...
Edited by fanty on Sep 28th 2019 at 2:39:06 PM
More and more webcomics are getting published these days. Personally I think I's a good trend. If there's anything that will break big companies' stranglehold on the creative market, it's the internet.
The problem with that argument comes when the company in question has the ability to create a greater demand which, as I mentioned with the publicity stunts, DC and Marvel tend to do.
Or the jelly company runs a campaign that creates a catchy jingle for jelly, posts doctors' citations about how much better for you jelly is than honey (even if it isn't true), and buys more shelf space for their jelly.
Which is pretty much what DC and Marvel do, allegorically-speaking.
Then do that. That doesn't detract from the people who want to work in the industry.
...
Edited by fanty on Sep 28th 2019 at 2:38:58 PM
It's more that they want to turn the jelly into honey, but the metaphor starts to make funny noises and emit smoke from the bonnet at that point.
I guess I'll never understand why so many people desire to jump on the incestuous sinking ship that doesn't want to be jumped on to begin with, when they could achieve their goals outside the of "industry" with much more ease.
You're assuming that people want the the same thing you do at the exclusion to everything else. Yeah, I want to see women given less sexist roles and for more creators and readers to be opposite my gender. I also like Superman. And I really, really like Nightwing. Maybe one day the point will come that nothing DC or Marvel puts out will interest me enough to put $2 toward them that I could to another, less-sexist comic. But just because a comic is less sexist doesn't mean it's good. Dolemite has more black people in it than Inception, but that doesn't automatically make it a better movie.
Similarly, Gail Simone likes the characters she writes. Yes, she could probably create different characters if she truly wanted to, but just because you made Supreme, that doesn't make the character Superman.
edited 29th Aug '12 3:52:43 PM by KingZeal
Because until the advent of webcomics, independent companies were not easy to publish or market for. Webcomics has significantly changed the way both publication and distribution of comics has been handled, which means that people who initially couldn't afford the insane amounts of time and money it took to write, draw, ink, color, edit, print, market, and distribute these comics can do all of those things relatively easily.
Competing in print just isn't an economically feasible solution—especially when the entire market is against you. Even though people complain about the problems in comics all the time, they are also openly hostile to anything that rattles said formula. You're talking about characters that, even if people don't read the comics themselves, are franchises unto themselves. Even if your comic sold thousands of copies, DC can make up for that much just from one publicity stunt like a Crisis Crossover, or Wham Issue, or movie or tv series tie-in. And believe me, this is important—because every comic book fan that slaps down the $20-$80 dollars to follow these stunts is not spending said $20-$80 to give your quaint little project a try.
In short, what you're proposing would be like telling LGBTQ people that instead of trying to integrate into a very heteronormative society, they should just go somewhere else.
edited 29th Aug '12 8:26:54 AM by KingZeal