Links

About cats and how they went from a "necessary household appendage" to cuddly companion animals.

Woohoo! N. K. Jemisin's Patreon worked and she'll be writing full time.

While I'd love to get these to put in our driveway, I bet it wouldn't take long for people to catch on that they are fake.

Here's a cartoon for my hubby. Humid days, indeed.

I signed up for the 30-day free trial of Comixology Unlimited, and I'm not impressed. I've always thought the search functions on Comixology are awful, and trying to find all books of a certain series that are offered in the unlimited service is annoying. In addition, it appears that most of the "free" stuff is first issues, not the most current content (in short, very limited). And it doesn't include any DC or Marvel books. So I'll probably drop it in a couple of weeks, before I end up being charged. It's just not worth it to me if there's nothing current. Add in the fact that some creators were never notified their books would be offered on the service, and it's even less appealing.

A comic about being a "nerdy, Mexican, gay, Mormon child of the ’80s and ’90s".

Not all school shootings are modern. Take a moment to remember the 1927 Bath School Massacre.

I love Lego Bricks, but I'd never be able to build a pop-up Lego Castle:

Yes, yet more links!

I'm feeling the need for some more links! Let's start with a bit of personal news...

I took the leap today and submitted an application to The DC Writers Workshop, even though I do not believe I quite fit the profile of what they are looking for. I have no published fiction, yet, so my writing samples were news articles. That alone may disqualify me. However, the experience of forcing myself to fill out that application, instead of a boring job application, felt good. And hey, there's a chance they might invite me to the video workshop, which could lead to new writing skills. That's nothing to sneeze at.

In some other happy news, Variety and DC Comics have confirmed the return of Supergirl for a second season. It will be moving networks and filming will likely move to Vancouver, which could mean cast changes. I hope not, since the cast is the strong point of the entire show.

I wish I could afford a catio for Inkwell. And for me. Inkwell really wants to go outside, but is terrified of it. And I don't want to lose him to a car or coyote. Via King5.

I'd like to hang out with these women, but I don't work in comics at the moment.

Enjoy a video at Boing Boing of skipping sodium into a river. Lovely explosions!

There's a very interesting discussion at MetaFilter about the cost to taxpayers of businesses like WalMart that fail to provide adequate security and end up calling the police four times as much as comparable retail stores. This is a form of hidden taxes and corporate welfare, like how many WalMart employees qualify for food stamps. If WalMart were a responsible corporation, it would take care of its employees and not rely so heavily on local police to handle its security. But read the comments... lots of good views and other examples there.

A bunch of white morons got upset when a group of 16 black female West Point cadets raised their fists in one of many photos during a photo shoot to celebrate making it through the academy. The photo pose was determined to be "inappropriate" by an official inquiry because the raised fist (commonly used to indicate "Army strong!" during football games) could also be taken as a political statement. Personally, I think it's a great photo and the lily-livered idiots who got upset are clearly trying to make up for their own deficiencies.

Speaking of deficiencies... definitely not safe for work: Why ancient statues had small penises.

The Zipper Merge is the only way to drive, but for some reason, it's considered rude by people who don't know how to drive. The Minnesota DOT is trying to teach people how to use it, even including a video of why it works and a video of how to do it. These links are from MetaFilter, which has quite a long and heated discussion on the issue. Personally, I'm for proper zipper merging, but since the majority of Washington state is not, it's too dangerous to do it. People will literally try to kill you if you follow the law and use the open lane until the merge.

Inkwell believes this website is the most annoying thing online.

I really hope this archive is being digitized and preserved for posterity, because it sounds like it might be invaluable when looking at history.

Thursday afternoon Linkdump

Well, crud. A frozen vegetable recall due to possible listeria contamination has expanded and now includes all the veggies we get from Costco, including one bag that's half eaten. Ug.

Syrian refugees in Canada have very little, but what little they have they are giving to help people affected by the massive wildfires. Via MeFi.

One thing I hated about importing some of my music into Amazon's music app is that, if it thought it knew what song it was, it would replace my music with a "higher quality" version. Because computer algorithms are imperfect, I would sometimes either get a different version of the song or, in one case, a completely different song. An example would be a live duet version of a song replaced by the more popular single singer version that I didn't like as much. Well, at least Amazon didn't delete my original songs. Apparently, Apple Music deletes original song files when you import them into it. Yikes. That's some serious damage to many people's music collections.

Supergirl is in danger of not being renewed, mostly due to the cost to make the show. I really enjoyed the first season, despite some clunky writing and plots. The cast is terrific and I want to see more of it.

How about some ghost stories? Here's a tale of ghosts on a plane. I'm not sure whether to believe the tales or not, but they are fascinating. I'm moderately sure I would freak out if I experienced something like this, seeing as I already have massive anxiety attacks on planes. The last time I flew, from San Diego to Seattle, I needed some serious help to stay calm. I'm not entirely sure I could force myself onto a plane again if there is any other option for getting to where I'm going.

Another interesting story I read today is about two women who just wanted to live without men in a time when women weren't really allowed to do that. But they managed their happily ever after despite the forces around them (and despite being a bit silly with finances).

Trying to trick drivers with an optical illusion might work for a bit, but it generally wears off once drivers figure out what they are.

A woman paints an octopus using 95 million-year-old octopus ink (Google Translate version). Original article in Norwegian. Via MeFi

This story doesn't comfort me regarding medical procedures in our high-tech world. I'm just wondering why the software was set up to do a scan at that point in time.

Every single authority figure failed this child who lost out on her lunch and was accused of a crime for trying to spend a legal $2 bill. The fact that the cop had to go to a bank to figure out it was real shows such ignorance I can hardly stand it. My former boss at Math 'n' Stuff used to get $2 bills on purpose from the bank to hand out as change. I swear I'm going to start getting them myself and spending them everywhere to raise awareness that they exist and are legal tender.

Augie reports that some Marx Brother Movies have been restored, including cut footage. I think I wouldn't mind seeing one of these all cleaned up... movie night!

If I had more money, I'd definitely be supporting a bunch of people on Patreon. One I'd support is Otis Frampton, creator of Oddly Normal. Unfortunately, I'm worse-than-poor at the moment (cash flow is good right now, but soon to be a right mess). So the best I can do is pass this along and hope someone else supports him until Eric and I get our feet back under us.

People who are thinking about trying to break into writing for comics could do worse than looking into this DC Writers Workshop. I am considering applying, although I suspect I a) do not qualify and b) wouldn't be able to afford the trip if I got accepted. Folks have until the end of the month to enter.

Here I Go A-Gathering Links...

My friend Lou Anders has had a short story published in Boys Life. I used to steal my brother's Boys Life magazines and read all the fiction and cartoons before he even got a chance to glance at them. I still want to read the entire comic adaptation of the Tripods trilogy... I never saw the whole thing.

Ancient footprints are already pretty cool artifacts, but now they are even cooler since professional trackers have been brought in to make sense of them. I love this type of history story... looking at a problem from a different, yet totally obvious, direction.

How about a tale of a very long-running experiment? I've heard of some experiments that have been going for many years, but this is a bit of a surprise. Seeds in bottles, buried in an effort to see how long the seeds would last.

So, Free Comic Book Day is coming. Here's some sneak peeks of Doctor Who comics. I need to figure out what comics we already ordered from DCBS so I know which ones to get when Eric and I go to the store next week.

I stayed up until 2 a.m. reading a book the other night/morning. I haven't done that for ages because I've been too responsible to risk being dead at work, for all the good it did me. But I really enjoyed the book and will be writing about it soon, probably not for tomorrow's reviews, but maybe next Sunday. It was Castle Hangnail by Ursula Vernon, and I strongly recommend it for any young woman, ages 8-18, who isn't very princess-y or girly and likes snakes and slugs and dirt and work. It's very good.

David Gerrold has a post about Hugo asterisks. I just want to say, the asterisks were there the instant the puppies gamed the Hugos. Putting them into physical form didn't make it any worse, since the damage was already done. On the contrary, the asterisks let some of us have a physical memento of their first time voting in the Hugos (me!) and raised money for a worthy cause. The people who were hurt by the asterisks deserved to be hurt because they are the ones who put the asterisk there in the first place by gaming the Hugo nominations. The fact that they still don't get it only proves the point. And it still amazes me that they are stupid enough to think that people gamed the Hugos before they did. The utter willful ignorance of the puppies is astounding.

Below the fold, depressing stories...

Linkdump

There have always been women in comics. Since the very beginning, really.

Dalek Relaxation Tape. "Your tension has been EX-TER-MIN-ATED!"

I'm still amused by the Wheel of Time pilot that was shown early in the morning back in February on the FXX Network.

A scientific explanation as to why cats rule the internet.

Bleeding Cool looks at subscription boxes. I've been tempted, but my tastes tend to be fairly narrow. I suspect I would usually be disappointed by all of these.

Doctor Puppet, videos on YouTube...

Yes in Pictures. via.

That would be a dangerous wedding to attend.

Remember that guy who used Kickstarter to raise $10 to make a potato salad? Then it went viral? Well, Potatostock has happened, and it sounds like it ended up being a win-win all around.

I backed another Kickstarter graphic novel of world's colliding. And the second volume of another Kickstarter as well. I have the first volume.

I also bought a fantasy storybundle, thanks to Sherwood Smith, who mentioned it and made me curious.

Mini Friday Linkdump

Bleeding Cool has more on the women in comics panel at Denver Comic Con that had no women.

But Denver overreached in their programming, clearly, because the checks weren’t in place to prevent this panel from happening. If Denver Comic Con is becoming a force to be reckoned with in the geek community (and they are), this was their youthful pratfall. One panel out of 300-400 went wrong. I think we can talk about it, use it as an example, but also forgive them and stop acting like this mishap was somehow intentionally organized by Denver Comic Con.

The people who wrote Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew.

I always wanted a complete set.

I think I want this USB charger.

I've been reading HP Lovecraft's works, fairly steadily now. I'm not even halfway done, but I have read enough to understand this reference:

I kind of want it on a t-shirt, to be honest.

Linky-Dinky-Doo

The New York Public Library's Instagram Account has some really neat stuff on it, including reference desk questions from before the days of the internet.

"Please give me the name of a book that dramatizes bedbugs?"

The Internetest safety video on the Internet

Reports from a Medieval War

I wish I had the skills and tools to make this for my cat (and for me).

Justice League Unlimited: The Lost Episode. I don't remember if I've posted this link before. If I have, it's still fun enough to share again.

Stupid Google Tricks. A couple there worth remembering.

"What does it mean when you dream you're being chased by an elephant?"

I am not opposed to people using marijuana, and this article definitely suggests we should be studying the medical potential of pot more. I want to say I would never use the stuff, but if I were in a situation like Xeni's? Maybe. Just... maybe. I don't know.

I want more Battlebots. Apparently, the new series will be airing starting June 21st, 9 p.m. on ABC. Get out the popcorn!

I was unaware that The Wiz almost had a comic book adaptation by Mark Evanier. Huh.

I can't really listen to the song without cringing, but Rolling Stone had a great retrospective on the making of Band Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmas?"

Cliff Mass corrects the media on the notion that we're having a super-drought. Of particular interest is the fact that precipitation is normal, it just didn't collect as snow.

Source. T-Shirt.

Bleeding Cool noted not long ago that DC's latest campaign is really ripe for photoshopping. Ouch. You know, at first I was disappointed there was no Aquaman ad, now I'm just relieved.

Do Not Disturb.

Stress doesn't make rewards any better.

GunFail, which collects news stories of people who really shouldn't have had access to guns, is on Pinterest, Facebook, and Tumblr. The guy who collects these stories noted on Daily Kos that his Pinterest page was disabled for awhile, but he doesn't know why.

DuoLingo now has Norwegian.

Well, time to start learning the language that matches my name.

Well, it's not Calvin and Hobbes...

Bill Watterson returns to the comics page. Watterson recently also participated in a comic strip documentary.

Tuesday Linkage

There will be no more Amy Unbounded. That's the bad news. The good news is that Rachel will tie up the cliffhanger best she can, and that she has other stories set in Goredd for us to enjoy.

Rioters damage comic shop. Forbidden Planet looted. The news from London is terrifying.

"Our Earth is degenerate in these later days; there are signs that the world is speedily coming to an end; bribery and corruption are common; children no longer obey their parents; every man wants to write a book and the end of the world is evidently approaching." (via)

Now this is a crappy landlord situation. Wow.

Most awesome Preschool Teacher ever.

I've been using Swagbucks to earn some Amazon.com gift cards. As of today, I've gotten $190 in gift cards without spending a cent (though my spam e-mail is getting hammered), and have enough for another $15. I've pretty much got my new Kindle when it comes time to buy it!

Safety Man! (he will haunt your dreams)

Play with cats online.

Pug for the Linkdump

Alert!

"Brent Anderson had a lot of art stolen in San Diego. His car was broken into at the San Diego Zoo and the following original art was stolen: 50 pages from Astro City Vols. 1 & 2 & Local Heroes; AC: Dark Age Books 1 (#s 1-4), 2 (#s 1-4) & 3 (#s 1-4) (50 pages). Green Lantern and Rising Stars artwork was stolen as well. Please share this to as many venues as possible, to get the thief caught and the art returned."

Via The Beat. Please spread the news.

Yet Another Linkdump

Very well done Comic-Con Bingo board, and as a counter, a disturbingly honest Comic Con Bingo board. Note: I've seen the Comedy Central version, and it's lame compared to these.

The Case for Comic Books.

Keep Right Except To Pass.

A League of Their Own.

The biggest problem with electric cars is that the infrastructure to charge them while you are out and about doesn't yet exist. Walgreens wants to change that.

Fascinating article on what gender means, and how marriage laws may have unintended consequences.

I'm seriously having trouble believing that people are really stupid enough to believe The Onion. It "literally" blows my mind!

Pug Puppy animated GIF for the in-laws.

A Sunday Review

TV this week:

• Batman: The Brave and the Bold: "Game Over for Owlman!" - Another fun episode, this one also featured Aquaman in a non-speaking role! Outrageous! I loved the solution Batman came up to Owlman's team of nasties. I think I recognized which Elseworlds some of those alternates were from.
• Numb3rs: "First Law" - Artificial Intelligence is achieved! Well, maybe. And I once again picked the wrong one as the baddie. Oh well. The one I picked was bad, just not the way I thought.
• Battlestar Galactica: "Final Cut" - Xena goes colonial on yer ... ahem. I love Lucy Lawless' true accent. It's lovely to listen to. Nice little twist at the end of this one.
• Food Detectives: "Small Plate Club" - I was most interested in seeing the plate size piece, but I was also interested in how they demolished the "alcohol burns off when you cook it" myth. In short, no, the alcohol doesn't burn off. It's still in there, just in slightly smaller quantities. There was also a piece on water intoxication, which explains the science behind how drinking too much water can kill you. The results of the plate test definitely argue that size of the plate matters. So replace those big plates with smaller ones, and lose a little weight.
• Ghost Hunters: "Betsy Ross House" - Two investigations in this season premiere, and two inconclusives. The first house was old enough that the sounds could have mostly been natural. Again, I don't think much of EVPs, so they don't convince me. The Betsy Ross House was a little more interesting in terms of sounds, but again, nothing convincing. Fun ep, and nice to see Jay and Grant again.
• Ace of Cakes: "Ghoul's, Ghosts and Chocolate" - The Charlie Brown cake was simply amazing. I loved how the chocolate bars were delivered to the bakery, as well. And that wedding cake! I like the couple's style, getting married Hallowe'en style.
• Heroes: "Shades of Gray" - Ok, this is getting a little better. I was actually engaged most of the episode. The comic shop bit was pathetic, but funny. And I was really hoping for more Hiro and Ando, and glad when they popped up. Just not enough of them.
• Supernanny: "Del Re Family" - Twins and a older sister in New York, with a cop for a dad. The older girl is simply COOL. Nine years old, going on sixteen. I seriously thought her dad was going to say no to the sleepover, but by trusting her now he's going to prevent serious issues later. That head butt the boy did to the mother looked genuinely painful. I kept thinking they ought to check the mom for a broken nose. And the younger girl's bit of naked rebellion is going to make great viewing for prospective boyfriends.
• Batman: The Brave and the Bold: "Mystery in Space!" - Depressed Aquaman is a sad sight to see. He's really a wet blanket. I've never been a big fan of Rann, but it made a good backdrop for Aquaman's sadness. Aquaman drawing a frowny-face in the sand had to be the highlight of the episode.

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No comic books nor Agatha Christie this week. My library is doing its best, but I can't get everything as quickly here as I did when I lived in the Seattle area. And with comic books there will always be an off-week as long as I get them mail-order. If I can get my act together, perhaps I'll think of something else to review in the off-weeks.

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This week's movie was The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. Hubby-Eric wanted to watch this movie in part because hubby subbed at Finn Hill Junior High School in the classroom next to Steve Wiebe's science classroom. I had pretty much no interest in the movie. The whole thing was depressing, seeing the politics of video gaming is the same as any small pond politics. It's important to remember that the movie fictionalizes some of the facts and plays fast and loose with the dates, but is generally correct. The way the people in the arcade gaming world treated Steve was ... disgusting is one word for it. Entering his house after his wife had asked them to wait? Disregarding his record because he got the chips in his game console from someone who's a twit, even though there was no evidence of wrongdoing? And Billy Mitchell comes off really poorly in this one. He could use a haircut. A depressing movie about another small pond world of fandom.

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My library book this week was The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America by David Hajdu. I wanted to love this book, but I had a very difficult time getting into it. The text is densely filled with detail and digression, to the point where a reader can easily get lost. Especially in the early chapters, when you aren't sure where the writer is going with this tale or what he's trying to convey. The text begins to come alive when Hajdu reaches the story of Wertham's book and Gaines ill-advised testimony, but by then you are over halfway in! It isn't bad, it's just written in a disjointed information overload style that didn't sync up well with my reading style. For me, the first half of the book was a grind to read.

Once I got past the stylistic difficulties, this turned out to be a comprehensive history of the censorship of comic books starting with a pretty decent history of how comic books came into existence. Frequent digressions in the text give potted histories of individual comic book creators, enough for a reader to get a good sense of who was making these books, and why they seemed so radical to the establishment. The book becomes chilling when recounting the Nazi-style book burnings conducted by children under the guidance of self-righteous adults. The testimony of the people involved in those burnings makes for disturbing reading.

While the book burnings were the most chilling part of the story, the most sobering for me was the appendix of this book. It is a list of comic book creators who never again worked in the field of comics after the purge of the 1950s. And it includes early Aquaman artists Louis Cazeneuve and John Daly, and early Aquaman writers Joe Samachson and Don Cameron.

The book has extensive non-intrusive footnotes (listed by page at the end of the book, no note markings in the text) and a comprehensive bibliography. The list of people consulted reads like a Who's Who of comic books (and in fact Jerry Bails, creator of the Who's Who, is also credited). This is a well-researched book, and while I don't think it quite succeeds in covering how the scare changed America, it certainly tells the story of how it changed the lives of a great many people. It's worth reading, if you can get into it.

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Past Sunday Reviews -- Comics at Amazon.com -- Previews -- My Wishlist

Thursday Linkdump of Doom!

Well, no real doom here, but I like to pretend...

No offense meant to Colbert, but I prefer the name Serenity.

The New York Times now has "Graphic Books" Best Seller Lists.

Five Reasons to Check Out Captain Britain and MI13. It's a good book, and I agree with everything in this article. Ok, except for the vampires on the moon. Sheesh.

I'm getting pretty sick of The Watchman promos and talk and everything, but this is just wrong. It's wrong in every single way possible. If you haven't read the original material (or, I suppose, seen the movie) then you probably won't get how wrong it is. At least it intended to be wrong, and isn't that way accidentally.

Wil Wheaton put his new book for sale in non-DRMed PDF format. It quickly made him a lot of money. "Sometime overnight, the total PDF sales exceeded the total print sales. I've still earned more via print sales, though PDF is rapidly catching up. Here's something cool about the gap between them: whenever it looks like PDF is going to overtake it, a bunch of people (presumably because they read the PDF) buy the print copy, and it leaps ahead. I wish I could do an animated visualization of the sales, like a little horse race, because it sure would look awesome."

I can read a lot on-line, but even free, Red Mars is too much. I'd want a paper copy if I were to reread that book.

A mermaid.

Let's wipe out toilet paper. One man's quest to reduce waste.

Speaking of waste, more proof that Diebold shouldn't be making voting machines. And any voting precinct that has bought voting machines from them should get a full refund plus damages. This is just fraud on the taxpayers and fraud on the voters. Diebold/Premier should be sued out of existence.

More reasons to be nervous about drug testing: false positives are really common. Experiments with the D-L test described at the end of the report found that "patchouli, spearmint, and eucalyptus tested positive for marijuana, while lavender, cypress, and oregano (which previous studies showed produced false positives with the D-L test) gave inconclusive results." In tests using just the NarcoPouch KN Reagent kit, 33 of 42 substances—including vanilla, anise, chicory, and peppermint—tested positive for cannabis.

Scans Daily

Oh woe is us! Scans Daily has been suspended by LiveJournal, probably because of copyright violations.

There's been an outcry of sadness and/or joy from the comic book blogosphere. Some, like me, wondered why it hadn't happened long ago. Others were dismayed because so many people knew about it, including some pros, and it was a great community for review and commentary on comic books. Some were simply delighted that those rotten thieves were finally shut down.

For non comic book fans, Scans Daily was a place where people posted scans from comic books and commented on them. No problem, right? Bloggers like me do this all the time. As long as you don't post too much of the book and make sure your commentary is all about the pages you are posting, then it falls in that grey area of Fair Use and everything is peachy keen.

Except Scans Daily often just posted more than a few images or even a few pages. There was a "rule" that you couldn't post more than half the book... but unless you are commenting on every single piece of action in those pages half a book is WAY too much to post. In addition, the "commentary" often consisted of summaries of the action in the pages NOT posted, essentially spoiling the entire book.

This was the reason I stopped reading Scans Daily. I enjoyed the posts that actually made intelligent comments on the books (or sometimes really bad but wonderful jokes), but there was a significant percentage of those annoying spoiler posts and it was pretty much impossible to avoid seeing the spoilers (someone always forgets to put spoilers behind a cut). There were even some people that seemed to be competing to be the first person to spoil a book, so spoilers were often posted before my shop was even open on new comic book day. I had a choice to either not read any of my LJ friends the day or so before new comics came out or to remove Scans Daily, so I dumped Scans Daily.

Oh, I missed the good posts. But there was enough bad it just wasn't worth the effort (I'll note that in addition to the spoiler posts there was a portion of adult content posts that also just weren't my cuppa).

And now it's been shut down. Reportedly, a well-known and generally well-liked comic book pro was "responsible" for the shutdown. Well, no... the folks posting too much copyrighted material are responsible. If the moderators had insisted on making an effort for Fair Use, instead of becoming lax and allowing people to post way too much of a book with not enough real commentary, it would still be around on LJ (I'm told they were about to instate new, stricter rules: so the revival, when it appears, will no doubt be more careful). I certainly don't blame any copyright holder for doing what they are supposed to do to protect their copyright.

And, in the case of the above mentioned comic book pro, the book that was posted was just published and the scans that were posted included the final page and all plot twists in the book. In short, you could find out what had happened in the entire book just by reading the post. Worse, the person who posted the spoilers also The comments on the post included inflammatory "commentary" including telling the writer of the book to "die in a fire". Typical internet hyperbole, true, but this is a guy who has been stalked and threatened in the past and knew a person who died in a fire. That sort of hyperbole is uncalled for no matter how much you hate the book. It probably made him more inclined to simply report the problem. After all, do you really want to politely ask someone who told you to die in a fire to remove their post?

Anyway, I'm half sorry to see it go and half glad that folks who were posting too much and pretending it was Fair Use got whack-a-moled. I'll probably not say any more about this topic, but I realized I had to post this on my own blog when it started out as a comment on another comic book fan's blog that kept growing until it was too much for one comment.

What Would I Do? Part II

If you haven't read the first part, go and do so now. Thanks.

Now I've got my books. My central Nine Titles and the mini-series that float around them. What next? Oh yeah, READERS.

How does a publishing company attract new readers? The only way is to get books into potential readers' hands and get them interested. But that's REALLY expensive. Advertising doesn't really seem to work (not that DC does much advertising for their comic books outside of other comic books). So, as queen of DC I've got to find a way to promote the product. What to do?

Well, there's this newfangled device called the "world wide web" that seems to be pretty popular with the kids these days (sarcasm off). Of course I'd use the internet to promote! It's a no-brainer!

What's more complicated is HOW to effectively promote via the internet. Here are my simple ideas, based on the streamlining of the titles I've already proposed and my views as a fan who uses the 'net a lot.

1) The web address is the icon. Put it everywhere. Put it on the cover of every book published by the company. Put it on buttons. Put it on stickers. Put it in every ad. Put it on the bottom of the last page of every story. Make the web address seem like the company name to people.

2) Make the main page of the website friendly and usable. No Flash, no Java, no extra crap. Make it pretty but SIMPLE. The rest of the page you can jazz up, but the main page MUST be accessible when people go there. Nothing turns off a potential reader as much as something they cannot read because of technical errors (and it doesn't matter whose fault the technical errors are).

3) Promote each title on its own, bookmarkable, page. People should be able to link to a page for a title from their own blog/twitter/whatever and direct other people easily to the page. So each of the main titles needs its own page with a permanent web address. Mini-series need them too... they will eventually be collected and the page will become the promotional page for the collection.

a) Every promotional page should have some minimal information like the artists and writers, the shipping dates and price.
b) Promotional pages should also have images from the book. A small sample of interior art as well as cover art.
c) These pages should also link to full on-line stories. More on that next.
d) Promotional pages should be updated as needed, but information should NOT be removed. Original ship dates should be preserved, along with original promotional artwork. Why? Because I said so and I'm the queen of DC in this exercise (and I'm a bit of a historian, so removal of data irritates me).

4) Offer full stories on the website. Not every story, but full stories. Even better, offer stories from the catalog of backstock. Use the web to reprint stories that otherwise aren't likely to be seen.

For instance: DC has now acknowledged that Aquaman was created by Paul Norris. But, except for a recolored reprint of his first story, have fans had a chance to read stories drawn by Paul Norris? If a current Aquaman story appears in one of the Nine Titles, then at the end of the story put an ad that says to go to the website to read a classic Golden Age Aquaman tale. Put the tale up, and leave it up. Let people read it.

Some of those old stories will never been seen again unless they can be reprinted very cheaply. Except for establishing the rights, the web is probably the cheapest place you'll find to publish. And there are some truly fantastic Golden Age tales... characters like the Spectre and Johnny Quick, that new readers might just really like.

And if you put some of the stories into context, with perhaps a short history lesson about the era the story took place in and what was happening in the world at that time, you can even pretend it's an educational initiative!

But I'd also expect some new stories. From current books on the stands. Perhaps hold the final pages until the pull date, but give the readers a taste. Consider it the advertising budget. You cannot make money without spending it. This is spending, but has the potential to make a lot of money.

5) Do not try to "protect" stories on the web. It will just make it harder for people to read and won't actually stop pirates anyway.

DC and Marvel are very concerned about protecting their assets, for which I cannot blame them. But they are so concerned that they lean too far toward technical solutions to moral problems. People will be honest if given the opportunity. But if they see a story online and cannot read it because it requires them to install something extra or because their computer can't handle the DRM, they will look elsewhere. Some will find a free pirated copy of the story, but most will simply not read it and as a result, you will lose that reader. If it happens enough times, the reader will ignore your company.

As for stopping pirates... well, you can't. It's simply impossible. Oh, I grant that if you put in enough protection most pirates will go somewhere else. But as soon as you have that much protection, it will be difficult for normal law-abiding people to read it, so they will go somewhere else as well. As a company doing business on the internet you have two choices: accept reality or fight senselessly until you lose everything.

Accepting reality means, in this case, that my DC initiative would put up high quality images of the stories in a non-protected format. Each page would have copyright information (and the web address!) both on the page in a footer and encoded in the file. And that would be the extent of the protection.

It's better to have "unauthorized" copies of your work out there that are high quality with a copyright and the URL of your site than a crappy scan done by a pirate who simply wants to "honor" of being the first person to post your story to the torrents.

Again, going back to #4, I'm not advocating posting every story. But I would not object to it either. Eventually, every story will be scanned and posted anyway. Best to make official copies that LOOK right and have a copyright notice.

6) Add new, original stories to web-only or web-first format. These would be teaser stories, tales that pull in new readers. These would be heavily promoted. DC would put them on Facebook and MySpace, even encourage comic websites to put them on their own pages. They would feature main and secondary DC characters in original adventures that are done-in-one and short. The Golden Age managed full stories in 6 pages, these would be something similar. They would show off the strengths of the characters. If Batman is featured, show him using his detective skills. These would be portraits of the modern characters that both introduce and add to the DC universe.

7) Collect and publish works promoted on the web.

You'd think that people wouldn't want to buy something they can get for free. You'd think that. But the truth is, most people love having a paper copy of that story they read online. Particularly a collection. So even if you are posting things for free, and leaving up free archives of stuff: collections work. Especially if people love the work. Look at where most webcomics artists are making their money. It's not in the advertising, although they get profit from that. It's from selling collections of their work and merchandise based on the work.

I firmly believe that it would work for DC as well.

Ok, so that concludes my main changes while I'm queen of DC. I don't have any idea if my ideas would work. I do know that publishing as an industry is going through some major changes, and in a few years we'll have a better idea of what will work and what doesn't. Perhaps I'm completely wrong and this plan is a recipe for disaster. But I don't think the industry can keep on like it has been going forever while its fandom shrinks.

What Would I Do?

There's a sort of meme going around about what YOU would do if you were put in charge of DC or Marvel. I'm no businesswoman, and I sincerely doubt anyone would listen to my business advice, but if I were in charge? Hmmmm. This is all off the top of my head, first draft, so PLEASE feel free to criticize.

I pick DC since I'm an Aquaman fan.

What does DC have going for it?
1) History... literally generations worth.
2) A backstock of stories that fills rooms, many of it published only once.
3) Iconic characters that are instantly recognized by much of the world.
4) A solid group of writers and artists that turn out great works every year.

What does DC have going against it?
1) History... too much for a new fan to absorb.
2) Continuity, the need keep iconic characters static, or return them to the status quo by the end of a story, thus stifling development.
3) Fans that demand too much and give too little in return.
4) The high cost of publishing, including getting rights to republish that massive backstock in new formats.

What are the challenges DC faces over the next few years? Loss of audience, lack of profit on the publishing side, and keeping the master corporation happy, I guess.

Loss of audience means loss of profits, so the number one initiative would be to rebuild the audience. What kind of audience does DC want? Obviously, a demographic with money to spend is the best, but they also want to build the future. So they need to appeal to teenagers and college-age adults.

Rebuilding an audience is not a simple task. You can't just put the current books into new hands and expect them to start picking up the book. In fact, the way the current books are written, you are unlikely to get many fans with any initiative that relies on just getting books into people's hands. Advertising is not going to cut it. In addition to getting new readers to look at the books, DC also must appeal to new readers.

DC's clumsy attempts to get new readers so far have included new lines with completely new characters and new lines with old characters re-imagined. The first takes advantage of only one of DC's strengths, the second grabs at three of them. The biggest problem with DC's reimaginings so far is that they've concentrated on a very young audience. The "Johnny DC" books are fine for building future fans in a long-term way, but aren't going to do much for the immediate bottom line.

If I were in charge, books with new characters would be put at a low priority. No translated Manga, no new girls' line. Vertigo and all would keep their place, but they would not be part of this initiative. Johnny DC would also keep its place, including the Super Friends and Titans for kids. Those books are what I'd consider a good start on future readers... they just need more exposure to potential readers. More on that later.

So, I'm looking at DC's main line of books. We've got your Superman, your Batman, and the rest of the books. That's pretty much how DC sorts them.

So as "queen of DC" in this exercise, the first thing I would do is trim Superman and Batman to two books each. Superman gets ACTION COMICS and SUPERMAN. Batman gets DETECTIVE COMICS and BATMAN. The main story will be carried in the title bearing the name of the character, with back-up stories in each issue. ACTION and DETECTIVE will only have one-off tales or some multi-part stories featuring characters from the Superman and Batman families. Page counts will be increased, but each book will only be a monthly.

For the rest of the DC Universe, I would bring back ADVENTURE COMICS with a rotating cast of main characters. I'd anchor it with Green Lantern and the Flash, making it their monthly book, and put at least two other stories in it that would rotate according to popularity and what the company wants to promote. I would also bring back ALL STAR COMICS anchored with Wonder Woman and the JSA. Again, rotating stories would fill out the books. Three other books would be the JUSTICE LEAGUE, TITANS, and LEGION. They would each have back-up stories as well.

In short, I'd make every single DC main line book an anthology with a higher page count.

But wait, there's more!

Naturally you aren't going to be able to fit everything DC wants to publish in those nine titles. So I would also allow mini-series. With a big caveat. Every mini-series must have a definite beginning, middle, and end. You see, the biggest problem with DC comics is that the characters have no end. It's a strength in some ways, but it becomes a weakness when the readers feel like they've read everything there is to read about a particular character. The character doesn't progress, doesn't move forward... nothing happens. And there are only so many ways to tell the same Superman story. Which is why there MUST be back-up stories introducing readers to other characters that can be allowed to develop.

So, to drag this back to my point, I would allow for mini-series to be published but they must conform to standard storytelling. They've got to be going somewhere. They must add to the universe.

*whew* That's a lot of thinking for one post. I think I'll finish this thing tomorrow. Feel free to comment, but keep in mind there's more coming... including how to attract readers like bees to flowers.

Linkdump

If you have a pet peeve, you must blog about it.

League of Extraordinary Freelancers Redux.

I, too, am Toshiko.

All the effort put into the diorama... and instead of asking for corrections, new museum director Jeff Hunt destroys it. Scumbag. He owes those students for their time and efforts. Picture of the destruction, on a mailing list about the event.

Revising Islam. Can they pull it off? Will it help?

A Guide To Your Pug.

Monday Night Thoughts

If you are feeling like having some pancakes, IHOP Free Pancake Day is tomorrow, February 12th 2008.

The minicity I've been following, Pontoon, now has industry! So the Pontoonians have gone from being farmers to... um... building things? I wonder when the transportation link will become active? SimCity via links.

I would switch "Love Poem" and "Chocolates", but otherwise this Savage Chickens cartoon has it pretty right.

GO PIA! YES! Pia Guerra to work on Doctor Who! AWESOME! If it sounds like I'm thrilled for this, it's because I am.

Why Aren't You In Newspapers? Bill of Unshelved (one of the best webcomics out there) explains the situation. Incidently, if anyone wants to buy me this, it'll go great with my Library T-Shirt.

Comic Strip Protest Round Up.

Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed #141: Storm, Magick, and Supergirl. Also see: Comic Book Urban Legends Addendum, on Super-Menace.

Michael Sensei links to YouTube Wallace and Gromit commercials from Japan. Now I'm amused.

Woody Guthrie bootleg recording restored.

Slashdot has a fascinating article on how laws ought to be "developed".

The Doctor Who LOL Macros group has been having a meme going 'round of "Terrifying Pertwee". It starts here.

He quit Aquaman for this? *sigh* I'm utterly uninterested.

In more somber news, Steve Gerber.

Comic Book Creator 2.0

I was offered a chance to preview this software and jumped at it. I'm not an artist and I'm only a mediocre writer, so I gave up on presenting you with a clever finished project along with this review. I will say that I do plan on using this for a couple of ideas I have in mind in the future. Nothing super, but stuff I hope will be pretty cool. So, let's start the review by installing the software...

Anyone who knows me knows I'm picky about what I install on my computer, and I hate programs that don't allow me to customize the installation. This program didn't have much to customize on the install, but at least allowed me the choice of whether or not I wanted quick start and desktop icons. That's a plus.

The documentation is a bit dry and technical. There was no simple guide linked from the readme file. Activation seems to require an online connection, which won't be a problem for most people, but the help is also online and in forum format, which makes it almost useless unless you have a lot of time on your hands. The most useful help is in a series of tutorials also available online. While I was able to figure out much of the basics myself, I eventually turned to the tutorials for more specific help (specifically the placing of speech balloons). I would have preferred to have that help available offline in a standard help file.

The set of basic backgrounds and clip art that comes with the program is fairly weak, but the program can use any image on your harddrive, so you are only limited by how well you can scan/import images to your computer. There are also extra sets of images available on the download page for the program, so you can beef up your graphics choices fairly easily.

Using the program will be intuitive for anyone familiar with comic books. You put in your background, add characters, text boxes, speech ballons. All very simple. You get a choice of layouts, which can help you focus. You can change the size and dimensions of your images in the program, and even call up your standard image editor from within the program, while working on a page.

Here's a sample strip, the result of using only the packaged clip art available on the website and very little thought:

I did note some odd quirks with the program. I got frustrated when the program apparently lost my set of backgrounds... until I figured out how to quickly reset it and realized I'd reset it wrongly myself. The display could use some serious customization, as it doesn't allow me to set it up to show an entire page on my display (1280X800). There are a lot of scrollbars that could be eliminated with a slightly slicker design or just some user options. The comic strip size templates still saved as a full page jpg, leading to lots of pointless white space. Most of the problems were very minor annoyances, but there were enough that it starts to add up.

I didn't even try to get into the options for sound and animation, as I like my comics nice and static and silent. But those options exist for people with those interests.

The upshot is that this is a great program that will help you tie together the elements of a comic book into a series of pages that look pretty darn good. But it won't turn you into an artist or creative genius, it just helps the process along. I think this is a great toy, but could also be a potentially useful tool. If you think you might like it, give it a try, then let me know what you think.

Random Linkdumping

Jack Pendarvis interview at Bookslut. Jack kindly describes himself as a loyal friend of this blog, so go read it to learn more about one of my readers... er... I feel a little egotistical writing that.

Congrats to TangognaT!

Many congrats to Collen Coover and Paul Tobin as well!

How Do You Say "Kalidah" in Japanese? Oz and Ends links to Michael Sensei.

Scott McCullar's 10 Favorite Comic Book Covers.

Comcast sucks. Yet more evidence.

More Seattle Trivia.

A lawyer discusses the lawsuit against the science blogger being sued for a negative book review.

DRM: The Sky Does Fall.

What does model train software have to do with open source? A lot, apparently. In short, a court has decided against the rights of open source software, which may force open source to... well, close.

Heraldic Brain Baffler. Answer and explanation of answer is in the comments.

Amsterdam's Bike Culture, MetaFilter links to an intriguing photo essay.

How good is your area for walking? Check out Walk Score to find out.

Monkeys Harrass Villagers (who can't fight back because the monkeys are protected).

I've never heard it described quite like this, although I've seen slightly similar descriptions.

Country Village Bothell London Bus, an enhanced photo. It's the best I've ever seen it.

Cats in a box.

Sep 15-19 is "Holy Pasta Week"
Plan your menus now.