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No, no, it would honestly be the apex of ridiculousness to hype a currently ongoing book. Definitely stick only to completed works.
I still stand behind New X-Men being a true standard-bearing work, that given the proper amount of publicity (which Entertainment Weekly did when Morrison's run began), would make arguments like this completely moot. Yes it involves super-heroes. Yes it is as rich, complex, moving, and artfully rendered as anything else in print. It will undoubtedly never happen, but if Marvel got their shit together, and made a mass market sized, impeccably designed hardcover (or even trade) edition of Grant's run I think it would do amazingly well, critically and commercially.
One reason most of these books get respected is because they're not typically comic-sized, gloss covered TPB's. I think DC is on the definite right track with their most recent spate of dust-coverless and hella good looking hardcovers. If Marvel did something similar, having Comicraft design a pulp themed (visually [see: Astro City Tarnished Angel TPB]) collection of Bendis' Daredevil run, again, I would put that up against anything else in that article.
A lot of it comes down to perception, obviously. Mainstream comics are still designed (visually) to appeal to comic book readers. There's not one book mentioned in that article that's designed like that. They're designed like books that normal people read, and that's why normal people read them. I don't think people are as embarrassed to read comics as they are embarassed to be seen with books that are so embarassingly designed. Books like Buddha or Jimmy Corrigan are designed like regular people books and, thus, get exposure.
So, I don't even know how I got around to talking about this stuff, I guess I can't really fault the author for talking about these books, because if the other books expect to be taken seriously, they'd better start looking the part.
And, yeah, any exposure to comics is inherently good. I guess all this vitriol I was spouting has finally led me to figuring out the precise reason why these articles keep talking about the same things. Realistically, they kind of don't have much of a choice. Entertainment Weekly can talk about glossy trade paperbacks because they look just as disposable as the Jessica Simpson CD reviewed a few pages back. But it's difficult to expect the New York Times to cover books that look so perilously disposable, even though there are great many of them that are anything but.
I'm telling you, there's undoubtedly so little money in it, but if DC cooked up a smaller (regular book sized) compilation of The Filth, designed it with a Worst Case Scenario paper stock cover, and just sold it like a regular book, it would be in the Times the next month.
It's a tough sell, though, because you'd need to release regular sized (or even super-sized) trades and hardcovers for the Direct Market, but until they start printing versions of great comics in formats that people recognize, they will never get any kind of real respect. |
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