Chabon's Eisner Keynote

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http://www.comic-con.org/Pages/CCIEisner04Chabon.html

discuss.

― Huck, Tuesday, 3 August 2004 14:11 (twenty-one years ago)

The 'where are the real kids comics?' clarion call is one that I remember reading loads in the 90s. It's a good point - the basic problem is the shift in distribution methods that cut off newstand sales. I like Chabon's unfashionable but probably correct ideas for what 'kids comics' would actually MEAN i.e. lots of repetition.

I also like what he's groping towards in the built-up universe section, i.e. a new/old reformulation of the idea of Continuity which would include the gradual accretion of kewl stuff in a universe (which kids luv) but not necessarily include having to know what happened 50 issues ago (which is totally unfair on kids).

That said when I was a kid I liked continuity but only inasmuch as the old stuff was blatantly referenced and explained i.e. the text box saying "*FF 234 - Bob" or whatever. This is now seen as a limiting and uncool way of handling continuity and the 'easter egg' technique (i.e. if you get it you get it) is preferred BUT when that spills out and runs the storylines it suXXors.

― Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 20:32 (twenty-one years ago)

I think there's a problem of price that Chabon doesn't address and can't really answer, too -- comics have never recovered from the sudden and drastic increase in paper prices, and I can't see how they will any time soon. When I was a ten year old in the mid-80s, I could buy five comics a week without depleting the entirety of my allowance -- for a kid to be able to do that now, he'd have to get at least $10 a week, and ... do they? When they're that young, young enough that their allowance isn't going towards dates or gas or drugs or beer?

They didn't when I was paying allowances, but granted, that was a few years ago now.

I didn't have video games or computer games competing quite so strongly for my dollar, either: they were there, but computer games didn't come out with the fanfare they do now (I don't remember how much they cost, not even to guess) and Atari games were only a little more expensive than a handful of comics.

And I didn't have the internet, or 6 broadcast networks and a few dozen cable ones, or 24-7 cartoon channels. I'm not at all sure I would have bought comic books more than once in awhile if I'd had Cartoon Network 20 years ago.

I sympathize with the "get the kids back" sentiments and all, I'm just not sure they're a) anything more than sentiments or b) the route to saving the industry.

― Tep (ktepi), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 20:47 (twenty-one years ago)

(There's the other hard-to-address problem as well: I don't know about the rest of you, but I wasn't introduced to comics by spending money on them. I'd read hand-me-downs from neighbors for years, for as long as I'd been reading, before I bought one, or even had one bought for me. It's too late to get kids that way again: a generation got skipped, and those hand-me-downs aren't prevalent enough. Figuring out how to get kids to start reading comics cold -- even with giveaways, which are much different from "hey kid, I'm your cool older neighbor, here are some things I liked, be cool like me and read them" -- is arguably a very different endeavor than figuring out how to make comics more like the ones kids used to read.)

― Tep (ktepi), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 20:53 (twenty-one years ago)

Yeah, I still haven't figured out how I read so many comics as a kid when I don't remember actually buying any. Actually, I probably didn't read that many, but everything I did get a hold of (assorted trades as gifts and library loans, reading comics at friends' houses, etc.) made a big impression.

― Jordan (Jordan), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 21:02 (twenty-one years ago)

I was saying that about losing kids in the '80s - there wasn't anything much to bridge the gap between Disney and the mainline superhero stuff, and that was aimed at a rather older audience than has been the case even at Marvel in the '60s, let alone DC or earlier superhero comics. And the highest profile thing then, as now maybe, was the X-Men. I started reading them again in the late '80s after a few years away. Marvel sent me everything free, so I read all the mainstream superhero things every month, and I had read pretty much every X-comic from the very start until that gap of a few years, and I think I'm a pretty intelligent reader, and after six months I was still hopelessly confused as to what was going on. This seemed a very bad sign. Add in the increased competition and prices, and I'm not at all surprised that my predictions of a drastically shrunken market have come true.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 21:08 (twenty-one years ago)

When they're that young, young enough that their allowance isn't going towards dates or gas or drugs or beer?

This should be the new motto for the industry: "At least comics aren't premarital sex or drugs!"

(Now back to your serious discussion.)

― Jimmy Carter, History's Greatest Monster (Leee), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 21:21 (twenty-one years ago)

When I worked at the bookstore, only kids bought comics from the spinner, and the only ones I remember them buying were Simpsons and Star Wars comics. My ex-colleagues say that the various manga digest books sell extremely well these days as well.

― Jordan (Jordan), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 21:36 (twenty-one years ago)

The chain bookstore here just doubled the size of its manga section -- it's now twice as big as the entirety of the science fiction/fantasy/horror/American comics/RPGs section used to be -- but I had chalked that up to this being a college town.

― Tep (ktepi), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 21:40 (twenty-one years ago)

For a very brief moment, my local Borders had the manga shelf (2-sided!) out in a central traffic area, w/ signs & everything. They've done some rejiggering, but the Comic area is probably 60% manga (or maybe they've just separated the manga from all the non-manga taint; I can't recall). That shit's hot AND economical, too - Shonen Jump for only $5!

― David R. (popshots75`), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 22:20 (twenty-one years ago)

Shonen Jump is almost always a good buy (although I haven't picked it up in a year, so I'm not positive what they're running now) -- when I had a subscription to it, I'd skip Shaman King and Dragonball every month, and it still felt worth the money.

Come to think of it, I first found Shonen Jump not at the comic store but at the all-night pharmacy down the street from my old apartment: they carried Shonen Jump and Wizard but no American comics.

― Tep (ktepi), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 22:32 (twenty-one years ago)

Ye olde comics blogosphere is ablaze with discussion on this subject. I've got a bit (as well as a link to a fairly amusing thread on the issue) over on my blog if you want to check it out.

highway62.blogspot.com

Basically, everything about the direct market is at fault. And oh yeah, kids like manga because it's cool and cheap and there's so much second-rate anime on TV now, it's awfully damn familiar (unlike 90% of the Big Two's output...)

― Matt Maxwell (Matt M.), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 22:56 (twenty-one years ago)

Huh, yeah, although I never think of it this way, it probably isn't coincidence that my two favorite comics as a kid were Batman (the Adam West TV show was on mornings or weekends depending on how old I was; the Casey Kasem doing the voice of Robin cartoon was on Saturdays) and Spider-Man (the live action series/movies were often on weekends on the local independent; the 1960s cartoon was on weekdays; and Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends was far and away my favorite Saturday morning cartoon).

― Tep (ktepi), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 23:01 (twenty-one years ago)

Funny thing is that cartoons weren't my entree into comics. The comics themselves were. I always favored the wacko non-superhero stuff when I was just a little punk buying comics at the 7-11. It wasn't until junior high when a friend of mine turned me onto X-Men that I started buying superhero stuff. Well that and John Byrne illustrating the Fantastic Four.

But there also wasn't the same prevalence/variety of various flavors of cartoon culture available when I was a kid, compared to what's out there now. When I was a kid, you practically wet yourself if you could get a hold of some Battle of the Planets or Amazing 3 or some such. And literally nobody in the US knew what manga was or that there were even comics made outside the US...

Those filmation takes on the DC superheroes are fucking ace, too.

― Matt Maxwell (Matt M.), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 23:59 (twenty-one years ago)

I got into comics, geez, I don't know, partly from the fact that there was a giant box of them at my grandparents' farm that my uncles had left behind and I had no cousins my age. Partly because my dad was and is a crazy reader who made bi-weekly trips to a local used bookstore that had an amazing used comics section.

And then, maybe it was KFC, was giving away Super Powers action figures with buckets of chicken and my hippie parents didn't dig fast food, so I had to wait until my grandmother was babysitting us and she wound up getting a Green Lantern action figure and I had no idea who the hell that was.

So, it was a mystery to solve!

― Huck, Thursday, 5 August 2004 13:41 (twenty-one years ago)

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