Having today received a press release from Chuck D (of Public Enemy fame) regarding the collected edition of his comic Public Enemy, Vol. 1, Welcome to the Terrordome with Adam Wallenta, it came to occur to me that I hadn’t read a single thing about this floppy as the series was happening.
While, to be sure, the Public Enemy comic sounds like a bit of a train wreck to me, that’s true of any number of celebrity “reality” shows that have managed to make a fortune. And I remember that while KISS, Nicolas Cage, Insane Clown Posse, Tori Amos and more have put out licensed comics, those books sell more like indie books, with a few thousand people picking them up. What happens with licensed properties is that a handful of hardcore fans of the person/band/property and a handful of hardcore comics fans pick them up. Ultimately instead of being able to capitalize on the popularity of the thing you’re covering, you end up cheapening the overall community by introducing one more thing that’s not popular, doesn’t do well and seems to be just a piece of merchandising rather than art.
It seems bizarre to me that this happens–that popular people and media are constantly brought into comics and then succeed in only drawing in a fraction of the audience that those people would have had in their own medium–and that we continue to welcome them in. Why not simply say, “A Public Enemy comic that’s not good enough to cut the mustard at a mainstream publisher, shouldn’t be on the shelf through a small press?” It seems to cheapen all of comics, in my opinion, to see that the expectations for our form are often so much lower than those for prose, music, cinema, etc.
This isn’t to say that there are NO good licensed products out there in comics, by the way. WildStorm’s Chuck, IDW’s Transformers, Dynamite’s The Man With No Name and Dark Horse’s Aliens and Predator books are just a few of the many fine licensed comics out there in today’s market. Still, I believe that comics publishers are so desperate for just a little mainstream attention and acceptance that these things are constantly cranked out, but what really happens? Instead of comics getting a little love from the hip-hop community, our audience ends up giving a little love to hip-hop (or whatever…I’m just picking on poor Chuck D because it was his press release that started this) and get nothing in return. It seems more likely to me that a comic fan went without X-Men one week to get this book than a music fan going without some iTunes downloads to be seen in a comics specialty shop. Maybe that’s a bit of a leap, but…!
Thoughts?
December 9th, 2008 at 8:42 pm
Thoughts?
1) That you don’t really know how well these things do. One of the frequent goals of books like these is to sell through other places beside the direct market. Looking at the DM figures won’t show you how many copies of Comic Book Tattoo sell through Amazon, or how many copies of a rock band’s comic sold at their shows, through their fan club, or via other means.
2) That a “mainstream publisher” chooses not to put out a comic book (or doesn’t go after it at all) does not mean that a smaller publisher shouldn’t publish it. The “mainstream publishers” are hardly the final arbiters of taste. Marvel has a bad track record with non-superhero books. DC is now doing some licensed books through Wildstorm, but they were out of the whole licensed thing for a while. And often a smaller publisher will do a more respectable attempt at a licensed book.
December 9th, 2008 at 8:54 pm
Nat, I didn’t mean to imply at all that smaller publishers SHOULD NOT do these, merely that when some of these books are patently awful, smaller publishers don’t help themselves establish street cred, or the comics community pick up new readers, by jumping on them because of the promise of short-term sales at Hot Topic.
December 9th, 2008 at 8:56 pm
While I don’t disagree with your overall judgment of licensed comics, I think hip hop comics deserve a little more attention. While I haven’t read this Public Enemy comic yet, I wouldn’t be so quick to judge it as “merchandising rather than art” because of the long history between comic books and hip hop culture. I’ve been meaning to do some research on this, but you can see the influence of comics in a lot of graffiti (especially Kirby in murals in the 70s/80s), the names of rappers/DJs/b-boys, and in references in rap.
Now it seems like that’s coming back around. Last year saw the release of the graphic novel Sentences by Vertigo and I know a few members of the Wu-Tang Clan have comics in the works. This could fall into that continuum… or it could just be meaningless merchandising. I guess we’ll see.
December 9th, 2008 at 9:14 pm
I don’t know that doing a lackluster licensed book does any worse for the publisher’s rep than doing a non-licensed book of similar quality.
I’ve not read the Public Enemy comic; if you have, has it really changed your opinion of the output of American Mule? (If you’ve not read anything else by American Mule, then the book succeeded in the first step of publicity: getting your attention.)
December 9th, 2008 at 9:26 pm
Tim, that’s a really good observation that I hadn’t thought of because of my overall cynicism on these types of publications. I wasn’t a fan of this book, and my knee-jerk reaction was to lump it in with other shabby licenses. Your comment is being filed in the back of the creaky, drab recesses of my mind for later processing.
December 9th, 2008 at 11:41 pm
Like Tim, I wouldn’t be so quick to judge the Public Enemy book as a licensed product. While I never saw the book in stores, I do know that it was sold in stores, and that I saw Chuck D at the 2006 San Diego Comic Con promoting the book. (Actress Rosario Dawson was also there that year promoting the book that she had some involvement in producing.)
In a related aside, a friend living in the Phoenix-metro area also told me last year that Atomic Comics had a signing for Public Enemy. He said the turnout was amazing, and that Chuck and Flav showed up with the entire crew. My buddy gushed about how great they all were with the fans, and said everyone seemed to have a fantastic time getting comics, records and CDs signed.
Like anyone who regularly reads comics, I’ve seen my fair share of books that could be considered a waste of pulp. Books with nothing behind them but a creators vision, and varying degrees of production value. (The same could be said of books produced by the majors as well.)
At the same time, really good comics with capable storytelling and art still often fail to find enough of a readership to sustain them. (Manhunter, anyone?) So there’s really no way to say what books deserve shelf space. As in all other commercial industries, the consumers ultimately decide.
And I, even in my near-infinite comic book wisdom, can’t dismiss what something like a Public Enemy comic might bring to the genre.
Is it the kind of comic book that I’m interested in? No. (But I am a long-time fan of Public Enemy’s music.) And do I expect a book like it to elevate the art form? No.
But do I think that a book like that can bring people into comic shops who might not ordinarily visit them? Yes. Absolutely. And when viewed from that angle, for me it seems like more of a gain for comics than a loss.
December 10th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
Check D is the real deal. I’ve met the guy (briefly, but still…) and he is gracious, intelligent, and genuine. I haven’t read this book but I’d be surprised if he put out a bad product.
December 11th, 2008 at 9:59 pm
I can’t speak for any of the other books you mentioned but I can speak for Comic Book Tattoo. You claim that these “licensed” properties sell more like “indie” books and do more harm to the medium than help it.
If that was the case with CBT it wouldn’t have sold out at SDCC, the softcover would not have gone back to print, it would not have been on the featured tables in Barnes & Noble and it would not currently be the #3 best selling Image book and in the top 100 selling graphic novels on Amazon.com.
You comments also show that you didn’t bother to read CBT, instead you just lumped it in a category that you label as “just a piece of merchandising”.
The efforts from the almost 100 different contributors of CBT, as well as the editor Rantz Hoseley (who also contributed to the content), was nothing short of inspired. You really have no right to include CBT as an example of “What Comics Do Wrong” when you apparently have no experience with the material.
Maybe you read CBT from cover to cover and hated everything in it. If so, you’re entitled to feel that way, but you should do your research before you make claims that the book only sold a few thousand copies and “cheapens” the community.
Those involved with CBT are a very talented group of people and they all worked extremely hard to make sure the book would not only be able to stand on it’s own as a collection of good comics, but that it represented comics positively to those readers who may not be comic book fans.