"The stock market on comics fell for a while. It was touch and go out there for a while as a huge glut of #1 and #0 issues of various things with sparkly hologram covers made for hard swallowing by the comics industry."
That's my original article I'm quoting, there. This has decreased some, but everyone's still interested in putting out #1 issues... mostly in the form of Events. (I think Event will be next month's word of the day). This whole event thing has gotten out of hand. Secret Files, Girlfrenzy, Genesis, New Year's Evil, Millennium Giants,1,000,000 D.C. (what they SHOULD have called it)... and that's just DC. And Genesis and Millennium Giants were each SUCH a waste of time. Secret Files is a good example, also, because another trend you see lately is the way every title is so desperate for new readers that they want any one to be able to have a 'jumping-on point' to each title in EVERY issue... which mean we spend a lot of time recapping things... or just not advancing the lives of the characters at all... how could we do that? Well, by interrupting the characters' lives with a lot of crossover events. Girlfrenzy was pushed into existence so fast that it took them a while to come up with a catchy name for it... It was just "Girl Week" for a while.
"1. The gradual fall of the Marvel empire. Due to poor management, treating it like a children's entertainment complex instead of a publishing company, Marvel has fallen in its mightiness..."
Well, they're slowly learning from that mistake, although the Industry (AAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaa!) is still run by a lot of executives... Who should run the Industry (AYE CARUMBA!)? The specialty comicbook shops? (They're next in line...) Wizard? (See the recent article written with Kurt Evans for more on this.) The editors?
How about the fans? We know what we want and we made Marvel great in the first place... that and the fact that they listened to us in the silver age. Now I don't know if anyone at Marvel or DC listens to the fans, other than the LSH writers.
Anyway, Marvel is slowly luring the talent back to them, and it's working.
"2. The slow, steady rise of DC... Though it suffers from superficial crossovers and 'events' in which little important happens... DC is now expanding rapidly."
No longer true. DC is getting a lot more cautious, and it was pretty cautious before. Though it still lets bad writers get new projects if they've been around the block in the Industry (ARRRRRRGH!).
Let's look at the report card for just a few specific DC areas for the last year.
Bat-titles: Cataclysm lowers the grade a lot. Bruce structurally reinforced Barbara Gordon's apartment building, but not his own house/cave? Grade: C+.
Super-titles: The red and the blue-- what a yawn. The gimmicky Alex Ross cover on the boring return of the true Superman was the icing on the cake. I kept asking people before I saw the issue myself, "So how'd he get his real powers back?" "He just did." There was nothing more worth telling. Also, Superboy, Hawaii's Hero has gotten SO old, and Supergirl's apparently some kind of cosmic angel. Also, the Iron Curtain of time travel we got with Crisis and suspended for Zero Hour has fallen completely, and we're day-tripping into the past and future like they were West Berlin. Grade: D-.
Legion Titles: They're back from the 20th century, finally, and never mind what I just said about time travel-- who cares if the Time Trapper's back. It's a whole comic about the future, after all. Tinya is cool, Lori is cool, Shadow Lass is cool (except for her poorly-told origin in the 3-out-of-4-issues-were-completely-ridiculous Legends of the Legion, and the fact that they don't call her Shady enough), the Anomaly isn't cool but I’m willing to play along with it, Triad is cool, and the only thing cooler than Jeff Moy's art is Karate Kid. Grade: A+.
Flash/Impulse (and JLA): Mark and Grant are each masters of Silver Age-ness, but not in a complementary way. There's Morrison in my Waid and Waid in my Morrison and they don't taste great together. Everyone get back to your assigned seats and go do that voodoo that you do so wellllllllllll. Grade: Impulse pulls the mid-range B they would otherwise get down to a B-... but Impulse gets about a 59 when taken on its own.
Starman: All I know is, I picked up an issue yesterday and it was pencilled by Harris. As long as it's also written by Robinson, does anything else really matter? Guest pencils are fine, but not if we see the guests more than the hosts. Grade: uh... for killing the spare Crimson Fox, we get a grade penalty. The main cast(s) of Giffen/Jones' JLA/E/I are sacrosanct and holy unto us. I still want Tora back. So, grade: 90.
Vertigo: Books of Magic is a mature title for 16 year olds, and we're going from Jenkins to Ellis on Hellblazer. Boy, you pray for something, anything interesting to happen on a title, and you (are gonna) get hand-grenades and testosterone. When it rains it pours. Enthusiastic phrases from DC about Ellis’ coming run on the title reveal the truth: "There's a new sheriff in town." In other words, Hellblazer will be Gone To Texas. Let's not turn this into Preacher II, Warren (No, hey, how about a family of titles that we'll call The Preaching?) I guess Warren can get John back into a blood-and-guts Li'l Bastard program to detox the Jenkins out of his system (I mean, when Tim Hunter has to save John Constantine, the world is wrong, wrong, wrong), and hopefully after that a writer with both talent and skill can take over. I don't think Steve Gerber is gonna be able to save Vertigo. I certainly never dreamed a year ago that the best thing about Vertigo would be Preacher. Of course... it's STILL not (though we're getting there)... the best thing Vertigo is putting out each month is Vertigo when it was good: Alan's Swamp Thing and Neil's Sandman. I guess time travel is cool outside of LSH, too. Vertigo Grade for the last year: uh... it's tough. Invisibles, yes, House of Secrets, no... I'll give it a C-, but only because Grant, Garth, Neil and Alan pull up the average for the whole school.
"3. Image comics. Image comics has three main things: Spawn, and all the sales power that comes with him, titles like Wild C.A.T.s, a title so shallow it really isn't good for anything but crossing over with other titles in other companies... which it seems to do very well, so I'll knock it more when I'm making some impressive money for stuff I've written... and Gen 13, which is in between."
This has changed a lot. Spawn, which has lost most of its luster, is still an incredible seller. Wild C.A.T.s has mostly faded from the scene. But that accusation I made about crossovers is no problem for Gen 13, because the Industry (AI-YAAHHH!) is nothing more than crossovers anymore. And Image is doing so much more than it used to... not only Leave It To Chance, but also Astro City, the incredibly sexist Danger Girl... even Replacement God (or is it cancelled?). Image has gone from being feared and reviled and scorned to feared and respected in spite of itself.
"4. Dark Horse. Dark Horse treats itself like what it is: a quality publishing company. With their growing explorations into what may be the Next Big Thing, which is MANGA and/or animation-style comics in general, Dark Horse stands to do very well over the next 5 years or so."
It's doing great so far... Although I haven't seen any Nexus in a while, and Madman in twice as long... get it together, people.
"C. Oh Yeah! Almost forgot Valiant. I don't know if it will work, but I notice Valiant is trying to make a comeback. I think it'll work for a while, but will they still be around in 5 years? Not if they don't try working with some new characters, new titles pretty soon."
I was exactly right. Kiss Acclaim/Valiant goodbye.
Finally, there's the Indie World. Cerebus, Lethargic Lad, Skeleton Key, Action Girl, Artbabe, Scary Godmother... Smaller comics are surviving based on quality while the super-large companies scream whenever the state of the Industry (NOOOOOoooooooo!) ...Well, you get the idea. Good on you, all of you. You're in this because you have Love in your Hearts (and, somewhat sadly, because indie comics is currently held as being one of the secrets to breaking into working for the Big Boys). You're still one of the best things about comics.
Well, that's it, kids. What can we learn from all this? Hard to say. Comics needs to expand beyond this Faustian pact it's trapped in with the specialty shops, but I sure as heck don't know how. Therefore, it's clear that we need to streamline things. And that doesn't mean cancelling titles the second their sales seem slow, it means discerning good writing and art from bad. And maybe more importantly, cut out all these events, events, events! Annuals were bad enough... if you do a big crossover every month, you get things like Genesis. Slow it down and hold the course slow and steady, people. If you make a "special" an everyday thing, it's not special anymore. "Aw, it's just another Big Event. I ain't payin' 3.95 (or more) for it."
For Halloween, I'm going as the Industry (EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!).