Born to a destitute existence,
J.Hues quickly rose to the prominent level of uncomfortably poor. His real name
is shrouded in secrecy but if you ask him he might tell you it's Jason Hughes
(Dammit!).
Nothing much happened until he
graduated from college with a completely useless degree in English, and then...
nothing much continued to happen. Subsequently, J.Hues found himself working
at a toy store. Later, through some strange accident he fell sideways into the
IT field and has been trapped there ever since.
To keep his sanity, he writes:
novels, poems, comics, grocery lists, checks (too many checks), fake doctor's
notes... Maybe someday he'll get paid for all this.
A genius in his own mind, J.Hues
uses various grammatical no-nos to mask his complete and total inability to
craft a single genuine or unique idea. He's never happy unless he is blathering
on with his own obnoxious opinions and ideas. Wait, are you still reading this?
Read the damn column already!
“When I stand before the Gates of Heaven I will tell them that it’s rude to laugh from behind the locked doors.” --me
PRE-MATCH HYPE
Back at it again. Now you may think that this is a lot like sucking up someone’s ass and you all know that I have just too much pride for that. And of course it couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that the authors have a column right here at SBC. No, in fact it only has to do with the fact that I am a freak about completion. And since I looked at The Resistance thus far last week and I always thought it strange that Palmiotti and Gray launched not one but two ongoing WildStorm series in the same month, thus forcing me to always think about the one when thinking about the other I made the determination that since I’d written about the one I should just as well write about the other as the two remain interlinked and therefore… uh… maybe we should just do this thing.
Preston Kills is dying. You see, he got this great superpower, was told “You will be judged” and now he has exactly one year left before he dies. His brother, Rob, works for the police department. And, oh yeah, that great superpower Preston got: the ability to see how people died by touching them. At least that’s how things start. Agent Mickey Rinaldi set up a website for people who ‘will be judged,’ and at the behest of a friend, Preston signed up on it. Thus, leading Rinaldi to him. But she’s not like most FBI Agents. In fact, she’s not really like any FBI Agents, and she’s definitely got an agenda of her own.
Early in the run we meet Harmony Peterson. She, like Preston, has been warned and gained a bizarre superpower. However, as we meet her it turns out her year is up and we get a bit of a teaser about what Preston has to look forward to. This is exactly the strength of this series. By the end of the the fifth issue there are a whole slew of mysteries brewing, and any one of them would encourage a reader to return. Let’s take a look at some of them.
Of course, the largest mystery is the whole bestowing of powers on the twentieth birthday with a “You will be judged” warning and then death when you turn twenty-one. Then we have the mystery of Agent Rinaldi. Is she who she says she is and what is she really up to. How does this connect with the new Gen 13 series; after all those kids also got the ‘judged’ warning when they got their powers. Then you’ve got this apparent serial killer committing gruesome murders leaving messages at the scene of the crime saying “I want to be judged.” Clearly this person knows about the others and is feeling a bit left out. Then we’ve got some little girl named Alex in a complex who can move things with her mind and Rinaldi has some connection to that. And Rinaldi is looking for someone named Herod to unravel a secret. And finally we have a priest at the Rockland Psychiatric Hospital who can apparently control people’s minds. Is that enough to keep you coming back for the next issue. Hell, The X-Files doesn’t have anything on this one, and we’ve only begun to scratch the surface of the government conspiracy angle.
As I stated last week, I believe in the strength of covers to attract audiences. 21 Down has a consistent and distinctive cover dress with the large logo and the long narrow, almost widescreen, fully painted image. And while Preston bears a somewhat disturbing resemblance to Keanu Reeves on issue 5, each image has been a powerful moment from its respective issue. It’s a simple and effective design, utilizing the white space around the images to emphasize the significance of that frozen moment.
Palmiotti and Gray have fine-tuned this joint venture they call writing in both of their monthly books, creating two distinctly unique visions. While The Resistance is creating an entirely new world featuring non-stop action, 21 Down has been a much slower-paced exploration of a select number of individuals in a world that reads as very familiar. This book is driven by the strength of its cast. While there is plenty of action, it is entirely of a mundane nature (by that I mean no superheroics or sci-fi-ery (looky I coined a new word!)). Fisticuffs, gunfire, acrobatics, etc. A series that quite frankly would make one helluva dramatic series on television (though for the love of god NO Keanu in the lead role).
It is quite rare in American comics to find a series so character-driven. I can’t emphasize this enough because I am entranced by the dynamics of this small but growing cast of individuals, each with their own motivations and each with their small world of secrets and desires. When I first spoke with Jimmy Palmiotti about this series I asked how he could have an ongoing series when the protagonist was only going to live for one year, and he told me that the trick was to slow it down. Obviously no one expects Preston to age a year in a year and the series to be done in twelve months (we’re not dealing with Erik Larsen here), but I never expected it to be paced so slowly and yet still be so captivating. Like an episode of 24 you find yourself engrossed in every minute detail and fascinated that so much can be happening in such a compressed amount of time.
The writers aren’t quite as natural in the truly mundane moments, as I felt the conversation between Preston and Rob about their father and their own relationship seemed a bit forced. I tried to picture my brother and I speaking in that way and it just didn’t fly. Unless they were estranged for a long time from one another they would just talk a lot more comfortably around one another. But then I nitpicked the dialogue last week in The Resistance. It’s not bad, but it’s just not always ‘on.’ In all truth, there are probably only a fraction of authors in any medium that can pull off dialogue perfectly.
Artistically, Jesus Saiz is improving with each issue. That’s not to say he isn’t an impressive talent, because he is. His style is perfectly suited for this type of story. There are no overly-muscled buffoons nor are there any busty bimbos busting out of brass bikinis. Just regular folk in regular clothes. Of course, the horror element with the murders, the crime scenes and our peeks into what Preston sees when he watches them die are hauntingly rendered, using a thicker brush stroke. It would have been fun to come out here and tell you how much of a disappointment this book was and how much of a tool Palmiotti and Gray are—we could’ve started the next comics feud but dammit they had to go and produce a compelling work.
What it boils down to is that the weaknesses the book has are so vastly overshadowed by the ‘what the hell is going to happen next’ factor along with the sixty-four Unsolved Mysteries that 21 Down winds up being one of the most unexpected treats on the racks today.
ROUND 1
As the Direct Market continues to try and slowly find new customers, the comics companies seem to have realized that greater sales aren’t to be had if they keep themselves solely tied to these little niche holes. Comics first thrived by mass availability. Every mother in the grocery stores saw these four-colored covers promising them that if they bought them then they could get ten to twenty minutes of distraction and silence from the filthy little hellions at home. The kids had the option of candy or baseball cards or comics down at the drug store and the newsstands had magazines and papers and comics. They were everywhere. Now they’re exclusively available in hobby shops. Thus we are happy to sell 100,000 copies of a comic that at one time sold millions and millions of copies.
Should we be surprised? The direct market was designed for the casual fan to find a place devoted to more intense exploration of their interest. It was never intended to become the sole place these rags were available. Or if they were then the current state of the industry was inevitable and somebody proved themselves a real dumbass.
Of course, maybe it was DC Comics that spearheaded this movement so they could keep their sales down. The problem was when grocery stores and other mainstream venues virtually abandoned the comic book. The comics periodical (in the mainstream) was killed. Now with only the small comics shops the prices had to rise and availability became increasingly limited as each price raise drove away more fans thus spurring another price hike and suddenly we had a month where the #1 comic in the land sold below 100,000. Time to panic.
So the comics companies have started to be innovative. Let’s see some of the latest moves. Tokyopop spearheaded a new publishing initiative by offering their line of popular manga titles in traditional paperback sized collections at price points below $10.00 and offering well over one hundred pages a pop. While these collections squander and appear to be failures in the Direct Market, recent reports from the top bookstores (Barnes & Noble, Borders and the like) have revealed that Tokyopop completely dominates the top of the sales charts for graphic novels.
CrossGen Entertainment has spearheaded numerous innovations in ways to get their comics to the public. Again, CGE titles sell moderately well in the Direct Market on a monthly basis. But that is only the first of many ways these stories are available. Aside from the traditional trade paperback collections, the company developed an anthology package, offering their entire line in two trade collections on a monthly basis. This way, fans could read everything at a reduced price. Then, several months into this run, possibly taking a lead from Tokyopop’s success, the format of these books was modified to a smaller size and below the $10.00 price point. Full color and of the highest quality these collections quickly became the best value in comics. Inspired by the quality in these collections, CrossGen announced a new line of ‘Travelers’ collections. Trade collections of individual series in this smaller format.
Now rumor has it that the Essential Marvel series will be made available in these smaller sizes. Clearly, the American public and the mainstream booksellers are impressed with the sales of these collections. It’s important that the publishers keep pushing the envelope to get their product back into the mainstream. There are millions of comics fans out there. They read the newspaper comics every day and they read comic strips in magazines. The format is alive and well, and yet the industry is still struggling. It’s public awareness that the industry lacks. The next generation of fans doesn’t even know we’re here. Paperback sized collections of comic stories at price points comparable to a paperback novel could be just what the industry needs.
Another great idea would be to try and get those books into video game stores. There’s an obvious cross-market of fans there. Small paperback collections of classic and popular comic series racked in these stores would be sure to garner sales and raise awareness of this medium with the very fans that we’ve lost (after all, everyone seems to agree that video games have taken many of the next generation of what would have been comics fans). While these kids aren’t very likely to spend $3.00 for 20 pages of story and art, they just might be willing to fork over $8-10 for 100+ pages. If the quality is there, nobody will mind that it’s in the smaller format.
On a related note, Gutsoon Entertainment recently announced that their flagship publication, the weekly manga anthology for mature audiences (not porn though you sick bastards) Raijin Comics will be made available in the major bookstores as well. That publication runs over 300 pages for five bucks. More for less is the future of this industry.
I just went back and reread that. I almost pissed myself laughing it was so funny. Okay, so it wasn’t funny but damn am I one smart bastard. I think I may have actually come up with the way to fix the comics industry.. Who’d have thought. If I’d been alive in the 1700s I’d have probably founded a nation or something.
ROUND 2
Never ask the Big Kahuna what he’s thinking about. And never solicit suggestions from him. If I say, “Hey boss man, what’s worth talking about in comics,” he’ll say “Talk about farts.”
Well, farts are largely under-represented in comics. Wouldn’t it be something if Jim Lee had the major battle with Batman and The Joker and when Batman has the Joker by the scruff and pulls him in close, the Joker crinkles his nose and
“Damn man. What was that?”
Batman: Sorry man.
Joker: Did you just let one rip. I didn’t hear anything.
A moment of silence. Batman tries to get back on track and glares at The Joker when suddenly…
J: Oh my god, Bats! SBD! You’re killing me! What the hell do you eat man. Is that why you wear black, so no one will see the stripe on your drawers. Superman doesn’t have this problem. I need a new arch-foe.
B: Hell, Superman could probably break you in half with a fart. Dude’s got superbreath, he probably blows holes in the bed at night. That’s gotta be titanium underwear.
Cue the over-used scene where Bats and The Joker share a pointless laugh.
Oh, and he likes to crack jokes that I’m a lemur or something. Who makes fun of people calling them a lemur? Let’s pick the most obscure animal we can think of and go with that. So everybody join with me and let’s start calling him a takin. God that’s so-o-o-o funny.
There’s a reason this guy stays largely behind the scenes. He runs a nice site and I think it’s great that he’s strated running Matchmaker.com ads for all the sad and lonely comics fans…
“Genre fan looking for woman who can appreciate the difference between a photon torpedo and a dilithium crystal. Knowledge of pre-Crisis continuity a definite plus. I live alone in a swinging bachelor pad with my own door, though the refrigerator and bathroom are upstairs. Please call before nine as my mom doesn’t like me to take calls after that. I can’t wait to curl up beside you and watch the entire V saga on DVD.”
Content AND public service. How did this guy get overlooked in the Nobel balloting?
ROUND 3
Speaking of Barnes & Noble, and we were back when I was changing the world for the better you know, they have some exclusive PAPERBACK editions of those expensive Marvel Masterworks coming. Now they’ll only be $12.95 instead of the usual $49.95. You see, Marvel likes to collect the best of the best in their storied history and then sell it for fifty bucks. DC does this too with their Archives collections which reprint the classic beginnings of their universe. The problem is none of these collections are available in cheaper formats. The geneses of these superhero universes should be available in reasonable prices. Wouldn’t’ it suck if J.K. Rowling only put out $49.95 editions of the first two Harry Potter books so that all the fans of the latest volumes have to take out a second mortgage to find out how it all began.
K.O.
disclaimer: the opinions expressed in this column don’t necessarily represent those expressed by any sane and rational adult; they barely represent the views of the author and they barely resemble coherency as it is; nevertheless this column is chock full of satire and parody (as protected by laws protecting such things) and as such don’t sue me. look at it this way, this is all for fun, don’t believe a word of it (even if it is true), don’t take it too seriously, and if you do take it, take it all with a grain of salt—better yet have the truck back up to your house.
