Via Heidi comes this hilarious rant from Eric Powell and the Creators Front for Diversity in Comics:
Which is all well and good, but unlike the situations in Egypt, Tunisia, etc. it seems unlikely that change in comics will occur from the bottom up. Until we have more "mega-corporations" willing to pay creators top dollar to make non-superhero comics, Marvel and DC will continue to dominate the market. (This complaint is nothing new, by the way, and the one big creator-owned success story in all the decades people have been bemoaning the superhero comic dominance was Image, which was primarily superheroes.) By the way, loath as some creators may be to admit it, DC has lots of non-superhero books; I've been tearing through our DC comp boxes during my sick leave so it's pretty fresh in my mind. But I'm biased; Robin has had three job offers in the past month, and of them all the DC work has paid far and away the best page rate. He's currently working on half an issue of DC Universe Legacies, about as close to the video's characterization of "your grandparents' comics" as it gets. Guess what? It's written by Len Wein, and it's fun. Also biased here, I like Len and have known him a number of years. And I'm old enough to be a grandmother. But I also buy and read all kinds of comics from all kinds of genres (whose creators don't make a living from them), and have for years, so I somewhat question the point of preaching primarily to the end user. Even so, the video is amusing.
Which is all well and good, but unlike the situations in Egypt, Tunisia, etc. it seems unlikely that change in comics will occur from the bottom up. Until we have more "mega-corporations" willing to pay creators top dollar to make non-superhero comics, Marvel and DC will continue to dominate the market. (This complaint is nothing new, by the way, and the one big creator-owned success story in all the decades people have been bemoaning the superhero comic dominance was Image, which was primarily superheroes.) By the way, loath as some creators may be to admit it, DC has lots of non-superhero books; I've been tearing through our DC comp boxes during my sick leave so it's pretty fresh in my mind. But I'm biased; Robin has had three job offers in the past month, and of them all the DC work has paid far and away the best page rate. He's currently working on half an issue of DC Universe Legacies, about as close to the video's characterization of "your grandparents' comics" as it gets. Guess what? It's written by Len Wein, and it's fun. Also biased here, I like Len and have known him a number of years. And I'm old enough to be a grandmother. But I also buy and read all kinds of comics from all kinds of genres (whose creators don't make a living from them), and have for years, so I somewhat question the point of preaching primarily to the end user. Even so, the video is amusing.
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