More Random Notes on a Random Sunday

It's kind of a lazy Sunday, so let's Rant some more, y'okay?

I picked up the new issue of Shonen Jump to discover something largely unexpected but still somewhat...annoying. Basically, the long running magazine will be ending its Print Edition in April (well, March really) and will be going purely digital. I'm not horribly surprised. Magazines are a dying industry to begin with, and throw in a recession, and the slow death of the Manga Market in America (funny, considering how many people I see dressed up as Naruto characters every time I go to a Con), and you have a recipe for the demise of Shonen Jump. I find the end of Shonen Jump annoying for a wealth of reasons. For starters, I don't really pay attention to Manga like I used to, and SJ was my only real exposure to the Medium nowadays. Secondly, I liked the monthly dose of "One Piece", a manga that still stands as one of my favorite comics being published today. Thirdly, the loss of the American version of Shonen Jump basically Sinks my theory that the Manga Format is viable in an American Market. I thought that SJ had proven to be a highly successful enterprise, and I had hopes that others would follow it, but that apparently won't be happening.

On the other hand, the loss of Shonen Jump won't affect me all that much. I've already been picking up the One Piece Trade Collections. Basically, instead of getting small doses of One Piece every month or two, I'll be picking up a new collection every...four to six months? I wasn't really reading any of the other manga that were running in Shonen Jump. I never liked any of the various Yu-Gi-Oh strips, I never got into the new strip Psyren, and it eventually became impossible to keep track of the billions of characters that populate Naruto and Bleach. Seriously, I just got through reading the latest installments of Naruto, and it made my eyes roll up into the back of my head because I couldn't keep track of what was going on. It's so confusing it makes "Final Crisis" (which I just reread today, on a whim) look coherent by comparison.

This seems to continue the seemingly inevitable trend of the death of the monthly comic. All of the major (and most minor) comic publishers are starting to introduce more and more accessible Digital Comics. A lot of the Independent Publishers have abandoned the "pamphlet" format for the better payday of the Trade Paperback (or Fancy Pantsy Hardcover). Fantagraphics openly derides the "Pamphlet" (oh, by the by, I HATE that term) nowadays, and they're not the only ones who have given up on the format. Most of my friends are strictly Trade Readers. Fitchie only reads Trades. Bro's gal Mary is a Trade Reader. Boolah mostly reads Trades (although he still reads a fair amount of monthlies as well. There's no real rhyme or reason to which comics he reads in which format either. I should pick his brain on the subject next time we roadtrip). Bro doesn't read many comics, but the ones he does are in the Trade format. He openly prefers the Trade format because, since he's not a lifelong comic reader, he finds it easier to follow the threads of a story when he reads it all in one dose (in fact, he's ran into that problem with some of my comix, namely loosing track of what happened from issue to issue). Hell, I even read a few comics in Trade only format, like "Madman" and "Godland".

And I'd do a whole thing on Webcomics, but that doesn't interest me right now.

I'm not gonna deny that the traditional comics format has its faults. One of the worst things about comics is the Ads. I hate Ads. And, yes, I know that every TORC Press comic has an ad for Ka-Blam in the back. What can I say? I get a discount for including the ad. I'm not made of money. Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that, the ads mess up the reading experience. You're going along, reading your favorite comic, and then you've got to skip a page, or two, or four to get through some stupid ads. Hell, I remember when they promoted the Matrix online game, there's was a frickin' six page booklet in the middle of every damn comic. On the other hand, some comics stick all the ads in the back. Which is swell in a way, but then you get to the end of the story, and you've still got half the book left, and you feel ripped off.

The other problem with monthlies nowadays is that most comics are Written for the Eventual Trade Collection. This oftentimes makes entire issues anemic or borderline pointless. Plus, I mean, it's kinda silly to buy a comic if you're better served to score the collection six months later, right? There's other annoying things about the monthly, like how Big Events will interrupt your monthly reading experience. Or rotating art teams coming in and out of the book.

The Big Guns (and some of the smaller guns) still use the Traditional Format because they still have a large enough audience of Guys Like Me who came up on the Monthly Comic and still love that experience. Plus, they serve as Commercials for the Eventual Collection. Like I said above, a lot of companies have abandoned the format entirely. And webcomics people generally don't bother with the "Pamphlet" format (although that's not set in stone either), instead collecting their webcomics installments in the more profitable Trade Format.

But down here in the dark depths of the Small Press, we generally don't have much of a choice. Although I've noticed that several of my compatriots have switched to the Trade Format exclusively, most of us still do things old school style. The reasons why are pretty obvious. 1) Trade Paperbacks, while more potentially profitable, are also more expensive to produce in the first place. 2) A Trade Collection takes longer to produce (and if you're anything like me, you'll never finish the damn thing in the first place because you'll have a billion new ideas that will ultimately replace the idea you started with), which means you could spend a year (or two, or three, or five) sitting around with no new product to sell. 3) If you're a No Name Nobody, it's a lot harder to sell a $10 Trade Paperback to people who are totally new to your product than it is to sell a $3 "Pamphlet". (Of course, selling that $3 floppy isn't exactly a walk in the park, while we're on the subject) So, yeah, we still like our regular comics down here in the depths.

The Question I find myself Asking, ultimately, is this: How do I make the Most of the Regular Comix Format? How can we make the regular comic a worthwhile reading experience? What can we do to make it superior to the Trade, or at the very least, not completely redundant to the Trade? I recently thought that the brilliant "King City" was a shining example of the Possibilities of the Traditional Comix Format, but then they announced the Trade Collection, which will contain all of the neat little novelty stuff that was in the Comix. Sigh.

Something for another time, perhaps.

Could just not bother with the Trade collections entirely. On the other hand, I kinda want some neat Trade collections to put on my bookshelf that I don't actually own, but one day I want a bookshelf with a bunch of my books so I can say, "Look! I did stuff! See? I've got a whole bookshelf!"

Ponder, ponder, ponder...

I'm rereading Jack Kirby's "4th World Omnibus" Collection for, like, the second or third time this year. Man, I love those comics. That scene in "The Forever People" where Desaad has captured the team, and he's leering over Beautiful Dreamer's paralyzed body is easily one of the creepiest scenes in all of comics history. Although Kirby was more of a Plot Guy than he was a Character Guy, the 4th World has some of my all time favorite characters ever. Orion, the raging warrior lost between two worlds. Mister Miracle, the peaceful escape artist perpetually trapped in the tempest of war. Big Barda, the Amazonian Warrior woman with a heart of gold. Metron, the cold seeker of knowledge. Desaad, probably the sickest bastard Kirby ever dreamed up. Kalibak, the horror that Orion should have become. Mantis, the moron with the power to rip a planet apart. Granny Goodness, the old woman who would gleefully rip your nutsack off just for the hell of it. And Darkseid. There's a reason we keep coming back to Darkseid, no matter how many times we kill him off or get rid of him. Darkseid is primordial evil. A being of cold, stone-like darkness so pure, and yet complex, that we can't seem to escape his shadow. And all of that cool stuff. Boom Tubes. Magnetic Roads. Mother Boxes. Dog Riding Soldiers. Floating Cities. Apokalypse and its Fire Pits. And it's all so beautiful and strange and ugly and right and wrong. Raw, but so Refined. I dunno.