§ Nice Art: By Wolfskulljack – much more at her website.
§ Well it’s been a while and I’m pretty rusty at this Kibbling. And half my feeds died since the last time I tried….hm. Let’s see if I still got it!
§ Comicbook.com has been sold, The Wrap reports. Previous owner Paramount sold CB.Com and PopCulture to Savage Ventures, one of those homes for lost media outlets that also recently acquired what’s left of Vice. Many of you probably didn’t know that Paramount owned the site, but that once marquis ownership gave it a stability that seemed rare in this world of media tumult in general and comic book media tumult in particular. They say “No leadership changes or layoffs are expected as a result of the acquisition, according to individuals with knowledge of the situation,” but… you know how that goes.
ComicBook.Com has a long, odd history, first as a mere placeholder site with a zillion dollar URL that goes all the way back to the 90s, with previous owners including proto online sales site Another Universe, Fandom.Com and CBS Interactive, which later became Paramount Plus. Paramount just took a nice $6 billion write down, is preparing to be sold, and is paring off little chunks of itself to save a penny here and there. Savage Ventures’ Sam Savage was CEO of CB.com at some point in its strange history so maybe he has some ideas of what to do with it.
While we ponder the future of CB.com, this is as good a place as any to bring up one of the greatest crimes in comics internet history: Comicbook.com’s 2019 purchase of The Comic Book Database, a fantastic resource for comics information. As a last snapshot from the Wayback Machine reveals,
IMPORTANT! ComicbookDB.com will be closing its doors on December 16th, 2019 as we look towards creating a new and improved tool for collectors to utilize. We want to make sure everyone has a chance to download their data & collections by clicking on this link after logging in. Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to contribute to the site and we look forward to seeing you again soon. If you have any questions, click here.
While the owners doubtless once had plans of integrating the CBD into some ür-comics site/price guide…that never happened, and all that beautiful information is now lost to the sands of time. Look at this site! Look how cool the internet used to be, kids! What a waste.
Hey Mr. Savage, I have an idea for you…
§ DSTLRY continues their media onslaught with Read the pitch deck 2 Amazon alums used to raise $5 million to turbocharge their comic-book startup, at Business Insider, which has a pretty iron clad paywall. You will have to pay $1 to read the story, but of course I did. Business Insider is well known for analyzing pitch decks, and this one was solid:
Dstlry’s story for investors was rooted in its content and relationships with human creators. It’s a media publisher that operates a marketplace with some Web3 components that allow it to verify ownership. But it’s specifically built not to feel like a platform for NFTs, short for non-fungible tokens. “The fun of digital collecting without the blockchain BS,” the company wrote on its website.
The company is betting on original, human-made content and using technology to bring that front and center. For example, it recently added the ability for creators to digitally sign and sketch on new comic-book editions.
Hm, I think I wrote almost the exact same thing myself recently…Since we like numbers here, I’ll confine myself to showing just one slide, the one with the sales numbers:
Not bad.
§ TCJ.com continues to put out great pieces every day, but I had this interview with Flying Colors owner Joe Field bookmarked for days. It’s a great look at the state of comics retailing with a true survivor and pioneer. And contrary to rumor, Flying Colors is NOT closing….it is moving to a new location because the previous landlord wants to install a bagel shop. Read the whole thing, but a sample:
It’s an interesting thing to say, and I think a lot of retailers would be tempted to say the opposite. Not that the direct market died, but rather that the direct market is all that’s left. The newsstand market evaporated, and that’s what’s left of comics. But I think you’re making the point that it’s sort of an auxiliary of the larger bookstore market, right?
Unfortunately, yes. Our last exclusive, if you want to call it that, for the comic specialty market is the periodical format. And publishers – particularly the larger publishers – are using periodicals as a way to amortize the cost of their book sales or book production. There’s really nothing being done other than a Free Comic Book Day, for instance, to promote the periodical market. That’s the last real exclusive that retailers have. I would hope that publishers will wake up to the fact that they really need to start promoting that format if they want to have a more sustainable comics ecosystem in the specialty market going forward.
What do you feel they could or should be doing to promote the periodical format that they’re not doing now?
In the past we’ve had co-op advertising. We have had price promotion. We’ve had a deeper discount for a better sell-in so that the product is actually on the stands. We’ve had creator tours or publisher tours. We’ve had all kinds of different things that could still happen if publishers really wanted to push our market. There’s good movement that’s happened recently in that DC has announced that they’re moving back their new release day to Wednesday, so the comic specialty market will be all on the same day. And there is some strength in that because if everyone is pulling in the same direction for new release day being Wednesday, that has something of an effect when it comes to how consumers buy their comics, and the energy that’s in the stores at the beginning of each new release week.
If there’s one thing I heard a lot of at SDCC during my brief forays to BarCon it’s that comic book industry marketing is in a pretty low state itself.
§ I’ve had so many links stored up in my tabs for months and months….here’s an old one Heritage Comics & Art Sales Surpass $100M in First Half of 2024 – people still like that paper stuff.
For the first time in their 48-year history, Heritage Auctions’ comics and comic art sales have exceeded $100 million during just the first six months of the year. According to Heritage, both the comics and comic art categories have seen significant growth in the first half of 2024. They reported that comic sales reached $63.6 million from January to June 2024, besting 2023’s $55 million for the same time period. Similarly, comic art surpassed $36.4 million for that timeframe in 2024, compared to $32.9 million in the first half of 2023.
Highlights of the year include a $6 million sale of Action #1, Heritage’s first comics and comic art auction that topped $28 million and the sale of Lee Elias’ Black Cat Mystery #50 original cover art for $840,000.
§ Comic-Con is in the rearview mirror but this piece on hotel prices that surveys the locals is a killer piece, at least if you’re a dedicated San Diego real estate Kremlinologist like me. The piece asks if it’s fair for Comic-Con to demand that downtown hotels offer large blocks of discounted rooms in return for staying in San Diego. Con-goers are all shouting yes, but many experts agree!
Economists Kelly Cunningham, San Diego Institute for Economic Research YES: Comic-Con generates considerable interest and publicity for San Diego worth many millions of dollars in promotion alone. The convention brings large numbers of visitors filling rooms that might not otherwise be occupied. Hotel guests spend additional money on other services that hotels provide, such as dining, event spaces, spa and other amenities, increasing their overall revenue. The downside is hosting the event during the busiest travel time of year when San Diego is already busy.
Lynn Reaser, economist YES: Hoteliers cannot afford to miss the 325,000 visitors attending the mega-event each year. Rates much higher than the average $215 to $425 nightly rates might deter attendees in a city that is already expensive. Other locales would compete actively for the business. The 58 hotels in the agreement have done it voluntarily and do it in their own self interest.
Many more similar opinions in the piece (with a few grumps). So please, keep those hotel rooms somewhat cheap.
§ That reminds me – staying over on Sunday night after the con, I was going to breakfast with pals and walking by the now empty lots where the wondrous carnivals had stood hours before and exclaimed “Sigh! Comic-Con is over!” and an obviously local guy walking his dog shouted “THANK GOD!” If St. Patrick’s Day lasted for five days here in NYC, I guess I’d feel the same way.
§ Speaking of SDCC, the SDCC Blog has The Shruggie Awards of San Diego Comic-Con 2024 up.
§ I’ve had the link to this biography of Kate Carew by Eddie Campbell saved for MONTHS, but it coming out in a few weeks!
Award-winning cartoonist Eddie Campbell writes the first extensive critical biography of this path-breaking pioneer artist. Kate Carew was America’s first great woman cartoonist, drawing for newspapers in the first two decades of the 20th century. She drew Sunday color comics alongside George Herriman, but it was in the idiom of freestanding caricature that she made her mark.
Her most endearing achievement was her cartoon alter ego “Aunt Kate,” whom she sketched into the proceedings, turning graphic reportage into her personal adventure from San Francisco and New York to London and Paris.
I’ve often wondered if there wasn’t some “lost woman cartoonist” who had pioneered auto-bio comics long before Binky Brown – it just seems like such a natural format. I’m sure some unknown died with pages of great diary comics that we’ll never know, but Carew seems to have been way ahead of her times…or perhaps, even more surprisingly, she was just OF the times.
§ And speaking of autobio comics by women, Mary Wings has died at age 75. She was the creator of one of the first queer comics, Come Out Comix, which she was inspired to make after rejecting both R. Crumb and the unsatisfying “Sandy Comes Out” in Wimmens Comix.
“It seemed so superficial,” Ms. Wings said in the 2021 documentary “No Straight Lines: The Rise of Queer Comics,” directed by Vivian Kleiman. “I thought, this has nothing to do with what it really feels like.” That night, back at home, she went to work with her pen and paper, and a week later she emerged with Come Out Comix, her own version of the sort of story Ms. Robbins had tried to tell. It was the first comic book about lesbians, by a lesbian and for lesbians.
§ And now, we come to…..the silly stuff.
§ Tragically, a Nicholas Cage cameo as Ghost Rider did not make it into Deadpool & Wolverine. Although Ryan Reynolds sort of tried.
Reynolds wanted Cage to join the film’s epic roster of cameos. Asked if Cage was pursued to reprise Ghost Rider, Reynolds answered: “Yes.” The actor then added: “Came to a conversation for sure. Yeah, but no.”
I’m not sure these two egos could have co-existed.
§ I enjoyed D&W but it was a LOT tamer than the Fox version as far as Deadpool’s sexuality and crush on Wolverine went, despite some tired old “gay panic” jokes. And it seems one joke about Deadpool’s butt was just too much for Disney.
According to Reynolds, “there was a note about this one line, and I’ll say this, which is that I was asked to take the line out. I was not even mandated to take the line out. To quote someone in a very high position of leadership at Disney, ‘I’m in for a penny, I’m in for a pound. And if you take it out, I’d love it. If you don’t, I will still love and support you, this movie and all the hard work that went into it.’ So, come on. At that point you go, ‘Do I want to stick with pride? Do I care? Am I going to die on a hill over one joke?’ Look, the answer is of course I’m going to die on a hill over one joke, but then you sober up a few weeks later.”
§ In our own Winners and Losers of SDCC, we praised actress Jennifer Garner for surviving an hour stuck in a Hard Rock Hotel elevator with aplomb. But People Mag elevated this story to its ultimate form with the perfect headline: Jennifer Garner Got Stuck in an Elevator Wearing This Breezy Summertime Staple. The staple in question is a loose floral blouse, and yes, I own some, you own some, and they are suitable for both a casual brunch with pals and a harrowing elevator ordeal.
§ Another ultimate headline: Farmers carve ‘Peanuts’ comic characters in corn mazes nationwide to honor 75-year anniversary. Over 80 farmers took part in the tribute and we may be a divided nation in many ways, but if a Snoopy made from a corn maze to cannot bring us together, then let this union fade.
§ CON WARS! Oh this is a good one! The tiny (122 sq mi, 1/10th the size of Rhode Island) isle of Malta has been divided by a culture clash as both The Malta Book Festival and the Malta Comic Con have been scheduled for the SAME WEEKEND in November. With a population of just half a million, there isn’t room for two bookish events on one weekend.
Merlin Publishers’ Chris Gruppetta said they did not have the manpower to attend both events. “My concern with the clash is that there’s a significant overlap in the people interested in books and comics, so the two events will cannibalise each other’s attendees,” Gruppetta told Times of Malta. “This year, the publishing industry is already in a crisis, so we are relying on book festival sales for a lift,” he added. He said, after a two-year hiatus, Merlin Library publishers will take part in the Book Festival and not Comic Con.
The organizers of the Malta Comic Con don’t think it’s a big deal though:
However, Wicked Comics, the organisers of Malta Comic Con, does not see the date overlap as a problem. Co-founder Fabio Agius believes people will be “delighted” to have multiple events to enjoy. While the clash was unfortunate, it was out of their control, he said. “These days, so many events are held in Malta it is virtually impossible not to clash with another,” Agius said.
I’m a bit suspicious of the suggestion that Malta is so crammed with activities that different dates couldn’t be found but…I’ve never been, so maybe Fabio is right.
§ This really deserves a post all its own, but if you want to read a gruesome dissection of the desperate times at Warner Bros Discovery (stock tanking, $9 billion write down) Matthew Belloni sums it up at Puck, but you WILL have to subscribe. While it’s easy to point to CEO David Zaslav’s shocking missteps – alienating talent, alienating the NBA, taking nearly $50 million in compensation while workers were getting laid off and good movies were being shelved – but maybe Discovery, the suite of nonfiction cable channels he owns, were also headed for ruin in the Cable-pocalypse:
A cynic might argue that Zaslav and his cohorts simply wanted to maintain the salary gravy train a bit longer, even if they knew the chances of success were small and thousands of people would lose their jobs. Regardless, Malone and Zaslav pounced, even though the transaction meant doubling down on linear TV, the exact business they were trying to escape. It wasn’t a great option, but it was better, in their minds, than resigning themselves (and their egos) to a future as a niche TV operator, like AMC Networks or A+E Networks, or as a content provider for the other distributors that would own the next 20 years of media. Who wants that? For Discovery and Zaslav, the WarnerMedia deal wasn’t a strategic merger, it was a lifeline.
It’s ugggggleeeeee. I’ll have more later.
