Editorial: Camera Obscura - Summertime Blues

It's summertime, and the heat is making Alasdair even grumpier than usual. And he's stuck at home while the rest of the editorial board are on holiday in San Diego. You've been warned.
18 July 2003

HOT SUMMER NIGHTS

Well it?s San Diego time again, so you?ve all fucked off there for the weekend, and no-one?s reading this. Which is good because it leaves me free to talk about whatever I want because I am not at San Diego. But my editor is, and so won?t really have the time to look at this. Hah.

I?d like to write a column mocking everyone who went as a fool, and generally making the convention experience out to be horrible and demoralising, a long weekend of hard grind for pros and a short break of deeply sad nerdery for fans. Maybe for some people, it is. But I really enjoyed it when I went, a couple of years back, even after practically killing myself in the New Orleans heat the week before.

So instead, I thought I?d write a column denouncing everyone who went as a bastard. Because, when you get right down to it, I?m a small and bitter man at heart.

So what is there to talk about, the week before San Diego?

Fuck all. No-one?s saying anything much, apart from ?Yes, we?ll have big things to talk about at San Diego. Big Things. Yes.?

CONSUME! CONSUME!

I hate the hype and hoo-ha that surrounds just about everything in this industry. I really do. I hate the fact that it?s necessary. I hate the fact that unless you jump up and down and shout, the majority of comic fans will ignore anything not put out by one of the big companies and featuring superheroes. But most of all I hate the fact that the hype for anything actually worth the oxygen to talk about is drowned out in the nonsense about things like Mark Waid being punted from FANTASTIC FOUR.

Don?t get me wrong, I?m sorry he?s gone (well, as much as I can be ? I?m not reading the book), and I hope his next project brings him greater success. I?m not insensitive to the fact that someone who is, by all accounts, a very nice man, has lost a job. It?s rotten.

It?s also none of my business. Or yours. Or anyone?s but his, and the people who had him off the book. It?s none of my business what goes on at Marvel. Or CrossGen. Or any of the other places that are thick with rumours about the dodgy business practices that go on behind closed doors.

I?m a consumer. If I don?t like the product, I won?t buy it, if I do, I will. But that?s where my involvement with the ?industry? of comics should end. It?s not like I worry about the hiring practices at Bloomsbury when I buy a book, or how the manager of my local supermarket treats his staff. And I buy coffee in Starbucks, too.

Or, to pick a most apposite analogy ? d?you watch Paramount films? If so, you?re buying into the same conglomerate, Viacom, that runs Blockbuster video ? the chain that won?t stock certain ratings of film. And since Viacom are in bed with the MPAA, they get an awful lot of input into how films are rated in the US.

And that?s without going into their interesting practices in regards to how they choose to stock certain titles ? if a Paramount film did badly at the box office, you can bet dollars to doughnuts it?ll be more heavily stocked at Blockbuster than an equivalent box office performer from another film distributor. Oh, and they drive local video rental firms out of business, too. They're more than a bit ethically dodgy, all things considered.

D?you give a fuck about any of this when you sit down to watch a film? Of course not. Should you? Well, maybe, but that?s a matter of individual ethical consciousness.

But do you jabber and shout about it to the point where it?s hard to find out what interesting film releases are due in the next few months? Do you tell all the movie buffs you know about it, and how you feel about it?

Of course not. That?d be stupid and infantile.

SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES

In other news ? THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN movie has received a critical panning from anyone with a pulse, and THE HULK has confused audiences worldwide with it?s attempt to graft a heart and a brain onto a movie about a big green monster that smashes things.

Are there any big comic properties heading to the big screen now before SPIDER-MAN 2? I can?t call any to mind, but if I?d got something based on a comic in development I?d be getting nervous right about now. It?s not going to much more than another lukewarm reception before Hollywood decides that comics aren?t the hot thing any more, and moves on.

Oh, while I?m thinking of it ? Don?t go and see WRONG TURN. It?s shit. So astonishingly by the numbers that it?s scary (much scarier than the film manages to be), crappy effects, and given that it?s meant to be a scary monster movie, I?d like to have found out more about the scary monsters other than that they?re ?superhuman inbred cannibal hillbillies?, which was explained to me in dubious visuals behind the opening credits, rather than y?know, in the plot of the film. I need my monsters to have some human angle on them to be scary, I?m afraid.

I?d also love to know what it was the characters learned about life and themselves in the course of the film, apart from, ?Never go where the hillbillies are, and don?t fuck your sister?. I?m not asking for an after-school special, but I?d like to feel that the status quo for the survivors has changed a bit beyond having had a deeply traumatic experience and one of them having lost a lot of their friends.

Still, at least it shows that comics aren?t the only medium where we find people striving for the ?illusion of change?, rather than trying for anything with any heart in it.

POST SCRIPT

Further to what I was talking about last month, I notice that in the last couple of days CafePress Publishing has gone into beta, allowing shop owners to set up books and comics to go on sale in the next month or so. If I've understood the pricing structure right, I'm not sure this has legs after all, at least not for pamphlet comics, although OGNs may do better, but I've only had a quick skim, and I may have missed some key information. The next year or so should tell, I guess.

Enjoy San Diego.

Alasdair Watson is the author of the Eagle Award-nominated RUST.

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