talks about a comics store manager whose clients have gotten older as the past two decades have gone by, and also about the creeping violence that’s running the risk of keeping the younger crowd out. Unfortunately, it also runs the risk of sensationalizing:

In 1989, the average age of a customer at Joe Field’s comic book store in Concord was 18.

Today, it’s almost 30. Moreover, Field estimates that buyers under 18 account for less than 20 percent of his sales.

Field’s experience at his shop, Flying Colors Comics, is anything but unique. The comics business has learned to survive and grow by appealing to adults instead of kids. And that has opened the door to increasingly mature and edgy material, some of it within famously mainstream comics.

In recent years, for example, many DC Comics stories featuring Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman have been influenced by the 2004 “Identity Crisis'’ miniseries, whose unsettling plot included the rape of another superhero’s wife. Marvel Comics’ recent “Civil War'’ miniseries didn’t address anything as controversial, but its themes were somber and starkly violent, with subplots involving fractured relationships among close friends and families.

The intensity of such story lines helps fuel events such as WonderCon, the annual comics and pop culture convention taking place Friday through Sunday in San Francisco. But WonderCon is almost equally about movie and TV attractions — some rooted in comics, some not — and that magnifies the challenge of getting kids to read.

So the article also talks about the Identity Crisis case, but sadly, plays it all soft.

“Comics,'’ Field says, “are still a flea on the rear of the entertainment elephant — including TV, movies, advertising and video games. Comics creatively dominate the other media, but they’re far behind from a business standpoint.'’

Almost no one talks any longer about comics being a sneakily artful way of getting kids to read. There is even some fear that the current waves of adult customers represent the last generations of comics readers.

A recent article on that topic in Wizard magazine generally dismissed the idea that comics readership is headed off a cliff. But it also revived the debate about the impact and appropriateness of including a rape (albeit discussed, not shown) in a costumed heroes tale like “Identity Crisis.'’

Brad Meltzer, the novelist who wrote that miniseries, said by e-mail that “the best part of comics has always been the mix'’ of stories.

Even if young kids were the biggest comics readers, Meltzer notes, “I’d still tell the story I want to tell. That’s the only story I should tell. Sooner or later, they’ll grow into it, or make it themselves.'’

Well, well, well. Looks like Meltzer is beginning to reveal his true face now. He couldn’t care less if a child stumbled across this in a family house any more than if they picked up the next issue of Playboy. But most importantly of all, what this article otherwise fails to address is the one-sidedness of his story’s focus on the rape. Nothing surprising, of course, given that this is a newspaper with a far too establishment-based approach. It’s just like papers like these to avoid all the harder hitting questions about the corrupting influence books like IC can have, or the possibilities that it could.

Some recent research by DC Comics may include insights on readership by age, but the company declined to discuss its findings. And Field is among the shop owners who say retailers tend not to dwell on exactly who is buying comics as long as sales are growing overall.

Well at least this answers something here. Money has once again triumphed over leaving the door open to all ages.

Manga, however, is only one slice of the comics business. Capitalizing on that niche interest, or creating kid-branded comics as Marvel and D.C. have done, strikes some observers as evidence of an oncoming crisis.

Douglas Simpson, store manager of Paradise Comics in Toronto, raised an alarm in the Wizard story and said through e-mail that he believes the industry will “constantly decline” without younger readers developing a “common history” as comics fans.

“That a special line of books has to be produced for kids shows that even the major companies know their readership is aging,” Simpson writes. “I am really convinced that the monthly periodical version of comics will steadily decline and that the trade paperback will be the only print survivor [of] comics.”

[…]

Lee Hester, owner of the Lee’s Comics stores in Mountain View and San Mateo, says comics have become a specialty market instead of a mass medium and that the trend is “to go more adult.”

The danger of being unable to replace aging customers is real, Hester says. But the scales are somewhat balanced by understanding how to cater to his select market.

How nice. This seller has “sold out” in spite of how he feels. All concerned should bear in mind that, as word gets out about how immoral, violent, corrupt and politicized comics have become lately, the more likely it is these days that even adult readership will drop. After all, the internet can shape things for the better, and those who take notice of this may not be very encouraged to read the medium.

And there is a good point about nobody developing a common history in comics if all this keeps up, because the less the publishers respect continuity or any of the characterizations that make the heroes and villains alike work well, the less some of the audience may care about it either.

that a company called Checker Books has gotten the license to publish trades of the now defunct CrossGen’s publications. Come to think of it, they seem to have rights now to all the properties. I guess Cal Publishing must’ve sold it to them then.

I wonder if this could ever lead to this company ever relaunching any of the books, reviving some of their unfinished series like Sojourn, or even trying out whatever properties they had again? Well, it’s something I certainly do hope for, since they managed to be more inspiring than what the big two are being now. The problem though, is that it’s possible that any characters and series that made a return could risk being watered down, and that wouldn’t be good. So, if it’s possible to get the old CG properties geared up for publication again, that’s why people who miss them like I do should be discussing how to best keep that from happening.

, Marvel’s licensing revenue has suffered a drop. I can only wonder if they spent so much time dealing with Civil War that they neglected their licensing matters.

I see that Dan DiDio has decided bring , in a miniseries that’ll be released in another few months.

I have only to hope that this’ll be better than what Geoff Johns did a little over a year ago in the pages of Teen Titans when he exploited the Zoo Crew for a pathetic “commentary” on the state of comics today while continuing to wallow in it himself.

IIRC, the fourth issue of Justice League of America’s latest volume sold almost 130,000 copies? Well I just took a look at , and what an amazing feat has come about: this volume being written by Brad Meltzer has lost a considerable amount of its audience, dropping to rank 66 on the chart with its 5th issue, just below Birds of Prey #102, and sold only 28,992 copies.

In other words, the new JLofA volume may have lost more than 100,000 units in sales figures this past month!

And IMHO, it is richly deserved, if for no more reason than the fact that the writer is one whose works I decidedly will not be spending my money on, and his books will not find their way into my house anytime soon. Even if I were still buying more pamphlet issues than I actually do today - trade paperbacks make up the bulk of my purchases - I still wouldn’t dare to waste time and money on the works of an overhyped writer who crossed the line more than most other writers and artists have when he wrote Identity Crisis.

Looking at a few of the verdicts voiced by readers in the past month or two for Meltzer’s scriptwriting, which definitely smells of padding out, it certainly had it coming to it from that perspective too. I wonder if any success he had with Green Arrow in 2002 was just a fluke, or he was clever enough at the time to lull the audience into a false sense of confidence?

On the other hand, while the also relaunched Justice Society of America seems to have lost some audience too, it still sells a considerable amount more than JLofA does: rank 15 with 86,180 copies sold. Nevertheless, that too has lost some audience by almost 20,000 units.

But turning to Marvel now, the scene there is almost sad. Civil War, which I’d like to find what to comment on now that it’s ended, is one the most wretched crossovers they’ve put out in recent memory, and yet the 6th issue sold number one on the chart with 259,264 copies. The lateness did lead to its losing at least 20 percent of its audience, yet it still sold alarmingly well, and the 7th and last issue is likely to do just as well.

It’s a real shame that, in contrast to DC, where some of the audience seems to understand that the editors are ripping them off, the readership at Marvel still hasn’t learned that, if they do want to improve the situation, they can bring about repairs much more easily by shunning books as bad as CW and not putting their money into Marvel’s pockets.

that’s coming out…yep, belatedly, and that’s what’s in discussion here:

Over the past few years, comic book publishers have been falling over themselves to enlist Hollywood talent to write their books. Both Marvel and DC have signed up their fair share of screenwriters, TV producers and film directors, most of the time with positive creative results. The one drawback to these relationships, especially with this week’s “Wonder Woman,” is chronic lateness.
Allan Heinberg is a busy man. While executive producing the hit show “Grey’s Anatomy,” he’s been trying to, unsuccessfully, write a monthly issue of “Wonder Woman.” While he had a few lateness issues on his last book, “Young Avengers,” it was nothing compared to the near glacial pace of his current “Wonder Woman” run. Since relaunching the book in June 2006, Heinberg has only managed to turn out four issues, the most recent of which hit stands this week.

And when a moviemaker or a TV producer can’t commit to a full schedule in writing comic books, he/she shouldn’t be hired at all. Period. However, recalling just how bad J.Michael Straczynski’s run on Spider-Man turned out to be, as well as Kevin Smith’s Black Cat miniseries, that’s why I disagree that some of these Hollywooders have had positive results. And Geoff Johns first came from the movie biz where he first worked as assistant to Richard Donner on Lethal Weapon, which could explain for some of his own obsession with violence in the comics he’s writing, which has gotten worse and certainly more questionable over the years.

One thing that’s certain is that there needs to be not just a toning-down of violence and promiscuity in comic books, but the companies also need to be looking for more “homegrown” talent. That they’ve fallen head over heels in search of moviemakers and novelists instead of getting more people from a simpler background is one of the biggest errors they’ve been doing lately.

When he wrote the introduction for Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters when it was compiled in TPB format:

“The concept of how our society sees and treats victims is one that is, unfortunately, underexposed in comics.” — Mike Gold, DC Comics editor, from the introduction for The Longbow Hunters

True, but today, it’s often an even worse situation than before: today, there are cases where it’s not even dealt with at all.

I found this site that says that people are comparing the Green Lantern Corps to the might of the US Military:

As you may know, the Green Lantern Corps is a sort of interstellar peacekeeping force set up by the Guardians of Oa to maintain the peace and defend justice. It recruits members from all sorts of different species and equips them with the most powerful weapon in the universe, the power ring.

[…] Consequently, the main criterion for becoming a Green Lantern is that you need to be a person capable of “overcoming fear” which allows you to unleash the ring’s full capacities. It used to be the case that the rings wouldn’t function against yellow objects, but this is now understood to be a consequence of the “Parallax fear anomaly” which, along with all the ring’s other limits, can be overcome with sufficient willpower.

Suffice it to say that I think all this makes an okay premise for a comic book. But a lot of people seem to think that American military might is like one of these power rings. They seem to think that, roughly speaking, we can accomplish absolutely anything in the world through the application of sufficient military force. The only thing limiting us is a lack of willpower.

First off, I have no knowledge of my own about anyone comparing the American army’s might to the power rings. And if it were similar, surely they’d have come up with energy shields with which to guard against rockets, just like Hal Jordan and plenty of other GLs with the right powers can do? There’s a very sharp difference between real life and science fiction. Not to mention that, if American military really had powers similar to the GL Corps, then there’s every chance that Saddam and Ahmedinejad would be discovered to have weapons similar to those wielded by Sinestro and the Weaponers of Qward to rival those of the US Army!

Second, I personally don’t think, and never have, that strength alone is what’ll bring about victory. It is intelligent and strategic thinking that does, not to mention having a bold spine and not caving in to the menacing demands of anti-war extremists like the ones identified with the Daily KOS and MoveOn.Org.

And as a conservative voice, I personally never made any comparison between American military might to the GLs power rings, and never even thought about it before, mainly because, like I said before, there’s a vast difference between real life and sci-fi. If reality had any of the same features as sci-fi, spanning all the way across the board, all these battles to vanquish evil would’ve reached outer space by now. I tried to see if there was any other discussion on the Net making these comparisons, but nothing came up.

I assume the writer must’ve heard one lone conservative voice making a possible analogy, but that doesn’t mean that all conservatives think that.

In the past few months, I’d read a bit of news about Brian Vaughan’s “Pride of Baghdad”, said to be based on a true incident of when four lions escaped from the zoo in Baghdad during the US Army’s shelling of Saddam’s gang there. Of course, I had no idea what to make of it until now, not just because I couldn’t find any copies of it, but also because the newspapers that spoke about it predictably wouldn’t offer any deeper insight.

Now, however, having stumbled upon , I’m beginning to get the suspicion that Vaughan’s book is anything but Animal Farm:

the end of the book feels like Vaughan is trying to make a statement without really making one.

[…]

Part of me feels like the book is Vaughan’s own commentary on war; that it is bloody and random. Another part of me feels as though it’s Vaughan’s disgust with our own US military, as the murder of the lions was portrayed pretty graphically and then the panel of the US Flag badge shown prominently afterwards. The dialogue of these soldiers seemed to indicate otherwise though. Like I said, I was confused.

Very interesting. It does sound like a cleverly and carefully concealed anti-war statement blaming the US for enabling the beasts to break out. Plus, the end of the book features the following text:

In April of 2003, four lions escaped the Baghdad Zoo during the bombing of Iraq

The starving animals were eventually shot and killed by U.S soldiers

There were other casualties as well.

Hmm. Something very odd about that part too. It’s not clear to me - not at this stage anyway - what Vaughan’s referring to when he speaks about the “other casualties”. Does he mean any innocent civilians in the city? Or does he mean Saddam’s own army? Or, does he mean - gasp! - the prisoners in Abu Graib?

See, that’s what’s disturbing about this cryptic text - as with quite a few other books of this sort, the writer isn’t making clear what exactly his complaints are about, resulting in something akin to moral equivalency, one of the worst forms of psychological warfare this world has ever known. Moral equivalency is by far one of the cleverest ways of covering ones tracks in making a moonbat statement, because you can’t tell if what they’re up to is good or bad. It’s a perfect blur of the differences between good and evil, or even the simple colors of black and white.

And pondering all this, I have to wonder if Vaughan really is writing a camouflaged anti-war message, using animals as a metaphor for other, more deeper, things in Iraq.

I notice that Vaughan also at the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, aka . (Yet there’s no mention if he ever did the same at a museum or any site dedicated to America’s soldiers.) And the AANM has (Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services), which is anti-Israel and supports Hezbollah and Hamas. Not to mention that they even once had an , a nurse who declared in 2004 that she was “embarrassed to be an American.” And Vaughan goes to spend his book-signing time over there?

All this tells me that my concerns that Pride of Baghdad could be an anti-war statement condemning the war in Iraq could have something to them, and that Vaughan is probably not a writer whose works I’d want to waste time on.

And it certainly does explain why I’m glad that Saddam for his sins!

This week, we make the discovery that, in re-launching JSA as a full title with a boolean included, Geoff Johns is undermining the entertainment value with plots that feature more increasingly violent assaults and murders. And while neo-nazis like the ones featured in issue #3 are some of the worst villains around, that still doesn’t mean that we need to see a mother and child being sent to the great reward in a sea of red juice. Bloodletting certainly isn’t needed in order to prove that the villains are the cannibals they are.

This also brings me to note something I noticed in some of the Johns-scripted books I’ve read. As :

As the non-maimy parts of this book show, Johns has a good handle on characterization and the clever hook. But I kinda doubt he’ll ever really develop those traits to any significant extent now because this is the kind of stuff that keeps him at the top of the charts.

I think they’ve hit upon something there. For example, it was speculated once on Johns’ own board that an old girlfriend of Barry Allen’s, Fiona Webb, could be turning up as the wife of a police detective when he was writing the Flash. But lo and behold, nothing ever came of that possibility, and the whole thing was virtually forgotten after awhile. There were some other interesting side stories with potential, in Flash and in JSA, that also never had anything come of them, if at all. In Hawkman, there were even a few supporting cast members who only seemed to be there for the sake of having a supporting cast! And why should Bart Allen become Kid Flash in 2003 if they’re only going to go by that for three years or less?

For someone whom you’d think had talent in coming up with interesting character developments and supporting casts, Johns certainly isn’t proving himself in that capacity by far. I wonder if it could have anything to do with the problem of writing-for-trades that’s become a troubling staple for many books today? Years ago, it sure seemed like a lot of writers could manage developments without having to write a storyline that’s padded out for at least five issues. That’s something that, IMO, comics have to return to. And besides, I doubt that they wouldn’t be able to manage printing even a story that isn’t written for trades into a compilation of some sort after awhile.

There are many ideas from years past, more than I could even think to list here now, that need to be tried again today.