response 1 of 1:

Jan 7 04:52 UTC 2001

(conventions?  I don't remember the last time I went to one.  I think
what happened was I got out of the habit of wanting to see behind the
veil, and simply began to enjoy what I was reading without trying to
dissect it or getting to know the people behind it.  that's about all
I ever got out of conventions, outside of the sleazy speculators trying
to make a quick buck by selling poorly-drawn books with excessive
print runs as "collector's items."  but that's another item.)

(really, if you feel there isn't anything new coming out of interest,
you're pribly missing out on some of the best work in ages.  it seemed
as if the past year, most creators stopped whining about the state of
the industry and, instead, did something about it, namely making comics.
going through a box of comics I received yesterday, I see several 
examples of this.)

(there's the collections of work that appeared over the past year:  The
League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Alan Moore & Kevin O'Neill's take on
heroes from Victorian-area stories; Chynna Clugston-Major's Blue Monday:
The Kids Are Alright, her look at a teenager's obsession with Adam Ant
and interaction with friends and oversexed adolescent boys; JLA: Earth 2,
a twisted look at an Earth ruled by supervillains and what happens when
heroes from our Earth try to set things right, with disastrous results.)

(there's the ongoing series:  although George Perez is no longer doing
art for the book, Kurt Busiek's take on the Avengers still stirs my
nostalgia for the heydays when Jim Shooter and Roger Stern were writing
the stories; Stan Sakai is in the midst of a lengthy storyline sequel to
his Grasscutter epic in the pages of Usagi Yojimbo; Terry Moore just
concluded another epic in the pages of his book, Strangers In Paradise; 
Linda Medley's blend of classic fairy tale characters and offbeat 
storytelling found a new publishing home, so Castle Waiting is coming
out regularly again; Frank Cho's Liberty Meadows, while mostly a collection
of his syndicated strip work, is easily one of the funniest reads out
there.)

(there's the reprints of long-out-of-print work:  Dark Horse Comics has
begun reprinting Kazuo Koike & Goseki Kojima's Lone Wolf And Cub, and 
that's going to take a while; ditto for Marvel's Essential collections,
basically B&W reprints of over 20 issues of continuity at a time, all in
an affordable format.  this month's selection for me was the first two 
X-Men collections, since I missed out on the glory years of Chris Claremont
and John Byrne.)

(even aside from what was in this month's box, there are other titles
appearing on a semi-regular basis that are worth a look.  Mark Crilley's
Akiko is kid-friendly without being pedantic, and it's earned him a
novelization deal, of which two appeared last year.  Batton Lash's 
Supernatural Law features the legal adventures of lawyers Alanna Wolff
& Jeff Byrd as they represent the strangest clients you'll see inside a
courtroom, all with a razor-sharp wit that readers of the National Law
Journal have enjoyed for decades.  Adrian Tomine's Optic Nerve has found
most of its acclaim outside of the normal comic reading audience, which
isn't surprising since there's not a shred of spandex to be seen within
the pages, just tales of Gen X angst.  Colleen Doran's A Distant Soil
is space opera at its finest.  Jeff Smith is teaming up with Charles 
Vess to tell the prequel to Bone in the pages of Rose.)

(part of the problem for many casual comic readers, or even people not
hip-deep in the genre, is finding something to interest them.  if you're
not interested in superheroes, you're unlikely to walk into a store with
posters of superheroes all over the place.  tying in comic retail with
the [once-]booming card game market helped somewhat by bringing in people
interested in fantasy, but that hasn't broadened the market enough, IMO.)

(comics can cover so much, but they've been mostly treated as a bastard
stepchild by the public at large.  you can go into a library and find all
sorts of information.  you can go into a bookstore and ask the person 
behind the desk to make a recommendation.  but it's difficult to go into
a comic shop and do the same.  I stopped buying my comics from brick-
and-mortar operations a couple of years ago because I became sick of
fighting with preteen Magic morons only to find 100 copies of the latest
X-men spinoff and no copies of that month's Action Girl Comics or Murder
Can Be Fun.)