Cashing in on comics

 
It’s no secret that comic books are now mainstream. That sort of crucial insight is not why you’ve clicked onto this page. With every other comic book series being optioned for a film, some even before the second issue hits the shelves and clothing available with obscure comic book characters - “Who’s that on your t-shirt?” “Dunno, looks cool though…” – everyone seems to be jumping on the comic book bandwagon. Even Virgin Trains has decided to up its cool quotient with its latest advertising campaign.



Costing £6.3m, the posters show calm and relaxed Virgin Trains’ passengers looking out of the window at a zombie attack on the motorway below. Yes, that’s right, a zombie attack. Not sure if it’s implying that anybody who drives cars is more likely to succumb to an undead assault or that reaching Birmingham in less than 90 minutes is a sure-fire way to survive the apocalypse but it’s certainly bringing comic book content to the masses in a unique way.

Virgin Trains sales and marketing director Sarah Copley says of the new campaign: “The time is right for us to be truly brave in championing Virgin Trains as the liberating way to travel. This campaign will make consumers think carefully about their travel choices particularly where long distance car and domestic air journeys are concerned, with the advantages of Virgin Trains being made clear in an eye catching and hard hitting way.”

Fair enough but what’s next? “Carlsberg don’t create superheroes but they’d probably be the best…” or “A Mars a day helps you save the world”.

Rubbish made-up slogans aside, I’m undecided if this direction is a good thing or not for comics. It creates a new audience that may not have enjoyed the medium before and who may bring some new voices or ideas to the comic book world. Or perhaps it’s cheapening it.

Do advertising agencies care about a medium they are using for a campaign? Maybe, maybe not. Perhaps they shouldn’t. Or perhaps the onus lies with comic book creators? No, they’re not responsible for this sort of campaign but if they’re selling rights to the movie at a second’s notice then the medium is cheapened already and the damage is done. Of course, a writer refusing to sign over the rights to a works doesn’t mean a damn thing, take the example of Alan Moore, he refused to sign over Watchmen and V for Vendetta, but they still got made. Publishers perhaps? As much as they want to entertain, they are businesses at the end of the day and are looking to make money, if they don’t do that they can’t produce comics anymore.

Who else does that leave? Us, the readers? Should we be condoning our beloved comics being used in this way? What can we do? Boycott them? Not look at advertisements featuring comic illustrations? Perhaps we have to grin and bear it while continuing to enjoy our medium, while telling ourselves that we enjoy it on a whole other level to everyone else.
 

Who here has issues?

I feel that I must confess something – I’m not actually a huge comic book fan… Before you click off this page in disgust, please allow me to explain. I’m not against comics, having been a fan of the medium for over 20 years it's just I’ve always preferred the graphic novel approach to collections rather than individual issues.

To me a graphic novel is more accessible and allows newer fans to introduce themselves to the medium. The back catalogue of stories would be impossible to source in comic book form, a collection makes the job so much easier.

Imagine attempting to work through Crisis on Infinite Earths and piecing together the whole story issue by issue with the added danger of missing one in the middle. It’d be tough. I’m not even sure if the full collection of comics for this storyline exists out there anywhere besides DC headquarters. I recently came across issues one, three, five and seven of Final Crisis in a second hand shop. Why on earth anyone would buy or keep the others and not these is beyond me but at the time I hazarded a guess that not having every second issue would hamper my enjoyment of the series and back in the box they went.


Maybe I’m missing out on something. The last single issue of a comic that I bought was the concluding part of Batman RIP as I just couldn’t wait for the collection to be released and I wanted to see how the Caped Crusader allegedly met his demise. The excitement of clutching that hot off-the-press comic in my sweaty paw as I marched home determined to savour every frame of it was quite interesting but since I’m a quick reader it probably took me longer to buy the comic than it did to complete the damn thing.

Given my enforced speed-reading abilities I rarely feel that buying a comic is good value and I’m also the impatient sort so don’t like waiting a week, a fortnight or a month to find out what happens next. I find it much better to ignore the series until it’s released in trade paperback form. Does this make me a philistine? Probably. Does it increase my enjoyment of comics (in the larger sense)? Definitely.


How do you take your comics? Issue by issue or trade paperback collection? Leave a comment and let me know.

Mark Millar's Nemesis #1

Catching up on the comic book universe after a marathon Walking Dead spell, I finally picked up the first issue of Mark Millar’s Nemesis. Hot on the heels of Kick Ass, his new series answers the question that apparently every comic book fan has been asking – what if the hero decided to be bad?

Touted by Millar as “Batman but a total cunt”, the eponymous Nemesis is depicted as a criminal mastermind with resources to make Tony Stark insecure. Dressed all in white with no logos, the character kills without remorse and once he sets his sights on someone, they may as well kiss their loved ones goodbye and make sure their affairs are in order.

Nemesis the character seems to be a combination of Batman and the Joker, splicing together the drive and resources of the former with the psychotic tendencies of the latter. As the image below illustrates, Millar doesn’t shy away from this comparison.



Although only one issue in, the character has captured the imagination of readers and there is already talk of a film adaptation. Millar has the knack of giving his fans what they want, even if they didn’t know that they wanted it. With Kick Ass, he provided a hero for the YouTube generation and here he shows us what would happen if Bruce Wayne, Tony Stark or Oliver Queen decided that helping people is for losers and that it’s cooler to be bad. Not an anti-hero, but just an out-and-out villain.

Some sites have given the first issue bad reviews, but the series needs to be given a chance. The main character and his next target, a media-friendly, God-fearing Commissioner Gordon-type have to be allowed time to grow – at least wait until the third issue before condemning Millar. Sure the characters are slightly one-dimensional at first glance but this is most likely a clearing of the throat before the full stories of both the antagonist and protagonist are revealed.