First Off

Lately, I've been at the angle of certain works. Take your average thriller, you can almost bet that you have the setup, a next-to-final confrontation, and then the "twist" final confrontation. This comes up far too many times to count, and you can guess the outcome from the tone of the work. Either the good guy wins, a la a James Patterson work (Kiss the Girls, Along Came a Spider, etc.), or it's a tragedy, as with Se7en.

Now, this leads to some really trite crap, and some revolutionary stuff, no matter how predictable the entire work is. Superhero books fall prey and succeed due to this over and over again. Indie books will, too, according to subject matter. The easy rationalization of this is the old '7 base conflicts' rule, that there's only seven distinct stories to tell, and so craftmanship comes with how the story is told. Fair 'nuff.

So yeah, comicbooks will be comicbooks will be comicbooks. Now, when you hit the 'industry,' you can start beating your head against the wall, because as of yet fans don't differentiate between the trite and the revolutionary. They're willing to stagnate, just like the popular music industry, with the trite crap, the same-old, same-old, the comfortable. Sometimes I really wonder what the average X-fan thinks of Morrison's run, or Milligan/Allred's X-Force/X-Statix. I like to think that, to most of them, picking up the new ish of X-Men is akin to picking up the new N'Sync record, a habit that's maintained with no mind towards quality, substance, or relevance.

In the comics industry it's just a much smaller scale than the record industry, but it's the same none-the-less. I'm not going to feel bad about picking up the new X-Men, just as I'm not going to feel bad about picking up the new Weezer or Korn album. But, I will go out of my way to pick up the Filth, or XXXLivenudegirls, or Finder, or TMNT, or any of a dozen others, just as I'll go out of my way to pick up the new Yeah Yeah Yeahs, or the new Mindless Self Indulgence, or the new Tech N9ne, or the new (international) Noise Conspiracy, or any of a dozen others.

But then, I'm not your average comics fan, just as I'm not your average music fan, but you'll always be playing against the average. Sure, one day works like the Watchmen and Sandman, Strangers in Paradise and Ghost World, etc, might handily outsell the tights-club-of-the-week book, just as the Beatles (should) always outsell the flavor of the week pop phenom. And your average fan ain't gonna fucking understand that there's more to the world than Superman or Britney Spears. Well, fuck, if you've got any taste and you didn't get over that sad fact by the time you were out of high school, then you've got some problems that I can't help you with.

But, if you're willing to grab all of your friends and scream at them that there's this awesome new (or old) work that's full of cred and resonance and craft and CAPITAL-A-FUCKING-ART, then we've got something we can work with, and we always will, and we'll always be able to make sure that the cream of the crop gets recognized as such, no matter how popular the bubblegum flavor of the week is. People will remember and worship Transmetropolitan or Eightball just as they are wont to worship Mudhoney or Sonic Youth. And the world will be a better place for it.

Selah,
Ian
I hope to see you there