With the exception of the speculator years, which nearly destroyed the comic Industry and was also primarily responsible for the loss of readers, the Comic Industry has always been run by "the Inmates"
ex: Stan Lee-Writer
Jim Shooter-Writer
Paul Levitz- Writer
Joe quesada-Writer/Artist
The Entire IMATGE comics staff
There are more but that is a good cross section.
The people need to know and Love comics in order to successfully produce a quality product.
an empty suit, like the ones running Marvel in the 90's have no understanding of the medium and try to flood the market with clones of whatever was selling good.
Those people only canre about immediate revenue. Not long term growth. If something is not selling, cancel it and put something else out.
If something is selling, then lets make five more of these so profits go up.
That outlook is completely wrong.
defient1 said:
Marketing sells the books. Marketing can sell a lousy book in highly profitable numbers and it does. Quality is a subset of the marketing.
I have to disagree with this outlook.
My view is this,
Marketing is a tool to move a product or promote a specific event. Quality is never a subset of Marketing. What the hell does marketing have to do with the quality of anything?
Yes, great Marketing cvan sell anything, once. But once people see that the quality is not there, no amount of Marketing can bring them back.
Writers and Artists sell books more than the characters that are in them. That is a fact.
Go into any comic shop and ask. Many people follow certain creators more than others.
For example, I buy all Warren Ellis and all Mike Mignola books. Why? well because everything they put out acheives a level of quality that I get entertainment from. There is virtually no marketing done for any of their titles either.
The characters have to behave in line with what is established. (not jump the shark by having the Devil get rid of your marriage for examle)
The story has to have a level of believable conflict.
It has to push the characters boundries further than it has previously in order to keep it fresh.
The creative team that is put on a book should be more than (put name of hottest creators here) and more about who would really do this story justice.
I have seen many instances of the wrong artist, or inker or colorist being put on a project and it ends up lacking because of it.
I am just guessing, that you are in Marketing in some form or another. Thats cool.
I personally come by my outlook mainly from personal experience. As a Professional Artist, I have spent the last 20 years marketing myself. Marketing my ability and my name. I have had some decent success at it also. One thing I learned is that no matter how good you market something, If the quality doesn't back it up, it will fail. And, that failure will spread across everything.
you said something similar in the later part of your post.
Regarding Bob Layton; I always liked the guy, but lets clarify something here.
All of those issues of Iron Man that everyone looked at and praised, were actually drawn by John Romita Jr. They were inked by Layton.
Yet, because Laytons inking was so overpowering, it sort of overshadowed Romita's work.
Layton is a solid artist and inker, but he is always praised incorrectly.