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Today's adventure: A stern lecture on the importance of being good

The panel discussion continues with one more question for Ken Lowery of the Ringwood blog, Eric Lindberg of Broken Frontier, Andrea Speed of Comixtreme, Randy Lander of his Comic Pants blog and formerly the Fourth Rail, and Johanna Draper Carlson of her Comics Worth Reading blog.

What’s your hope for the comic book industry? For comic book journalism?

KEN: I would wear out my keyboard before I could list all the problems with the comic book industry. The biggest and most glaring problem, to me, seems to be the distribution system. What we have right now is akin to transferring a watermelon through the eye of a needle. That eye of the needle is called “Diamond.” I understand Diamond is a business that must turn a profit to continue operating. I understand they are largely benign. I understand that the biggest publishers, in their infinite shortsighted wisdom, benefit from the current system’s calcification. Everyone thinks all comics needs is some new breakthrough title, but this is of course old thinking that has time and again proven to do nothing on its own. As my buddy Matt Maxwell puts it, comics doesn’t need a new killer app. It needs a new platform.
But comics as we know them are inbred. I won’t go dramatic and say they’re “dying”; so long as someone is willing to pay for a book with pictures and words in them, the medium will always exist. But comics is a reductive field, increasingly more insular, increasingly less interested in doing anything it hasn’t already done for the past 10-20-30 years.
Worse, the general attitude is that this is okay, and suggesting changes is akin to blasphemy or lunacy. Unfortunately, the people who are completely content with their tiny, anemic empires are the ones in charge of them.
It’s too bad. Everything about comics distribution is stark insanity, and no other medium in the world would tolerate using that system.
Comics journalism needs more Dirk Deppeys. Comics journalism needs more Tom Spurgeons. Comics journalism needs more Heidi MacDonalds. Comics journalism needs more Matt Bradys. It needs more publishers who think the comics media, such as it is, deserves some respect and interaction. Publishers like Larry Young.
Basically, we need to grow the smurfin up. Press release factories like Silver Bullet Comics and Comic Book Resources (good for the columns and nothing else) are a good example of what we DON’T need. We don’t need more magazines who put speculatory cast lists for comics movies on their COVER. We don’t need more sites that serve as little more than ego gratification for writers who feel like “insiders” because their domain name grants them fluff junket interviews.
We can do better.

ERIC: My hope for the comic book industry is for survival. I think we’re in a new Golden Age in terms of the variety of styles and genres out there and the work being produced. But I worry that the mainstream world still thinks of comics as trash or kids’ stuff and that readership is not what it could be. I hope that more people will give comics a chance and not just watch the movies and cartoons while ignoring the source material (Whenever I see kids with Spider-Man shirts, I wonder how many of them have actually read a comic book or if Tobey Maguire is all they’ll ever know. Nothing against Tobey but there’s a sadness in that for me).

My hope for comics journalism is just that we’ll keep getting the word out and analyzing this great art form.

RANDY: The industry is a big question that could go on forever if I went into all of it. So I’ll just say I’m hoping for changes in the destructiveness and cynicism that has infected so much of the “Big Two” books, more fans willing to take chances on non-superhero books and that we’ll survive the changes and challenges from digital distribution, the bookstore market, the manga boom, etc. I’d also like there to be a healthy direct market, since that’s where I work, or at least some other form of selling comics where I can continue to make my living.

For comic book journalism, honestly, I don’t think about it that much. There are so many great blogs and review sites out there that I can’t keep up with all of them, and I probably add at least one new RSS feed to my daily routine every day. I think that, in general, if you want any kind of comic book journalism, you can find it. Daily news with a mainstream focus, reviews of new books, reviews of old books, humor, scholarly analysis, focus on mini-comics, linkblogging, webcomics, almost everything is covered. There’s always room for more, and there will certainly be more indispensable sites created on an almost-daily basis, but I have to say, the Internet has been great for comics journalism. Sure, there are issues, and there are guys whose writing is like nails on a blackboard to me, but I’m sure my writing is like that to some. There’s a big enough audience, and a splintered enough Internet, that there is literally something for everybody. Maybe that’s me being pollyanna, but that’s how I see it.

The downside, of course, is that very few people are making a living at this. I’d love to be able to do my reviews for a living again, but I don’t think there’s an economic model for it. So it stays a hobby, one that I’m fortunate enough to be able to blend somewhat with my day job in comics retail.

ANDREA: I would hope it would break out of the ghetto its been assigned to for a very long time. It’s been dismissed as a kid’s thing (or a boy’s thing) for almost as long as its existed (in the States - things are a bit different in Europe and definitely in Japan), and while that’s not quite the case anymore, now it seems to be a hunting ground for movie deals. I totally understand a writer actually wanting to make a living at their craft, but if the comics exist only to make that movie money grab, it pretty much deserves to be kicked around.

Comic book journalism? That still exists, huh? (HA!) When Wizard is considered a bastion of the industry, there’s an obvious problem. (No offense to Wizard or its readers - and I know very well I’m hardly Edward R. Murrow - but come on. They’re the Us Weekly of comics journalism.)

JOHANNA: Oh, gracious. I hope that the American comic book industry begins to more actively reach out to the many readers who aren’t white males. I hope that comic book journalism begins to actually develop, because there’s almost none of it out there. To do so would require the existence of more people dedicated to journalism instead of doing it as a way of being noticed or getting discovered or breaking in.

 

Now, my challenge to them:

I want to thank these five critics/reviewers for participating in my column for the past three weeks. But I just couldn’t leave without issuing some sort of challenge to them, and to other comic book journalists. We’ve got a few really good critics in the industry, but we need more. The problem is there’s virtually no economic incentive to pursue it as anything more than a hobby or pastime. You thought it was hard to make a living as a comic book creator? Try making a living as a comic book journalist. There’s an exclusive club.

One thing that would help is if the good ones can pull together to form a “gold standard” website for quality in journalism. Quality is key. If there was a single well-designed website where comic fans could go to get the very best comic book reviews and if there’s was a budget to pay them for their work, it would be a positive force to improve the overall expectations for reviewers. Of course, this would involve stealing those good people from pre-existing sites, which probably wouldn’t be very nice. It would increase competition, which is something we need more of.

Second, my suggestion is to convince your local newspaper, college paper, or big-city alternative weekly publication to include reviews for graphic novels. The reviews should not be for individual comics in a series, but for the complete story.

Third, readers need to review the reviewers. Obviously, comic book creators are biased against critics who give them bad reviews. Even if the reviewer was a hack, he or she wouldn’t listen to the criticisms of a writer or artist. As a result, the readers need to hold these people accountable to their opinions, because these opinions should carry a certain weight.

Fourth, review websites need to create editorial policies that deal with both the general needs of a good review (standard word count range and approach) and the minutia of a style guide. For example, can we please stop spelling “indie comics” as “indy comics”! For the love of God, read the Rolling Stone, SPIN, and any other pop culture magazine. They refer to independent music or independent film as “indie”—with an “ie” and not a “y”. Indy with a “y” is a common abbreviation for Indianapolis, such as Indy Car Racing. So unless the comic comes from Indianapolis, please refer to the comic as “indie”. Otherwise, you look uninformed. Also, Oni Press, Slave Labor Graphics, and Viper Comics are not technically independent publishers. They are small press. And the antonym to “mainstream” would be “alternative”, not independent. Some books could be both independent and mainstream, but they could not be mainstream and alternative. Spell names correctly, and make sure when you give the credits that you pay attention to who did what. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen inkers listed as colorists and the other way around. If your only complaint about an alternative comic is that it’s not in color, please stop writing reviews.

And finally, love comics. Maintain that unending admiration for what comic creators do. Realize a graphic novel that took you thirty minutes to read may have taken them a year to create, possibly without any pay. Love the comic for what it is, not for what you wanted it to be. Was the creator successful in their attempt? To have a healthy comic book industry (a phrase I’m still not 100% comfortable with), we need good journalists and good critics. So, be good and I’ll be okay with anything you say about the comics I love.