Classic EBI #192: How Do You Buy For Your Geek

Valiant Comics is back! Again! Really this time! With their newest announcement, I go over the history of Valiant, from their first signs of trouble (:coughACCLAIMcough:) to the revelation of their Free Comic Book Day cover for 2012, and I give those working for the company a few suggestions.

Everything But Imaginary #427: Valiant Comics, You Dirty Tease

But going back in time, we’re sticking with Christmas, and another of my “buying for the geek on your list” columns, this one from 2006.

Everything But Imaginary #192: How Do You Buy For Your Geek?

The countdown has begun, friends. We’ve got less than a month left until Christmas, Kwanza, Chanukah, National Boll Weevil Appreciation Day or whatever it is you personally celebrate. No matter what, the time has come to start your shopping in earnest, because pretty soon the time will come to start handing out those gifts.

And as those of us who proudly gather under the Geek Umbrella know, this is the time of year when we both give and receive those great gifts that come with our heritage: comic books, DVDs, statues, toys, pencil boxes with the Punisher’s logo on them… in this day and age, there are more geek goodies available than ever before. So as has become something of a tradition here at Everything But Imaginary Global Headquarters, today we’re going to talk about some of the goodies currently available for the Geek out there. Now for most of you, you don’t need this list. The people in a Geek’s life are often non-Geeks, and when you do have a fellow Geek to shop for, you can pretty easily figure out what to get for them. So this guide isn’t for the regular EBI reader. No, my friends, this is a guide for your family and friends. This is a checklist of the New and the Cool out there in comic stores and retail outlets alike. Today we’re gonna talk about the swag you want for Christmas, so print out this column and conveniently leave it lying around where the clueless loved one may happen to find it. Trust me, you’ll thank me later.

As a Geek, perhaps the second-greatest shared obsession (second behind comic books, of course), are DVDs. Right now, there are a lot of ‘em out there. Superman fans have entered a golden age. Just yesterday saw the release of Superman Returns in two editions (a barebones and a two-disc special edition), plus a 14-disc collector’s edition that collects it along with all four of the original Christopher Reeve movies, the director’s cut of the original Superman and the never-before seen Richard Donner cut of Superman II. I haven’t had a chance yet to view the Donner cut (which is also available separately), but several reliable sources (i.e. Mark Blicharz) are reporting that this original version, what the movie would have been had the Salkinds not fired Donner before the movie was completed, is the best superhero movie ever made. And I believe that – even the original cut was close, only the cheesy ending prevented it from reaching that peak.

If you’re not up for the greatest superhero movie ever made, how about the greatest superhero TV show? Justice League Unlimited, having been prematurely ushered from the airwaves by the knuckleheads at Cartoon Network (do I sound bitter?) has now hit the DVD shelves. Spinning off the original solid Justice League cartoon, the new series added dozens of other DC characters to the original seven Leaguers, often giving minor heroes the spotlight and making some of the most exciting moments in superhero history. This show was just plain brilliant, and even if there aren’t any new episodes in the making, I can watch the old ones again and again. And again.

If you’re not in the market for DVDs, how about home décor? Comic geek statues are becoming pretty big these days. DC Direct’s “Women of the DC Universe” line, for example, shows off the likes of Power Girl, Supergirl and Harley Quinn as designed by Adam Hughes. Graphitti Designs has statuary showing off Jeff Smith’s Bone characters, View Askew stars like Jay and Silent Bob, Bernie Hogarth’s designs for Tarzan and the stars of the classic Tales From the Crypt comics.

Speaking of those classic comics, Gemstone has begun a new line of archive collections of those old EC Comics titles, like Weird Science, Shock SuspenStores and Tales From the Crypt. Add this to already venerable archival lines such as the Dark Horse Archives, DC Comics Archives and Marvel Masterworks, and there are thousands of classic, legendary comics available for the Geek in your life.

Ah, but you don’t have anyone on your list interested in the classics of the past, you say. Your friends are looking ahead, to the new technologies. Not a problem, Marvel Ultimate Alliance, which is getting rave reviews, is available for virtually every video game platform there is. If you’ve got a friend who managed to fight through the crowds and win one of the estimated twelve Playstation 3 units available in North America (or if you’re stuck in the past and still playing on a PS2), they can now suit up as Spider-Man, Captain America, the Fantastic Four or any of 20 playable characters, then throw down with dozens of different villains. A good gift for the comic geek or the gamer on your list.

Similar to statuary, prop replicas are becoming a big business as well. Quantum Mechanix has begun a line of replica props from the movie Serenity, such as Alliance Money Packs and Captain Mal Reynolds’ pistol. There are tons of props available for such movies as Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Batman Begins and Hellboy, and now comic book props are available as well. You can own Green Lantern’s power battery or Captain America’s mask. These last few have always kind of perplexed me, actually – how do you make a replica of something that, technically, never existed? Ah, well…

Dark Horse Comics, always a home for quality collectibles, is putting out a ton of cool stuff too. They’ve got plenty of statues and books, but also unique items like lunchboxes, playing chards, Zippo lighters, Christmas tree ornaments and Syroco-style figurines featuring classic Peanuts characters, Golden Age DC heroes and even Kellogg’s cereal mascots like Snap, Crackle and Pop and Tony the Tiger.

What about the young geeks out there? As a medium, comic books need to make an effort to lure the young, after all. The good news is, there’s stuff out there for them too. The Marvel Adventures and Justice League Unlimited digest paperbacks are solid reads, and it’ll always be fun to stuff a stocking full of Archie digests. If your kid is into Disney, you can give ‘em a gold mine, with stuff like Gemstone’s The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck and The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck Companion. These books aren’t just for the young – they’re some of the best comic books ever made, bar none.

It really is a wonderful time to be a Geek, friends. There’s more stuff out there for us than ever before. So what are some of the things on your wish list this year? What neat goodies are you hoping to find under the tree? Share your wish lists with us here. And here’s hoping you get everything you need, and a few things you want.

Blake M. Petit is the author of the superhero comedy novel, Other People’s Heroes, the suspense novel The Beginner and the Christmas-themed eBook A Long November. He’s also the co-host, with whoever the hell is available that week, of the 2 in 1 Showcase Podcast and the weekly audio fiction podcast Blake M. Petit’s Evercast. E-mail him at BlakeMPetit@gmail.com and visit him on the web at Evertime Realms. Read past columns at the Everything But Imaginary Archive Page, and check out his new experiment in serial fiction at Tales of the Curtain.

Classic EBI #95: The 2004 Comic Book Industry Progress Report

This week in Everything But Imaginary, I’m digging into the newest force in independent comics, Kickstarter. How does it work? How has it worked? Is it worthwhile?

Everything But Imaginary #403: Kicking Things Into Gear

But going back in time, this week’s classic EBI is the final column from 2004, my “2004 Comic Book Industry Progress Report.” A little time capsule that’s kind of pertinent, considering where comics are right now.

Everything But Imaginary #95: The 2004 Comic Book Industry Progress Report

Hello there, all, and welcome to the final Everything But Imaginary for the year 2004. It was a year of ups and downs, highs and lows, smooth and chunky, and when all was said and done, I think it wasn’t too bad a year at that. That said, there are always things that could be done better, and as such, we here at Everything But Imaginary Global Headquarters have compiled the following progress report for the comic book industry, for the retailers, and for you, the fans. So take a look, see where you fall on this hierarchy, and do what it takes to make 2005 a better year for comics than 2004.

For the Comic Companies:

*Keep up trying to attract younger readers. I have to give credit where credit is due, Marvel and DC Comics have both made great strides this year in their effort to reach out to the pre-teen and younger crowd. The new Marvel Age line, offering a mixture of contemporary retellings of old stories and brand-new stories with Marvel’s teenage characters, is a great idea. The Johnny DC imprint, rounding up all of the DC Comics based on cartoon shows, is also a very effective way to brand which of their titles are appropriate for younger readers — plus they get major bonus points in my book for things like activity pages and a letter column (something woefully missing from other DC Comics these days). I want to see both of these lines grow and prosper this year, so fans, try out some of these comics even if you consider yourself too old for them. And if you know any kids who might like a few comics, this is the place to start.

*Conversely, remember to keep your comic book prices reasonable. I love Gemstone Comics for what they’ve done with the Walt Disney properties, but I’m still in a tiff about charging $6.95 an issue for Uncle Scrooge and Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories. Yeah, clearly they’re gearing this to the collectors. But guys, the collectors will read the books anyway. It’s insane to have the two flagship titles of a Disney line priced too high for a child to buy them! If you must have a title for “collectors,” why not call it Walt Disney Masterpieces or something? Just make the other books affordable.

*Remember: that old adage about the only bad publicity being no publicity is nonsense in the long run. Controversy sells, true, but not for long. Sure, when people rant and rave about how bad a comic book is, other people may pick it up for an issue or two to see what all the fuss is about, then they’ll drop it and join in the ranting and raving. Soon you’ve reached everyone there is buying comics, and the sales will fall. And fast.

*Take advantage of your multi-media properties. Spider-Man 2 was one of the top-grossing films of the year. Smallville is a hit. Kids everywhere are singing that godawful Teen Titans cartoon theme song. There is no reason not to use that to your advantage. Including a mini-comic in the Punisher DVD (a comic by the regular creative team, no less) was a very nice touch. So was handing out the special edition Amazing Spider-Man where Frank made his first appearance at the movie theatres. I saw a lot of people in the theatre reading that comic book before the film started. Push the comics based directly on the films and TV shows and, more so, try to link them. Advertise the Superman: Birthright hardcover book as being the bridge to Smallville that it is. Play up that you’re going to have writers for that show on two of the comics next year (Superman and Superman/Batman). And if the Bryan Singer run on Ultimate X-Men ever finally comes out, God help you if you don’t let the non-comic readers know about it!

For the Retailers:

*Clean up, dammit. This doesn’t go for all retailers, but I’ve seen a lot of comic shops that are an absolute mess. Dusty shelves, 15-year-old posters on the wall, hastily boxed back issues in no order whatsoever and comics dating back to 2000 sitting on the new release shelf. That’s ridiculous. And it’s no way to run a business. Get out the broom, put up some new posters, alphabetize the old comics and you might just get more customers, as opposed to the people who walk by your store, squint in confusion, and then wander off to the pet shop next door, which at least has an excuse to occasionally be filthy.

*Be friendly. The best comic stores — the ones that I go to on a regular basis — are the ones that treat everyone with respect, be they a first-time customer or someone who’s had a pull list for years. Talk to your customers. Help them find what they want. Don’t be patronizing or snooty — not only does it cost you a customer, but it helps perpetuate a stereotype that holds back the whole art form. As I’ve said before, if it’s something the Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons would say… don’t say it.

*Take some business classes. Too many retailers are just fans who decided to open their own shops. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but when the proprietor has no idea how to run a business, all the love of comics in the world won’t keep it going. First figure out how to maintain a profitable retail business. Then apply that to running a comic book store. The husks of abandoned comic shops across the country prove how vital that lesson is.

For the Fans:

*Stop buying bad comics, particularly when there are so many great ones you aren’t reading. You would think this was a given, but a lot of people simply don’t grasp the concept. Now I’m not suggesting that you should go out there right now and drop every other title from your list, I’m saying you should be more discriminating. If you’re getting 194,246.7 X-Men related comic books a month, are you doing that because you still actually like all those titles, or because you haven’t missed an issue since 1977 and don’t want a hole to appear in your collection? If it’s the latter, that means it’s time to rethink things.

*If a comic is getting critical acclaim, try to find out why. There are certain comic books that you hear us funky reviewers praising month in and month out. She-Hulk. The Monolith. Fade From Grace. But these books don’t have the gargantuan sales numbers of other books of (arguably) much lower quality. We know you’ve heard the buzz by now. Why not see what all the fuss is about? And nobody is saying you have to like any given comic book. I’m just saying that if everyone keeps talking about how great a comic is, it may be worth your time to try an issue or two and see what all the deal is.

*Be heard. In this day and age, the only thing that can build comics readership (until the companies do something to engender a major societal shift) is your word of mouth. If you have a comic you love that no one is reading, tell them about it. If you’ve got one that you think your non-comic reading cousin would like, lend them a copy. If you’re at a bookstore and see an old lady trying to pick out a comic book as a gift for her grandson, make a suggestion. And be heard by the publishers too. Chat it up on the message boards. Write them letters — even if they don’t publish letters anymore, there’s bound to be someone reading them. It’s true that the best way to vote is with your wallet — buy what you like, don’t spend money on what you don’t like — but it can’t hurt to tell the folks in charge why you like or don’t like the comics you’ve chosen to purchase or chosen to ignore.

FAVORITE OF THE WEEK: December 22, 2004

It was a good week, but not a great week in comics, and the best comes from a rather unlikely source. Space Ghost #2 continues the dark, shadowy origin of a character best known today for hosting a goofy talk show on Cartoon Network. This is the origin of the classic Space Ghost, though, and this is a great issue. Stranded on a distant world, betrayed by the peacekeeping force that he fought for, Thaddeus Bach was left for dead. But now he’s not only alive, he’s mad. It’s hard to believe that the same Joe Kelly who writes the incredibly dull Justice League Elite also writes this comic, and it’s fantastic to see the beautiful artwork of Ariel Olivetti. I’m really starting to anticipate this comic each month.

Blake M. Petit is the author of the superhero comedy novel, Other People’s Heroes, the suspense novel The Beginner and the Christmas-themed eBook A Long November. He’s also the co-host, with whoever the hell is available that week, of the 2 in 1 Showcase Podcast and the weekly audio fiction podcast Blake M. Petit’s Evercast. E-mail him at BlakeMPetit@gmail.com and visit him on the web at Evertime Realms. Read past columns at the Everything But Imaginary Archive Page, and check out his new experiment in serial fiction at Tales of the Curtain.

 

Classic EBI #89: Sigils at the House of Mouse

And once again, friends, it’s Wednesday. Time for an all-new Everything But Imaginary column! This week, I look at the impact of long-term storytelling, how it can work well, and what sins a writer may commit that loses his audience prematurely.

Everything But Imaginary #396: Gratification in an Instant

But getting into the Wayback machine, we’re looking at my column from November 17, 2004, a column about a topic that’s only really become significant in the last month or so… the story of how the Walt Disney company bought the defunct CrossGen Comics. It didn’t have much of an impact then, but now that Disney also owns Marvel, we’re finally seeing motion on the old CrossGen properties. Let’s see what I said about this way back then, shall we?

Everything But Imaginary #89: Sigils at the House of Mouse

Well gang, as you all know unless you have been living under a rock, in a cave, or simply don’t pay attention to such things, the news that the Walt Disney Corporation and Shadow Government has acquired the properties of the former CrossGen Comics has finally caught a little fire. More so than that, Disney’s DPW productions, the arm of the company that is apparently in charge of such things, has announced that the first project under this banner will be the resurrection of CrossGen’s brilliant fantasy comic Abadazad. [2011 note: This resurrection was, sadly, short-lived.]

Now this is both good news and bad news. I’ll do the good first. Disney is one of the largest media and entertainment companies in the world. Their characters are internationally famous. Even when one of their movies flops, just about everyone hears about it. (C’mon, you know you all saw the ads for Home on the Range, even though only about three of you saw it.)

Having that kind of backing behind a comic book company could be a great thing if it was utilized properly. I’d love to see the long-promised Meridian movie or see The Crossovers as a weekly TV show. Could you imagine Sojourn put on the big screen with the same production values as The Lord of the Rings or Route 666 given the same respect as The Sixth Sense? Heck, I’d even dig going to the theme park to take a plunge on “Po Po the Monkey’s Wild Ride.”

Unfortunately, just because a major media company owns a comic book company doesn’t mean it’ll get that kind of push. You know who owns DC Comics, right? Time/Warner. Now this has resulted in a few good projects — Batman: The Animated Series and Justice League Unlimited, and even cool stuff like Batman: The Escape and other Six Flags attractions (Six Flags being the theme park chain Time/Warner owns).

Heck, do you think if it weren’t for this sort of corporate synergy we ever would have gotten the decades-in-coming Superman/Bugs Bunny crossover?

But these things, unfortunately, are the exceptions that prove the rule.

Time/Warner as a whole treats DC Comics like a redheaded stepchild. Despite having the most recognizable comic book characters on the planet, they shunt the company aside and try to milk the characters for all they’re worth instead of treating them with respect. As a result we get crappy movies like Catwoman, Steel and certain bat-films so atrocious I dare not even speak their names. (And I can’t speak for any other park, but the Batman stunt show at Six Flags New Orleans is flat-out terrible.)

That’s the whole problem with DC movies over the past decade and a half — there’s no competition with any other studio, so there’s no incentive to make a fantastic movie or lose the license. If Spider-Man had tanked, Marvel Comics could have blamed Columbia Pictures, not renewed the license and taken it to another studio to try again. But Catwoman stays at Warner Brothers no matter how bad the movie is. The closest thing we’ve got to an escape on the horizon is the news that a potential Shazam! movie may be made by New Line Cinema instead of Warner Brothers… but New Line is still a subsidiary of — anyone wanna guess? You in the back wearing the Def Leppard t-shirt and the polka-dotted bow-tie? Thaaaaat’s right. Time/Warner.

Folks at DC have often admitted, candidly, that if Warner Brothers could trash the entire comic book operation but still keep the characters viable, they would.

Now one has to assume that Disney wouldn’t do such a thing to CrossGen, at least not any time soon, or they wouldn’t have bought the assets in the first place, but the fact is, we’ve still got to keep a clear head about this. It’s possible.

Then there’s the other question. Disney has its hands in almost every form of entertainment — movies, TV, theme parks, book, music… but can they run a comic book company? Well, the answer last time… is no.

I hear you folks yelling now. “But Blake! I see Disney comics all the time! You yourself talk about Carl Barks and Uncle Scrooge more often than normal guys talk about bikini models and football! How can you say Disney can’t run a comic book company?”

Well, because Disney doesn’t publish any of those comics.

Back in the 40s and 50s, there was a little comic book company called Dell. You may have heard of it. Dell published an awful lot of comics, and a vast number of them were licensed comics. Back then, nearly every TV show, movie and newspaper strip had a comic to go with it. Dell published Looney Tunes, Peanuts, Lassie, The Lone Ranger, Tarzan, Leave it to Beaver, I Love Lucy and — oh yeah — Disney Comics. But Dell eventually faded away and the Disney license, along with many others, wound up at Western Publishing, which produced the comics first under the Gold Key imprint and later under the Whitman imprint. Then Gold Key went away as well and the Disney license was lost for a while until Gladstone Comics was formed in the 80s. (Gladstone was even named after Donald Duck’s lucky cousin.) Gladstone was immensely successful with rejuvenating the Disney line. So successful, in fact, that in the early 90s, Disney decided to take a crack at doing the comics themselves.

They revoked the license from Gladstone and started publishing their own comics, continuing classics like Mickey Mouse, Uncle Scrooge and Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories, and adding in titles for the hot properties of the time like Roger Rabbit, Darkwing Duck and Tailspin.

But Disney, which was so successful at everything else, didn’t seem to have the passion for comics to keep the company going. Disney’s first issue of Uncle Scrooge was #243. Their last was #280, then they gave up the ship and Gladstone took over the license again. Gladstone had a good run of a few more years, but then they closed up shop too in 1999. Then, horror of horrors, there were no Disney comics available in the U.S. until just last year, when Gemstone Comics took up the license and brought them back.

So what will be different about Disney trying to publish comics this time?

Well, for starters, the press release said the new Abadazad comics will be under their Hyperion imprint, which typically publishes prose books (including children’s fantasy like Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson’s recent book Peter and the Starcatchers, an excellent prequel to J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan). They also said that four Abadazad books are initially planned. This would seem to indicate that they aren’t going to get into the business of trying to publish monthly comics again, but instead will most likely print books. Whether they’ll be hardcover or paperback, standard size or digest, I don’t know, but printing and marketing books is what Hyperion is good at, so that means there’s a fighting chance. The most important thing, I think, is to make sure they keep writer J.M. DeMatteis and artist Mike Ploog, who created the title and own a portion of the copyright. This book is their baby, and they did a marvelous job on the three issues that actually saw print before CrossGen closed up shop.

And the rest of the CrossGen properties?

Well… time will tell. But when Abadazad comes out, give it a read, okay? Especially if you’ve got kids. It’s the best fantasy comic you could ever give to them.

And if anyone at Disney is reading this… please… could you maybe publish the end of Negation War?

FAVORITE OF THE WEEK: November 10, 2004

This week’s favorite was actually a tighter race than you might think, folks. Ultimately, Identity Crisis #6 did win out, because the conclusion of that book still has me reeling, and any comic that still so occupies my thoughts a week later is deserving of special recognition.

But since IC gets the glory all the time anyway, I’m also going to give a shout out to Avengers Finale. While I thought the conclusion of the Avengers Disassembled storyline kind of petered out and disappointed with the revelation of the big villain of the piece, this finale was spot-on perfect. It was an excellent examination of the team, the characters, the history and the legacy of Marvel’s major supergroup. Plus it had the Beast in it a lot, and I always liked him as an Avenger. Hey, Bendis, any chance we could maybe sneak him into New Avengers instead of Wolverine?

Blake M. Petit is the author of the superhero comedy novel, Other People’s Heroes, the suspense novel The Beginner and the Christmas-themed eBook A Long November. He’s also the co-host, with whoever the hell is available that week, of the 2 in 1 Showcase Podcast and the weekly audio fiction podcast Blake M. Petit’s Evercast. E-mail him at BlakeMPetit@gmail.com and visit him on the web at Evertime Realms. Read past columns at the Everything But Imaginary Archive Page, and check out his new experiment in serial fiction at Tales of the Curtain.

Classic EBI #81: The Price Point

Today is the third and final installment in my EBI mini-series where I crunch a few numbers and try to determine the “real” issue count of some classic comics. Some of the answers are a little surprising…

Everything But Imaginary #391: One More Try at Crunching the Numbers

But going back to a classic EBI, on Sept. 22, 2004, I took a long took at a subject of major importance: comic book prices. Boy, it’s a good thing we never talk about that anymore, isn’t it?

Everything But Imaginary #81: The Price Point

When I started reading comics in the mid-80s, they cost 60 cents a pop. Now to some of you, I know, that makes me sound like an old fogey. You got in during the $1.50 or $1.75 days. To others, it makes me sound like a whippersnapper. Why, back in your day comics were only 50 cents, or 35, or a quarter. If there is anyone on this site who remembers picking up a 10-cent comic on a regular basis, let me know.

Comics soon shifted to 75 cents on me. Nobody likes seeing prices go up, but at least, I thought, this was a nice round number. I could get two comics for a buck fifty. Four for three dollars. That’s not bad.

As the years went by, of course, prices crept higher. $1. $1.25. $1.50. I cringed at $1.75. I went apoplectic at $1.95. Now, sadly, I miss those days. Flip through the prices next time you get your comics. You’ll have some $2.25s if you’re lucky. Plenty of $2.50s, no doubt. Mostly, you’ll find $2.95 and $2.99 staring you in the face.

Prices go up, I know that. But can you name any other product that has exhibited a 500 percent increase in the last 20 years? And for that matter, what about salaries? Are you (or your parents) making 500 times what you made in 1984? It’s so weird — paper products are skyrocketing in cost while technology prices, relatively, go down. Once it cost you a fortune to buy a calculator, now they give them away free in cereal boxes. Which is lucky, because you’ll need a calculator to figure out what you’re spending on comics this week.

There are plenty of reasons given for a price increase, of course. My favorite is low sales. You bump the price to fund a comic that’s not selling in bulk. Okay, on paper that makes sense, but it really irks me when the price jumps like this for a project that the publisher has done nothing to promote. One of the best comics on the racks, Fantastic Four, jumped from $2.25 to $2.99 a month ago, without even that cherished sojourn at $2.50. So I ask you, Marvel Comics, why? This title has one of the best writers in comics, one of the best art teams, some of the best stories for the last few years, some of the best characters for the last few decades, and the book hasn’t been this good since John Byrne was on it — coincidentally, back in the mid-80s, just when I started reading it. Say what you will about Spider-Man or the X-Men — Fantastic Four is the heart of Marvel Comics.

Yet the price jumps 74 cents with little fanfare. Not that I expect them to roll out the red carpet and say, “Hey, we’re jacking up the price!,” but it would have been nice to see them make an effort to sell the title for a while before resorting to a price increase. This is, pardon the pun, a fantastic comic book. If you can’t sell it, a pox on you, not on Mssr.s Mark Waid and Mike Wieringo. This title’s got it where it counts.

Another factor is often the format. Glossy covers, cardstock covers, glossy paper – sound and fury signifying nothing. If it keeps the price down, I’d much rather have a regular cover and regular newsprint… y’know, they way they’ve been printing comics since the 1920s without anybody freaking out over it. Frankly, I hate glossy paper. I live in Southern Louisiana, where standard humidity is approximately 972 percent for almost the entire year. (For some reason, February 3 is usually rather dry.) When it’s this humid, glossy paper sticks to your fingers and the ink smudges. It’s hard enough trying to touch the cover of a comic book, knowing it’ll have a thumbprint if I’m in contact with it for too long. Imagine that on every page.

The book that spurred me to this debate this week, to be honest, was G.I. Joe vs. the TransFormers II from Devil’s Due. I got the first crossover last year, enjoyed it — even reviewed it for this very site. And even at $2.95 an issue, I intended to pick up the sequel. But the first issue wasn’t $2.95. It was $4.95.

And I don’t care how many extra pages or “special features” you cram into a comic book, that ain’t the way to start a miniseries.

This is the main reason — in fact, the only reason, that I do not purchase any comic books from IDW Publishing. I love Steve Niles’s writing. I think he’s doing some of the best horror stories in comics. 30 Days of Night was fantastic. Dark Days was terriffic.

But a regular comic from IDW carries around that hefty $3.99 cover price. And that’s simply more than I’m going to pay. I’ll wait for the trade paperback. Which is all well and good in and of itself — I love trade paperbacks, they’re a great way to read comics. But if everyone decides to wait for the trade paperback, the series won’t sell enough copies to warrant collecting it in a trade paperback, will get canceled, and will fade into obscurity. There are a lot of real gems that could be lost this way.

Kid’s comics drive me the craziest when it comes to this. It’s bad enough for adults and teenagers, who theoretically have a bit of disposable income, but pricing comics out of a child’s range is a disaster. Marvel and DC, to their credit, do price their kids’ comics in the lowest price tier — $2.25 for Marvel Age Spider-Man, Cartoon Network Block Party, Teen Titans Go! and other such titles. Archie, last I checked, was priced at a seemingly arbitrary $2.19. The point is, it’s at the lower end.

But is it low enough to get new readers?

Let’s say you’re eight years old. You get an allowance of $5 a week. You have enough money to either buy two comics books — which you will have read a half-hour after you get home — or to rent a video game, which you’ll get to play for three days before you’ve got to return it.

There’s some math I think most of us can do even without a calculator.

The worst, absolute worst offender on a regular basis is Gemstone Comics, and what makes it the worst is that they’re the best. Gemstone has the license to publish comics based on the classic Disney characters — Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse and the like. Donald and Mickey each have a monthly comic with a $2.95 price point — steep for a kid, but at least in the range of normality.

But some of the best comics Gemstone publishes, classic Carl Barks stories, new Don Rosa stories, fantastic stuff by William Van Horn and Pat and Shelly Block, go into Uncle Scrooge and Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories, two series that are published in 64-page “prestige format” collections each month, with a monolithic $6.95 price tag. That’s seven bucks for an Uncle Scrooge comic, friends. Gemstone, in fairness, is following the lead of the previous license-holder, Gladstone Comics, which began the practice of aiming these two old, cherished titles at the Disney “collector.”

You know what? Chop each of those issues in half. Put them in a regular format. Give them a price that kids can afford and you will help to spawn the next generation of comic book fans. The collectors will buy the books anyway.

And it’s not just the reader who gets hurt by high prices. It’s the retailer too. A few weeks ago two of my best friends, two guys who have read comics as long as I have, two guys who will actually argue until they run out of breath that they know more obscure comic book trivia than I do, announced to me that they were giving up comic shops and ordering their comics from an online retailer, because the comics online are cheaper.

And you know what? I can’t blame ‘em.

I have no problem with online stores. I shop them frequently, whenever I miss an issue off the rack or I’m looking for a trade paperback I can’t find anywhere. But websites can’t draw in new customers like a brick-and-mortar store can. (And brick-and-mortar stores could be doing a lot more to get new customers than they are now, but that’s another column.) And browsing the listings on a website just can’t compare to walking past the racks, hoping to spot that elusive issue of JSA from the corner of your eye.

I’m not an economist. I don’t know what can be done to lower prices. But I do know that if something isn’t done, we’re going to keep losing readers to TV, to movies, to video games, to attrition, and we won’t get the new ones to keep this art form alive. These prices are the enemy, guys. And they may be a foe not even the Fantastic Four could beat.

FAVORITE OF THE WEEK: September 15, 2004

Those two buddies I mentioned may lynch me for this, because I know they haven’t enjoyed Greg Rucka’s run on this title, but Adventures of Superman #632 was his best issue yet, and walks away with favorite of the week. Now the main problem my pals seem to have is that Rucka, in their viewpoint, is focusing too much on the Metropolis Special Crimes Unit and not enough on big blue himself. That’s a valid argument, and I don’t even disagree with it, I just happen to like what’s being done with the SCU. That said, this is hardly the case here. Lois Lane, embedded in the middle east, has been shot, and Superman is racing faster than a speeding bullet to save her… but sometimes even a man of steel can be too late. This is a great issue, a gut-wrenching issue. You can see the pain and agony in Superman’s face as his wife fights to survive and he, for once in his life, is rendered helpless to do anything. This is real heart, real emotion, real Clark Kent — and the current writer of Action Comics could stand to take lessons from this issue as to how Superman should be written. The last page is one of the most powerful I’ve seen in a core Superman comic for a long time. This one’s a winner.

Blake M. Petit is the author of the superhero comedy novel, Other People’s Heroes, the suspense novel The Beginner and the Christmas-themed eBook A Long November. He’s also the co-host, with whoever the hell is available that week, of the 2 in 1 Showcase Podcast and the weekly audio fiction podcast Blake M. Petit’s Evercast. E-mail him at BlakeMPetit@gmail.com and visit him on the web at Evertime Realms. Read past columns at the Everything But Imaginary Archive Page, and check out his new experiment in serial fiction at Tales of the Curtain.

Classic EBI# 135: Halloween Happenings

In this week’s Everything But Imaginary, I take a look at the recent announcement that DC and Marvel Comics, finally deciding they’ve got enough of my money, are going to be lowering the prices of many of their comics in the coming months. And may I say: wah-hoo.

Everything But Imaginary #370: Another Price Point

But in this week’s Classic EBI, we’re going back to Oct. 26, 2005, a time when I (and all of the Gulf Coast) were still suffering from the recent shock of Hurricane Katrina, and we needed a little Halloween to get our minds off it. This is also the reason, by the way, that you’ll find no “favorite of the week” in this column. At the time, I had no shop from which to get my comics weekly, and thus couldn’t make regular picks…

Everything But Imaginary #135: Halloween Happenings

Well gang, here it is, October 26, just five scant days before Halloween. Anyone who knows me well can tell you that Halloween is one of my three favorite times of the year (the other two times being Thanksgiving and Christmas – January through September are basically just the months I have to slag through to get to the good stuff), and I enjoy it for many reasons: the opportunity to dress up as some outlandish character, the chance to embrace my dark side even just for a little while, and of course, the fact that you can eat enough candy to choke a camel and nobody looks at you funny.

Another major reason I like Halloween (and Thanksgiving and Christmas) is the surfeit of holiday-themed storytelling you get this time of year. In the case of Halloween, it’s scary stories, monster movies and cartoons about kids waiting up all night in a pumpkin patch hoping to see an enormous gourd that never quite materializes. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere, but if I brought it up I’m liable to invite a whole plethora of armchair analysis, so I think I’ll leave that alone.

As comic book geeks, of course, we don’t just look to the television or the silver screen for our holiday offerings. We look to comic books as well. In past years, we’ve had lots of comics to choose from. This year, not so many. I’ve only come across three specifically Halloween-themed comics so far this year. Would you like a rundown? Heck, I knew you would.

First and foremost, we’ve got to mention the Donald Duck Halloween Ashcan from Gemstone Comics. This was a stroke of brilliance on Gemstone Comics’ part – a comic book, a trick-or-treat giveaway, a promotional item. Sold in bundles of 25 copies for a really cheap price, this comic reprints “Hobblin’ Goblins” by the immortal Carl Barks, and is intended to be given away on Halloween night to trick-or-treaters. Personally, I want this to be a huge thing. I love Gemstone comics and getting them into the hands of their core audience – kids – is a great thing. We all trick-or-treated as kids. The point of the night, admittedly, was to get as much candy as humanly possible. But we always thought it was cool if we got one or two little trinkets that had a little more permanence – toys, trading cards or comics.

The Donald Duck ashcan, of course, isn’t the first comic ever printed as a Halloween goodie. In the late 80s, Marvel comics put out a set of ashcans reprinting issues of Captain America, Spider-Man and Heathcliff (part of their STAR Comics line for younger readers). These comics enjoyed a pretty healthy life and were circulated for several years. I, of course, got them all. Comic books make a great giveaway, although they’re far too expensive to give out in their full-sized editions. Kind of like Snickers bars. So I’m really glad to see Gemstone putting out this special. I hope some of the kids lucky enough to get it in their treat bags will look for more of their titles.

Next up is Bongo’s annual offering, Bart Simpson’s Treehouse of Horror. This year we get issue #11, which begs the question, what’s harder to believe? That the Simpsons TV show is in its seventeenth season, or that the Simpsons comics have been around for over a decade?

Just as each year’s Treehouse of Horror TV episode is an anthology of cartoons (usually spoofing popular horror movies and the like), the Treehouse comic is an anthology of Halloween stories, typically done by the biggest name comic creators (or other celebrities) they can get. In the past, Treehouse has featured the works of Chuck Dixon, Gail Simone, Sergio Aragones, Gene Simmons and – I’m not making this up, folks – Pat Boone. This year’s crop includes a vampire story by Blade co-creators Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan, a Swamp Thing parody by Len Wein and the inimitable Bernie Wrightson, and a great parody of classic EC comics written by Chris Bonahm and Steve Ringgenberg, with art by James Lloyd, Angelo Torres, John Severin and Mark Schulz. It’s definitely one of the better offerings, and a lot of fun.

The only other specific Halloween-themed comic I’ve seen this year was Action Comics #832. It’s tradition for one of the Superman comics to offer up a Christmas story every December, but a Halloween offering isn’t unheard of either, and this one (although it isn’t marked as a tie-in) links up with the Day of Vengeance miniseries. The Spectre, on a crusade to eradicate all magic from the universe, has set his sights on Metropolis, where a Machiavellian demon called Satannus has been hiding for years. And I mean years in real time – in the early-to-mid 90s he was a fairly major villain in Superman’s universe, but he sort of faded away, with his major plotline (the fact that he was disguised as Newstime magazine’s publisher, Colin Thornton), left dangling. I’m not really sure why DC (or writers Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning) decided to bring him back at this time, new readers certainly won’t know the history there, but it’s a nice nod to some unanswered history for longtime fans.

What makes this more of a Halloween story, however, is the Lois Lane subplot in this issue. As ghosts swarm Metropolis, she finds herself coming face-to-face with a very personal ghost. It’s a really strong story for her, and one that sets up a couple of good plotlines for the future as well.

Although I haven’t seen Marvel put out any specific Halloween-themed comics, they have taken advantage of the season with other projects. They’ve launched a new version of Nick Fury’s Howling Commandos starring some monstrous soldiers and put out a “Horror” edition of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. They’ve also got a Marvel Zombies series coming up soon by Robert Kirkman – would that they could have squeezed that out in time for Halloween.

My favorite Marvel Monster project, though, are the four “Marvel Monsters” comics – a set of four one-shots spoofing the classic monster titles they put out back in the 50s and early 60s, before the superhero genre took over with Fantastic Four #1. They wisely decided not to play the genre seriously, doing a Fanastic Four spoof with Fin Fang Foom and having the Hulk tussle with Devil Dinosaur.

The only one of the specials I’ve been able to get my hands on so far is actually the one with the weakest ties to the current Marvel Universe, Where Monsters Dwell. The theme of this issue is to bring back some of those goofy monsters from the past in new stories. The prize of this issue is Bring on the Bombu, by Keith Giffen with excellent finishes by Mike Allred. This tells of Bombu’s second attempt to invade Earth (the first having taken place way back in Journey Into Mystery #60), which comes across with very comical results. Peter David and Arnold Pander supply a new Monstrollo story and Jeff Parker, Russell Braun and Jimmy Palmiotti give us a surprisingly strong tale of the monstrous Manoo. There’s also a reprint of another classic tale, I Was Trapped By Titano (not the super-ape with Kryptonite vision from DC comics), which is actually my only beef with this issue – not that there’s anything wrong with it, but I wish Marvel had provided us with credits for the story, or at least noted where it had been originally printed. (I eventually located that information in the text page that, presumably, is running in all four Monster specials.)

So you do have some choices for Halloween this year, friends, but you know what? It’s not enough! I want to see more Halloween offerings next year. I’d love to see a new Batman Halloween special (although with Jeph Loeb exclusive to Marvel now, it wouldn’t be the same). I want to see Halloween editions of Looney Tunes and Marvel Adventures. I have no idea who currently owns the reprint rights, but I want to see some nice archival editions of the old Tales From the Crypt comics in the vein of the DC Archives or Marvel Masterworks. (2010 Note: This was later achieved by copyright owner Gemstone Publishing.)

There’s lots more that could be done, folks, and the comic book industry has a whole year to get ready for it.

Blake M. Petit is the author of the superhero comedy novel, Other People’s Heroes, the suspense novel The Beginner and the Christmas-themed eBook A Long November. He’s also the co-host, with whoever the hell is available that week, of the 2 in 1 Showcase Podcast and the weekly audio fiction podcast Blake M. Petit’s Evercast. E-mail him at BlakeMPetit@gmail.com and visit him on the web at Evertime Realms. Read past columns at the Everything But Imaginary Archive Page.

Everything But Imaginary #311: Convoluted Convention Report

Jonah Hex in hardcover? The return of Top Dog? Comics on the Kindle? The comic book convention season has begun, and this week I take a look at some of the announcements from last weekend’s HeroesCon in Charlotte and Wizard World Philadelphia conventions!

Everything But Imaginary #311: Convoluted Convention Report
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Everything But Imaginary #300: Then and Now

Six years and 299 columns later, I sit down to write the 30oth installment of Everything But Imaginary. This week, I look at how the comic book landscape has changed since the first column came out, comparing comics THEN to comics NOW. Plus, my pick of the week: Ender’s Game: Battle School #4!

Everything But Imaginary #300: Then and Now
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