Back in January, I talked a bit about how I had set up an old laptop to act as a media server, hosting whatever music, movies, and TV that I threw on it. I was willing/able to do that, in part, because I had an old laptop lying around anyway. I've had it for three or four years, and I would occasionally pull it out to try to get it up and running again but generally with only partial success. However, I did finally seem to get it to a relatively stable state last fall.

It still doesn't work 100% though. The wifi in it is spotty at best, so I need to keep it hard-wired to my router to ensure a continuous connection. There's also something going on where any browser that you open will suddenly and randomly crash for no reason that I can see in the logs. Other programs can be hit or miss whether or not they're impacted. I set up Plex to serve up all my media files locally because Jellyfin -- a platform that seems better aligned with why I wanted to set up a media server to begin with -- would keep crashing.

But it occurs to me that I can host digital comics from the same device. Plex does not handle books or comic books, but I did learn there are similar platforms out there that cater to comics. I have hundreds (thousands?) of digital comics sitting on my laptop hard drive, and it would be great to have ready access to them from any device.

My first attempts were Komga and Kavita, based on some reviews I'd seen. Komga installs but won't open, while Kavita simply wouldn't even finish the installation process. (To be clear, I am NOT citing these as failures of the programs. As I said, the old laptop I was using for this purpose was already not fully functional with a minimal amount of stuff on it, so I'm in no way blaming the developers who made them; it's just something wonky with my computer. I did get YAC Library up and running, but it seems to require a separate app installed on whichever device you're using; you're unable to run it through a browser or otherwise directly connecting to the server. Also I'm not sure if it's pulling in the meta data correctly. That's not critical, but it is an annoyance.

My next experiment will be LANraragi. It does seem more focused on manga, but we'll see how it does with US style trades and floppies. Of course, that's assuming it installs in the first place, and that it doesn't crash a lot in the second.

I'll also try looking at ComicBase. I used to use them just to catalog my physical collection, but a cursory read suggests I can connect digital editions of the books directly to that as well. There is a much higher cost factor involved here, but if I can get it to work across a home network, it would solve two problems as I've been without a comics catalog for far too long.

Of course, much of this would be a moot point if I had boatloads of extra cash that I could just throw at this, instead of using an old laptop that doesn't 100% work properly and having to test out different options. Of course, if I had that kind of money, I'd probably just hire someone to do all this for me; maybe integrate all the elements I want together into a single platform. 🫤 In the meantime, though, I'd love to hear any thoughts, experiences, or commentary anyone out there might have on what's worked or not worked for you!

It's Memorial Day here in the US, where we honor all of the soliders that have fallen in battle by taking the day off and grilling hamburgers and hot dogs. Today's Frazz sums up my thoughts on the holiday, so I'm just going to leave it here...

Here are this week's links to what I've had published recently...

Kleefeld on Comics: On the Latest Kickstarter Payment Processor BS
https://ift.tt/L6dgXAJ

Kleefeld on Comics: Weeaboos Are People Too
https://ift.tt/VoIHmxf

Kleefeld on Comics: Thomas Nast's Ignorant Vote
https://ift.tt/bYDyCqN

Kleefeld on Comics: RIP Dark Horse Comics
https://ift.tt/4XlVicB

Kleefeld on Comics: Charging into the Future like There's No Tomorrow!
https://ift.tt/ZkPV13c

I try to be a forward-thinking guy. I try to look out down the road to see what's coming, so that I have a better chance to zig and zag as needed. I'm by no means a futurist, though; I'm nowhere near adept enough at predicting sociological behaviors or extrapolating wide-spread trends based on current technologies. I have my moments of insight, but they're not as frequent as I'd like. I was forecasting wide-spread cloud computing years before the term was commonly known and saw "video blogging" coming a few years before YouTube was founded. I had a "win" yesterday by predicting Embracer Group would close all their Things From Another World locations before they announced they were planning to do just that. But I was also completely side-swiped by social media when that came on the scene; I had no inkling anything like that was coming.

On the plus side, I think even the most prescient futurists aren't exactly batting 1000 either! 😊

But guys like Marshall McLuhan and Alvin Toffler (both of whom I've referenced on this blog before) were able to see some of the broad strokes coming down the pipe. McLuhan didn't know what the internet was but he saw a vast communications network that reduced our entire planet to the equivalent of a single community: a "global village." And that's the type of thing I try (in my decidedly unprofessional and seriously inadequate way) to do. I try to look at the information of today and figure out not only what's going to happen tomorrow, but also in the next several years.

At some level, many people do that. Whether you're planning a wedding or booking gigs for your band or saving up to buy a house, that's all about looking toward the future by extrapolating as much as you can from what you know right now.

How all that relates to comics is, of course, the question of what's going to happen to comics as a whole? Where is the industry headed? What will overall sales look like? What technologies will enhance production and distribution of digital comics? What properties will become "hot" and garner population attention? Those are the questions a lot of folks in comicdom are asking.

The problem, obviously, is that we're all speculating. We don't know the future, so we all have to guess. And we're all making these guesses with incomplete data. Sales numbers are often a big blind spot for us. Retailers know their own numbers, but not for the industry at large or any of their direct competitors. Publishers know their own numbers, but not specific retailers or other publishers. Creators don't provide their financial information (notably, income from making comics) to anyone. Bloggers like myself don't know any of that. So any predictions any of us make are based on less than ideal information.

That's where a lot of arguments come from. A retailer can say, "Listen: I make X amount of money selling just Marvel comics and I'm doing fine. I don't see what the deal is about DC distributing separately." While the next retailer might say, "I've seen a decline in sales because of COVID, and many have switched to digital." And yet another retailer might say, "New people are coming into the store because of comics they read online." Those three retailers are going to see the future of comics differently, based on the information they have that is biasing their view.

I use "bias" deliberately. I don't mean to suggest that they're actively altering their opinions to fit what they're seeing in their respective stores, but the information at their disposal will push their thoughts and ideas in a certain direction. I'm very cognizant that my constant work in web development focuses my attention toward online behaviors over print, and colors my outlook.

But it's not just a single factor like that impacting my thought process. I pay more attention to independent creators than the larger publishers any more. I got hooked on comics in the early 1980s. I went to college for design. I went to graduate school for an MBA. I have an 8-to-5 job in a beige cubicle. (Or, at least, it was in a beige cubicle up until the pandemic!) I've done freelance work. I am familiar with printing processes from previous jobs, but my knowledge there is primarily based on technologies from 25 years ago. I don't drink. I got a divorce after ten years of marriage, and eventually married someone else and moved to a different state. I have a dog. My favorite color is green.

All of that, regardless of how irrelevant it seems to comics, has some measure of impact on how I think about the medium. The same holds for everyone else. Their first car. The parent that abandoned them at age 7. The house that burned down across the street a week ago. The childhood friend who they hadn't talked to in 30 years committing suicide after a long struggle with PTSD that originated with their military service. The Spelling Bee their cousin won in fifth grade.

All of those things, many of which you're probably not aware of, have an impact. Which is to say: take EVERYTHING with a grain of salt. I'm certainly going to talk and act in what seems to be my best interests, and that's one of the reasons I'm bullish on webcomics in general. If you see/hear someone else speaking with a contrary point of view, there's almost certainly a reason for that.

I think my point here is that you, as a consumer of information, need to keep alert of not only what people are saying about the future of comics, but who is saying it and where they're coming from. As much as I like and respect guys like Brian Hibbs and Joe Field, I always keep in mind that these guys are both retailers and have a retailer perspective. Nothing wrong with that, of course! I'm just saying that it's different than a creator or a fan perspective.

But the future is a big question mark for all of us, and our backgrounds and current situations are going to impact our outlooks. Just something to keep in mind the next time you see someone talking up their new digital comics platform or the company press release announcing a "coporate realignment" shortly after laying off a bunch of employees.

Yesterday, Embracer Group dropped a press release to announce "its intention to spin off Fellowship Entertainment on Nasdaq Stockholm." Embracer Group, if you don't know, is the private equity firm that bought Dark Horse back in 2022. It's day-to-day operations were still headed by Dark Horse founder Mike Richardson until early March of this year when he was unceremoniously fired.

So why do we care about this press release?

Let's start simple. This "intention to spin off" basically means that Embracer Group is formally splitting into two different companies: Fellowship Entertainment and Embracer Group. This 'new' Embracer Group will basically continue to act like the old one, focusing on buying up other companies and either making them more profitable (by radically cutting costs -- i.e. laying people off) or turning around to re-sell the company for a profit. Frequently, they try to do both. Fellowship, then, will be more focused on owning/managing a variety of IP franchises. That is, if you want to make a product about some character they own, they're who you will have to pay the licensing fee to. The Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit is probably their most well-known propety now (hence the name "Fellowship") but they also own Tomb Raider and other Eidos games, as well as Dark Horse.

According to the press release, Fellowship "will focus on dedicated IP management, aiming to transform franchise ownership into recurring revenue streams across games, film, consumer products, and additional areas." The first key phrase there is "IP management." There is no talk about storytelling or immersive gaming or anything like that anywhere in the announcement. Just IP management. That means that all they want to do is just own the rights to a bunch of properties, and then sit back and let licensing fees roll in while they do jack shit. That's what "recurring revenue streams" are. They don't care who puts out another Tomb Raider game or if there's an ongoing Lara Croft comic book or anything like that; they just want to be able to essentially rent out the character to the highest bidders. They're not the ones who are going to continue publishing The Lord of the Rings books or making another Tomb Raider game; they just go to collect the paychecks.

So why did they buy a comic boook publisher like Dark Horse?

Because Dark Horse is not a comic book publisher. I mean, yes, they do publish comic books and their most popular ones are themselves either licensed (e.g. Star Wars, Stranger Things...) or creator-owned (e.g. Hellboy, Umbrella Academy...) but they own a number of properities themselves including The Mask, Time Cop, and Ghost. They also have some degree of control over other properties they don't own outright; for example, while Mike Mignola still technically owns Hellboy, all of the media properties -- the movies, shows, and video games -- are managed by Dark Horse and they get a slice of the pie just for managing the contract. That's what Embracer Group wanted when they bought the company in 2022; they didn't care about the comics -- they just wanted the IPs.

This is part of why Embracer Group outright closed Things From Another World's online presence last year. It involved actual work on a day-to-day basis. They don't want that. They want to kick their feet up on the desk and let the checks roll in. I expect we'll see the physical stores close before long either -- they're probably only still open because of existing rental contracts for the physical store locations.

Am I saying that we'll stop seeing comic books with a Dark Horse logo on them? Probably not. They're going to do the same thing that Marvel has been doing more slowly over the past several years. The comics will continue, but their actual production will be farmed out to other publishers. I have been pointing this out for nearly a quarter century now, but no one has seemed to catch on -- Marvel stopped being a comic book publisher in 2000 and became a "character licensing company." They realized their worth was in owning Spider-Man and the X-Men, not in publishing Amazing Spider-Man and Uncanny X-Men. We see that more and more now, with an increasing number of publishers putting out comics in Marvel's name: Abrams, Scholastic, IDW, Titan... That's why Disney bought them. Embracer Group is trying to do the same thing with Dark Horse. They don't want to publish comics; they want people to send them money so they can rubber stamp another Mask movie.

I don't know what kind of timeframe Embracer Group is working on, and what other legal or financial factors might be at play, but if you want to mark the official end of Dark Horse as a publisher, this is it. The comics will continue for a while, but the company isn't a publisher any longer.

The headline image here is the Thomas Nast cover cartoon from an 1876 edition of Harper's Weekly. The title of the image is called "The Ignorant Vote" and ran shortly after that year's elections.

That particular election was very contentious. Without getting into a lot of details, a close modern analogy would be the Bush/Gore race from a few years back. Eventually, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was awarded the presidency; however, it's generally believed that it was on the condition of ending the Reconstruction in the South, which was a Democratic goal. While Nast was an abolistionist and often depicted Black people with a level of dignity not afforded them almost anywhere else at the time, he was also a strong supporter of Reconstruction and was upset at its ending. He blamed ignorant voters for making the election so contentious that the compromise needed to be struck. And, in his eyes, ignorant voters were recently freed slaves and Irish-Americans, both caricatured here.

Over at this wikispaces page they summarize the comic this way...

By setting the Irish and Blacks as equal on the scale, he is asserting that their votes are equally inferior. On the upper portion of the scale, “North” is inscribed on the side with the Irishmen, and “South” is inscribed on the side with the Black man. This suggests that Nast believes that North and South are equally negatively affecting United States’ politics. The controversy regarding the Election of 1876 was not just the Black man’s fault; the responsibility is equally shared by Black and White. In both instances, there are outside forces affecting their voting decision other than their personal political beliefs. For the Irish, it is the Roman Catholic Church; for the blacks, it is the white people that they depend on for their livelihood. Both the Church and the white Southerners generally supported the Democratic party; whereas Nast and Harper’s Weekly subscribed to Republican doctrine.

The Irish were racially stereotyped very poorly for generations. They were considered lazy, perpetually drunken louts, not very far removed from apes. In that respect, they were viewed similarly to Black people but, by virtue of their skin color, they just weren't quite as bad. Absurd as it seems to me, I've seen old references where someone makes the comparison, verbally or visually, of apes evolving to Africans evolving to Irish evolving to Caucasians.

Interestingly, while Nast did have a prior history depicting Blacks in America with a level of dignity, rarely resorting to even the generally accepted visual tropes of the day, he evidently had few qualms portraying the Irish in a negative light. He regularly showed them as drunken neanderthals, and here is no exeception. A German-born immigrant himself, one wonders if Nast felt more resentment against the Irish because he was in more direct competition with them. Allegedly, when he was a child in New York City, he was frequently bullied for his small size and he may have transferred that general resentment of a handful of local Irish boys to the Irish as a whole.

Despite being perhaps the most widely recognized American cartoonist at the time, Nast's career began going downhill not long afterwards. His importance diminished significantly after he left Harper's Weekly in the 1880s (and, ironically, Harper's Weekly's significance declined without Nast) and Nast lost most of his wealth in 1884. While he continued working in a variety of (mostly) artistic capacities, he experienced a number of commercial failures but was eventually given a consulship by President Teddy Roosevelt, largely due to his work from years earlier.

I was recently pointed to this article on How to Avoid Becoming a Weeaboo and thought I should point out the utter horseshit of it.

Let's start with a little background. The definition, according to Know Your Meme, is "a Gaijin (foreigner in Japanese) displaying a heavy bias towards everything from Japan or virtually exiling oneself from the indigenous culture (also known as “outside”) in pursuit of the “superlative.”" It's a little different than "otaku" in that otaku tend to be more focused on a certain aspect of Japanese culture (e.g. anime, manga, etc.) whereas a weeaboo is more indiscriminate, taking an extreme interest in all-things-Japanese. Basically, a weeaboo is a person who is such a fan of Japanese culture to the extent that they regard everything else as inferior.

I don't know that I've ever met anyone who might be considered a weeaboo. Stu Levy is probably the closest, but while he has a clear appreciation for Japanese culture, I don't know that I've seen him eschew everything else as inferior. But I'm sure there are people out there who would generally be considered weeaboo; I just don't travel those circles very regularly.

So why is this "Avoid Becoming a Weeaboo" horseshit?

Well, first, there's nothing wrong with liking Japanese culture. Beyond manga and anime, they have deep, rich culture with a history at least as fascinating as anyone else's.

Second, there's nothing inherent in one's own culture (whether you're from America, France, Egypt, or anywhere else) that's necessarily superior to Japan's. We're generally taught a sense of patriotism, or even jingoism, wherever we grow up and it's infused so pervasively at such a young age that we rarely have the wherewithall to step back and recognize it as the propaganda that it is. There's no fundemental reason that says we have to accept that at face value or, for that matter, that we have to accept it at all.

By calling someone weeaboo, you're effectively saying that their value judgements are fundamentally wrong. That they're not allowed to consider Japanese culture, traditions, language, and mores better than their own. There's nothing wrong with disagreeing with that judgement, but we're not talking about anything quantitative here. It's no different than claiming someone's an idiot because they prefer vanilla over chocolate. If anything, it displays more small-mindedness on the part of the insulter because it shows how they can't accept that anyone might have a different set of values than they do.

Take a look at that How to Avoid Becoming a Weeaboo piece again too. Most of the "rules" center around not being a newcomer. If you want to actually learn Japanese, don't you have to start with just a few words? Don't many cosplayers start with relatively easy costumes using store-bought products? Doesn't everybody adopt different styles from other people as they're discovering what works for them? Don't many authors consider using Mary-Sue characters as a viable way to train yourself to write better? This list of Don'ts that we're presented with essentially says that you're not allowed to start becoming interested in Japan; you have to skip over the education portion of becoming a fan and simply be an expert without any learning curve. They're basically laying down club rules that say you can't be a member of the club unless you're already a member of the club.

And what a shitty way to treat fans! Look, I've gotten annoyed with comic fans who asked very obviously newbie questions. I used to moderate a Fantastic Four message board, and I got really tired of answering the same dozen FF questions every 6-8 months for the new guy who just discovered how awesome the comic/cartoon/movie was. But I still recognized that I had that level of excitement when I first discovered the comic as well, and I didn't want to potentially kill that excitement and sense of discovery for this new person. That's not fair to them, and it robs fandom of someone who could have a lot to contribute.

You want to roll your eyes when somebody online tastes Pocky for the first time? Fine. But don't try kicking them out of the club before they've even had a chance to see what it has to offer!