I'm afraid I've fallen off the comics "grid" in recent years, since I no longer visit a comics shop with regularity or spend as much time on comics Web sites as I used to.

As I say above, I'm content much of the time to pick up a stack of old trades at a used bookstore for $5 each and let that serve as my comics reading for six months. Meanwhile, a dozen new titles like iZOMBIE are coming and going, but my radar isn't really turned on.

The comics industry chased me away after a 25-year affair.

Best way to reach me now is free previews on the more heavily visited comics Web sites, like Bleeding Cool and Comic Book Resources, and maybe even a placement here on Comicon. Let me take a look at five or six pages, get a feel for it. Get it in my face. But those little banner ads, I tune those out.

Pacific Comics! The Rocketeer was a backup feature in Mike Grell's Starslayer.

I still have those issues!

Asking "Should someone STFU, given a particular set of variables and context," is a different, different thing than telling someone to STFU. Like I said above, you just like to skew peoples posts to the argument you want to have.

If I really wanted to talk to people that only "agree" with me why would I be here at Comicon, and for that matter talking with you?

You actually made a few valid points, but as a whole your argument doesn't hold up for me. It seems to be just a lot of hairsplitting and even some of that is contradictory. So somehow despite your best efforts I remain unconvinced. I see way more gray area in this mess than you, I'd say we should agree to disagree but that usually pisses you off.

Actually, I honestly don't recall, I try to not pay much attention to your posts anymore. Only when you're part of a discussion I'm interested in, and even then I've usually regretted it in the end anyway. So yeah, even if i read it, I probably didn't pay attention to your recommendations.

That really depends on how loosely you define "superhero."

Great point, how much of the total US comic market is Manga, and what about Archie and Bongo, things like that...

That Popeye book that just came out was great fun, and does The Goon count as superhero, love that Goon (incidentally there was a nice anti-superhero comics rant in this months Goon, a little preachy, but there are a lot of choir here).

Yeps. I remember around the time the Watchmen movie came out, something like five out of BookScan's top 10 graphic novels for the month were Naruto volumes. American superhero comics haven't been a reliably dominant force for some time.

Bad example. Pacific was a distributor (I would say "fly by night" distributor, but in the comic book DM they were all fly by night operations) with a poor artist relations/editorial side. Stevens didn't even want to do the book at all, other than to draw some cool airplanes and lingerie, felt it was something of a burden. Then he barely got enough out of the Disney movie for a downpayment on a house (which he later lost in an earthquake).

Which merely emphasizes that there's plenty of other places creators can go other than DC or Marvel.

Mike

Then say what you mean. Either Moore is a hypocrite with no room to criticize; or Watchmen bears no relationship to his other work and should be left alone as an integral work. One or the other. There is no in-between.



Examples.



Your loss, homo.

Yes, more American cartoonists should try drawing imported Japanese reprints.

Kidding aside though, I actually agree with you on this one. If DC and Marvel are only interested in acting as as a trademark zoo, then... well, it ain't thirty years ago. An aspiring cartoonist has other means to get their work out there.