GHOSTBUSTERS: Unemployed college professors destroy hotel with nuclear weapons.

Dorian of postmodernbarney (with some assistance from some of my favorite comics bloggers) brings the masses "Uncomfortable Plot Summaries."

Some of my favorites:

ALIENS: An unplanned pregnancy leads to complications.
BATMAN: Wealthy man assaults the mentally ill.
BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA: Redneck trucker kills Chinese immigrants.
DIE HARD: Dysfunctional cop saves marriage by murdering foreign national.
JURASSIC PARK: Theme park’s grand opening pushed back.
LORD OF THE RINGS: Midget destroys stolen property.
SCARFACE: Immigrant finds running his own business stressful, dangerous.
SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT: Redneck bootlegger makes mockery of law, sanctity of marriage.
STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE - Religious extremist terrorists destroy government installation, killing thousands.

Plenty more at the link.

-Buck

Read on, faithful few!

Trade-Waiting: Why Make It Hard First?!

Raise your hands if you intend to buy the "Thor: Balder the Brave" Premiere Marvel Hardcover, 176 pages for $25. I...don't see much interest. Collecting Balder the Brave 1-4 and Thor 360-362, seven issues from the mid 80s, Marvel has decided to sap your wallet of its meager cash supply, insisting these issues require fancy treatment. Yes, Walt Simonson, author and co-artist (with Sal Buscema), tells a very epic tale and his style has definitely influenced the current generation of "widecreen" artists, not to mention the recent slate of Matt Fraction-penned Thor tales.

But $3.57 per issue for seven, 20+ yr-old comics that no one's beating down the door to buy in deluxe edition? Is this the best we can get collect? Thinking on Thor, what about Dan Jurgens's run that, more recent and "relevant" to modern audiences, remains only collected piecemeal?

While these old comics are great, and Simonson's Thor run deserves to be fully collected, why not choose omnibus trade paperbacks that are affordable? For $24.99, DC reprinted the whole of Superman's "Our Worlds At War" saga - 20 issues! - and fulfilled the two "A+A" principles of comic book trade collecting: Affordability and Availability. Yet even DC has been failing, with Marvel, on the first principle, probably the most important.

Because publishers love it hard.

***

Release a popular story, and you know it will sell in trade in today's market. A great example is the Sinestro Corps War in the Green Lantern titles over at DC. Several one-shots and months worth of both Green Lantern and the Green Lantern Corps, the "SCW" was admired by fans and non-fans alike for its effective, clear, self-contained storytelling. Three collections (vol. 1, vol. 2 and Tales of the "SCW") hit stores after the conclusion...in hardcover. The prices were $24.99 for vols. 1 & 2 and $29.99 for Tales...; the softcovers (or what we traditionally think of as "trades") are $14.99 for each.

So let's break that down looking at vol. 1. It collected the one-shot that started the story as well as the next four parts. The HC prices out at ~$5 ($4.998) per issue. To be fair, that's how much the GL: Sinestro Corps Special cost, and it was 64 pages. The other issues carried a $2.99 cover price, a $2 mark-up in HC. Of course, materials costs in a hardcover are greater than an SC.

Over in that SC, each issue costs you $3 ($2.998). So it's a $1.96 savings over buying the issues as they were released, while the HC is a $8.04 mark-up over the singles.

Which would you choose?

This is but one illustration of a trend that's gripped the Big Two over the last several years. Before 2000, trades were rare to begin with; only the biggest stories were collected, or those by the better-known creators. Titles were sporadically gathered into trades, often leaving large gaps between storylines (tragically, in the 1990s there was no DC or Marvel title fully collected among their best-sellers - that goes for Superman, Batman, Spider-man, the X-Men, etc. - when such a practice would've probably revolutionized comic collecting). The back issue business boomed (well, then busted, but it boomed for years before that!).

Over the last ten years, publishers have realized the revenue potential of the bookstore market, which means you need collections, square bound if softcover or just HC, to fill shelves. And because we're dealing with capitalist organizations, they want to make a buck. Thus, overpriced hardcover collections are released, followed months later by softcovers.

It used to be that HCs were reserved for the best a company had to offer. Neil Gaiman returns to The Sandman with "Endless Nights," released first as an oversized HC and then later, an oversized SC. It was a big deal, and the HC made that apparent; it even broke into the NYTimes top 20 fiction bestsellers (HC) when it was released. Now, you get every so-so X-Men arc in "premiere" HC shortly after it concludes, with the SC still half a year away. The pizazz of the hardcover collection is diminished.

***

Let us not deride collecing in trade every issue of an ongoing series. There's nothing wrong with creating such a backlist. Personally, I think it's great to be able to check out a year's worth of a series from the library or "trade-waiting" (the practice of not buying singles and only getting trades) and not missing anything. But Marvel and DC are missing the point. People buy these things for convenience/availability, yes, but due to the financial breakdown of the trade allowing for better affordability than singles.

Single-issue ads pay for large chunks of a comic's cost as does the cover price itself; trades then, ideally, are closer to "pure profit," produced after creators are paid their gross fees with just royalties owed now (if any) as well as production costs. Therefore, trades can be priced less than the sum of the single issues they collect. That's the logic that governs softcovers, but HCs are priced higher (in the case of vol. 1 of Sinestro Corps War, ~ 47% higher) to capture more profit. The economic logic is simple - understandable, in today's highly competitive market - but long-term deadly.

Imagine I'm a new comic book reader. I decide to collect X-Men in trades, as there's no comic book store nearby, but I can get the collections easily at my local Borders. I decide this after 1) seeing one of the X-movies on cable and checking out the first Astonishing X-Men trade from the library. Going whole hog, I choose to get all three main X-titles (adjectiveless, Uncanny and
Astonishing), as it will cost less in trade than in singles, so I can afford all three. I follow along online with what's going on in the singles, when stories end and when I can expect trades. Much to my disappointment, however, my financial situation does not allow me to pay 40%+ more for the issues in HC and that is the only way I can get the titles once the arcs have finished. I could
wait for half a year (at least) for the SCs and realize my 10%+ savings, but I am disillusioned that for entry-level titles at the biggest comic publisher in the US, I have to pay a premium to get what is essentially the second go-around of the offering plate. I am punished for buying the collections. I make another decision and choose not to get the HCs. In time, I forget why I wanted to buy these in the first place and just...drop comics. Then, I go on a shooting spree.

While a bit extreme, the above does illustrate the problem of releasing HCs so far in advance of softcovers. There is no incentive to buy HCs if you're watching your wallet and SCs are down the line; but then again, there is much rage when forced to wait close to a year after a story's wrapped up to buy said softcover. Much rage.

***

How does the "HC-first" policy help titles? Are the companies claiming it's better for business and helps grow the customer base? If anything, new customers will abandon bookstores and comic book shops (the former matters less than keeping the latter alive and prosperous), heading for discounts online at Amazon or DCBS. This hurts the industry, long-term, by destabilizing brick-and-mortor retailers like a Comics Galore or Graham Cracker Comics or Asylum Comics.

So it's no only the consumer who is punished by the edict to issue trades in HC first, softcover later, denying them affordability (you can't argue that the quick publication denies availability; in fact, they publish collections - incl. HCs - so quickly now for a lot of titles, that availability of a story is almost better than during the hey-day of the "comic book shop" pre-1994); now the comic book store that kept the industry alive* during the bleak mid- and late-90s loses business to the online retailer because it can't offer the same level of discounts.

What sort of companies deliver their primary (or most visible) delivery system? With the newsstand market long gone and other distribution methods still in growing pains, it becomes more apparent to me to provide beneficial pricing opportunities to comic book stores to keep this "direct market" afloat. Perhaps this can be done by releasing softcovers to them at the same time as HCs, though not to bookstores or online retailers (they can get them six months after the HC is released, or whatever the timeline is). The HC market exists, but not in the size to justify every single story getting it's own select or premiere or deluxe oversized HC treatment.

***

The best example of a series' collection is that of Dark Horse's Conan (the Cimmerian) by Kurt Busiek, Tim Truman, Cary Nord, et al. When it comes time to release a collection and they are prompt, the release comes in both hardcover and softcover almost simultaneously. The printing of the HCs is even far lower than the SCs, owing to the smaller market, higher price and desire to create an aura of "collectibility." Perfect. If you want to release everything in HC, this is the way to go.

Another good example is how Marvel treats their "Ultimate" line and DC their "youth" books (such as Titans-related, including Teen Titans and Blue Beetle): no hardcover releases at all of one arc. You might get a big HC, as with the "Ultimate" line, that covers three or so trades; what a great idea! And Teen Titans? Those stories are great for younger readers, good hooks, but HC collections would be like putting a electrode on a gerbil's food pellet. The shock to the system (cost; a sense of...fiscal violation) conditions one not to do said action again.

The big hurdle for publishers is to realize that not every arc is worth putting out in such deluxe format. Most of the mainstream titles at the Big Two would see brisker trade sales in paperback (conjecture) if released when the HC normally came out. Save the HCs for omnibus-type collections, like Marvel did with the first two years of Brubaker's Captain America run, or DC currently is doing with Starman (six deluxe HCs covering the whole series plus supplemental material...released long after the trades). Enchance their impact.

Long run, this method will be better for the comic book industry: more titles out in cheaper formats sooner to create and hook readers with a steady supply of material that will make said readers more apt to purchase the higher-cost items in the future.

And by Odin's beard, get some the lead out and collect Dan Jurgens' Thor run!


-Hooper



*An argument can be made that comic book stores, specialty shops that bloomed into existence over the 1980s, grew beyond their means in the 1990s and that the eventual closing of more than half nationwide over the late 1990s (continuing through today) was a market adjustment. The newsstand market gave comic books the mass media status they've enjoyed since the 1930s, though the days of the spinner rack are long behind us.

Read on, faithful few!

The Hooplah Reviews "Final Crisis"

Right off the bat (not "write off the Bat"), this series succeeds beyond it's immediate "crisis" predecessor, Infinite Crisis, and in the fullness of time will stand as one of the most articulate and well-realized comic book stories about stories.

Don't believe me? Let's look at this a bit closer.




Grant Morrison has been chomping at the bit to write Jack Kirby's myths-made-flesh, the New Gods, since he started in on mainstream DC heroes. His JLA run heavily featured their involvement, not only as members but as threats to humanity, the cosmos, reality, etc. Theirs was a story of never-ending battle, cyclically ending in calamity. First World becomes Second becomes Third cracks into Fourth and dies to give birth to glorious Fifth.

But what's important is the story. It changes over time from that of gods clashing to man deciding its destiny. The Fifth Age, ushered in over the trying times of Final Crisis, is the age of Man. Self-determination, to borrow from Woodrow Wilson.

So does FC do all that? Does it move past the normal Event tag into some grander space?

On the whole, yes.

Without talking down to us, Morrison has used the medium of the comic to pull back the layers of our heroes and their narratives. Their tales and myths, if you will. Deconstruction in comics isn't new, and has been a trend for the last two decades, but at the core of Morrison's heroes isn't self-loathing, doubt or regret. It's hope, optimism, the relentless pursuit of Good against all odds.



In the back-and-forth Buck and I had on this, he told me, "I guess my only beef is that it almost reads like an Elseworlds, because it didn't seem to change a whole lot in the grand scheme of things."

To a large degree, he is right. These heroes and villains were there before and they will be after. The city of Bludhaven (destroyed in Infinite Crisis) is still a war zone, of sorts. The teams still exist, though they might have a different roster. The Daily Planet globe still stands. No major heroes died, though it looks like the Hawks are back on the cosmic wheel, waiting to spin back off, reincarnated into new bodies. Batman was zapped millennia into the past where he's leaving clues to his whereabouts (I see a mini coming up next year!). Superman lives. Wonder Woman is back to being a hero. Mary Marvel was forcibly changed back to normal, and therefore has the potential not to be evil. Mr. Tawny is still sipping tea.

I think the reason it didn't change anything - well, aside from the world now acknowledging the Multiverse - was that it was meant to reinforce what we already knew. These heroes never give up. It doesn't matter if they die - death won't keep them from at least trying. They are amazing forces for good, as I've said. Their "story" supersedes all others, all negative strains, all doomsday plots and schemes and devices.

That's what the two-issue tie-in Superman Beyond was about, to a large degree - the "good will always triumph" story dominating whatever evil is thrown at it. Likewise, the same with Final Crisis.

But there is change at the end of it.

Batman picked up a gun...and used it. Shouldn't that be some banner event? His demise was a sacrifice, but not an end. Still, he shot the Darkseid-possessed Dan Turpin. He didn't shoot to kill Turpin, but fatally wounded the essence of Darkseid.

The New Gods are back, as is the pre-Crisis Multiverse. In this, Morrison is (perhaps) saying there shouldn't be limits on these stories. Why say "one Earth," "52 parallel Earths," "x-dimensions of the Snowflake," etc.? The Power of Story (and the wild potential of comics) bursts from such constraints.



To be critical for a moment, Morrison did play this a little close to the crazy vest. Plotting it linearly for six issues (there's nothing awry with any of that structure; if you can't grasp it, go back to Archie), he diverges into the scattershot narratives upon narratives form that confused many in #7. Time has no meaning until it's all hashed out, the heroes have won and the rebuilding started. Unless you accept the conceit he laid out previously - time is collapsing in itself as result of Darkseid's fall/higher-dimensional death and has no meaning on Earth in the classic sense - the last issue is a confusing mix that cannot be followed, much less understood. Were I him, and aware as he is that not all comic book readers want to put in a great deal of effort for the big Event comics, I'd've made this slightly more coherent for the casual reader.

As it stands, that hurt the read-through only slightly. This is a story about ideas (and ideas about story); what impact does time really have on such things?

In a recent IGN interview, Morrison said, "This isn't arbitrary. This is the result of a lot of thought. You know I love to talk and theorize about comics and the creative process but I feel I'm close to over-explaining and justifying something that was really simple. It's about trying to create a feeling."

I agree with Morrison. We aren't dumb. He knows that. His talking about every little thing - satisfying the instant gratification desire that forces us in only a week to demand all answers after one quick reading - will ruin not only his creativity and faith in readers, but our faith in ourselves as creative participants in the vivid and continuous dream that is story.



Whether or not Final Crisis is a rewarding read depends on how you go into it. Scott McCloud talks about the iconic in comic books, how we see ourselves and larger ideas in the stories and line work. Morrison grasps this concept, and maybe overreached a little here and there. But taken as a whole, we've been given an amazing sequential art experience. It challenges us to keep up, promising all the knowledge we'll need. How many comics do that?

As an "Event" comic, it only partly succeeds. The casual reader can have a hard time, tie-ins were mismanaged (or mismarketed), the art and schedule proved problematic. The grander DC Universe is impacted, but in ways far more subtle than, say, giant crashed alien spaceships in NYC, heroes uncovered as alien invaders, "no more mutants" or even the disappearance of infinite earths.

But as a comic, as a story, it raises the bar and the imagination. I'll take that over splash-page battles and soap opera melodrama that masquerade as good writing.

-Hooper

Read on, faithful few!

The Hooplah Reviews "Spider-Man: The Other - Evolve or Die"

We're digging into the vault for this review. I checked this out from the library, some three years after it finished, too curious to pass it up.

Stupidly long title aside, I can recommend it. While the twelve issue story could've been compressed, or the climax moved an issue later, providing more build-up for Morlun's part and Peter's illness, I can't find much to fault.

The set-up is simple: Peter Parker is dying.

In an effort to stave off death, he's seeking help from all fields scientific, natural and supernatural. But in the end, they all have the same sad story to tell. In these twilight hours, he interacts with his friends and loved ones, fights the good fight now and again, but it's a losing action. And if his illness doesn't kill him, there's help waiting in the wings. Morlun, the totemistic villain introduced at the beginning of JMS' run makes a surprise appearance, back from the dead, to harvest Peter's powers.

(For those who don't know the specifics of the totem-aspect of JMS' run, it boils down to Peter being the current incarnation of the spider totem, one of many animal-based powers floating around. Morlun feeds on these, gaining in strength as he kills and absorbs their power. It was all introduced in the very first JMS arc. While this knowledge is passingly mentioned, knowing it can't hurt; it also shows why this is such a big deal, as it's the climax of Peter's development and acceptance of this mystical nature of his being.)

Peter and Morlun fight in great superhero fashion, the nigh-omnipotent villain rarely suffering, the very mortal hero plunging on, knowing death is near but also willing to give all. For with great power--! You know the rest.

Morlun savages Spider-Man. It's barely a fight, in the end. Cops arrive, denying Morlun his meal, Peter is rushed to the hospital and the heroes gather around their fallen comrade. Then Morlun returns, you get another fight but wait!

Yeah, now Peter Parker/Spider-man's got weird new powers, debuting in his second (and last, to-the-death-of-both) fight with Morlun. And he technically does die, but the story is told well from there. I won't get into the final act, but there's some internal struggles, more mysticism, rebirth and a decent, suitably heroic resolution.

Consider this: it's a death and return story, told over four months and twelve issues in three titles by the same three creative teams. From a technical standpoint, it's perfect. The story might have a few structural problems, but you cannot fault the framework overall that contains this (somewhat major) Marvel Universe story within only one (small) family of comics.

Mike "Ringo" Wieringo and Mike Deodato, Jr. both show why they are so popular - Deodato especially, as he redefines his style to more reminiscent of early Sandman or Hellblazer than his Wonder Woman stuff. Pat Lee I could do without; he can't draw Aunt May (looks like an old tranny) and in general misses out on nuance. JMS, Peter David and Reggie Hudlin write as one here, without any big differences in style or characterization. It's a little melodramatic at times, a fault I have with Spidey comics in general (it's either wisecracking or hyperangst), but it is supposed to be a monumental event. Thankfully, Morlun is toast.

Much can be said for the way it handles Peter's last days with his family, the interactions with the supporting cast and the overall emotional content of the story. Perhaps it's all made more bittersweet by Ringo's death since publication, and the parallel I couldn't shake of a life taken too soon. Unintended, but it helps. Even without that, I think we can all connect on a human level with these works of fiction, better here than in any other Spider-Man comics I've read.

The Other sits well with me as I write this and I think I know why it works for me, when it wouldn't for regular Spidey fans: I'm not a fan.

There is little appeal for me in the character, because there never seems to be a decent or well-written challenge. But here we have a story that is obviously complex and substantial, but one that flies in the face of Spider-man orthodoxy. Were you a fan from the 60s and 70s reading this, you'd no doubt call it trash or whacked out mysticism (maybe not "whacked out." Perhaps dastardly. How did people speak back then?). 80s and 90s-era fans see something potentially as grating and confusing as the Clone saga.

But I've followed nothing, care little for continuity and can come into this almost a greenhorn to recent storylines. Almost. There is no explanation who the group of heroes is he hangs out with (The New Avengers, pre-Civil War) until their costumed names are dropped. And it didn't click that Jessica Drew, not Jessica Jones, was the "Jessica" always there, until "Spider-Woman" was mentioned.

I like it because it doesn't feel like Spider-Man - the teenage, wisecracking webslinger pining after MJ or Gwen and struggling to balance home and hero lives - but a What If Spidey were a regular hero without all that youthful drama? It might stand as one of the few mature Spider-Man stories in print.

I don't know if "The Other: Evolve or Die" was part of a larger "The Other: [etc title]" series of stories, but it could've been. I'd certainly read more.

And for me to say that about Spidey comics is saying a lot.

-Hooper

Read on, faithful few!

The Hooplah Comic Book 2008 Year in Review

2008: it was the year that saw me quit.

Now, before you get all up in arms, I didn't give up all comics; I'm not that strong. I'll still get trades/graphic novels/collections - those thick ones you see at the local bookstore. But I did decide enough is enough and have forsaken the purchase of single issues of comic books. I am finishing out two stories (Final Crisis and JSA: Kingdom Come) and once done, I can say I'm done.

Let me tell you why: it's all about cost vs. quality. Though comics have seen a resurgence in popular appeal (and both dollar-share and unit sales have gone up over the last few years), it's come at a high price. Constantly tying in an ongoing story to whatever movie or video game or cartoon is to be released damages the content; shoe-horning certain characters into a larger crossover can destroy that title's momentum and discourage new readers.

Earlier this month, I had thought about trying a comic year in review, looking at the major stories, creator moves and industry happenings, but I can't really work up that much enthusiasm. It is the year that saw me decide to quit singles, as I've said. That should be indicative right there of my opinion on these last twelve months.

It's a stretch that's seen ongoing, monthly titles not release twelve issues in a year. Delays have not always been a hallmark of the comic industry. One only has to look back at the way things were before Image set up shop - and even at the Big Two in the few years following - to see how things should be. Story and character was placed before writer and artist. The age of the comic-creator-as-superstar took firm hold with the splashy, million+ selling titles of Image in the early 90s where narrative was sacrificed for art, for flash-in-the-pan doodles that, in the end, proved unsustainable on the whole. That's Image, you say, the worst offender.

Look at DC's banner event this year, Final Crisis, or several years' back to Marvel's Civil War. Each had superstar artists and writers attached, yet neither, even with proper lead-time, could come close to a monthly schedule. A month-long hiatus was built into Final Crisis, yet it still has two more issues to go when we were to be at the finish line in a matter of weeks. We can blame artist JG Jones for the delays, which have lead to new artist hirings to Get Things Finished. Civil War just stopped and rescheduled part-way through to accommodate Steve McNiven's laborious penciling, yet for anyone who's seen the finished product, one has to wonder what he was doing with his time....

It's been a year of delays, a year of outright scheduling failures and a year of amazing wordplay on the part of Dan Didio, DC editor-in-Chief. Anything that's been received poorly, be it the ending to Batman RIP or the delays on Final Crisis or the Countdown/Death of the New Gods fiasco, were all part of the plan. To read his interviews over at Newsarama, you'd think he's unflappable in the face of criticism and the best damn liar ever. He plays with words like Jaws with Robert Shaw; there is no escape from the black hole of his blatant duplicity. The truth is absorbed and repurposed to make either DC or him the victim of outside forces beyond control. Maybe we just don't get it.

You'd think from that I'd be done with DC, but as stated, my last few singles will be DC issues - Final Crisis and JSA. For whatever reason, DC just puts out a better product, delays or not. Marvel's gotten a better hang of Event publishing, putting out World War Hulk, it's tie-ins and the whole shebang of Secret Invasion without too many hitches (Marvel leaves those for the Ultimates), but what they've sacrificed is coherency and story. World War Hulk was a two-issue fight stretched over a five-issue mini and thirty-seven tie-in issues. What story existed was reliant upon knowledge of Planet Hulk (recapped in a summary page) and in no way merited such a waste of trees and cash.

The worst offender, however, is Secret Invasion: eight issues, seven tie-in minis (for twenty-two issues) and seventy-one related issues in ongoing series and one-shots, all for a half-day fight that we knew would end with the heroes winning. That's ONE HUNDRED AND ONE issues all told.

Brian Michael Bendis is the culprit, not Didio's opposite, Joe Quesada (himself responsible in large part for the Spider-Man: One More Day train wreck). He's been masterminding this event for the last few years through his post as chief Avengers scribe and plotter. It was a fantasy for him, a dream to write this sprawling, pulp alien invasion mega-story, and it serves as a culmination to his run. You know what? Kurt Busiek, another Avengers writer (and one a mite bit better than BMB), had a great run a few years back, and it too culminated in a mega-story, an Event featuring the conquest of Earth by the despot Kang. Great swaths of real estate were destroyed, characters died and it was truly a world-shaking story. At the end of it all, you know what?

It all took place in pages of The Avengers. No mini. No tie-ins with other titles.

And this story lasted for months and months, essentially the last year of Busiek's tenure. Surely it could've been a four-month event, if the story could've been disassembled and scattered around two or four-issue minis featuring Spider-man and Wolverine and Thor and the Great Lakes Avengers and etc. But Busiek – and Marvel at the time – were a little smarter and still contained stories so you didn’t generate Event Fatigue, what we suffer from greatly now. DC managed this also, from the time of the original Crisis through the Death of Superman, Batman's breaking, Zero Hour and even that odd non-event, The Kingdom. Heck, Identity Crisis had ramifications in other titles, but the story was a done-in-one-miniseries, a small "e" event.

In ye olden days, an event such as Secret Invasion would not have crossed over into every other title but stayed contained in one Avengers' mini, with the side stories being woven in or dropped, and only Avengers-centric comics propelling the story forward. X-Men or Spidey titles could reference after the fact, but not be interrupted.

Probably the best example of major event referencing was in Grant Morrison's JLA, when Superman briefly became electric (boogey woogey woogey). It wasn't a big thing, just a throwaway line (and a great use of the new powers), but were the same to happen today, you can know that all the Supes titles plus JLA and maybe some of the other major player books would've had a piece of the story.

It's not enough to write a good story anymore. All comics have to be Events. I think this, over everything else, is just ruining the monthly comic trade.

Sure, the price point for entry is higher than ever (completely beyond inflation), but you can trade-wait and get discounts per issue, or use subscription services that offer up to 35% off. Singles can be made affordable, and there might, in the future, be a backlash with creators offering their titles for less at independent publishers (Warren Ellis is good for this).

No, Event Fatigue, as I mentioned above, saps the will to read these stories. I can't get full enjoyment, the thinking goes, unless I read all fifty issues of this story, regardless of how thin the connection is between The Runaways and an X-Men event, or Adam Strange and a Wonder Woman epic. It's a barrier erected for sales that erodes readership long-term. You don't win fresh, life-long readers with a continuity-laden, dozens-of-issues-spanning story.

Where are the single issue tales? What happened to them? Why do we need to spring from catastrophe to Armageddon to universal undoing and then back to street-level disaster that spawns a major conflict?

I love comics and the opportunity they offer creators to tell visual stories big and small without the budgetary restraints of modern Hollywood. For all the current deficiencies, I cannot see myself giving them up entirely, but singles? I can't do it anymore.

Any thoughts, Buck?


Buck: I’ll start with a brief comment about trade-waiting. The only real problem I have with it is the continued tendency from the Big Two to publish every collected storyline in a “prestige” or “deluxe” (and I use those terms very loosely) hardcover format. If the softcover edition were published simultaneously, this wouldn’t be a problem. But as it stands now, the more inexpensive softcover editions are not published until several months, sometimes up to a year, later. I can only assume there are people who are actually shelling out $20-$25 for a book that would have cost you $18 if you’d bought the individual issues. Whereas I, the consumer who waits for the softcover, usually pay $13-15 for what would have cost $18. It saves me money in the end, but the practice of publishing virtually your entire output in hardcover first is infuriating. The only problem is that by waiting for the collections, sometimes by the time I discover a title, it’s already been cancelled. It’s a Catch-22 when dealing with the second-tier books from each publisher.

Hooper: As a trade-waiter, I must agree. I cannot abide waiting the extra months for the softcover of a series that should never have a hardcover release. In my eyes, HCs should be reserved for the big deal books, not every story arc. Though it is one of the best comics being published, do I need an HC of each Booster Gold trade? Of course not, it's ridiculous.

A few more points:

Just for the record, I was done with singles over a year ago. The only single issues I’ve bought since making the decision have been the two event miniseries of 2008, Final Crisis and Secret Invasion, and Matt Fraction’s excellent Thor specials from Marvel.

Regarding McNiven’s art on Civil War…to be fair, McNiven’s art is far from horrible. I actually enjoy his work. I assume you mean it’s not extremely detail-oriented, and that’s why you’ve questioned the delay. If that’s the case, I agree.

Hooper: That is exactly the case. I can understand the hyper-detailed work of Bryan Hitch, Frank Quitely or, say, Ladronn taking more time, but McNiven would skimp on background and faces. There is a quantity of art I expect from delays, not just a quality.

Buck: In light of the comments regarding Didio, I’ll also mention Marvel’s explanation (or lack thereof) for the mechanics by which Spider-Man was made a bachelor again following a deal with the devil. The explanation from Marvel Editorial about just what happened at the conclusion of the One More Day story arc? “It’s magic. We don’t have to explain it." That’s sloppy, and a slap in the face to your core audience.

Lastly, don’t think that by venting our frustrations we’re condemning the entire output of DC and Marvel. Far from it. I can recommend several good titles from each publisher. For DC, Green Lantern has been very entertaining since its relaunch, and Geoff Johns is about to re-take the writing reins of the Flash, a character he was born to write. Johns’ work on Action Comics has also drawn good reviews. I’ve been enjoying Blue Beetle, though I was late to the game and the book has already been cancelled. And as for Grant Morrison’s All-Star Superman…well, every other comic book should hope to be half as good as that. On the Marvel side, I can recommend The Immortal Iron Fist, Captain America, Runaways, Daredevil, Avengers: The Initiative, Marvel Adventures: Avengers (these last two being far and away better than the two banner Avengers titles), and Matt Fraction’s Thor work without hesitation. Ghost Rider, Agents of Atlas, and The Amazing Spider-Man have also drawn some good critiques as of late.

So we’re not abandoning comics, and we’re certainly not abandoning DC or Marvel. We just wish they’d put a little more quality into their flagship efforts.


Hooper: Buck is right. Frustrations are as cyclical in comic books as flashes of brilliance. For every Event that is delayed and screws up half a dozen other on-schedule books, there's a Booster Gold, Green Lantern, Immortal Iron Fist or Captain America that renews not only our faith in the industry as Industry, but in comic books as great pieces of entertainment.

2009 promises to be another banner year for comic book publicity: several big-name movies are coming out (Watchmen, X-Men Origin: Wolverine), and if The Dark Knight succeeds in getting major award recognition at the Oscars, we can expect more people taking a chance on the source material. Will what they find be up to snuff with some pretty stellar storytelling?

Judging from 2008, I don't have much optimism in snagging a bucketful of new readers. Marvel will be entrenched in Dark Reign, the ludicrous follow-up to Secret Invasion that has the US government handing over control of all superhuman response to a known psyche case and mass-murderer. X-Men, from the few things I've heard, continues to improve, but it's still stuck in the mire of continuity. But DC invented continuity, and it ain't breaking free in 2009. Everything builds on everything. The stories are great for old hands, but not fresh fish.

The uncollected backlist might lure new readers, finding those great old series that linger in back issue bins and repackaging them in affordable trades. DC is doing this with Justice League International, the acclaimed series from the 80s and early 90s. These old stories are unfettered by current Events, and many have set beginnings and endings, so a reader can get four or six trades and feel satisfied, whereas now they have to slog through the wasteland of ongoings, delays, rescheduling, the crossovers without end….

If DC and Marvel have, roughly two-thirds of the market, then the great hope for comic books becomes the Other Third: independents. Dark Horse, Image, IDW, Oni, Top Shelf, etc.: these are the publishers who have the greatest potential to lure in new readers with – fancy this – new stories, engaging characters, lower cost-per-story since there are fewer Events to consider. You get more genres covered, not just "superheroes," and creators are better able to flex their muscle without editorial mandates to consider. Look at Boom Studios! and their growing catalog of genres covered: high fantasy, space opera, horror, conspiracy, crime, heist, cop, supernatural. I could go on, and that's great! Other companies offer "realistic" fiction, the sort of real-world stories many don't understand are present on the racks of their local comic shop. And I'm not mentioning manga, the bookstore juggernaut sub-medium.

If all were fair, that Other Third would become the Second Half, spurring a renaissance in comics as literature and a truly engaging form of mass entertainment.

Cross(over) your fingers.

-Hooper (w/ Buck)

And by the by, thank you Wikipedia and ComicBookResources for your excellent tie-in tallies for major event comics. Tie-ins need to mean something, as described by Alan Moore in his Twilight of the Superheroes proposal:

"The perfect mass crossover would be something like the following: it would have
a sensible and logical reason for crossing over with other titles, so that the
readers who were prompted to try a new title as a result of the crossover or
vice versa didn't feel cheated by some tenuous linkage of storylines that was at
best spurious and at worst nonexistent."

Looking over these tie-ins to find the total number of issues involved, while dollar amounts might be different or far closer, Marvel's approach is ridiculous to spread the plot out so much in a blatant cash grab, as it alienates readers new and old.

Read on, faithful few!

The Hooplah Reviews "Spider-Man: One More Day"

A lot has already been written about this story. It's one of those comic book arcs that "breaks the Internet in two," as even the editors have started to say. But this one had good reason: it featured the manufactured end of Peter Parker's (Spider-Man) marriage to Mary Jane, his crush and love since high school (with a few interruptions).

Theirs was a star-crossed love, and it was for that reason that Mephisto, stand-in Devil of the Marvel Universe, chose to erase their marriage from existence save for a small bit from their souls to savor the anguish, the loss, the sorrow - all in exchange for the life of Aunt May.

But I don't buy it.

The Peter Parker that sell his marriage to the Devil isn't the same one who hefted a building on his back or has struggled for years to atone for one small moment of selfishness, who has given his all time and again for a city that he loves. What he does is not the reaction of an adult who's gone through life and seen how it works. Maybe the circles he runs in make him feel immune to death, as it pertains to him and those around him (in "The Other," he does die and come back and no one's all that surprised). But Aunt May is old, and if this was her time, if her getting shot was part of the plan (as was Uncle Ben's death), why can't Peter realize the lesson he's been taught time and again, that sometimes people die, and we cannot change that?

It's a bad story; there's no redeeming quality. I don't know if this is J. Michael Straczynski's fault as writer or Joe Quesada's (as editor-in-chief of Marvel, though as an artist he does a piss-poor job of helping). Editorial mandate was rumored to be the reason for how the story turned out. I'm betting that JMS wrote it 70% how it was published, and the tweaking was small. Mephisto was am editor-added part, but the dissolution of the marriage to save Aunt May was not.

And that's what gets me. It doesn't make sense for Spider-Man/Peter Parker to choose an old lady over a young, fresh marriage and a whole future. In fact, it insults Aunt May, who would've gladly sacrificed herself, but now can at some point be burdened with the knowledge that to keep her alive, two lives were broken.

My problems with the story cover all aspects of each issue.

The art was rarely good, at times giving the characters goofy, odd-shaped facial features. It's not that Quesada is a bad artist, but he was very inconsistent throughout. The "Brand New Day"/post-unmarriaging scene was good, as was the depiction of Mephisto. But Iron Man and Dr. Strange are obvious weak points for Quesada. He looks to be aping Mike Deodato's excellent, almost Vertigo-esque worked turned in a few years' back on the title, or at worst, the Spawn/Greg Capullo house style. Not suited for the story.

Good writing can overcome bad or mediocre art. I cannot honestly recommend this story, and it's because of JMS' writing. Nothing is rational, nothing is in-character, little is adult. Iron Man/Tony Stark is a heartless, fascist bastard; Dr. Strange is a parody of a sorcerer; Mary Jane is too verklempt to be the strong woman she's always written as being. Peter Parker is childish, wanting the bad things to go away; unheroic, throwing fists and irrational actions before sane reasoning; and selfish to a "t," in that he even considers ruining MJ's life or breaking her heart. I don't see how any of those could pass muster.

When asked about JMS' orignal ending at Newsarama, Joe Quesada said, "This was the story he wanted to tell. In his story, Mephisto was going to change continuity from as far back as issues #96-98 from 1971. In Joe's story, Peter drops the dime on Harry, and that helps get him into rehab right away. Consequently, MJ stays with Harry, and Gwen never dies and never has her affair with Norman, etc., etc. And in the end, Peter and MJ are never married." JMS agreed with this interpretation. He found the Mephisto/magic way a cop-out, though he was still going to make the demon an integral part of the story, just not his published actions.

Regardless, it doesn't gel either way. It's still a narrative cop-out, a deus ex machina, authorial interference. We deal with a powered rule that frequently bends and breaks natural laws, but the stories themselves are written in the real world. We can afford to suspend disbelief for the internal logic of powers and magic, but to have that fly in the face of story structure and characterization - in essence to shoehorn in established characters to fit a narrative mandate - breaks the rules. Might as well have 88 pages of Quesada and JMS explaining what happens, just pictures of them at their desks with world balloons, maybe holding up sketches of the characters for reference. "This is the story we want to tell featuring characters that look like this but behave how we need them to in a story crafted to dumb down the mythos and insult the audience."

The follow-up story/event is "Brand New Day," showing us what happens when Peter and MJ haven't been married for the last X years. People who were dead...aren't, new villains pop up, the old single dynamic abounds and there's an underlying sense of something amiss. In capable (non-JMS) hands, I hear we've been given many good to great issues that are far better than what came before. Out of the ashes of bad stories, great ideas can grown.

So check out those new issues, and if you're curious, once they undo Mephisto's bargain and reunite Peter and MJ, how this all started, check out "One More Day" from the library. Read, as I did, to satisfy an itch. But don't buy it. Don't show economic support for trash editorial moves like this. In the annals of Spider-Man history, this arc will be a blemish, not-soon-forgotten, but easy to mask. I only hope the resolution is as much reward to the fans as it is apology for what they went through to get there.

-Hooper

Read on, faithful few!