Sunday, February 06, 2011
Walking with Superman: Day 200
It's Super Bowl Sunday, and Superman's in Arlington, Texas for the big game--though he has no idea just how big it will be! The Sportsmaster has taken both teams--and all the screaming fans in Cowboys Stadium--hostage, so he can stage his own big game. He's assembled a fantasy football team from the biggest, strongest supervillains in the cosmos, and Superman's been drafted to play defense. In this linebacker-sized issue, it's up to the Quarterback of Steel to assemble an all-star, all-superhero team to win the safety of over 100,000 football fans! This is one Super Bowl that no one will be watching just for the commercials!
But that's okay 'cause I've got no self-esteem
Well, that was a bust.
I knew it was probably a bad idea to do a contest with so little forward preparation. I figured it was probably a bad idea to make it so open-ended and free-form. I figured I'd probably get an entry or two from the regulars who comment here occasionally, and that they'd end up with the prizes, and I was all right with that.
But man, not a single entry? Worse yet, my average visits have dropped to, like, half of what they were when I started the contest. And I imagine that several of those 56 hits are mine, what with checking to make sure that things have actually posted when they were supposed to.
I'm not usually one to wallow in bitterness, and this time will be no different. I still plan on doing a contest, and I plan on it being successful. I've got at least two more milestones coming up in the next four months or so, and I'm going to make them count. And the first step is actually making this blog popular.
And as someone who spent high school reading comic books and playing chess, I know all about what it takes to be popular.
Seriously, though, any word of mouth and link love would be much appreciated. I've mostly been writing this Superman series for myself, but there has to be some other obsessive Superman fan who would enjoy it, right?
I knew it was probably a bad idea to do a contest with so little forward preparation. I figured it was probably a bad idea to make it so open-ended and free-form. I figured I'd probably get an entry or two from the regulars who comment here occasionally, and that they'd end up with the prizes, and I was all right with that.
But man, not a single entry? Worse yet, my average visits have dropped to, like, half of what they were when I started the contest. And I imagine that several of those 56 hits are mine, what with checking to make sure that things have actually posted when they were supposed to.
I'm not usually one to wallow in bitterness, and this time will be no different. I still plan on doing a contest, and I plan on it being successful. I've got at least two more milestones coming up in the next four months or so, and I'm going to make them count. And the first step is actually making this blog popular.
And as someone who spent high school reading comic books and playing chess, I know all about what it takes to be popular.
Seriously, though, any word of mouth and link love would be much appreciated. I've mostly been writing this Superman series for myself, but there has to be some other obsessive Superman fan who would enjoy it, right?
Saturday, February 05, 2011
Walking with Superman: Day 199
Superman has returned to the San Antonio of the present, and his descendant has returned to the distant future, but there was a stowaway on their trip home! Revolutionary soldier, former Congressman, and folk hero David Crockett was accidentally brought to the present, mere moments before he would have died. Now, Superman faces a dilemma: send him back to be killed and burned unceremoniously in a mass pyre by the Mexican soldiers, or allow him to stay, despite the potential danger to the timestream and the psychological trauma of being a man out of time! Things only get more complicated with the arrival of two time travelers: Linear Man Liri Lee, who wishes to maintain the timestream's integrity, and rogue temporal physicist Walker Gabriel, offering Crockett asylum in the timeless city of Chronopolis! It's up to the Man of Steel to help Crockett make his decision, and protect him from those who would rob him of that right--no matter the cost!
Friday, February 04, 2011
Walking with Superman: Day 198
In the 853rd Century, an unexpected tragedy caused that era's Man of Steel to face a crisis of confidence. Counseled by Superman Prime, he decided to take a journey into the timestream, visiting his ancestors to get back in touch with his Superman-ity. The final leg on this journey brought him to the first Superman, during a time in his life when he faced a similar set of problems. Following their climactic battle against apparently insurmountable odds, the futuristic Superman finally feels like he's conquered his doubts and can return to his own timeline--until a malfunction in his suit's chronocircuits sends both him and the modern-day Man of Steel one hundred and seventy-five years into the past, and two hundred miles west! The Men of Steel are thrust into the middle of the Battle of the Alamo, and they're not the only anachronisms around--the Texian soldiers are driving back the Mexican Army with automatic weapons and laser rifles! What time traveling trickster would turn the tide of the Texas Revolution? It's up to the Supermen to stop it, before history is irrevocably changed!
Thursday, February 03, 2011
Walking with Superman: Day 197
While Superman tackles the deadly duo of Brother Eye and Solaris the Tyrant Sun, his 853rd-Century counterpart takes on the deadly new O.M.A.C. in the skies over Houston! The original Man of Steel faces the World's Fiercest foes, a satellite built by Batman as a countermeasure against rogue superhumans and a sun built paradoxically by a future Superman and programmed to be the constant nemesis of the Superman dynasty for the next fifty thousand years, and it's going to take more than his strength to defeat them! Meanwhile in the Space City, his super-scion stands against the hyper-adaptive abilities of the Organic Metahuman Annihilation Construct, and this strange visitor from a distant future is the only obstacle between it and the destruction of the metahuman race! It's a tale so titanic it needed two Supermen to tell it--but there's more to the Man of Beyond Tomorrow's visit than meets the eye!
Wednesday, February 02, 2011
Walking with Superman: Day 196
There is a new crater in Houston, Texas today, and Superman lies at the bottom of it! Solaris the Tyrant Sun, has risen, and its dawn may herald the end of days!! But this artifact of the world that's coming is not acting alone--it has united with the anti-superhero satellite called "Brother Eye"! Together, they have created a bizarre new danger, an entity called O.M.A.C.: the "Organic Meta-human Annihilation Construct"--and it has its sights set on Superman! But this sun-born god-killer will be a terror he never bargained for--and could never defeat!! The Man of Tomorrow will need assistance from far beyond tomorrow, and so he sends an "S.O.S." into the depths of space and time, hoping to reach his distant descendant--before it's too late!
Tuesday, February 01, 2011
Making Rape Jokes at the Darkness
I like superhero comics.
I like a lot of superhero comics from the big two. I like some creator-owned superhero comics as well, from "Empowered" and "Love and Capes" to webcomics like "The Non-Adventures of Wonderella."
I like a lot of non-superhero comics as well. I read more webcomics (XKCD, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, Order of the Stick) than floppies in that regard, but I've got a fair share of "Scott Pilgrim" and "Walking Dead" and "Hellboy" on my shelves.
I spend an average of $30 a week on comics. Intermittent trades are in addition to that.
I am not the problem.
If you are, for instance, an indie comics creator, someone without a superhero title, then I can imagine you would have some issues with the mainstream system. Even from the consumer point of view, I have no idea how indie comics hit it big. By the time I hear of some indie book, it's usually already professionally published. Either it's from some established creator (usually someone who came up in literature or film or mainstream comics) or it's self-published or it's part of some "the book has to be popular before it can get noticed" weird causality loop. I don't know where most indie creators start.
That being said, there are obviously avenues for indie creators to get published, whether through self-publication means or through the smaller comics publication houses, or even through imprints at the big two, like Vertigo and Icon. Of course, getting published doesn't necessarily entail making it big. You have to get an audience, and that isn't a sure thing.
Of course, it's easier with a superhero property. At the big two, superhero comics have a built-in audience; even new titles are tapping into an existing customer base dedicated to a universe with history. Indie superhero comics don't have that particular inroad, but still tap into the existing base. Comics are a niche market, and superhero fans make up most of that niche. The indie comics market is a small, somewhat overlapping fraction of that market, and it's splintered. People who like romantic biographical books might not like pulp sci-fi or zombie horror or musical urban fantasy.
And people who like superhero comics might not like any of it.
The problem for indie comics creators is not that people like superhero comics any more than the problem for sci-fi novelists is that people like mystery novels. The problem is that the market is small and splintered. A large market can sustain a wider variety of genres. It's anecdotal, but it seems like when the movie industry is doing well, there's a much wider variety of movies; studios are more willing to take risks. When the film industry is doing poorly, variety shrinks to the things that work or are likely to work, and the only risky movies are ones that have established directors and casts. And so you see the current market, glutted with superhero films, CGI kids movies, lame comedies, and the occasional "Inception" or "Black Swan." Again, the problem is not with the audience who enjoys "Iron Man" or even "Gulliver's Travels," it's with a market that's too small for the producers to be willing to take risks.
And the comics market faces this problem twice; the publishers represent one barrier, but the stores represent another. Just as a struggling publisher is unwilling to take risks on unknown quantities when determining what books to fund and produce, a struggling shop owner is going to be less likely to take risks on ordering books that are themselves unknown quantities, returning us to the causality loop of needing to be popular before you can be successful.
In other words, the problem for indie creators cannot be solved by cursing the superhero comics fans who support the industry's continued existence. The direct market is built, one way or another, on the superhero fans. The reason that you can buy floppies of "The Walking Dead" is because there are superhero fans to support stores that cater to the niche market, and because there were superhero fans to support the superhero creators who started the superhero comics that formed the foundations of Image Comics. The problem for indie creators is finding a market, and expanding that search beyond the confines of the brick-and-mortar comic book stores. Many indie creators, particularly webcomics creators, have found ways to do this quite successfully. And in their discoveries may lie not only new readers for indie comics, but the future of the entire industry.
Print media is struggling to retain relevance and audience. Niche markets in print media doubly so. Indie comics represent a niche market of a niche market of a struggling medium. Indie creators face the same problem as the rest of comics creators: how to evolve the medium in a changing world and changing marketplace, how to survive in a crappy economy, and how to expand the audience beyond the regulars and die-hards. But the survival of indie comics will not come at the death or shrinking of superheroes as a genre. Until the problems facing the entire industry are solved, superhero comics remain the life support mechanism for the medium. Their failure means the failure of the stores who count on them to stay open. The failure of comic shops means the end of the current distribution model, leaving indie creators in the unenviable position of either having to compete with all other media online to market directly to the consumer (as many webcomics creators do, and quite successfully--but I suspect the new complaints will be much the same as the old complaints, except with "comedy webcomics about video games" and "stick figures telling math jokes" and "thinly-veiled fetish material" replacing "the superhero genre"), or having to compete for a considerably reduced amount of retail shelf space with all the other indie creators, and without the 'sure thing' of the superhero genre to keep casual bookstore browsers coming to the graphic novel section.
Indie comics creators can light a candle and look for alternative methods of distribution and new audiences, potentially saving the entire medium from the problems plaguing everyone. Or they can continue to curse the darkness of economic-forced genre hegemony, and continue lamenting their state until every last publication house and brick-and-mortar comic store has shuttered their doors.
Seems to me that the choice is obvious.
I like a lot of superhero comics from the big two. I like some creator-owned superhero comics as well, from "Empowered" and "Love and Capes" to webcomics like "The Non-Adventures of Wonderella."
I like a lot of non-superhero comics as well. I read more webcomics (XKCD, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, Order of the Stick) than floppies in that regard, but I've got a fair share of "Scott Pilgrim" and "Walking Dead" and "Hellboy" on my shelves.
I spend an average of $30 a week on comics. Intermittent trades are in addition to that.
I am not the problem.
If you are, for instance, an indie comics creator, someone without a superhero title, then I can imagine you would have some issues with the mainstream system. Even from the consumer point of view, I have no idea how indie comics hit it big. By the time I hear of some indie book, it's usually already professionally published. Either it's from some established creator (usually someone who came up in literature or film or mainstream comics) or it's self-published or it's part of some "the book has to be popular before it can get noticed" weird causality loop. I don't know where most indie creators start.
That being said, there are obviously avenues for indie creators to get published, whether through self-publication means or through the smaller comics publication houses, or even through imprints at the big two, like Vertigo and Icon. Of course, getting published doesn't necessarily entail making it big. You have to get an audience, and that isn't a sure thing.
Of course, it's easier with a superhero property. At the big two, superhero comics have a built-in audience; even new titles are tapping into an existing customer base dedicated to a universe with history. Indie superhero comics don't have that particular inroad, but still tap into the existing base. Comics are a niche market, and superhero fans make up most of that niche. The indie comics market is a small, somewhat overlapping fraction of that market, and it's splintered. People who like romantic biographical books might not like pulp sci-fi or zombie horror or musical urban fantasy.
And people who like superhero comics might not like any of it.
The problem for indie comics creators is not that people like superhero comics any more than the problem for sci-fi novelists is that people like mystery novels. The problem is that the market is small and splintered. A large market can sustain a wider variety of genres. It's anecdotal, but it seems like when the movie industry is doing well, there's a much wider variety of movies; studios are more willing to take risks. When the film industry is doing poorly, variety shrinks to the things that work or are likely to work, and the only risky movies are ones that have established directors and casts. And so you see the current market, glutted with superhero films, CGI kids movies, lame comedies, and the occasional "Inception" or "Black Swan." Again, the problem is not with the audience who enjoys "Iron Man" or even "Gulliver's Travels," it's with a market that's too small for the producers to be willing to take risks.
And the comics market faces this problem twice; the publishers represent one barrier, but the stores represent another. Just as a struggling publisher is unwilling to take risks on unknown quantities when determining what books to fund and produce, a struggling shop owner is going to be less likely to take risks on ordering books that are themselves unknown quantities, returning us to the causality loop of needing to be popular before you can be successful.
In other words, the problem for indie creators cannot be solved by cursing the superhero comics fans who support the industry's continued existence. The direct market is built, one way or another, on the superhero fans. The reason that you can buy floppies of "The Walking Dead" is because there are superhero fans to support stores that cater to the niche market, and because there were superhero fans to support the superhero creators who started the superhero comics that formed the foundations of Image Comics. The problem for indie creators is finding a market, and expanding that search beyond the confines of the brick-and-mortar comic book stores. Many indie creators, particularly webcomics creators, have found ways to do this quite successfully. And in their discoveries may lie not only new readers for indie comics, but the future of the entire industry.
Print media is struggling to retain relevance and audience. Niche markets in print media doubly so. Indie comics represent a niche market of a niche market of a struggling medium. Indie creators face the same problem as the rest of comics creators: how to evolve the medium in a changing world and changing marketplace, how to survive in a crappy economy, and how to expand the audience beyond the regulars and die-hards. But the survival of indie comics will not come at the death or shrinking of superheroes as a genre. Until the problems facing the entire industry are solved, superhero comics remain the life support mechanism for the medium. Their failure means the failure of the stores who count on them to stay open. The failure of comic shops means the end of the current distribution model, leaving indie creators in the unenviable position of either having to compete with all other media online to market directly to the consumer (as many webcomics creators do, and quite successfully--but I suspect the new complaints will be much the same as the old complaints, except with "comedy webcomics about video games" and "stick figures telling math jokes" and "thinly-veiled fetish material" replacing "the superhero genre"), or having to compete for a considerably reduced amount of retail shelf space with all the other indie creators, and without the 'sure thing' of the superhero genre to keep casual bookstore browsers coming to the graphic novel section.
Indie comics creators can light a candle and look for alternative methods of distribution and new audiences, potentially saving the entire medium from the problems plaguing everyone. Or they can continue to curse the darkness of economic-forced genre hegemony, and continue lamenting their state until every last publication house and brick-and-mortar comic store has shuttered their doors.
Seems to me that the choice is obvious.
Walking with Superman: Day 195
With the hostage situation at NASA's Johnson Space Center diffused and the disgruntled engineer called Solaris in custody, you might think that Superman could spend some time enjoying the sights and attractions of Houston. But while one Solaris heads to prison, another is hurtling toward the Earth! The artificial sun built by a futuristic Superman had been kept dormant and deactivated in a far orbit, but a computer error during the NASA hostage crisis sent it into a collision course. Only Superman can put the sleeping Tyrant Sun in its proper place--but there may be more to the accident than meets the eye!
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