Via TCJ, I came across this rumination by Chris Puzak about the lack of Sci-Fi comics and fans in the comics world. Every since I worked in the industry - and met some extremely nice people - I have followed the business side of the industry, and Chris’ piece got me thinking: I am not sure that comics are actually a mass market medium anymore.
Chris thinks that the primary reason for the lack of sci-fi comics is the poor job the industry does attracting anything but superhero fans:
Harris wonders why more science fiction fans haven’t gotten into comics. The industry seems to make half-hearted attempts to attract them, but never for a very long time. For example there have been various attempts by comic companies to do adaptations of science fiction stories. Marvel published a short-lived series in the 70s entitled Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction, which relied pretty heavily on adaptations. DC got into the action in the 80s with a series of science fiction graphic novels, adapting stories like George R.R. Martin’s “Sandkings”, Ray Bradbury’s “Frost and Fire”, and Harlan Ellison’s Outer Limits episode “Demon with a Glass Hand”. Neither company seemed to have much luck with these series, but I thought they fairly good.
DC had a great idea in hiring actual science fiction writers like Christopher Hinz and Michael Moorcock to write stories for its Helix line of comics, but there really wasn’t much of an effort to alert science fiction fans to the comics’ existence. If the comics had been printed as cheap graphic novels and put in the science fiction sections of bookstores, then they might have been better sellers. There are many science fiction manga series, so hopefully the American companies will someday find a way to capitalize on that
I don’t think that will happen. There are two basic areas of science fiction devotees: literate and video. Now, I know that is a simplification, and I realize that there is a great deal of overlap in the two groups (myself included), but I think the basic point holds. There are two means by which the vast majority of science fiction or speculative fiction fans experience sf: through the written word and through dynamic visual presentations, i.e. television and movies. I think that comics fails to satisfy either group.
People who prefer to get their sf through the written word are going to be disappointed by comics, especially American comics, because comics are an economically poor means of reading a story. Because they are illustrated, it can take more pages to get across an idea. Contrary to popular opinion, a picture isn’t always worth a thousand words. You can generally get more story per page in prose as opposed to comic form. Even very minimalistic stories would be difficult to do effectively in just one comic. Doing a novel length treatment would require several comics. Even if one could, the fact remains that comics cost about two to three dollars a copy. I can buy a copy of Asimov’s for just a little bit more than that, and get several complete stories, as well as reviews and essays.
Comics also do not work for visual fans, because comic illustrations are not not dynamic, they are static. A page in a comic book does not have the same visual impact as good movie special effects. Peter Jackson could not have made the Battle of Helms Deep come alive on the pages of a comic book in the same manner as he did on the big screen.
I do not see how the comics industry can get past this dilemma. Some may argue that graphic novels or manga-like collections would solve these problems, but I am not so sure. Graphic Novels do not really solve either the static image or cost to story problem. I purchased Endless Nights for my wife for about 25 dollars for Christmas. I enjoyed it, but the stories in it where in no way as complex or engaging as those in the last David Brin collection I purchased, nor were the images as striking or exciting as those in the LOTR:TT.
The problem for comics is that I don’t see why those concerns do not translate from sf to any other genre. Perhaps romance and mystery comics, for example, do not suffer as much in the art department because they rely less on a sense of wonder for their power. However, the fact remains that we are a video watching society, and static images of a gun fight or a love scene don’t carry the same emotional punch as dynamic scenes do. The story/cost problem is the same for every other genre as for sf. The more I thin about this, the more I am convinced that comics can never be anything other than a niche market. Technology has created visual options that are much more exciting than comic art, and the economics of publishing have changed in such a way as to make comics prohibitively expensive in terms of story to cost ratios. The heyday appears to be long gone, and I don’t see how comics can ever regain a mass following given the current configuration of American society.
The obvious counter argument is, of course, Manga comics. They have sold in the tens and hundreds of thousands, small in terms of Television and movies, but good in terms of genre book publishing. However, I have to wonder if the success of Manga comics is a reflection of the fact that it is almost impossible to find that particular sensibility in entertainment. Anime is very much a niche market, still, and I seriously wonder what would happen to Manga sales if Anime were to become widely and easily available in the United States, the way sci-fi or mystery or romance movies and television series are. No, it seems that right now Manga comics represent the one outlet for the dissemination of Japanese flavored entertainment, and not a representative of how well comics can do in a competitive market.
There just doesn’t seem to be any reason to think that comics will anytime grow out of what they are now: a market largely dedicated to the superhero genre and little else.
December 29th, 2003
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Culture |
3 comments
Poetry sucks. Now, I am aware that that is not a universally held opinion, and further aware that not all poetry sucks completely. But I would submit to you that Sturgeon’s Law needs to be modified for poetry: 99% of poetry is crap. Out side of rare exceptions, I have found that prose is consistently better at expressing ideas and at generating genuine emotions. The emotions even good poetry conjure up tend to be shallow and one note in nature, more manipulation than honesty. The best of poetry cannot compare with the best of prose.
I think this comes from the fact that poetry is a largely unnatural means of expression. Human beings, at least modern, Western human beings, simply do not communicate in verse. The form places restrictions on the content - even free verse, to a certain extent - and those restrictions make the poetry something less than real human communication. Compare the dialog, characterizations, and flow of Paradise Lost and the Grapes of Wrath. I don’t think its an exaggeration to say that Paradise Lost is perhaps the finest piece of long poetry every written, and yet it simply is not in the same class as the finest prose works. A large part of that is due to the limitations of the poetic form: at no time can you ever forget you are reading a piece of poetry. By that I mean the cadence, the sentence and line structure, the choice of language, the sometimes forced-seeming word usage is a constant reminder that you are dealing with an artificial construct, not a natural means of communication. Some older literature has a minor version of this problem, but only a minor version. Novels do not have the limitation poetry does, and so are able to use normal methods of human communication to get their stories across. A good novel has none of the problems of cadence, structure or enforced word usage that plagues poetry. Poetry sucks because it feels wrong, and it feels wrong because it is not normal human communication - it is an artificial construct created for the sake of itself.
Some people may argue that songs are simply poetry put to music, and since songs are an effective means of communication, all poetry should be considered such. I don’t think so, because I think that people forget that the singer in a song is another instrument. We expect music to adhere to a particular set of conventions and forms, and when a person’s voice is used in service of those forms and conventions, it becomes just another instrument. In other words, song lyrics are not experienced as language, they are experienced as music.
That is the core of the problem. Poetry is not a natural use of the language, it is artificial, and in being artificial it is inferior as a means of communication.
December 29th, 2003
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Writing |
6 comments
As this article reminds us, there are people who want to work but are not being employed to their capacities. That is as damaging as unemployment, and yet we have no real way to measure it. The job picture is a lot worse than the official statistics make it seem, and since the official statistics don’t trumpeted the discouraged or underemployed, we have no easy way to bring the issue to the center of national debate.
What keeps being forgotten in the discussion of jobs is that the quality of the job is as important as the quantity. A nation in which the majority of its jobs are low wage, low benefit, dead end traps is not a healthy society. Its middle class will shrink and its economic prospects will dry up do to lack of consumption. The combination of white collar jobs disappearing overseas and the increase in underemployment very strongly suggests that the United States is becoming just such a nation.
December 29th, 2003
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Economics |
2 comments
Calpundit seems to think so:
So yes, there are downsides to the Bush Doctrine, lots of them, and that’s why I don’t support it. But there are also upsides, and Libya’s transformation appears to be one of them. Acknowledging that doesn’t make you soft on Bush, it just means you’re willing to acknowledge the obvious.
On the face of it, that makes sense, but I think that there are two serious problems. The first, of course, is that Libya did not really have a weapons of mass destruction program. Since the United States included no conditions that would lead to the democratization of Libya, Qaddafi essentially gave up nothing for lucrative economic concessions. That is hardly a success.
More importantly, for threats to be effective, they must be credible. I am surprised to see that people think the United States is still in a position to invade and occupy a rogue nation. Approximately 80% of the United States combat forces are already deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq or refitting, with the rest mainly deployed in Korea. Already, the Army is preventing soldiers from leaving the service. Where, exactly, is the threat of American military action going to come from? And if the US is not, as it appears, capable of fighting and occupying another nation, then why should anyone believe that the Bush Doctrine has scared anyone into anything?
It is possible that Qaddafi simply panicked, but this is a man who has survived fro more than thirty years - I doubt he is the panicky type. It is more probable, given the United States lack of ability to effectively threaten, that this is simply the culmination of Qaddafi’s twelve to fifteen year attempt to rejoin the “civilized” nations of the world.
December 29th, 2003
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Politics |
2 comments
Here is your Monday morning pick-me-up
Although the federal government announced last week that it is taking precautions to ensure a safe beef supply, it might be too little too late, says the Madison author of a book on mad cow disease.
“We have not taken this disease seriously,” John C. Stauber, author of “Mad Cow USA,” said in a telephone interview on Friday.
He said three recent tests performed by government agencies on a Washington state cow suspected of carrying the disease all have verified the strain of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) as the same one found in Great Britain in 1997.
Tests conducted by researchers from the Veterinary Laboratories Agency in Weybridge, England, agreed with U.S. preliminary findings that the Holstein had BSE.
“This cow should have never been slaughtered and put in our food system,” Stauber said.
The good news about the 1997 infected beef crisis in Great Britain is that it only killed 130 people, Stauber said. The bad news is that people have been dying from meat they ate 10 years ago.
Vegetarianism is looking better and better.
December 29th, 2003
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Health |
no comments
