Saturday, February 5, 2011

Comic sales for January are terrible. By which the comics commentariat essentially mean...

...that sales for January are terrible for Disney (Marvel) and Warner (DC). The big companies are in all sorts of strife with their comicbook sales, but really, so what? The books themselves have never looked prettier but the content would frequently be insulting to a retarded person, let alone the putative adult "sophisticated" audience they claim- which is really a dwindling audience of western middle class super-consumer types, totally disconnected from the broader world of comics.

Case in point- Archie comics. Year in, year out, there they are at the mainstream locations Marvel and DC have long since given up on, and as a consequence Archie's female audience numbers quite possible in the millions, certainly in the 100,000s, and its Sonic the Hedgehog and soon Rockman / Megaman titles are robust to the point of absurdity.

What really pisses me off to no end about the whining re: falling comic sales is that it is classic solipsism. The fat tubs of lard that consume DC and Marvel are pissing and moaning over falling sales etcetera- whilst many other types of comicbooks have in fact increased sales. Yes, I admit, I'm an indie myself so yes, I have an agenda. Like DC and Marvel don't? I would love to see DC and Marvel collapse, and I say that as someone who was once a rabid Marvelite. It isn't the same company at all any more, and likewise its characters are vile parodies of what they once were. Meanwhile over at Indyplanet there is a literal world of comics, of all conceivable types, crossing all cultures and interests. And the best of them are absolutely fantastic in terms of art, execution and finish. Marvel and DC are cranking out these insulting "stories" and fomenting endless ennui with their bottomless chumbucket of crossovers, whilst godlike artists and writers are marching into the future by the day.

So what if Disney and Warner take a bath on the comics operations? They'll never do anything genuinely creative anyway. They bought the comics companies to get the brands, which is all the characters have been since the 1990s. They have less soul than Dracula.

Well that turned into quite the rant. Time for some water and rain watching.
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