#Comicsgate - The Culture Wars Hit The Funny Books!

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I recall hearing, I think from Zack, that KickStarter had been sending out messages along the lines of "oh please come back" to some of the more successful CG-ajacent people. If true, I can't help but wonder if maybe they reached out to TenNapel and cut him a deal on fees or something to get him to launch on KS. A kind of "timed exclusive" deal.

As for the game video, as a fan of the first two games, I think it looked (and sounded) great. It's silly to complain that it looks different from the 16-bit games. The first game looking like a 16-bit game wasn't a stylistic choice; it was the 16-bit era and it looked the best it could possibly look on the hardware at the time. I look forward on seeing where the game goes from here, though I otherwise have zero interest in the Amico. But maybe it'll go the way of Ouya and end up in bargain bins pretty quickly and I can pick it up and play more EWJ for a song… kind of a sick thing to wish for, but…
 
FROG said:
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.
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Asides of quality big issue for me with all this stuff is publishing schedule. Now if one doesn't follow the drama it is easy to forget that you guys (asides of Zack) are even producing anything. So for me key thing would be that you'd have new product ready either every month or every second month.
 
FROG said:
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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If you can do them as periodicals (such as a Jawbreakers ongoing from Grand Bizarre to G0dK1ng) and have distribution through retail, it would be a great contenter.
 
FROG said:
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.
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About a month ago @Adamska had insight on how creator-owned manga were able to form a collective bargaining bloc versus retailers and printers. Since timeliness in Comicsgate books isn't really an issue, would it be possible to get volume/bulk discounting by using several campaigns and fulfilling them at once?

A nameless trool said:
If you can do them as periodicals (such as a Jawbreakers ongoing from Grand Bizarre to G0dK1ng) and have distribution through retail, it would be a great contenter.
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GranDuke said:
Asides of quality big issue for me with all this stuff is publishing schedule. Now if one doesn't follow the drama it is easy to forget that you guys (asides of Zack) are even producing anything. So for me key thing would be that you'd have new product ready either every month or every second month.
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If I have learned one thing from Dan Shahin's show, it's that comic retailers shit their pants over the minor inconvenience of getting one shipment from DC on Tuesday and the rest on Wednesday; the idea that retailers are going to trawl through Kickstarter and IndieGoGo and back & track countless individual projects was always a pipe dream. Few campaigns have a bulk discount tier for retailers and those that do universally compose a tiny minority of revenue compared to single backers. I suspect they're fans who happen to own comic shops.

Theoretically a site like IndieCron except tailored to LCS retailers could appeal to them, but I can't imagine anyone in Comicsgate ready to start that shit up again.
 
Alright, I know this isn't really the place for it, but since it's comic book related, and I figure some positivity would be appreciated: Spider-Man: Life Story is seriously the best comic book I've ever read. I haven't read many, admittedly, but seriously, considering Marvel and how they've been for the past few years, it's genuinely fucking astonishing how good that book is. Seriously, go and read it, even if you're not that big of a Spider-Man buff. Holy shit. All the little details and story beats and fake outs; god, it's so damn good. A lot of the stuff I recognized wasn't even Spider-Man stuff I was super familiar with, but even then the book impressed me regardless of my experience. I can only imagine how satisfying it must have been to read all those issues as they came out.
 
Uranus Pink said:
I am not touching Spider-Man until One More Day is retconned out of existence.
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We are halfway there. Nick Spencer, for falling on his sword and taking all of the blame over Secret Empire and Brevoort/Alonso's scheme to salt the earth on Cap, Thor, and other iconic characters to permanently replace them with SJW diversity characters, managed to force Brevoort to get Slott fired from Amazing and not only take over the book but also reunite Peter and MJ. They aren't remarried yet, but they are now dating each other exclusively. And it's heavily speculated that Kindred may or may not be some sort of plot device to finish off retconning OMD and bringing the marriage back into canon.
 
Given MJ was pregnant right before OMD happened and it practically killed their kid, I am still not touching Spider-Man as long as OMD stays canon.
 
Uranus Pink said:
Given MJ was pregnant right before OMD happened and it practically killed their kid, I am still not touching Spider-Man as long as OMD stays canon.
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I got a damn fine deal on about 10 trades that follow OMD.
The stories aren't awful but could have been told with MJ.

Speaking of comics that you'd recommend.
If you liked Mighty Morphin Power Rangers try Go Go Power Rangers. It's pretty damn interesting. The main book is good but I just like the Go Go books better. Shattered Grid is a pretty cool story if you like alternate future stuff.

Is there a comic book recommendation thread? If not, we need one. I'd really be interested in hearing what you all are into at the moment.
 
Bungus Scrungus said:
Alright, I know this isn't really the place for it, but since it's comic book related, and I figure some positivity would be appreciated: Spider-Man: Life Story is seriously the best comic book I've ever read. I haven't read many, admittedly, but seriously, considering Marvel and how they've been for the past few years, it's genuinely fucking astonishing how good that book is. Seriously, go and read it, even if you're not that big of a Spider-Man buff. Holy shit. All the little details and story beats and fake outs; god, it's so damn good. A lot of the stuff I recognized wasn't even Spider-Man stuff I was super familiar with, but even then the book impressed me regardless of my experience. I can only imagine how satisfying it must have been to read all those issues as they came out.
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What Spider-Man Life Story and Batman White Knight taught is is fire all comicbook writers and have artists do their job
 
Just why is/was Bendis a big deal? I'm not a Marvel reader so I've not come across his stuff there, but just how was anyone excited for his stuff?

Like … why bother aging up Jon, all his characters sound the same anyway, he could be anyone. His teen characters aren't amazingly written. I know he has kids, how does he fail so bad?

A nameless trool said:
What Spider-Man Life Story and Batman White Knight taught is is fire all comicbook writers and have artists do their job
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Not a bad shout as they, in SGM's words, "think visually". I can't remember which panel or interview this was in, but he spoke of a project he was working on with Scott Snyder, where SS would sometimes ask questions about the more visual scenes, how they should be portrayed, etc.

I hope SS stays on; I love reading the scripts in the back of some of his Batman trades. They drip with enthusiasm, stuff like "yo greg, those masks for the red hood gang in #0 were awesome! we're using them again!" etc. I can imagine if Tom King's scripts were included, there'd be his suicide note randomly included halfway through...
 
Puddleduck said:
Just why is/was Bendis a big deal? I'm not a Marvel reader so I've not come across his stuff there, but just how was anyone excited for his stuff?
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Luck, mostly. Comic book writing fundamentally changed at the turn of the century, abandoning narration and inner monologues in favor of shallow Whedon-esque quippiness and "realistic" speech patterns. Bendis was at the forefront of this movement during his run on Ultimate Spider-Man, and got a lot of undeserved praise for 'modernizing' Spider-Man's origin.
 
Ding Dong the witch is....fired?
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Aquaman has been around as a second-string character since 1941. Most of us who grew up watching Superfriends, have a soft spot for him, even though he came across as more friend than super. A movie based on him made $1.14 billion worldwide in 2018.

Regardless, the February 2020 issue of Aquaman (the last issue before chinavirus could be used as an excuse) had orders of.....
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a measly 19,601.

I haven't heard anything about this book. No excitement, not even any controversy. The Hi-C haired bitch famously told people not to buy her books if we didn't like her, & we listened in droves. The fans en masse ignored Matt Fraction's "edgy" wife, & now DC is cutting their losses on a character that's more well-known worldwide than he has been in his almost 80-year existence. The wokeness is so strong at DC, they can't even cash in on their successes.

Take a bow, KSD. And go back to independent crap and thinly-disguised lesbian psychodrama.
 
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Puddleduck said:
Just why is/was Bendis a big deal? I'm not a Marvel reader so I've not come across his stuff there, but just how was anyone excited for his stuff?
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Stab You in the Back is right, but there is a bit more to it. Bendis became buddies with Quesada. He entered Marvel through Quesada's Marvel Knights imprint, and then Quesada pushed for Bendis to write Daredevil and Ultimate Spider-Man.
Ultimate Spider-Man was good in comparison to dogshit that Spider books were since 90s and Raimi's movies just came out. Naturally, people flocked to the only passable Spider comics. That gave Bendis a lot of exposure, he was considered good by people who were used to capeshit's bottom of the barrel standards, and that lead to increased interest in Bendis' other work. Fads like decompressed storytelling, Buffy speak, cinematic elements, "realistic dialogue," and obnoxious pop culture references were all the rage in comics back then, and Bendis frequently relies on these elements in his writing to the point of borderline satire. All of that combined led Bendis to become a star writer.

Having popular name on their hands, Marvel capitalized on it to sell more books. Bendis' kept getting more series, fanboys kept buying books he wrote, and his buddy Quesada kept propping the guy up. Eventually Bendis rose through the ranks in the comapany, and got to the point where he was writing ton of books a month, he was in charge of events, contributed to Marvel's overall direction, and for a short time was consulting for MCU before Marvel Studios broke off from Marvel Entertainment.

People criticizing Bendis were always around, but they slowly grew to become more prominent as Bendis' writing declined, he pissed off more and more people with mishandling their favorite characters, his writing crutches became more apparent, and his style became passé. Breaking point was probably the GotG comics Bendis took over after Abnett. In few issues he pissed off nearly entire readership and caused sales to plummet. Horrid Moon Knight book, X-Men, and bad events sullied his reputation further. Still, Bendis was the biggest fish at Marvel, and DC in its ineptitude thought that hiring him would probably bring Marvel fanboys over to DC. In addition, Bendis never wrote anything for DC up to that point, DC advertised the move, some Marvel fanboys were eager to get rid off Bendis, and some people wanted to see how he would shit up DC. That's why the move was a big deal.
DC ended up overpaying for a lemon of a writer. DC fanboys were pissed, Superman under Bendis began to dip in sales quickly, and his other projects were not slam dunks DC hoped for. As a pure coincidence, Marvel began its resurgence soon after Bendis left. I suspect it is due to his absence. Bendis was no longer there, influencing creative direction of comics with his shitty ideas. Fresh writers were brought in as replacements. Still, Bendis has just enough fans and buddies in the industry to be able to coast by.
 
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