Author: VD

Upon further review

Last night I made two comments that drew an amount of attention. Well, three, actually. Allow me to explain:

First, as a result of Marvel badly misplaying its hand in an attempt to bypass the two major comics distributors and go direct-to-dealer in the late 90s, Diamond managed to establish a near-monopoly over the comics distribution business. Like all monopolies, their customer service has gone downhill as their prices have risen. If you combine their own reports on total retail sales with Hoover’s report on their annual revenue, Diamond takes 22 percent of the total retail dollar that goes through the comics stores. That amounts to a 37 percent markup, 17 points and 85 percent more than is normal for a distribution business.

It’s good to be the monopolist. The additional markup amounts to $55.8 million annually, or $31,885 in lost profit to each of the 1,750+ brick-and-mortar comics stores in the USA. It’s no wonder these stores are struggling or that long-established retail establishments are closing down everywhere from Arizona to Iowa and Sacramento. Diamond isn’t evil or even particularly rapacious, they are simply failing to recognize that they have been devouring their own seed corn. The rise of digital delivery systems combined with the shrinking physical channel is going to place Diamond in an increasingly difficult position; I would expect them to buy some of the independent publishers and get into content production themselves as time goes on, since from what I hear they are pretty smart.

Second, we have found it difficult to establish Alpenwolf even though we have completed one DevGame game and have several others in various stages of development because the major free game sites, Addicting Games and Kongregate, have kept changing their strategies in ways that make it difficult to work for them. Since we already built a complete virtual goods and virtual currency infrastructure, there is no reason why we shouldn’t simply launch our own free-to-play site. It’s going to be very small by gaming standards, and will probably launch with 3-5 games, but at least we’ll have a vehicle for getting our games out there to the gamers. From there, its simply a matter of building traffic and that’s not a challenge that frightens us. Frankly, it’s probably preferable to be able to grow slowly and steadily int his regard. Look for announcements asking for volunteers concerning forum moderation and writing trivia questions for everything from the NFL and NCAA football to comics and television shows in the next few months.

Third, if you think Neil Gaiman is a great novelist, or even a great SF/F novelist, you are simply wrong. He is a successful, talented and much-loved SF/F author, and understandably so, but he is also little more than a very successful stunt writer with two or three tricks in his bag. There is a reason that all of his notable books involve mythology of one sort or another; his true gift is translating ancient myth into a form that pleases postmodern palates. He also has the ability to convey that sense of the numinous that I lack. But Neal Stephenson, William Gibson, Alan Moore, John C. Wright, China Mieville, Nick Cole, and even George R.R. Martin are all better, more original SF/F writers with considerably more to say about the human condition than Gaiman.

When I have thought about the writers whose work I would like to be able to emulate or surpass over the years, Neil Gaiman never once entered into the equation, not even for a moment. Consider that American Gods is described as “Neil Gaiman’s best and most ambitious novel yet.” I liked that story considerably better when it was called Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul and On the Road. That being said, of the various comics I have read, Sandman is head-and-shoulders above the rest.

As for my own writing, you might contemplate this: How many other authors flow as easily across as broad a range of genres as I do? How many authors have historically done so? Perhaps my inability to focus precludes achieving greatness in any one genre, but I think that sort of unusual breadth at least merits consideration.

UPDATE: this guy has a skeptical, but reasonable perspective on the situation.

To say Arkhaven has been controversial is an understatement. From the moment the company’s flagship title, Alt-Hero, was announced the internet was debating whether a right wing perspective would “save” comics, or further damage an already fractured industry. But as I said before, what’s lacking is a shared notion of what “saving comics” really means. That said, there is a general consensus that Mark Waid’s head on pike would be a good start. Which brings us back to Vox Day and Arkhaven. Most criticism directed toward Vox can be boiled down to: “The last thing comics needs is another goddamn writer with an agenda.”

A self-described libertarian nationalist and member of the Alt-Right, Vox Day has never been shy about his politics. Likewise, his yet to be release Alt-Hero series looks to be something of a satire of today’s overly politicized comics. The project is still months away from completion, so for now we’ll just have to wait and see. In the meantime, Arkhaven has two titles digitally available on Amazon—Quantum Mortis and Right Ho, Jeeves. Both are selling well. Neither are political in nature. And there’s the rub—Alt-Hero could be a political screed. Then again, maybe not. But so far Arkhaven’s catalog hasn’t shown itself to be a mouthpiece for anybody’s politics. If only we could say the same for Marvel.

Does this signal a new dawn for comics? Well, if bringing content to an ignored demographic is Arkhaven’s end goal, it’s not a bad start. And drawing new readers to the medium is a net gain for everyone. But as Green Lantern artist Ethan Van Sciver has been quick to point out, the company currently has no presence in Diamond’s monthly Previews catalog, which is a prerequisite for getting books stocked in comic book stores. And in Sciver’s eyes, if a company isn’t moving product through brick-and-mortar shops, it’s contributing absolutely nothing to the overall health of the industry.

I’ll be blunt, if Arkhaven can eventually become successful enough to provide comics shops with enough monthly product to pay the rent, Vox will not only save the industry, he’ll be the motherfucking Batman.

Better yet, the Shade.

The Ember War comes to Arkhaven

Richard Fox, the Dragon Award-winning author of the bestselling science fiction series THE EMBER WAR SAGA, has an announcement.

Exciting news! The Ember War will come to a comic store near you! The contract with the comic imprint (either Dark Legion or Arkhaven, publisher’s choice) and fellow writer Jon Del Arroz (who’ll do the prose to script work) are signed. 

We’re excited about this, as we’ve wanted to work with Richard for some time now. The first series will be five issues that cover the events of the initial book; there are currently 9 books in the series. We’ll also have another announcement soon about a collaboration for Castalia House that is definitely going to be of serious interest to fans of a certain science fiction series that has already seen graphic adaptation.

This week’s sign of the apocalypse

Peter King comments on his travels:

Flew from New York to San Francisco the other day with my wife for grandson Freddy’s first birthday. (Yes, it’s been a year.) In front of us in line to board the plane: an older woman pushing a lovely black carriage with some pretty red stones festooning either side. I look around the woman to see into the carriage.

Shih tzu.

What a country.

Exactly. Lesbians raising the product of artificial insemination and women with furry little child-substitutes has not, historically, been a sign of a healthy society.

Plague for profit

All right, so this Blind Item at Crazy Days and Nights sounds way too far-fetched to be true; it’s more akin to a SF-horror novel plot than actual news, right?

Apparently The Church is finding it more difficult to bring in children the way they have in the past. That elusive head of the Church has donated tens of millions of dollars to research against diseases, many of which adversely affect third world countries. It was during this process of trying to eradicate a disease that one of the scientists created a pathogen which can kill swiftly and effectively. When the head of The Church heard about it, he agreed to test it on a village in a country that was friendly to bribes. It worked really well. It killed an astonishing number of people which were mainly adults. The children of the adults were 30-40 miles distant at a boarding school. Now, with no parents, they needed to be adopted. The Church, along with more bribes to the government had a great way to get large numbers of children quickly.

With that success, they decided to try it again, but this time, the villagers didn’t stay in place as they had before and some traveled to a neighboring village. The next thing you know, it has now started spreading to different countries and killing people faster than they can create cover stories. Look for them to spread the rumor it is an Ebola outbreak to give themselves a chance to destroy the evidence of what they did.

It wouldn’t shock me if they come forward with a cure and make hundreds of millions of dollars. That might bring too much publicity for them though. Even they would have tough time watching thousands of people die though wouldn’t they?

I mean, lethal artificial diseases that are being tested in third world countries is just crazy conspiracy theory, right? Right?

Fears are growing of a major health crisis in East Africa as a girl died of a suspected fever which could be more deadly than the Black Death. A nine-year-old girl died in central Uganda with the symptoms of an eye-bleeding disease which it is thought could kill up to 40 per cent of those infected by it.

The feared outbreak comes only months after hundreds of people were killed by the plague in Madagascar in what was described as the worst bout for 50 years. The symptoms of the new disease include headaches, bleeding, vomiting, diarrhoea and muscle pains.

This timeline just keeps getting weirder. If the Vikings win the Super Bowl, we’ll know all bets are officially off and literally anything can happen.

Mailvox: the NFL is not pro wrestling

But it is not pure sport for the pure of heart either:

Didn’t we agree this was pro wrestling two weeks ago?

No. Pro wrestling is actually scripted. They know who is going to win ahead of time. The NFL, on the other hand, relies upon a “thumb on the scale” approach to gently favor its preferred narrative as well as to protect the betting lines and prevent the blowouts.

Football is too unpredictable, and has too many injuries, to successfully script a game, let alone a playoffs or a season. But you can usually know which team is going to get the marginal calls in the playoffs on a week-to-week basis, such as the Saints in 2009, the Chiefs last weekend, and the Vikings this weekend.

The thumb on the scale only matters if the game is very close. For example there is absolutely NO WAY the league wanted Jacksonville to beat Pittsburgh since the narrative all season was set up for Pittsburgh to seek revenge against New England in the AFC Championship. That’s why the league spins multiple narratives, gently supports them all, and hopes one or more of them will play out. They are particularly intent on doing this now in order to try to carve back some of their lost ratings before the Super Bowl.

I expect that the league now favors a Minnesota-New England Super Bowl, as “the first Super Bowl at home” and “the last ride of the GOATs part II”. Also because they don’t want either New England or Jackonville, both of which have excellent defenses, blowing out an Eagles team starting a backup quarterback. (Of course, if Foles can somehow beat two of the top three defenses in the league this year, he will fully merit a Super Bowl ring.) But even if you suspect you might have the official wind at your back for a change, you still have to make the plays and win the games.

By the way, I’d like to point out that Sean Payton choked on the clock management as well. I watched the end of the game again and the Saints had two unnecessary, but intentional clock stoppages once they got into field goal range. And in defense of rookie safety Marcus Williams, I will note that his mistake was NOT intentionally missing the tackle of Stefon Diggs, but rather, misreading the ball and breaking on Diggs too fast and hard.

I can guarantee you that before the play, the defensive backs were reminding each other “no pass interference!” Williams appeared to think the ball was not going to hang as long as it did and broke on Diggs, then altered his path at the last moment when he realized that he was going to get there early. If he hadn’t changed his course, he would have cut out Diggs’s legs before the ball arrived.

Was Williams trying to avoid a pass interference penalty?

“I feel like I was a little early [getting to Diggs], but at that point, I’ve just got to make the tackle when he comes down.”

Williams was right. He was early. His mistake was trying to break up the play rather than letting Diggs catch the ball, then tackling him in-bounds to run out the clock. But then, given that his coaches were misplaying the sidelines on offense, it’s not a surprise that their rookie safety did too.

I liked this quote from Coach Zim quoting the Hitman.

No one thought we were going to be any good. I know you guys didn’t pick us very good going into the year. But we have a bunch of fighters in that locker room, guys that will compete. I said to Harrison Smith yesterday in practice, I said, ‘Are you afraid of these guys?’ He said, ‘I am afraid of everybody. That’s why I play good.’ That’s how our team is.”

Don’t overlook anyone, hit everyone hard, and don’t ever quit. That’s the Viking philosophy and it’s not a bad one for life.

Berkeley riot pedos

Apparently By Any Means Necessary is connected to NAMBLA:

The left-wing activists behind the anti-conservative riots at Berkeley have ties to one of the nation’s most prominent pro-pedophilia organizations.

The Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration & Immigrant Rights, and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary — more commonly referred to as By Any Means Necessary or BAMN — is one of the militant leftist groups waging a campaign against conservatives and Trump supporters in Berkeley. The group’s planned aggressive demonstrations against conservative commentator Ann Coulter and the students coming to hear her talk led to the cancellation of Coulter’s speech this week due to safety concerns.

BAMN’s parent organization worked directly with the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) in the years just before it founded BAMN, according to NAMBLA documents reviewed by The Daily Caller. In addition, a member of that parent organization said to have founded BAMN is an admitted member of NAMBLA, which she has described as the victim of a “witch-hunt.”

I suppose we should have known by the Star Trek uniforms. In other Berkeley riot-related news, two of the victims of the rioters filed suit in U.S. District Court last week against The Regents Of The University Of California, the President of the University of California, Janet Napolitano, the City of Berkeley and the City of Berkeley Police Department, as well as several named police officers and their two attackers.

This action seeks to protect and vindicate fundamental rights. It is a civil rights action brought under the Fourteenth Amendment against government actors responsible for creating dangerous conditions and exposing the Plaintiffs to physical harm caused by a violent mob of anarchists at a student-sponsored Milo Yiannopolous event (“Yiannopolous event”) scheduled to take place at the University of California, Berkeley (“UC Berkeley” and “University”) on February 1, 2017. Government actors took affirmative measures in preparation for and in response to the riotous mob that left the Plaintiffs in a situation more dangerous than the one in which they found the Plaintiffs.

Government actors are responsible for creating and exposing the Plaintiffs to the unlawful actions of an angry mob of violent anarchists by directing law enforcement officers to vacate locations in and around Sproul Plaza and the MLK Center at UC Berkeley, agitating the mob by issuing feckless disbursal orders and empty threats of arrest from a vantage point where they could ensure their own safety while leaving Plaintiffs exposed to violent assaults, erecting barricades in such a manner as to enable angry malefactors to surround Plaintiffs and assault them and to deprive Plaintiffs of an exit route, failing to enforce the law and by other affirmative actions. By their failure to intervene or employ reasonable tactical methods to ensure the safety of the Plaintiffs and the public, government actors conducted their official duties with deliberate indifference to the Plaintiffs’ safety, permitting hordes of violent rioters to swarm the university campus in a violent rage. By their failure, government actors are thus responsible for creating and exposing Plaintiffs to known and obvious danger.

This action additionally seeks relief from government actors who failed to exercise their duty of care to plan effectively for the foreseeable harms brought upon the Plaintiffs and from the perpetrators of unlawful assaults.

Kwgwarblurgwokfurbla!

I think that is the exact quote from when we realized Stefon Diggs was going to not only be able to stop the clock in field goal range, but go in to score. Also, I’m pleased to discover that I am, apparently, in excellent cardio-vascular shape.

A few thoughts:

  • It’s good to have the official NFL Narrative on your side for once.
  • The new stadium is already luckier than the previous two.
  • SKOL!
  • What happened to the pass rush in the second half? Also, what happened to the pass blocking?
  • It is better to be lucky than good.
  • The second pass interference call for 34 yards was actually correct, although it could have been called defensive holding instead. The clip they kept showing was just the very end; Crawley actually held Diggs’s jersey for more than five yards to keep Diggs from blowing past him. When Aikman said that Diggs had his hand on Crawley’s hand he was right, but he didn’t realize that Diggs was trying to remove Crawley’s hand from his jersey. Remember, Diggs has the fastest on-field time recorded this season and the Saints were playing a Seahawks clutch-grab-and-pray style in order to stay with the superior Vikings receivers. Note that the Vikings actually declined almost as many penalties committed by the Saints secondary as they accepted.
  • Michael Thomas actually won his battle with Xavier Rhodes. I did not expect that.
  • I love it when Harrison Smith blitzes.
  • Why can’t any head coach except Bill Belichick understand that you have to burn the clock down to less than 20 seconds before you kick the field goal that puts you ahead by one or two points? I was going berserk when Pat Shurmur called a pass on second down, and aghast when he called another one on third down.
  • Case Keenum is a good quarterback. To become a really good one, he has to learn to avoid a) throwing the ball in the field of play when avoiding a sack and b) taking a sack on third down when in field goal range. Those two plays gave up 10 points.
  • Coach Zim is a really good coach. To become a great one, he has to learn not to wilt on the high pressure decisions. Not going for it on 4th and goal from the 2 was the first big mistake. Not calling a run on the first drive after the half was the second big mistake. Not burning the clock before kicking the go-ahead field goal was the third big mistake.
  • The punt getting blocked may have saved the game for the Vikes. With five minutes left, it prevented the Saints from being able to burn the clock while marching down the field. 
  • You HAVE to put away a good team when you have the chance. A good team, particularly one with a good quarterback, is ALWAYS going to come back on you. Even great defenses get tired. I would have felt good about going into the half up 20-0 and receiving to start the second half. I knew 17-0 was not enough, especially when they failed to score on the drive to open the second half.

A tale of two reviews

SuperComicFunTime really did not like QUANTUM MORTIS A Man Disrupted #1:

Quantum Mortis: The Actionless Comic
This book is not a good book. It is action-less, motionless, and for the most part, people-less. The book is divided into two chapters. The first chapter is mostly some guy named Tower flying around and talking to his computer until he lands the ship and talks to a green space monkey that spouts gibberish into a translating device.

Then chapter 2 starts and we still don’t have our second character for a few more pages. Tower pops a space Tic Tac and we get a pin-up entrance for Hildreth the civilian space detective.

Then both characters are seemingly attacked by word bubbles until their magic space technology identifies the body as an exiled royal from another planet. We get a nice splash page giving the history of the exiled royal’s family. Then the book ends.

It’s not fun. I didn’t learn anything. I don’t care what happens next. It’s bad. The whole 29 pages should be summarized in a page or two while giving us character development. Don’t spend money on this like I did.

On the other hand, Harry liked it a lot.

Great job craftmanship restored
This is a very well done animation of the book .the quantum mortis series is top notch story telling . I read them as fast as I could. The art while having a distinctly retro feel adds to the story without overwhelming it. Knowing what comes next in no way detracts from enjoying the artist’s perspective of the story because he is staying true to the heart of it. The illustrations of hildy and tower actually bring out the romantic understory without taking away from the plot. It is great to see craftsmanship restored to graphic novels. Very few English ones approach the Japanese masters. Letting the art add to the story instead of being pictures without purpose. Well done.

To put it in perspective, there is another first issue of a comic where virtually nothing happens, although for 40 pages instead of 28. A guy is in a cage. For decades. Nothing happens except for people actually falling asleep – now there is a fitting metaphor, right? There is no action except for an occult ceremony that doesn’t even involve a dead goat or a naked woman until the guy in the cage escapes off-camera, so we still haven’t seen anything happen until one of the guys who took part in the ceremony falls asleep and has a dream. The end.

How absolutely horrible, right? How action-less, motion-less, and literally people-less, as the guy in the cage was not a normal human being. Clearly no one ever bought or read or liked that particular comic, right?  Well, no, because that’s all that happens in the first issue of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, which happens to be one of the most well-regarded comics series ever written.

Now, I wonder if there might be anything we can glean from these two extremely divergent reactions to the same comic. Why does SuperComicFunTime hate QM:AMD so much while Harry likes it so much? Perhaps their reviews of other products unrelated to Quantum Mortis might give us a clue. Here are a pair of five-star reviews for other products they liked. Guess which review was written by whom?

Review of Avengers #219: By Divine Right
This comic is AWESOME! I got it in a box of comics I opened about three weeks ago. OMG! I was so stoked when I saw Jim Shooter was the writer! Janet Van Dyne loses her clothes early on and soon, cosmic hijinks ensue.

Review of A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami
I immediately recognized the writer’s talent, the characterizations and plot integrate seamlessly and while the ending is surprising and a little bit disappointing the journey is absolutely worth the time. I can’t remember such good prose, and by a non-native English speaker. 

Different audiences, different tastes. SuperFunComic’s perspective isn’t wrong, it’s just different. I have no doubt that he would be as bored by Murakami as he was by QM-AMD #1. As far as I am concerned, the only relevant question is which market is more interesting to us as a publisher? And since the top-selling comic of 2016 was Big Trouble in Little China/Escape From New York which sold 421,625 units while Murakami’s books sell in the millions, well, I am confident that we are making the right choice.

Divisional Sunday

I have to admit, I did not think the Eagles would pull it together well enough to beat the Falcons. Discuss amongst yourselves. And Skol Vikings!