"Movies are a fad. Audiences really want to see live actors on a stage."
-- Charlie Chaplin
It's fairly easy to find quotes and predictions about various inventions or methodologies that were seen as passing fads of no real importance or significance. The ones, of course, that most memorable are those that got it completely wrong. It's all but impossible to predict what catches on and what doesn't so, while it's easy to get a quick smile from Chaplin's comment, it's not really held against him in any way. If anyone were able to know the secret to taking something from a fad to an institution, I daresay there'd be a lot more people with a lot more money. But it winds up being a matter of timing, marketing, particulars of execution, championing and leadership, and a host of externalities that no one really has control of.
Think of it in relation to the comic industry's history. Martin Goodman was (in)famous for jumping on every trend he could. As funny animal comics became popular, he flooded the market with funny animal books. After romance comics started to catch, he threw out a slew of romance comics. Westerns rose in popularity, Goodman was right there feeding into it. And he kept doing that year after year, fad after fad, until the superhero genre happened to stick. And even now, half a century later, there's no way we can concretely pin down WHY superhero comics stuck fast. Had Flash been reintroduced in 1955, maybe things would have been radically different. What if Joe Maneely didn't die in 1958 and had drawn Fantastic Four #1 instead of Jack Kirby? There are a million variables that could have been different, and any one of them might have resulted in superhero comics just being the next fad on the list.
Ah, but as Alvin Toffler has taught us, things are moving considerably faster than in Chaplin's day. New technologies are emerging with such frequency now that we don't have time to sit back and really analyze them before the next one is upon us. So how do we know what's going to take off and what's going to fall flat? How do we know whether to put our efforts to A, B and C or X, Y and Z? Never mind that we haven't even heard of L, M, N, O or P!
The truth is we don't know. No one does. Stuff keeps getting thrown up against the wall; some of it sticks, some of it doesn't. I've learned from decades of experience that I am one of the worst judges of what has any sort of staying power. I have always been, it seems, running perpendicular to whatever the cultural zeitgeist du jour was. I was late to MySpace, late to Facebook, late to Twitter...
Why this is problematic for you, the comic creator (or commentator or whatever) is that a lot of these technologies are where your audience is! That's how you communicate with them. That's how you market to them. That's how you tell them how to buy your stuff. It's all well and good if you're on Twitter, but if none of your audience -- or your potential audience -- is, then it's mostly just wasted effort.
Now, some of this can be automated to make your life easier. You can have your Flickr account populate your blog which then feeds into Facebook and Twitter which gets copied over to LinkedIn... Or whatever. But the point is that if you're playing in that space, you need to keep abreast of trends. Otherwise you're sitting there like a dork wondering why no one is visiting your MySpace page.
As of now, I don't have an easy answer for you. The best I'm able to do is just keep tabs on my friends and see what they're using. Maybe it'll catch on, maybe it won't. Maybe it'll be ideal for my purposes, maybe not. But you can't sit back and assume what you heard works last week will work this week. You need to dive in and get some details as quickly as you reasonably can, get the general feel for how it works, then see if you can use that to your advantage.
Monday, January 30, 2012
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Decals & Vinyl Figures
A lot of folks from my office at work are going on a business trip this week. I've done business trips before, but this will be the first time with my current employer. Most all of us will be on the same plane, and most all of us have the same model of laptop, so I figured I ought to ensure that mine doesn't get mixed up with anyone else's. I thought a Spider-Man sticker or something would be kind of amusing because most of what I do is web work. (It amuses me at any rate.) So I swang by the local Target yesterday to see if they had anything. The only one I could find larger than an inch or so was part of one of those wall-decorating kits from RoomMates.
For ten bucks? Sure, I'll splurge. I figure I can use some of the other characters to spruce up my comic room a bit as well.
First off, I have to say that I'm impressed. The art is surprisingly (to me) consistent in quality and the figures are all pretty close to being in scale with each other. The clear edges mean that you don't get an extra white border around the figures, and the printed areas are fairly opaque, so you can still see them clearly over visual textures and relatively dark surfaces. They also have sets for Superman, Batman, Green Lantern and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as well as movie versions of Captain America and Thor.
They also have larger single figures available for twenty-ish dollars. (The price varies a bit depending on the figure.) These are presented in several parts that have to be assembled on the wall, but the result is a 4-5 foot tall character. Most of the same characters are available that way.
And for thirty-issue dollars, you can get a 3' x 2' classic comic book cover. Looks like they have just over a dozen currently. Fantastic Four #1, Detective Comics #27, Hulk #181... covers that you've likely seen a few thousand times before.
Now, Fathead seems to do something similar using many of the same images. The figures are larger -- more in the six foot range -- and appear to be single sheet of vinyl. Probably a bit sturdier and they don't need to be assembled. They also have the bonus of some classic style images by the likes of Jack Kirby, John Buscema and John Romita Sr. But, they also cost about $90-$100 each, so it's going to make a bigger dent in your budget.
What I'm curious about, though, is why haven't more comic book shops utilized these in their own stores. I'm aware of one that put up a commercially available Marvel border, but that's it. I should think a five foot Superman would be a bit of a draw if you could position it so it was visible from the front window. You could create a display that looked like this...
... which would be a little shy of two-feet square. It'd cost you around $50 and you'd have enough decals left to easily create another five or six similar displays. Seems to me that it'd be an easy and cheap way to get some nice looking art on the walls. A 6'5" Wonder Woman would be cool, too, if you wanted to spend a little more.
I just think it would look a LOT better than so many of the other options I've seen... thumbtacked posters that are curled and/or ripping, hand-painted murals by the owner who can kind of draw a bit, original art that's badly framed. I get that running a comic shop isn't exactly like printing money and things can get pretty tight sometimes but, in running a business, especially one that's so dependent on people being in a specific physical location, it seems that you need to spend a little extra to make the place look nice.
First off, I have to say that I'm impressed. The art is surprisingly (to me) consistent in quality and the figures are all pretty close to being in scale with each other. The clear edges mean that you don't get an extra white border around the figures, and the printed areas are fairly opaque, so you can still see them clearly over visual textures and relatively dark surfaces. They also have sets for Superman, Batman, Green Lantern and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as well as movie versions of Captain America and Thor.
They also have larger single figures available for twenty-ish dollars. (The price varies a bit depending on the figure.) These are presented in several parts that have to be assembled on the wall, but the result is a 4-5 foot tall character. Most of the same characters are available that way.
And for thirty-issue dollars, you can get a 3' x 2' classic comic book cover. Looks like they have just over a dozen currently. Fantastic Four #1, Detective Comics #27, Hulk #181... covers that you've likely seen a few thousand times before.
Now, Fathead seems to do something similar using many of the same images. The figures are larger -- more in the six foot range -- and appear to be single sheet of vinyl. Probably a bit sturdier and they don't need to be assembled. They also have the bonus of some classic style images by the likes of Jack Kirby, John Buscema and John Romita Sr. But, they also cost about $90-$100 each, so it's going to make a bigger dent in your budget.
What I'm curious about, though, is why haven't more comic book shops utilized these in their own stores. I'm aware of one that put up a commercially available Marvel border, but that's it. I should think a five foot Superman would be a bit of a draw if you could position it so it was visible from the front window. You could create a display that looked like this...
I just think it would look a LOT better than so many of the other options I've seen... thumbtacked posters that are curled and/or ripping, hand-painted murals by the owner who can kind of draw a bit, original art that's badly framed. I get that running a comic shop isn't exactly like printing money and things can get pretty tight sometimes but, in running a business, especially one that's so dependent on people being in a specific physical location, it seems that you need to spend a little extra to make the place look nice.
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Spotlight On A Kirby Design Sequence
A little earlier today, Tom Brevoort posted the following Sgt. Fury page over on his Marvel Age of Comics tumblr. (You are following that, aren't you?) 
The bottom three panels leapt out at me for the brilliant way they draw the reader's eye across the page. That explosion almost forces your eye into the last panel, doesn't it?
And then, the billowing smoke pulling the through-lines of the plane wing...? Love it!
I want to point out the more subtle things, too, though. Like how that middle panel isn't a duplicate of the previous one. There's a slight change in the angle (very evident where the crosshairs' frame is broken by the gutter) and the image is slightly larger. Not only are you given the perspective of the gunner, but you get the sense that you're following his eyesight specifically as he leans in and his body picks up the vibrations of the firing machine gun.
But then you also have this nice bit where the large black blob creeps up the three panels, starting in the lowest left corner, then enlarging a bit, before finally fully breaking into the panel untethered, mimicking the flow of the explosion to the clouds and simultaneously helping lead the eye to it.
It's just a really gorgeous piece of design work, I think, and I just wanted to take a few moments to highlight it.
Friday, January 27, 2012
Three Weeks Since A Mash-up!
It's been nearly three weeks since I've done a mash-up, so I'm allowed one tonight, right? How about if I make one a little extra interesting? Text from today's Garfield, art from today's...
Bad Machinery
Sci-ence
Cool Jerk
Your "little extra" can be that I did three instead of my usual two, or that I made a couple of slight alterations to Paul Horn's art so that Paul Stanley makes an appearance. (I told you it was only a little extra.)
Actually, I did the art tweaks mainly because the lack of any real dialogue in Garfield today meant that these make almost no sense. By adding "The Starchild" makeup and the sign of the horns, the dialogue makes at least vaguely a kind of sense. I considered also doing a version with today's Garfield Minus Garfield but that seemed a little too self-referential.
Bad Machinery
Sci-ence
Cool Jerk
Your "little extra" can be that I did three instead of my usual two, or that I made a couple of slight alterations to Paul Horn's art so that Paul Stanley makes an appearance. (I told you it was only a little extra.)
Actually, I did the art tweaks mainly because the lack of any real dialogue in Garfield today meant that these make almost no sense. By adding "The Starchild" makeup and the sign of the horns, the dialogue makes at least vaguely a kind of sense. I considered also doing a version with today's Garfield Minus Garfield but that seemed a little too self-referential.
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Selling The Comics Lifestyle
I first started going to a gym regularly in my early 30s. It was mostly an effort not to lose weight, but to avoid putting any more on and maybe get a bit of muscle strength as well. And while I was going to that gym, my weight remained pretty steady and I got a little stronger in my upper body. (But not much.) I did about an hour's workout pretty consistently every other day for maybe four years. I stopped going in 2007 largely because of finances.
In mid-2010, I learned that a friend was going to run a marathon. I said to myself, "Well, hell, if Chris can run a marathon, why can't I?" It wasn't exactly a bucket list item for me, but I thought it would be a neat accomplishment. So I tried repairing the decomposing treadmill in the basement and started running for the first time. The treadmill lasted only a few months before it died beyond my capacity to fix it. At which point I joined another gym, my finances having at least stabilized.
Since my goal was to complete a marathon, and having absolutely zero experience in running, I started reading up on it. And health in general. I read a lot, and was able to pick a great deal of information about fitness and nutrition. But to do any good, I had to start acting on it. I started eating breakfast again. I changed my lunches to primarily salads. I recently had the epiphany that I had unintentionally almost entirely eliminated red meat from my diet. And the marathon training itself is a regular schedule of running, of course, but also weights and swimming.
Not surprisingly, the gym has been pretty packed lately with a bunch of people trying to make good on New Year's resolutions. But I look around while I'm working out and I can pick out the folks who are most likely not going to continue showing up all year. In fact, I've already seen more than a few people who showed up every day for the first week or two now coming in more sporadically. You see, what these people don't get -- and what I didn't get until I really found myself embedded in it -- is that fitness is a lifestyle choice. You can show up at the gym and take the zumba class for a couple months and lose 10 pounds or whatever. But if you want to see a "permanent" change, and not just a short-term fix, it requires a mental adjustment as well. You need to incorporate a new exercise regimen and a new diet into your lifestyle. Diet, as they say, is a not a verb.
What does this have to do with comics, you ask? Well, comics is a lifestyle choice, too, isn't it? You're not JUST reading Spider-Man; you're going to the comic shop every week and chatting with the other folks there, you're online reading about upcoming storylines, you're creating fan art, you're hunting down back issues, you're analyzing plot points to see if you can figure out what comes next or whether or not they've screwed up the continuity... That's why "comic" conventions frequently also have actors, wrestlers and models as guests -- the "comic" of their title refers to the lifestyle, not the specific medium.
Gyms periodically offer discounts and use advertising that can go along the lines of, "Lose that belly fat so you look great on the beach this summer!" But the people those attract are mostly short-term customers. The long-term ones, the ones who act as an ongoing revenue stream, are the ones who have made a lifestyle choice, and they have a very different message sold to them. It's not four walls with some weights and treadmills; it's a club where friends hang out and bond.
I think more comic shops could stand to take this approach. Don't sell the customers/readers on the physical comic books themselves, sell them on the lifestyle of hanging out with cool people who lead interesting lives and have imaginative ideas. Comics is very much a lifestyle choice that goes beyond just reading the stories. Why are you here reading this, after all? There are some shops out that are doing this already, and some of those are doing it better than others. But I don't think you can grab new readers on the draw of a single character or book alone. At least, not for very long. I think the lifers that stay with comics are the ones who not only say that this is a cool medium, but the ones who say it's a cool medium with lots of cool people I want to hang out with.
In mid-2010, I learned that a friend was going to run a marathon. I said to myself, "Well, hell, if Chris can run a marathon, why can't I?" It wasn't exactly a bucket list item for me, but I thought it would be a neat accomplishment. So I tried repairing the decomposing treadmill in the basement and started running for the first time. The treadmill lasted only a few months before it died beyond my capacity to fix it. At which point I joined another gym, my finances having at least stabilized.
Since my goal was to complete a marathon, and having absolutely zero experience in running, I started reading up on it. And health in general. I read a lot, and was able to pick a great deal of information about fitness and nutrition. But to do any good, I had to start acting on it. I started eating breakfast again. I changed my lunches to primarily salads. I recently had the epiphany that I had unintentionally almost entirely eliminated red meat from my diet. And the marathon training itself is a regular schedule of running, of course, but also weights and swimming.
Not surprisingly, the gym has been pretty packed lately with a bunch of people trying to make good on New Year's resolutions. But I look around while I'm working out and I can pick out the folks who are most likely not going to continue showing up all year. In fact, I've already seen more than a few people who showed up every day for the first week or two now coming in more sporadically. You see, what these people don't get -- and what I didn't get until I really found myself embedded in it -- is that fitness is a lifestyle choice. You can show up at the gym and take the zumba class for a couple months and lose 10 pounds or whatever. But if you want to see a "permanent" change, and not just a short-term fix, it requires a mental adjustment as well. You need to incorporate a new exercise regimen and a new diet into your lifestyle. Diet, as they say, is a not a verb.
What does this have to do with comics, you ask? Well, comics is a lifestyle choice, too, isn't it? You're not JUST reading Spider-Man; you're going to the comic shop every week and chatting with the other folks there, you're online reading about upcoming storylines, you're creating fan art, you're hunting down back issues, you're analyzing plot points to see if you can figure out what comes next or whether or not they've screwed up the continuity... That's why "comic" conventions frequently also have actors, wrestlers and models as guests -- the "comic" of their title refers to the lifestyle, not the specific medium.
Gyms periodically offer discounts and use advertising that can go along the lines of, "Lose that belly fat so you look great on the beach this summer!" But the people those attract are mostly short-term customers. The long-term ones, the ones who act as an ongoing revenue stream, are the ones who have made a lifestyle choice, and they have a very different message sold to them. It's not four walls with some weights and treadmills; it's a club where friends hang out and bond.
I think more comic shops could stand to take this approach. Don't sell the customers/readers on the physical comic books themselves, sell them on the lifestyle of hanging out with cool people who lead interesting lives and have imaginative ideas. Comics is very much a lifestyle choice that goes beyond just reading the stories. Why are you here reading this, after all? There are some shops out that are doing this already, and some of those are doing it better than others. But I don't think you can grab new readers on the draw of a single character or book alone. At least, not for very long. I think the lifers that stay with comics are the ones who not only say that this is a cool medium, but the ones who say it's a cool medium with lots of cool people I want to hang out with.
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Wednsday Link-o-rama
- Matt Kuhns examines the new DC logo. Unlike many folks who have criticized it, Kuhns is a bona fide graphic designer and looks at it specifically in that context.
- PRI's The World has a piece on the "Hero, Villain, Yeti” exhibit about Tibet's depictions in comics at the Rubin Museum of Art.
- I did not know this previously, but apparently the last Saturday of every August (the 25th this year) is International Cosplay Day. "It is to have fun and be able to cosplay for a day even when there is no convention in your area."
- Krazy Kat animated in stop motion? Yes, please!
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Breaking The Filter Bubble
One of the complaints I've heard rendered against some comic fans and professionals over the years is that they can be too insular in their reading. I've heard some really talented pros before specifically cite that part of what makes them talented is that they don't limit the type of material they take in. More to the point, if they write or draw superhero comics all day for a living, they read not just other types of comics, but other types of material altogether. Novels and poems and song lyrics and non-fiction and just about anything else.
If all you ever take in is a certain type of story, that's all you're going to produce yourself. You'll basically wind up rehashing the same old stuff over and over. At best, you'll wind up being a hack. The basic way creativity works is when your brain puts together two (or more) ideas that previously weren't put together by anyone else. That's why mash-up artwork online can be popular -- combining two ideas that wouldn't normally be put together is new and different.
Beyond just characters, though, a broader base of information better informs what you produce. A lot of the sexism that shows up in mainstream comics, I think, stems from the fact that there are so few women in the industry. Male writers are just writing what they know: men. So female characters come off as shallow or two-dimensional; there's no real reference outside of all the other shallow and two-dimensional female comic characters.
I bring this up, to some degree, in response to Google's changes in their search results, which are now incorporating social media aspects to the top results. Basically, if you haven't seen/experienced this already, the upshot is that anything you search on, the first results are, whenever possible, going to be pulled from your and your friends'/acquaintances' sources. Their Picasa albums, their blogs, their Google+ posts, etc. The potential issue there is that your searches are more narrowly focused on what you and your friends already know. Eli Pariser calls this a "filter bubble."
Personally, I try to actively combat that filter bubble. I still read an inordinate amount of material relating to comics, of course, but I do try to counter that with some other things as well. Right now, I'm reading a biography of Cleopatra for example. I also specifically went in to TURN OFF those personalized search results. I found having those only really distracting because I don't want to search on what I already read through a link on someone else's profile; I want something new!
You can walk around in circles if you like, I suppose, and stay within your comfort zone all the time, but I'd rather see/hear a wider variety of voices than just reflections of my own. I might disagree with many of them or find them wholly irrelevant, but at least I saw that my thinking wasn't the only option out there.
Beyond just characters, though, a broader base of information better informs what you produce. A lot of the sexism that shows up in mainstream comics, I think, stems from the fact that there are so few women in the industry. Male writers are just writing what they know: men. So female characters come off as shallow or two-dimensional; there's no real reference outside of all the other shallow and two-dimensional female comic characters.
I bring this up, to some degree, in response to Google's changes in their search results, which are now incorporating social media aspects to the top results. Basically, if you haven't seen/experienced this already, the upshot is that anything you search on, the first results are, whenever possible, going to be pulled from your and your friends'/acquaintances' sources. Their Picasa albums, their blogs, their Google+ posts, etc. The potential issue there is that your searches are more narrowly focused on what you and your friends already know. Eli Pariser calls this a "filter bubble."
Personally, I try to actively combat that filter bubble. I still read an inordinate amount of material relating to comics, of course, but I do try to counter that with some other things as well. Right now, I'm reading a biography of Cleopatra for example. I also specifically went in to TURN OFF those personalized search results. I found having those only really distracting because I don't want to search on what I already read through a link on someone else's profile; I want something new!
You can walk around in circles if you like, I suppose, and stay within your comfort zone all the time, but I'd rather see/hear a wider variety of voices than just reflections of my own. I might disagree with many of them or find them wholly irrelevant, but at least I saw that my thinking wasn't the only option out there.
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