the Lottery Party: Burning Bridges For Sale

The year just keeps getting better and better.
Diamond’s ongoing trainwreck, at first laying down impossibly new laws for the industry to adhere to followed by a change of headquarters resulting in numerous incidences of mistaken, late and even lost orders, is still a corporate-level mess unraveling. Though at last loosening its deathgrip to allow a few more indies to sneak through the machineworks (likely from a couple of months of downward spiraling sales across the comic book landscape), rumors now abound of Steve Geppi taking some very real financial blows. Might this be an opening shot in the months to come for others, most notably the new Enemi/Haven tagteam, to actually challenge the evil empire’s monopoly for a seat at the big boy’s table?
We need the variety, we need alternatives. If Diamond’s situation continues to worsen and should they even tank outright, where the flaming heck will that leave everyone who is so dependent on their services?
And the price gouging continues from the big two. Despite countless public claims (read: lies) to the contrary, it is real and it will continue. All of this is confounded by what I see as an abuse of the media. DC has found a home to voice Dan Didio’s piece via the folks at Newsarama, while Marvel has apparently gone to bed kinky style with ComicBookResources. Barely six weeks after discontinuing his Cup ‘o Joe column for myspace comics (citing that his “schedule is just in…sane with work” and would not be able to do a column any longer), Joe Quesada exploded last week all over CBR, so now we have the Executive Editor and Editor in Chief of the two largest publishers now openly courting the two largest comic news websites. Am I jealous? Actually, for my part, in all of my online scribery the past few years I have never reviewed a book from either Marvel or DC. I recognize there are hundreds of sources for that already so I prefer to give the space to the underdogs. However, we at ComicNews.Info do not impose those kinds of rules upon our contributors, so all in all our objectives can remain more open-minded than merely playing Uncle Tom to the powers that be. We play ball with any publisher willing for a game. But if the big two publishers wish to play favorites while throwing the bones to the dogs, sobeit. Just imagine though, what if Microsoft only allowed coverage via the New York Times? What if Disney only gave the meat of its news stories to the Wall Street Journal? Do you see where I’m going? Monopolizing a distributor is proving lethal to the industry as a whole, monopolizing the media outlets is the same degree of inbreeding. And in the case of the recent Captain America 600 blunder, in which the marketing had everyone geared for a bombshell only to be left with the usual disappointing wave of hot air, what was honestly won by this in the end? Aside from the dozens upon dozens of blogs around the nets describing the frustration and diminishing faith in the persons in charge at Marvel Entertainment, I see this as the corporate boys trying to push a used before plot point on a readership that it has apparently deemed as being too dimwitted to pick up on their own. Why not just drop the epic story naturally and let the media attention grow after the fact- wouldn’t that ultimately serve the speculator’s interests all the more anyhow?
Both companies seem to be in a bizarre contest to out-embarrass themselves. DC’s Trinity series, despite the technical prowess of its creators, proved to be a fifty-two part abominable failure. And more recently seen with the transition from Battle for the Cowl to the Batman rebirthing is the increasingly common idiocy of releasing in-continuity books out of order, annoying many a fan. With Marvel only waiting two years to bring back Steve Rogers from the grave, bets are already being placed to see how long it takes to again be reading the adventures of Bruce Wayne. You have to stop and wonder sometimes how many of the current stable of editors even care about what they do for a living anymore.

Ignoring the problems will not make them go away. Everybody is feeling the economic sting of the times, so spend your money wisely and make a statement. If you enable business practices as brutally unaesthetic as theirs you have no right to complain about the increasing cover prices of the books we all love. And love is what it boils down to, don’t get me wrong. When arts and entertainment, as copacetic and so vital as they are for modern survival, are forced into taking a backseat to the suit and tied moneymen of greed-worshipping corporate America and their backstabbing closed door dealings, passion is hindered. We suffer, as fans of these institutions, we suffer and as long as our wallets endorse such questionable ethics the state of the comic book industry will continue its drunken stumble through Hypertime and on into the Negative Zone.
Please please please prove me wrong, you wench of a goddess Reason.

by Richard Caldwell, Managing Homemade Penny Rolls
messages on how I shall never be allowed to work anywhere in mainstream comix here: captainhowdy023@gmail.com

Last 3 posts by Richard Caldwell

• Optimum Wound Contest Winners Lineup - September 9th, 2009
• Talking With The Ever Industrious B. Alex Thompson - September 4th, 2009
• Exclusive: Optimum Wound Contest! - September 4th, 2009

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