#Comicsgate - The Culture Wars Hit The Funny Books!

[Elwood P. Dowd]

Guys, I got some bad news. @PocketJacks claims he just signed the petition to shut down Kiwi Farms. And it's all Jon Del Aroz's fault.

We're fucked. It was nice knowing you.

View attachment 2216691

https://twitter.com/ComicsJacks/status/1399100201609138182?s=20

Archive: https://archive.md/1FjP4

EDIT: Fuck you @TheCosmicWarrior, you've doomed us all!!!

Eh, I'll wait until after @Null gets the retarded email demanding the site be purged of all the Cuckening pictures.

 

[Captain Manning]

But the bottom line here is that manga sales are overtaking American comics sales and comics shops are closing all over the country. Hardcore fans may like superhero comics but that audience is growing older and shrinking and nobody is replacing them.

What I don't get is how the hell can anybody like one genre so much, to the exclusion of all others.?

I think maybe the "superheros sell" thing might be a bit overstated. I wonder if it's just that mainstream U.S. publishers are too chickenshit to try something else, or they lack the creativity to create something that doesn't leverage an existing IP.

It's really easy to point out the top of the superhero heap like Batman and Spider-Man and go "See? Batman/Spider-Man sells". Of course Batman sells. It also sells primarily because DC publishes five Batman series since it's easier to sell five Batman books to one person than it is to sell one Batman book to five people.

That's a very good observation, and one that suggests the fanbase really isn't that big.

 

[Uranus Pink]

I am aware there is some non-capeshit stuff, but you really got to dig more for it, and I think most of it is from much smaller publishers.

Effectively only the smaller publishers do none capeshit stuff. Before the 90ies comic crash the Indy publishing scene had actually matched what Japan was doing although with a lot of trial and error. But most of them been obliterated during the Crash and the aftershock. In no part thanks to lot of them hitching their wagon to the capeshit speculator bubble. As most American comic buyers still only gave AF for capeshit. Mid and post crash was when the manga publishers made their move to fill in the gaping crater. While taking Will Rogers to heart with this quote. Sticking to reading and observation letting the capeshit publishers continue to piss on the fence without ever learning to stop doing it.

 

[jspit2.0]

I think the point here is that publishers like Shueisha, Kodansha, and Shogakukan cast their net pretty wide, and you get a lot of different genres that get pretty good exposure. Manga is a medium, and not a genre. It's not all giant robots. Not all slice of life. Not all magical girls. Not all cooking. Not all sports. Et cetera.

Their publishing analogs in America (Marvel, D.C., Dark Horse, Image, et al.) are inundated with capeshit, to the point where is really drowns out anything else.

Your making the assertion that Capeshit is drowning and therefore that is why comics is bad. If only there were more pirate books?

I would argue that a healthier industry has the luxury of publishing less popular niche material and that a rising tide lifts the boats. And there are plenty of non-superhero titles from the major publishers.

I am aware there is some non-capeshit stuff, but you really got to dig more for it, and I think most of it is from much smaller publishers.

This is not a weeaboo thing. It's just a sad fact. I dunno why, either.

Except you don't. Big girls, Walking Dead, Hellboy, Saga, Paper Girls. I can keep going.

Nobody is saying all superhero comics are shit. As Ellis said in the piece, there's room for good work in any genre.

Warren Ellis hated superheroes. He was apart of that crew.

But the bottom line here is that manga sales are overtaking American comics sales and comics shops are closing all over the country.

Because American comics are shit. Make the about pirates or cowboys with the same creators and sensibilities and they'd still be shit.

Hardcore fans may like superhero comics but that audience is growing older and shrinking and nobody is replacing them.

That was Axel Alonso and the SJWs justification for going woke.

I go to a shop about twice a month and I rarely see kids inside. I see plenty of middle aged dudes buying up multiple copies for speculation purposes (it got so bad the shop had to institute a one copy per customer policy). You know what my local shop does not sell? MANGA. The shelves are full and the floor is empty. And this is a store that's been around for 40 years.

I'm sorry. Maybe if they just ordered a hundred copies of Kamen America and Gold Digger they'd bring all the current generation of kids who don't read in.

When I go to Barnes & Noble, it's a different story, one much like the story in Shane Davis' video. Plenty of traffic in the manga section and crickets in the mainstream graphic novel area. Kids don't want a $5 floppy copy of one the multitude of Batman series or the dozen Avengers tie-ins. Kids do want One Piece and DragonBall. The basement bunch might buy superhero books regularly but they don't exist in numbers that will keep the industry alive in 10 years. If kids ain't reading the comics, they're done. Maybe not now, but eventually.

Meh. Basement bunch.

It's really easy to point out the top of the superhero heap like Batman and Spider-Man and go "See? Batman/Spider-Man sells". Of course Batman sells. It also sells primarily because DC publishes five Batman series since it's easier to sell five Batman books to one person than it is to sell one Batman book to five people.

No, I mean one Batman book or GN outsells virtually all non superhero alternatives. Superheroes outsell non-Superhero titles with rare exceptions. (Scholastic and the occasional synergy title).

Effectively only the smaller publishers do none capeshit stuff.

Since....?

Because John Constantine and Sandman are not 'capeshit'. I can do this all day...

Before the 90ies comic crash the Indy publishing scene had actually matched what Japan was doing although with a lot of trial and error. But most of them been obliterated during the Crash and the aftershock.

Crossgen, Antarctic, and Aspen. All were outsold by superheroes.

In no part thanks to lot of them hitching their wagon to the capeshit speculator bubble.

???

No. Just no. Crossgen never hitched itself to the speculator bubble nor did Aspen. They're Indieshit titles just weren't what the actual market that actually bought books wanted.

As most American comic buyers still only gave AF for capeshit.

Yep. Almost as if people wanted something different from American comics?

Mid and post crash was when the manga publishers made their move to fill in the gaping crater. While taking Will Rogers to heart with this quote. Sticking to reading and observation letting the capeshit publishers continue to piss on the fence without ever learning to stop doing it.

View attachment 2216892

That's, very nice.

Soooo, to review; there have always been people with a bizarre hate boner for superheroes. They have, contrary to evidence or facts, argued for my entire life that if only American niche genres that didn't sell well got even more space; why then comics would sell well!

Marvel and DC both bit. They pushed hard. They pumped out genre titles, chased phantom audiences, and in the end it all came to naught.

 

[Captain Manning]

Your making the assertion that Capeshit is drowning and therefore that is why comics is bad. If only there were more pirate books?

No. Re-read what I wrote. I'm saying that major American comic book companies are drowning in capeshit and it's potentially stunting their growth/revenue. Not because nobody is buying it, but because the people that don't like that genre sure as hell are not.

There is a market for capeshit. I don't dispute that. I just don't know why there's so goddamned much of it in American comics. It's enough to not make me give a shit about mainstream American comics.

Furthermore, I suspect a lack of creativity. Or rather, diversity of another type. Especially when today's writers are leveraging IP that is so old that a lot of the people that originally came up with said IP are now worm food.

Except you don't. Big girls, Walking Dead, Hellboy, Saga, Paper Girls. I can keep going.

You'd be going against a strawman. I said that they are inundated with capeshit. Not that that's the extent of everything that comes out.

Warren Ellis hated superheroes. He was apart of that crew.

Well then, so am I. I think I even said that on KF a long time ago elsewhere,

I for one, think the best thing Marvel ever did was The Punisher. He doesn't shoot laser beams out his ass because he was bitten by a radioactive Duckbill Platypus. It's just more my taste. Sue me.

Incidentally, I have never read/seen One Punch Man either. Even though I hear it's kind of a send up of the superhero genre.

Because American comics are shit.

Agreed. For the most part.

 

[Analog Devolved]

Cuckolded by leroy and the strap on poo video are still for sale. Both for only $6.

Spoiler: nsfw

 

[jspit2.0]

Cuckolded by leroy and the strap on poo video are still for sale. Both for only $6.
View attachment 2217114View attachment 2217113View attachment 2217112View attachment 2217111

My eyes!!!

 

[NasserRabadi13]

Cuckolded by leroy and the strap on poo video are still for sale. Both for only $6.
View attachment 2217114View attachment 2217113View attachment 2217112View attachment 2217111

I should give up writing in the horror genre. Nothing I write will ever be this horrifying.

 

[A nameless trool]

Shane said it himself, manga has "something for everyone". American comics are virtually dominated by one thing for a very narrow range of customers which is getting smaller all the time.

There's manga geared towards pretty much every demographic in a wide variety of genres, available weekly (in Japan anyway) and for a cheap price. The stories are easy to get into because they're almost all kept in print and even the most popular ones have an ending. They aren't 70 year old trademarks fighting the same fights over and over with zero stakes storytelling that can't even kill a side character or let any change stick because it's a 70 year old trademark that needs to stay the same and the ever aging manbaby audience likes the status quo to return eventually. Reboot, rinse, repeat.

Mainstream American comics are creatively bankrupt because they aren't outlets for creativity, they're work-for-hire life support systems for ancient properties that are far more successful as movies than they've been as comics in at least a decade.

Warren "Internet Whorin'" Ellis wrote about this wretched development 20 years ago in a piece called "The Old Bastard's Manifesto", which contained this snippet later used by Bendis in an issue of Powers:



The whole thing is worth a read. Ellis was ahead of the curve on a lot of ideas back when he still had ideas, even acknowledging he was part of the problem since he would deride publishers for pushing out superhero pablum right before accepting work from those publishers to produce more superhero pablum. He championed the manga model before most stores were carrying manga. And he's absolutely right that American publishers making what are ostensibly kid's comics for an overwhelmingly adult audience is not helping anything, but slowly choking the industry to death.

What Warren Ellis is right about is building a diverse collection of stories with begining, middle and end that would attract readers on bookstores.
Vertigo was doing that.
DC did a lot of elseworlds that worked this way.
Image went there.
Most of the indies did.

What Warren Ellis does not write (but probably knows) is that those comics were written and edited by the 40 year old creepy dudes that hang out in comicstores so there was little hope of ever attaining mainstream approval.
And could not predict the explosion of capeshit movies that made everyone focus on capeshit hoping for a movie deal and/or catching the trend.

I should give up writing in the horror genre. Nothing I write will ever be this horrifying.

Your next novel should be about a comicbook writer pushing aspiring young artists into a treehouse of horror and only the last survivor will be able to draw his magnum opus.

Or just listen to your chat and have a cursed pelt of a holy animal that everybody who wears it end up rabid. Someone unearths it in a charity shop and turns it into a fursuit and then goes to a furry convention.
Add your protagonist, a group of youtubers going to the convention for trolling and you will get THE FURRY CON MASSACRE.

 

[Mister Dongs]

"Capeshit" isn't shit at all. The American comic book industry dates far before superheroes to noir and jungle comics. How many of you have even read comics or been in a shop in the last fifty years?

If you had you'd know three things. First, there has always been hundreds of alternative titles. Archie, Sandman, Preacher, Jonah Hex. Fuck, Antarctic, Aspen, Crusade, and Crossgen were all built on anything but superheroes. They all sold extremely poor.

While this was a rule that held thoughout the 70s all the ways to the 00s, during the late oughts a new trend started to emerge when the mainstream American comics took notice of Reina' Telgameier's success, which by all means did not sell extremely poorly.

I wrote up the stream in depth here but the relevant part is at about 7 minutes in where Ross Richie (CEO and as of last week Chairman of Boom Studios) offers a window into the decision-making process of 30-year DC comics publisher Paul Levitz to comic book autist representing retailers Dan Shahin. Dan in the interview, much like Captain Manning right now, bemoans the flood of capeshit on shelves to the exclusion of all else and doesn't think twice about making it known.

tl;dr: Sales trackers were arriving at 2008 tha Telgameier's Drama YA graphic novel was outselling superhero comics collectively 2 to 1. That two out of every three people entering a local comic book shop had virtually zero product geared towards themselves beyond Drama and that this was the impetus for DC and Marvel's lurch into adapting their properties and well-established characters into YA-palatable fare. It's the strongest piece of evidence of a deliberate and disastrous change that occurred in American comics over the Obama years from 2008 to 2016 and that the complaints from Comicsgate weren't just the delusions of fans but an agenda and direction that was being pushed. And ironically, Dan Shahin was the one to do it.

 

[NasserRabadi13]

Your next novel should be about a comicbook writer pushing aspiring young artists into a treehouse of horror and only the last survivor will be able to draw his magnum opus.

Or just listen to your chat and have a cursed pelt of a holy animal that everybody who wears it end up rabid. Someone unearths it in a charity shop and turns it into a fursuit and then goes to a furry convention.
Add your protagonist, a group of youtubers going to the convention for trolling and you will get THE FURRY CON MASSACRE.

I took suggestions from the chat, and I'm gonna be working on draft 3 of a comic tomorrow that's a mix of ideas they threw at me/things they told me they'd like to see.

CREEPSTERS. It's my own Gremlins/Critters/Ghoulies.

Draft 2 is 80 pages. Draft 3 might even be a few pages longer than that. There's a LOT of story to tell with this universe/these characters. But I'm doing my best to condense this issue a bit, so that it doesn't get too out of control. Each page is a page an artist needs to be paid to draw, which makes everything so much more expensive.

 

[Captain Manning]

Sales trackers were arriving at 2008 tha Telgameier's Drama YA graphic novel was outselling superhero comics collectively 2 to 1. That two out of every three people entering a local comic book shop had virtually zero product geared towards themselves beyond Drama and that this was the impetus for DC and Marvel's lurch into adapting their properties and well-established characters into YA-palatable fare.

Which is essentially what I just got done relating. Not everybody wants capeshit. It's not that capeshit is what people want more than anything, so the product line is being driven by the sales figures. If that were true, the US comic industry wouldn't be losing sales to manga.

Moreover, I think it's fucking idiotic to convert capeshit to something it was never intended to be. You run into the opposite problem of alienating the people who still like traditional capeshit.

To solve both problems, you would ideally "clean sheet" new properties to run alongside existing product line. Unfortunately, that would mean you'd have to hire writers that have original ideas and characters, rather than ones who just put a fresh coat of paint on Faggotman, or whatever IP that's been lying around in a drawer for decades.

So in the end, you end up with a comic that's trying not to be a "superhero comic," but has fucking superheros on the cover.

Christ. No wonder the US comics industry is in trouble.

 

[TESTEFY-HD]

OH NO!!! Whatever will I do?

 

[Pilule Noire]

I think capeshit is to Ellis as wokeshit is to CGer. Like this:

Ellis: Look at this terrible capeshit! Terrible right?
Customer: Kinda yeah...
Ellis: Try my stuff. It's not capeshit!
Customer: Ok... but is it good?
Ellis: ...It's not capeshit!

Or, in the CGer version:

CGer: Look at this terrible wokeshit! Terrible right?
Customer: Kinda yeah...
CGer: Try my stuff. It's not wokeshit!
Customer: Ok... but is it good?
CGer: ...It's not wokeshit!

You see the clever trick they're doing, they're saying that stuff over there is bad because it has the bad thing in it. But their stuff doesn't have the bad thing, therefore it must be good.

It's pure genius!

Although Ellis also has some controversial statements in that manifesto, that wouldn't look out of place in a 2021 Heavy Metal tweet:

What you say on the net doesn't matter. What you used to say in letters pages doesn't matter. No-one's listening to you. Because whenever anyone asks you what you think, you ask them to bring the fucking Micronauts back. The coin of your uninformed opinion is unutterably debased. Come back when you have something worth saying.

Understand that when you write CAPE GIRL or ZAP BOY, you are not writing for your fondly imagined child audience. It doesn't exist. You are writing for a forty-five-year-old unmarried man living in a one-room apartment who listens to Madonna and is probably masturbating over your work. I want you to hold that image in your head the next time you sit down to create one of these works. Your worst convention-nightmare fan, glopping away as he peers through thick glasses at your drawing of Zoom Woman.

Then go and do something better with your time.

CG would never shame me for being a healthy, robustly unmarried bachelor, masturbating vigorously to comics with Madonna playing in my one-room apartment? Would you @FROG, would you shame me, if I did that this afternoon?

 

[Miniluv]

Warren Ellis hated superheroes. He was apart of that crew.

Warren Ellis hated the overwhelming dominance of superheroes over a medium in which any story could be told.
If 95% of American television was Westerns, I'd be so goddamn sick of Westerns I'd throw my TV out the window.

I'm sorry. Maybe if they just ordered a hundred copies of Kamen America and Gold Digger they'd bring all the current generation of kids who don't read in.

That's pretty disingenuous. Kamen America and Gold Digger aren't geared for kids. Like most mainstream American comics, they're geared towards adult men with disposable income that like T&A. They have the visual hallmarks of a manga style but they aren't the same thing and you know it. If the shop I'm talking about was concerned with making money, they'd stock popular manga AND Gold Digger/KA.

As it stands, they're ordering non returnable copies of Catwoman and Ms. Marvel for an audience that scarcely exists.

No, I mean one Batman book or GN outsells virtually all non superhero alternatives. Superheroes outsell non-Superhero titles with rare exceptions. (Scholastic and the occasional synergy title).

Jesus Christ, Batman is the most popular superhero brand in the entire world. OF COURSE he's going to sell. Superhero books flood the shelves, of course they outsell non superhero books. Batman isn't representative of all superhero books. All Italian cars are not Ferraris. The lion's share of superhero books on the shelves are utter dross and they are the majority of the market because that's what the two biggest names in comics decide to put out. Nobody's pacing up and down awaiting the newest issue of fucking Gwenpool or some other dumb shit like that.

Because John Constantine and Sandman are not 'capeshit'. I can do this all day...

Yeah? Justice League Dark is capeshit. John Constantine is, as of now, therefore capeshit.
DC made Gaiman use JLA in the Sandman book to firmly root the series in the mainstream DC Universe so it would have that capeshit stink on it because they had no faith in their customer base to pick up a series that wasn't somehow connected to their convoluted costume party. It distanced itself from that as time went on, but DC wanted it to be known that this was a DC book that was capeshit adjacent.

To solve both problems, you would ideally "clean sheet" new properties to run alongside existing product line. Unfortunately, that would mean you'd have to hire writers that have original ideas and characters, rather than ones who just put a fresh coat of paint on Faggotman, or whatever IP they have lying around in a drawn.

I'm not really sure why any writer or artist would want to create something new for either of the Big Two just to see it get molested by a corporate monolith, handed to another writer that doesn't give a shit and turned into some kind of media adaptation that gets you a few middle tier royalty checks. You think Mike Mignola isn't thanking his chosen deity that DC turned down his Hellboy pitch?

 

[jspit2.0]

While this was a rule that held thoughout the 70s all the ways to the 00s, during the late oughts a new trend started to emerge when the mainstream American comics took notice of Reina' Telgameier's success, which by all means did not sell extremely poorly.

I wrote up the stream in depth here but the relevant part is at about 7 minutes in where Ross Richie (CEO and as of last week Chairman of Boom Studios) offers a window into the decision-making process of 30-year DC comics publisher Paul Levitz to comic book autist representing retailers Dan Shahin. Dan in the interview, much like Captain Manning right now, bemoans the flood of capeshit on shelves to the exclusion of all else and doesn't think twice about making it known.

tl;dr: Sales trackers were arriving at 2008 tha Telgameier's Drama YA graphic novel was outselling superhero comics collectively 2 to 1. That two out of every three people entering a local comic book shop had virtually zero product geared towards themselves beyond Drama and that this was the impetus for DC and Marvel's lurch into adapting their properties and well-established characters into YA-palatable fare. It's the strongest piece of evidence of a deliberate and disastrous change that occurred in American comics over the Obama years from 2008 to 2016 and that the complaints from Comicsgate weren't just the delusions of fans but an agenda and direction that was being pushed. And ironically, Dan Shahin was the one to do it.

scholastic

 

[Captain Manning]

OH NO!!! Whatever will I do?
View attachment 2217325

First of all. It's one X.

Secondly, If that's actually him, that's kinda dumb considering the prevailing theory is that he's doing this crap predominately to dox Vikki and Dean (I don't think EVS gives a shit, and most of his info was probably already put out be he himself).

Thirdly, they uhh... sorta do. I guess. They took glee in posting what they thought was good dox of you. Including your fish picture. Then when they saw what much better doxing looks like, they went crying to Null and tried to take down KF with the usual failed methods. Because, as we all know, Wascampaign is the penultimate in badassery.

I'm not really sure why any writer or artist would want to create something new for either of the Big Two just to see it get molested by a corporate monolith, handed to another writer that doesn't give a shit and turned into some kind of media adaptation that gets you a few middle tier royalty checks. You think Mike Mignola isn't thanking his chosen deity that DC turned down his Hellboy pitch?

I see your point, but it would still be the smartest thing for the Big Two to try if they want to unfuck things.

 

[Miniluv]

I see your point, but it would still be the smartest thing for the Big Two to try if they want to unfuck things.

It seems like they can't help but not unfuck things.

As a geezer, I remember when non-superhero titles were pretty commonplace from both Marvel and DC. I'm not old enough to have lived through the heyday of Westerns and War comics, but those things were being published into the mid-80s, with Marvel's The 'Nam going on later than that. Sgt. Rock was a mainstay in the DC lineup for many years. Conan the Barbarian was one of the biggest titles Marvel had in the 70s and 80s, not to mention Savage Sword, which was a prominent fixture on magazine racks nationwide. The old DC horror/mystery titles lasted just as long, with elements and characters from those series filtering into the Vertigo line later on. And this was in an era when sales were far better than they are now.

Now they can't stop themselves from injecting superhero stuff into attempts at other genres. Any time DC publishes a story that's fantasy, western, war, or even fucking pirates, it HAS to be an Elseworlds story with altered forms of their superhero characters. It's like hey, DC made a fully painted prestige book reminiscent of Tolkien and Moorcock! Fuck, it's about the Justice League. Hey, a pirate story, that's pretty unusual! I wonder what's up with that. Oh, it's fucking Pirate Batman.

When Marvel re-acquired the Conan license, I was kind of excited about it. Conan was one of my favorites growing up and I kept up with the property all throughout the Dark Horse run. I read they'd planned on doing omnibus versions of Savage Sword and I was stoked. Conan was always like its own thing and had very little interaction with the rest of the line aside from a couple of issues of What If...? So Marvel gets the license and the first thing they do is have the motherfucker fight Wolverine and join the Avengers, because of course.

Marvel and DC could easily take the slots filled by their bottom four or five selling titles that are destined for the axe and replace them with something completely out of left field that doesn't have shit to do with spandex. But they won't. Or if they did, it wouldn't be long before we see a special appearance by one of the six Green Lanterns or Ironheart in an effort to "boost sales" (lol)

 

[Captain Manning]

So, this just happened in Mike S. Miller's Discord.







Some observations:

1. Preston is delusional. He thinks people are "shocked" by the claims in his lawsuit. These people, if they even exist, should be removed from the gene pool immediately.
2. I can't possibly imagine what "papers" Preston is alluding to.
3. Mike Miller sounds like an idiot. I wonder if he's "that type" of EVS alog I mentioned the other day.
4. Preston left Mike's Discord after this.

 

[jspit2.0]

So, this just happened in Mike S. Miller's Discord.

View attachment 2217437
View attachment 2217438
View attachment 2217439
View attachment 2217440
View attachment 2217442

Some observations:

1. Preston is delusional. He thinks people are "shocked" by the claims in his lawsuit. These people, if they even exist, should be removed from the gene pool immediately.
2. I can't possibly imagine what "papers" Preston is alluding to.
3. Mike Miller sounds like an idiot. I wonder if he's "that type" of EVS alog I mentioned the other day.
4. Preston left Mike's Discord after this.

Oh hey, its more Ethan never dun nuffin'. Joy....

Mike doesn't like Ethan. Ethan doesn't like Mike. Mike took a ton of shit from gay oppers in WC, your buddies, for over a year. Ethan cheered as they harangued him and he took multiple opportunities to assert that Miller hates the gays.

Mike, in turn, fucked everything up. He took his moral high ground and thoroughly conceded it.

Ethan and Mike are both petty fucks. But you seem obsessed with caping for Frog. Protecting Caesar?