Are most comics not very good?

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I say this because while I have "discovered" several excellent titles over the last year, they seem to be a small fraction of the heaps of comics available in my local stores. And yet, whenever I take a chance on something that has not been recommended to me first, it is invariably a bit of a dud. Is there just a huge drop-off in quality after the showcase titles or I simply have bad instincts?

Also - HOW do these stores ever shift the mountains of crappy comics that turn up month after month? Poor trees!

― adam... (nordicskilla), Friday, 12 November 2004 16:31 (twenty-one years ago)

For awhile I was getting jaded by the comics I was reading. It was all fairly high-quality recommended stuff, and I was just like, "oh, more comics, hmmm." Then I read some current Claremont & Austin X-Men books that were lying around the house, and suddenly my eyes were opened and I wept with appreciative joy at how very good most of the comics I read are.

― Jordan (Jordan), Friday, 12 November 2004 16:35 (twenty-one years ago)

The ratio's no different than for books or music, really (I was going to add movies, but the number of movies playing in one place vs the number available, and etc., makes for a different cross-section for movie theaters than for bookstores). You'd have the same response, I'm willing to bet, to picking random books off the shelf, especially if we didn't have a coffee-table culture that passes book recommendations on by osmosis, and newspapers that keep tabs on the bestsellers, profile authors, etc.

So yeah, in other words, most of them either aren't good or aren't universal in appeal, but just as for everything else.

― Tep (ktepi), Friday, 12 November 2004 16:45 (twenty-one years ago)

Still, though, there have to be so many people who would love to write comics for the Big Two that I'm shocked at how bad some of the writers are.

― Jordan (Jordan), Friday, 12 November 2004 16:49 (twenty-one years ago)

I think it's easier to keep a job in comics than to get one -- John Byrne has written some of the worst stuff I've spent money on, in any medium, but he was also deservedly nominated for the ILC best-ofs. He will probably remain gainfully employed by comics publishers until he retires, even if he never writes a flagship title again.

That's part of it, I think. Another is the genre blindness -- in genre writing, you so often have the people who "just buy it for the ideas" and don't care if the characters are just finger puppets to demonstrate the ideas, with dialogue that wouldn't pass muster for an Ovaltine commercial; as long as there are enough "wow, that could really happen!" moments with the high-density aliens who live inside comets, or enough "oh wow whoa!" moments with the prophesied chosen one who'll lead his vaguely English country to victory against the vaguely demonic, it's all good.

In comics, the specifics are different there, of course, but a lot of readers are using criteria ILC (rightfully) doesn't.

― Tep (ktepi), Friday, 12 November 2004 16:54 (twenty-one years ago)

(One reason for the ease of keeping a job, of course: it shows you can write on time. I know three people who got their Big Shot In Comics and fucked it up because they couldn't write to a deadline.)

― Tep (ktepi), Friday, 12 November 2004 16:56 (twenty-one years ago)

Editors are funny like that.

― Huk-L, Friday, 12 November 2004 16:59 (twenty-one years ago)

That's the thing, at least one of them (I don't know about the other two) really thought it wasn't a big deal. Didn't drop everything to work on the project; didn't set aside specific time for it; got all excited the first couple days and worked on it in all his free time, and then put it aside "to work on it when he got around to it." (This was a paying assignment, mind you, not a sample.) He just figured that since he was the creative guy, the practical end of things could and would be shifted around him.

― Tep (ktepi), Friday, 12 November 2004 17:02 (twenty-one years ago)

I can post-rationalise all I like but deep down this is probably the #1 reason why I've never tried to write professionally (creatively or journalistically or whatever).

― Tom (Groke), Friday, 12 November 2004 18:03 (twenty-one years ago)

Meeting deadlines trumps big fat talent 9 times out of ten.

― Huk-L, Friday, 12 November 2004 18:04 (twenty-one years ago)

Why aren't you writing comics, Tep?

― Jordan (Jordan), Friday, 12 November 2004 18:09 (twenty-one years ago)

There seems to be a fair bit of tolerance of slow but hot artists, though.

― Tom (Groke), Friday, 12 November 2004 18:10 (twenty-one years ago)

True. Btw, when I read through the whole process that they go through in the most recent Powers trade (writer to artist to inker to letterer to editor and all that), I was pretty amazed that comic books make a monthly schedule at all.

― Jordan (Jordan), Friday, 12 November 2004 18:14 (twenty-one years ago)

Marvel has a sample from me right now, but I don't even know the odds of that leading to anything. Writing comics for me would be something to do for awhile, but I don't know how well I'd suit the format, in the long run (once I'd used up my "this would only work in comics" ideas).

But hey, any lurking editor who wants to hand me a title, I'm sure I'd get over that. Street Poet Ray! You are not forgotten!

― Tep (ktepi), Friday, 12 November 2004 18:55 (twenty-one years ago)

If you get in, Tep, remember me!!! I will gladly piggyback on the merits of others (and hope to have a really impressive body of work within the year, as my life begins to change by LEAPS and BOUNDS).

― Huk-L, Friday, 12 November 2004 18:56 (twenty-one years ago)

You could get a job at DC and we could collaborate on a crossover! That would be boss.

― Tep (ktepi), Friday, 12 November 2004 19:02 (twenty-one years ago)

I think Martin should spearhead an initiative to insert ILCers into the industry.

― Jordan (Jordan), Friday, 12 November 2004 19:05 (twenty-one years ago)

Embedded ILCers! Suddenly, many more giant scorpions on covers.

― Tep (ktepi), Friday, 12 November 2004 19:25 (twenty-one years ago)

And every cover is a superhero/"ward" double entendre.

― jocelyn (Jocelyn), Friday, 12 November 2004 21:13 (twenty-one years ago)

I am now going to have to pitch a sidekick for Man-Thing, clearly.

― Tep (ktepi), Friday, 12 November 2004 21:50 (twenty-one years ago)

Man-Thing sidekick = Boy-Hole surely?

― Raw Patrick (Raw Patrick), Friday, 12 November 2004 22:30 (twenty-one years ago)

All but the mighty Boy-Hole burns at the touch of the Man-Thing!

― Tep (ktepi), Friday, 12 November 2004 22:32 (twenty-one years ago)

Ha ha! It was worth delurking.

― Raw Patrick (Raw Patrick), Friday, 12 November 2004 22:37 (twenty-one years ago)

most comics are not very good, including many i love

do i give a fuck? not really

and yes, there are also many great ones

(way to sit on the fence)

(and yes, Tep shld be writing comics)

― H (Heruy), Saturday, 13 November 2004 00:06 (twenty-one years ago)

There seems to be a fair bit of tolerance of slow but hot artists, though.

I suppose people will tolerate chatacters looking wildly different from one story to the next more than they'll tolerate them acting/talking differently. There's no good reason for this, other than we read for the writing rather than the art.

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Sunday, 14 November 2004 17:29 (twenty-one years ago)

Hot artists can more easily afford to go those long periods without work, too (if you're slow and missing issues, you aren't being paid for those issues, after all -- even if people tolerated this in writers, the only ones who can afford to work that way are the ones who don't depend on comics as primary income: Kevin Smith, JMS, et al). That was the subject of much "what can you do about it" criticism in the 90s, when guys like Joe Mad would make more money on a single image licensed for T-shirts, lunchboxes, etc -- something they did in a weekend before going back to the Playstation -- than Kurt Busiek made on all four of his full-length comics that month.

― Tep (ktepi), Sunday, 14 November 2004 17:43 (twenty-one years ago)

Tep OTM. Artists get paid bank, even compared to hot writers.

― Matt Maxwell (Matt M.), Sunday, 14 November 2004 17:59 (twenty-one years ago)

Embedded ILCers! Suddenly, many more giant scorpions on covers.

Nightwing Christmas issues named "Dick Grayson as a Christmas Carol."

"Hellraiser: Curse of the Chickenbear."

Long-haired sidekicks named Ned.

― Christine 'Green Leafy Dragon' Indigo (cindigo), Sunday, 14 November 2004 22:47 (twenty-one years ago)

See, this I wouldn't mind, that last point. But why only a sidekick? ;-)

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 15 November 2004 04:25 (twenty-one years ago)

Because the sales of the Ned flagship title haven't been what they were.

― Jordan (Jordan), Monday, 15 November 2004 05:17 (twenty-one years ago)

Well CLEARLY if the tie-in album had been Cleft and Cloven we'd all be singing a different tune.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 15 November 2004 07:19 (twenty-one years ago)

I have snuck Tom Millar in to a superhero book, so in a sense, we have already begun our embedding. I should have made him do something Millarish instead of just dying, but I wasn't thinking ahead.

― Tep (ktepi), Monday, 15 November 2004 13:15 (twenty-one years ago)

Does he at least die in a Hawaiian shirt?

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Monday, 15 November 2004 13:30 (twenty-one years ago)

Sadly unspecified -- it was just a tossed-in namecheck cause Tom was on while I was finishing the story. Man, how many times do you waste the opportunity to take advantage of killing off Millar?

― Tep (ktepi), Monday, 15 November 2004 13:39 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm glad I gave up on wanting to write comics. The rationale seemed to be 'personal interest + reasonably literate = viable career'... but ultimately... I wouldn't worry about deadlines, but having to write formulaic stories month-in month-out to make a living, I thought would kill my soul pretty fast.

― _chrissie (chrissie1068), Monday, 15 November 2004 13:59 (twenty-one years ago)

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