Comic Books in General

This is about the comic book industry in general.

Here is what I have heard: "The only reason Marvel and DC are still around is because they are owned by conglomerates they can fall back on." OK, then how do you explain indie companies that are going strong? Some of them may make money from licensing deals but that isn't true for every company and not all of them use comics as an excuse to propose movies and TV shows.

The people who say that are dumb. Marvel and DC are around because they make money. If they didn't make any money, then Disney and WB would shut them down in an instant.

The comic book industry has had its ups and downs, however: the recent proliferation of indie comics didn't exist twenty years ago because if you weren't part of Marvel or DC, you were an underground comic and those probably didn't make money. Or only the ones who became really famous did, like R. Crumb.

Marvel and DC have had their ups and downs, too, although Marvel moreso than DC, since DC has been owned for quite a while by Warner Communications. Marvel, on the other hand, went through a string of owners until the '90s, at which point mismanagement and the ending of the comics bubble forced them to declare bankruptcy. There was a long, hard climb out of bankruptcy, which they achieved mainly through selling the rights to their properties to various movie studios...and once they were out of bankruptcy, they decided that now would be a really good time to start their own movie studio.

So yeah. Marvel and DC make money. It doesn't compare to the amount of money that their movie division makes, but they do make money.

The indie publishers are largely done by folks who are creating comics because they really, really want to make comics. They wouldn't mind if they made a huge profit, but not making a huge profit isn't going to stop them. Also, with the tools that are available to the average person now, it's a lot easier to produce a more-or-less professional looking comic at a reasonable cost. The production side has become a lot easier.

Indie comic making doesn't report a lot of profit, but in turn it generally doesn't demand investing a lot of money either. At least not as much as a mainstream comic.

Indie creators also see more profit from their comics. I recall reading that Gillen and Mc Kelvie get a bigger cut from Wicked + Divine than their Marvel work, so for them the profit balances out.

For those who love Comic Book history, I recommend the American Comic Book Chronicles series by TwoMorrows Publishing. Each book covers a decade (well, two of them technically cover the first and second half of the 60s) and each chapter dedicates a specific year in that decade. They don't just talk about DC and Marvel but also other publishers like Archie, Harvey, Charlton, Dell, Gold Key, etc.

edited 22nd Sep '16 11:20:16 AM by DS9guy

If we're talking books about comic history: She Changed Comics will be released pretty soon. It's about women in the comics industry. Notably, it's not just about white women in American comics. Some of the women who will be included are Nell Brinkley, Jackie Ormes, Trina Robbins, Lee Marrs, Dori Seda, Gail Simone, Phoebe Gloeckner, Alison Bechdel, Marjane Satrapi, Jillian and Mariko Tamaki, Francoise Mouly, Jenette Kahn, Atena Farghadani, Doaa Eladl and Kanika Mishra. Women from the Golden Age to today, from America to Iran (Farghadani is currently in prison in Iran for a cartoon mocking Iran's parliament). More than 60 women will be profiled.

So, you know, probably worth checking out, when it gets released, if comic book history is something that interests you. I actually backed it on Kickstarter, so I'll be getting a digital copy. (The project had a goal of $10 000. It raised $66 000.)

It's not a bad lineup; a lot of the people mentioned show that whoever compiled this knows their stuff.

Nice to see Marie Severin gets a mention as well... (Whither Aline Kominsky-Crumb, though? Or Mary Fleener?)

I don't think everyone profiled is mentioned on the Kickstarter page. So those two might be there. But I think space constraints guarantee a lot of notable women will be left out, especially since part of the point is to get as diverse a set as possible.

If it includes non-Americans, then it needs to include Rumiko Takahashi. I mean, she was (and may still be for all I know) the most successful female cartoonist in history. For awhile, she was the second highest paid cartoonist in the world, period (the highest paid being Charles Schulz).

She is included.

Takeuchi Naoko? Louise Simonson?

Howzabout Ramona Fradon? She worked on Aquaman and, most notably, Metamorpho in the 60's. She later took over the comic strip Brenda Starr. She had a great, distinctive style.

Graphic Novels and the New Age of Foreign Reporting

Whoa, Jack Chick died. He was the epitome of So Bad, It's Good. Goodnight sweet prince.

Given his age, I can't say I'm surprised... yet I kind of am. I didn't think it'd be now.

Still, God rest the soul of a cartoonist who may not have technically been good, but was truly entertaining. I hope the Faceless God does right by him up there.

I have to say I was dismayed when I learned his publishing house was listed as a hate group by the SPLC. Jack was a crazy old man whose morals were about seventy years behind the times, for sure, but I never detected malice from him. He seemed to honestly believe he was helping. If anything I think his greatest flaw was probably gullibility, given that much of his worldview was shaped by being snookered by obvious hucksters like Alberto Rivera and John Todd.

In the great cosmology of fundamentalists Jack Chick was sort of an anomaly. He had no influence on powerful people. He was not peddling dangerous quackery. He was just a lone nut who wanted to spread the Gospel to as many people as he can.

Say what you will about his work, but his motives were honest, and it's that honesty that probably makes his work truly entertaining.

I wonder whether Fred Carter is still alive. He's probably been doing the Crusaders comics coming out recently, but I hope he's still with us.

edited 24th Oct '16 5:29:20 PM by Aldo930

He was also racially tolerant which is really damn rare on the Christian far right.

Pretty sexist though.

He led a very long life doing what he wanted to do, enjoying an actually high level of privacy, and being well known around the world.

That's not such a bad life.

Not to speak ill of the dead, but when you realize that his high level of privacy was due to fears that the Vatican would try to have him assassinated...

Flat "What"

Only because he believed a real estate scammer pretending to be an ex-priest telling him that Catholicism is responsible for literally everything bad in the world. Like I said, gullible.

The world has truly missed on a Jack Chick/Chris-chan team up/vs. battle.

Chris v. Jack- Dawn of You'd Better Not Think About It.

Yet, let's be honest, Alberto Rivera led to some of Chick's greatest work. Just read any of the Alberto comics and marvel at their content.

The sort of stuff Jack Chick accuses the Catholic Church of is the sort of conspiracy most writers of fiction could only dream of inventing.

edited 24th Oct '16 6:30:20 PM by Aldo930