The absolute state of the American comics industry
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Quoting myself from a year ago:
https://kotakuinaction2.win/p/12ih9o7sWK/x/c/4J9McBD7zEY
You left out the part now where they are all gay, have a different skin color, possibly the opposite sex and fight against vending machines for tampons not being in the male restroom
Hey, look at the bright side: now they might actually legitimately kill off a character. Granted it’ll be only white male characters so that instead of resurrecting them or finding out the dead version was secretly a clone, they can put a black trans lesbian in the suit and have everyone act like the white guy never existed. But actually killing off a character for real would bring comics into a brave new world!
Speaking of, Alfred from Batman is currently dead.
Tom King is such a hack.
There’s a moment in the Simpsons from 2003 where even as a kid I knew the show was done being original. Principal Skinner is about to marry Ms. Krabapple, and thus stop being a stuffed-shirt loser, and Barney had sobered up a few seasons earlier. The scene is Skinner in the bar telling Moe he can’t go through with the wedding for basically no reason (I think I literally just says “I have cold feet”) and then immediately they cut to Barney showing him back on the sauce. Two opportunities for major character development derailed in the space of 10 seconds, in favor of keeping the characters the same one-joke 2D caricatures they’d always been.
That’s comic books right there.
Never thought of that but spot on
The Principal and the Pauper was the defacto end of the Simpsons for me. Funnily enough, its a 20 minute joke about the same refusal to do development that you're criticizing - except it has the gall to blame the audience for reacting poorly to seeing a character's backstory senselessly destroyed.
Bingo. But a lot of the modern writers for marvel and dc can’t write. But then again they only seem to hire activists. Indies have been the only new ones I’ve bought lately
A lot of the modern artists for Marvel and DC can't draw, either. So the comics are shit for more reasons than just the
"message"stories.Sums of the recent Eternals run. Art was dog shit with horrific expressions and faces in general which included a spectacular version of Carol Danvers who looked like an 80 year old dude.
Yes! Reading some random comic book from the 90s is like reading Shakespeare by comparison. But I love reading the stuff Kirby/Lee/Ditko worked on when I can afford it. Classic DC, and some good indie comics in the 80s like Alien Worlds. I could go on and on
And until then >.> 🏴☠️
It's not even this. It's that, even if it takes 10-20 years, manga will end and will reach some conclusion.
The only conclusion comic readers get is a brand new day, lol.
Even if they never end they could write stories in a way where you don’t need to go back 2 decades to understand a reference in a single pannel. And actually number the tpbs either as volumes in a contained story and not just write Batman in huge font on the side.
Golgo 13 came out in 1968.
It's still going.
The anime wasn't shit, but then that came out in 1983.
I remember that, with the weird chick Golgo bangs then she tries to run him down on a horse on the beach or the business man who was the main antagonist after Golgo killed his son. IIRC there's a phone call the business man takes where the other end of the line flat out states they were the ones who killed JFK because of what the business man told them to do. Had a good twist about the son, though.
That would be the movie.
https://myanimelist.net/anime/1760/Golgo_13?q=Golgo%2013&cat=anime
There was also an OVA in 1998.
https://myanimelist.net/anime/1761/Golgo_13__Queen_Bee?q=Golgo%2013&cat=anime
And an actual TV series in 2008.
https://myanimelist.net/anime/4039/Golgo_13_TV?q=Golgo%2013&cat=anime
I hope that one day a business class uses American comics to teach a lesson about ignoring your core audience. It’s one thing if you think you can get more women to read comics. However at some point you have to accept that women don’t read comic books at the same numbers as males. Add in the way Disney seems to think the target demographic for comics are teen girls and they keep pushing characters whose comics consistently were cancelled.
Even though it feels like we’ll be stuck in the SJW quagmire forever, it’s useful to think like this, about the long term. Like any counterculture, it’ll produce a few reasonable ideas for improving society and the rest will be rejected and looked back on as silly or sinister. This happened with the 60s counterculture, the various religious Great Awakenings, etc etc. The same way my parents’ generation looks back at afros and mustaches and corduroy suits and cringes, middle-aged Gen Z will look back on the non-binary look with bemusement (and that’s all non-binary REALLY is, a look that is popular now, which for some reason has weird theories about gender attached to it).
I’m sure business types WILL someday point to this era as a lesson in what not to do. It’s always tempting to freak out and think society is gonna collapse from this shit, but society always carries on. They are a movement that needs jazz hands instead of clapping because they’re sensitive to noise, they aren’t fucking bringing about a revolution. They also can’t live without their gadgets. Capitalists and strong people will crush them if they try to overthrow anything. This is just a temporary annoyance, though a very BIG annoyance I’ll grant you.
If you believe some of the business podcast I listen to, as well as people who still have contacts inside Hollywood if they dont work themselves (like Chris Gore), it has already started.
Despite what people want to be blackpilled about, ESG is not free money, and it is no shock that the companies sticking hardest to the Woke are still losing money hand over fist (instead of "They can ignore customers because ESG!"). And now, we have seen Top Gun:Maverick and Hogwarts Legacy make money hand over fist despite the Woke attempts to kill them, as well as all of the Woke stuff like Velma crash and burn. And it has finally gotten too obvious for even the most dense Boomer CEO to ignore. Or did you think it a coincidence that most of the cuts are happening in Marketing, which is the most woke part of most companies?
But we will still have to put up with the garbage for a good long while yet. When it comes to stuff like movies and TV, that is usually in the pipe a good 3-5 years before it is actually out. So a lot of what we are seeing is stuff from 2018-2020, at the height of peak TDS and Woke Power. But hey, at least until then, anime is still going strong, and video games are excellent (especially outside of AAA titles).
Makes sense. It really can’t go on forever
spoiler: They actually don't care about pushing women into it. Expanding the audience is just the excuse the communists fed to corporate decision makers to convince them to approve the injection of the propaganda into their content.
But that also requires hiring people who don’t hate comic books or just want to use it for a platform
That's all there is to it. The Japanese method is tens of thousands of people wanting to sell their art, and dozens of studios and distributors purely wanting to make money. Artists submit work and if someone thinks its good enough they give them a publishing contract. If they sell, they are offered more profitable contracts. That's it. It's like writing books anywhere.
Whatever is possessing the husk of American comics industry, it's not a functional business and hasn't been for a long time. Ostensibly it's two giant studios who are also the distributors. You can submit work to them or get a foot in the door through a connection inside and word of mouth. If they really think you got what it takes, maybe they'll give you a shot. "Got what it takes" means you agree with their company values and messaging, get along with the old staff, and are willing to work for peanuts. "Give you a shot" means you can apprentice under another artist for a while until you're ready, become a background illustrator, or if you're a writer they might even use your idea as the basis for a future Batman/Superman/Spiderman story!
It's not classic publishing model where they put anything in stores to see what gets an audience. They're just running on autopilot and the fumes of old IPs. Actual creative types tend to realize this early on and don't even apply. The people working for the industry are hacks who just want to make it big and get Hollywood to pick up their story for a blockbuster movie. The longer it doesn't happen, the more cynical and corrupt they become. This isn't even getting into the SJW parasites that infest and consume all rotten businesses now, who reanimate the corpse of their host to scream at you how it's not about the money - it's about sending a message.
Japan has doujinshi culture: self published comics. Twice a year there is an event called Comiket where the main attraction is the release of new doujinshi. A lot of professional creators get their start by making doujinshi.
While some doujinshi violate copyrights, publishers look the other way because they understand that this is the source of their talent pool.
The closest thing we have to this in the west is fan fiction. We could never have a Comiket type event for fanfiction, because the corporates would not hesitate to squash it.
this could just be my separation from Japan talking, but I feel like Manga is a lot more organic right now. from the outside, it looks like a market flooded with original stories made by literal who authors where the ones that gain popularity are the ones that get talked about most on the forums. It doesn't feel like there's a big overarching company like Disney or Marvel calling the shots from on high.
I just saw an example of something that can be fixed by shortening the text at 4:01 to this:
Haven't seen the vid, but last time I checked, total sales of (American made) comic books were up, not down. The American comic book industry continues to persist, despite mangas making inroads.
the numbers are all fake.
Nobody ever lies about sales numbers.https://themanhattan.press/2022/09/15/publisher-blasts-the-new-york-times-bestseller-list-as-pure-fraud/
Really? I’ve heard the opposite but I stopped reading current marvel and DC in early 21 due to them being garbage in my opinion along with the diversity/lgbt obsession.