§ Jeet Heer looks at Alex Toth’s handling of phallic symbols and does not even mention the fact that this guys cigarette holder is drooping, which symbolizes erectile anxieties.
A 1950s romance comic, one that features a stereotypically weepy woman crying over her love life, is normally not where you would expect to see a commentary on erectile dysfunction.
§ Marc-Oliver Frisch, Tucker Stone, David Brothers,
Johanna Draper Carlson and Valerie D’Orazio all comment on The Great Amazon Pricing Glitch of 2010 and, more sharply, the sense of fan entitlement that has come from the canceled orders. We are equally astonished to find so many people moaning over not getting to rip off Amazon, Diamond and their favorite publishers. Frankly, that $25 gift certificate wasn’t needed, but we’ll take it anyway — it’s called…customer service.
The Savage Critics has debuted in a new, updated and very snazzy new website!
§ This interview with Kieron Gillen about the economics that killed PHONOGRAM, his well reviewed and well-liked creator-owned comic drawn by Jamie McKelvie has been widely quoted due to its frank look at the marginal economics of making comics in this industry.
KG: There’s a difference between making only a little money and starving. We’re very much in the latter. Jamie’s lucky to get a couple of hundred dollars from an issue. While he didn’t tell me about this until after it was all done, there were three occasions when Jamie was seriously considering throwing in the towel. The problem is that Image’s deal is a back-end one. Will we make some money off the trade? Maybe. And that’s a big maybe. But that means Jamie not earning any money for the six months it would take to draw it, which is the main reason why we took over a year to do 7 issues. As in, every time Jamie ran out of money, he had to stop and do something else. A couple of hundred dollars doesn’t cover rent or pay for his fashionable haircuts. And doing this bitty work f–ks up the production anyway, because you can’t concentrate or plan. You just spend your entire life in low-level money panic.
Gillen also points out the lack of real alternatives for creators at their level, and the various elements — such as music clearance — that made it problematic for some publishers. The ultimate ending of PHONOGRAM may reveal that perhaps the audience wasn’t there to support such a project, but it’s troubling that in this day and age the system is STILL best set up to sell action/adventure and little else.
“Vertigo, Icon, and most creator participation companies just aren’t that interested in a quirky book that appeals to the indie music sensibility”
I don’t think that’s what Kieron said at all… he cited Vertigo as probably not being possible due to legal issues with the book’s use of actual songs. I know for a fact that most of the editors at Vertigo love Phonogram. How could they not? It would be a perfect book for them otherwise. (Young Liars may not have survived in the long run, but it was absolutely a quirky book with indie music appeal that Vertigo was happy to publish)
Kieron also said he hasn’t seriously pursued other publishers, which kills me because I love this book to death.
brian w
I know that there’s nothing some comics writers love more than ragging on comics fans for “fan entitlement”, but in fact, many states have consumer protection laws that if an item in a store has a wrong (lower) price marked, the store *must* honor that price. Why should Amazon be any different?
When the Amazon glitch happened, I assumed it was some weird one-day only super-sale, and I took advantage of it. That it was a mistake is regrettable, but the $25 gift certificate more than made up for it. I already used it to buy something else. Things like this happen; does anyone really feel gipped because it was a mistake and not a sale?
I encourage everyone to spend their $25 Amazon checks by purchasing something from a charity wishlist.
I think the Amazon kerfluffle shows that fans still want to buy books, just not at the prices they normally sell for.
Heidi! Please! Comics Comics is a family blog where we try and help kids of all ages appreciate the joys of picto-fiction and sequential art. That’s why I avoided any references to “drooping”. Sometimes I think you have a sailor’s tongue!
To further what Brian Wood said, Vertigo also published Greatest Hits, which from what I know of it was sort of a “Beatles as superhero” riff that was very music-oriented and very British.
The failure of Phonogram to catch on is one of the most depressing things I’ve heard about comics publishing in ages. As much as I love Image’s creator-centric setup, I can’t help but think another, more hipster-friendly publisher might have been better suited to getting this type of material in the hands of the right people. Then again, Comic Book Tattoo and Put the Book Back on the Shelf sold like gangbusters, so who knows what went wrong exactly.
“As in, every time Jamie ran out of money, he had to stop and do something else. A couple of hundred dollars doesn’t cover rent or pay for his fashionable haircuts. And doing this bitty work f–ks up the production anyway, because you can’t concentrate or plan. You just spend your entire life in low-level money panic.”
I know exactly how that feels.
Scratchie,
While some states may share those laws be true, a big part of the issue is supply. Amazon first tried to assuage the situation by shipping 1 copy of the books, instead of the multiple issues many had ordered, but even at the reduced quantities, they still just plain ran out of books. There aren’t 10,000 of these things sitting around at Amazon or at Diamond. That isn’t how supply chain purchasing works.
If you go into Wal-Mart first thing in the morning on Black Friday, somehow manage not to crush an employee to death against the doors of the store, and happen to be the 36th person to reach the sony flatscreens when there were only 35 of them in stock, you can’t blame walmart for that. You can’t demand they honor a specific price if there is no stock left. Really the only thing you can do at that point is reign blows down upon #35.
Bill, I’m not saying they should sell stock they don’t have. I’m saying that if they advertise a certain item for a certain price, and it’s in stock, it’s not unreasonable “fan entitlement” to expect them to honor that price. In many states, it’s the law.
Another thing to be considered, maybe, is the question whether PHONOGRAM would still be PHONOGRAM if it had been released by Vertigo. There has been some frustration in the past from creators whose vision for their own ideas ended up not being reconcilable with Vertigo editorial’s.
I’m saying that not because I don’t want PHONOGRAM to be commercially viable or Gillen and McKelvie to earn a living doing the comic — I do.
I’m saying it because PHONOGRAM, as it stands, is one of the most visionary, ambitious and creatively successful comics of the last decade. Depending on how hands-on Vertigo would be and given the fact that Vertigo hasn’t exactly had a great strike rate when it comes to such works lately, are we sure we would have WANTED this book to be published by Vertigo, considering whatever creative compromises might have been involved in getting there?
I know it’s easy to say for me, given that I’ve got no commercial stake in PHONOGRAM other than the $ 3.50 I gladly invested in each new issue. But I think it’s worth considering.
(Oh, to dispel the impression that I’m talking — and linking — to myself here, I should add that I’m not the author of the “Kibbles ‘n’ Bits” post.)
“If you go into Wal-Mart first thing in the morning on Black Friday, somehow manage not to crush an employee to death against the doors of the store, and happen to be the 36th person to reach the sony flatscreens when there were only 35 of them in stock, you can’t blame walmart for that. You can’t demand they honor a specific price if there is no stock left.”
Sure, you can. Department stores used to have things called “rain checks” for a reason, once upon a time. However, nowadays the bait and switch tactic with standard boilerplate over “limited quantities” has become the more prevailing method in screwing over customers who came in for the deals.
Brian is entirely right in his interpretation of Kieron’s quote.
Brian and Jamie — sorry if I mischaracterized the quote. I was just trying to paraphrase the overall impression of what Kieron said about other publishers not being a viable possibility for Phonogram. In case I didn’t make it clear enough EVERYONE SHOULD READ THE WHOLE INTERVIEW.
A 2004 law journal article about online pricing errors has considerable info on Amazon.com and how the company protects itself from disastrous consequences due to pricing mistakes.
The strategy is still in effect:
From the legal standpoint, Amazon.com probably wasn’t obligated to fill any orders.
SRS