Heartless Dark: The Blog

This is a conversation between Suit and Creator.  Conversations like these help us past the time at our day jobs.  Most of the time they are spent talking about big boobs and fire but occasionally they produce great ideas (like Heartless Dark) or insight without even us ever realizing it.  

Suit -
 remind me to bring back my comics from my mom’s house 

 and my hologram covers 
 remember when comics did that 
 those were the good days 

Creator‏ -
 yeah – i have a bunch 
 those comics actually ruined the  comic industry 
 but i still treasure my memories  from them 

‏Suit - 
 really 
 how so? 

Creator -  
 okay >deep breath< time for a  little comics history lesson 
 let’s start the mid to late 80s –  circa Dark Knight/Watchmen 

Suit -  
 k 

Creator -  
 with the arrival of those two seminal series, the public began to look at comics – the  perception of comics as striclty for kids ended and comics entered into a dark(er) era
 where gritty stories became more the norm ‏‏

Suit - 
 k 

‏‏Creator -
 sales increased as more adults entered the buying population, because the comics  stigma was gone 
 with a flood of new readers – older issues began to be worth more money 
 so people began buying a lot of comics in hopes of a good return on investment 
 enter 1991 – Marvel comics relaunches X-men with a second title beginning at  number 1 (Uncanny is somewhere around issue 282)
 it becomes the highest selling comic of all time – selling multiple millions of copies –  cause it’s a new #1 for X-men 

 relaunches of titles weren’t as common back then 
 well, Marvel smells success and does that with Spiderman (another HUGE selling  issue) 
 all of the sudden, new #1s for every title – new titles (X-Force (was New Mutants),  Excalibur, 100 diff spiderman titles)
 well, the creators who worked on these titles realized that “hey, marvel is screwing us  over – we can make more money on our own”

Suit -  
 Marvel is a bastard 

Creator -  
 so the top artists of the day (because art at this time became one of the top sales  drivers) slpit off and formed their own company.

‏‏Suit -  
 Damn the Man, Save the Empire 

‏‏Creator -
 enter Image Comics 

‏‏Suit - 
 Hoo Ray!!!

‏‏Creator - 
 the founders were Todd McFarlane, Jim Lee, Marc Silvestri, Rob Liefeld, and Jim  Valentino (I believe) 
 their initial titles EXPLODE with sales like no other independent comic has ever done 
 Spawn, WildCATS, Cyberforce, Youngblood, and Shadowhawk (ooh, Erik Larsen also  founded image and his title was Savage Dragon)
 millions of issues sold – they’re big things 

‏‏Suit -  
 yeah I remember when Spawn first came out 
 it was a huge deal

 

Creator -
 so, over the next few years, tons of new  titles – new #1s, new artists – flashy covers,  holograms, lenticular covers, MASSIVE  crossovers (thanks to the late 80s when  crossovers started – a great way to get  people to buy more comics), etc
 all amounted to TONS of issues sold 
 of inferior product 
 with the amount of comics sold, no one  cared about producing Watchmen quality  comics – just turning a quick buck (and many  bucks were made)
 fans got jaded and fed up, stopped buying,  stores couldn’t move the mounds of (now)  worthless comics they had – the shut down  nation wide
 top selling titles went from selling 1 million plus issues A MONTH – to barely 100,000 
 by mid-late 90s – the industry COLLAPSED 
 all thanks to a flood of flashy covers and art – with little substance 

‏‏Suit - 
 yeah i remember there being a comic shop in every part of the city
 Comic Market collapses and congress doesn’t bat an eye, where was our bail out money

‏‏Creator - 
 from 1995-2001 it was the dark ages of comics 

‏‏Suit -
 and then comic book movies 
 and ultimate titles 

Creator -
 what did come out of that time was an emergence of good stories and great artists – a  new era of creativity cause, hell, who cares – our audience can’t get any smaller, let’s  take a risk

‏‏Suit - 
 lol 
 nice reasoning 

Creator - 
 then X-men the movie was  huge – and great – and  Spiderman was even bigger  (but  still sucked) – coupled  with some great risks  (Origin, new Spiderman  stories, etc) –  started to  revitalize comics
 comic movies are huge and  big properties – all creative  people in hollywood love  and  read comics (some  write them too) 
 comics are receiving  national attention with The  Death of Captain America or  Batman, or many other reasons 
 sales still aren’t that great – but they’ve leveled out 
 i don’t know if the industry will ever recover from the 90s bust, but there’s enough  good comics out there to keep it going
 just look at Comic Con – it’s bigger now than it ever has been in 40 years 

‏‏Suit - 
 Comic Con has expanded its scope though, with TV shows like Lost, movies and sci-fi  shows 
 but I guess if those people like that stuff they would probably like comics as well 

‏‏Creator - 
 yeah, there are a TON of people who love comics – but don’t buy and read them 

‏‏Suit - 
 thats true 

‏‏Creator -
 they love the movies, or the cartoons, or the idea, or the characters, but don’t really  buy the comics 

‏‏Suit -
 and why do you think that is?

thesuit Uncategorized Comic Con, Comic History, Dark Knight, Marvel, Movies, Spider-Man, X-Men