I will be appearing tomorrow afternoon at Jim Hanley’s Universe in midtown for this event:
Join film-maker Miguel Cima and special guests at the JHU Underground at our Manhattan Location for screening of the award-winning documentary DIG COMICS on Saturday, November 14 beginning at 3:00pm. Following the screening will be an A-List panel discussion with Mr. Cima, Tom Brevoort, Heidi MacDonald, Andy Helfer, Chris Irving, and Danny Fingeroth!
DIG COMICS is a film exploring the public’s attitudes, about reading comics, and it won the documentary award at the 2009 San Diego Comic-Con film festival. Tom O’Shea interviews filmmaker Cima here, and he has some interesting ideas…
I’ve heard too many big publisher execs say in interviews that their concern is not comics, but how they can monetize the legacy characters. That’s totally fucked up! Imagine Capitol Records was like, well, these Beatles T-shirts and video games are doing great, we no longer need to distribute music. How insane would that be? Robbed of Beatles music, that’s my analogy. How is it that such mentalities are holding the keys to an art form? It’s outrageous! These guys would be ready to let Spider-Man comics vanish as long as the movies prove to be the most lucrative. And the fact is readership is down and keeps going down. It doesn’t make sense economically, either as there are obviously great opportunities to up readership and sell more books, but really, it’s just a sin for them to think that way, and it’s nuts that these guys would admit as much in public. So, yeah, if the big publishers don’t step up, comics may well go the way of the Zoetrope.
Knock ’em dead Heidi – and oh, have a great birthday on Sunday.
~
Coat
So, Heidi, what did you think of DIG COMICS’ Miguel Cima, or as I like to refer to him, the Funnybook Evangelist?
And happy birthday to you!