Every so often, I take a pile of stuff, any individual item of which isn’t
worth a whole column in and of itself, but nevertheless may have some interest for regular
visitors to this site… and put them all out at once in a patchwork hodge-podge column
outing.
Guess what? It’s that time again. Oddly enough, a theme developed over the course of the
week… getting more bang for your comics buck. Let’s see what’s in the pile,
shall we?
*
To begin with, some reader mail.
Most of the time, when people get testy with me about something I’ve written, I try not to
get into a big back-and-forth about it. Only so many hours in the day, nobody ever wins these
things, everybody’s entitled to an opinion, etc., etc.
But this one kind of stuck in my craw, a little, because I find it symptomatic of the craziness
that drives the superhero comics industry.
Without getting too into the specifics — I don’t want to embarrass the guy, he
wasn’t nasty, just emphatic — a reader ventured the opinion that there was something
ideologically wrong with my suggestion that if comics are going to be designed,
written and sold with an eye towards their eventual home as a trade paperback collection, that
maybe we should just, you know, get on with it and BE a book-publishing industry. That this
suggestion somehow implied my secret shame at being seen with a standard 32-page booklet, or that
I was being disloyal to comics, or that I took some sort of elitist, smug pride in reading my
comics in book form.
Normally after reading comments like that I would just snort and move on, but this is worth
taking some time to walk through, especially since our Dread Lord And Master was talking about
Marvel and DC’s book pricing policies earlier this week.
First of all, let’s dispense with the “shame” charge, okay? Of all the Comics
Should Be Good crew, I think I have confessed to more nerdy fan ridiculousness than any of my
colleagues. I’m here in print every week talking about loving socially-irredeemable crap
ranging from Mack Bolan novels to the Filmation Aquaman cartoons to Marvel’s 70’s
Godzilla comic. Under my real name, even, complete with photograph. If the accusation is that I’m worried I might
provide ammo for people to embarrass me about my pop culture tastes, well, sorry, guy, but
I’m thinking that ship sailed years ago. It’s all in the archives.
Fanboy with a capital F, that’s me. I’m afraid there’s just too much textual
evidence out there for me not to own it. How does my preferred format for the stuff make
a difference?
But the reason I tend to stump for the idea of comics-as-books isn’t ideological, at least
not in the sense that I’m pushing for some kind of superhero-comics “We’re
books now! Behold our legitimacy!” pride parade. It’s simple economics. The plain
truth of the matter is that the comic book, as the format’s traditionally been
understood in the U.S., doesn’t really exist at Marvel and DC any more.
Look, I loved the spinner-rack monthly periodical as much as anyone (and was so willing to be
seen with them I started a class in how to make them for Seattle’s after-school
arts program.) But the fact is that those are pretty much gone. At least in the sense they once
existed– as a mass medium, a newsstand presence comparable to any other monthly
magazine. Even Archie Comics maintains their market presence largely in digest form these days.
Certainly the “comic book” in its spinner-rack incarnation is dead as far as
superheroes are concerned. Modern superhero monthly comics strike me as
nostalgia publishing, about on a level with those pulp replicas from Adventure House. (Those are pretty awesome, by
the way, but my point is that nobody confuses them with the mainstream magazine presence
pulps used to have.) Comic books as produced by Marvel and DC today exist largely to placate an
audience that stubbornly refuses to let them go. Because economically,
currently this is a plain stupid way to read superhero stories.
Just pulling a random example out of a hat:
When I was a kid, long ago, I was a big fan of Iron Fist. I liked a lot of what Marvel
was putting out then, to be honest, and in those days I could keep up with almost all of it.
A comic book was thirty cents. Even adjusted for inflation from 1977 to 2008, that’s still
only $1.09. Not unreasonable even when I was confined to just mowing lawns on the weekend for my
spending money.
Now Iron Fist is back. I still have affection for the character and I’m interested in his
new adventures, especially since several of my fellow writers here at CSBG seem high on the book.
Worth checking out?
Sure… until I look at the price tag.
$2.99 is almost three times the price of the comics I grew up on even after that 1977
price is adjusted for inflation. And for three times the cost to me, I get…
less story.
Think I’m kidding? Here’s a typical Iron Fist page from the Olden Tymes.
That was a pretty dense read. For my money I got somewhere between twenty-five minutes and half
an hour’s entertainment…. for the equivalent of one 2008 dollar. That’s not
bad.
And here’s a random sample from the current version.
Bear in mind that I’m simply talking about presentation. For the sake of
argument let’s say I enjoy both incarnations of Iron Fist equally– and in fact I do,
pretty much. There’s no qualitative judgment here… it’s a matter of
density. There’s measurably less story content in the newer, more
expensive periodical.
Not to beat it into the ground, but since most comics writers today think in terms of
the eventual paperback collection, stories run six issues or more. In the older books I grew up
on, stories were generally two to three-parters at most, and several were done-in-one. But
let’s say they did go six parts. Again adjusting for inflation, even in 2008 dollars
I’m still only out six and a half bucks or so. But in the real-life 2008 comics retail
marketplace that six-part story costs me $17.46, and I can usually read it in about an hour at
most. No matter how good the art is, it still goes by pretty fast. Now split that hour over six
months. Ten minutes to read the comic each month… if I linger over it and admire
the art. Ten minutes… for three dollars. Sorry, that’s not
“widescreen”… that’s “padded,” at least to my old-school
sensibilities.
(And none of this even addresses all the stylistic changes; the inability to walk in on most
modern superhero comics in the middle, for example. Today’s books are meant as
chapters. You’re signing up for at least a six-month ride or you might as well not
bother.)
On the other hand, if I am a patient man, my patience is rewarded. I can wait for Marvel to
collect this story in a book, the same six-issue arc plus an additional
eight-page story and a few pages of extras.
Here it is in hardcover. I get it in an attractive, permanent format, I have the added bonus of
getting to read the whole thing at a sitting along with some nice extra frills, and best of all,
I get it cheaper.
Right now this hardcover edition is offered on Amazon for $14.99. That’s already a
significant savings over the $17.94 you’d pay for that story at six months the hard way,
but there’s more. Only a dope would buy it new when you can click on
“used” and get it for $6.00. Hell, that’s less than six 1977 inflation-adjusted
original Iron Fist comics. My $6.00 hardcover arrived looking brand-new. Read once and
resold, most likely.
The Amazon listing for the trade paperback version looks even more attractive in terms of
price– $10.99 new and $5.39 used.
There are downsides, certainly. There are shipping charges, and you are always gambling a little
bit when you get things mail-order. But you can minimize your cost and risk in those areas and
the bottom line is still that it’s a hell of a lot more sensible.
The crazy part, though, is that this system depends on the hardcore Wednesday-or-bust ideologues
like my critic to make the whole thing work. They subsidize the operation.
Seriously. I could never afford to cherry-pick Marvel hardcovers off Amazon for five to seven
dollars each without the booklet loyalists out there proving their devotion to a clearly outmoded
format.
I certainly appreciate it. Honest, I do.
But maybe… if we ALL got on board with the book-packaging idea, we might drive publishers
to produce comics that would be a little more affordable for everybody. As, say,
book publishers have done.
I miss the days when comics were a mass medium and not a specialty item. I think that’s
healthier for everyone, from both an artistic and economic perspective. Book-format
comics, marketed and sold like mass-market paperbacks or manga digests,
seem to me to be the easiest way to get there. In short, I’m hoping we can get comics that
are more inclusive, with a wider audience. I don’t think that’s an
elitist position, to be honest.
Does that clarify why I like the idea of comics as books? (If anyone’s still reading this
and not over searching Amazon for “Marvel+hardcover”…)
*
Of course, the day after I pulled the above column fragment out of the
file, dusted it off and proofread it, Supergirl #33 came out.
Who let this James Peaty guy into the club? He’s not doing any of the things a
writer’s supposed to do on a DC book.
First of all, this comic’s done-in-one. Not just done-in-one but self-contained, I
got through it without needing any other comics to reference. Entertaining, well-written, the
setup was good and the twists were clever, Supergirl won by being smart and then she showed
decency and mercy towards her antagonists… and even though Empress is a character I knew
nothing about and apparently one who also has an incredibly convoluted backstory, I never got
lost. It even took me a little longer than ten minutes to read it.
On top of all that, it’s something that not only entertained me, but that
I could pass on to a bright youngster without any fear of reprisal. We even got
a Supergirl cover that doesn’t look like something off a Hooters calendar.
What the hell? I didn’t think there was anyone working on a DC spandex book that even knew
how to do this stuff any more. (Not counting Kurt Busiek, anyway. He used to
try it sometimes when nobody was looking, but he’s all tied up with Trinity now.)
Seriously, this was one of the nicest throwbacks I’ve ever seen. You know when geezers like
me are grumping about how things used to be? We’re not arguing for the return of Streaky
the Super-Cat or any of that crap. We just would like to see more comics like
this. Smart and fun and (relatively) continuity-free; and best of
all, not filled with cheap pandering to the arrested-adolescent demographic that
demands all superheroes have EXTREME VIOLENCE! and HOT BABES!, whether that’s appropriate
for a particular title or not.
I don’t think it’s asking a lot… and it can’t be that hard
because DC showed in this week’s Supergirl that they can still
publish stuff like that.
So of course it’s a fill-in. Next time we will be seeing a Supergirl from a new creative
team that’s all tied in with the Superman continuity and so on and so on.Â
(Ironically, I picked this up by accident, I thought the new team started this month
and figured I’d see what was up.) I still wish the new team well, but in the
meantime, I’d like to see writer James Peaty do more stuff like this. He looks like a name
to watch for. Pity it apparently won’t be on Supergirl.
(None of the above is meant to slight artist Ron Randall, who does a very nice job on the story
too. But I expect Ron Randall to be good. The writing was a pleasant surprise.)
Anyway, I don’t think comics like this blow a hole completely through the
let’s-just-do-books argument, because they’re clearly the exception. (If
there were more of them and they went to a wider audience there’d be no need to have the
argument at all.)
It’s nice to have a current example around of what I’m talking about,
though. Everyone? This is what I mean when I talk about “fun
comics.” It’s not re-inventing the wheel, it’s not a turning point, it’s
not anything other than an entertaining Supergirl adventure, which is a
reasonable expectation for someone picking up a Supergirl comic book. Understand?
This should be the baseline. This is at minimum what we should get every
month. (Now if we could just get it cheaper.)
But it’s not the baseline. Instead it’s a freak accident. Which is why guys like me
get so irritated at the DCU’s current direction.
*
Speaking of giant hunks of comics at bargain prices, I’m surprised I’ve seen so
little on the review sites about the new comics entries in the Mammoth Book Of…
series.
I fell for The Mammoth Book of Best War Comics a few weeks ago and I really like it.
Marvel and DC and EC all have refused to allow stories from their respective libraries to be
included, so really it ought to be called Best War Comics That Aren’t All That
Famous. Still, that limitation has forced the editors to think outside the box a little and
the result is a very cool collection with a nice indie sensibility. You get Will Eisner’s
Last Day in Vietnam, the short manga that eventually was revamped into Barefoot
Gen, and lots of Archie Goodwin’s Blazing Combat. “Best” may be a
bit much, but it’s good, and you can’t beat the price.
Likewise The Mammoth Book of Best Crime Comics is way cool, and here the fact that the
major comic publishers snooted inclusion in the book doesn’t hurt nearly as much.
All sorts of good stuff, including a choice Ms. Tree reprint, a Will Eisner
Spirit, and Dashiell Hammett scripting over Alex Raymond’s art on Secret Agent
X-9. Take a look at the list of names on that cover. This one gets a lot closer to
‘best.’
Actually I’m rather fond of some of the prose entries in the Mammoth series, as well. The
Pulp Fiction and Pulp Action volumes are great fun.
All available for what you’d spend on a Marvel Essential– or considerably less, if
you order online. Recommended.
*
It’s not strictly comics-related, but people seem to enjoy the tales of Julie’s and
my scrounging around for weird old rarities in bookshops. (This can actually be a profession for some people, though we’re not that
hardcore about it.)
We’ve been having a bit of good fortune in that area recently. Since the last time I
mentioned this hobby, I’ve had an astonishingly easy time picking up a number of the old
Whitman “TV Favorite” hardcovers for cheap. I love these books and quite a few comics
people worked on them. For example, here’s Maverick from Alex Toth.
This is a lovely book just to look at, and the story by Charles Coombs is pretty good too.
Finding a couple of these on the road renewed my interest in them, so I’ve been looking
around here at home, too. In an amazing run of luck, over the last few weeks I’ve managed
to score some very hard-to-find volumes… for peanuts.
Here are three I’ve wanted for quite a while. The trouble with hunting antique books based
on TV shows is that you’re not just competing with bookscouts; you also have to get there
ahead of the memorabilia collectors. Because of that, books that are spun out of
“cult” shows are particularly hard ones to find.
So I was very pleased to nail down, at long last, Voyage To The Bottom of the Sea (by
old-school SF writer Raymond Jones!) and the first of the two Man From UNCLE entries, as
well as the second Mod Squad volume. (We’ve been catching up with the Squad on DVD
the last week or so, and there’s only one word for the experience: “Solid.”
Check out this clip –about four minutes in– if you think
I’m kidding…)
But I’m getting distracted. The point is, the score I am most pleased with from the last
couple of weeks is this one.
The Green Hornet: The Case of the Disappearing Doctor is damnably hard to find for under
fifteen or twenty dollars… at least, in anything like readable condition. That one has the
antique collectors, the TV-memorabilia people, the comics fans, and the Bruce Lee fans all after
it.
The story, by Brandon Keith, is pretty good and certainly hits all the marks one would expect in
a story based on the Hornet’s TV show. The illustrations are by Larry Pelini.
They’re pretty good too, but curiously static. No action scenes are illustrated at all,
though there are several good ones in the plot. The closest we get to an action scene with the
Hornet and Kato are the book’s endpapers.
Which are admittedly kind of cool. But that’s it. Still, I’m very pleased to have
found a c
)
and reject those that you are not interested in
(
)
This is a fairly important question to consider, I think. The gaming industry clocks in
billions of dollars in revenue each year, a good portion of which is devoted to mobile sales. Yet
if mobile Web use is going to continue climb at the solid clip, and mobile phones are to be smart
and powerful enough to conquer interactive entertainment, is there room for platforms devoted
primarily to gaming?
Yes, it’s important to emphasize this new and very big nail in the coffin of
convention. It’s a point that has been echoed with increased volume in recent months. The
ever-present mobile Web. If game developers take up the task of engineering titles to connect
players with one another without limit to place or time - or, reversely, dependent on place and
time - the sort of gaming that comes with the 
To be sure, this is a good thing. Change rarely does good things for nostalgia, but it
enables progress to continue on. The sheer volume of possible applications of GPS- and 3G- and
4G-infused networking, let alone gameplay, piques the interest of millions of people. Privacy is
of course an ever-present concern. But gamers have made plain their desire to take the
multiplayer experience as far as it can allow. That has been the case with Xbox Live fans,
PC-based MMORPG devotees, and it will also be true for mobile gamers, too. Heck, the
possibilities given via the Nintendo DS specifically have intrigued a global supply of users. So
gaming over wireless cellular telephony spectrum is really just upping the ante. It is very much
within reach.
If you were interviewing someone for a
position with your company and they admitted that they didn't know anything about the new trends
and innovations taking place in their field, what would you think? Likely, what you would think
is "next candidate, please." In today's business world, job-seekers are expected to stay current
with the happenings taking place in their area of interest. There was a time when those
happenings were very much job-specific and anything having to do with technology fell squarely on
the shoulders of I.T. That time has passed. Web 2.0 technologies lifted the veil of mystery
surrounding computing technology and made it accessible to everyone. Today, if you're not staying
current with Web 2.0 technologies' impact on business, then you're just not staying current.
Period.
Only a
handful of years ago, it was common to hear people laugh at 
Leave it
to people in the wiki market to know how to collaborate. Nearly 20 different wiki providers have
teamed up to offer a new Firefox extension that will 
Web Office Defined: A Web Office suite is a combination of productivity, publishing
and collaboration features. A Web Office both embraces the functionality of desktop office suites
(e.g. Microsoft Office) and extends it by using Web Native features. 
The State of Office 2.0: Over the past 10 years, Corel, Sun, IBM and others have tried to
compete with Microsoft in the office software business, but thus far none of them have been able
to take a significant chunk of Microsoft's large market share, which generates revenues exceeding
$15 billion each year. These companies have tried everything; including Sun open sourcing their
StarOffice suite and releasing it as the free 
The Web Office
was a market that underwent a lot of changes in 2007. Our 
This is the
perspective of a "skeptical, later early adopter"; the sort of person who Microsoft needs to
retain and should have been able to retain easily. I don't spend time on productivity tools that
may at some date make me more productive, but which today are just a frustrating time sink. That
describes the majority of people. MS Office can be annoying, but it does work. So any serious
alternative has to offer a significant advantage and at the same time make adoption a total
breeze. 
A
Enterprise 2.0 is Happening: If you're a business who has been ignoring the Web 2.0 trend
and the spread of social media: look out, the tide is shifting and you're about to be left
behind. The rise of social media didn't happen overnight, the power of the internet to unite
people, the ubiquity of broadband, the rise of Gen Y, the development of new technologies for
socializing on the web - all of these things and more have led to the rise of social media. And
this new force is affecting change in the way that companies do business - now and for many years
to come.
The break-up of behemoth, vertically integrated enterprises commenced in the 1970's, got
a boost from junk bond financing in the 1980's, and accelerated in the 1990's with globalization.
Now, late in the 2000's, Social Media (aka Web 2.0) is adding another gear that will accelerate
the fundamental restructuring of the enterprise. 
Most enterprise
software sucks. That is my considered opinion from 30 years in the software biz. Words that come
to mind are: bloated, inflexible and user hostile. The good news is that it is 
The 
SharePoint to run Enterprise 2.0? 9 companies are saying "yes," having recently launched
Enterprise 2.0 offerings that integrate with SharePoint technology. If there's one thing that any
I.T. pro knows it's the value of "maximizing their investment" in whatever servers they run,
technology they use, or services they've signed up for. With strict budgets in place, no I.T.
purchases are bought on a whim. Instead, each decision is researched, tested, thoughtfully
considered, and, if worthy, purchased, then rolled out to become a part of the I.T.
infrastructure. SharePoint is no exception. 
Google is 
We 
48% of Bank
Customers Want Web 2.0 Gadgets. 
Online
Accounting: State of the Market: Accounting software for small business and personal use is
increasingly moving from the desktop to online. However, compared to other office software, this
transition to online has been relatively slow. Partly that's due to user reticence: writing a
document online and sharing it with others (via Google Docs, Office Live, Zoho, or whatever you
use) is one thing. Entering sensitive financial information into your browser is harder to adjust
to. 
Add this
one to your web office toolkit - 
The
Clarizen project management software came out of stealth mode last year and has now just launched
a new version with additional features. The latest version, Clarizen v 2.0, will be demoed at the
"
Enterprise 2.0 is a
37Signals offers a range of applications, from simple, single-function apps like Ta-Da
Lists (to-do lists), Writeboard (collaborative word processor), and Campfire (group chat) to more
complicated apps like Basecamp (project management) and Highrise (group contact manager).
Health 2.0,
web-based apps and services for the healthcare sector, is a nascent but potentially huge market
for web 2.0. As of now, many of these apps have an emphasis on communication, information sharing
and community. These are relatively easy things to address using Web tools. However we're
starting to see health 2.0 apps try to tackle the enormous inefficiencies in the healthcare
system - check out our description of Carol.com below. Also, in the longer term, we will see the
Web being used in medical diagnosis and practice. 
The 
Google
Traditional resumes are boring. They become stale and out-of-date, they can't really
showcase your work or achievements, and they end up just sitting in the bottom of someone's
inbox. A paper resume, while professional, doesn't really let an employer get to know you. Many
sites are trying to solve the problems of traditional resumes by providing job seekers a new way
to stand out in the crowd. 
The iPhone has been
making headway in its battle to become a business-ready tool. Obviously, the addition of
Microsoft Exchange support was a big step towards being considered a viable alternative to the
traditional smartphones used at work, like Blackberry and Windows Mobile. However, beyond simply
supporting enterprise email, the iPhone platform has a lot of potential to cater to the needs of
its business users, too. 
LinkedIn
has an audience that is both younger (41 vs 48) and richer
($106k vs $98K). LinkedIn was also naturally crowing about their growth (189% for year ending
Oct. '07) and the chart from 
Viral marketing, user-generated content, online buzz: over the past few years, these terms
have been representative of a new way of marketing to consumers that takes advantage of the
current popularity of the social web. This new technique involves companies encouraging its
customers to create content of their own in order to generate interest in the company's brand.
Unfortunately, one of the potential side effects of this strategy is the potential for negative
buzz. Despite this fact, a surprisingly low percentage of marketers are monitoring for negative
responses. 
Using the new pilot program from a company called 
Mobile marketing startup, 
Swipetek