When I was a young adult, I didn't understand how a person could be a fan of a single sports team for life. The roster would change from year to year, so if you liked a team because of a specific player, wouldn't you switch over to that new team when the player went there? And what would happen when they retire?
As I grew a little older, I began to realize that the coach has an important role in the overall character of a team. So even if the entire roster changed, a coach would (theoretically) run the team as s/he did before, and the style of game they played and the type of approach they took would be fairly consistent. So I understood how someone might be a fan of a single team beyond the relatively short life of an individual player's career.
But coaches aren't immortal, nor are they immune to layoffs. So how/why someone could remain a lifetime fan of a team still eluded me. If an assistant coach was promoted, and followed a similar style to the previous coach, I could see that a fan might stay with a team, but only after some reasonable consideration of the new person. Even maybe if an entirely new coach was brought in and just happened to do things in a similar way to the previous coach.
For a long time I thought comic books were different. Switching the writers and artists out might be like changing the team roster, and you could liken the editor to a coach. But even beyond that, they would all be working towards the goal of telling stories about certain characters. And the characters, in order to remain the same characters, needed some consistency. So even if the creators were throwing new ideas and directions out there, Spider-Man was still Spider-Man. Whereas the only real consistency in a sports team would be their logo, a comic character was more than just a visual representation.
(I should point out that I also couldn't understand how someone might be a long-term fan of books like The Avengers or Justice League which had constantly changing rosters.)
A lot of my initial thinking developed around this when I was first getting into Marvel in the early 1980s. Their characters had been around for, at most, twenty years and they were under the editorship of one man (Stan Lee) for at least a decade of that, and by that person's understudy (Roy Thomas) for another four. So what I was seeing was only five or six years removed from the original direction. Interestingly, though, subsquent editors kept fairly in line with that notion for another 15-20 years, probably due in part to the fact the newer editors (most notably Mark Gruenwald) grew up reading the original's line.
What I hadn't really paid attention to was DC. Despite being nominally familiar with their line, I was somehow unable to piece together just how wildly different a character like Batman could be. I had read a number of the "New Look" stories, I had seen reprints of some of the 1950s stuff, I watched Super Friends regularly, I had seen the Adam West TV show... a few years later, I read The Dark Knight Returns and I saw Tim Burton's Batman. And through all of that, it never dawned on me that all these people were presenting wildly different characters whose only real shared characteristic was a name. How could one person be a life-long Batman fan when he showed up as a totally new character every 5-10 years?
Now that the Marvel Universe is safely past the half-century mark, I can see how disparate their own characters have become. John Byrne, Walt Simonson, and others tried to follow very much in the footsteps of Jack Kirby on the Fantastic Four. But more and more creators have made their attempts and have shown radically different concepts. Jonathan Trask, Mark Frost, and Roger Corman all gave it a shot in live-action. They had cartoon shows in 1967, 1978, 1994/1995 (technically the same series, but it was totally overhauled between seasons), and 2006. Plus that WTF version of the Thing in 1979, and appearances in the 1994 Spider-Man, 2009 Super Hero Squad, and 2012 Avengers cartoons. And that's the obvious stuff outside the comics! As I've mentioned before, I dropped my 25-year habit of reading the Fantastic Four comic because the characters had gone so far afield from what I first enjoyed about them. The team that I used to love reading every month was no longer showing up in the book that carried the same title.
What's weird is that only with the start of this year's football season did I recall that lack of understanding I had regarding a life-long fan of a single sports team. And while I still don't get it, I can look at comics fandom and ask the same question. It's a business decision that comic publishers make to change how they handle their characters, just as it's a business decision for a team to hire/fire a coach. The owners think that bringing in a new approach will prove to bring some success and therefore appeal to a wider audience. In some cases, they're right. In some cases, they're wrong. Regardless, why continue to be a fan of something when it's changed so much that it no longer embodies that which made you a fan in the first place?
On this day in 1904, a strip debuted by the name of Foolish Fred. It wasn't successful, lasting only a few months, and is pretty unremarkable even for strips of the time.
In fact, the only reason, I supsect, it's remembered at all is because it was by C. W. Kahles who, only a year and a bit later, created Hairbreadth Harry who was perpetually trying to save Beautiful Belinda from the evil plots of Relentless Rudolph. Kahles continued working on the strip until his death in 1931, and the strip carried on under the hand of F. O. Alexander for another eight years. Even if you haven't seen Hairbreadth Harry, you're likely familiar with Alexander's work -- he did the original illustrations for the board game Monopoly, which are still being used today. (Although my initial thought was that Alexander stopped working on Hairbreadth Harry thanks to the royalties he received from the wildly popular board game, it looks as if he was never paid at all for that work!)
In any event, you can see from the example above the concept of Foolish Fred isn't that interesting or original. It's not really bad, but just a fairly standard gag strip with little characterization to interact with or appreciate. I will say, though, that I am impressed with the execution of the brickwork in the final panel above, which is rendered only through color and without any linework to "hold" the individual bricks. Very nice and effective use of the medium, but hardly enough to save an otherwise mediocre effort.
One of the things that a lot of people (myself included) cite as one of the benefits to webcomics is that there are no gatekeepers. There's no group of editors and publishers to say what is and isn't worthy of reaching an audience. What this means is that much of the racism inherent in the publishing industry is wiped away in webcomics, as there's no one to say that a comic isn't relatable (or whatever the excuse is) because the protagonist and/or creator isn't a white male.
That part is fantastic! The downside, though, is that without those editors and publishers to support the work, it's much harder to find. The creator is basically left to do their own marketing, and their single voice is often overwhelmed by the noise.
Joamette Gil recently asked herself, "How many webcomics are actually out there with black protagonists?" It's a question I've asked myself on occasion and, while I certainly have no trouble finding some, I have no idea how close to comprehensive my lists have been. I don't know that Gil's attempt is comprehensive either, but she's tracked down quite a few more than I ever have and she's continuing to add to her list as more people tell what's missing.
So go check out her list! There's so much on there that you're bound to find a comic or two that looks/sounds interesting. I know there are plenty on there that I wasn't aware of previously that look really cool! Be sure to bookmark it as well because she keeps adding to it. Lots of great stuff to support!
What do suppose comic fans did with their comics before long boxes? In terms of storage. Their thin and floppy nature would make it difficult, at best, to keep them upright on bookshelves. I expect some people used file cabinets, but those would be cumbersome to say the least. From what I've seen in older photographs, the answer, at least among the Big Name Fans, was stacking.
The picture here is of Larry Herndon. He was a Big Name Fan out of Texas who published a number of fanzines throughout the 1960s and early 1970s before opening his own "nostalgia store" which carried comics, pulps, movie posters, and the like. But look past Herndon. Behind him are bookcases filled with stacks of comics. That was how comics were stored by many collectors up into the 1970s.
Doug Sulipa...
Robert Beerbohm...
The Cherokee Bookshop...
An unidentified collector from 1948...
In an era before specialized comics storage materials, the only thing fans had to keep comics relatively flat was basically gravity. So stacking them made the most sense if you had any intention of holding on to your collection for a while. Although even then, as you can tell from some of the pictures, the slightly thicker spin would keep books from laying completely flat, especially the higher your stack became. (Hence the need for bookshelves: to keep many smaller stacks.)
Many of us grew up with long and short boxes as a staple of the hobby, but they're not really all that old, and fans used to have to store their collections very differently because of it.
Last week, Variety Comics announced that they would be shutting their doors permanently after over forty years in business. From their Facebook announcement...Variety Comics was present at the dawn of mainstream comic book culture in America. When it first opened in the summer of 1974, the Punisher was just a few months old and those perennially teen-aged Mutant Ninja Turtles would not arrive for another ten years. Sadly, after 41 years of profitable operation, we are going out of business. The final day will be October 31st, 2015...
We would be remiss to leave the stage without mentioning Variety's patron / father Rich Vitone. He is sadly - and fortunately - not here to see the end, but he would no doubt be proud of this 41 years of success, 34 of which he saw from behind Variety's counter before he passed away in 2009. Those of you who remember him know that Rick was a unique character who endeared himself to those lucky enough to warrant his attention. He was sometimes brusque, but if you were ever harangued by the master (and who wasn't?), pay it no mind - it probably wasn't personal. In fact, if Mr. Rick were still here for these final moments, he'd likely conceal his true feelings by barking at the last customer of the last day: "Finish up and get out!" But it's my belief that what he'd really want to say is: "Thanks for everything, boys. It's been one helluva ride." I'll be God-damned if it wasn't.
I've never visited the store, so I can't speak to it first-hand, but from the descriptions I've read, it was very much the type of comic shop that was perfectly typical in the early 1980s. One of the reviews I read was raving about the place, but still said, "Many of my observations about the store can be seen as valid criticisms by shoppers. The store is definitely a mess. There are stacks upon stacks of books, trades, magazines, and boxes. You will feel the need to wash your hands after going through the back issues." The reviewer loved it in part because he could find strange gems amid the chaos, but he also felt it is "a shrine to the reverence we once held for comic books without the frills."
As of 2011, the current owner Vinny Nguyen had never visited another comic shop. Ever. He grew up going to Variety as a customer, and took over the place from Vitone.
I suspect that gets to precisely why the store is closing. It's not just that they're catering to a type of customer who's increasingly rare in comicdom. It's not just that they've kept the old wall paneling and haven't added "frills" to the store itself. It's that, despite the acknowledgement in their closing statement that they've witnessed a great deal of change in the industry since 1974, they haven't done anything about it. They've seen the industry change, but felt that they didn't need to adjust to those changes. Frankly, that they've taken that approach and survived this long astounds me to no end.
I've talked many times about my dislike for nostalgia, and it would appear at first glance that's what Variety has been banking on. Customers walk in and say, "Wow, this looks like the shop I used to go to when I was kid!" That might work as a shtick, but that's not actually what they're doing. Because nostalgia is not simply lifting the past and bringing it to the present; nostalgia lifts only parts of the past, blurs the rough edges, and places it within the context of the present. So you recreate the best bits -- say, the 1970s stylings in the building and furniture with 1980s superhero posters on top of that -- but leave out the uncomfortable parts -- say, the actual counters that have had four decades of use and are beat all to hell. Simply not updating anything doesn't sell nostalgia so much as just make everything look old and used.
I don't mean to knock Variety or it's owners (past or present). Selling comics is NOT an easy task, and to do it even for the few years that the current owner has been at it is note-worthy. Not to mention just the general shame for the industry as a whole every time another comic shop closes. I have a nothing but sympathy for anyone connected with the shop.
But it should serve as a reminder to other shop owners that this is how capitalism in the U.S. works. As harsh as this sounds, you need to adapt or die. Simply continuing on because that's the way we've always done things will inevitably, if sadly, lead to obsolescence.
