Rolling Comic Books 2020 Visions

Was caught unaware of the new Forbidden Planet Glasgow. To start with I was dismayed by sheer quantity of merchandise and more of the bloody Funkopop but as I was leaving, I realized there is an upstairs (exclusive Frank Quitely art created for the stairway?) and there's more of everything and some new stuff the never had. More prose books than they've had in years (admittedly a lot of it looks like old stock), so I was quite impressed overall. Hope this goes well.

Funkopops are everywhere and are the most loathsome things.

They recently opened a huge retail store in Hollywood: https://www.funko.com/hollywood-1

Funkopops are everywhere and are the most loathsome things.

OTM, just fucking hideous.

The funkopops and other merch are, needless to say, what keeps Forbidden Planet Glasgow afloat. Certainly not comics or graphic novels. If and when the funkopops craze dies away, I imagine a number of comic shops will be in pretty dire straits financially.

It's nice to have more space to browse in Forbidden Planet Glasgow - the old Buchanan Street shop was a no-go zone on a Saturday, it got so crowded - but their new back issue section is rubbish. Poor selection and high prices.

tbf I avoid the Forbbiden Planet in London because it mostly feels like a shop for geek culture merchandise, stick to Orbital and Gosh which seem to be keeping afloat (knock on wood)

I suspect they do keep some shops afloat, but if that is what it takes, let the industry die.

Comic shops have had to rely on this kind of merchandise to stay float for decades, whether it's collectible card games or beautifully detailed busts of questionable taste. I'm fine with it. GameStop/ThinkGeek occupies a lot of that market, and modern chains like Newbury Comics and FP make it something like 95% of the store.
(Though I do kind of want to let the industry die to kill its ridiculous ordering system.)

funko pops are the backing currency of comics stores, much like petroleum underpins the petrodollar

These vast seas of inert, blankfaced fuckwit things, huge pockets of landfill in waiting.

but enough about the current ruling class, let's talk funko pops

lol

i dunno who at marvel thought that 2020 was the perfect time to introduce a character called 'brittania' (not 'britannia' for some reason) draped in the union jack as part of something called 'the union' but i suspect it's not gonna be entirely well-received on this side of the pond

They wanted her to give them heroes. Meet Brittania in "The Union" #1, coming in May. #MarvelComics pic.twitter.com/EFpW956OBH

— Marvel Entertainment (@Marvel) February 18, 2020

Last year, the main comic book mart in London gave over a large part of its floorspace to funko pop dealers - they drew an almost completely different crowd from the usual smelly old comic book fans - much younger, many more female fans. So I think there is the possibility of using these (basically harmless if useless) model toys to broaden and grow the comics audience a little bit; not sure most comic book stores would know how to go about this tho.

It's not entirely clear most comic book stores would want to!

dunno who at marvel thought that 2020 was the perfect time to introduce a character called 'brittania' (not 'britannia' for some reason) draped in the union jack as part of something called 'the union' but i suspect it's not gonna be entirely well-received on this side of the pond

dunno if he created the characters but this series is written by Paul Grist

I mean, Captain Britain is already a thing in Marvel, and the team will also feature, er, Union Jack.

Debuting in a five-part series spinning out of the forthcoming Empyre storyline, The Union teams Union Jack — a hero who first appeared in 1976’s The Invaders No. 21 — with four all-new characters, each one representing different countries in the U.K.: Snakes from Northern Ireland, Kelpie from Scotland, The Choir from Wales and team leader Britannia.

So yeah I'm going with Britannia as the least worrying of these, particularly if she's darker without the light source that appears to be coming from her cleavage.

hmm, maybe it deserves more benefit of the doubt then, but either way someone at marvel marketing needs a starter guide to uk politics xp

'the choir' from wales is cracking me up tbh, maybe this will be good after all

I'd argue investing more in manga produces the same result. Customers in Gosh and Orbital (and the Gosh reading group!) pretty young and diverse.

Not that I begrudge comic stores stocking some of those funkos.

I think Snakes might actually be a clatter of snakes in a trenchcoat!

snakes in a trenchcoat / two bits

yeah I'm going with Britannia as the least worrying

call her by her name

Her name's Britannia.

It's ok. I know how it's spelt.

— paul grist (@mistergrist) February 18, 2020

feel we should honour and respect the intent of the legal author itt

well, there it is

Why have Marvel created a UVF mural? https://t.co/710LwfR30l

— Jamie (@jamieplsstop) February 20, 2020

I hope the funkopop owners and their inheritors believe in recycling instead of binning when the time comes to decide.
One of the greatest comic shop successes had to be one with the least craft.

Are all big manga successes ones with anime versions? Are some fans reluctant to read unless there is a version to watch?

For all the stereotype of geek culture being for loners I think there might even be too much emphasis on community and sharing because nobody seems to want to try anything unless there is versions in different mediums, merchandise and a busy fanbase ready to talk to you. Surely all the crap like funkopop is just to show other people your bedroom and all the stuff you like?

Just imagine book and music stores being half merchandise. Funkopop of bands and writers you cant even find in the store anymore.

large US chain Barnes & Noble is about 1/4 random merch like that and fancy notebooks!

... and record megastore Amoeba Music is basically half merchandise these days!

(well, maybe 1/3)

I’m not sure what it’s like in 2020, but five years ago the physical store chain that sold the most vinyl records in the US was Urban Outfitters, which is a clothing/miscellaneous junk chain. Most records sold overall was Amazon.

I wouldn’t be surprised if B&N moved more graphic novels and trade paperback collections of comics than local comic shops in a lot of areas

Funko Pops are easily found in all chain bookstores

Great fucking walls of the things.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Gq3qVqJL10
Fun!

Diamond not shipping anything after 4/1. Death of the direct market?

Hah! The way we live now - how will covid-19 change us?

I am gonna be really sad if my local shop goes under, I was already a patreon patron :(

Marvel already made a Heroes-World-style attempt to wipe out the DM last week, by offering enormous pandemic discounts to (in functional effect) online mail-order retailers

I should probably email my local shop and ask them what they want me to do... I'm sure they'll stay open as an eBay store as they did before they had a physical storefront, but I'll be sad if they end up closing down, even with their problems getting my holds every week.

I told my store (Mega CIty in Camden) I'd pick up and pay for everything when it's safe in a few months, and offered to help if they had any £££ issues in the meantime.

I assume it'll be Comixology-only for a while, then nothing at all. Who knows? I wish there was a way to buy online editions through my local store.

Marvel already made a Heroes-World-style attempt to wipe out the DM last week, by offering enormous pandemic discounts to (in functional effect) online mail-order retailers

sic, how would discounts for retailers cause the DM to collapse? Because the discounts will stop if/when physical comic shops re-open? Because the discounts are in effect a loan that will leave retailers forever in debt to Marvel? Because by offering incentives that other comic companies can't match Marvel hoped to secure a bigger slice of a rapidly shrinking market?

By giving a huge (supposed) boost to all retailers at the exact moment when brick-and-mortar shops are taking the biggest customer-based hit in the 50-year history of the market, and days before many of them are directly ordered to stop trading, it's effectively giving a massive advantage to online sellers at the expense of those who have actually done hand-selling, promotion, marketing etc for years and decades.

forever in debt to Marvel... secure a bigger slice of a rapidly shrinking market

These too, especially the latter, and in the specific way they did with Heroes World: they outright prefer a retail landscape that a) they control all the terms of, and b) does not offer non-Marvel product at all.

are there online sellers of note of the monthly titles that aren't also brick and mortar stores?

"buyer's club"-like enterprises and eBay-focused folks, yes. but it also provides an incentive for owners who do both to lay off staff, disenfranchise customers with catholic or non-Marvel-focused tastes, and switch strictly to selling corporate product online, at the expense of stores who have spent careers directing their energy into serving the best interests of customers and the creative field alike.

if the only stores that survive are doing subscription and flipping tulips, the actual market no longer exists.

catholic tastes? huh?

https://wompampsupport.azureedge.net/fetchimage?siteId=7575&v=2&jpgQuality=100&width=700&url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.kym-cdn.com%2Fentries%2Ficons%2Ffacebook%2F000%2F022%2F524%2Ftumblr_o16n2kBlpX1ta3qyvo1_1280.jpg

catholic tastes? huh?

...? The narrowing of margins, the rise of spined comics and then destruction of the international bookstore market (and concomitant shifting the business model of the '80s-surviving publishers), and the aging of the superhero customer have all been major factors in increasing one-on-one festival sales as a proportion of artist's sales, but walking into a shop is still the best method for a reader to assess and then purchase author-driven comics.

ah ok. sorry, i've actually never heard the term catholic (little c) used before and just looked it up

The Bissette Godzilla comic also includes a pin-up page by Alan Moore

best thing about pinups is you don't have to scroll

steady

That pinup page looks crap on my knackered ipad, to whom should I complain?

Scans_Daily Artisanal Lithography

Been looking looking at Michael Deforge and Beatrix Urkowitz for the first time in years and I'm more impressed now than I was back then, so much good design. I remember the name Lale Westvind but jeezhus fookin' christ, some of this is amazing
https://www.instagram.com/lalewestvind/
There's a compilation book out in november called Grand Electric Thought Power Mother!

Did anyone ever read any Loic Locatelli books? It slightly annoys me that some of his characters look jarringly more manga than others but he's really good at drawing and design. Persephone and Pocahontas are both in english.

Loving the Tardi/Manchette collection, hard boiled Paris noir with a background hum of radical politics.

Also read Tom King's Mister Miracle, kinda dumb Vertigo fan fiction? Felt like a very surface level grappling with philosophy, and the winks to Kirby pretty cheap. But I'll admit I'm biased against ex-CIA agents.

Forgive some film talk for the subject matter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7MpVdZ9SXU

Tokiwa: The Manga Apartment - This lovingly wallows in sentimental nostalgia for 50s japan and the manga artists of the time who either worked in this apartment or passed through it. Period music, shots focused perhaps more on the settings than the characters, manga authors huddled together discussing their successes, insecurities, failures and the audience and business, and they sumo wrestle in their garden in one scene.

I had heard this was mostly a biopic of Hiroo Terada (he did baseball manga) but it's actually more spread out than that. Terada is quite happy being a slightly old fashioned storyteller for kids, Shotaro Ishinomori (Kamen Rider, Super Sentai) despairs and hasn't yet found his thing yet (his sister is a prominent character), Hideko Mizuno seems to have been the only woman there but didn't stay long term, Tezuka leaves the place quite early and quickly becomes an important figure, babies cry in the presence of Tsuge, Suzuki leaves for animation, Fujimoto's mother asks why everyone wears berets.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokiwa-s%C5%8D

That looks really cool, thanks!

I initially found the nostalgia too gooey but eventually it won me over. I don't know how it has managed to stay so under the radar, I first heard about it when the star Masahiro Motoki was being discussed in the Tsukamoto book by Tom Mes.

http://www.magnetic-press.com/toppi/
Didn't know this series was happening. Publisher is new to me.

I believe they work as lion forge

Lion Forge bought Magnetic in 2016 (and Oni last year)

did not know about Oni!

any idea where their money comes from?

the owner's dad is the 745th richest man in the US, so it's anyone's guess rly


* (nb: second-richest black man)

huh, wild (some pun intended)

We never expected this to become a trend, but David Steward II is now the third son of a billionaire to launch his own animation studio, following in the footsteps of Travis Knight’s Laika and David Ellison’s Skydance Animation.

buy all the cinemas and make them $2 entry

the laika story is a huge bummer btw
https://priceonomics.com/how-the-father-of-claymation-lost-his-company/

Does anyone else remember a comic set in a graveyard or castle with superhero-esque characters, drawn in a Kirby style, probably from within the last decade and maybe from Image?

Re: Corben's death in the obituary thread. I think his last appearance in Heavy Metal should have been on the shelves by now, thankfully he got that finished. I gave up on the serialization and am waiting for the collected edition.
Dimwood was to be his next thing, his facebook says that he was working on the last page a while ago.
https://muuta.net/wp/dimwood/

He always experimented with animation and put them online occasionally (but nothing ever stays up for long on his official site) there's a video here of some recent works
https://www.facebook.com/Corben-Studios-Inc-193240777737358/

I heard several years ago that Fantagraphics offered to print his underground era work but Corben already had plans for that stuff.

I would have loved to read Martin Skidmore on Corben :/

My favorites by him are probably the second Den book (really shows off his skills and it's the most disturbing thing he ever did, probably), his House On The Borderland adaptation, some of the Warren comics (most of which is in Creepy Present Richard Corben), and the graphic novel length House Of Usher. I've heard Bloodstar is very good but I think I never got that because there are two versions and maybe it was too expensive. There's a ton of stuff that hasn't been printed in decades and his family is intent on keeping his works out there, so fingers crossed, I would buy a bunch of this stuff a second time but there's lots of odds and ends I never got, thankfully a great deal of his work was creator owned.

Just discovered this artist, really amazing but none of her comics in english yet
https://www.instagram.com/tamia.baudouin/
Claire Wendling has been around much longer, I think Lights Of The Amalou is her only graphic novel in english but there's lots of sketchbooks and some covers for Marvel and DC. I think her most recent drawings look like her best, some of it quite NSFW. I discovered her from youtube interviews but I probably seen her american comic covers when they came out.
https://www.instagram.com/claire.wendling/

Corben's Hulk was fun! I don't know any other artist whose weird approach to anatomy stayed so weird for so long.

I think he never stopped doing life drawing but when he got cartoonier it was this odd combination of long and short features.

yeah, the late era marvel and dc cartoony stuff could get mannered and sloppy.
no disrespect though! he was formative for me!

By cartoonist/illustrator standards, I don't think that was ever a real problem for him. It annoys and worries me how easily so many amazingly skilled drawers fall into cliche mannerisms, "overacting" and sameyness and I think he avoided that to a remarkable degree for someone who spent their life doing comics and illustration.

To focus on problem areas, I think he often struggled with smooth textures against rougher textures, he once said he makes his characters balder and shaved because "hair destroys form", I guess it's similar to when a lot of sculptors don't even bother trying eyelashes.

Although his writing and the writers he worked with were mostly very readable, I do wish he had some standout scripts because (unless my few unread Corben books surpass expectations) I wouldn't say he has any real must read books, but he had the skills to make one (true for so many great comic artists who never lucked out with a script).

if you're looking for "problem areas" I would point to the guy's consistent default body types: 0% body fat mega-schlonged double-jointed men and impossibly cantilevered gargantu-breasted and buttocked women, all sculpted from the same stippled putty. I loved him, I remember Fantagor being one of the first comics I ever saw, but he was undeniably working in a specifically pulpy milieu that came with certain limitations. But I hear you.

Everyone could use more body types but the women were one of the main draws for me and there actually was quite a bit of variety: the super muscled women, skeletal woman in Den, quite a lot of bald and balding women, lots of different faces but he seldom drew people with fine delicate facial features.

And quite a lot of grannies recently!

All his people looked made of plasticene

often they were

his distorto body types did often repeat over one phase in his career, but the stock shapes would change over time

(my impression based on reading a couple of things a decade, and glancing at a few more)

Much of this is NSFW but it shows a bunch of his models, including Gilbertson, who I think worked with him for maybe a decade. Love his Nosferatu pictures.
https://muuta.net/wp/miscs/photo-models/
https://muuta.net/wp/figure-gallery/
https://muuta.net/wp/articles/karen-gilbertson/

This is the Claire Wendling video I saw, there's way more of these with other artists, a few comics people but I think they're mostly concept artists. It's a fun series even when I'm not a fan of whoever is on and one of the hosts laughs at everything.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtfRoXTbbUc

those corben photo model images produce some of the least corben looking corbens i've ever seen!

wendling is great btw

Have you read her books? The reviews of Amalou mostly said it was disjointed and confusing on a story level but I want to check it out sometime.

I haven't! This thread is the first time I've heard of her!

I seen another interview with her and she said she was done with comics (or at least interiors) because she got tired of it and felt trapped, hasn't done comics stories since 2002.