The Pulse covers past Christmas stories

Steve Chung is summarizing a bunch of past Christmas-themed comics stories at Comicon Pulse throughout these weeks.

So far he has presented:

The Brave and the Bold #184 starring Batman and The Huntress

1979 Super Star Holiday Special (the Legion of Superheroes)

Luke Cage Hero For Hire #7

Batman #27

Action Comics #469 (The Private Life of Clark Kent)

Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD # 10

Batman #285

Amazing Spider-Man #130

1980 Super Star Holiday Special (Jonah Hex)

Fantastic Four #361

Batman #219

Flash 73

Incredible Hulk #378

Marvel Holiday Special 1993 (Iron Man)

1980 Super Star Holiday Special (Sgt. Rock of Easy Co.)

Marvel Holiday Special 1993 (Thanos)

Teen Titans #13

If any readers of Monitor Duty readily recall a Christmas-themed story, not covered (and there are tons) send us your memories. If any of the Monitor Duty staff remember a story, they should post it.

As Steve Chung summarizes more I’ll update the list.

Merry Christmas

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Marv Wolfman interview

In an interview on the Pulse we have the following exchange:

THE PULSE: How does it feel to have so many current creators cite New Teen Titans as having such a great influence on their career?

WOLFMAN: Mixed emotions. Obviously, I love it. It validates so much of the work I did. On the other hand, it is sometimes awkward when editors tell me how much they loved the book and how much my writing meant to them, but when I ask about new work, it’s always, “Well, we don’t have anything.”

I know they are under pressure to keep finding new talent so I don’t have a personal problem, but it is frustrating as I think I could be doing the same kind of work today.

It’s getting despressing. The rest of the interview is fine though.

Marv Wolfman is completing Games with George Perez.

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Elongated Man profile on the Pulse

Hutch will have a bit of fun reading COMICON.com: SA PROFILE: ELONGATED MAN.

I already knew most of the stuff here, but the examination of the artists brought some stuff forward that was actually new to me.

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new Alpha Flight series

I got it from the Pulse: Scott Lobdell is writing a new Alpha Flight series. I am not overall certain of the continued existence of this series.

I have nothing against the existence of this series. From a purely objective standpoint I will say that it’s doomed from the start. From the same standpoint I’ll say that Lobdell’s work isn’t awful and that his skills are okay. The series could be enjoyable as long as it lasts.

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Fox 411 on LOTR

Fox411 weighs in on the premiere of “Return of the King” and predicts that Oscar noms are in the offing for Best Picture, Best Actor (Ian McKellen), Best Supporting Actor (Sean Astin), and Best Director (Peter Jackson). Two good quotes:

[The film is] three hours and 12 minutes long. Right before the lights went down, Wood shouted to the audience: “Don’t forget to pee.” It’s better advice than Gandalf ever gave anyone.

And a tidbit about the opening of the movie:

Jackson, Frances Walsh and writer Philippa Boyens have added a prologue of sorts to the very beginning of “King” in honor of actor Andy Serkis, who plays Gollum. For the first two installments, you only see Serkis as the CGI character. Now we get a 10-minute introduction explaining how he became this rotten creature. Serkis is every bit as good “real” as he is computerized.

As someone who was bummed that the real story of Smeagol’s gaining possession of the ring wasn’t shown in the first movie, I’m glad to hear that it’s added in here. But this now makes for another element from earlier in the saga that has been added on to an already overloaded third installment. (And couldn’t it have enlivened The Two Towers, which was missing both the beginning and ending of the book? They could have added that as a flashback when Frodo says, “You were one of the river people…”) No wonder they had to eliminate Saruman’s entire appearance from “King”! This is going to be one cramped film, I can already tell that much.

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the numbers lie? perish forbid

Normally I hold very little but disdain for this fellow, but here I am pointed to an article by Sturt Moore, (the leftist doing A Thousand Flowers), actually still another chapter of A Thousand Flowers, about the various numbers regarding unit sales in the comics industry.

As much as we rightfully complain that the entire industry is in a downturn (the highest selling series today doesn’t come close to the sales of Power Man and Iron First when it was cancelled in the early eighties), the prices of individual issues are too high (I remember buying new titles for $1.50 each and I own comics that sold for $0.75 each), and that general newstand distribution is nearly extinct, according to some like Moore individual unit sales are going up. I don’t have the patience or ability to play this kind of numbers game; I don’t have to do it as long as you can read it.

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Monitor Duty Exclusive!!!!

One of the best things about running Monitor Duty is that, every so often, I get a tip from someone in the know and no one else on the web has it. I’m happy to say, I’ve got one.

This is a Monitor Duty Exclusive, folks!

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Good news about the industry?

Looking at the Numbers; or, a Little Holiday Cheer

Comic sales are actually increasing in unit sales (i.e. more comics sold, not just more money received) and that doesn’t count TPBs!

I’d like to dicker (there’s a word you don’t see often enough nowadays) with one of Stuart Moore’s statements, concerning the availability of entertainment today which is often blamed for low comic book sales:

But, you say, back in the Golden Age, books sold in the hundreds of thousands — sometimes in the millions. True, but consider this. Way back in my second column, I posted this list of competition for comics in the 1930s:

- movies
- radio (including dramas and comedies)
- live theatre (sporadic, unless you lived in a big city)
- public libraries
- magazines (especially the genre pulps)

Today, it looks more like this:

- movies
- television (many times more channels than even a decade ago)
- video/computer games
- internet/web
- radio (mostly music & talk now)
- live theatre (still sporadic)
- public libraries
- magazines

That’s a much more formidable list of competitors — especially given the way we pay for cable TV and internet access. They’re like utilities: one bill a month, unlimited usage. That’s got to cut into pay-per-transaction industry like comics.

First off, is Stuart charting the list of things competing for the audience’s money or for the audience’s time? When the list includes things like public libraries, I’m assuming that he is chronicling the many options for “wasting time” without consideration for the cost involved.

That is a better argument than those who say that comic sales are low because of money spent on video games and Pokemon, as though kids have never had other things to waste money on before. Please. A decade ago it was Nintendo Cartridges and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. In my decade it was Atari 2600 cartridges, Star Wars action figures and thousands of quarters in arcade games. The decades before that it was pinball and toy soldiers and many other things that cost way more than 12 cents for a comic book.

But notice that, in Stuart’s estimation of options for using our time, he counts video games now and does not count games in the earlier decade, nor does he include sports which used to be a major hobby for kids (back when kids were scrawny and spent a lot of time outside running around). To count video games now as an added expenditure of kids’ time, but not consider that kids spent countless hours with marbles, jumprope, hopscotch, board games, toy soldiers, playing cops and robbers with toy guns, and playing baseball in any wide open area where you could consider a piece of wood a base, is a flawed way of thinking.

Kids don’t run around outside so much anymore because parents have become paranoid. I spent countless hours goofing off as a kid without my parents around, but many parents I know now seem to have a house arrest-like watch on their children lest they be kidnapped or drown in a swimming pool if left unguarded for even a second. While I think this is very bad for kids…it is good for comic books. If kids are spending all their time indoors, they could be reading comics.

Stuart also adds that we have more channels of TV to watch, as though this adds more hours of TV. Mayyyybe it does. I think it just means that kids have more options and don’t watch everything made for kids because they could never watch it all. But in my day, the era of “channels 2, 5 and 11 and Green Bay if you spin the UHF knob,” we still wasted tons of time on TV by watching anything even mildly acceptable. However, while statistics show that we all watch too much TV, one has to consider that this has more to do with lax parenting today than a surplus of channels. Good parents set limits on TV time (and Internet and video game time).

I might also add that in the olden Golden era Stuart is contrasting, radio shows were big and between the two mediums kids could always be entertained with something. Stuart’s analysis only works if kids had many hours where TV and radio failed to entertain and so kids turned to comic books more often back then.

In summary, I dispute his list of “fewer options then, more options now.”

I’ve said before, I’ll say again: Give a kid a comic today and he’ll read it. He’ll love it. I gave a friend’s kid a comic book and he carried it around everywhere he went for a week. Kids will read comics. They just can’t find comics. The price point is also an issue, sure, but price-packaging is a completely separate problem from availability.

For more, read “How to Save the Comic Book Industry” and “On Trolls, Children and Knocking Opportunity.”

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