ADVIL COMICS, OR TAKE TWO AND CALL ME NEXT WEDNESDAY

To illustrate this week’s theme for Ahead of the Pack allow me to tell you a story. A few years back, one Friday evening, my sister invited a friend over to our apartment. They adjourned to the kitchen for a little while, and my sister’s friend (who is studying now to become a doctor) sees a case of advil, and decides he’d like one as a snack. Why? Because it’s candy coated of course. However he decides that like the hard-shelled chocolate candy it shares a striking resemblance to he shall bite into it . Unfortunately the inside of an advil is not chocolate by Ibuprofen, which isn’t so tasty. Needless to say he got a shock and ended up spitting it out.
So what does that humorous little anecdote have anything to do with anything? We learn from this story that sometimes things are better left swallowed whole rather than chewed. What? Still too cryptic? All right, if you must know this is an allegory. The point being that some comics (and indeed stories of all kinds) are better left alone, without us over-analyzing them.
Many of my favorite comics, I love because of their deep, thought provoking nature. Greg Pak’s Magneto: Testament was a poignant emotional heavyweight, Joe Kelly’s I Kill Giants never loses its power with each successive reread, and Daytripper never fails to engage me on a deep and personal level. That’s great, but you know what, as much as I like all of those I also like explosions, super-hero smackdowns, and Dinosaurs.
For example, Chris Yost’s, and Scott Wegener’s Killer of Demons. It’s a comic about an ad exec that may or may not be charged by a tiny foul-mouthed cherub with the destruction of demons. He also might be crazy. Regardless the comic spends its time reveling in ridiculous action sequences , and base humor. It’s not going to stimulate your intellect, but that’s not what it’s trying to do. It’s fun, and it appeals to our basest of pleasures, something which isn’t necessarily a bad thing in moderation.
Still when you try thinking about it too hard, about why you’re enjoying it, and about whether it makes any sense, well you’ll end up with a mouthful of metaphorical Ibuprofen. So my advice is, don’t. While it’s always nice to engage your mental faculties, it’s also nice to enjoy something without having to focus all of your cranial might on it. Advil comics are relaxing, they’re escapism, a sanctuary for the over-taxed brain. So next time you criticize a book as stupid, lay off, don’t chew it over, just let it be, and it will go down smoothly.

Printing Problems

When people think of how comic books are made, they’re usually pondering over the creative details. They wonder how to format a script, draw a page, color, letter, and so forth. All of which is hard work, to be sure, but it’s all for nothing if you don’t know how to actually print a comic. If you are an aspiring comic book writer, or artist and you haven’t been picked up by a major publisher then it’s a very serious concern. While there are a multitude of printers around most of the conventional printers are far beyond the means of anyone outside the bigger names in the comic book industry.
Printing is never easy. The minutia of work involved with getting words, and pictures on paper are staggering, not to mention the errors that are guaranteed to happen with every run. However whereas the traditional (i.e. non-graphic novel) printing presses offer a wide selection of printers at widely varying prices and qualities, the comic book/graphic novel printers unfortunately do not.
There is a fairly large selection of printers, however most aren’t too friendly for smaller orders of prints, and thus require a large investment. Many printers require hundreds or thousands of copies as a minimum, and charge exorbitant prices for those. This locks out a major portion of the market seeking to print their work are smaller publishers and aspiring creators. Printers’ high fees severely limit not only who can print, but the content on the comic book market.
Comic books are great, but one of the biggest problems the genre faces today is the lack of variety. Super hero titles all have different characters and twists, but even the biggest fans will have to admit that there isn’t a lot of difference conceptually between them. You have some titles from Vertigo, or Image, and so on that break the mold, but it’s not a lot. The ideas are out there, they’re just waiting to be put the page.
There are however options for aspiring creators. Some printers offer web services at more affordable rates. So it’s certainly possible to get your idea printed, but you don’t have too many options. Printing companies need to reevaluate their business models. As it stands now, most cater to a small group of publishers and block out a large amount of eager customers, which is just bad business.