Alex Zalben has a fine write up on MoCCA’s ‘To Run A Comic Shop’ Panel , which included Tucker Stone of Bergen Street Comics, Gabe Fowler of Desert Island, Robert Conte of Manhattan Comics and Brooklyn Comics, Thor Parker of Midtown Comics and moderator (and former retaielrs) Alex Cox, currently of the CBLDF. As usual that’s a very smart, modern line-up of merchants, and sure enough there was some inetresting talk. For instance, some stores actually frown on cel phones when they are used to order comics online—using the brick and mortar store as a showroom of sorts:
Cox then started a discussion about how things have changed in retail over the years. “Stores, in a way, have become showrooms,” said Conti, talking about how customers will check prices on their phones before buying. “The customer has become my biggest competitor because of smartphones.” Fowler agreed with this point, asking that he politely asks people not to use the phones in their store. On the other hand, Stone said that, “Any customer who is going to come into our store to buy things purely on a price level is only going to be satisfied by the Internet.”
And then there’s….Before Watchmen.
Stone chimed in that Bergen won’t be buying Before Watchmen, except for customers who pulled it now. “We won’t have it on the wall,” said Stone. “It’s not useful for graphic novels, it’s not useful for small press… It’s only useful for the weekly stuff.”
ComiXology’s David Steinberger then asked Stone from the audience to clarify why Bergen isn’t selling Before Watchmen, to which Stone said, “We’re gonna lose money, we’ll probably lose customers… It was a decision that was made. When I heard that decision, I said that’s a bad idea… That’s an explanation that I’ll have to give over and over again. As time has gone on, as I’ve seen online response to that project… This is just gross, and we don’t want to be part of this one. We’ll participate with the grossness they did to Kirby on the Avengers books, but this one…”
That’sa pretty gutsy move by Bergen Street. We had tweeted this during the panel and got a vociferous response from pros and retaielr salike who felt that Bergen Street was being irresponsible and leaving money on the table.
To be continued, naturally.
BIG BIG ups to Dustin for making a solid, reasonable summary of the argument against the project.
Again, the quality of the books themselves is not the point people are making. The quality of the books doesn’t matter if you feel DC has screwed the original creator of the concept.
@citizencliff Yes! Thank you! He was offered a bad deal, but thanks for realizing that he, indeed, signed that deal. No excuse to complain now.
Of course DC and Marvel have screwed a lot of creators. That’s what happens when you deal with large corporations. If you don’t know that, maybe you shouldn’t be dealing with large corporations.
That’s why companies like Image, Dark Horse, Top Shelf, etc. exist. To help sustain creator owned books.
If you want to own your own characters, it’s probably a pretty bad idea to create them for a huge conglomerate.
“This constant Charlton comparison is saying it’s raw material and not the chef that we should take into account.”
On the other hand, *this* argument that ONLY the contributions and wishes of the putative ‘chef’ (Moore) should be taken into account — and what the ’sous chef’ (Gibbons) and the folks who provided the ‘ingredients’ (Charlton, though Moore did tweak the ‘recipe’ a bit) and the ‘kitchen’ (DC) contributed is without value or merit — seems equally ill-conceived and cynical in its own way to me.
How quickly things start to look like Newsarama around here. And this place is supposed to be above the “fanboyish” dialogue. Ha.
@Blackcatgreg: “Of course DC and Marvel have screwed a lot of creators. That’s what happens when you deal with large corporations.”
It’s obvious that we’re on two different sides of the river here. On the other hand, it’s clear that there’s a bright future for you in DC’s marketing division.
“3) the event itself as emblem of DC and Marvel’s extraordinarily short-sighted thinking in this age of event comics. Why detail some of your most high profile, respected creators, and J. Michael Straczynski, to make new stories that weren’t necessary, that predate a comic that hasn’t been timely in 20 years? Why not make NEW CHARACTERS, NEW STORIES, NEW ADVENTURES, instead of exhuming the same old corpses and fondling their over-handled remains again and again?”
Respectfully, this is a rather silly argument. New Characters/Adventures vs. Old Characters/Adventures is a false choice. I like a great deal of the new creator-owned work being done today (Chew, Fatale, Bendis’ Scarlet, etc.), but I also like reading a good Batman yarn now and then — and I suspect most comic readers are like me in that regard.
Shared-world universe stories (with superheroes) are a unique artform unto themselves, and as such have a certain unique appeal. That really shouldn’t be that hard a concept to grasp.
As for ‘necessary’ — who and/or what criteria should determine whether a story was necessary? Was Batman: LOTDK ‘necessary’? Was Daredevil: Born Again? Or about Darwyn Cooke’s New Frontier (or his Parker adpatations, for that matter)? How about Moore’s own ‘Whatever Happened to The Man of Tomorrow’?'Necessary’ or not, I’m glad those creators used those ‘old’ characters to make some great comics.
There’s a lot of great creator-owned work out there, and I’m happy to extol its virtues — but I’m equally happy to roll my eyes at those who think they have to trash classic characters and/or the practice of WFH in order to do so.
This is great news. I have a lot of respect for these people. It’s never okay to screw the creator. Glad people are starting to finally take a stand against it.
Yes yes yes, its a complex and nuanced issue, but my first gut reaction “i’d be more likely to go to a store because they didn’t stock Before Watchmen”.
The Wednesday crowd are unlikely to abandon their loyal lcs because they don’t have any copies of a specific issue. Probably happens all the time with the surprise hits.
But for people like me?
They just became a destination shop.
Will, I’m not saying no one should make comics with existing characters, but Watchmen? It’s like doing “The Early Adventures Of Jay Gatsby”–it’s not necessary because Watchmen is a closed circuit, a finite, wholly contained story. Batman and Superman and Spider-Man are existing characters whose stories have always been episodic genre tales, often retreading the same old ground because biff-bam-pow, comics are usually for kids. But Watchmen is for adults.
Another way to come at it–Watchmen was a piece of art, whether or not you like the art, or whatever its flaws might have been. It grappled with issues both in and out of its pages, both contextual and subtextual. Before Watchmen is just money–it’s just a book of coupons. There’s no reason for it to be there, except for fan service and DC’s bottom line.
I’d argue DC could expend the same amount of energy, marketing, fake viral “buzz”, etc., and create new characters, new IP’s, new directions that over time would make MORE money for the company, in whatever markets or media or venues. If DC wants to be purely about their bottom line, I think that’s perfectly fine. But doing it this way, in such an unnecessarily exploitative way, engendering so much ill will toward the company and by extension the creators who work for that company– it’s stupid. It’s bad business. It’s smoke and mirrors, and behind the smoke and mirrors are just more smoke, more mirrors, and nothing of real value or import.
I don’t blame anyone who’s excited about Before Watchmen. I don’t think it’s bad at all to want to read it or buy it or whatever. I do find the whole project reprehensible, cloddish, and backwards, but there are a lot of comics I don’t like. That’s just my opinion, for what that’s worth. But I think when people like Chris Roberson and shops like Bergen Street make a stand on issues they find unbearably problematic, I think it’s worth something.
We tend to view these issues as if we all had law degrees– “now now, hold on, we all know he signed that contract, too bad dumdum”, but that’s frankly gross reasoning. If you think that comics are art, then it follows that comics are artists. And if you value people making art, don’t act like bad contracts are zingers that big bad corporations should be expected to throw at artists! Don’t act like Siegel and Shuster had law degrees and were savvy businessmen. Don’t pretend that Jack Kirby didn’t build virtually the entire Marvel Universe in just a few years, only to later have most of his originals stolen while under Marvel’s care, and have to renounce all rights in order to get the few remaining pieces back. Jack Kirby was a soldier and an artist and a visionary. Alan Moore revolutionized “literate” comics a dozen times in the 80’s and 90’s. We should treat these artists with the respect their creations and their sweat have earned, not line up to come up with clever reasons why they deserved what they got.
I agree with Citizen Cliff’s point. Stores are in the business of selling, not censoring. If I hear of a favorite writer or artist putting out a book called Hitler and the gay bashers rape some babies, with the proceeds going to the KKK, I really don’t care. I want to read that book. I like comic shops that sell EVERYTHING. If a shop doesnt’ want to be obvious about promoting BW, then that’s awesome. If a comic shop only want’s to promote Indies, then that’s awesome too. But carry everything or chances are I won’t be buying stuff at your shop because I don’t care at all about your personal morals or lack of them.
Regarding the tangent about Charlton and Chefs and Songs and what not, I’ll just say that this comment by Will Naslund says it all:
“On the other hand, *this* argument that ONLY the contributions and wishes of the putative ‘chef’ (Moore) should be taken into account — and what the ’sous chef’ (Gibbons) and the folks who provided the ‘ingredients’ (Charlton, though Moore did tweak the ‘recipe’ a bit) and the ‘kitchen’ (DC) contributed is without value or merit — seems equally ill-conceived and cynical in its own way to me.”
This. Period. It takes a village. You hippy creators lining up for Kickstarter funds should know that.
Dean
>> Sure, I figure most [if not all] merchants curate what they sell but I used to “believe” I had the latitude to browse and “shop” for anything that was published any given week, as long as I was diligent and arrived the day it was officially released [when I dare skip the weekly release day, I check online to see what came out and contact my LCS and ask 'em to kindly pull and hold my desired choices]. >>
The number of comics stores that carry everything that’s published any given week is probably zero. If you believed that you were seeing it all by shopping early, you were probably missing out on a lot of stuff that never made the shelves at all.
Cliff:
>> I don’t believe it’s the place of the shops or online stores to boycott or sensor which books are available to the customers.>>
Every store limits what books are available to its customers. Heck, even grocery stores limit what groceries are available to their customers.
>> Alan didn’t pass on being brought on to write Swamp Thing, a seminal comics character created by Len Wein, and he did a terrific job. He didn’t say ‘No, no, I can’t, that’s Len’s character.’>>
Considering Len was the one offering him the job, it would have been a very odd response.
Secrets behind the comics revealed: When I was trying to sell stuff to DC, Len invited me to come up with SWAMP THING and JLA fill-in ideas, because he’d offered Alan whichever of the two books he wanted. Whichever one Alan didn’t take, he’d need a fill-in for. So Alan took SWAMP THING and I got to write JLA #224. [My Swamp Thing fill-in ideas made it into other works, none of them involving Swamp Thing.]
kdb
@Dustin Harbin–re: “if you think of comics as art, you must then agree that comics creators are artists”, I agree with that.
But it raises an interesting distinction–can a corporation make art? Can it hire craftsmen–and subvert their artistic identities to its own commercial whims–and still make art? I don’t want to say it can, but I sort of think it can.
It further raises the question of whether something conceived out of non-artistic motives can become art, which again, I think it can.
Maybe in the long run we should consider there to be two creators of a given mainstream comic–the “artist” and the “corporation” (however many people there are on the artist side and however many people on the corporate side). Certainly I’d say that’s the case with Before Watchmen, and I’d argue it’s also true of virtually any superhero comic from Marvel and DC.
(hope it comes through that I’m not trying to refute anything you’re saying; I agree with EVERYThing you’re saying, and it leads me to this next stage of questioning)
I’ve been informed that my local shop won’t be carrying ‘Before Watchmen’ either except for subscribers. They actually went so far as to remove the cover of this month’s Previews catalog (featuring a Jae Lee drawing of Ozymandias) from the store copy. Strikes me as leaving money on the table, but I understand the decision.
Then again, I wasn’t going to buy them anyway.
Alan didn’t pass on being brought on to write Swamp Thing, a seminal comics character created by Len Wein, and he did a terrific job.
These arguments about Alan Moore and Swamp Thing never make sense to me. Moore was at least the fifth writer to use the character in an extended run (including throughout the end of the Challengers of the Unknown series before Martin Pasko’s run). Swampy was clearly meant to have ongoing serial adventures like the other umpteen dozen DC heroes.
Matt:
>> Maybe in the long run we should consider there to be two creators of a given mainstream comic–the “artist” and the “corporation” (however many people there are on the artist side and however many people on the corporate side).>>
If you do that, it naturally extends to considering Maxwell Perkins the co-author of all the books he edited, by promoting anyone who has input into a project to the level of co-author. The work-for-hire deals already make the corporation the legal author of the work; I think that’s more than enough.
Side example: I once, at Norman Mailer’s request,* wrote a long letter advising him on how to finish HARLOT’S GHOST. Does that make me a co-author?
[*not a direct request - Mailer asked his agent for advice, his agent farmed the job out to one of the VPs, and the VPs dropped 750 pages of manuscript on my desk and told me to get going.]
Or, on the Charlton’s rights side of the equation: Lawrence Block once wrote a novel about a private eye named Markham, a licensed tie-in to a TV show. When he was done, his agent and editor thought the novel was good enough to stand on its own, so Block reworked the manuscript so it was about a PI of his own invention, and sold the book as an original. [He also wrote another Markham novel, to fulfill that contract.] Does that mean the TV company that made the Markham series has some sort of right to Block’s new PI character? He didn’t change the characters at the proposal stage, after all. He wrote the whole book, finished it, then rewrote it to be a new character.
I think various people inspire, advise and suggest, but that doesn’t make them co-authors. Ditko owns Mr. A, DC owns the Question, and Rorschach is tied up in whatever the Watchmen rights are. But even though they’re creatively related, they’re different characters, as are TV’s Markham and Block’s “Ed London,” who took his place in Block’s manuscript.
kdb