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Friday's Sermon – Europe By The Pound, Paedogeddon, Kids Not Buying Comics And Superoddness.
Friday. I used to look forward to Fridays. But now it's all, palm kids off onto their grandparents, go to the bank, post office and supermarket, teach young children at a church holiday club about St Francis of Copertino, take the tube into London to meet old friends, pick up a used PC that might actually have Word, Photoshop and Excel on it, be forced into having alcohol by possibly clients, forced I tell you, come back and write all the Bleeding Cool stuff that I should have done during that period.
Thankfully, last night while watching Entourage on VHS and Jam And Jerusalem on the Nintendo Wii version of the BBC iPlayer, I managed to write a couple of advance articles. They should tide you over in my absence.
Until they kick in, what's happening?
I understand the C2E2 chappies are planning to bulk-buy seats from the UK and Spain to fly creators over to the Chicago show, who just wouldn't normally consider it. And while C2E2 have grabbed the big publishers, Chicago-born Brian Bendis slipped through their fingers as WizardWorld Anaheim Comic Con grabbed him first. And they are scheduled head to head…
At least the Anaheim logo is spelt right. Guys! Your 'Chigago' logo still needs fixing!
Previously relatively sane Byrne board member Lars Johansson posted slightly odd warning signs against predatory paedophiles in and around the comic book industry. It included sage advice warning of;
People who have very little knowledge about the history or the origin of the character, but rather likes to discuss the current gracefulness of him found in the "gotta have" comics. The pedophile tries to achieve some kind of status quo coolness, almost with himself in it (sometimes with his own made up modified "title"). Any origin or back story found in the comics will destroy this "picture". Normal people "error" by sometimes asking too much about the history "how did the spider make him like that?" etc.
Or
Anything that aggressively and in an unnatural way explains away non-completionism of a comic book run, where nobody asked. "Not much happened in those issues, so I pretend the crappy art by Jim Smith doesn't exist, do you hear that boys!".
Lots of uhmming and ahhhing on the board follows…
British kids comics are hitting the skids… while the weekly children's anthology comic the Beano (running since 1938) stays steady at over 50,000 copies a week, its sister title The Dandy has lost a quarter of its sales, sitting at around only 20,000 copies a week. Other less well known titles also drop, though the news stand experiment The BeanoMAX (a Beano-style magazine in a bag full of goodies) experienced a rise of 6% to over 40,000. It Marvel or DC take a lesson from this, expect to see Amazing Spider-Man or Wednesday Comics coming bagged with pencils, ruler, bracelets, water pistols and candy.
Apparently Blog@Newsarama is responsible for the Siegel estate taking more of the origin of Superman IP back from DC Comics/Warner Bros. See DC? This is what happens when you stop giving stories exclusively to Newsarama and either a) let CBR and IGN on on the act or b) set up your own blogs to disseminate information instead. Bet no one saw that one coming, did they? I bet ComicsShouldBeGood will never cause the Kirby estate to get a chunk of X-Men…
The case grants the estate of Jerry Siegel co-ownership of Ma and Pa Kent, Superman's childhood and arrival on Earth. And what an odd coincidence that this should happen on the same day, DC put out previews of Geoff Johns and Gary Frank's Superman: Secret Origin… which, you know, covers all that.