being published by Marvel (that would be Amazing Spider-Man).

However, I've noticed that the guys who LOVE X-Force are all a little younger than me.  They were reading comics when the original Age of Apocalypse when it came out in 1995.  I wasn't reading comics at the time.  I was mostly into using my new legal drinking status to buy drinks for for attractive young ladies.  Since I "returned to comics" a few years back, I've read AoA and I think it's a fine X-story, but reading a old story as a grown-ass man is different because AoA will never be connected to some of those wonderful memories that we all have from our teenage years.

It Came From the Long Box! -- Secrets of House Sinster #6

Secrets of House Sinister #6
cover by Mike Kaluta

I’m fortunate enough to have a comics collection that is widely varied in its tenor and genre, and when I dig through it, I’ve always got a great chance to find something that is both a lot of fun and something that I haven’t read in a while. Last night, while I was trying to reorganize some things, I came across Secrets of House Sinister #6. It’s a recent acquisition, and I had not had a chance to read it up to that point, but I dug into it this morning and had a lot of fun with it.

There’s something wonderful about horror comics, particularly those of a certain era. Naturally, there are those wonderful pre-code horror comics from EC, Charlton, and the like. But there’s another era that is of equal greatness, if not of equal importance, that era is the one that was given it’s vigor in the 1960s by Warren publishing and its Creepy, Eerie, Vampirella, and other magazines. Regardless of precise publication date, it’s the braveness of Warren, in my opinion, that made horror comics once again welcomed in the mainstream market place again and helped reinvigorate Charlton’s horror line and allowed for DC’s House of Mystery, House of Secrets, The Witching Hour, a whole host of other titles from DC and Marvel, and, in particular, the subject of this review: Secrets of House Sinister.

I see nothing wrong with Prequel-Watchmen. Here’s Why.

OK let’s get this out of the way – yeah, it’s a money grab, Yadda, yadda, yadda. But it’s not like Alan Moore created the original characters The Watchmen were based on. Remember these were Charlton Heroes of the 1960′s – a few of which Steve Ditko created. How is that any different from Alan Scott or Jay Garrick being re-imaged into the Silver Age Green Lantern and Flash? Could it be said that Moore did the money grab first?

I love Watchmen and their, unexplored, rich history. This could be a fun sandbox that today’s gifted artists and writers can play in. Comic book characters, and all fictional characters for that matter, should be shared and explored once and again for every generation and not lie dormant so uppity purists like The Simpson’s Comic Book Guy can lament about the Golden Age of 1985. The Watchmen belong to us fans now. If you don’t like it, fine. Don’t read it. But don’t tell me it’s going to suck. Not just yet, anyway.

Who knows what a new Watchmen comic will bring? Brubaker on Rorschach? Johns on Dr. Manhattan?

Just be glad Stan Lee isn’t still on X-Men.

-reposted from Collected Comics Library

Genre comics & superheroes

"Why can't we have more non-superhero work from Marvel and DC?"


That's a common refrain that you'll see on any comic book message board.  The Big 2 make a living on superhero comics, but why can't we get more material like war comics or westerns or crime comics?

A few months ago, it seemed like the publishers might be listening.  One of the comics I was looking forward to most among the new DC52 was Men of War and they had a sexy sounding western title called All-Star Western.  Marvel got in on the act with the recently released Six Guns, which seemed to be a modern-day western.

But, all of these new series have fallen very flat for me because they are still tied to their respective superhero universes.  Men of War tells the story of what it's like to be a solider in a world with superheroes.  All-Star Western puts Jonah Hex in fricking Gotham City.  And Six Guns features bikers and bounty hunters dealing with D-list Marvel heroes and villains.

All of these comics are well written and well drawn, but I lost interest the second I saw that they contained superheroes.

Granted, once you get away from the Big 2, the world is your oyster if you want a non-superhero comic book, but why can't the Big 2 use their financial muscle and access to talent to make it a little better.

How about you?  Do you like having a helping of superhero in your genre comics?

- Dean Stell

Things To Not Worry About: Creators' Social & Political Opinions

Over the past week or so, there have been a lot of forceful, and occasionally angry, opinions posted across the internet about the thoughts and opinions that comic creators choose to espouse. Frankly, I found the initial outrage ridiculous and hardly worthy of much attention at all. The outrage I’m speaking of, of course, is the response to Frank Miller’s blog post regarding the Occupy Movement; a movement that is sweeping the country and bringing all kinds of like-minded folks to the streets to protest and attempt to stand against what they feel is political, social, and economic injustice. My views on the movement are a bit complicated and absolutely not worth discussing here—particularly as they are irrelevant to this discussion. What encouraged this post is a point that was raised on the 11 O’Clock Comics message board. On the board the following question was posed: Can you separate artists from their art? That is, does your personal opinion of an artist affect whether or not you are able enjoy his or her work?

So here’s my position: I don’t care. Not even a little bit. If I got all flibbity gibbet every time someone famous espoused a political, economic, social, or religious view that was different from me, I wouldn’t be able to watch TV, read books, watch any movies, or listen to nearly any music ever…except for maybe Rush…and that's a big maybe.

What is difference of opinion and what is "wrong"?

Interesting things happen when you interact with the public, especially when you interact with the comic book public and talk about things like art in comic books.

As some followers know, I write reviews for 7-8 current comics every week at www.weeklycomicbookreview.com.  It's a fun thing to do and I think it has made me a better comic reader because I'm constantly trying to think of ways to put into words what a comic makes me feel.

But, you see some interesting things in the comment thread....  And, I LOVE our comment thread.  There's no better feeling that knowing that something you wrote caused someone to spend some of their time interacting back, so I always try to respond to everyone on our threads.

Ordinarily, I think comics should be a no arguing zone.  I mean....when I think of the people who get into fist-shaking rages over comic book arguments, I feel kinda the way Allen Iverson used to feel about "practice".  My attitude is usually, "C'mon....we're arguing about comic books!  Are you fricking kidding me??"

And, you'll see that attitude on most of the "feel good" internet comic forums: Hey! We're all entitled to our opinions!

But....what if their opinion is legitimately dumb?