Here are this week's links to what I've had published recently...Here are this week's links to what I've had published recently...
However, if you were not aware -- and you might well not be if you're under, say, forty -- Byrne's cover image is a direct reference to a Vanity Fair cover from several months earlier in which a very pregnant Demi Moore appeared nude in a photograph by Anne Leibovitz...
Not surprisingly, the attention the magazine cover got caused imitations of all sorts, some done seriously to emulate the strength of just presenting the female form unashamedly and some done humorously pointing to the absurdity of the complaints. Since then, Vanity Fair has replicated that cover -- or at least elements of it -- a number of times themselves. I think there's broad recognition that that was something of a milestone for what was/wasn't considered acceptable in publishing, and there's a strong arguement to be made that it shifted a lot of people's outlook on how we're told to perceive beauty.
That said, I actually had a little difficulty in finding a copy of the cover to use with this piece. Demi Moore has appeared on Vanity Fair plenty of times; indeed, about a year after this cover, she appeared again clothed in nothing but body paint. This caused less of a stir, though, because it wasn't immediately evident that she was, in fact, naked and she was no longer pregnant (and it was therefore acceptable as a beauty standard). Most of the ebay copies of the magazine I saw had them in the original plastic the magazines were shipped in, in which an opaque color block covered virtually everything but the magazine's logo. Most of the articles talking about the cover used a cropped version and/or just unrelated photos of Moore. Of the remaining images that did show the entire cover, most of those seemed to have been digitally color-shifted to emphasize the darker areas and shadows. So it would seem that several decades on, people are still concerned about it being 'offensive.'
All of this I bring up as a simple history lesson. If you're flipping through back issue bins and come across an early '90s comic with a character on the cover posed like this, it's this Vanity Fair issue that they're referencing. It might not seem like it now, but it was huge scandal back in the day.
This study focuses on effects of knowledge and experience on both mean and variance measures of individual and team innovations. We propose that multiple knowledge domains produce novel combinations that increase the variance of product performance and that extensive experience produces outputs with high average performance. We analyzed innovations in the comic book industry, finding that innovations with extreme success and failure were affected by factors similar to those affecting high-performing innovations. Multimember teams and teams with experience working together produced innovations with greater variation in value, but individuals were able to combine knowledge diversity more effectively than teams.If you're not especially versed in academic-speak, what they're basically saying is that, all other things being equal, comic books whose creators have a greater variety of genre experience are more likely to be good than comics whose creators who have worked in a smaller set of genres. Furthermore, that this is more pronounced in individual creators than it is with teams. To put it another way, the amount of experience a creator has will have less of an impact on a comic's success than the breadth of that experience.
In my research about comics, one thing that sometimes comes up when you're reading how-to guides and such is to absorb as much as you can throught others' experiences. If you want to write comics, read a bunch of comics to see which metaphors and analogies work and which don't. If you want to draw comics, look at a bunch of other comics to see how different illustration and storytelling techniques impact the reader's journey. Less often said, though, is to look at MORE than just comics; and this is frequently emphasized even more to the fans of superhero comics. If all you ever read is Batman, all you're going to be able to do is regurgitate old Batman stories. But if you also read about Sherlock Holmes and and Flash Gordon and Alice in Wonderland and Jason Bourne and James Bond and Zatoichi and Asterix and Anna Karenina and In my research about comics, one thing that sometimes comes up when you're reading how-to guides and such is to absorb as much as you can throught others' experiences. If you want to write comics, read a bunch of comics to see which metaphors and analogies work and which don't. If you want to draw comics, look at a bunch of other comics to see how different illustration and storytelling techniques impact the reader's journey. Less often said, though, is to look at MORE than just comics; and this is frequently emphasized even more to the fans of superhero comics. If all you ever read is Batman, all you're going to be able to do is regurgitate old Batman stories. But if you also read about Sherlock Holmes and Juliet Capulet and Flash Gordon and Alice in Wonderland and Jason Bourne and James Bond and Zatoichi and Asterix and Anna Karenina and all manner of other characters, you can bring a rounder, fuller approach to your interpretation of Batman. Likewise, if all you ever read are superhero comics, your own comics are going to be largely repetitive of them.
What Taylor and Greve's paper shows is that, quantifiably based on comic sales data, that bringing in a broader range of experiences is a creator's best path for success. If they've done comics about superheroes and science fiction and crime noir and Westerns and romance and non-fiction and whatever else, their subsequent comics will benefit more than if they had focused exclusively on one or two genres. I think that's something many older professionals have inherently known anecdotally -- that's part of why they always look towards folks like Jack Kirby and Will Eisner; they weren't just prolific, they were prolific across multiple genres --- but this paper is academic research showing that is indeed the case!
Rituals of all sorts have been with man since... well, the dawn of man. We use them as a stabilizer in our lives. Back in the day, mankind simply didn't understand much of what was going on around him, so he fell back on rituals to provide some continuity in his life. He wasn't sure if he would be able to even find a mammoth, much less be able to kill and eat it. So he developed a ritual to perform in advance of the hunt because it was a way to give him security and confidence before taking steps outside his cave into the unknown. He knew that, even though he couldn't count on the outcome of the hunt, he could count on the activities proceeding it.
By the twentieth century, man had figured out a great many things. Everything from fire and the wheel to creating and harnessing electricity to bring a small amount of daylight to the city streets at night. But while man's knowledge has increased, providing a great many answers to what was previously unknown, we keep raising new questions at an increasingly rapid pace. So while I -- a resident of the 21st century -- can rest pretty comfortably knowing that I can reliably get something to eat any time I step outside my dwelling, I don't have any clue what my long-term future looks like. In effect, my future is just as uncertain as that of our Australopithecus afarensis friend, Lucy -- the only difference is that my future extends further out than my next meal.
Alvin Toffler, back in the early 1970s, noted this and began touting the notion of "future shock." The idea being that life is indeed moving much faster than at any point in man's history (and, indeed, man's prehistory!) and we, as human beings, are being forced to constantly adapt ourselves to ever-changing status quo; further, that some people simply cannot keep up mentally and experience a form of culture shock within the very culture they've been living in. In extreme cases, future shock can resemble post-traumatic stress disorder.
A man living in the 1800s could pretty well assume that his day-to-day activities weren't likely to change that radically over the course of his lifetime. He still had to question whether or not he could earn enough of a living to buy food and keep his belongings secure, but he knew that if he was a cobbler, his job wasn't going to appreciably change. At all. By contrast, today's jobs are radically different than they were even ten years ago. A decade ago or so ago, people found it amusing to see Leonard Nimoy with a cell phone, unintentionally mimicking Mr. Spock using a communicator. But that visual is not only passe but it's out of date, as it's almost common to see people wearing wireless earbuds. Compare the political landscape of 2015 and that of today? We truly live in a completely different world than the one we inhabited a decade ago.
All of which points back to mankind's ability to adapt. We can, collectively, push societies and cultures forward with leaps and bounds on many levels but, as individuals, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep pace as we affronted from all sides by different forces, of which we may have only the most peripheral knowledge. Check out the latest Mindset List if you have any doubts about the wide range of changes going on in our lives. And do you know HOW we're able to keep up and adapt?
Rituals.
In an age when the jobs we have today will not be functional in tomorrow's economy, in an age when whole nations are leap-frogging themselves in technological revolutions, in an age where planning for anything beyond next week is almost laughable, we use rituals to keep ourselves sane. It provides that sense of stability and comfort in our lives so that we know there's at least that small portion of our life that we can rely on to be there over and over. The ritual gives us a focal point to relax and unwind -- however briefly -- from the rest of the world racing past us. Some people have a routine/ritualistic approach to how they get ready in the morning. Others focus around their favorite TV show on a weekly basis. Holidays provide annual outlets that work on a decidedly longer-term basis. And those of us who live and breath comic books have New Comic Day.
New Comic Day gives us an oasis for our lives' stresses. Whether you go on your lunch hour or after work or whenever, you stop by your Local Comic Shop for some period of time during which you can drop whatever's troubling you on their doorstep. You can, for the time you're in the shop, have your biggest worry be whether or not the new Wonder Woman costume sucks. If you hit the shop at the same time every week, you're likely going to run into the same folks week after week as well, all doing the same thing. They've checked their concerns at the door, too, and can discuss "Identity Crisis" instead of the real ones in the rest of your life.
Maybe you take that a step further, and you scan through the wall of new comics in ritualistic manner as well. Maybe you take an extra few moments in every visit to admire the CGC 7.5 Detective Comics #27 beneath the glass counter. Maybe you flip through the latest issue featuring Spider-Man, even though you don't have any intent to buy it. It's all about creating a mental comfort zone for yourself, so that you can forget -- for a short while -- about their job security and Trump and COVID and climate change and...
Think about this, too: we still have New Comic Day after we got a bunch of different distribtors besides Diamond. New Comic Day exists at all in the first place because it was Diamond that originally set that Wedesday schedule. But now that they're no longer the only game in towm, both cosumers and businesses fall back on the ritual of a Wednesday pilgramage to the comic shop.
Rituals.
It's pretty well documented now that the more life changes you might face in a short period of time, the more at risk you are to physical illness. With life speeding up on the whole, it's increasingly more likely for you to experience more and more of these life changes. Marriages don't last as long as they used to. Knowing more people almost inevitably leads to going to more funerals. Changing jobs, if not whole vocations, is commonplace. We're in a society now that reshapes itself on an almost daily basis, and I think that helps account for the seemingly increased problems we're collectively having. People are using more drugs to fight off sicknesses because their immune systems are collapsing under the weight of the life stressors. Crime, especially violent crime, is becoming harder to combat because more and more people are not able to adjust to the world changing around them and flip out by going on a shooting spree.
Many people still need New Comic Day. But where I used to think they needed it to keep their favorite stories from getting spoiled or being more "in the know" than the rest of the comic book community, I now know they need New Comic Day for their mental and physical health. An anchor with which they can tether their rowboat of sanity for an hour or so, not having to battle the increasingly turbulent societal waves crashing down on a daily basis.
By the twentieth century, man had figured out a great many things. Everything from fire and the wheel to creating and harnessing electricity to bring a small amount of daylight to the city streets at night. But while man's knowledge has increased, providing a great many answers to what was previously unknown, we keep raising new questions at an increasingly rapid pace. So while I -- a resident of the 21st century -- can rest pretty comfortably knowing that I can reliably get something to eat any time I step outside my dwelling, I don't have any clue what my long-term future looks like. In effect, my future is just as uncertain as that of our Australopithecus afarensis friend, Lucy -- the only difference is that my future extends further out than my next meal.
Alvin Toffler, back in the early 1970s, noted this and began touting the notion of "future shock." The idea being that life is indeed moving much faster than at any point in man's history (and, indeed, man's prehistory!) and we, as human beings, are being forced to constantly adapt ourselves to ever-changing status quo; further, that some people simply cannot keep up mentally and experience a form of culture shock within the very culture they've been living in. In extreme cases, future shock can resemble post-traumatic stress disorder.
A man living in the 1800s could pretty well assume that his day-to-day activities weren't likely to change that radically over the course of his lifetime. He still had to question whether or not he could earn enough of a living to buy food and keep his belongings secure, but he knew that if he was a cobbler, his job wasn't going to appreciably change. At all. By contrast, today's jobs are radically different than they were even ten years ago. A decade ago or so ago, people found it amusing to see Leonard Nimoy with a cell phone, unintentionally mimicking Mr. Spock using a communicator. But that visual is not only passe but it's out of date, as it's almost common to see people wearing wireless earbuds. Compare the political landscape of 2015 and that of today? We truly live in a completely different world than the one we inhabited a decade ago.
All of which points back to mankind's ability to adapt. We can, collectively, push societies and cultures forward with leaps and bounds on many levels but, as individuals, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep pace as we affronted from all sides by different forces, of which we may have only the most peripheral knowledge. Check out the latest Mindset List if you have any doubts about the wide range of changes going on in our lives. And do you know HOW we're able to keep up and adapt?
Rituals.
In an age when the jobs we have today will not be functional in tomorrow's economy, in an age when whole nations are leap-frogging themselves in technological revolutions, in an age where planning for anything beyond next week is almost laughable, we use rituals to keep ourselves sane. It provides that sense of stability and comfort in our lives so that we know there's at least that small portion of our life that we can rely on to be there over and over. The ritual gives us a focal point to relax and unwind -- however briefly -- from the rest of the world racing past us. Some people have a routine/ritualistic approach to how they get ready in the morning. Others focus around their favorite TV show on a weekly basis. Holidays provide annual outlets that work on a decidedly longer-term basis. And those of us who live and breath comic books have New Comic Day.
Maybe you take that a step further, and you scan through the wall of new comics in ritualistic manner as well. Maybe you take an extra few moments in every visit to admire the CGC 7.5 Detective Comics #27 beneath the glass counter. Maybe you flip through the latest issue featuring Spider-Man, even though you don't have any intent to buy it. It's all about creating a mental comfort zone for yourself, so that you can forget -- for a short while -- about their job security and Trump and COVID and climate change and...
Think about this, too: we still have New Comic Day after we got a bunch of different distribtors besides Diamond. New Comic Day exists at all in the first place because it was Diamond that originally set that Wedesday schedule. But now that they're no longer the only game in towm, both cosumers and businesses fall back on the ritual of a Wednesday pilgramage to the comic shop.
Rituals.
It's pretty well documented now that the more life changes you might face in a short period of time, the more at risk you are to physical illness. With life speeding up on the whole, it's increasingly more likely for you to experience more and more of these life changes. Marriages don't last as long as they used to. Knowing more people almost inevitably leads to going to more funerals. Changing jobs, if not whole vocations, is commonplace. We're in a society now that reshapes itself on an almost daily basis, and I think that helps account for the seemingly increased problems we're collectively having. People are using more drugs to fight off sicknesses because their immune systems are collapsing under the weight of the life stressors. Crime, especially violent crime, is becoming harder to combat because more and more people are not able to adjust to the world changing around them and flip out by going on a shooting spree.
Many people still need New Comic Day. But where I used to think they needed it to keep their favorite stories from getting spoiled or being more "in the know" than the rest of the comic book community, I now know they need New Comic Day for their mental and physical health. An anchor with which they can tether their rowboat of sanity for an hour or so, not having to battle the increasingly turbulent societal waves crashing down on a daily basis.
The book takes readers through pretty much Siddiqui's entire life, from his birth up until a couple years ago when the book was first published in France. His childhood is a little unusual for a Pakistani boy in that his parents had moved to Saudi Arabia for work, and he spends most of his childhood there, though spending many summers and vacations in Pakistan, until he turns 16 and his family moves to Pakistan for good. What's interesting is that it was it was his father's secular notions of finding good work that moved them from Pakistan to Saudi Arabia in the first place, but he became increasingly radicalized while he lived there, which eventually sent them back to Pakistan.
What is, I think, rather more common is that, despite living in an unusual situation -- not just to my Western eyes, but even for a Muslim boy -- his youth still had many of the same issues and challenges people of all stripes grow up having to deal with. He's torn between what his parents tell him to do and what some of the older cool kids in the neighborhood want to do. He pushes his boundaries as a teen to find how strong those parental guard rails are. As he starts getting older and taking an interest in the girls, he's stymied by adults' protestations saying he's not behaving appropriately. The specifics are all unique to him, but the broad strokes are pretty common across cultures, I think, and it makes Siddiqui entirely relateable.
What all this does is set up how a boy raised in a fairly strict Islamic household became more secularized, so much so that he's eventually threatened and then outright attacked by the Pakistani military. So much so that his parents all but disown him. (The final/current relationship he has with his family is unclear, but he does note he's unsure if he'll ever try to reconile things with his father again about five years before the end of the book and the only members of his family seen or mentioned after that are his wife and child.) So much so that he has to flee the country and live as a political refugee in France. How does someone who spent a good chunk of his youth memorizing the Qaran and constantly being taught what his father thinks it means come to the conclusion that wants to investigate and criticize the same people he was told to honor without question?
Here in the United States, we sometimes see/hear stories of children growing up in white nationalist households, and shooting up night clubs and theaters and schools as they get into their late teens and early twenties. They were taught that anyone who doesn't follow their belief system is wrong. So wrong that they should be removed from the world. This happens, in part, because they are taught a specific doctrine, not to question it, and not to take in any information for any other sources. The person's parents and other leaders restrict what they're allowed to think, often leaving the person with an unnuanced and highly distorted view of the world. It happens in all forms of religion because, frankly, that's largely what religion is. (Though, fortunately, not usually as intense.) That we see it here in The Dissident Club roll out in a form of Islam is almost incidental; it happens just as much in every theology.
What keeps Siddiqui from falling prey to it is what often saves other people with similar authority figures -- access to information. Siddiqui caught just enough to start asking questions at a young age, and that continued as he grew older. Seeking out actual information instead of relying on spin is what got him into journalism. And unfortunately, that's what also made him a target. Fortunately for Pakistan, and for us, he was willing to take that risk in order to share information with those who might not otherwise get it.
The story and artwork here are solid. Siddiqui and Maury make it easy to connect with the characters and the experiences, even when, as I said, they're unusual even for a Pakistani boy. I think it sheds a light on how it's possible to get beyond the constraints an overly restrictive parent might try to put on their child, and how that will sometimes mean alienating them if they refuse to accept what the child chooses to do with their life. And, though we don't see as much of Siddiqui's father as we do of him, we do get some sense of how he was radicalized over the course of several years. It's a gripping story and one that I'm sorry any journalist might have to go through.
The Dissident Club was originally published in France a few years ago, as I said, but it came out in English last month. It is published here in North America by Arsenal Pulp Press and retails for $27.95 US. Well worth the read!
In a statement she made on her LinkedIn account, she noted...
I am so happy to be joining WEBTOON in bringing stories from amazing creators across the globe to life. I want to thank JunKoo Kim [Webtoon's CEO], Yongsoo Kim [Webtoon's CSO], and Glenn Choi [Webtoon's VP of HR] for sharing their vision and deep enthusiasm for the brand, what we can build together and for making me part of the WEBTOON family.I suspect most people will zoom in on her time with Disney. After all, it is a company that's built around telling stories and one of the largest corporations in the world. It's a nice piece to have stand out on your resume, particularly if you worked there for over a decade and a half. But here's the thing that strikes me... she didn't work for the part of Disney that everybody loves. She worked for the cynical part of Disney that's concerned less about your enjoyment of their media and more concerned about just keeping you as a perpetually paying customer. Here are some snippets taken from how Girishanker's described her roles at Disney...
Led entire marketing function for Disney Rewards, including unifying member acquisition, engagement, retention, consumer insights and product for the first time.
Led all aspects of Disney Rewards business, creating a highly efficient and supportive team environment that allowed for both team and business growth. Partnered with other Disney business units to leverage the member based to drive efficient and guaranteed revenue streams. Partnered with other Disney businesses to develop innovative b2b2c and b2c initiatives intended to build long-term consumer relationships.
Built direct-to-consumer relationships across the Disney brand, thereby creating highly loyal and engaged member based. Oversee all aspects of operations, including product, technology, marketing, finance, and business development.Now, to be fair, Girishanker's using resume-speak here. This is her trying to tell potential employers that she adds financial value to the company. But there's also nothing resembling "connecting with beloved characters" or "ensuring customers have magical experiences" or any of the typical euphemisms that media companies utilize when they try talking about how their intangible assets (characters and stories) lead to more tangible ones (revenue and income). For example, the most recent Disney press release I can find, coincidentally from the same day as Webtoon's announcement, includes: "Disney Experiences brings the magic of The Walt Disney Company’s powerful brands and franchises — including Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, ESPN, 20th Century Studios and National Geographic — into the daily lives of families and fans around the world to create magical memories that last a lifetime."
I don't point all this out to showcase any kind of moral judgement or anything. Companies that don't put at least some effort towards bean counting have a tendency to go out of business fairly quickly. I'm calling attention to this to highlight Webtoon's focus. Despite being very much a company that is promoting webcomics and storytelling, their interest is more in ensuring that you become and stay a paying customer. While some of that necessarily requires a measure of customer satisfaction, that's not their focus. The question they're asking is: how do we keep people coming back again and again?
And if your answer to that is "just keep telling webcomic stories that I like" then you're possibly forgetting how deep into the 21st century we are. Other platforms that have focused on keeping people coming back again and agin include Google, Facebook, X, YouTube, LinkedIn... It's not about whether or not you enjoy your experience, it's about customer retention. And those are not the same thing.
Does this mean I think Webtoon is going to be enshitified the same way those other platforms have been? Well, no, not the same way certainly. But if your company's focus is not on delighting your customers but on simply customer retention... well, that's going to lead to different types of 'innovation,' isn't it? I'm not going to lay all the blame here at Girishanker's feet, by any means, but I think rather that her hiring is a symptom of what we can expect to see from Webtoon as a company overall in the next few years.
Here are this week's links to what I've had published recently...
