I first became interested in the Fantastic Four when my folks picked up a copy of issue #254 for me. I don't know that there was anything about it that had them choose that issue over some of the other things on the stand at the time, but John Byrne's take on the team was eye-opening to me for several reasons. I honestly don't know what caught my interest first: that this group was more a family than a team, that they were explorers more than superheroes, that it was optimistic without being naive, or that they were all just solid, likeable characters.
See, I had actually come in contact with the FF previously. It was that storyline from Fantastic Four #111-112 in which the Thing has gone crazy, has a mad throw-down with the Hulk and destroys a good chunk of the city; meanwhile, Mr. Fantastic and the Human Torch are arguing about how to handle the situation, and the Invisible Girl was off in the country worrying about all of them. Everyone was dour and upset with one another, the book was oozing with negativity and pessimism. Not to mention that they weren't even fighting bad guys; they were just fighting other heroes.
After I got hooked on the comic from Byrne, I started going back to amass a collection of the previous 253 issues, as well as subscribing to the series going forward. Over the course of the decades those stories took place, there are obviously a lot of different approaches to the characters. Some made more sense than others. Some were executed via some sort of editorial fiat.
The FF teaming up with the Shogun Warriors? Probably not the best use of the team. It's the wrong genre, and there's no compelling reason for a team-up.
The FF trying to stave off an interdimensional war by fighting an alternate reality version of Johnny in space hockey gear? A bit weird with the hockey gear specifically, but an okay concept otherwise since it involves exploring other dimensions.
Having to fight off a team of witches trying to use Reed and Sue's son as key part of some ritual? A bit genre-stretching, but doable since it's rooted in protecting one's family.
Sue threatening divorce because Reed shut down her son's brain? Um, no.
The stories that always stood out as particularly bad were the ones that went too far outside the core concept. When they were treated as superheroes. When they forgot the notion of family. (Not that team members couldn't be replaced, just that they had to be incorporated into the group as family members in order to work with the concept.) When things became dour and depressing.
The team was birthed in the early 1960s amid a wave of optimisim about future, thanks to the advances of modern science. The first issue debuted only a few months after President John F. Kennedy spoke to Congress about landing a man on the moon before the end of the decade. If any comic of super-powered individuals was imbued from the start with more optimism than the Fantastic Four... well, there hasn't been, so I can't even finish that sentence.
Look, The Incredibles conclusively proved you can make a great superhero movie without an origin. If movie makers would just pick a storyline from one of the optmistic periods of the FF's comic and stick with that, we could finally get a decent FF movie. No origin is necessary. Hell, even if you wanted to include one, all it would take would be one of the characters just saying, "Back when we got bombarded with cosmic rays..."
Anyway, my point is that the core concept of the characters is what's important, and straying from that is where you run into problems. You can change up the costumes, tweak the powers around, get diverse actors to play the roles... that's all superficial fluff. It's going back to the source and recognizing the history of what worked (and what hasn't) that's important.
Derek Royal and I were discussing webcomics on the Comics Alternative webcast (which, as of today, I'm an official co-host for!) and one of the things that came up was a webcomic that did not have a print edition available. (You'll have to listen to the episode to find out which one!) What struck us as odd was that A) the comic had been going on long enough to have at least a full trade paperback edition -- lack of content was NOT an issue and B) the pages are formatted for a typical, vertical trade paperback layout. It looked like it's intended to be printed eventually, but we couldn't quite sort out why it hadn't been yet.
Now, that is admittedly a bit presumptuous on our part for assuming the author wants to make money off the comic. Maybe it's only being made as a creative outlet. But it suggest a potential issue for creators... namely, to have a plan.
There are plenty of creators out there who put together their dream comic, throw it online, and immediately have all sorts of ancillary materials available: t-shirts, stuffed toys, tote bags... Which is indeed one of the big ways creators make money online, but it doesn't do much good that early on because there's no real fan base yet. Even the readers who do find the work early on are likely going to take a while to really warm up to it and feel engaged enough to want to make a purchase.
But at the same time, just throwing the comic online and hoping that money will start presenting itself down the road isn't really a good tactic either.
What creators need to have is a plan of some sort. It doesn't necessarily have to be super-elaborate or detailed, but there should be a roadmap to help point things in the right direction. For example, a creator might know they want to do t-shirts after a while. But rather than spend a lot of time designing them up-front, let the strip run its course for a while. This will build up a fan base that might be receptive to the idea, and it can also point to characters and designs that are more likely to sell.
The same goes with advertising, another popular way to earn money online. Obviously, the initial click-through-rates (and accompanying price-per-click) will be fairly low just by virtue of few people coming to the site in the first place. But after the comic gains some traction, the creator can go to specific advertisers that might make more sense for that particular audience.
Of course, things change and a creator needs to remain flexible and open to other possibilites. Sometimes, options like Kickstarter and Patreon become available. It's possible someone with the right connections is able to hook the creator up with a great licensing deal. It'd be foolish to tune out options just because they didn't fit the plan. But not having a plan at all leaves one wandering around fairly aimlessly, and it'll be unlikely that some great deal just gets dropped into the creator's lap.
So maybe you've been paying a modicum of attention to the comics news outlets lately, and seen a variety of complaints arise when a creator misses the mark on some representation issue. I've talked about the mis-fires in Strange Fruit and Justice League 3001, and that "Women in Comics" panel which didn't actually have any women participating, and a variety of other issues. You've probably seen it come up on Twitter or Facebook or whatever. And you might be thinking to yourself, "Where the hell did all of this come from all of a sudden?"
The thing is, though, it's not new and it's not all of a sudden.
You ever hear of the Gaylactic Network? They're a science fiction fan group with chapters from San Diego to Washington, DC. And, as you might well guess from the name, the group is about supporting LGBT creators and fans. (I know there should be a Q and/or I in that acronym, but strictly speaking, all of the Gaylatic Network materials I can find only cite LGBT, so I'm only citing who they themselves claim to represent. In any event...) There are local meetings to support things at a community level, and they host Gaylaxicon at a national level and hold the Gaylactic Spectrum Awards, "given annually for outstanding LGBT content in sci-fi, fantasy and horror genre publications." Even if you haven't heard of any of this before, you're not especially surprised, right? I mean, it's 2015 and the Supreme Court has ruled gay marriage is the law of the land, so you'd expect a group like this exists.
They were founded in 1987. (Wikipedia incorrectly cites 1986.) 1987. That's nearly 30 years ago. Over a quarter of a century. And that's just the oldest formal fan group I happen to know off the top of my head, without having done much research. I don't doubt there were earlier ones.
Turtel Onli has been a central figure for trying to coalesce the Black comics community in the Chicago area. He started writing/drawing his NOG comics back in 1979. In 1993, he pulled together the Black Age of Comics convention in Chicago, and it's been hosted in other years everywhere from Los Angeles to Detroit. 1993, you'll recall, was also the year that Milestone Comics started. That's over 20 years ago.
What you're seeing now isn't new and it's not sudden. These discussions have been going on for decades. The difference now is that social media has reached a saturation point where you (the middle-aged cishetero white guy) are seeing the conversations that are scrolling through your one minority friend's feed. Your neat and tidy social circles haven't exactly collapsed, but the borders between them have substantially blurred.
This isn't a new conversation. You're just now becoming aware of it.
Lion Forge has been pretty actively lately in securing the licenses to 1980s television shows for translation into the comic book format. They've got Miami Vice, Knight Rider, Airwolf, and they recently sent me review copies of their upcoming Saved by the Bell and Punky Brewster graphic novels. I expect the rationale behind their thinking is primarily that nostalgia is pretty popular these days, and by focusing on properties of the 1980s, they'll be targeting Gen Xers and some older Millenials who are out of college and have some disposable income. Despite falling pretty squarely into the former group, I've long been pretty actively against nostalgia for nostalgia's sake. If a publisher wants to revisit an older property, that's fine, but I'm going to view it on its own merits, not against any fond feelings I might've had for the original.
Interestingly, the two books they sent me were ones that I had no great affection for in the first place. I did watch Punky Brewster for the first season or two, but not religiously, but I think I only saw Saved by the Bell maybe a dozen times in my whole life and most of those were as re-runs when I was on a treadmill in my 30s. I think the only one of their books I might have less familiarity with would be Airwolf which, to date, I have never seen a single episode of.
Both books seem to start shortly before their respective shows began, thereby including "origins" that would have been handled in the shows' opening sequences. This does two things: 1) it establishes the characters and premise for readers who might be totally unfamiliar with the shows, and 2) it establishes some updates/retcons for old fans. In the case of SbtB, there's a conscious decision of highlighting the contemporaneousness of the stories, giving the character modern cell phones, laptops, etc. Over in Punky, there is some updated technology (although many of the computers still use CRTs) but the big update is making Henry Warnimont a long-lost relative instead of complete stranger. This does change some of the character dynamics somewhat, but I suspect this was done because of the social implications of an adult male just taking in some random homeless girl.
The overall approach to the two books is markedly different. Saved by the Bell adheres more closely to the original format of the show, where each installment is a stand-alone story, based on a single driving element, with a series of comedic set-ups and punchlines. Zach and Slater competing for a date with Kelly, for example. Interestingly, by moving this format into comics, it highlights just how similar the show's original concept was to the old Archie comics formula. Previously, I would've found this more problematic but as Archie itself has moved away from their classic forumlas, there's not really any contemporary competition in that regard. Which I'm sure suits Lion Forge just fine, as they don't have the decades of experience perfecting that formula that Archie has had. Saved by the Bell isn't bad about what they do, but it's not nearly as elegant as a Harry Lucey strip.
Punky is written more as a single narrative focusing on Henry trying to adopt Punky. It has the same types of jokes and humor as the show, but laid over a solid and serious story. The show also did have Punky's legal adoption brought up, but that was over and done with by the third episode, allowing the show to mostly flow over less weighty subjects. It's possible the tenor of the comic will change after Punky's adoption (occurring here near the end of the book) but I got a deeper sense of emotional heart here than I recall from the show.
One thing thing that both books share is (what I assume is) a deliberate decision to not depict the likenesses of the original actors. The character designs are only loosely based one or two key characteristics of actors, but there's no real resemblence to Mark-Paul Gosselaar or Soleil Moon Frye. They even changed Punky's dog Brandon from a Labrador to more of a Border Terrier! I presume this is all to avoid getting agreements from all the actors to portray their likeness and, while it's largely a non-issue, there were a couple characters that seemed far enough removed from the actors' likeness to almost suggest they were supposed to be an entirely different character. (Notably, Mr. Belding and Henry.) Obviously, this is a non-issue for people coming to the stories with no real awareness of the shows, but it might prove distracting for the fans these books seem to be aimed at.
Overall, I didn't find anything that particularly stood out with the books, either good or bad. They were generally okay, but that was about it. Punky Brewster definitely did a better job of emotionally resonnating, but I don't think that was something that they were even trying to do with Saved by the Bell. While you're supposed to feel something for Punky and her ersatz family, SbtB isn't supposed to be anything more than a hook to string together some mildy amusing jokes and gags on. If you were a fan of either show, you'd probably get a kick out of these, but if not, I don't know that you're missing anything special.
Cartozia Tales started back in 2013 as an interesting sort of experiment. It's an anthology series planned for ten issues. All the stories take place in the fictional world of Cartozia (hence the name) but, while the short stories all continue from one issue to the next, the creators who work on them change. It's a little like that game where someone writes part of a story, and then passes it on to the next person to continue writing. So stories can take some unusual turns, depending on who's working on any given portions. This is enhanced by some of the ideas behind Cartozia in the first place; it's something in the same vein as Wonderland or Oz.
And while it's proven to be a very interesting read, that's not what I'm going to focus on today. No, the other aspect of the book that I find interesting is its distribution.
The team put together the first issue, published it, and put it for sale on their site. Then they did issue #2 and, while they were working on #3, launched a Kickstarter to try to pre-fund the rest of the series. (I understand the first two issues were personally funded by editor Isaac Cates. Possibly part of the third.) But then, after the Kickstarter was successful (actually, running in tandem with the KS) they offered subscriptions for the full ten-issue run.
I picked up my first Cartozia book, I believe, from Sarah Becan (one of the regular contributors) a little over a year ago at a show. Probably CAKE. I expect all the other creators sell various issues at any shows they table at as well. That's pretty typical for indie books that people contribute to. Interestingly, though, the ones with online stores don't seem to be selling them that way.
Which means that, if you don't meet one of the folks in person, you have to go to the Cartozia site to purchase either individual issues or a subscription. (Available both as printed comics and as PDFs.) But to further make things interesting, you can order a "partial subscription." That is, if you've picked up several of the indivdiual issues already, you can order a subscription beginning at any issue number. They'll send you all the issues from the last one you have through what's been produced to date, and then send the subsequent issues out as they're published. I don't know that I've ever seen a distribution plan quite like this before.
I gather the Kickstarter funds are nearing exhaustion, and the project seems to have taken longer than anyone anticipated in general. But all the creators seem committed to the project, and certainly want to continue it through to its conclusion. It's the increased attention they've been doing in marketing this summer that reminded me of the book I got from Becan earlier. When the series is complete, I'd be tempted to talk with Cates to see how things went with the project overall and where they had the biggest challenges.
In the meantime, if you're interested in checking them out, they're offering a digital version of the first issue available for free, and issues #2-3 at a steep discount through the end of this week. (More details here.)
