Rolling Comic Books 2020 Visions

oh lol

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

No shipment this week for the UK, I just learned. And understand that your 'after' there might actually be 'on'?

Half-price sale on Fantagraphics gift coupons (Fantabucks) for the next two days. All their books for the next season have been stuck in China for months already, so you can hold onto the credit or dig through the catalogue.

I should amend my original breaking story, as I understand that Diamond will still be shipping warehoused material, just nothing newly-published.

I'll say it right now, "Stephen Bissette has sent you a friend request" is not something I thought I'd ever read.

Cool. Is he mostly doing film journalism these days or still working on his dinosaur comics?

Oh yeah, that reminds me that I was pleasantly surprised to see his pieces in one of the genre rags (Screem? Monster!?) I was picking up for a while.

Bissette say hi to me

Bissette very publicly quit his dinosaur comics, and the comics industry altogether, in 1999 when Diamond raised their reorder threshold once their monopoly was established (after Marvel's previous Heroes-World-style attempt to wipe out the DM). Video Watchdog closed in 2017, but I don't think he'd been writing regularly for it for a long time - he's been a full-time lecturer at CCS for fifteen years.

He does have a 700-page hardcover monograph on The Brood out next month in the UK, though.

Speaking of the major parts of it attempting to wipe out the DM, apparently AT&T is going to continue releasing weekly comics digitally through the pandemic.

The monograph is out now, or at least mine is because I blew through it over the weekend and is why we are now friends.

It's amazingly wide-ranging (I suppose unsurprisingly given the length) and looks at most of the takes on the film in real depth and breadth, with a real insight into things I never knew about the Canadian film industry.

"DC Comics has also announced they are looking into ways of getting single issue comic books into stores without using Diamond Distribution." according to Charles LePage's ComicsList.

Bissette on Cronenberg? Cool!

I thought that Bissette was still working on Tyrant (his dinosaur thing) as a very long term project that wouldn't be finished for years. Saw him talk about it on his blog, but can't be certain that was it. It was in a semi-rant about why he wasn't willing to collaborate with new comic writers he didn't know, that he and many other comic artists have their own comics they want to do; for these pitching writers not to assume that comic artists are just sitting on their hands because they haven't had steady comics coming out.

as a very long term project that wouldn't be finished for years. Saw him talk about it on his blog

Sure, but he hasn't even blogged about sketches or prints for sale since the end of 2013, let alone discussed narrative work* - drawing a page or two a year, and needing to redraw the 80-odd published pages from 1995 before re-publication due to changes in scientific consensus, puts "for years" into perspective, on top of how many of them ago he wrote that.

*(I went to the pub w/ him after sitting in on one of his first-year classes that October, and tsked about his long- and medium-form blogging all having moved to Facebook: at the time he said it was because student-aged kids mediated all their internet through Facebook, so it was the only way to engage them.)

https://www.sothebys.com/en/series/dc-complete-the-ian-levine-collection

I4n L3v1n3 is selling his complete DC Collection as a single lot. It's not an exaggeration to claim this might be the biggest comics auction of all time.

wow. i wonder what the reserve is.

too many comics imo

gonna just stack em on my coffee table as I make my way through reading em all

love that it's a reading collection and not slabbed at all

Speaking of the major parts of it attempting to wipe out the DM

Diamond has stopped paying publishers.

what do people make of this

https://bleedingcool.com/comics/today-the-comic-shops-direct-market-was-saved/

It seems like it might be the best option to allow business to continue as close to normal as possible, but I also don't really know how many smaller publishers still have yet to embrace digital.

Pretty sure in the longer term, Diamond is gonna need to get the boot (or have its monopoly broken, at the very least). One week into this and they're already unable to pay their vendors. The corporate entities behind the Big Two are almost certainly gonna be asking why the entire business model rests on the back of an entity with (apparently) no liquidity whatsoever.

"Our Last, Best Hope for a Piece"?

why the entire business model rests on the back of an entity with (apparently) no liquidity whatsoever.

May or may not be relevant: Geppi himself has apparently been bleeding money like an artery was cut for the last 14 years

Slightly off-topic (haven't finished the video but the occasion is a prose horror anthology about a fictional Hammer/Amicus-esque film studio) but a longish interview with Bissette seems appropriate enough
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4NwwskeW3E

He was great on Joe Dante's podcast!

lol, he really needed three episodes on that

Fantagraphics are delaying the digital release of many of their new books, in order to give surviving retailers a better chance of selling them.

(While for customers on lockdown, they've also dropped prices on a lot of digital back catalogue through April 23rd, and are doing free shipping on direct orders in the US, with code SHUTIN.)



In pvmic, I4n L3vine is screaming at ppl on the internet to GET YOUR FACTS STRAIGHT, as he sold his collection years ago and it's that buyer who's auctioning it now. (iirc, aimn, he was so disgusted by the New 52 that he didn't want to have DC comics around any more.)

iirc, aimn, he was so disgusted by the New 52 that he didn't want to have DC comics around any more

LOL — tough, but fair.

https://bleedingcool.com/comics/milo-manara-draws-women-very-differently-in-recent-weeks/

Manara's new direction is a thing.

I was anticipating different types of women from his usual but only the clothes has changed really.

^

I’ll never forgive Marvel for letting him do that Spider-Woman variant cover. “Click” my nutz

I bet they tried really hard to stop him

Pretty low on the list of Marvel's crimes.

Top of the list for me though.

Why? Especially given they've treated people horribly, the copyright extensions, they're part of that hegemony noted in that Disney thread and pump out piles of shit constantly and their shitey films.

I'm not a fan of Manara but he's head and shoulders above most of their artist stable.

Because I’m a fan of Spider-Woman, and didn’t appreciate seeing her turned into Butt Crack Chick (it’s not even a good drawing). I’ll leave those other fights to others, we all have our own emotional investments.

Yeah, all those "different" pictures of women still all have the single same face he knows how to draw, it just has a mask on it sometimes.

Molly Crabapple presented a sex in comics documentary which was quite good and I was surprised she criticized him for drawing the same girl with a different wig. She liked him overall.

Frazetta and Jack Kamen are the artists I liked most guilty of this. I think that most artists who are interested in having a good looking cast struggle with deviating from the same face/body type. Some people call it sameface syndrome. What a lot of artists do are almost emoticon faces. Regardless of using a small number of models, Dante Gabriel Rossetti didn't have much range in this regard but he's still great.

Doesn't help if you work by comics deadlines, even if it's more lax european deadlines. Nowadays I'm kind of amazed that comic artists on regular monthly or weekly deadlines manage to be even pretty weak or mediocre. A lot of great artists would be completely terrible under those deadlines.

I was surprised she criticized him for drawing the same girl with a different wig.

― Robert Adam Gilmour,Wednesday, April 15, 2020 9:25 PM

Surprised because I didnt expect a documentary to make these kind of judgements about people they were interviewing.

High recommendation for this longass bagel high school story on instagram, that’s been running all through lockdown (and still continues!)

https://www.instagram.com/p/B9xRzZNjpMJ/?igshid=s51cxebri9f5

My LCS got their March 25 order a couple days ago (over three weeks late). Bought some extra stuff on top my pull to give them a little support. Thinking about doing some mail orders for some other local shops too, but then I'm still conflicted about buying unessential stuff through the postal service.

If we're recommending Quarantine Comics I have to recommend this remarkably funny and gross storyline by Simon Hanselmann (Megg and Mogg?) that's been running every day

https://www.instagram.com/p/B9sB-C3hQ_X/?hl=en

(Unfortunately you'll have to do the crappy IG browsing to figure it out)

i've always had mixed feelings about Hanselmann but the COVID storyline is dead fucking on

ha, same. i wasn't really a believer until i started reading this

I think i've read everything they've ever written and it's always been sorta like, well i see what you're doing there but it's so often gross and sadistic for no other reason except you're having a good time drawing it but their moment is definitely now. it's honestly the most of-the-instant bit of art i've seen so far in this shitstorm.

Who needs excuses to be gross?

http://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/10/25/magazine/25gross2/25mag-25gross-t_CA1-jumbo.jpg

More Junji Ito books from Viz: Venus In The Blindspot in autumn and Remina in winter.