#Comicsgate - The Culture Wars Hit The Funny Books!

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Big exclusive contracts are over.

Diane Nelson, former DC Ent. Pres., had the bright idea to shell out an absolutely golden contract for Bendis to come to DC, from what I understand, against some degree of protestation from other DC execs.

The sad irony is that this was done to make themselves look pretty for AT&T, and make DC Comics look like they were an exciting company with a big future. Looking back, it makes me queasy to realize just how small and insignificant all of them were to this major corporation shark for which they wanted to appear to be desirable bait.

Diane got fired from Warners, and DC has been stuck with Bendis, with his stupid ideas and declining sales, ever since. I haven't been reading his Superman stuff, but his exploration of what Geoff and I did on Green Lantern is so bad. "Gold Lanterns" whose power rings work on "Happiness." Fuck.

And here comes AT&T, probably examining this guy's $500K per year contract. And Tom King's. And Scott Snyder's. What are they paying these guys for?

The new normal makes complete sense: None of us are worth anything to any comic publisher. It's a buyers marker for creatives from here on out. Expect plummeting page rates, the number of books published slashed by 75%, and a lot of unemployed artists and writers looking to Hollywood and video games.
 
This 2 page "Bendis is Coming!" spread really hasn't aged well.

2019.01.24-10.10-boundingintocomics-5c4a37edf363e.jpg

It's even sadder when you realize it killed the Superman books right as they were getting some of the best sales they have had in 20 some years.

A LOT of people really liked the Father/Son dynamic and wanted it explored after Damian in the Bat books. Bendis immediately shat all over that and started quickly shoveling in his own new characters for royalty rights. (Which is his standard MO as a writer these days.)
 
SmugAutist said:
Oh fuck, more Hollywood rejects bringing their shit scripts to videogames. We already have Neil Druckman, we don't need any more of his clones.
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Yeah, MCU really killed any sense of wanting to work on a product just because you like it, not just in the comics industry. Now all they want to do is use other products as a stepping stone to "big projects". Fuck passion I guess.
 
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Doug TenNapel launched the cowfunding campaign for Earthworm Jim 2. He's using Kickstarter, but there will be an Indiegogo after. I believe he said he wanted to use Kickstarter as a test to see if he gets cancelled.

A teaser for the new Earthworm Jim game was recently posted on YouTube and video game outlets are using the opportunity to go after Doug. His involvement in the game was quoted as "one brainstorming session" and that he is “open for unpaid consulting on the project.”

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Doug TenNapel on Twitter: "We're launching an @Indiegogo right after …

archived 12 Aug 2020 17:35:57 UTC
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www.kickstarter.com

Earthworm Jim 2: Fight the Fish!

The second chapter of the Earthworm Jim comic book series. Earthworm Jim and friends fight Bob the Goldfish all the way down the tubes!
www.kickstarter.com www.kickstarter.com


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Earthworm Jim Should Stay In The '90s Where He Belongs | TheGamer

archived 12 Aug 2020 17:34:38 UTC
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FROG said:
Big exclusive contracts are over.

Diane Nelson, former DC Ent. Pres., had the bright idea to shell out an absolutely golden contract for Bendis to come to DC, from what I understand, against some degree of protestation from other DC execs.

The sad irony is that this was done to make themselves look pretty for AT&T, and make DC Comics look like they were an exciting company with a big future. Looking back, it makes me queasy to realize just how small and insignificant all of them were to this major corporation shark for which they wanted to appear to be desirable bait.

Diane got fired from Warners, and DC has been stuck with Bendis, with his stupid ideas and declining sales, ever since. I haven't been reading his Superman stuff, but his exploration of what Geoff and I did on Green Lantern is so bad. "Gold Lanterns" whose power rings work on "Happiness." Fuck.

And here comes AT&T, probably examining this guy's $500K per year contract. And Tom King's. And Scott Snyder's. What are they paying these guys for?

The new normal makes complete sense: None of us are worth anything to any comic publisher. It's a buyers marker for creatives from here on out. Expect plummeting page rates, the number of books published slashed by 75%, and a lot of unemployed artists and writers looking to Hollywood and video games.
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That sucks. I remember back in 2018 when I met Zack at the DC pop up area at SXSW and they had just announced Bendis was coming over to write for Superman. We got to see Frank Miller and I had him sign an issue of Daredevil. The DC crew were really cool and brought me, my wife, and Zack beers for free. I didn't realize it what was really going on at the time, I thought Bendis was just jumping ship at Marvel because they didn't want him involved in the MCU anymore.
 
GoPro said:
Great! Bends is almost guaranteed to be affected. He is writing a lot of books, he brought over his Jinxworld imprint, Superman books under Bendis are selling worse than they did under last few writers, DC readers' reception of him was mixed, and given how DC marketed Bendis they are likely paying him a lot of money. He is the prime target.
King's involvement was already being scaled down, and this will only speed things up.

Hopefully Abnett won't get hit too bad. He can be a much better writer than either King or Bendis, but he has been slacking lately. Maybe some fire under his ass is something Abnett needs.
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Let's see... Dan Bloody Abnett wrote a ton of fan favourite novels for Games Workshop, while Bendis is a failed cartoonist and King a guy who wrote a mostly panned novel...
 
nohm said:
Doug TenNapel launched the cowfunding campaign for Earthworm Jim 2. He's using Kickstarter, but there will be an Indiegogo after. I believe he said he wanted to use Kickstarter as a test to see if he gets cancelled.

A teaser for the new Earthworm Jim game was recently posted on YouTube and video game outlets are using the opportunity to go after Doug. His involvement in the game was quoted as "one brainstorming session" and that he is “open for unpaid consulting on the project.”

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archive.vn

Doug TenNapel on Twitter: "We're launching an @Indiegogo right after …

archived 12 Aug 2020 17:35:57 UTC
archive.vn archive.vn

View attachment 1515036
www.kickstarter.com

Earthworm Jim 2: Fight the Fish!

The second chapter of the Earthworm Jim comic book series. Earthworm Jim and friends fight Bob the Goldfish all the way down the tubes!
www.kickstarter.com www.kickstarter.com


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Earthworm Jim Should Stay In The '90s Where He Belongs | TheGamer

archived 12 Aug 2020 17:34:38 UTC
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Well good for Worm, I love how these "Gaming" sites say how problematic he is when he is making the dough on their favored Kick starter platform. With Lim and Ten Apples doing good on KS, I wonder if the other CGs are having second thoughts or will they submissively follow Frog in staying in the safety of Indiegogo's pond.

Then with the whole DC thing, I have a feeling that it only happened because of: SJWism + TSD + Corana-chan fracking the whole world = the whole mainstream comics collapse. CG are just rats laughing at the sinking ship while on the flotsam before they fight each other for the bloated corpses.
 
A nameless trool said:
To be fair, having YA Batman can make some future 20-somethings search for grown-up Batman stuff in a couple years. The challenge is putting out good, affordable Batman stories for different demographics. And no, Gotham High is not the way to go...
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Reading between the lines, I've bad news for you. You're in for a LOT more Gotham High in DC's future.

Everybody's focused on who's got the boot rather then who's got the power after DC threw it's very own Red Wedding.
For example, Sana Amanat isn't going anywhere....
I think some of the big promotions are a strong indicator of the future direction that DC is planning to go in, and the bad news is that it's going to lean heavily YA.

Jim Lee is neutered, they literally cut his balls of by firing his right hand man, he's talking 'the long walk'.
So, who's actually running DC now?
Three women.
Boy did the sudden flurry of MeToo'ing that swept the industry, right before the axe was due to fall, really pay off for those demanding that 'more women needed to be in charge'. They got what they wanted, all the top jobs went to a bunch of literal 'who's?'' with a vagina.
Most telling of all is the appointment of Michele Wells, from DC Young Adult to basically running publishing.
DC's main sales growth lately has been in graphic novels in bookstores and these places lean heavily YA in their customer base these days. Clearly Wells has been promoted to steer the graphic novel productions in this direction.

So the ladies are in charge of comics now, Gotham High is the creative direction DC's is going and if you thought the SJW infestation of comics is bad now, I encourage you to check out the YA Bookgate thread:
Because the bunch of neuro-atypical Troons that are currently fucking up the industry have nothing on the organized Stazi that's created a climate of fear in the YA book community .....and you can guess where Well's will be sourcing her writers from....
 
Comicsgeist said:
Boy did the sudden flurry of MeToo'ing that swept the industry, right before the axe was due to fall, really pay off for those demanding that 'more women needed to be in charge'. They got what they wanted, all the top jobs went to a bunch of literal 'who's?'' with a vagina.
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So it's going to get even shittier.
 
The audience they're trying to court already gets what they want from anime and manga. Nothing they put out is ever going to be anywhere near as successful, popular, or good as My Hero Academia or Demon Slayer.

Has anybody in the American comic industry even tried to pull their heads out of their asses long enough to ask "What are Japan & Europe doing right that we're doing wrong?"
 
Mysterious Girlfriend X said:
The audience they're trying to court already gets what they want from anime and manga. Nothing they put out is ever going to be anywhere near as successful, popular, or good as My Hero Academia or Demon Slayer.

Has anybody in the American comic industry even tried to pull their heads out of their asses long enough to ask "What are Japan & Europe doing right that we're doing wrong?"
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They did it with manga. The result of that was Marvel Mangaverse. Characters had superficially Japanese elements and artwork was superficially manga-like, but it was ultimately still the same old tired stories, with the same old tired characters, with the same old tired and lifeless art, all done by the same old hacks. It all lacked dynamism and fun of shonen, or subtlety and deliberateness of seinien or shojo. Not to mention overall quality and diversity of stories.

Vast majority of American comics are embarrassingly lacking in comparison to European counterparts. There is a reason why Umberto Eco mentioned Dylan Dog instead of X-Men when he said "I can read the Bible, Homer, or Dylan Dog for days without being bored." The only time I saw an effort from big two to get some European influence in was Moebius' Silver Surfer that got gimped by Stan Lee, and Marvel's occasional forays into publishing European works in English. Skydoll is the only thing I can remember now, but it was mangled by lackluster translation and slavish devotion to breaking stories into 24 page floppies regardless if it first the story. Besides that, Dark Horse and Image dip toes in importing European books once in a while. Smaller publishers like Cinebook, Humanoids, and Europe have been around for years and they focus on European translations. Apparently that market is lucrative enough for Soleil to invest into English language division, for First Second and Fantagraphics to dabble in European books, and for smaller translation focused publishers like Ablaze, Vault, and Epicenter to pop up in recent years.


Sad truth is that large American comic book companies are run by clueless hacks, out of touch has beens, or fanboys who do not see or understand anything that is not superheroes. They were too dumb or ignorant to realize that Manga (in spite of rampant piracy) will consume one third of the market. Once they did it was too late, they were too dumb to understand why it happened, and their efforts to remedy the situation are laughable.
 

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Aqua Panda said:
This 2 page "Bendis is Coming!" spread really hasn't aged well.

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Actually it has aged well, because it was a homage to a series of "Kirby is coming!" ads DC did in the early 70s when Kirby switched from Marvel to DC to do New Gods. Comic fans will remember that Kirby's tenure at DC was a huge bomb, as the Fourth World books flopped and Kirby basically doing random book until he sulked back to Marvel.

When DC first ran the "Bendis is coming!" ads, a LOT of the people who hate Bendis saw the ads as an omen that Bendis would flop HUGE and that someone at DC greenlit such an ego maniacal ad campaign as a wink-wink acknowledgement that people at DC internally knew it was a retarded idea to bring Bendis in/give him Superman and that it was going to be a disaster on par with Kirby's DC run and end as abruptly as Kirby's run at DC.


SmugAutist said:
Oh fuck, more Hollywood rejects bringing their shit scripts to videogames. We already have Neil Druckman, we don't need any more of his clones.
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Khouri will either go to Image, IDW, or (god help us) Marvel. Either that or he'll end up working for one of the major anti-life SJW websites or create a brand new one, since he is SJW royalty among that sect and if not getting a major position at one of those sites, could start his own website and get his old cronie crew from Comic Alliance together to set up a new website to spew the Anti-Life equation. Which is the most likely scenario, as I can only imagine that falling from grace as hard as he has, will make Khouri feel that he has "scores" he need to settle with nerds/comic fans and if Biden wins, he'll probably feel embolden to use his bully pulpit to try and deplatform as many critics of him and his ilk and Comicsgaters as he can deplatform, now that he can't run an official blacklist at a major company.
 
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Pentex said:
@FROG I share your energy in dancing on Andy Khouri's grave.

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Just watching that video alone I think I've been phished by the prostitute.

But antisjws thinking dc is going to die are retarded, they've been saying this about every sjw company of the past 3 years, and they come back stronger every year since antisjws are coomsumers who got marvel avengers preordered or buys marvel legends/Dc Multiverse wave bundles from entertainment earth.
 
I agree with ComicsGeist that DC's publishing future lays along the lines of YA novels and things that can easily, directly and inexpensively be adapted into streaming shows for teenagers. Which actually is the smartest path for AT&T.

In a way, it's the ultimate victory for SJWs, because they've shrunk DC Comics down to an entirely controllable size for them, producing books in which SJW content merges fairly easily with superhero properties. GOTHAM HIGH and BRING ME THE WATER or whatever that was IS the future of that company.

BATMAN, SUPERMAN and JLA will still be published, as they still sell over 40,000 copies. But the line is going to be chopped down by another 75%, and nothing that isn't a guaranteed sale is going to be tried. So I picture GREEN ARROW as an occasional back up story in one of those magazines, rather than allowing it to have it's own comic, and "ARROW" should get a romance YA novel instead.

Gail Simone and Kelly Sue Deconnick inherit the earth.

Marvel will follow suit. I'm already hearing rumblings from people over there.

Oh, and yeah, Andy Khouri will find temporary shelter at one of the other companies like Antos did. Out of spite.
 
FROG said:
I agree with ComicsGeist that DC's publishing future lays along the lines of YA novels and things that can easily, directly and inexpensively be adapted into streaming shows for teenagers. Which actually is the smartest path for AT&T.

In a way, it's the ultimate victory for SJWs, because they've shrunk DC Comics down to an entirely controllable size for them, producing books in which SJW content merges fairly easily with superhero properties. GOTHAM HIGH and BRING ME THE WATER or whatever that was IS the future of that company.

BATMAN, SUPERMAN and JLA will still be published, as they still sell over 40,000 copies. But the line is going to be chopped down by another 75%, and nothing that isn't a guaranteed sale is going to be tried. So I picture GREEN ARROW as an occasional back up story in one of those magazines, rather than allowing it to have it's own comic, and "ARROW" should get a romance YA novel instead.

Gail Simone and Kelly Sue Deconnick inherit the earth.

Marvel will follow suit. I'm already hearing rumblings from people over there.

Oh, and yeah, Andy Khouri will find temporary shelter at one of the other companies like Antos did. Out of spite.
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It seems to me the big two (well one confirmed atm) will be ceding lots of room to CG whether they like it or not.
I'd say you guys should start thinking about that shared universe you don't want to do.
You had some great ideas in the past, Red Lanterns come to mind. Scale it up and fill that universe.
Now is the time. Pounce conservatives, pounce.
 
boofit said:
It seems to me the big two (well one confirmed atm) will be ceding lots of room to CG whether they like it or not.
I'd say you guys should start thinking about that shared universe you don't want to do.
You had some great ideas in the past, Red Lanterns come to mind. Scale it up and fill that universe.
Now is the time. Pounce conservatives, pounce.
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Yeah, this is all pretty breathtaking.

My plans are to publish CYBERFROG, COOL STORY BRO, and FEARSOME. My own books.

And then offer to publish JAWBREAKERS, GRAVEYARD SHIFT and maybe BLACK FLAG. Maybe CASH GRAB too. The biggest titles, under ALL CAPS COMICS. If we consolidate and join up at this point, it might be a good idea. I need to think about it a little more, and suggestions other than to go fuck myself would be welcome.

I like the idea of a single universe that takes place in CyberFrog's world of Vyzpzz domination. An uprising of new heroes in that world. I think people could get with that.
 
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