Some (old) news you can use…or "Guess what search terms I used to find these stories"
“Smash! Pow! Bam! Why superheroes go bankrupt”
“One way Marvel tried to cut its losses in the ’90s was by directly distributing its own comics. That move not only ran several distributors out of business, it also shuttered many comic book shops and did real damage to overall sales. The company’s hamfistedness earned it the enmity of many fans, who undertook a boycott of all things Marvel.”
“Pow! Bam! Can Marvel keep soaring?”
“Pow! Take that, vile debt!”
“Whatever happened to ‘bam’ and ‘pow?'”
“It seems like nowadays, comic books have completely overlooked their most crucial readers: children. Sure, there’s still an audience for Wonder Woman; it just happens to be your fat, impotent uncle George. And let’s face it, George won’t be with us much longer. So who will take his place as a new comics reader?”
“Comics are Nothing to Laugh About”
“…A teenage geek who’s never kissed a girl in his life goes into a comic store surrounded by people just like himself, which is run by a short, fat, balding, cigar chomper of an owner named Marv, to pick from the latest assortment of comics featuring Misogynist Man and Steroid Lad, in ‘Pow/Bam’ dialogue thinly disguised as a story.”
I also came across this paper on Comic Book Markup Language (official site), which is a proposal for presenting comic books on the web in a format other than the usual “scan ‘n’ post.” I’m sure someone out there in the comicsweblogoverse has already mentioned this, but it was news to me. Pretty interesting, I thought.
EDIT: The HBO series Carnivale may return as a comic book. (via TV Tattle)
