{"id":245,"date":"2003-07-01T11:22:04","date_gmt":"2003-07-01T19:22:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2003\/07\/01\/the-next-age-of-comics-has-begun\/"},"modified":"2003-07-01T11:22:04","modified_gmt":"2003-07-01T19:22:04","slug":"the-next-age-of-comics-has-begun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=245","title":{"rendered":"The Next Age of Comics Has Begun"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jim Henley <\/a>has coined the wonderful term “Bubble Age” (a la “golden age,” “silver age,” etc), to refer to the comics that came out during the direct-market bubble, starting with 1981’s Dazzler<\/i> #1 (the first comic book distributed exclusively to the “direct market” of comic book shops) and ending when the direct-market bubble burst in 1993.<\/p>\n

While the direct market dominated comics, it created economic conditions that allowed a flowering of wonderful comic books than anytime before or (so far) since. Cerebus, Love and Rockets, Hate, Eightball, Zot!, Understanding Comics, Beanworld, Naughty Bits, Yummy Fur, Bone, Watchmen, From Hell, Sandman, Journey, <\/i>Joe Sacco’s work, Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing, Mars, Stinz, the Desert Peach, Palookaville, Mage<\/i>, and dozens more.<\/p>\n

Frankly, compared to the Bubble Age, the so-called Golden Age of comics was crap. In the Bubble age, for the first time, a critical mass of English-language cartoonists were able to make a (scant) living without either attempting to appeal to superhero fans, to daily newspaper editors, or to the denizens of head shops.<\/p>\n

Since then, the comic book market has – if not entirely collapsed – certainly deflated into a sad lump on the ground. Established talents are still eeking out a living – and only some of them – but the direct market is no longer able to nourish new talents, and the readership seems to shrink every year.<\/p>\n

The obvious solution for years has been to distribute comics via the internet – but the problem is, how to make a living off it? No one wants to pay $4 to read a comic on the internet – it’s simply not worth that much. But you can’t make money charging what a comic books is really worth – say, a quarter – because there’s been no way to allow payments that small over the internet.<\/p>\n

Now that’s changed.<\/p>\n

Folks, go check out Scott McCloud’s <\/a>new comic, The Right Number<\/i>. <\/a>It’s an excellent comic in its own right, with a couple of wild ideas and Scott’s usual skillful cartooning (looking better than it has in years, in fact).<\/p>\n

And it’s only a quarter. (There are also a few sample panels you can read for free).<\/p>\n

If it works, this will begin the next age, and maybe – just maybe – a new flourishing of comics worth reading. Go get on the ground floor, why don’tcha?<\/p>\n

UPDATE: In the comments to an earlier <\/a>post, Scott Martens <\/a>explains why he doesn’t find the average comic book worth buying: “$2.50 on something I’ll read in 10 minutes and may only be somebody’s idea of a prologue, or worse, the middle chapter of a story whose beginning I haven’t got.”<\/p>\n

So the question is, are folks who aren’t willing to pay $2.50 willing to pay a quarter? We’ll find out….<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jim Henley has coined the wonderful term “Bubble Age” (a la “golden age,” “silver age,” etc), to refer to the comics that came out during the direct-market bubble, starting with 1981’s Dazzler #1 (the first comic book distributed exclusively to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-site-and-admin-stuff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}