Augie DeBlieck Jr.’s review of Rock Bottom this week (which starts “This is a book that deserved to be read ages ago, and that I should have recommended to you when there was a better chance for a stray copy to still be left on your retailer’s shelves. The book isn’t out of print, though. It might not be handy to grab one on Wednesday when you pick up the rest of your books, but you can still order it through your retailer and get it in a week or two.”) gets Rock Bottom publisher, Larry Young, thinking about being a publisher of graphic novels, as opposed to monthly comic books:
Comic Book Resources’ Augie De Blieck, Jr. identifies the strength and weakness of being a backlist publisher: the strength, of course, being that every book we publish is a genius work of art, but there’s no reason to go in on Wednesday because it’ll be there for you when you’re done with the latest corporate crossover event that doesn’t mean anything in the scheme of things and barely entertains you with superheroes who were old when your dad read them off the newstand. The weakness, then, being that maybe it’s there and maybe it’s not, and if you remember to ask your retailer to order it and he actually does, and there’s stock in the Diamond warehouse and it doesn’t snow in Texas stopping trucks maybe you’ll get it in a week or two.
Which of course is why every book we do has to be a genius work of art. No audience is going to go through all that just to get the latest fluffy event comic.
January 23rd, 2007 at 11:01 pm
Ah yes, another holier-than-thou shot at superhero comics by an indie publisher. That was unexpected.
Oh, and a shot at our collective fathers. That was classy. After all, they certainly were mindless drones as well, buying superhero comics as they did. I love it when my living relatives are insulted.
I do hope you have fun existing on razor thin profit margins for the short time that you manage. Where would I be without companies or creators like you? The wails of anguish when you and your pretentious brethern wink out of existence, unremembered and insignificant, sustain me. I revel in your obscurity, take joy in your demise. My world would be joyless.
Sincerely,
Mithel
January 24th, 2007 at 11:33 am
I almost never respond to these things, anymore, because… well, what’re ya gonna do? But “Sincerely, Mithel” was just so funny to me after that (possibly willful) mis-reading, I figured I’d come in out of retirement… not to argue points or shake my head sadly at Mithel’s world being joyless without us, or anything, but only to point out that neither did I take a shot at “our collective fathers” in general or Mithel’s “living relatives” in particular. I only wrote “…barely entertains you with superheroes who were old when your dad read them off the newstand.”
This, of course, is only referring to the superheroes’ relative age and creakiness, and tangentially to my personal enjoyment, at 43, of stories written for 12 year olds. But if you dig it, rock on. The last time I liked a superhero book, Jemas took Waid and Ringo off it, so that shows what I know.
January 24th, 2007 at 11:37 am
For the record, my father isn’t offended. He acknowledges that he is, indeed, somewhat older than me.
January 17th, 2011 at 6:24 pm
Holy crap! I couldn’t have said that any better