I stopped into a convenience store today, to buy snacks and a soda I absolutely had no business consuming, and I noticed an older lady behind the counter.
Now, by 'older' I don't mean in her forties, or fifties, or even just older than me, I mean past retirement age. She had liver spots on her hands and that kind of stooped, osteo-porotic posture you see older white women getting. And she didn't move very fast.
My first thought was 'Oh, how nice, she's decided she needs to get out of the house and be around people for a few hours a day. Good for her. When I get that old I'd like to do the same.'
Then, as I waited in line, I had a second thought.
What if she needs to work?
What if, despite her best efforts, despite a lifetime of planning and saving and doing without, she's come to the twilight of her years without enough to live on? What if she's only working the register because she has to make rent? Or prescription money? What if the system she counted on to take care of her, the system she supported from her earliest working life, no longer supports her?
I didn't have the courage to ask, I couldn't even imagine how to broach the subject. 'Excuse me, ma'am, but has the social safety net betrayed your expectations? Are you working here because you have no other option?'
I've saved quite a bit over the years. I'm gonna need to save more.
Saturday, March 15, 2014
Thursday, March 13, 2014
RIP, Comic Books
I collected comics for a long time. A very long time. I was 10 when I started collecting instead of just picking up the odd issue from the spin rack at the grocery store, but I'd been reading comics since I could read. Literally. The first issue I remember specifically taking home and reading (and writing in) was Justice League #89, from 1971. Since then I've collected many, many, many long boxes, I think 38 or 39, all packed full. I have a history with the medium, is what I'm saying, I'm the guy the comic store clerks call 'sir.'
But I don't collect comics any more. I'm back to picking up the odd issue here or there, as I used to do when I was six. No more loyal following, no more regular Wednesday trips to the comic book store as I used to do for years. I'm done. The passing of an era. Nothing is constant but change, and all that.
Why? Because the medium is dying. Slowly. Agonizingly. Pitifully. Like watching a slug you've poured salt on. The circulation for a hugely-successful title these days would have qualified as a cancellation twenty years back. There are several reasons for this demise, all of them caused by short-sightedness and poor management decisions. I'm only too happy to share them with you:
1. There's no point for new readers to come on board.
I can follow the story lines, but that's because I'm as old as the creators and I have the same history they do. But new readers? They're lost. It's like hanging out with a different group of friends who talk in nothing but in-jokes. Sure, you'll understand a little bit, but it'll mostly pass you by. Take a newbie to a comic shop - assuming you can coax them in - and hand them any current Marvel or DC issue. See if they can make heads or tails of it. They can't, I guarantee you.
2. There's nowhere for kids to 'come across' comics.
Aside from being hostile to any new readers (above), which includes kids, there are no places for kids to find comics. When I found comic books I was passing time at the magazine counter in the grocery store, waiting for my mother to finish shopping. I saw this primary-colored splash, at my eye-level, and I was hooked on an addiction that lasted four decades.
Try to find a spin rack now. Go ahead, try, I'll wait here. Didn't find one, did you? Because there aren't any. To 'come across' comics now, kids have to make a trip to the comic store. The dark, smelly, unfriendly comic store, where fat scary beardos and maladjusted goobers make sure only their own kind feel welcome.
3. The inmates run the asylum.
When I first found comics the artists and writers were, by and large, first- and second-generation creators. These were men (mostly) who invented the genre, and who had educations and life experiences outside of creating comic books.
Now, we have people creating comics who have only read comics. They may even have a degree in 'sequential art,' which is a higher-ed term for comics. These people are fourth- and fifth-generation comics readers, who devour pop culture like the insubstantial dross it is, and regurgitate it into their creations. They're not creating stories, they're creating comic book stories, and they're doing it through the narrowly-focused lens of their own shallow learning.
This point explains the first two, above.
4. Corporations.
Make no mistake, corporations have always been a dirty part of the comics scene, just ask Siegel and Shuster's families which company cheated Superman's creators for decades. But, until very recently, the parent corporations, while greedy and deceitful, have largely left comics to themselves on the creative front. Now, however, Disney owns Marvel and Warner Bros. has discovered that it owns DC, and the corporate meat hooks have sunken in.
Even five years ago, you could walk into a comic shop and find all sorts of amazing work in the majors, let alone the indies. Now? Marvel is all about the Avengers and DC is all about the Justice League. And that's it. Movie tie-ins and merchandising, nothing else. All creativity and risk-taking has been squeezed out of the medium by soulless, gray bean-counters. The worst thing is, the bean-counters think the public can't tell what they're doing.
If I've learned nothing else during my tenure on this planet, I've learned two things: health care should never be for-profit, and multinational conglomerates should never let marketing decisions drive creative processes. Sadly, both these things are the reality we have to live with now.
These are the reasons the genre has passed me by, and they're also the same reasons comic books are dying. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that within five years - unless things change drastically - the print versions of comic books from the Big Two will be gone. Marvel and DC, driven by moron MBAs who think they know business but only really know PowerPoint, will switch to digital-only distribution. Which will exacerbate the four points I made above, and hasten the demise of their business. This will lead to the death of comic book stores, but will also lead to a new flowering of the genre for independents. Ten years from now, I hope, I'll see spin racks back in the grocery stores.
Fingers crossed.
But I don't collect comics any more. I'm back to picking up the odd issue here or there, as I used to do when I was six. No more loyal following, no more regular Wednesday trips to the comic book store as I used to do for years. I'm done. The passing of an era. Nothing is constant but change, and all that.
Why? Because the medium is dying. Slowly. Agonizingly. Pitifully. Like watching a slug you've poured salt on. The circulation for a hugely-successful title these days would have qualified as a cancellation twenty years back. There are several reasons for this demise, all of them caused by short-sightedness and poor management decisions. I'm only too happy to share them with you:
1. There's no point for new readers to come on board.
I can follow the story lines, but that's because I'm as old as the creators and I have the same history they do. But new readers? They're lost. It's like hanging out with a different group of friends who talk in nothing but in-jokes. Sure, you'll understand a little bit, but it'll mostly pass you by. Take a newbie to a comic shop - assuming you can coax them in - and hand them any current Marvel or DC issue. See if they can make heads or tails of it. They can't, I guarantee you.
2. There's nowhere for kids to 'come across' comics.
Aside from being hostile to any new readers (above), which includes kids, there are no places for kids to find comics. When I found comic books I was passing time at the magazine counter in the grocery store, waiting for my mother to finish shopping. I saw this primary-colored splash, at my eye-level, and I was hooked on an addiction that lasted four decades.
Try to find a spin rack now. Go ahead, try, I'll wait here. Didn't find one, did you? Because there aren't any. To 'come across' comics now, kids have to make a trip to the comic store. The dark, smelly, unfriendly comic store, where fat scary beardos and maladjusted goobers make sure only their own kind feel welcome.
3. The inmates run the asylum.
When I first found comics the artists and writers were, by and large, first- and second-generation creators. These were men (mostly) who invented the genre, and who had educations and life experiences outside of creating comic books.
Now, we have people creating comics who have only read comics. They may even have a degree in 'sequential art,' which is a higher-ed term for comics. These people are fourth- and fifth-generation comics readers, who devour pop culture like the insubstantial dross it is, and regurgitate it into their creations. They're not creating stories, they're creating comic book stories, and they're doing it through the narrowly-focused lens of their own shallow learning.
This point explains the first two, above.
4. Corporations.
Make no mistake, corporations have always been a dirty part of the comics scene, just ask Siegel and Shuster's families which company cheated Superman's creators for decades. But, until very recently, the parent corporations, while greedy and deceitful, have largely left comics to themselves on the creative front. Now, however, Disney owns Marvel and Warner Bros. has discovered that it owns DC, and the corporate meat hooks have sunken in.
Even five years ago, you could walk into a comic shop and find all sorts of amazing work in the majors, let alone the indies. Now? Marvel is all about the Avengers and DC is all about the Justice League. And that's it. Movie tie-ins and merchandising, nothing else. All creativity and risk-taking has been squeezed out of the medium by soulless, gray bean-counters. The worst thing is, the bean-counters think the public can't tell what they're doing.
If I've learned nothing else during my tenure on this planet, I've learned two things: health care should never be for-profit, and multinational conglomerates should never let marketing decisions drive creative processes. Sadly, both these things are the reality we have to live with now.
These are the reasons the genre has passed me by, and they're also the same reasons comic books are dying. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that within five years - unless things change drastically - the print versions of comic books from the Big Two will be gone. Marvel and DC, driven by moron MBAs who think they know business but only really know PowerPoint, will switch to digital-only distribution. Which will exacerbate the four points I made above, and hasten the demise of their business. This will lead to the death of comic book stores, but will also lead to a new flowering of the genre for independents. Ten years from now, I hope, I'll see spin racks back in the grocery stores.
Fingers crossed.
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