Monday, September 19, 2005

M.E. on the Emmys

I caught about half of the Emmy Awards last night and couldn't get too interested. Maybe if I'd seen most of the nominated shows, it would have been different. But it was a lot of the same old, same old...with stars singing (badly and intentionally so) a lot of vintage TV theme songs and no end to the self-congratulation. David Letterman came out and did a tribute to Johnny Carson that I'm sure was sincere but it looked like...well, it was like someone was holding his family hostage and they'd sent him out to deliver the speech under duress. For some reason, the director kept cutting to an audience shot of Conan O'Brien who looked like his family was also being held at gunpoint.

The best thing I saw was a brief segment by Jon Stewart. Here's a link to an online video of what he did. (The video is on the site of crooksandliars.com, which is a good place to look for current events video clips.)

• Posted at 3:35 PM · LINK

The Comic Book Bizness

Here's an interesting commentary from an investment website on the current health of Marvel Comics. The quick version of it is that the part of comic book publishing which involves making money publishing comic books is not doing so well, a fact obscured by merchandising and movie income. This has always been one of the shaky things about the industry to me. I hear that revenues are up, that some company had a great year, etc., but the optimistic announcements usually have a way of skirting the issue of whether the publishing of comic books is, in itself, profitable. If not, then we're left with the musical question: How sound is a business where the signature product is a loss leader? And there's another question, which is to what extent does this situation impact content?

I think in some ways, both DC and Marvel are currently in a situation not unlike what harmed DC around 1969-1971. DC went through a period where, in a very short period of time, they introduced and quickly cancelled a stunning number of new comics: Bat Lash, Anthro, Bomba, Secret Six, Angel and the Ape, The Creeper, The Hawk and the Dove, et al. Some of those books were quite good and some of them, I honestly believe, could have been hits if they'd been allowed to stick around long enough to find an audience. The result was that your average comic fan took the attitude regarding DC, "Don't bother to start buying anything...it won't be around long." Marvel, with its greater stability on the newsstands, took an easy lead. Today, both companies do a lot of events and stunts and they all seem to be about to kill off major characters, plus creative teams don't stick around long so many books are in a state of constant reinvention. With all that, I think they've lost a certain consistency without which you can't have much long-term reader loyalty.

That, I think, is one of the problems. There are others.

I have a few quibbles with the article I'm linking to but here's the biggie. Its author writes...

The comic book industry has long thrived on exploiting creators' ideas for maximum profit. Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster, the teens who created Superman back in 1938, infamously sold the Man of Steel to DC for $135, and they eventually died in near-poverty. Any work done for DC or Marvel is work for hire — the company owns all rights to it, lock, stock, and barrel.

Okay, first off, the man's name was Joe Shuster. I continue to be amazed at how often people who write about comics cannot manage to spell both "Siegel" and "Shuster" correctly in the same sentence. Secondly, Jerry and Joe might have died in near-poverty but thanks to a modest (very modest) pension from DC Comics, that was not the case. In fact, Jerry was living in a very nice condo in Marina Del Rey when he passed away and while it was not the mansion he deserved, it was far, far better than "near-poverty."

Lastly, not everything done for DC or Marvel is "work for hire." Even leaving aside the many books published by each which were proclaimed as "creator-owned," both have a lot of past cases where the "work for hire" designation was, at the very least, arguable. I'm not sure DC has ever even tried to claim that with regard to the efforts of Siegel and Shuster. Or as too many journalists write it, Siegel and Schuster.

• Posted at 11:41 AM · LINK

Sock It To Him

I just made a wrong turn on the Internet and found myself on this page of the website for the Luther Burbank Center for the Performing Arts in Santa Rosa, California. George Carlin is performing there in October and the above paragraph appears on the page ballyhooing his appearance. I know at least three people who read this site who will think it's hilarious that someone thinks George Carlin got his start as a cast member on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In. And if George sees it, he may even think of an eighth dirty word.

• Posted at 9:05 AM · LINK

Membership Has No Privileges

Since I never resigned or got kicked out, I guess I'm still technically a member of the Archie Club, an organization I joined for a dime (I think) back around 1961. Even then, I thought it was kind of a scam. You got a pin and a certificate and a few other items and hey, how about that membership card? Is it possible they could have spent less on them? One color on cheap paper with the printed signature of a fictional character. Yeah, there's a press credential that will get you into all the important places. It especially annoyed me that the card said I was "entitled" to be a reporter for their magazines...like they were bestowing on me the honor of sending them stuff to fill up those text pages that nobody read. This, I did not do, though I was tempted to submit an item about crummy comic book fan clubs...or maybe one about how I'd decided that at age nine, I was outgrowing the reading of Archie comic books. Somehow, I don't think they'd have printed either.

Anyway, of all the "clubs" one could join as a comic book reader, the Archie one was just about rock bottom. Over the next week or two, I'll try to discuss some of the better ones.

• Posted at 1:58 AM · LINK