comic books and movies

I'm much too lazy to actually ever write that post titled, You Know, You Guys Care Way Too Much About Getting Comic Books Turned Into Movies that's been eating at my backbrain for a few months, but Tucker Stone hits a few of the highlights that would be in it--namely, "comic book movies don't sell comics, and never have and possibly never will, but that's not necessarily a bad thing." Maybe I could write a follow-up titled, Are You Sure You Want To Become A Franchise? Or, Okay, So You Are Sure You Want To Become A Franchise, That's Cool, Your Life, But Don't Complain If I Don't Follow.

Getting stuff--particularly finished works--made into movies is really, ultimately, not about artistic validation. Right now, and in the foreseeable future, comics and graphic novels are a tiny, money-poor niche in publishing and in the broader American cultural sphere. It's hard to make a living on them. That's going to remain the case for the foreseeable future. Creators who benefit substantially from the occasional comic/GN-inspired movie will be few and far between (one can always live on the hope of that, I suppose; that's what the American dream is all about--letting gross inequalities of wealth and social resource remain standing on the unshakeable, delusional hope of the disenfranchised that they'll someday win the lottery or invent the perpetual motion machine and be welcomed into the Kingdom); creators who benefit artistically from comic books or graphic novels being made into movies will, I think, be even rarer.*

*Creators who benefit artistically from the creative innovations of film are not so rare.

So all that money and name recognition that gets thrown around with movies? Just remember you're not going to end up getting very much out of it, whether you're a reader or a creator of comics. Comics etc is not a money field. Publishing of any stripe is not a big money field. That is a reality all people who are part of book culture need to accept. I'm not saying, "don't hope and work for financial solvency and god willing, even profitability in book publishing or as a creator," but movies are not the holy grail that will make money issues in publishing go away.

bookblogging

Graphic novels:

Huizenga, Kevin: Curses
(Kawy, Kawy, thank you for recommending this to me! You have such good taste in books. And at last! A D&Q book in which the characters are not all jerks! Like Kawy, I recommend this one.

I will be pondering Huizenga's vision of suburban life and its mysteries and fantasies. The ogre in the basement, the magic gasoline and the magic styrofoam take-home container, the plastic bag, the migraines, insomnia, bad joints...it's ironic of course, but it also works literally as a translation of fairy-tale structures into American suburban landscape and life; the everyday artifacts of your life infused with mystic potential. That's as ambiguous and weird as it is appealing, but clearly there's some love, too, in the story about insomnia, with the graveyard wandering and the nighttime bicycle rides along the wide, tree-lined streets. And hatred for the starlings, that fit so well into the suburban settings that they blight and pester. Oh, what a cool book! I took my time reading it, because it deserved that.

( And la la la, I am a Universalist--Unitarian Universalist--so Jeepers Jacobs would not approve of me and my fundamental lack of fear of hell. )

Vance, James, writer, Dan Burr, artist: Kings in Disguise
(oh...wow. Like Busman's Honeymoon, it's clear in places that this started life as a play...but it adapts into this form very well. Recommended.).

Menjivar, Jose: Cicada
(neuroses, serial adultery, suicide...the lighter side of comics).

Gross, Milt: He Done Her Wrong
(omg, this is my kinda wordless novel. Circa Lynn Ward, but possessing a sense of humor--a very broad and brilliant sense of humor, as all the best cartoonists have--and not another stinking woodcut book. Recommended!).

Kochalka, James: Fantastic Butterflies
(I am continuing to dig Kochalka).

Miles, Scott: Big Clay Pot
(oh, what a nifty premise, and what a sweet, sad little book).


Manga:

Takada Yuko: 3x3 Eyes: Blood of the Sacred Demon, 3x3 Eyes: Curse of the Gesu
(the former reads almost like a pilot in its own right. Now that would make a good series intro! But it's still not the first volume, and I still have no idea what the first volume is, or if my library even has it. I could Google it, but I refuse to, on principle. Starting with volume 1 shouldn't require research).

Hirano Kohta: Hellsing vol. 5
(...oh, I think I see some plot. Neato!).