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Comment count is 21
SolRo - 2016-11-28

I think the problem with the American comics industry, that even this guy doesn't notice, is that -it's an industry- and a very insular one at that. You have be in the system for your work to get anywhere and once you're in the system you have to keep pumping out work.

A writer or artist might get into the industry with one very good piece of work and blowing the right person, but after that, hey, we have 15 x-men, 12 spiderman, 20 wolverine, and tons of other miscellaneous crap that needs to be pushed out on a regular basis...get me a story by the end of the month or I find someone else.

The other problem obviously is that all of the energy and effort goes into producing and selling these same nearly 100 year old characters over and over and over and over again.

In contrast the manga industry is barely that...it's thousands of writers/artists making whatever comes into their head, selling it at giant amateur conventions, and occasionally the good stuff gets picked up by the magazines. As a work gets popular, the writers are actually able to exert more control over their work rather than less...they can take breaks, they can end a series where they feel like, kill off characters and never bring them back, etc, etc. A lot of new ideas and people are constantly entering and exiting that industry every year.

While the American industry just focuses on how to repackage the same characters and stories over and over again.


Monkey Napoleon - 2016-11-28

You're like a professional reductionist, aren't you?

Just like every fucking nerd comic reviewer who makes youtube videos and whines about this period in comics, he's completely forgotten about the absolutely pure and utter horseshit the comics industry shoveled out for a lifetime before he was even born.

All these characters and the books they wrote back then were meant for little kids, and they absolutely read like it. There's no complexity to anything about them. Our modern characterizations of these silver and golden age characters COME from these guys and writers smart enough to ape them. Batman before this time is Adam West Batman only stupider. All that terrible shit that the companies did in the 90's was just more of the same thing they'd been doing since forever, only with a 90's XTREME sensibility packed in.

These guys, plus a few others, carved out a niche in the comics industry that still exists to this day. They're the reason Marvel and DC even have graphic novel imprints separate from their main universe stuff, and all kinds of cool shit comes out under those brands all the time. Not only that, but now every once in awhile they'll hire somebody actually good to write for their traditionally dogshit books like Batman or Spiderman and what-have-yous, and they'll produce something somebody not stupid might want to read for a bit. None of that would have happened if these big name guys didn't swoop in and save the industry.

TL;DR: This guys argument is facile.


Monkey Napoleon - 2016-11-28

Having said all that, I don't doubt the Batman thing is terrible. The quality of WB's animated stuff has been declining for years. The last thing they made I remember liking was the The Dark Knight Returns, but that was probably one of the most faithful adaptations I've ever seen.


Bort - 2016-11-28

I would put the problem in the comics industry at, editors wield the bulk of power but are only rarely held accountable for their decisions.

For decades, DC was suffering from Marvel Envy (wanting to turn their Supermans and Batmans into more popular Spider-Mans) but were primarily limited by editors who just didn't understand what Marvel was doing right. That just led to weird messes of stories where, say, Green Lantern would refuse to save dying worlds because it was cutting into his me-time. And then, most recently, DC has largely been broken by hiring Bob Harras as their editor-in-chief, who tried to turn DC into the version of Marvel Comics that nearly went under by the late 90s. Thus we got the version of Superman who lost almost all his powers, got a cool new haircut, rode around on a motorcycle, got into fights with cops, and was hated and feared by the normal folks. We were about a month away from kryptonium claws before DC finally just let Geoff Johns set things right. Now we no longer have stories where, say, Green Arrow gets turned into a werewolf so he can learn what it's like to be a minority.

I should mention Eddie Berganza too. Besides being the genius editor immediately in charge of the Superman titles during his Wolverine-lite phase, he's also a notorious sexual harasser. Dude should have been out on his ass years ago, except the rumor is he's got blackmail material on some of the highers-up and so seems to be unfirable.

http://www.cbr.com/sexual-harassment-allegations-against-dc-ed itor-eddie-berganza-become-public/


poorwill - 2016-11-28

Gonna focus on the garbage you were spewing about the manga industry as everyone is pummeling you over your other idiotic comments. It is a *massive* fucking grinder - notoriously even worse than the US superhero biz- and there all kinds of sinister shit that you are ... glossing over isn't the right expression. I'm just going to say 'you're fucking dumb'. The *average* yearly salary of a manga artist in Japan is $35K. This does not include expenses - they have to pay for their own assistants and shit out of their own money and deadlines are brutal. The One Piece guy gets like 4 hours sleep a night, and he's the top of the top. He *needs* to take those breaks, or he'll fucking DIE you shit-eating imbecile. Artists that aren't huge obviously don't have the luxury to not work themselves to death. Unless they get tankobons, it's basically guaranteed they're gonna be operating at a loss. It's pretty much a given that a manga artist needs a second job. How they do that, I don't know, given that they're supposed to churn out 20-40 pages per month. Fuck you SolRo.


Redford - 2016-11-28

You can argue that the American comic industry has more humane conditions for work (as absurd it sounds) but it's worth pointing out that the creator of One Piece works as hard as he does because of his choice. He loves his comic, and his audience, and wants to give them as much content as possible before his fingers accidentally explode.

There are also plenty of cases where anime/manga artists are being overworked and underpaid due to social and business decisions as well though. Studio Ghibli is of course the most blatant one of these, but there are others. There are also hundreds of thousands of small Japanese artists making their own circles and learning how to draw by releasing under comikets, one release at a time. There is no way you can do this under the current American comic industry. The corporations own the characters and settings with an iron fist, and you need to go through them to release anything.


SolRo - 2016-11-28

I never said the manga industry is a utopian paradise, just that it has an actual turnover of ideas and creators, with most creators keeping control over said ideas, and an amateur ecosystem that doesn't have the slightest comparable example in the states.

And it's not like American comics writers or artists become millionaires by doing contract work on existing IP. They earn shit here as well, and with a smaller social safety net.


15th - 2016-11-28

I don't know anything about comics, but I'm pleased to see Solro is a renaissance man of being wrong.


Kid Fenris - 2016-11-29

There are two things I like about the manga industry, despite the above-mentioned problems. One: a series rarely changes hands. Sure, you'll see classic stuff revived by new creative teams, but most manga has the same writer/artist throughout its run. Even if a series switches gears and gets crappy, it at least has the original creator at the helm.

Just about every Marvel or DC superhero comic swaps writers and editors during its lifespan, so there's no singular vision. It leads to confusing messes of plotlines and inbred references that new writers have to sort out or relaunch or whatever.

The second thing? Stuff actually ends. Popular manga might span fifty-plus volumes, but they usually follow one continuous story that leads to a conclusion at some point. A lot of Marvel/DC stuff just goes on and on.

Of course, there are plenty of coherent, creator-owned Western comics. But when it comes to big-name superhero stuff, I can see why a kid would have a much easier time picking up Naruto or One Piece than the latest X-Men storyline.


Binro the Heretic - 2016-11-28

Why do so many comic nerds hate the "V For Vendetta" movie?

I thought it was one of the rare Moore adaptations that turned out well.

"Well" doesn't really do it justice, though. It was really pretty great, I thought.


Two Jar Slave - 2016-11-28

It was better than the comic in most ways.


badideasinaction - 2016-11-28

I think somewhere in the comments he said he liked V, he just thought the sound design was laughably bad so he included that clip.


cognitivedissonance - 2016-11-28

Two reasons:

A) It mistook the politics of the comic for something else. Moore's book is individualist anarchic, an ethic that requires an understanding of Max Stirner and a certain degree of subtlety. The movie doesnt take the complexities of Moore's ideas seriously and it becomes the Wachowskis ranting about Fox News, and the end scene is absolute braindead garbage. Also, Stephen Fry knows better and somehow keeps finding himself in these movies.

B) The years since have not been kind, given the way the V character has been adopted by fairly repellent online people with appalling theories. It's such an odd film to build an inconsistent nascent ideology around.


StanleyPain - 2016-11-28

The movie is framed in such a way as to make V look like an anti-hero (hence all the fucktards who think the movie is a clarion call to anti-government movements) when the original graphic novel clearly paints him as a psychopath whose ends do not justify the means and who is engaged more in revenge than actually wanting to help society. It is a story about revolution against fascism, yes, but the underlying theme is meant to be "at what cost?" The movie doesn't really explore that in any meaningful way.

Also he fucking imprisons and tortures and someone. Why is this even an argument?

Personally, I liked the movie, but just like Fight Club, basically most of it's "fans" completely misunderstood it because they are idiots.
The best part being, of course, morons who couldn't be bothered to spend 10 seconds on the internet looking up Guy Fawkes day and who STILL today, in 2016, think it's a British holiday *celebrating* Fawkes rather than condemning him.


TeenerTot - 2016-11-28

Ha ha! Liefeld.


chumbucket - 2016-11-28

I'm not quite sure how the "cabal of great writers" created Liefeld and his ilk. Why not just lay the blame on those follow-on wannabes and NOT the actual good writers and artists they are trying de$perately to ape?


Bort - 2016-11-28

Phantom stars.

Though there are some weaknesses and issues even in the more talented writers' output that is a little easier to see in retrospect. Alan Moore's major works all have a rapey streak to them, and not that he started the use of women in this fashion, but he certainly helped legitimize it.


Bootymarch - 2016-11-28

I think I turned off his sonic video within 10 seconds; this I made it 6. He's going for the world record.


Xenocide - 2016-11-28

I made it a bit further in but turned it off after the incredibly generic "[author I dislike] KILLED COMICS FOREVER!" whine.

The Killing Joke animated movie IS fucking terrible, though.


Gmork - 2016-11-28

The Killing Joke animated feature was a huge pile of shit, 5 stars for that.


Waugh - 2016-11-28

you're a huge pile of shit


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