Mike Manley follows up on his post about fan reaction to the just-announced Batman: Brave & the Bold cartoon with an unapologetic post titled “The Walled City of Babymania”:
I don’t expect the babymen to ever see what I’m talking about, they can’t. But the fact is their taste is not the taste of a large pool of average readers, it’s the taste of the fetishist, the niche collector. They so resist change and want such a limited type of product that unless you have been following this stuff for years it’s really not something the average reader could even get into. Even back in the 80′s you had a big variety of comic, from Richie Rich, Archies, Conan, Rock, CarToons magazine, the Warren mags, Heavey Metal ( when it was good) Marvel, DC, Goldkey/Western all of which published a much wider selection of book. Now almost everything is superjocks, some kind of zombie and if it isn’t—it doesn’t sell worth a crap. And by sell I mean enough to make the creator a few grand minimum an issue, or a livable wage.
But the sad fact is since no new kids in any real number are coming into the hobby of comics and falling in love with them for a few years and since 90-95% of retailers are the worst kind of dumb businessman you can imagine, who don’t seek to build more customers, and definitely not kids, it’s a double whammy. There has been to my observation over a 10 year unraveling of the old idea of what the comic biz was always about driven faster to it’s doom and bust by the speculators.
Much more at the link.
April 9th, 2008 at 8:20 am
This man has balls of steel.
… I love him.
I normally don’t care for much DC related (and admittedly Justice Leauge Unlimited turned me off from the DCAU since there were so many characters I didn’t give two shits about), but I may just give this new Batman series a chance based on this guy’s nerve alone.
ILU Mike. Never change.
April 9th, 2008 at 9:19 am
He may not say it in a nice way, but he speaks the truth.
April 9th, 2008 at 10:41 am
So what if kids arent buying them, do they have to? If the stories are aimed at adults and the prices the same what is to stop people from getting into them when they are adult?
You dont see people screaming once a month about how the porn industry is dying because kids arent buying it
April 9th, 2008 at 10:58 am
While it’s hard to disagree with some of his points (similarly, I’ve heard that fish are easier to shoot if you put them in a barrel) mostly I think Manley does a good John Byrne impression. Which of course means it’s hard to discern his ultimate point through all the indignant arm-waving. In the longer post at the link he at least mentions manga–which is doing exactly what he complains the superhero publishers will not–namely, attracting kids, lots of them, to the form. So what’s his beef? By implicitly defining “comics” here as cape and cowl books, then bitterly complaining about how that market has evolved, he’s inadvertently lumping himself in with the “babymen”. While it’s certainly in Marvel/DC’s best interest to figure out some way to grab new young readers, the world will not end if there are no Batman comics for nine-year-olds. Today’s kids have Naruto to keep them warm.
Sometimes I think there are people who have so many years invested in hating what the Big Two have become that it’s hard to accept that the paradigm is shifting, and they matter less and less every day. Frankly, if their stupid creative and business decisions are hastening their own demise, shouldn’t that be a cause for celebration among those who believe that pseudo-mature superhero books, their publishers and fans have warped comics to ill effect? Unless DC signs your checks, why would you give a rat’s ass if they’re making the right moves to stay viable into the infinite future? I don’t see the continued availability of new Superman comics for children until the end of time as anything worth getting worked up about. Comics will continue without them, and without any of us.
April 9th, 2008 at 11:18 am
Zeitgeist, your comparison of the superhero publishers with the porn industry is telling.
I liken Marvel and DC to Rolling Stone, which has stuck to its original baby boomer demographic since its inception, and so still features articles on Robbie Robertson and Jerry Garcia’s corpse, whereas other music magazines like Spin try to reinvent themselves every few years to appeal to the kids. Of course, then something like pitchfork.com comes along and leaves all the print music magazines looking useless and outmoded. Which is right where the Big Two are today in relation to manga and the web.
April 9th, 2008 at 11:30 am
I cannot believe DC Comics/Time Warner continues to allow this horrible man to behave like this so immaturely online. How embarrassing for them.
April 9th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
The porn industry doesn’t have to worry about getting new viewers/readers/etc. because it is porn. There will ALWAYS be a demand for it. It’s evergreen.
Superhero comics? Not so much.
April 9th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
You know, I usually really enjoy talking with Mike at conventions, but now I think I’ll just leave him alone. I don’t want him to get any bitter bee babyman germs.
April 9th, 2008 at 8:31 pm
This is a tough issue. I’ll agree with Manley that the super hero comics of today are aimed at grown-ups, and that the hardcore grown-up fans of those comics are wwwaaaayyy too touchy about material featuring their favorite super heroes that’s aimed at children instead of at them. I can empathize with his frustration.
But the super hero comics publishers made their output more adult as a survival strategy. Comics got squeezed off the newsstands by magazines that brought higher profits, and the publishers increasingly turned to the direct market for sales. But the direct market brought its own demands on the publishers. Comic shops don’t now and never have existed in great numbers, and are virtually absent in small-town America. Comics became harder and harder for kids to find. So the overall market aged, and super hero comics aged in pace with their audience.
Seriously. If you look at the super hero books of the 80s, most of them were still being written for kids. Their 90s counterparts were aimed more at teenagers. And the comics of the current decade are generally aimed squarely at adults. And they had to be done that way. The only viable large-scale market the publishers had left to them dictated it.
Which does leave us in kind of a mess. Fewer and fewer kids are getting into American comics, and the current fan-base is getting older and older. We have yet to see what will happen when the manga generation outgrows manga (and outgrow it they will; there’s not enough adult manga material out there to satisfy the vast numbers of child and teenage readers the form enjoys today). Will those kids turn to American comics, or will they just stop reading comics altogether? The question remains open.
Personally, I’m happy to see comics material out there that’s aimed at any audience. Kids, adults, women, fans of genres that don’t involve grown men wearing spandex… I wish there was more of all of it, and that it could get into the hands of the people it’s being written for. Increasingly, it looks like the comic shop is not the place for that to happen. Which makes me almost as frustrated as Manley. Hopefully, I’ll avoid calling anybody a bitter bee. Babyman, though, has a nice ring to it. I think it’s time for Lobo to get a new catch-phrase…
April 9th, 2008 at 10:44 pm
90-95% of retailers are the worst kind of dumb businessmen?
About 80% of comic fans are babymen?
I don’t see how we can argue with Mike Manley… clearly he has statistics to back him up.
Jeez, gimme a break. Manley’s about as informed about the modern comics industry as I am about the modern animation industry. Difference being, you don’t see me spouting off on my blog about how 80% of all animators are whiny crybabies who go off on a crazy tear painting all comic fans with a wide brush because a few angry fans on the Internet tore into one piece of art from a project they’re working on.
April 12th, 2008 at 2:24 am
Manley’s screeds on this issue, as validating as they might be to a certain breed of DC/Marvel hater, are ultimately illogical and irrational.
Fans weren’t dissing him b/c his show isn’t aping what’s going on in the comics — even the most hardcore Batman fan can’t expect ‘Batman Begins: The Animated Series’ is going to pass muster as kids TV.
They dissed it because it evokes the pop-kitch stylings of the Adam West/Burt Ward crapfest which nowadays is rightly viewed by most folks as an embarrassing aberration.
Manley seems to have made the all too common mistake that in order for something to be acceptable kids fare it has to be made as kitchy, silly, or otherwise inane as possible.
But here in the real world, this is not the case. The best of the current crop of pop culture offerings operates on multiple levels in order appeal to the widest possible range of viewers, as the success of Harry Potter, the Simpsons, and even Naruto clearly shows.
Why anyone would deliberately try to antagonize and/or alienate any portion of their potential audience — especially in a field as increasingly marginalized as American animation — is a mystery to me. After all, Nielsen boxes don’t discriminate on the basis of age.