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I think the biggest positive news at SDCC was Robert Kirkman being named a partner of Image.

I had thought this before SDCC when this was announced and was going to say so but then I thought maybe it was just because he brings a lot to the company right now. He was a breath of fresh the company needed. But with the video posted by CBR yesterday I think this is the beginning of a change in the comic book industry.

It will be an up hill battle for him but he has the clout, the respect, fresh ideas, and youth on his side right now.

I think with the current state of Image it is well deserved. I am really loving the Image content right now but these great books just don't sell. Walking Dead seems to be one of the exceptions in todays market. I think another quality Image creator right now is Jay Faeber. The only thing is he does not have the fan base like Walking Dead and Invincible.

comicm wrote: I am really loving the Image content right now but these great books just don't sell. Walking Dead seems to be one of the exceptions in todays market.

Look no further than the "Comic Budgets" thread where opinions seem to be that most folks would cut out most/all indie books and settle in on Marvel/DC if they had to cut back to 10 books.

Extend this to all the comics readers who only get 10 books in the first place & you see why the numbers fall where they do.

If I had to cut back to only 10 books, 2 of them would be Invincible & Walking Dead. This would not be the case had I never gone to Image to try these books in the first place, but Kirkman is one of the BEST writers in comics today, hands down.

By the way, more on Kirkman on Newsarama:
http://www.newsarama.com/comics/080814-WBKirkman.html

He's also on the latest Word Balloon w/John Siuntres

i heard the wordballoon this morning as it became available and was pretty exited to hear his view point and determination.
it sounded quite important, in my opinion; and i think he has several points in his arguments that i agree with, particularly from the creative perspective.

i'm around the same age as kirkman and share a strong emotional attachment to the franchise characters and their universes, and many times find it hard to swallow that they are, at all times, intellectual properties of large commercial conglomerates, to be exploited as they see fit.
that is certainly not the reason why i buy so many dammed books!

comic creators seem to have a quite "brief-peaked" professional career. writers and artists in their 50s are considered to be semi retired veterans or legends... even the image guys are old school now... and their in their late 40s ...
i didn't think comics was such a physically taxing profession... writers, painters, artists, reporters, critics, actors and many other intellectual professions have longer spans than comics... who seem more of the likes of rock-stars or sport-pros
will eisner did his best stuff when he was over 60 ... many other creators on other mediums have as well
maybe a creator owned career can provide for a much larger and mature body of work.
does that make any sense?

here are some names and aproximate ages of some amazing and popular creators i dont thin i see enough of...

art adams, erik larsen, jim lee, Whilce Portacio, McFarlane are on their mid 40s; Kevin Maguire and David Mazzucchelli are 48; frank miller, Jerry Ordway, Alan Davis and John Totleben are on their early 50s; Stephen R. Bissette is 53; alan moore and J. M. DeMatteis are in their mid 50s; Chris Claremont, Mike W. Barr and Roger Stern, brian bolland are around 57; john byrne and Mike Zeck are 58; dave gibbons, William Messner-Loebs and John Ostrander 59; len wein and Bernie Wrightson are 60; Walter Simonson 61; marv wolfman 62; neal adams 67

i dont have to see them draw or write "flash versus the hulk" or anything like that, but i'd be tremendously interested to see their work in the medium (comics, sequential art or whatever you want to call it) way more often...
maybe kirkman's position offers a solution for this "early exhaustion" problem...
a more vigorous tradition of independent and creator owned properties as a reliable source of income, in the future can be an option for all sorts of creators; not just for the younger-underground-indy-artsy-fringe-trendy type of works (however you want to call or classify it, no intention to offend anyone)

this issue is quite interesting and has many angles to be tackled.
it be wonderful to hear you guys discuss it calmly and at length on one of your shows, a roundtable maybe ... there are so many considerations to be taken here, that a number of opinions would be most valuable, particularly those of the creative front and the editorial or executive front....

the discussion continues with bendis's reply to kirkman on wordballon.

also around comics focused on it with john siuntres, Hilary Barta, Mike Norton, Tim Seeley, Andrew Kudelka and Jenny Frison.

crank and mike also touche on it on their 149th episode of the crankcast

i hope the debate does reach some fruitful outcome...

I'm about halfway through the Word Balloon episode with Kirkman and have the Bendis one next on the playlist.

laseraw wrote:the discussion continues with bendis's reply to kirkman on wordballon...

And here's my response to his response, from the top of the 3rd page of comments.

From: http://www.newsarama.com/comics/080820- ... l#comments

I don't remember Kirkman announcing that ALL creators should come and do creator owned work and stop working for DC & Marvel. In fact, I don't remember him saying that ALL creators should do anything. IIRC, He said that it would be better for both creators and for the industry if "name creators" stopped working for DC & Marvel and concentrated exclusively on creator-owned work.

If sales on a title increase solely because it's been announced that a creator is starting a run on a title (consistently, not just because it happened once when people weren't happy with the existing creative team), then I think it's fair to consider this person to be a "name creator".

These are the ONLY people Kirkman is suggesting should even attempt working only on creator-owned work, and even then, only if they've wanted to but have been afraid to try.

The Image founders proved that if creators give fans a choice of buying their creator-owned work or nothing (and have a large enough fan base), they can carry over enough fans to make a living. They also proved that, over time, it's easy enough to go back to DC or Marvel if things don't work out.

Bendis suggests that "this generation of comic book creators are standing on the shoulders of giants who worked very hard to make things easy for us, and get the (creator rights changes) they got us. It was really just before I got into comics that things got a lot easier, and at DC and Marvel got a lot better."

Didn't things get "a lot better" at DC & Marvel as a result of the exodus of creators who founded Image, or are these the "giants" he's standing on?

Lobo wrote: ... Bendis suggests that "this generation of comic book creators are standing on the shoulders of giants who worked very hard to make things easy for us, and get the (creator rights changes) they got us. It was really just before I got into comics that things got a lot easier, and at DC and Marvel got a lot better."

Didn't things get "a lot better" at DC & Marvel as a result of the exodus of creators who founded Image, or are these the "giants" he's standing on?

i heard the expression "standing on the shoulders of giants" used many times before in relation to the medium of comics ... but i really dont know how far back Bendis wants to take that reference...
is it straight to the image guys little over a decade ago?
or to siegel and schuster's 5 decade struggle over superman copyrights?
...
i dont know but, it is creators who have produced and developed the icons both companies now exploit. that's for sure.

i agree with you about the image exodus. even if that early stuff is commonly questioned from a creative stand point, it did provide for a later reevaluation of the stands held by main stream industry, rebalancing the emphasis towards story quality, versus cheesecake quantity

but i do think this could be a new opportunity to achieve something positive, somewhat similar to that;
avoiding anything as drastic as an exodus or as dramatic as another collapse of the main industry but, gaining from the current "positive momentum" provided by the success of movies, media awareness and the over-all attention generated toward the medium; attempting to guarantee the continuation of the medium of comics itself, and of course of its authors, not only of the known icons and super-hero genera.

anyhow it is too bad that Bendis didnt have time to listen to the Kirkman video-statement himself ... that transcribing thing unfortunately didn't help move the debate along, having Bendis basically defend himself and respond against kirkman, all the way through the interview.

Vince, David, Chris and I spent about 2 hours last night discussing Kirkman, Bendis and the chatter that's surrounding it last night. I have to say it was a compelling conversation to be a part of, hopefully it's equally compelling to listen to.

[quote="Wood"
... hopefully it's equally compelling to listen to.[/quote]

i'm sure it will, as it usually is.
i've been a listener since episode to of the bullpen days.

Wood wrote:Vince, David, Chris and I spent about 2 hours last night discussing Kirkman, Bendis and the chatter that's surrounding it last night. I have to say it was a compelling conversation to be a part of, hopefully it's equally compelling to listen to.

Cool. I'll have to check out the episode. Please post a link when it goes up.

Here is our conversation from this week's 11 O'C:

http://media.libsyn.com/media/bullpenbu ... de_018.mp3

laseraw wrote: anyhow it is too bad that Bendis didnt have time to listen to the Kirkman video-statement himself ... that transcribing thing unfortunately didn't help move the debate along, having Bendis basically defend himself and respond against kirkman, all the way through the interview.

It's too bad that Bendis didn't have time to listen to what Kirkman said before ranting and raving about how Kirkman was the one who didn't know what he was talking about.

laseraw wrote: ...
comic creators seem to have a quite "brief-peaked" professional career. writers and artists in their 50s are considered to be semi retired veterans or legends... even the image guys are old school now... and their in their late 40s ...
i didn't think comics was such a physically taxing profession... writers, painters, artists, reporters, critics, actors and many other intellectual professions have longer spans than comics... who seem more of the likes of rock-stars or sport-pros
will eisner did his best stuff when he was over 60 ... many other creators on other mediums have as well
maybe a creator owned career can provide for a much larger and mature body of work.
does that make any sense?
...

will eisner interviewed on reality break podcast #1

"... that's something we forget in this medium, particularly in comics, strips ... that artists grow as everybody else does. and so as we go on, we accumulate life experience, which refines and alters, and makes more sophisticated our thinking..."



i just heard this and thought it goes along pretty well with what i saw more interesting and more relevant of kirkman's statement.

... and also ...

" ... i've liken it at to any professional sports team that, you generally have some rookies and, you generally have some veterans;
and part of the veterans job is tell the rookies stuff that otherwise they're gonna have to reinvent the wheel, but also to give 'em kind of a concept of the overall view of things and, take them beyond themselves...
veterans who know the sport, know the industry whatever, are always essential but, in comics i think a lot of that has been lost.
... i'm not making an argument for me per se, or for any particular person who's been around for a long time but, i just think in terms of the industry, in terms of story telling, there's a bunch of stuff we learned from our elders, back in the 70s, and a lot of it, not "a lot of it", but "some of it" has definitely been lost.
it just didn't get passed down because of the marvel bankruptcy, they were fewer comics, a number of reasons... there are guys today doing stuff and they dont really know all the tools that they could have at their disposal and thus readers that have not seen those tools used..."

Steve Englehart (61) following a discussion over the extinguishing use of thought balloons on main stream comics at wordballon