As was foretold, we've added advertisements to the forums! If you have questions, or if you encounter any bugs, please visit this thread: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/240191/forum-advertisement-faq-and-reports-thread/
Options
Kevin Church yells at people.
hughtron
__BANNED USERS regular
__BANNED USERS regular
Kevin Church wrote:...And maybe that's exactly why I'm just so fucking pissed off at the majority of you out there. You are the reason so many of them suck. Yes, you - you're getting the books you deserve.
You complain about the ads in Marvel and DC pamphlets, yet you buy them each and every month instead of waiting for the trade. You complain about how delayed Civil War is, yet buy every quickie cash-in to reward the publisher for their lateness. You bitch about how expensive comics are, but when Marvel and DC raised the cost of a regular 22-page pamphlet to $3, you just kept on picking them up without hesitation...
Plenty more over at his blog. Personally I think he's pretty much right on. A few months ago I took a good, hard look at my pull-list and stopped buying nearly everything on it, even some books by Grant Morrison. (gasp!)
hughtron on
0
Posts
The best thing for the comics industry is if everyone stops buying comics
Just the bad ones.
PSN: OrneryRooster
That said, his advice is good advice, and there are plenty of books I can cut without missing.
From the quote, it sounds like "bad ones" includes all of DC and Marvel.
And anything with an ad.
How many comics lack ads? The only one I can think of is Fell, and even that has one on the back cover sometimes (I think).
Not to mention that if nobody buys a comic, it might not make it to trade anyhow.
This, I felt, was a very good point.
Because it won't attract new people to the medium?
Because seeing it in another medium won't be fresh or exciting?
No, because most super hero movies are just what he said. A bastardization of the source material edited down and snipped until it fits a 120 min. timeframe.
Seeing them in a new medium is fresh and exciting when they are done well. When they roll out every possible comic property as fast as possible the end product is usually less than stellar.
criminal doesn't have ads and it's even published by marvel
Like "Manhunter" and "Nextwave".
are you being sarcastic or did you just call manhunter bad?
Or maybe because Watchmen is so good we are afraid to see it made badly. We'd love to see it made well, but its so easy to make a bad film these days we desperately don't want that to happen here.
At this point, it's clear to me that comic book movies are not for comic book fans. They exist to deliver the stories to the mainstream. That's the reason we're never happy with them, because they often disregard the painful minutiae that we regard as essential to anybody's proper enjoyment of the story, work from something more distilled than we personally would like, and have a few liberties taken for the sake of the transition. When Watchmen gets made, you know there are going to be people complaining because Doctor Manhattan probably won't have his giant blue dick bouncing around everywhere. These guys, and the guy who bitches about the lenses on Nite-Owl's mask not being accurate, or how Rorshach doesn't sound exactly the way they'd pictured it in their heads, they're not even evaluating it as a movie. Whether it's a good movie or not. Not to mention the legion of fans who will refuse to see the movie and still talk shit on it because Alan Moore said that movies are bad.
It really is!
Then Marvel and DC have a REASON to jack the price up per comic.
Or delay comics(Who cares? No one's reading them!)
Or stuff them with ads.
Or do all this shit he's doing to increase their profit margin. Which the now need to do more of to increase their profit margin even FURTHER.
And neither will I. You don't have to.
But purposely not buying books until it gets to trades just to "send a message" is not only pointless, it's not a very good way to make comic prices go down, or make shit come out on time, or get less ads.
The people who want to see all the minutiae of their favorite off-screen property brought to life on-screen are not comic book fans; they are assholes. For Watchmen, I want to see someone make a good movie based on the source material. I don't care if Rorschach is played by Ving Rames as long as the screenwriter, actors, and director are up to the task of making an interesting, challenging, and morally ambiguous movie.
For example, for all the panning V for Vendetta received from comics fans, I think the movie did a darn good job of hitting the most of the key points present in the original format. It was by no means exactly how I would have liked to have seen it done, but it was done skillfully and intelligently enough for me to appreciate it as a movie.
In response to Church's rant: "If you love superhero comics, stop supporting shitty superhero comics. If you love comics in general, start supporting better comics."
I agree with this statement, but the rest of his rant is complete bullshit. It sounds to me like he's responding to a vocal minority, not the majority of comic book consumers.
I am not buying Jeff Smith's Shazam mini-series until it hits trades to send the message that $6 an issue is seriously fucking ridiculous
See THAT might accomplish something. It's out of the norm, and I imagine people are already going "6 bucks an issue!? Fuck that."
Fair enough, but you should probably clue the publisher into your motivation, because otherwise you are just one person among the millions who don't buy the comic for an array of reasons. A simple letter to DC saying, "I'm really interested in this series, and I plan to buy it when the trade hits, but I won't buy the monthly because I am not paying $6 an issue for it" would really drive the point home.
Do you post at Metafilter? Your name is very familiar.
Ayup, that's me. Or rather, ayup, I do also post on Mefi.
As I said, I agree with his statement that if you think a book is shitty, you should not buy it. I don't agree with his ranting and raving at "comic book fans" because I think he does not have a balanced or realistic view of what "comic book fans" like and don't like.
As for "Night at the Museum," the New York Times gave it a decent review for the kind of movie that is, i.e. rather fluffy and comforting entertainment. Just because it isn't Citizen Kane doesn't mean it's crap.
The same holds true for comics. Not every comic book is going to be "The Dark Knight Returns," but no one said that every comic book should be. Sometimes they can just be fun and silly.
I mean, they are comic books for fuck's sake. Let's not take them (and ourselves) too seriously.
I see. I've had an account there since like 2001. I lurk but I very rarely post. Your name looked very familiar though. It's a story about bunnies or something, isn't it?
I think most comic readers are like this and thats probably why NextWave sold so well as to get an ongoing.
Oh Wait.
(I'm not disagreeing that some books are too serious, I just wanted to highlight the difference 'tween us and most people that buy books)
He's a scrapper, our Robes!
I now suspect you of running a rabbit-fighting gambling ring.
Back on-topic:
I'm all for comics being treated as a serious medium, but the most effective efforts in that area have been from non-superhero stories (for examples, Maus and One Bad Rat).
Superhero comics are ridiculous by definition, and thus I'm not terribly concerned when they involve lots of superhero storytelling conventions. In fact, sometimes I rather enjoy it.
Edit: Odd. The new software doesn't automatically nest quotes. I wanted hughtron's original comment in there, too.
I'd say editing down is less of an issue than what they add in.
It wasn't the things that got left out of the V for Vendetta movie that upset me, it was stupid shit like making Evey an overt love interest.
In any event, the fact of the matter is that comics do not sell well anymore. Movies are about the only way 95% of the world will know anything about Watchmen or anything else that isn't Spider-Man or Batman or one of the other handful of comic characters who have worked their way into mainstream consciousness.
And on that note, can anyone name a single comic book character created after the 60s that qualifies? The only one I can think of that even comes close is Wolverine.
I cringe at anything over $3.
As much as I've liked Peter David's Marvel 1602 mini, the fact that it's $3.25 and yet appears to have fewer pages than the average comic irritates the hell out of me. (I'm guessing the extra money is for the covers, which appear to be made of posterboard or something instead of standard magazine paper.)
Maybe Spawn?
Naruto?
I wouldn't say Deadpool has infiltrated the mainstream consciousness.
I wouldn't say any manga character qualifies, at least in the West.
Spawn? Maybe. But I'm willing to bet you'd find plenty of people who have no idea who he is. Find me the American who's never heard of Batman or Spider-Man.