FULL BLEED: CHICXULUB STARTS HERE

Friday saw the end of the official stretch of the Fake Believe campaign. We did great. More than four times the initial ask (and that'll probably be the next one because I'm lacking in confidence.) Almost 10% more backers than last year's project (that being All Waters Are Graves, the first book I ever Kickstarted). All good. All great. Now, the campaign is continuing, something about late pledges which is a thing now. I'll probably let it run until the end of the month, April, right? The cruelest month, something about desire. So yes, the pledges are still adding up even as we speak. Over $2100 now. I'm still amazed.

While the campaign was counting down, I was down in Orange County at this year's Wonder-Con, at the Anaheim Convention Center. Yeah, I was checking my phone while waiting in the giant concrete holding pen everyone was routed to while waiting to be let into the show. For an hour and a half. After driving down in a rush and having timed out of breakfast and and and. Not the most fun. I like going down to Southern California and seeing folks I know. But sometimes things line up in such a way as to be draining and exhausting before the doors even open.

I probably used this to describe the show last year, but exhaustion seems to be a theme now. Or maybe it's just me. It's just me. You're right. I'm not getting any younger and things are still moving, still happening. Things are rolling. This is America and the people are in the game, dig? Yeah. It's just me.

Which is why there were no big publishers at Wonder-Con. Prism was there, Maker bless 'em. They're in it for the long haul. Fanbase Press was there. Aspen was there. They still make comics, right? I've been out of the game awhile. And there were the companies selling comics that aren't really comics but are IPs for sale and just waiting to be acquired. Those are comics like that cute little husky in The Thing was a sled dog. Sure, they're comics. They're not really comics.

There were independent and self-published comics teams there. Plenty of self-published authors too (I may get back to that section and have some... thoughts, which is problematic as I'm in that cohort. I dig it. I'm clear. No, really, achieved nirvana. I'm down with my interplanetary clam heritage.) There were a number of folks out there just doing it on their own. That takes force of will, or desire (back to that cruelest month) or a stubborn streak a mile wide. But of course indie publishers are there, because a show like this is a major market for them, or it can/should be. I was there. Conventions are how you sell books that don't make it into Previews (or even if you're lucky enough to do so.) Yes, Previews is a dated reference. Even my C4 is old. Like Batman. That's a joke.

The indies were out there trying to move books. But you know who wasn't?

Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, Boom, IDW, Fantagraphics, Comico, Image. Wait. Comico. Yeah, sorry. I'm old.

Right. There were no big comics publishers out on the floor. Nobody who could potentially pay money to creators to make comics that they would then sell. Now, there were probably folks from those companies moving through the crowds, sure. But not standing underneath signs that advertised as such. I know. Los Angeles is such a long drive for the folks from Warners to come down. Just unthinkable. I mean, have you seen the traffic on the Five? Yeah, just awful. It’s a burden, really. So it’s totally understandable as to why DC wasn’t there. I mean, who would be?

Now it’s entirely possible DC wasn’t there last year. Or the year before. My memory’s not what it was. But the thing is, DC used to be the one reliable presence at Wonder-Con. Even in the very early 2000s when I started going to the show because I went insane and decided I was going to write comics. Marvel didn’t go to shows for the most part. This was back before being a movie powerhouse, when they were desperate and would do all kinds of crazy things just to get people to pick up the comics. Sometimes they were even successful. DC, though, they kept the torch burning. They’d show up. It wasn’t always the fanciest presentation, but they were there.

Not anymore. I dunno, maybe they were doing panels (I skipped those for the most part and was only around a day.) But lemme tell ya, most people there were skipping panels unless they were tied to a big popcult thing. Panels aren’t what people see. (Yes, I’ve been to panels where the audience outnumbered the speakers. I’ve spoken on such.) The panels are for the die-hards. The lifers. Like me.

No Marvel either. Again, not a shock. Not welcome, but not a shock. But Marvel isn’t a comics company really. They hold IPs and print comics about them and are part of the holdings of a much much larger corporation with a bunch of executives and shareholders who must be appeased. And their movies are on the skids. Even Marvel knows the truth.

Chicxulub is here. That meteor impact that wiped out the dinosaurs by sheer force (and uh, turning gypsum and sulfur deposits into atmospheric sulfuric acid clouds). Yeah. It’s here. It hit. The money is scared. It wants income. It doesn’t want to spend. It’s not going to waste precious resources on things like going to comic shows and flying the flag and reminding attendees who the powerhouses are. The Marvel/DC cold war is over and both sides lost. Yes, they’re both standing. Yes, they’re both putting out comics. Neither is growing. Their footprints are shrinking.

What about those crafty smaller critters, those mammals who are deft on their feet? Surely companies like Boom and IDW and Image can thrive in the spaces left behind by the retreat of the titans?

I’d sure love to see evidence of that. Until I do, I’d suggest that the crafty mammals are the independent publishers who are going direct to readers at shows and online. Now, is it a living? Of course not. Every one of those mammals is going after plants and the occasional reptile egg, maybe some fungus or thing that the ocean coughed up. Trickle-down at work. Now this might sound like insult. It’s not. They’re still here and working and creating new art. Still fighting. That’s more than the titans are up to. They’re animate and on momentum or is that inertia? They’re holding companies that allow new twists on the old properties but won’t ever make anything new. They’ll drop DLCs and expansion packs. They won’t ever make anything new. I get it. Making something new is hard and involves risk and time and all the things that corporations hate to do.

The middle-sized companies might allow for something new (usually, though, it’s reinventions of things that other people own with variant covers to feed the speculator market to wring more blood from those stones). But they’d have to show up. They’d have to do the work. And on the show floor, at the very least, that ain’t happening. They don’t even exist. Hell, not even Fantagraphics is there with comics for old folks and weirdos.

Yes, I know the story is likely different for SDCC. I haven’t been in fifteen years. It’s also an aberration like Taylor Swift is an aberration in her marketplace, so huge as to distort the efforts of even the smallest bands.

Guess what? The public can’t get into SDCC. They haven’t been able to for a long time. That might’ve changed after Covid and the like. I’m betting not. Sure, advance sales are great but when you’re locked into those, you’re not growing. Just like printing to advance sales means you’re not gonna grow, either. Yes, I’m aware that my work goes right into that category. Thanks. Here’s your cookie. You’re welcome.

So, comics shows, which were once the stomping ground of the big leaguers, have been left to the little guys. And Funko. Yeah, they’re still the biggest single brand/retailer on the floor. It’s great. Though their display this year was more a death-maze than a giant idol built to plastic deformities as in years past. I guess that’s progress?

Look. It’s not all bad news. There was at least 15% comics stuff on the floor this year. Lots of folks selling half-price trade and graphic novel collections. Lots of bargains if you knew where to look. Original art is great to look at, but at thousands of dollars or even tens of thousands a page, who is this for? Again, nice to have a little comics museum at these places but the prices seem detached from any manner of reality that we’re living in. Plenty of booths selling old comics as well, but mostly priced to be slabbed and not to be read. I did manage to find a chewed-up copy of the last Treasury-Sized Conan collection I was missing. That was nice. Cover was a mess, but the pages themselves are fine. Readable. Pulled aside a shopworn copy of the 2001 Treasury edition by the King and Frank Giacoia for a friend of a friend. That was nice.

There was a lot of two-things art being produced at near industrial scale. Two-things statues, too. You all know what I mean by two-things, right? Stitch as a police officer. Ariel in Elsa’s costume from Frozen. Two things. Stuff like you’d see in an AI prompt “Darth Vader making craft beer and saying ‘the formula has been altered, pray I do not alter it further.’” Lots of popcult lifestyle gear and apparel. Which, to be fair, has been the backbone of these shows for a long time. Copyright infringement is your best entertainment value after all.

There were even people offering original art and not simply interpretations of Godzillas or Disney characters or Your Favorite Superheroes or Anime Girls Gone Wild. But they were not the majority. And it’s good that they have a marketplace where they can be seen. Yes, you can be seen on the internet too. And whenever I figure out how to make that happen, I’ll keep the secret for myself and let people know about it after I’ve figured out retirement. The second easiest way to get seen is to do work that your audience is already familiar with, maybe even something that someone else has made.

Original art? New stuff? That’s hard to come by in this economy. Like I said. The money is scared. And it’s not just comics where that’s the case. Books, even die-hard genre publishers? You bet they’re scared. The corporations are cutting and worrying more about their real estate footprints and bonuses than paying creators to make work to spend money promoting on and it might just fail anyways. Oh, I know. Having AI re-create the authors doing Q&As with fans will make this generation of readers pay big, right? Nevermind the fundamental necromancy and abomination of it all.

Movies? Man, where do I even begin? And everything I say here will apply to AAA gaming as well. Yes, there will be big-budget productions. Those will be, more than ever before, house bets with inordinate percentages of their resources in an effort to re-create past returns. Because they’re banking on that same line going up at the same rate forever and forever, in defiance of, well, everything. Time, mortality, cultural history, economics, everything.

Hell, sometimes even whole-ass countries get snookered into thinking they’re the exception and not the rule incarnate.

Entertainment industries are scared. Maybe even shit-scared. Like Disney and the cascade of bad decisions behind the “live-action” Snow White remake, they’re so scared of bad decisions that they’re going to do nothing but make bad decisions over and over and over until things break. Sure, they could remake Snow White and do a stylish, perhaps even editorial-fashion inspired vision, something shimmering and inhuman and perfect. Instead we get inhuman and gormless, something that looks like Shrek 3 only costing fifty times more. Or homework movies that require working knowledge of twenty year old films that were mostly forgotten in their own time (or five year old films that were abandoned at release), when the bones for something much more interesting are right there, shown to you for ten minutes and then dropped. Yes, I’m talking about Captain America: Brave New World, which featured contrasting stories of three different Black men with three very different relationships to America and you could have had something really meaty and satisfying and actually say something about today. Instead, that story is discarded for the giant rage monster who sits at the heart of America and we’re supposed to give unearned forgiveness to? Whew. That’s a strong series of misses and waste of Anthony Mackie’s considerable on-screen charisma.

The money is in retreat. Which is something that capital markets and economies love. Just turn on the news, right now. Go ahead. What was 2007 all about? Bad bets that made everyone have to pay up or cash out and anyone who had any money to get through this and to hire folks, where were they? Oh right. They were nowhere to be seen (or getting TARPed up).

The money isn’t interested in saving any of the businesses it’s associated with. It’s interested in continued existence as constituted by the executives of their corporations. A friend of mine asked “So what’s the future look like?” and I replied, as I made the turn from Ventura Bl. Over to Mulholland highway: “The studios have got to learn to be custodians of all this culture or they’re just going to sell themselves off for parts.” And the reply was “These men don’t know how to take care of anything, so strike the former” or words to that effect. And yeah. They’ll sell themselves for parts. They’ll burn themselves for fuel to keep the existing structures in place. When now is the time to try and expand and grow and experiment with what works and doesn’t and instead it’s retreat.

And all this was before things like tariffs enacted by a paranoid lunatic who thinks he can turn back the clock to a time when he had his own hair and was young and strong and all those other things that are impossible. Everything comes from somewhere else. Everything passes through borders or is sold across borders. And now those are toll bridges. On everything that’s being sold on tight margins, so prices can’t just absorb those increases and new taxes. They go up. They go up on things that people are barely affording now. Right. Books are printed in Canada (unless they’re POD, ahem, oh wait, raw materials, fuck.) Or in China. There aren’t large scale presses for the book trade in the US. The margins aren’t there. Kickstarter projects might still get printed. Harper Collins? I don’t think they’re interested in Kickstarter scales. Can’t pay for Manhattan real estate and salaries like that.

Maybe ebooks will save them. Because print books have been a loss leader to keep retailers open (which makes people who go to retailers aware that books are still a thing) and printers and distribution channels alive in the hopes that things will turn around. Why else is a hardback a bargain now on Amazon and the trade costs just a couple bucks more than the ebook? Right. The margins for that might no longer work. And some things, when you raise the price, the audience just goes away. It does not get rebuilt. Ask comics.

Where does this leave things? In the hands of the mammals. Those little shrew-like critters in the underbrush and leaf litter. They’re living on not even scraps, compared to the titans. They’re living at the margins. Not even the margins. They’re in exile and in fear of being blindly stepped on. Not chased down and eaten, but just squished by the giant and stupid footfalls of the cyclopean beasts who can’t even see what they’re lumbering through as the sulfur clouds make every breath harder and harder. Does this promise success or even an actual opportunity? No. But it’s the only way that anything from the outside is going to survive. And it may only live as long as you’re on the earth to make it. It might even be forgotten within weeks of your passing. Immortality is for the discorporate.

Was talking with a friend in comics about this, at a bar not far from his studio. And it all came down to that. It came down to the fact that “We’re still here.” Maybe that’s cold comfort. So’s an Old Fashioned.

Maybe I’m wrong. Sure. I’m just looking at the glass as mostly empty with a residue of some faintly suspect salts clinging to the sides. But there’s still enough for a sip in there. Or you can go looking for a spring elsewhere. But if you’re going after money with your work, you’re probably better off doing it yourself. And if you’re doing something that somehow strikes broad appeal and someone wants to buy it, lock stock and barrel? That’s your call. I wouldn’t hold my breath right now. Yes, there are people making a living off their work exclusively, not having to take or hold an outside job. I salute you. And I really hope it lasts. I hope that the companies you work for continue to see your contributions as valuable. I hope the bargain is not altered.

Because for everyone else it has. Why does everything on Netflix look awful and like soup? Because the crews there are being squeezed. Because they’re not working under conditions which were there for the previous generation of editors and actors and writers and gaffers and PAs and craft services. The top is still taking its big bite. The middle and bottom look more like Swiss cheese or ciabatta bread that’s more gas bubbles than chewy goodness. The money that filled those holes and made the structure sound? It’s simply not there. It used to be there. It’s not now.

Circling back to where we started. I still like comic shows. I really do. Even though the alluvial junk and debris that used to go for peanuts is now priceless. All those old collections and storage spaces and warehouses that could be raided for quick infusions of cheap stuff? Well, that’s not a renewable resource. And when even the comics companies dip out of the scene, not even to fly the flag of their latest event, then you know that the music is winding down. I still like comics shows. I get to see folks in person there (I live in an… isolated locale even though it’s populated). Though all of us are grayer and heavier and maybe even more beaten, we’re all still here. We’re all making stuff. We’re all still doing work. One day we might even get recognized for it.

The worst part is I didn’t even get to the worst part about all this, where folks see it as an opportunity to use AI to replace expensive human expertise and work. Oops. I got to that. But this is all I’m gonna say.

It’s weird to be back in a place where the only thing you may likely feel from your work is individual pride in it. Yes, that was always there and it was supposed to be the rock. I get it. But the reality is that folks, daily folks, were working to keep roofs over their heads and food on the table. And when that’s taken away or eroded sufficiently, things get weird.

I should follow-on with this and end more positively. Imagine that these last three paragraphs didn’t happen. Maybe that’s for the best.