[UA] Death to Comic Flame Wars

[Tim Toner]

Eh, I dunno about this.  Marvel has a problem with not keeping their trade
paperbacks in print.  DC has done a bang up job in pushing their content to
the bookshelves, going so far as to give a title a chance so that it can get
enough issues out to be collected, because they know that there are people
who will only buy a comic book when it's collected and perfect-bound.  The
economics really don't support this, unless it's a hell of an author, like
Warren Ellis, and even he has a tough time of it (his stories of the
pathetic marketing campaigns for some of his titles make for depressing yet
riveting reading.  DC will give it a chance-Marvel, for the most part,
won't, unless it's a proven winner.  I think Marvel was idiotic for not
collecting Christopher Priest's run on Black Panther, one of the best titles
that came out that year.  It spoke perfectly to the 'no, I read GRAPHIC
NOVELS' audience that DC has cultivated.

 

Doesn't matter, though.  The Anglophone comics industry is in a death
spiral, with a manga reprint selling two to three times better than the
industry's number one title.  That's not to say it's not good-there's a lot
of outstanding comics out there.  There's just no one reading them serially.

 

[ObUA]  Global Frequency, Warren Ellis's latest 12-issue miniseries, is a UA
game waiting to be run.  Imagine 1000 people around the world, each carrying
a satellite enabled cell phone that allows them instant communication with
each other.  Each person is the best in their field at one thing, and
whatever that thing is, it'll undoubtably come in handy when the chips are
down.  Imagine the Sleepers fused with The New Inquisition, and everyone
knows about it.  Most of the ideas that pop into Global Frequency inevitably
get posted first on www.diepunyhumans.com <http://www.diepunyhumans.com/>  ,
but my faves include subsonic noise being mistaken for visits from the
divine, a woman who is the greatest living practitioner of Le Parkour
(http://www.urbanfreeflow.com/UrbanFreeFlow/frontpage.htm), and an agent who
is immune to pain is sent up against a villlian who is.immune to pain.  The
result is pretty much as disturbing as you can imagine.

 

Republicans for Voldemort
Because Fictional Elections Deserve Fictional Characters.
http://www.goats.com/archive/030808.html

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