"The "stars" should always be the characters. Spider-Man, Batman, Superman. Yes, JB's FF was great, but I never got the feeling that the star of the book was anything other than the FF themselves.

>>>>>>>>>>"

I get your meaning, but there's a problem with it. There's a difference between a Kirby FF and a Byrne FF, say. A quality each distinctive creator had in presenting them. Ross Andru's Spider-Man up against Gil Kane's. Herb Trimpe's Hulk and Sal Buscema's Hulk. These are all pleasantly different, and the writing reflected the tone of the artist, in my view. I never NOT recognized that the John Byrne FF was John Byrne's FF, not the FF as "stars". There's something to be said for recognizing the product, the "stars", as filtered through great creators. That's where your money is going.

The problem seems to me today, as with everywhere, the talent level is mediocre overall. There's no strong editorship. No vision. No direction but inward and inbred.

Hook up some writers and artists, like Powell and Rude and Mignola and Byrne and Paul Smith and Miller, writers that have proven records with success like Wolfman and Dixon and Waid and Robinson and Busiek, and whoever else is left who can produce a sequential comic book story, pay them sick amounts of money, promise them carte blanc on the top titles and make the offer one they can't refuse. Though nobody SHOULD be locked into JLA or FF or the AVENGERS for the rest of their lives, a nice fat run of a couple years by any mixture of the above would help. When they're done, you line up another quality set, and go for two more years, or longer. That's how I remember the major titles were handled when I was a kid.

Have integrity as an editor and let the chips fall. He's the guy making the decisions, and his job is convincing the "suits". I believe, in my heart, that the best comic book talent would work their ass off for an editor who showed they stand for a quality product and are willing to pay for it.

I guess I think it's easy. I'm also thinking the world wants what I want. Like the return of Go Go dancers. That's never going to happen either.

Chuck Dixon wrote: I was told recently that to get more work at a major company I would have to "party with" and "buddy up" to certain people.

Please excuse my language, but that's so fucking wrong.

Thomas WROTE:The Image boys were all
about, well, self-image--"pop stars" rather than comic book writers and
artists.

************************

These guys were born from the wizard age it was all about glam and photo ops

and maybe alittle work every once in awhile.

back when JB,Simonson and miller were getting big it was there work that was getting the glamour

A number of the books that I've read on the history of the comic book market point to the advent of television, video games, etc. as substitutes that marginalized comics as a prevalent form of entertainment for kids and teens. 

These books say that kids in the 1940s bought millions of comics because - short of radio shows and films - there weren't any other forms of cost-effective entertainment.  It's a very different dynamic today in which comics compete with television, movies, video games, and the internet for consumers’ time and money. 

That seems to be a reasonably plausible explanation since kids (of all ages) only have a finite amount of time and money to spend on entertainment. 

I also think that comics had a real edge over some competing forms of entertainment back in the day because artists were only limited by their imagination and could render fantastic things like monsters, space ships, super heroes, etc. that couldn't be done cost effectively in television or movies.

Today, CGI and other special effects have elevated the ability to generate absolutely incredible images in TV, film and video games, whereas comics have remained relatively static.  Comic book artists continue to develop new styles and new techniques, but the magnitude of change has not been as dramatic as in other media.

Comic publishers have not let all of these things take place without a fight.  They’ve tried different art, different writing, different distribution, more violence, more scantily clad females, more sex, less violence, less scantily clad females, less sex, comics for adults, comics for kids, higher cover prices, lower cover prices……you name it, they’ve tried it.

I’m sure there are a million things that the big two publishers could have done differently to end up on a different path than they are on today.  I’m not sure what they can do at this point, but I hope that they are able to keep the comics business and the characters that I love alive for many generations to come.

I've been hearing that tired "we can't compete with video games" argument for decades. It doesn't fly.

When you look at the book and library market you see a different perspective. You see small publishers move 5X the number of trade paperbacks that the Big Two move. And they do it with lesser known titles than the household name icons of DC and Marvel.

And manga trumps standard superhero TPBs by an even higher ratio.

I've spoken to librarians and the word is that the whole library system is sex mad for graphic novels and have trouble finding enough comics for their members. It's an entry level market that is hungry and dwarfs the DS market. But the two majors ignore it and do little to cooperate with libraries and provide the material they want.

And schools support GN programs because its one of the only solutions that work for reluctant readers.

And the majors have not done everything they could or tried every angle or approach. They keep hammering away at the same approach over and over like an infant with a mallet and only one peg left for his pegboard.

You can lure them away from their Playstations if you provide the comics they want as opposed to showering them with more stuff they've already passed on.

I think that graphic novels and trades MIGHT do better separated into their different genre areas. But B&N and Borders have such broad genre categories. Most of the stores don't even have a western or war or adventure section. As Matt above says, they don't even differentiate between SF and fantasy.