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Making the comics forum better.

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Tryphena Absent

12:01 / 15.09.05

My SO buys them and I read the first page of every comic he gets. If it's something I've been told is good then I really try to get through the whole thing but I've found 7 Soldiers really inaccessible. I don't know precisely why but I haven't liked the panels. I say it's the pictures but really I mean the composition. I find the art and the words don't sit together but I'll probably try again when the whole thing is sitting in front of me and maybe it will work for me then. I don't dislike things because they're not real to me by the way (I like super-violence and I don't see much of that in everyday life)... that's just where my primary interest lies.

17:38 / 15.09.05

Actually, Tom I think you are flat wrong in some of the things underlying what you are saying, particularly you erroneous characteriszation of Marvel and DC of being ‘mainstream’ while all else around it is ‘small press’. Random House publishes comics. This is one of the most mainstream of publishers in the business and they have entire imprints devoted to comics (Jonathan Cape in the UK and Pantheon in the US). Where this mischaracterization is most damaging is the way in which it prescribes what comics can be. Marvel and DC publish, pretty much exclusively, superhero comics. There are a few Sci-fi, Horror and Fantasy title lurking around the edges but the bulk of it falls into that narrow genre (oh they might combine superheroes with other things but the genre is pretty much there and ingrained). Meanwhile outside of Marvel and DC there are comics covering all manner of subjects and situations – Marjane Satrapi’s Embroideries is basically the vagina monologues in comic book form, Joe Sacco’s The Fixer explores war journalism far more fully than any news report ever would. My point is that Comics is a medium, capable of covering as many subject matters and styles as books or film or any other medium. The ‘comics mainstream’ of Marvel and DC is merely a genre with in that.

Which kind of begs the question. Is the comics forum supposed to span the entire medium, as I always thought it was supposed to, or is it just there to cover the niche of genre comics published by Marvel and DC?

Outside of that, I’m all for raising the quality of various threads talking about Marvel and DC comics – aside from all making a commitment to greater personal efforts of intellectual rigour, I’m not sure the best way to achieve this…

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

00:49 / 20.09.05

Is the comics forum supposed to span the entire medium, as I always thought it was supposed to, or is it just there to cover the niche of genre comics published by Marvel and DC?

The problem is that if you look over the sales charts in comic stores, Marvel and DC suck up most (if not all) of the attention and dollars. I'd love it if we had a couple of threads about other comics, but they tend to die from disinterest or turn into "me too" threads.

Any ideas on how to keep them alive?

06:26 / 20.09.05

The problem is that if you look over the sales charts in comic stores, Marvel and DC suck up most (if not all) of the attention and dollars.

And my point is that the comic stores do not equal the extent of the comics industry. There are now people reading comics who never go into comic stores, and why should they? All I am trying to do is ensure some element of 'shelf space' in the comics forum for 'comics other than those published by Marvel and DC'. That way so that the comics forum stands a better chance of retaining/attracting readers who have little interest in the output of Marvel and DC. This seems like the logical first step...

The next step I'm less sure of, aside from keeping the content of these threads as lively and engaging as possible - full of intellectual rigour. Ideally this is something, as Tom points out above, that should be being practiced accross the wholeforum and the board...

09:03 / 20.09.05

I have the solution- Magneto could occasionally cull the weak threads...

22:04 / 20.09.05

Sleaze - I'm not saying for one minute that comic books = superheroes or comic books = Grant Morrions (no matter how much it seems like that sometimes), but it is fair to say that the biggest selling comics and the most massive proportion of the market is skewed towards super-hero or fantasy comic books. Palestine is a great book, Robert Crumb's stuff is awesome, Maus blew my head off, and they get decent readerships, but compared to the total output of Marvel and DC it's a small proportion of the market. And my point was just that if you look at the bulk of the comics produced, even after you've gone passed Marvel and DC, the next few publishers aren't enormously different.

Which is all to say - the medium can support a whole range of different genres and styles, but it's still dominated by a couple, and sales of those styles are dominated by Marvel and DC and the two or three companies that follow them. So although I don't necessarily agree that it should be the case, it's not an enormous shock that conversation about comic books is equally dominated by discussion of what Marvel and DC publish. It's not ideal, it doesn't represent the range of comic books out there, but I can't see how we can get around it, except to have some people on the forum talking about and pushing the other stuff when they find something that's likely to have broad appeal.

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

00:10 / 21.09.05

. Palestine is a great book, Robert Crumb's stuff is awesome, Maus blew my head off, and they get decent readerships

They are all pretty old books. Maus is almost 20 years old, Crumb has had one new book in the past 5 years, and Palestine finished at least 5 years ago.

Indy comics are in a slump. And the few really good ones come out so infrequently that it's hard to discuss them. Stray Bullets gets a HUGE bump when a new issue comes out, but that was how many months ago...and how many of us have given up on it as individual comics and just buy the collections when they come out?

I would LOVE to see a thread where someone who knows manga can help separate the diamonds from the dross, since they are clogging up shelves in bookstores.

I've seen the comics forum take a tick upward in the past month or so, and part of it is just people noticing that it was started to stagnate a bit. As a mod, I'm doing a bit here and there to help...but in some cases it just feels like there's a lack of energy lately, so I'm trying to make it a bit more fun.

Any other ideas?

miss wonderstarr

06:50 / 21.09.05

You can't force people to read and respond to threads on comics outside their comfort zone, but I think you can try to prompt discussion beyond just "Devi-8 seemed to be carrying the Kraken's shield from LotYR #12 in panel 3... could he be the long-lost father of MarieCelestia?" On the "Pulp Heroes" thread at least one person nudged in a few questions to get the discussion beyond just first appearances, origin stories and secret powers. The "Stray Toasters" thread is also moving slowly into potentially-interesting areas about the ethics of teenage erotica, rather than remaining a box where people can simply drop their memories of reading a comic. My "80s Comics Design", to my surprise, is still bobbing near the top of the page with people making lengthy, nicely-supported contributions, as well as shorter comments, every few days.

Rather than starting new threads, I think it is possible to try to encourage and steer existing threads (if they're about something you have some interest in) towards deeper waters.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

08:22 / 21.09.05

And even in Marvel and DC we're only concentrating on a fraction of whats out there, we're not currently talking about anything DC-tights related outside of Crisis, though that's understandable at the moment but even before the whole 'Identity Crisis' thing we weren't talking about any of the titles, threads on Vertigo stuff like 'Fables', 'Y', 'One Hundred Bullets' lasted less than a page, there was a brief spark of interest in 'Avengers Dissassembled' at Marvel but again, not really on anything else they do.

10:17 / 21.09.05

threads on Vertigo stuff like 'Fables', 'Y', 'One Hundred Bullets' lasted less than a page

..which I find demoralising, as any of those is IMHO far superior to the majority of the output of the big two.

Regrettable Juvenilia

12:19 / 21.09.05

It's an odd quirk of Barbelith that that kind of stuff has never been looked upon as fondly as either shiny superhero stuff on the one hand, and yr black and white indie stuff on the other. Actually I don't think that's that odd, but I'm not sure I have the time or energy to explain why it happens - something to do with the fact that those two hands are extremes of kind, and thus Vertigo's sci-fi/fantasy genre stuff is seen as somehow middle of the road. Often erroneously, in my humble opinion.

Then again, Fables is just embarrassing crap, written by a man who's still old-fashioned enough to think men shouldn't cry like little girls, or whatever it was he said.

That being said, how do people feel about the idea that as a rule of thumb, it's bad form to go into a thread about a comic you dropped a while ago, just to say that you dropped it a while ago? I'm not thinking of specific examples here, but I'm sure this has happened, and doesn't exactly encourage people to keep posting about serial titles that appeal to some but not all.

Keith, like a scientist

13:16 / 21.09.05

I would LOVE to see a thread where someone who knows manga can help separate the diamonds from the dross, since they are clogging up shelves in bookstores.

I think there was a manga one awhile back that various people posted recommendations, too.

Those sorts of recommendations topics generally get fairly good play in the forum.

I'd start a topic on Mamoru Nagano's Five Star Stories, but it's distressingly hard to get sometimes, and it's future outside of Japan is sometimes tenuous, unfortunately. Super wild stuff.

13:37 / 21.09.05

I was about to start a Blade of the Immortal thread, then searched and found three, each a few posts long, each going;

Poster A- 'Blade's ace!'
Poster B- 'Yeah it's fantastic!'
Poster C- 'If you like that you'll love Lone Wolf and Cub!'

then the thread dies. It was eerie, like parallel evolution.

15:33 / 21.09.05

Maybe making a conscious effort to get contributors/commenters to say why and how a particular title rules/sucks might be another strategy?

I mean, it gets old repeating that after a while, but what I really like about the 80s comic design thread is trying to figure out why those comics worked the way they did.

00:07 / 23.09.05

Then again, Fables is just embarrassing crap, written by a man who's still old-fashioned enough to think men shouldn't cry like little girls, or whatever it was he said.

Threadrotting, he actually said adults shouldn't cry for "the loss of innocence" because he wrote a previously nice Batman supporting character as having done a very bad thing. Which, you know, I'd be old-fashioned enough to agree with.

I agree with Soitaire on the manga issue, as it's pretty much becoming the viable alternative to Big Two comics, is superceding them in sales + outlets if you believe the blogs and I've read like 3 in my life (Otomo, Shirow - surely these guys have a thread? Or oughtta?) and I really want to know what's hot there - I think Barbelith could tell me. And you know, girls read manga and stuff. Should open it up a bit, anyway. So, instead of maybe doing the perennial 'what manga is good' bit, we could have someone start a n/t with, I dunno, Hideo Hino or Tezuka or whatever. Not me, I'm no expert. More generalistic threads are also in vogue presently, and that's a good thing. I'm sure there's a good few seams unmined yet.

I'd apologise for not having at all carried out my promise earlier herein, and just continuing to post about big two comics but I'm actually a little resentful of bits of this thread, though I would acknowledge it has had a broadening effect.

Regrettable Juvenilia

08:26 / 23.09.05

he actually said adults shouldn't cry for "the loss of innocence" because he wrote a previously nice Batman supporting character as having done a very bad thing

I was referring to: "I'm still from an early enough American generation to find men claiming to act like overly dramatic little girls just a little bit cringe-making."

Our Lady Has Left the Building

10:46 / 23.09.05

Has anyone looked to see whether The Engine is actually doing anything useful comics-wise or is it just a lot of Ellis fanboys milling around in the hopes of being spat upon by their glorious leader?

11:11 / 23.09.05

I've been attempting not to reply to this thread on an off-the-cuff basis cos i intend to write a fuller, more thought out post - but this week has been busy...

Briefly, I can see what you are getting at Tom, I'm just concerned that an acceptance of 'there are more superhero books' as the status quo just serves to re-inforce the perception that comics=superheroes.

Outside of that, I have been heartened by the appearence of a fair few good threads in the last month or so - i'd like to see everyone keep up it up...

As for the Engine - upon my brief wander round there it seemed to be all about the publishing of comics rather than the reading, added to that Ellis's consistant dislike of criticism on his forums (of both his and other professional people's work) I don't think there is much there that is useful to incorporate...

21:18 / 28.10.05

I feel a bit of a cock for not saying this sooner, but I really appreciated the effor that sleaze, kovacs and a few others put into Comics while this thread was still a going concern. I wasn't contributing (because, as stated, I'm more after guidance and having my interest in the medium rekindled) but I was certainly reading.

miss wonderstarr

21:47 / 28.10.05

I certainly appreciate you saying that.

As a sidenote, I had a look at old posts on the Comics forum yesterday -- stuff from 2001 I think -- and it was a dreadful state. Most of the threads from that period have no summary and less than half a dozen replies. There was one positing a wild theory about Bowie being the inspiration for the X-Men, and the only person who responded was someone trolling the original contributor by copying his username. It died after three posts from two people.

If this is what the standard used to be like, then I think those who think the forum's currently on the slide should take a trip back in time.

22:45 / 28.10.05

To be fair, the reason that many circa 2001 threads don't have abstracts IIRC is that back then no threads had abstracts - they are a more recent invention. And while ideally moderators should be adding abstracts, I tend to do it on an Ad Hoc basis when a topic resurfaces...

20:22 / 08.09.08

So, I've been thinking about starting a manga primer thread, similar to the anime one in FTV&T. Is there any point? Would people find it interesting and have enough to say on the subject themselves to make it worth the effort?

A fall of geckos

20:54 / 08.09.08

I'd definitely be interested. I've not read much manga - Loan Wolf and Cub, Osamu Tezuka's Buddha and Uzumaki and maybe a couple of other pieces. I'd certainly be interested in hearing about Japanese comics, and a primer that discusses the common tropes in the different genres would be useful.

21:35 / 08.09.08

Well, I've only really started digging into it myself over the last month or two. I was hoping it'd spark some discussion and help to maybe expand Comics' remit - it's still painfully DC/Marvel/Morrison-skewed.

We've had a few manga recommendation threads here over the years, but they've always died out after a few posts. The anime thread seems to be a good model to follow instead, even if the opening post is just me talking about the few things that I've been reading so far.

Baroness von Lenska

03:07 / 09.09.08

Absolutely mind bogglingly exhausted, but just want to say yes, definitely yes on the manga primer. Personally, I've always found Comics a tough place to nudge into even though I love reading some of the more in depth and offbeat threads (the ongoing Filth and Seaguy threads come to mind), mainly because I don't read any superhero comics. Or have any interest there. Manga, on the other hand, I think I could pull together some interesting and worthy material to gab about. So, I'm in.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

04:07 / 09.09.08

I've only had sporadic exposure to manga I really clicked with -- Yotsuba is the big example -- so I'd love to see a primer thread. If nothing else it might ignite me to read those mangas I have sitting on my shelf, mostly untouched.

The Comics has a lot of potential but quite often there isn't enough interest at a given time. I'd like to see more people talking about Berlin, or Love & Rockets, as well as all the super-junk we love so much. It's a wildly flexible medium and the forum doesn't reflect that as much as I'd like.

Hell, I'd love to see an "Understanding Comics" thread with references to McCloud's Zot and general discussion of the academic/theoretic approaches to comicbookery.

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