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jack fear:
Re: Late books. The problem with your argument here is that you seem to have this image of Warren Ellis as the lone, Promethean capital-C Creator, responsible for all aspects of his work that—when, in fact, he's largely limited by his collaborators. The cold fact is that, although Warren's illnesses caused a hiatus last year, the vast majority of the delays are not his fault—not directly, anyway. During MoS's publishing hiatus, Chris Weston committed to THE FILTH, and John Cassaday committed to CAPTAIN AMERICA.
uhh, i heard from someone who had worked with him that his collaborators were moving on to other projects because of the extreme lateness of his scripts (though he still managed to find time to read every. single. post. on his forum). for example, at the comics' festival in bristol last year, chris weston was saying that he was still waiting for the script for the next issue of 'ministry of space', and it was already late then. it's almost a whole year later and the series still hasn't finished, even though it's only a three issue miniseries. much like alan moore, he seems to be getting a reputation for working with people only once or twice before they are unable to ever collaborate again.
sleazenation:
Actually this discussion is already missing one of Ellis' most interesting initiatives- the warren ellis forum itself- you can say many things about the cult of ego that ellis cultivates there, but it does serve as an excellent focus group for extremely loyal readership, and a model for a kind of direct marketing that can only be dreamed of in the non-net world - wtness the speed at which the WEF alone managed to raise 20,000 dollars for top shelf recently.
no, the WEF did NOT raise the $20,000 Top Shelf needed alone. the WEF was just ONE of the places that posted a plea for help, along with places like sequential tart, ninth art, bugpowder and pretty much any other comics related site or forum.
yes, the WEF does have some clout within the industry -- companies like AiT-planetlar would probably never have taken off to the extent to which they have without the support of something like it. plenty of self-publishers have somewhere to generate interest in their work, and accolades from ellis count for sales, no doubt. it is one of the largest comics communities out there.
flux:
I think that there's not a lot of things in the comics market that are accessable to a truly mainstream market, save for the superhero stuff that is so huge that it can be a cross-format franchise (Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, The X-Men).
i think these examples are more popular because of the iconography, like coca-cola or andy warhol's campbells soup tins. people can recognise the logos or costumes of these superheroes, but i'd bet most of them who wear them on t-shirts wouldn't know a thing about the actual characters if you asked them -- or if they did, it would be from television, not comics. i don't know much about superman or the x-men, and i've read comics for years. what i do know i picked up from other mediums than comics.
and, jack, calling him "The Warren" doesn't help your argument, it makes you sound like more of a fanboy than you are...
oh yeah, and as for "mainstream bestsellers" in a comparable industry, according to something i heard at work yesterday (i work in the book industry) only 5% of book authors are "bestsellers". that leaves a hell of a proportion who aren't considered "mainstream", doesn't it? |
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