Hello and welcome to 2024.

And welcome to 2024. Hope you don’t have too bad a hangover…

Goodbye and good riddance to 2023

2023 is nearly done. It has been a bit of a rollercoaster as has pretty much every year for about the last decade but there’s signs of light. Hopefully I don’t manage a terrible decade from 2016 to 2026 and 2024 turns things around overall.

We shall see. I’ll be popping open a zero-alcohol Guinness and toasting in the New Year, so have a good out there. See you all on the other side…

How do we fix the comic book direct market?

Following on from the recent blog discussing the comments from Mark Millar in regards to American comic shop retailer Glenn O’Leary things have quickly moved on. Millar hosted a discussion with the owners of three American shop chains and is something everyone commenting on this need to listen to.

Some of the figures being thrown around are scary. Losing up to 25% of sales is a huge chunk of money for any business to deal with, regardless of how well they’re doing, and before anyone chirps up saying ‘WHY DON’T THEY DIVERSIFY!!!’ then listen to what these guys are saying. They have and there’s a point where a shop selling comics can’t diversify, partly due to space, costs or you start being so general that you’re no longer a comic shop, you’re a ‘Geek’ supermarket competing directly with the toy and book shops who probably buy in the same products that you do but with a greater discount from distributors.

As for diversification and equality in the actual comics themselves (and again, I remind everyone we’re talking of superhero comics sold in the direct market here, there’s a larger world of comics covering every genre out there) is an issue for good and bad. Making comics more diverse works as long as you keep legacy characters more or less what we know they’ve always been as people are familiar with these characters for that reason. However without an actual vision, good storytelling technique and a story (and art as comics is a visual medium) then people won’t care barring a few ultras who’ll support anything they feel supports whatever identity they claim this week.

It is perfectly possible for a creative team to take on a character, reshape it for a new audience while still keeping a core of what attracted people to it in the first place. Frank Miller’s Batman work & Daredevil. Alan Moore, Steve Bissette and John Totleben on Swamp Thing. Even the revamped Justice League from J.M DeMatteis, Keith Giffen and Kevin Maguire came bursting on the scene in the 80s to reshape a then mainly turgid superhero mainstream. Since then we’ve seen plenty of examples that may not have lit things up like those comics did but they’ve sometimes come close all because the creative team had a vision first so they could tell the stories they wanted to tell. If you’ve got a solid creative vision, stick to your guns & have support from publishers, and yes, fans and retailers, then your comic will sell. See The Immortal Hulk or Powers/House of X for great examples in the last five years.

I recently read this article on the 2004 revamp of Battlestar Galactica which initially got an appalling fan reaction, especially Katee Sackoff’s casting as a new female Starbuck, but the creative team stuck to their guns, produced an incredible work of art that spoke about an awful lot about the time it was made. It ended up being commercially and critically loved to the point where people think of this version rather than the original if they’re of a certain age group. It can be done but you need to be brave, talented and have a creative vision beyond tokenism or turning your writing into online activist Twitter posts. Also the idea that concentrating on trades or Young Adult books is going to turn things around isn’t borne out by sales, nor is the idea that placing these books into bookshops will help as you then rely upon bookshops caring enough about promoting comics amongst all the thousands of other books they sell. Any boost felt is felt by publishers selling to bookshops, not the direct market.

Then there’s the idea that periodicals are a dying medium and digital is the future. That’s true to an extent but there are signs of a shift back towards physical media. Vinyl records which was a completely dead medium 15 years ago barring a few small pressing plants still turning out the odd 12-inch or collector vinyl are now selling so well that record shops (HMV are reopening shops across the UK, including their flagship Oxford Street shop in London) are experiencing good business. Then there’s the death of the ‘Streaming Revolution’ as people tire of films and TV shows being deleted by corporations so they’re now buying Blu-rays or DVD’s which means they get to keep things they like. Physical media is always going to be there. You can always refer back to it and that tactile feeling of holding something in your hands is something essentially human as it means something to people in an age where we’re struggling to find meaning anywhere. We can do the same for comics but only if there’s a will from the top down & as I’ve said elsewhere, the audience is there. They just need to have something they feel is worth their time and money.

It isn’t 1993 anymore. It isn’t even 2019 anymore. Covid, then economic hardship has made things incredibly hard as the cost of everything increases. If you have a shop you need to pay rent, bills, rates, wages (over here in the UK you need to pay National Insurance and pension contributions as well as deal with a dreadful exchange rate), advertising, general shop maintenance and of course, stock. If you’re buying stock that doesn’t sell then you logically cut back and one needs only to scour bargain bins to see the creators who don’t sell comics over the last half-decade especially. Yet these people still work in an industry where there’s reams of undeveloped talent out there in the indie scene who clearly are not just better writers or artists but they’d possibly have a better creative vision. This isn’t to say good comics will solve the problems by themselves as there are plenty of good comics out there but they rarely get the push and praise especially online as outrage and anger makes better capital, especially from the supposed ‘Wokesters’ and ‘Comicsgate’ people who feed off each other in ever increasing outrage. Neither side offers anything of substance that’s positive to this debate but they have dominated it since O’Leary’s video went live last week. That’s depressing. Much of comic media has been disappointing too.

I do think we’re at a time when the direct market is changing and all of us who love comics need to play a part be that buying good comics, supporting local independent shops and supporting those good comics-focused cons out there. Comics as a medium will be fine. The US, and UK industries may not be if the direct market is whittled down or dies and for those who think that’s fine, remember that the humble comic shop (or at least, the better ones) is also a community hub that nurtures talent. There’s not a chance the creative boom in talent that happened in the UK in the late 70s, throughout the 80s and into the 2000s would have happened were there not shops for creators to pick up comics or have those conversations with other fans, creators or retailers who can help, advise and encourage people. I’ve done it myself throughout the decades. You don’t get that in a big bookshop or your local Asda. Those on both sides of the culture war debate drooling at the prospect of the death of the direct market are pushing for a world where you might have to go to these places and that’d be a terrible thing for the comics medium, the community as a whole and ultimately the industry.

So let’s have this debate now while things can be changed or improved now, leave the culture warriors to eat themselves & lets work out how to make things better.

Mark Millar, comic shop owners, the state of the direct market & the state of comic discussion online.

Comic Book Palace is a YouTube channel detailing the day-to-day activities of an American comic shop run by owner Glenn O’Leary and the shop has been open for 30 years, so it’s an often interesting glimpse into what a comic shop does in the modern age. Last week they uploaded their latest video and it proved to be a tad controversial. Skip to around 11 minutes for the relevant section.

The clip was shared on Twitter (if you want to call it X like that lunatic Musk then feel free) & caused a massive amount of online outrage. People raged at O’Leary for his comments, and attacked how he looked & a number of people who should know better joined in, including some creators who later backtracked their comments. One creator who sided with O’Leary was Mark Millar who invited him onto his YouTube channel for a discussion.

It’s now a week later and there’s a raging debate with one group backing diversity & being angry still at O’Leary, Millar and the direct market (the main system in which comics retailers buy new comics for their shops from publishers such as Marvel and DC as well as independents like Image or Dark Horse) itself saying that it’s about time it died. There’s another group of Comicsgate people raging at the first group because that’s what they do as both of these groups feed off each other.

And there’s a third section of people trying to have a debate about the state of the direct market and the daily struggle of running a comic shop in the year 2023. Problem is this part of the debate is overshadowed by the first two groups eating each other’s tails for likes and outrage points while the issues brought up in that video posted last week are now tied to that debate for good and bad. So as someone who has been in and out of the comics industry for 40 years and still keeps a toe in the water let me break down what I think the issues are as well as some possible solutions.

• Diversity. This is the one that’s causing the most rage but most people raging (on all sides of this) aren’t listening to what’s being said. It’s a touchy subject that hits directly at modern identity politics but it is one that needs discussion. Do we need diversity in comics is the basic question & ‘yes’ is the basic answer. A more diverse range of comics that speaks to a larger section of the general public should equate to more sales, right?

Except in superhero comics, no, it isn’t a sure-fire way to sales success. Making a character gay, bi, trans or disabled for the sake of it or replacing them in such a way doesn’t really work if it’s just a gimmick to try to boost sales or pander to a vocal part of the online comics community. The successful examples of superhero diversity in popular characters like Miles Morales or Kamala Khan were rounded characters with a background & characters not solely built around identity politics. Basically, it isn’t tokenistic or box-ticking but something that actually reflects lives than just characters saying ‘I’m trans/gay/etc’ in an attempt to get some controversy in order to sell books but you need a compelling story to back it all up or it’s just the comics version of Tweeting a hashtag.

Problem is short-term controversy might sell a few comics but it doesn’t translate into long-term sales. Did we learn nothing from the 90s when characters were killed off & replaced? The recent death and rebirth of Kamala Khan (a character Marvel has failed to capitalise on her popularity) was a shoddy & failed attempt to boost sales but ended up pissing people off. We need more diverse characters in superhero comics but it needs to be more than a token effort. Of course there’s a vastly different story outwith superhero comics but that’s a whole other discussion as we’re talking about the superhero part of the industry here.

• ‘Writers are putting themselves into the stories’. This is the big point O’Leary is being pulled up on & he’s right and wrong at the same time. Writers should be putting themselves into their writing. We should have their experiences and knowledge forming part of the story we see in superhero books. However, one needs to have lived some interesting experiences and have the knowledge of basics like how to make a story interesting to a general audience and not just a few mates who’ll never say no to them. If a writer has nothing to say beyond their own narrow experiences in whatever bubble they live in then it doesn’t make a good reading experience for other people. Far too often you’ll read page after page of characters just standing around eating and talking in superhero books with no superhero action, which is of course, the entire point of the genre. Which isn’t to say we can’t stop for character building or to try different things but if people are paying $3.99 for a comic they don’t want it to be boring every issue or worse, just be a bad experience that sours them to the title & creative team.

I’m not naming names but you can walk into any comic shop or comic convention in the US and UK, go up to a dealer’s bargain bins and you’ll find piles and piles of recent comics from the last decade written by the same people. Why these people keep getting hired is down to one thing; they’re cheap, hit deadlines and don’t say no to editorial. Also, many who do treat comics as a stepping stone aren’t bothered as they think they’ll be gone in a few years and the ones who don’t just produce decreasing quality work.

• Pay the writer. Millar has found out the average pay rate per page for Marvel is $90 a page. I know people who’ve worked for Marvel from the 90s to the 2010s who were paid substantially more than that. Comics were selling more of course but you don’t sell bad comics so companies are locked in a spiral of paying poor writers a shite rate which seels them selling fewer comics so they end up resorting to cheap stunts to try to sell more comics but end up alienating more readers, some of whom may well be lost to comics.

I don’t think Millar’s idea of getting Big Names in would do anything but provide a short-term boost which would leave us back where we are now. I do think writers of a more consistently better quality are needed & you won’t get them by paying peanuts. There’s a load of great talent out there writing and drawing their own comics but they’re also doing this by juggling full or part-time jobs. Pay people enough so they can work on a Big Two title & you might find the next Jonathan Hickman. Brian Bendis or even the next Neil Gaiman or Alan Moore rather than continue people to churn out comics that’ll end up never to be read again and then people might justify the costs of buying comics. There’s plenty of people in Indie comics or publishing their own comics who are talented who might take the chance to work on a major superhero comic if it’s worth their while.

• Price. $3.99 is the average price of a new American comic, though double sized issues can cost as much as $9.99. Over here in the UK thanks to a terrible exchange rate made worse by Brexit as well as other costs, that works out around £3.60-4.00 an issue. Most people are suffering some sort of financial hardship & comics have some serious competition from video games, toys, action figures and everything else people have to spend money on like mortgages, rent and bills. Say you’re a Batman fan. That means you buy Batman, Detective Comics, Nightwing (possibly Titans), Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy and then all the various miniseries and specials that are all Batman related each month meaning if you want everything then you’re spending £30-50 a month just to keep up. There are of course issues such as the price of paper,but if you charge as much money as companies are then you need to give value for money as well as the next point.
• Better quality stories. One of the things coming out of this discussion is the lack of good stories that engage people for a long time. Jonathan Hickman’s X-Men, The Immortal Hulk, Moon Knight are all titles which have had good runs fans enjoyed because they could get their teeth into them rather than have then rebooted after a couple of dozen issues at most. The dropoff of quality of X-Men after Hickman left hurt sales & interest as did all the multiple tie-in books and titles all because the people that followed Hickman weren’t as talented nor were they interested in making good stories. Recently Marvel have brought in better writers such as Keiron Gillen to steady the ship but the damage has been done.
• Variant covers. Variants are fine to a degree. If however you’re standing in front of a customer and they’re struggling to remember what issue they own because they’re seeing multiple covers in back issue boxes then what’s happened is you’ve alienated casual readers. Sure, collectors will have download apps to help them or still have their notebook, but reading a comic shouldn’t involve having to do homework. Appealing to collectors is fine but they’re not the only people out there.

There’s a lot more to cover which I’ll do once Millar does his livestream with comic retailers however we’re at a crucial point where we could make things better or we could end up driving the direct market off a cliff.

When is a Comic Con not a Comic Con?

The comic convention is no longer the domain of mainly young to middle-aged males with dubious hygiene & complete knowledge of who drew The Fantastic Four between 1971 and 1981. Now they’re ‘pop culture’ events that sometimes have nothing to do with comics or even have a single dealer selling comics. You’ll get endless piles of Funko Pops, Anime weapons, cosplayer kits, and anything that isn’t comics. Sure, you may get some manga but outwith of say, One Piece or Attack on Titan you won’t get anything too challenging.

Old conventions were purely comics focused as you can see in this video from 4:30. There are no cosplayers, there’s some toy dealers, and a few women, but overwhelmingly it’s comics as a medium and collecting as a hobby which drove these shows. Fast forward 35 years and now comic cons look vastly different.

That’s one of the biggest cons in North America but take the big studios out & many smaller cons look much like New York Comic Con. Plenty of cosplayers, anime, furries, and people who don’t give a single toss about comics. This has helped create a wave of negativity in the scene where people think the world of comics as we know it is coming to an end and there’s little point even trying anymore. Twitter and other social media are full of stuff like this so we end up with a narrative that the comics industry is dying, nobody buys comics and because things like Comics Twitter is mainly an echo chamber this is all taken for granted as being how things are.

Except it’s bollocks. True, things are tough as after all times are hard for most people, it could be better but we’re not seeing the endtimes for comics. Far from it. The MCU boom years are coming to an end as is this cycle of fandom as comic book movie fatigue kicks in and although the MCU sausage machine will grind on spitting out the odd monster hit, the days of these films making billions regardless are over as cinema habits change post-Covid. Comic cons have mutated. There are a few old-style comic cons left with most being hybrids of pop culture events encompassing anything from cosplayers to wrestling as well as comics to ones which just have the words ‘comic con’ in their name to make people think it’s something like San Diego Comic Con they’ve seen online, but in reality, it’s just a load of props from films from the 80s and 90s with the odd actor from that time making a few quid in their retirement.

To make it clearer let me use the example of Scotland as that’s where I am for now. There’s four main organisers of cons in Scotland. Acme and BGCP are Scottish based, so independent of large funding streams. They organise shows in Glasgow, Dundee, Edinburgh and around Scotland. These follow the mix of comics, pop culture and are widespread in their reach but still hold an element of comics there. Then there’s Showmasters who throw in a token comics presence to justify the word ‘comic’ in their marketing, and lastly there’s Monopoly Events who don’t feature comics or anyone from the industry and are very firmly using the term comic con to make it sound like it’s related to a big US event when in fact, it isn’t.

I know of other events across the UK where actors from comic-related TV & films were billed as guests while people who worked on the comics or even created the characters are ignored by organisers. Then there’s an issue with illiteracy in regards to reading comics as people just haven’t been brought up reading or have only read manga so struggle with comics from the rest of the world. Times are good. Except things are coming to an end as the bubble begins to burst.

We’ve enjoyed good times in the world of comics since really, 2010 when the effect of the MCU was clear in bringing new people and events into the industry as well as bringing back former collectors who may have sold their collections when younger. But we’re in difficult financial times for many people & also too many comic cons look and feel the same, regardless of organiser. Marvel are heading into a deep rut where people no longer have the same excitement for the films and characters overall (with a few exceptions), while DC are moving into a new start under James Gunn which won’t be along til 2025 & realistically we won’t know if it’s really affecting the culture til 2026/7. As for the comics which drove these films there’s massive issues but that’s for another blog.

Culture evolves and changes. People move to the Next Big Thing not to mention that we’re living in a culturally stagnant time right now which makes people hungry for new things. Sure, the nostalgia market will carry on & the better conventions will carry on too but there’s too many poor ones who’ve cashed in quickly that will go down in the next few years as times get harder & people tire, or become pissed off, with some current cons. People aren’t going to be be foinf to cons to see celebrities & be ripped off for autographs or buy some overpriced at with a Bat-symbol on it, or do anything that reduces what is for many, a great day out. Those types of shows will die, and the ones that have no roots or love of comics will either not last or try hard to show they have something to do with comics at a far too late stage. By the end of the decade things will have changed and the best cons will still be around after the industry resets.

As for comics and the direct market, that’s another blog coming very, very soon…

Disabled people could do with your solidarity

The Tories are intent on making the lives of disabled people hell in what is their last year of power before Labour (We assume) gain power, and even then the worry is that a weak Labour Party committed to following on some of the worst policies of the Tories will make disabled people’s lives hell. Right now we as disabled people are under attack after years of successive governments using disabled people as scapegoats for larger problems and to deflect from their own bad management.

There was a protest in Westminster from disabled people the other night and this was it.

We live in an age where people protest at the drop of a hat knowing barely any details or complexity of a situation beyond maybe a TikTok video. Causes draw tens of thousands yet for disabled people we’re lucky to get a few hundred if that. Now a lot of disabled people can’t protest as many are amongst the most vulnerable in society and those who do and allies are entirely welcome but we don’t get the same as others for several reasons I assume.

To put it simply it isn’t as trendy or glamourous as others. There’s no snappy slogans. There’s no way to mask the messy complexity of disabled people’s lives. It also involves dealing with a harsh reality that you yourself might become disabled and you don’t want to confront that for yourself so it’s easier to Tweet something or say you’re some sort of vague ‘ally’ without doing anything to help.

The fact is the next year is going to be a hard one. Many disabled people aren’t going to survive it and its all avoidable so really, people need help now. Actual real help and solidarity and not words or even worse, apathy.

Alan Moore’s interview for Book Week Scotland 2023

Alan Moore has just turned 70 and for the majority of his career he’s written (and sometimes drawn) comics, but now he’s left that medium behind him for the world of novels and short stories. So far he’s released a few books with Illuminations being his latest and very good it is too.

For this year’s Book Week in Scotland he sat down with Heather Parry to have a very good discussion about his latest book and his forthcoming works, including the long-discussed Long London series. It’s a great discussion and worth an hour of your time.

Godzilla is 70

I still find it remarkable that Godzilla is so appreciated these days when for a long time (outwith of Japan of course) it looked like the only people that liked Godzilla films were sad fanboys like myself.

Anyhow, here’s the rather glorious short film Godzilla versus Jet Jaguar (you don’t need to understand any dialogue as really, who the hell sees a Godzilla film for that?), and of course come December I’ll be down the front for Godzilla Minus One. It is a good time to be a sad fanboy like me…

It happened to me…

Many years ago I lived in Leicester. It was a city full of good people but overall the city was rundown, smallish in attitude and size but it was a decent place to live but this was back in the 90s before it became a giant student playground. In the late 90s I went out with a nurse and she worked in a home for sick kids. I’m being vague for obvious reasons that’ll come clear.

This nursing home was partly an old Victorian building with a newer part built on the side which replaced some older buildings and it was in this section where the kitchens were based, and it’s here where people would see ghosts, hear noises and generally end up being scared shitless at night especially. I only got told this second hand & being a good Fortean Times reader I was instantly sceptical but at the same time, curious but it wasn’t til Christmas that I experienced it for myself.

There was a Christmas party at the home that was open to parents as well as partners of staff so as there was free booze available I went with my partner to enjoy it. After a few bottles of wine, I was taken to the kitchen area where the lights were turned off & it turned into somewhere I really didn’t want to be which is unlike me as I normally love being in a kitchen. The place was much, much colder than the rest of the building which was warm even if it was one of those buildings that had horrible cold-looking corridors everywhere. This was a large care home kitchen with pots and pans everywhere. At the back was a big walk-in freezer firmly locked shut but what got our attention while walking into the kitchen was a sound like the door being slammed shut. This is the point where I started bricking it.

The place was freezing, it felt like someone was staring at us when were in there and one of the nurses there refused to go in that night because of the slamming door, and the fact she’d had similar experiences herself when working. I don’t blame her as the 15 or so minutes in there were terrifying with things shifting & a feeling like you’re being watched. It was a bad, bad feeling everyone generally got which was enough after quarter of an hour to get out of there and head back to the warm where the drink and mince pies were.

At the end of the night, we booked a taxi home and to this day I still have shivers going up my spine when I’m in hospitals, especially in a hospital corridor alone. I never checked the history of the place which in those days wasn’t an easy thing to do, but Leicester is an old city and who knows what was there at some point in history?

A few words about Pete Doherty: Who Killed My Son?

First of all, I have to say the punctuation in the title of this Channel 4 documentary about the killing of Mark Blanco and Pete Doherty’s involvement on the night he died is impressive in what it suggests. Secondly, the film was a shocking outline of what is clearly a case where a young man’s death has never been suitably resolved, which isn’t to say Pete Doherty killed Blanco but he certainly has a lot of unanswered questions he’s never been held to account for in a court.

On the 4th December 2006, Mark Blanco, a young actor went to a party in an East London flat where musician Pete Doherty was in attendance with his minder, Johnny Headlock as well as the tenant of the flat, Paul Roundhill. There were also three women there & the flat was a well-known crack den where people could buy drugs from Roundhill and of course, use them on the premises. That night Blanco died in mysterious circumstances with Doherty fleeing the scene. There’s a concise timeline and details of the case at the Justice For Mark Blanco website run by his mother Sheila Blanco.

For nearly 20 years Sheila Blanco has been trying to get some justice for her son. A few times since 2006 this has been picked up by various publications or the likes of Newsnight, but it’s never really gained much traction outwith a relatively small number of people. That’s changed now thanks to this Channel 4 film which came off the back of last week’s Russell Brand documentary & the wave of reflection of the culture of the 2000s in those post 9/11 years but pre social media days when everything was up in the air.

The case would have probably vanished into the depths of the internet but a crucial bit of evidence exists in the form of CCTV footage showing Mark’s death. Be warned if you’ve not seen it as it’s a shocking bit of footage.

The woman fleeing with Doherty is Kate Russell-Pavier, then 19 years old and from a wealthy, privileged background just like a lot of people in this scene were at the time. She’s another person who hasn’t seen the inside of a courtroom to answer questions about what happened or been held accountable for fleeing the scene of a crime. Certainly, the three women there on the night have all said that Roundhill, Headlock and Doherty went outside the flat with Blanco however they also said Blanco was incredibly drunk even though he only had around the equivalent of four pints in his system.

The Justice For Mark website is an extraordinary resource, especially the case facts page which has loads of details that you can’t fit into a 60-minute documentary. There is a weight of evidence to reopen the case & hold a proper investigation rather than have this court of public opinion where nothing is solved and Blanco never finds justice. Doherty’s enjoyed a few decades of fame since the death & has avoided any hard questioning on the matter as I assume a lawyer has told him to do so but he’s never seen the inside of a courtroom to answer questions about Mark Blanco’s death and I think it is time he did, if only to give Sheila Blanco some closure on this hopefully.