COMICS CULTURE SHRAPNEL from CBEM 363
One thing that's been keeping me busy is the other magazine I work for, which is in actuality an entirely new venture. We used to be Tsunami, a publication out of the Terrapin Anime Society down at the University of Maryland College Park (congrats to the Terps in the NCAA tourney, BTW). Then there were some problems with the club president, and in the end it was just easier and better to quit. So we're starting our own magazine. I decline to say anything further about the disagreements until I know how this will all turn out, wouldn't want to have bad blood or be unprofessional. It's a shame really, because it's a good story.
We've spent the last month trying to think of a name. You'd think this be easy, considering our focus is anime and we generally think along the same wavelengths. Well, both are true but unfortunately we think along two wavelengths. One (the one I am on) is leaning toward Japanese-derived names, while the other is falling into "Anime ____." The main argument against a Japanese name is that its too "obscure" while the argument against the latter is that anything with "anime" in the same is too generic.
Which is true. If you were to make a list of all the anime companies that ever existed, how many have a name like that? And how many of those companies with such a name failed? It's a bit disproportionate. One cannot be part of a crowd.
So it leads me to wonder, what does attract people? What makes a magazine stand out? Or a comic, for that matter.
I think about what I have bought over the years. I bought my first issue of Sandman because the cover was very, very yellow. I bought Impulse #9 because it was blue. Those were colors I wasn't used to seeing on a comics store shelf. Too many blacks and browns and muddled colors. You can use a lot of colors to no effect because they cancel each other out.
I know Warren Ellis wrote about that particular issue, the fact that many comics are very, very ugly. Ugly art, ugly characters, ugly colors. Maybe it's getting better. I know it is, because I can buy things like Planetary and Alias which are always so very pretty. Experimentation, diversification. Actual attention to art history makes covers like those striking and memorable.
There's always those words on the cover that tell you what's inside, well with magazines there are. And sometimes you still get comics with word blurbs on the cover. If it's dialogue they are usually tipping their hats in tribute. But something it's more captioning, and they should kill that too. It's never done right. It's either campy or pretentious ... or both.
And the title ... where I started in this rambling. Does it matter to us? Do we think about whether there's an X in the title, or do we buy things on creators alone? Is that the right thing to do? It always seemed to be, until this past week at least. Bill Jemas claimed that Peter David only writes for his die-hard fans now, cramming too much sass and in-jokes into each issue for new readers to jump in and enjoy his stories. I don't know if this is true - I am not a regular reader, but I enjoy anything by Peter David that I read. So why don't I buy his stuff?
I suppose because while I enjoy, it doesn't interest me. How do you interest people? Marketing is an arcane art, almost mystical. It certainly is rather oblique and random, or it always seemed to me. But then again, it might be that I don't know anything about it from the technical end.
I wonder how many comic book creators know marketing, and how many marketing people truly know comics. I've seen companies make a lot of bad decisions, decisions that could have only come from a marketing department not really all that into comics. I think Marvel is successful because the people in charge really love the artform (not the industry, and let's maintain that distinction) and really like to get their hands dirty. When you got people working with everything, they tend to gain a new appreciation for the finished product.
That still doesn't get me a name.