Guy stuff.

Hater Blog: Levitz or Quesada?

Dick Hyacinth of the entertaining guilty pleasure and recent addition to the Blogs of Note, Dick Hates Your Blog, has been running a series of "Hate Polls", pitting the likes of Mark Millar, Geoff Johns, Brad Meltzer and Joe Quesada against each other for the title of Most Hated in Comics. Last week, after Quesada soundly thumped previous reigning champ, Millar, he asked who else might be a worthy challenger to the formidable DaQ and my comment was one of my favorite ever, as succinct a description of the "Big Two" as I could imagine:Yes, Levitz is whom I'd put…

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Random Thoughts and an Update

So yeah, “minor” surgery is still surgery, and coupled with a drug industry and medical profession that takes “side effects” a bit too casually, I missed the entire NY Comic Con. The whole damn thing. The PopCultureShock party, too, which pisses me off the most, actually, as I was hoping to meet up with some people I hadn’t seen in a while as well as putting some faces to blogs I enjoy.

Ugh.

Anybody out there who did attend the party? I can live vicariously through your feedback!

I spent most of the past week laid up in bed, periodically hobbling around the apartment to take a break from marathon sessions on my rarely used Xbox: Destroy All Humans!, Just Cause and Fable: The Lost Chapters. Not a single comic book tie-in among them, although throughout Fable I was thinking what a great license it would be to adapt for comics. It features a pretty solid storyline that’s ripe for embellishment, especially since the main character is so malleable, by design, but driven towards his destiny by forces beyond his control, that much of the subtext takes place in the player’s head.

I wonder if the rights are available and how ridiculously expensive they might be?

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NY Comic Con: T-Minus 2 Days

I haven't been nearly as enthuastic about this year's NY Comic Con as I was about last year's, but that's primarily because last year's was so exhausting, my level of direct participation this year is drastically reduced, and I stupidly scheduled some minor surgery for tomorrow without realizing it was the day before the Con.Despite dragging my feet, my press registration has been secured (Thanks, Phoenix!) and as long as all goes smoothly tomorrow and I'm on my feet as expected by Friday, here's what I'm hoping to catch this weekend:FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 2310:30AM - 11:30AMKids Comics: The Category Waiting to…

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On the Shelves: 2/21/07

Reading is fundamental. Read what you like; don't waste your time reading bad comics out of habit! My weekly look at select comic books being released Wednesday, 2/21/07. The full shipping list, as always, is available at ComicList. [NOTE: Not all of these titles will actually arrive in all stores. If your LCBS offers a pre-ordering service, be sure to take advantage of it. If not, find another one; or try Khepri.com or MidtownComics.com] PICK OF THE WEEK House of SugarDARK HORSE COMICS Conan #37, $2.99 I'm finally caught up on my post-Busiek Conan reading and am happy to see…

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Comic Book Commentary v2.0 and Other Stuff

Random, somewhat connected thoughts on the site, traffic and future plans... ITEM: Ever since I got back on the blogging horse late last year, traffic has been on a steady upswing, which is very nice. January was our best month since our peak early last summer, and February is tracking quite nicely. Many, many thanks to Dirk Deppey in particular, who drives a ton of traffic here every time he posts a link on Journalista!. Thanks also to Johanna Draper Carlson, whose Blogs Worth Reading link sends a regular stream of traffic this way, too. ITEM: Speaking of Deppey, If…

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On Soliciting Reviews, Entitlement and Reaction Sheets

“You get what you get, and you don’t get upset.”
–Isaac D. Gonzalez, 6 years old

An interesting debate broke out over the weekend at Johanna Draper Carlson’s blog, Comics Worth Reading, in response to a post entitled, Stupid Publisher Tricks: Review Copies and Guilt Trips (and its follow-up, Another Argument Against Review Copies), that took an unnamed creator to task for attempting to make her feel guilty about not having reviewed his unsolicited work:

I know you’ve never been a fan of my work…but despite that…I took my marketing guy’s advice and added you to our review copy list. I just wanted to say that I was quite disappointed when I saw not even a week later that you had both [books] up for sale on Amazon.

I waited weeks to see if you would do the right thing and either write a review (good or bad) or at least contact me to let me know that you received them. All you had to do was say “thank you but no thank you” and I would have paid to ship them back.

Johanna is one of a handful of comics bloggers I genuinely respect, as do many professionals in the industry, so I was surprised by the creator’s wrongheaded approach to the situation.

An overblown sense of entitlement isn’t something that’s limited to continuity obsessed fans, and the worst thing a creator (or publisher) can do assume that their work deserves a review. Challenging a reviewer on anything other than a purely factual level is a no-win situation; the creator is usually the one with more at stake, especially if the challenge occurs in a public forum. While this particular communication was via a backchannel email, the tone of it suggests someone who is prone to getting into public pissing matches*, which is an excellent example of bad marketing.

Remember, “marketing is everything a company does to acquire customers and maintain a relationship with them”, and that includes interactions with the Press, especially online where Google remembers everything.

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5 Good Reasons Against Opening a Comic Book Store

1) "Bookshops' latest sad plot twist" THIS is the paradox of modern bookselling. Even in an entertainment-saturated age, people still buy books. But the casual reader has many other places to get bestsellers and topical books, from warehouse stores to the mall. Meanwhile, book nuts -- the ones who simply must buy several volumes a week -- are lured online. Few businesses can survive that lose customers from both ends of the spectrum. In 1995, anyone seeking a book that was the least bit uncommon had to have a store special order it from the publisher. If it was out…

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