Hey, it's time for another edition of: Sean Can't Think Of Anything To Say So He'll Just Post What Comics He Bought...

Annihilation: Ronan #3 The ONLY reason I bought this is because I just found out that a minor FF character (Lyja) has a one-panel cameo in it.
The Amazing Spider-Man: Hooky I stumbled across this in the shop today with a $2.50 price sticker on it. I don't know if the story's any good, but you can't go wrong with cheap Bernie Wrightson art!
Civil War #4 I've actually kind of been enjoying the whole "Civil War" storyline, despite some radical character re-works that totally clash with established continuity.
The Cubes, Set 2: Joe Okay, it's not really comic-related, but the shop had him in a discount bin for five bucks. Since I work in a cube farm now, it was impossible to pass up!
The Looking Glass Wars: Hatter M #3 As I've noted here repeatedly, I enjoy different takes on Alice in Wonderland. This one has been especially enjoyable so far, and I only wish that the full novel that this comic stems from is published here in the U.S. soon.
Nextwave #8 Warren Ellis continues to make this a delightful read. The Mindless Ones replacing Americans is a poignent, if cynical, social statement that I heartily approve of.

I mentioned the other day that I'd seen the phrase "cultural capital" in reference to comic book collecting. I've been thinking about the notion since then.

The basic premise is that, within the realm of comic book collecting (and certainly other areas as well -- but I'm just focusing on comics here), fans use cultural capital as a method to determine social hierarchy; cultural capital being the knowledge and wisdom that one accumulates within the realm of the industry. For example, a newbie to comic collecting probably doesn't know the long histories of various characters and, by this cultural capital theory, s/he would be low on the social totem pole. Someone who's been reading for several years and knows the whole history of Spider-Man from Amazing Fantasy #15 onwards is higher up the food chain. The person who knows the whole history of the Marvel Universe is higher still. Comic book creators, because of their "insider" knowledge rate higher than anyone else, but still have their own internal hierachy. So a Mark Evanier or a Tom Brevoort still rates higher than, say, a Chuck Austen or a Robert Kirkman. So the notion of "keeping up with the Joneses" is more a matter of being more in the know than the next guy, rather than simply making more money and spending it conspicuously.

One of the things that's had me frustrated (for lack of a better word) is this feeling that I'm not as well-known/respected in the comic book community as I'd ideally like. And when I started thinking about how much cultural capital I have -- relatively speaking -- it occurred to me that there's another parallel here with "traditional" capitalism. Namely, that I'm trying to compare my fan-based capital with professional capital. I developed FFPlaza.com, I'm on the Board of Directors for The Marvel Chronology Project, I've had letters printed in at least a couple dozen comics, I was named "Comics #1 Fan" by Diamond back in 2002, I've got a regular column in The Jack Kirby Collector... but all of that is trumped by being a professional in the industry. Matt Brady (to pull out an easy example) makes a living writing about comic news. He's in the industry. Peter Sanderson and Will Murray are effectively back to being fans, but they both were in the industry for several years, still trumping me.

So can I really increase my cultural capital without going pro? Well, sure. And I think I'm already doing that by reading as much as I can realistically get my hands on. And I throw out the odd proposal here and there to try get a few things published. But I don't know that I can reasonably weigh my knowledge of comics against those who are in the field. It's not a fair comparison, not unlike a college dropout trying to compare his/her salary to Bill Gates'. It's an apples and oranges situation.

And, yes, I fully recognize that this entirely my ego talking here. How well-known I am to the comic book community, ultimately, is a means to feed my sense of self-worth, which I'm obviously not really getting from other venues. But it's still an interesting aspect of my place in the overall comic community, and I think it's worth examining.

I like to think that I do a fairly good job of keeping up with the comics industry. Not just Marvel or DC, mind you, but the industry as a whole. I'm generally not totally oblivious to the status of Red Sonja even if I don't read the title, or what Matt Wagner's been up to after his second Mage series.

But this weekend, I was passing through a bookstore and saw something called Making Comics by Scott McCloud. Totally new to me. I picked it up and flipped through it. Looks like totally new material. Not really a sequel to Understanding or Reinventing but something not unlike a how-to.

On the one hand, I'm really pleased that Scott's put this out. I like studying the form of comics often as much as the comics themselves, and the more I understand the actual construction, the more I can enjoy the finished result. I've found that I have a much deeper appreciation of good movies after having spent some time studying writing techniques and good storytelling principles.

On the other hand, I was totally blindsided by the news of the book's publication. Further, after doing a few quick searches online, I didn't realize that McCloud's on a fairly substanial book tour to promote said book. How is it that I totally missed any news on this before now? Sheesh! These are the types of things I should really be on top of, and I'm just completely not on top of them.

Today, I'm working on my next "Incidental Iconography" column for The Jack Kirby Collector.

Typically, I start by looking at the theme the editor has proposed for the issue and choosing a character to focus on that somehow ties in with that theme. Sometimes I have some idea of characters I'd like to examine first, and try to put them in tie into a particular theme.

One of my criteria, though, is access to artwork. I'm sitting here in Ohio, my editor/publisher is in North Carolina, the Jack Kirby Museum is based out of New Jersey, and Lisa Kirby lives out in California. So unless I want to rack up huge airline bills, I'm stuck with essentially whatever's in my personal collection and the bits and pieces of artwork I can find online. So sometimes I simply can't do adequate research on a character and I'm forced to choose another. (I was somewhat stuck in that position when I opted to do a piece on Mr. Miracle.)

But I usually find at least a couple of pieces to start with and fire off a note to my editor that I'll be working on such-n-such character, and he might start tracking down various pieces of art when he starts to work on the issue. What I find infinitely fascinating, though, is that I'll start looking at the body of artwork that I have and start putting it in some sort of order. And I start seeing things that aren't really obvious looking at the pieces individually. Sometimes extremely subtle things. But the pieces, when looked at collectively, tell a story unto themselves. I dare say it's not unlike a filmmaker trying to put together a documentary. S/he has a basic outline to start with, but as more footage becomes available, the story starts unfolding in unexpected ways.

This morning, I began writing about Herbie the robot. I had a basic outline of what I wanted to touch on and some basic points to make. But in looking at the various artwork, I saw some profound things about Jack's designs on the whole that I would never expected to see.

But to read exactly what those are, I'm going to have to let you wonder until my article is actually published! Be sure to check out Jack Kirby Collector #47 due out at the end of October.

I started reading Jeffrey A. Brown's Black Superheroes, Milestone Comics, and Their Fans on my lunch hour today. I only read the first chapter so far, which basically serves as an introduction. (You know the old addage: "Tell your audience what you're going to say, say it, then tell them what you said.") I found it interesting that he struck on some good points early on, but had some presumptions that weren't so well-founded.

I like that he brings up the notion of "cultural capital." It's not a concept I see used much in relation to comic book research, and I think that it's something that needs further exploration. (Hopefully, I'll see more on this in later chapters of his book.) Further, Brown notes how curious it is that, for as much analysis has gone into other media, comic books have comparitively little. He blames that, in part, on the notion that comics are historically a kids' medium and weren't given much respect from the academic community accordingly. Here's where I start taking issue with him.

Yes, comics were looked down upon as the bastard child of "real" literature for many years. But that started getting thrown out the window in the 1960s when colleges started teaching classes around Marvel comics. (Not just literature classes, either! Art, philosophy and religion as well.) By the mid-60s, Stan Lee was fairly in demand at graduation ceremonies and the like. Much has been written about how the 1970s saw social relevance brought into comics, notably with Denny O'Neil's Green Arrow stories and Marvel's non-CCA-approved issues of Amazing Spider-Man. The 1980s was all about bringing gritty realism into comics following the lead of Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns. And this whole time, comics are also being looked at as an investment with the potential to reap huge financial rewards.

My point is that comics haven't really been exclusively for children for several decades now. And if people keep trying to say that they have been, then the industry will always be viewed as just on the verge of maturing. Sure, comics are still evolving, but they matured decades ago. It's 2006. Isn't about time we bring our perceived baseline up to reality?

Every month, the big comic book companies send out solicitations for their upcoming comic books to generate interest (and hopefully sales) in their various titles. These solicitations are generally for about three months out to give retailers sufficient time to go through every publisher's listings, send in their orders, and still have enough time for the publishers to actually print as many as are needed.

Now, an interesting facet of comic marketing is that the national bookstore market is much, much larger and requires a greater lead time... I think somewhere closer to six months. What bookstores then do is throw the publishers' information in their databases and, even if you still don't see the books on the shelves for another six months, you can order them well in advance if you ask someone sitting at a computer terminal in the actual bookstore.

OR...

You can have more direct access to their lists by simply hitting the company's web site. Amazon has their process streamlined so things tend to show up there before anywhere else, and I just learned (through MarvelMasterworks.com) that Marvel's releasing a collection of the original Nomad storyline from Captain America #177-186. I've had those individual issues on my want list for a little while, but they were far enough down that I didn't want to spend an inordinate amount of time hunting for all of the issues. And I certainly didn't want to shell out a lot of cash for them either! Amazon's got the collection for sale for $16.49 -- less than $2.00 an issue. Plus you don't have to spend any time hunting.

I do so enjoy when publishers put out materials that I want to read.

I just read over at Newsarama that DC's Georg Brewer is currently working on a "New Gods Omnibus" that will collect Jack's entire Fourth World saga in four hardcover volumes.

A year or two back, I went out and picked up the various black and white trade paperbacks that reprint the individual titles Jack was working on. I just got the "core" books and skipped on Jimmy Olsen because... well, I'm not keen on seeing them in black and white. They were intended and designed to be printed in color, and I think NOT having the color makes them look like they're missing something. I don't have many of Marvel's Essentials series for the same reason.

(On a side note, the Essentials books I do have are the first two Tomb of Dracula volumes. I thought those would be okay to view in black and white largely because they're by Gene Colan, whose artistic style is based more on the tonal qualities of the pencil than the definitive strokes of a brush or technical pen. I'm reminded of an editor's quote from years ago: "The trick is to present raw Gene Colan. Pencils only." His artwork always seems to lose something when it's inked. But even though the Dracula stories are inked, they still convey much of his original intent, I feel, and they stand up relatively well in the Essential line.)

But now, I'll have the opportunity to see Jack's storyline somewhat closer to how he laid it out. The books will (likely) be printed in chronological order in color, and they're talking about including both his introductory Jimmy Olsen stories and his Hunger Dogs finale; neither of which I've read. Regulars to this site will know that I have a GREAT respect for Jack and the sheer volume of work he produced makes it difficult to get my hands on all of it. But even though I'll be essentially buying these stories for a second time, I have the feeling that it will be very much worth it.