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People are always looking for the next big thing in comics. Well, in everything really, but I write about comics, so I'll keep this comics-focused. You know what I think about when I think about the next big thing in comics? This part of this interview Jim Amash conducted with Roy Thomas back in 1997...
I remember this one lunch with Jack [Kirby], and probably Sol Brodsky and John Romita [Sr.] and Frank Giacoia; five or six of us. This was one of the relatively few times Jack had lunch with us, as opposed to Stan [Lee]. The only thing I remember from that lunch, besides nice anecdotes and being with an entertaining guy, was somebody asking, "What's going to be the next big thing in comics?" Superheroes had been going for years; what's next? Jack said, "I don't know more than anybody else, but the one thing I can tell you is, it's not gonna be me, and it's not gonna be Stan Lee. It's gonna be two guys in a garage somewhere, coming up with something, just like Siegel and Shuster did." I think of that from time to time, when I see something like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles come out. There's a certain amount of truth to that, that these things come out of nowhere. And it's as likely to be done by an unknown as it is by an established professional.
(The full interview, by the way, can be seen in The Jack Kirby Collector #18.)

It's not like these people spring forth with an amazing concept, fully formed, from nowehere though. Siegel and Shuster worked for years to get Superman into print and, had publishers been paying attention, many would've found a copy of the premise in their slush piles. Art Spiegleman didn't just debut with Maus -- he'd been making underground comix since the 1960s. Todd McFarlene didn't just start launch Image doing Spawn -- even his run on Spider-Man didn't just spring from nowhere; he had sent over 700 submissions into various editors before getting a single, short backup story in Steve Englehart's Coyote.

These days, you're more likely to see cartoonists you've never heard of winning major awards. Because of work they've done on webcomics that maybe only now are just getting printed and "legitimized." They're out there, grinding away every day for years before they "suddenly" become an "overnight success." But the thing is that most people aren't paying attention to that, so it only seems to them like it comes from nowhere.

All the more reason to keep your eyes and ears open -- you're less likely to be surprised by the next big thing because, while everybody is looking for it in the obvious spots, you'll see it first because you've been looking in those garages.
If you look in comics from a few decades ago, they used to contain ads detailing how you could get a subscription to their regular titles. (The one I'm including as an image here was the version that I used when I got my first subscription.) I don't think it was ever a particularly lucrative side of comics publishing, but they did want to make sure people could still get their comics if their local grocery or drug stores didn't carry them. It would certainly be more work for them internally as they'd have to manage a bunch of individual addresses instead of just handing a huge batch of comics to a distributor. But the lack of a distributor meant they didn't have to pay one, and they could look good to readers by whacking that cost (or at least some of it) off the subscription price. Which lead to, in this example, an eight cent savings per issue for the reader! (And, hey, when I was 12 back in the early '80s, a whole dollar a year was note-worthy!)

The past couple of decades you've seen publishers shy away from subscriptions. They still have them, but they don't promote them nearly as much. In fact, you generally have to dig pretty deep to find anything about them on most publishers' sites. They're just as problematic as they ever were in terms of logistics, and their profit margins are even thinner.

Which makes this bit I stumbled across on Marvel's site interesting. To get a subscription, there's just an online order form. Pretty standard, no problem. Fill it out with your credit card info, comics start arriving in your mailbox. Done! But if you do run into problems with your subscription for some reason, here's the contact info Marvel provides...
Marvel Subscriptions
PO Box 727
New Hyde Park, NY 11040
TOLL FREE: 888-511-5480
marvelsubs@midtowncomics.com
Most of it is pretty non-descript and could be anything from a generic call center to just some guy's apartment. But check out the domain on that email address -- MidtownComics.com. Midtown, if you don't know, is a brick-and-mortar comic shop with three locations in New York, including one right in Times Square. You can stop into that, or any of their locations, just like any other comic shop, and pick new comics off the rack, or maybe some back issues, or some statues and action figures, or whatever. They have in-store pull lists, like most other shops, but they also have a subscription service where you can have all of your new comics delivered by mail anywhere in the United States. And they're shipped from their warehouse in New Hyde Park. (See above.)

So it would seem that Marvel has, at some point, farmed out their subscription processes to Midtown Comics. I suspect the order form on Marvel.com sends the info directly to Midtown and bypasses Marvel altogether. Which would mean, while subscriptions are still available, Marvel themselves have nothing to do with them any more.

That's not intended as a criticism, by the way; it makes complete sense from a business perspective -- that type of distribution is far outside their baliwick. But it's still an interesting change that I don't recall hearing anything about previously.
Here are this week's links to what I've had published recently...

Kleefeld on Comics: On Business: Changing Aspirations

FreakSugar: Fanthropology: Self-Storytelling
http://ift.tt/2xYjUVX

Kleefeld on Comics: On History: Moving Target Review

Patreon: MTV Geek Classic: Kleefeld on Webcomics #40: Holiday Shopping

Kleefeld on Comics: Weekly Comics Links
http://ift.tt/2yNoxAZ

FreakSugar: Webcomics Wednesday: PA Outrage
http://ift.tt/2yKicXM

Kleefeld on Comics: On -isms: I Am Alfonso Jones Review

Patreon: MTV Geek Classic: Kleefeld on Webcomics #41: Frank Page Interview 

Kleefeld on Comics: On Strips: Gordon Campbell Tells the Truth 
To Tell the Truth has had a solid life on television, beginning in 1956 and coming out with new episodes (in fits and starts) for over 25 of the following years. The concept is basically that three individuals claim to be the same person; a group of panelists then ask questions of them to see who seems to be telling the truth about their identity. It's first iteration was host by former Superman voice actor Bud Collyer, who I mentioned last year hosted an episode featuring Chester Gould.

I came across a more interesting episode, though, featuring Gordon Campbell from 1961. Campbell certainly isn't as well known as Gould was, but here's his overview story that Collyer reads on behalf of Campbell during the episode...
I, Gordon Campbell, am an authority on comic strips. My collection contains examples of some 2000 different strips, many of them no longer in existence and some of them dating from before the turn of the century. It contains such rare items as Foxy Grandpa, Buster Brown, Mutt and Jeff, vintage Little Orphan Annie, And Her Grand Old Name Was Maud, The Shenanigan Kids, and the first of all comic strips, The Yellow Kid. Mine is the largest private collection of comic strips in the world.
What I find interesting is that, while there is one reference to collecting strips being a "curious hobby" it's otherwise treated in a reasonably serious fashion. The panelists even seem eager and excited to talk about their (presumably) favorite strips.

Campbell's status is much like that of Bill Blackbeard's. His collection was indeed impressive (although I gather Blackbeard's surpassed it at some point) probably owing in large part to the fact that he spent much of his professional career as art director for the Newspaper Printing Corp. The collection appears to have gone to Steve Geppi's Entertainment Museum sometime after Campbell's death. I don't believe any of it is on display, however, so it's accessibility seems rather limited, as the Geppi's doesn't have the same type of research capabilities as, say, The Billy Ireland Museum.

I can't seem to find any particulars about Campbell's death. I found a reference to a Gordon Campbell who was born in 1928 and passed away in 1985, but that would mean he would've been 33 when he appeared on To Tell the Truth and, frankly, he looks considerably older than that in the episode. Beyond that, I can only say that he'd been gone for at least a few years by 2008, and that his estate largely went to his nephew as he and his wife had no children.

In any event, I find it interesting that Campbell and his efforts were recognized on television as early as 1961. You can watch the full show if you like, but Campbell's portion begins at the 17:19 mark...
Alfonso Jones is killed in this book. His death happens on page two, so it's hardly a spoiler. The rest of the book then relays who he was and what he meant to those who knew him, initially through flashbacks but then also through commentary Jones himself makes as a ghost.

Jones, it turns out, was a bright and talented fifteen year old. He worked hard, both at school and as his job as a bicycle messenger. He was in the school play. His father was about to be released from prison after DNA evidence finally proved his innocence. Things were going well. Until a random and unnecessary act of violence from a police officer.

The story is original, but it feels far too well-trod. Not because other writers have written the same thing, but because we hear about this on the news day after day after day. An unarmed Black person is killed; the cop swears he was justified despite all the evidence to the contrary; there are marches and rallies and tears, and callous attacks of character against the victim; the cop walks away with barely even a slap on the wrist; the victim's friends and family can do nothing but mourn and shout into the void in the hopes that someone will hear. If you haven't heard this story at least a dozen times, you've been actively not paying attention. The most fictitious element of this story is on page 148, where we see that the President is a Black woman.

Which is not to say that this isn't powerful story. We get a lot of insights into who Jones is that frequently get left out of mainstream news reports. Particularly the impact he has/had on his classmates. There's plenty here to have readers connect and empathize with Jones. So it's no longer that lone, unflattering picture that the media often uses for Black victims of police violence, but a fully realized and rounded-out character. He's a boy with hopes and dreams. Some longer term than others, some more realistic than others. But he quickly becomes a boy readers care about, and one they're saddened to see go -- even though he dies almost as soon as he's introduced to them.

And lest anyone be concerned that this story is "clearly" a social justice warrior book meant to stoke hatred against the police or something, the officer in question is given a sympathetic story as well. As the title suggests, the story is definitely Jones' but the cop is not portrayed as some Black-hating Klansman either. He's not just a simple straw-man argument or generic boogeyman, but he's got his own worries and fears as well. Ultimately we don't learn what exactly was going through the character's mind when he shot Jones, but Jones himself feels conflicted about his killer from what he does see.

I was surprised at the effectiveness of the story structure. For as much as they jump around in time, between flashbacks to memories to stories the dead tell each other to the "main" story, it holds together very well. As a reader, I was never at a loss for when I was supposed to be relative to Jones' life (or afterlife). And while I said the story isn't unique, the details are. If you've been paying attention, you'll no doubt catch parallels to actual victims of police violence. "Oh, they said almost the same thing after Tamir Rice got shot." "Oh, that's the same reaction when Philandro Castille was killed." But, as has been pointed out elsewhere, those stories are all presented the same way already. "It looked like he was reaching into his pants for a gun!" "He was no angel!" The details in Alfonso Jones are original, even if the overall story, sadly, is not.

It was a powerful read. It's not long, but I actually had to set it aside for a bit because things got too powerful. Kudos to Tony Medina, Stacey Robinson, and John Jennings for making sure a moving story out of something we hear so often as to almost become numb to it. Which, I suspect, is a lot of the intention -- to make sure you don't forget that all of these deaths aren't just names and bad photographs, but real people who lived real lives and had a real impact on the world around them. Don't forget their names.
  • Daniel Peretti has a new book out from University Press of Mississippi called Superman in Myth and Folklore. I read an early draft of it maybe three or four years ago, and it was quite good then. For as much as has been written over the years about Superman, I'm continually surprised how new, insightful work like this can still be written.
  • Comic creator and historian Brian Walker and Manuel Borja-Villel, director of Museo Reina Sofía, talk about George Herriman show at that location.
  • In advance of a Tove Jansson exhibit opening today at Dulwich Picture Gallery, Jessie Thompson pens a nice overview of her career.

The Green Arrow that I first got to know was the Denny O'Neil/Neal Adams version from the 1970s. When he teamed up with Green Lantern, and they tackled those heavy social justice issues. I was young enough at the time that I think a lot of it went over my head initially, and I didn't pick up on the commentary until I re-read them years later, but I do think I like the idea of a superhero that tackled problems that seemed a little more mundane and got pissed off when Green Lantern tried sloughing off the regular people. My dad picked up the Mike Grell stories later when I was a teenager; I remember reading many of those, but I don't think probably all of them. I eventually picked up the 2001 series launched with Kevin Smith, but not until it had been running for a couple years. So Green Arrow hasn't been a constant presence in my comics world, even taking into account the periodic absences of his own title, but -- thanks largely to those early O'Neil/Adams stories -- I always kind of dug the character.

So I was happy to get a chance to read Richard Gray's Moving Target, published earlier this summer by Sequart. I've got several of the Sequart books and documentaries, and they'd all been pretty solid. I expected and got no less from Gray's book.

The first challenge in writing a history of Green Arrow is that the character has really been all over the place creatively. What Gray does is obvious enough -- tackling the character's trajectory in a fairly chronological fashion. This is made easier somewhat by not having several books about him being published simultaneously. And with some noticeable gaps in the character's publication history, it becomes fairly straight-forward to break the history down into chapters covering pretty distinct periods.

Gray takes advantage of many of the creators who remain alive to discuss with them in a fair amount of detail how they worked on the character. This not only informs the book's premise, but by including the full interviews, it helps to round out the perspective as one that's larger than Gray himself.

I found the portions of the book covering periods when I wasn't reading about the character very insightful. I was certainly aware, for example, of his creation by Mort Weisinger and George Papp, but I'd read few of those stories, and knew little about the character before Jack Kirby took him over in 1958. But more significantly, Gray's book also provided me broader character insights from the periods that I had read. His analysis of Grell's run was especially educational for me, and provided for a fascinating look at a character I had mostly assumed was still the O'Neil/Adams one I had read years earlier.

Further, Gray is able to develop a connecting thread throughout all the iterations of the character, including the multiple TV versions that have shown up over the past decade or so. Given the changes the character has undergone, I have to say this really impressed me that he was still able to find a common thread.

The writing is solid and, like I said, provides a lot of insights about the character. If you're familiar with any of the Sequart books, Moving Target falls very much in line with their general style and direction, which is, to my mind, a very positive thing. I really like the editorial direction of Sequart overall, and just really wish there had been an outlet like theirs twenty years ago. Chalk another success up for them!