When There is No More Room in Hell
Waddaya mean lame tie-ins?
It’s always good to learn from other in your field and this post is inspired by two bloggers that are a Hell of a lot better at it than me. Tom Spurgeon at his site The Comics Reporter wonders why certain questions aren’t being asked of the comic book industry. Dorian at goes over the ”zombie” type customers one can find at your local comics hut (if you have a local comics hut, which brings us back to one of Tom’s questions). The questions of Tom’s that I want to go over concern the bad habits of comic publishers and the problem of too many comics (if you arrive to the conclusion that that is a problem). Reading those and the rest of his questions I thought “but what am I, a lone fan, to do?” Then I realized that while I may not know the inner-workings of the comics industry from the business side, I do know what it is like on the fan’s side. Reading Dorian’s thoughts about some fans I wondered “is this a case where the bad habits of publishers are perpetuating the bad habits of customers and vice-versa?” Then I stopped going over things in my head and I thought writing something down would help.
I don’t have a problem with someone really liking what the like and being unashamed of it. Be it a household name like Batman or a B-level superhero like Firestorm, there are certainly worse things to get into. What I don’t get is the “zombie” consumer who buys comics that he or she knows are bad. To extend the discussion to films for a moment I know Star Wars fans who admit their distaste from the last two films yet freely admit they will see the new one coming out, probably on opening weekend. It’s that behavior which I feel is sending a very bad message to publishers and is partly responsible for such phenomena as the flood of X-Men and Batman books on the market (this discussion will pretty much focus on Marvel and DC although they are hardly the only culprits when it comes to flooding the market).
I feel uncomfortable with labeling those who display such behavior with the ghoulish-but-comical name “zombie” when I think “addict” is much more truthful. There’s a completest mentality where a collection lacking even one issue where Nightcrawler or Barbra Gordon or Forbush Man appears in is seen as a problem and one that can only be fixed by spending money on a product for one reason and one reason only: it has that appearance of Nightcrawler or Barbra Gordon or Forbush Man that you need so badly. It’s a weird little habit that many of us fall into. I know I do sometimes. I’ve often had the desire to own everything Grant Morrison worked on. Thank goodness I’ve been talked out of buying full runs of Skrull Kill Krew. It’s seems to be a quest that is as expensive as it is unrewarding. If I did end being the Man with the Largest Grant Morrison Collection at best I would impress literally hundreds of people for literally tens of minutes.
That’s just the thing. I’d be spending money (and not just small amounts of it) on comics without caring if I felt they were a good read. Instead I would be spending money so that it would calm down my neuroses about missing a few Grant Morrison comics and only then for a while. Neuroses like that are alive and well in many comic book fans. I fear that is what sells a lot of comics and is the reason why publishers know they can flood the market.
Publishers are probably keenly aware of this and know that they can get some money out of even the lamest franchise tie-ins. Dirk Deppey has this humorous inference on the X-Men world:
After all, you could basically say that Chuck Austen's entire run on Uncanny X-Men was devoted to proving once and for all that you could throw a typewriter and a few sheets of paper at a trained monkey, illustrate the results, and the hardcore X-fans would still eat it up and ask for more. Oh, they'd whine and moan on message boards from time to time, but the consistency with which they'd nonetheless drop money on each new issue made their cries of alleged anguish ring more than a little hollow.
It means more bad comics out there for you and me. Everybody works less (if at all) for a guaranteed amount of sales so why even take a chance on something that could be better, even a better franchise tie-in? There’s the fear of what someone with barley any knowledge of comic books looking at the Graphic Novel shelf at Barnes & Nobles would think. At this point, though, I’m more concerned if someone who is a fan realizes what kind of game is going on and just gives up. I could hardly blame the person.
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