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Will the now wholly owned Beat be the last comics website to turn out the lights? Ya never know
There was some private social media conversation this week about Comics Bulletin sort of dwindling into the forest. I hadn’t been following the site’s workings since a snappy new staff and direction were announced last year, but I had noticed a drop off in the number of stories coming across my RSS feed (Yes, I still use RSS. A more streamlined replacement has not been found.) I see the excellent Daniel Elkin has moved his small press news column back to his own site, Your Chicken Enemy. Speaking of which, here’s a fine review of WHAT IS LEFT by Rosemary Valero-O’Connell. Bookmark, or follow or…I don’t know. Hit the link? How do you do this now?
Anyway I don’t know any more than that (I reached out to a few folks but got no response) but it should be noted that Comics Bulletin has been around for more than 20 years, a very solid comics resource, long run by Jason Sacks. Before that it was Silver Bullet Comics, run by Jason Brice, one of the earliest comics news/reviews sites out there. I don’t know if anyone named Jason is running the site now, but I hope the content is archived somewhere.
MEANWHILE, on a happier note, ComicMix is still around to change lightbulbs and everything! A few weeks ago the site’s founder Mike Gold sent a letter out to folks saying he was leaving, and there was a certain ominous overtone to the missive. However, I’m told it was just an evolution of sorts for both Gold and ComicMix, and the site is still going strong.
Gold expanded on his departure in a column, terming it “shuffling off to Buffalo.”
There are lots of reasons for my departure, the most significant of which is, quite frankly, I’ve been looking to leave for several years. Again, my short attention span: my professional mind wanders the same way my id does. When ComicMix chose to go in a different and largely unarticulated direction, I seized the opportunity to change my business url.
I shall be getting back to writing, and I will be expanding my podcast and publishing work. That’s what I do during those brief periods when I’m not being sarcastic. Maybe I’ll write that exposé about the comics industry; who knows?
He adds that Adriane Nash will be starting a new site called Pop Culture Squad.
ComicMix has dropped many of its columnists, but they have a new business development person on board, and their Planned Parenthood benefit comic, Mine! is coming out next year, so a lot going on.
Speaking of ComicMix, here’s Ed Catto interviewing Dan Gearino, the author of Comic Shop: The Retail Mavericks Who Gave Us a New Geek Culture.
EC: How would do you respond when someone says, “I’d like to open up a comic shop?”
DG: My advice would be that a new shop owner needs to be well-capitalized to be able to afford the kind of diverse inventory to have a strong start, and to weather the potential of a slow start. The amounts are different depending on the region, but $100,000 is a number I’ve heard more than once as a rule of thumb. This is very different from the 1970s, when someone could start a shop with their own collection and first month’s rent.
If you have the financing make a go go of it, my next advice would be to visit lots of stores and see what they do well. Many retailers will be eager to give advice, as long as that new shop isn’t in the same market. The best stores have a lot in common in terms of attitude and merchandising choices. Also, find a bad store or two, with disorganized stock and an indifferent staff, so that you can see how not to be.
I miss working for ComicMix. Wow, that had to be at least a decade ago! Looking forward to Adriane’s new site.
“but I had noticed a drop off in the number of stories coming across my RSS feed (Yes, I still use RSS. A more streamlined replacement has not been found.)”
I literally don’t understand how RSS faded like it did without something better replacing it.
There are so many comics sites but they are all on their own tiny little islands that most will never hear of. Feels like there’s a lot of critic talent out there that need to Voltron and build something bigger so they can be noticed
I like how the Beat has been scaling and adding more voices.
RSS is a great tool, but it’s not an incredibly user friendly one.
Not user friendly? You just plug a link into a reader and sort your shit and refresh it. A lot of sites make RSS hard to find however, or have deprecated it entirely, so maybe that’s what you mean.
And Mister Smith, I think Google FB, etc decided that everyone would stream their content on Google+ or FB likes or whatever.
Google has had a lot of social networks that worked — people would regularly share content via Google Reader -but they killed those to make way for the Voltron of Google+ and other failed social platforms. Google doesn’t understand people. Maybe that’s for the best.
Hey Heidi,
I’m currently the owner and publisher of Comics Bulletin. We were on a panel together that you moderated last year.
The archives will hopefully stick around, but I’m looking to find new management for the site that will reflect the standard and quality of the site under Jason Sacks. That’s all I can really discuss at this time.
RSS is still the best way to go. The only hindrance to it is that people used to syndicate their whole articles. Nowadays, almost everyone makes you click through to read more than the first 100 words.
For some reason, people think Twitter and Facebook replaced it, which is ridiculously silly since (A) Facebook doesn’t show you things professional websites post unless they pay Facebook to do so and (B) Twitter’s churn is so fast and strong that you’ll miss most things.
They’ll have to pull RSS out of my cold dead fingers. (Thanks, Feedly.com, for existing…)
I’m a big RSS user myself.
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