Diseased #Comicsgate - The Culture Wars Hit The Funny Books!

AriZona_LaD said:
View attachment 965235
Twitter poll results just before Ethan retweets.
twitter.com

Michael Lynch on Twitter

“If you backed Cyberfrog Blood Honey, will you be backing any future books from Ethan Van Sciver? Please retweet.”
twitter.com twitter.com
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Twitter

archived 9 Oct 2019 19:47:19 UTC
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I'll add the final results when It's over. It is already radically shifting.
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Twitter polls are exceptional due to the bubbles twitter naturally creates and brigading efforts.
Gee Willows Wilson! said:
Joe, honey... This is New York City Comic Con... of course these two pictures look packed. But the sales are sales.
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How much do they sell books for at these conventions? I saw a few pros bragging about selling hundreds of copies of their books (not that i believe them), but if its at RRP of $5 and they sell 500 (x to doubt) then they made $2500, minus travel costs, table expenses, etc they'd be getting about 2 grand. Probably seems like a lot to these broke weirdos and it's not bad for a weekend, but if you had an audience you could make that in hours on a kickstarter.

Also super duper smart of Joe to post that just before this news dropped
www.forbes.com

Surprising New Data Shows Comic Readers Are Leaving Superheroes Behind

As more comics and graphic novels are sold in bookstores, new genres are overtaking costumed crusaders with the rising generation of fans.
www.forbes.com www.forbes.com

AnOminous said:
Wasn't Meyer on time despite having his publisher literally fuck him over thanks to Mark Waid?
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I think the second one, that i can never remember the name of, that he used as a pilot to see if he could ship jawbreakers himself was ~a month off and jawbreakers was a few months late.
 
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7proxy said:
I wonder why we don't hear more about Peter Simeti. Maybe I haven't followed the scene closely enough but he seems to have the publishing and distribution thing down (when he's not getting SWAT'ed) so if he created a more "prestige" imprint for CG's big hitters it could be their path to a more streamlined process.
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Guys like EVS and Ya Boi won't go to Peter, partially because they want to be independent, but the main reason is that he's already been heavily targeted like the swatting you mentioned just for being polite to CG guys. They probably want to give Peter some breathing room for his own good.

This is happening though
Alterna Comics - YouTube - www.youtube.com.png
 
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Ma Wang said:
I have a cousin that goes to Cons all the time, and she's never picked up a comic book in her life.
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AnOminous said:
The only people I know who go to comic cons don't even read comics, and the only people I know who still read comics don't go to comic cons.
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I have picked up comics at my city's large convention in the past, but I haven't been there for a while (quite honestly, I'm not sure I'll go back thanks to Weeb Wars).
 
AnOminous said:
Wasn't Meyer on time despite having his publisher literally fuck him over thanks to Mark Waid?
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Ah, Ah, Ah I did say "almost"

As for me, I do actually got to comic conventions to try and find whatever issues I can't find at my LCS, but with the con pricing it's very rare I get anything. This year though, I did manage to pick up a huge amount of 'Lone Wolf and Cub' manga.
 
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7proxy said:
I agree for the most part but to be fair, a lot of this is just growing pains. Look at Ya Boi Zack and how much he improved since his first Jawbreakers – Lost Souls campaign. I'm pretty sure he was months late on the one Waid torpedoed but he's got this shit on lock now.
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I'm pretty sure I've heard Zack mention that his very first attempt on kickstarter earned a pittiful ammount of money and took THREE YEARS to deliver, so he may be slick Dick now, but it's far easier to deliver when you're just the writer farming out the art . He got a harsh slap of reality back when he was doing it all by himself for the first time though.

7proxy said:
Those that are the most late are artists who decided to take on the roles of writer/editor/publisher all at once. I hope that CG can evolve into something more cohesive and more structured instead of everyone self-publishing their stuff. Mitch Breitweiser got the right idea with creating Allegiance but he did so at the cost of his own Red Rooster comic. Somebody's got to bite the bullet and choose one: draw comics or publish comics.
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I think the slow uptake for Mitch's latest offering reflects the gun-shy nature of consumers that are yet to recieve delivery of the inital project they backed.
I'm also kind of confused by Mitch's model.
He's croudfunding his Imprint launch with 3 comics, which look great BTW, I've always been of the opinion that his books are probably the best that CG has to offer because he's made the wise decision to work with proven writers and employed an editorial staff, but he's trying to ride two horses here, crowdfunding AND the direct market. As an international customer his $30 shipping charge means that even at a lower tier I'd still be paying more then $20 a comic.
This leaves me to wonder why the hell I'd pay so far over the odds for a book that I'll probably be able to buy for $5 in a couple of months time? It doesn't make a lot of sense which is probably why Mitch is being so coy about the how delivery of future issues is going to work.

7proxy said:
I wonder why we don't hear more about Peter Simeti. Maybe I haven't followed the scene closely enough but he seems to have the publishing and distribution thing down (when he's not getting SWAT'ed) so if he created a more "prestige" imprint for CG's big hitters it could be their path to a more streamlined process.
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Well Alterna has it's own baggage but the reality is that CG needs a publishing house that can offer contracted editorial and publishing services. Perhaps Mitch's new Allegience imprint could offer contract services at a per page price that would be a handy earner for them and offer economies of scale to CG creators. You already have Eric Weathers lettering about 90% of CG projects, add an editorial service and perhaps print management to that and things might run more smoothly for creators.
 
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Comicsgeist said:
I'm pretty sure I've heard Zack mention that his very first attempt on kickstarter earned a pittiful ammount of money and took THREE YEARS to deliver, so he may be slick Dick now, but it's far easier to deliver when you're just the writer farming out the art . He got a harsh slap of reality back when he was doing it all by himself for the first time though.
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Apparently, he tried to re-release Yonchi but it failed:
www.kickstarter.com

How you doing? (Canceled)

You look good.
www.kickstarter.com www.kickstarter.com
As you can see, he renamed it and scrubbed it.

He did succeed in a Kickstarter of a colored version of his first one-shot, No Enemy, But Peace:
www.kickstarter.com

"No Enemy, But Peace" graphic novel

The true story of Sgt. Marco Martinez, a former gang-banger who joined the Marines and earned the Navy Cross in Iraq.
www.kickstarter.com www.kickstarter.com

He also wanted to create a project called The Frozen Chosin (he used panels later used in Chosin: Hold the Line):
www.kickstarter.com

"The Frozen Chosin"- Graphic Novel and 3D Animation Project

THE FROZEN CHOSIN is a graphic novel/3D animation project about the most horrific battle of the Korean War.
www.kickstarter.com www.kickstarter.com
As you can see, it flopped.

I also found an article on CBR from 2009 talking about these projects:

War Stories: Sgt. Richard Meyer on "No Enemy, But Peace"

CBR News caught up with writer/artist Sergeant Richard Meyer to discuss "No Enemy, But Peace," a new comic book based on the true story of a U.S. Marine serving in Iraq.
www.cbr.com www.cbr.com
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War Stories: Sgt. Richard Meyer on "No Enemy, But Peace"

archived 1 Aug 2018 18:25:22 UTC
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Manwithn0n0men said:
@Comicsgeist a couple of different people in the scene offer editorial
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That may be, but how many people are taking advantage of them? (I'd be interested to know)

There are people out there in CG that can fulfil various production functions, but if there was one (or preferably more) publishing house had the capacity to offer a full editorial, lettering, print file management and a deal with a printer, all at a reasonable cost then an economy of scale could be achieved. That might help to address issues like pricing and overburdened creators running late (or 17 fucking pages of exposition and an unnecessary recap of a naff 90’s comic that really belongs in the ashcan).

Of course many creators probably can't afford these extras, because another elephant in the room is the fact that a crowd funded comic really needs to hit a minimum of 35k (in my estimation) to really make the effort worthwhile and ensure everybody involved doesn't feel like their months of efforts were all expended for peanuts at best or wasted altogether at worst.
 
I wonder how bad things are going to have to get before Joe and the hacks at Marvel will start listening to fans again.

Even Dan Didio acknowledges the Industry has a problem.
 
Gee Willows Wilson! said:
I don't think I can, that's my point. He's been so fucking weird and wrong about things - saying stuff is good when it's not and vice-versa.
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Maybe I'm weird but I never agree with him on Gail Simone - I find "aunt humor" funny, and while I notice a lot of her stuff has "sitting around eating", it doesn't really bother me.
 
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