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Another Link
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15th May, 2008 @ 14:12
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Kieth Olbermann- someone I wasn't previously familiar with- gives George W Bush some food for thought
(via Graham Linehan)
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Why I love Twitter
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15th May, 2008 @ 13:19
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I am a MASSIVE Fell fan, so naturally I'm following Ben Templesmith on Twitter (gosh that sounds like stalking doesn't it? Oh dear).
Anyway, he just "tweeted" this link: http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=562803
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Tweets for Today
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15th May, 2008 @ 05:07
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Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter |
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Tweets for Today
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14th May, 2008 @ 05:08
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Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter |
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Are Comics Too Expensive?
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14th May, 2008 @ 05:00
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I'm sure this won't be new to anyone, but Tom Spurgeon wrote a good piece about this subject recently.
Alan David Doane likes to quote Spurgeon's maxim that the only comic that's too expensive is a bad comic, and I can see where he's coming from... but I find I have to disagree. I think comics are WAY too expensive nowadays. I fully appreciate the reasons why they cost as much as they do, many of them contributing to the exceedingly high quality of a lot of the comics we have available in the current market.
But I would happily trade glossy colour pages and art that takes months to produce for black and white on bog-paper and the occasional rushed panel or figure, if it meant that comics would be cheaper.
Right now, I pay around two pounds for a comic. If I want to buy five, that's a tenner.
How many kids (and by kids, I mean under twelves) do you know can- and would- walk in to a shop and spend ten pounds on comics?
When they can walk into a bookshop and buy a manga trade with 300 pages for half that amount?
If I could magically make it happen, Marvel and DC's flagship titles about their household name characters would be aimed squarely at children (which doesn't mean we can't have the grown up versions too- remember that when DKR and The Killing Joke were published, the main Batman book was still aimed at kids). But kids need to be able to afford the damn things, and feel like they're getting value for their pocket money.
If we're really serious about wanting this industry to have a future, then we need to get kids reading comics again. And while I am very much part of the "wait-for-the-trade" camp (depending on the book, of course- lower selling titles, I buy the floppies, because they need and deserve the support) I strongly doubt that many eleven year olds are buying the "52" trades (which is a shame, actually. I shocked the shit out of myself by buying the first one the other week and rather enjoyed it, in a pop comics kind of way. It's a big dumb superhero ensemble piece, and I'm a sucker for such things, sorry indie peeps. And I would have LOVED it when I was nine. (Also: it has the Question in it. HOORAH!)).
Sorry this post is rambly and lacking in pointiness. I am exceedingly tired. I just think that this is an angle that rarely gets brought up in this debate.
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Damnation Page 90
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14th May, 2008 @ 01:31
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Page 90 of Damnation- which means there's only twenty four to go...
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Thinking About The Future
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13th May, 2008 @ 06:45
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So, I've been thinking quite a bit lately about where to go from here,
not just with Damnation, but with the whole comics-making thing in
general. Don't worry, I'm not thinking about giving up. I'm just not
sure what to do now that Damnation is nearly finished. I know I want
to get it into print, and in the short term that means minicomics- a
format it's well suited to, of course- but part of me wonders if I
should be approaching publishers, since that was my original
intention, when I started it last summer. Looking at it now, though,
that just seems like a collossal waste of time. For now, I'll do
minicomics, and see if I can sell any. And that still leaves the
question of what to do next. I know what the first thing I'm
going to do is- a reasonably short (between 40 and 60 pages) fantasy
adventure yarn for kids. But that's just a little thing to give me
some breathing space after Damnation, by just being fun to do. I'm
going to need something longer to occupy me after that. I've pretty
much decided not to do the war story I mentioned a while ago, but I do
have a few things germinating in the back of my skull. One of them is
a bit like Scalped but in space, another is a bit like Fell with
ghosts. Only neither of them is as derivative as that sounds,
obviously. I have a hankering to draw something in a pulp sci fi
adventure vein... Robots, monsters, space ships, people and aliens
punching each other and zapping each other with ray guns. Can't for
the life of me come up with a decent story to match, unfortunately.
Anyway, not sure why I'm telling you all this... Just thought I'd
share. |
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Tweets for Today
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13th May, 2008 @ 05:07
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Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter |
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Ooooh WANT
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13th May, 2008 @ 03:31
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Not On Strike BECAUSE MY UNION ARE A BUNCH OF WIMPS
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12th May, 2008 @ 23:41
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So, here's what's been on my mind lately...
Many people reading this will be aware of a blogger named Brett who runs a blog called "not on strike", who I hear staged a Massive Flounce last week. Now I don't want to spend too much time on what a dick such an obvious dick is (I mean seriously, the post at the top of the page over there right now is basically saying that if you thought the "open source boob project" was a bad thing, then you're a pro-lifer), but I'm mentioning this dick because he accidentally got me thinking about a couple of things.
First of all, this individual has described himself as a Libertarian, and also "super-liberal". In the SAME SENTENCE. Now, I ask you, what the fuck does that even mean?
Libertarianism means you think the government should be abolished. There's no getting around the fact that that is an extremist position. So apparently it is now possible to be a liberal extremist. I mean, even getting away from my usual bug-bear about how "liberal", which used to refer specifically to those who occupy the middle ground between socialism and capitalism, has been pretty much co-opted into a term for everyone left of George W Bush, surely that's pushing it. Has the term been so diluted now that it literally just means people who don't think they're prejudiced...?
I tell you, I am increasingly nostalgic for the days when people actually bothered to learn the meanings of words before using them, so that words like "liberal" meant something more than "not an outright nazi". But then, the level of general political conversation in our culture is barely above pre-school at this point anyway. Frankly, I'm still
reeling from the fact that the city I live in just elected a gibbering croneyist clown as it's mayor, in order to replace a man who did more to improve our quality of life than any other politician in the last quarter century.
Let me just break that down a little: amongst Boris Johnson's election pledges were that he would equip all police officers with a han-held scanner that can detect knives, and that all London's buses would be covered by "live CCTV" (which bearing inb mind that they all have CCTV cameras on them at present anyway, presumably means that those cameras would be transmitting to some bank of screens somewhere). Or to put it another way, he was just blatantly making shit up. And yet people voted for him.
Fuck, nearly 70,000 people voted for the BNP.
We live in an age where the majority of people have so little understanding of politics, that if Rupert Murdoch put his support behind an Orangutan he could probably get it elected Prime Minister. So I probably shouldn't get so worked up about someone describing themself as a liberal Libertarian... but fuck me, it does get on my nerves.
######
Anyway, I said he got me thinking about a couple of things, and here's the other one: the post in which our friendly numpty made this contradictory claim was in fact one in which he declared that " The right of commentors to freely express any idea shall not be infringed upon by the management of Not on Strike" and went on to outline a whole "Commenter's Bill Of Rights".
Now, I've come across this argument before; the idea that screening comments on your own blog, and choosing to delete ones you don't like (for whatever reason) is in some way an infringement of your readers' freedom of speech. Which is just the most absurd bollocks. I am a firm believer in freedom of speech. I think it is incredibly important that fools be allowed to make fools of themselves. But just as freedom of speech is not the freedom to yell fire in a crowded theatre, neither is it the freedom to make me angry in my own living room. And that's what my blog is; it's my little metaphorical living room on the internet. Which is why, when I'm here by myself, I sometimes draw the curtains so I can masturbate.
If you came to my house and started expressing views that I found offensive, there is a very good chance that I would ask you to leave. And if you say something that annoys the shit out of me in the comments of this blog, and I just don't have the energy to argue with that day, then of course I'm going to delete it. That's not an infringement of your rights. You can still express your views, just not here. As Ragnell says: get your own blog, they're free.
Freedom of speech is not the right to go around rubbing your stupidity and lack of social skills in everyone's faces.
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There are other things rattling around in my noggin at present, some related, some not, but that'll do for now. I may be back later if I find the time.
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