A selection of some of the funniest, most interesting and strangest quotes from the past week:
“He’s not a great actor. In fact, he’s pretty bad. But comic fans can’t help but appreciate it when he appears. ‘Nuff said.”
– Forrest Hartman of Gannett News Service, on Stan Lee’s cameo appearances in Marvel movies
“If they’d just been robots and talked and thought and acted like robots, it wouldn’t have caught on. But they were such Everyman characters that you treated them like they were a person, with flaws and imperfections and conflicted natures.”
– comics writer Simon Furman, on the appeal of Transformers
“It is extremely disappointing that Hasbro and DreamWorks would choose to promote a film to preschool children that the industry deems inappropriate for anyone under the age of thirteen. In their cynical attempt to wring every last dollar from one of this summer’s blockbusters, these companies have shown little regard for children’s well-being or parents’ desires to limit their children’s exposure to violent entertainment.”
– Dr. Susan Linn of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, on the marketing of the Transformers movie
“There are at least two different audiences for comics these days. What sells the best at Barnes & Noble isn’t what sells the best at a comic book store. They both think their market is the only one, and no one will buy what doesn’t sell in their kind of store. I’ve gone into a comic shop and asked why they don’t have kids comics. They say, ‘Kids don’t like Scooby-Doo.’ Of course kids like Scooby-Doo. What they don’t like is most comic stores.”
– cartoonist Kyle Baker, on the comics market
“I’ve had many conversations with creator friends of mine about the pendulum swing that happened in the wake of the IMAGE explosion back in the early 1990’s. The sort of ‘we don’t need no stinking writers’ attitude of the IMAGE founders resulted in what were nicely drawn comics with little story, for the most part. They became commodities and not comic books with good stories to go with the flashy drawings. The other major companies, in response, tried to emulate the initial massive success IMAGE had by doing similar types of books with crazy cover gimmicks thrown in for good measure … and the quality of the entire industry, for the most part, suffered. It drove many long-time fans away. In the aftermath of that sales bloodbath, the creative pendulum swung in the writers direction and away from the emphasis only on artwork as the selling point. It’s been that way for some 15 years or so now … and I think that pendulum swing may have reached its apex. My feeling is that in recent years, the quality of writing in comics has diminished. Maybe it’s not the writers’ fault … maybe it’s editorial edict that has replaced good story, plot and character development with the stunt … the event … to sell comics. Maybe I’m just a middle-aged fuddy-duddy who has lost touch with what makes for interesting comics.”
– artist Mike Wieringo, on the current state of superhero comics
June 29th, 2007 at 3:58 pm
“Of course kids like Scooby-Doo. What they don’t like is most comic stores.”
Awesome.
June 29th, 2007 at 4:26 pm
And what sells gangbusters on the racks at Borders, although DC is hesitant to admit this? SCOOBY-DOO.
Joe Staton probably sells more copies a month than most of DC’s top artists.
June 29th, 2007 at 4:42 pm
“My feeling is that in recent years, the quality of writing in comics has diminished. Maybe it’s not the writers’ fault … maybe it’s editorial edict that has replaced good story, plot and character development with the stunt … the event … to sell comics.”
‘Ringo hit that nail right on the head, friends.
June 29th, 2007 at 11:31 pm
I initially responded over on ComicMix, but I’ll paste it here, too:
“What they don’t like is comic stores.”
Not to distract from the otherwise eloquently summed up issue (in a great interview), but I don’t know that you can state that one line with certainty.
“It’s that their parents don’t like comic stores.”
Now THAT would be more accurate. For all the independence kids have these days, they are still dependent on their parents (more often than not) for transportation. If their parents will take them to a mall (which is more likely to have a B&N or Borders than a comic shop), they have access to comics there. If the parents read anything but comics, kids might HAVE to accompany their parents there and try to find anything to be interested in. I’m convinced that during my childhood, there were plenty of lame toys that only sold because they were available to bored kids who found them while impatiently waiting for their parents at a grocery or department store. This isn’t to suggest the kids don’t actually like Scooby…but that the kids don’t necessarily dislike a comic shop. It is a silly idea when it is almost certain that kids don’t actually a latte-serving bookstore that has less than 1% of its stock made up of comic book type stuff and, at best, 10% of its stock made to appeal to a wide spectrum of kids.
June 30th, 2007 at 12:09 pm
No, comic fans don’t appreciate when Stan Lee shows up in all of the movies… it is just sad and completely unnecessary. I could see the first Spider-Man movie, but all of them?
It just goes to show you how unprofessional the Marvel Entertainment production company is… and maybe that isn’t entirely their fault: I live in Hollywood and most of the ‘executives’ have no idea how to tell a proper story.
June 30th, 2007 at 11:06 pm
Criticizing Stan Lee’s acting skills is like criticizing Alfred Hitchcock’s acting skills; it’s not like either man is/was there to help push the story along.
January 17th, 2011 at 9:25 pm
Wow, that was an amazing article! Thank you so much for doing such a fantastic job with this, i’ll be reading regularly from now on.