Coming Soon to A Spinner Rack Near You: Ms. Marvel

The new Ms. Marvel series, coming out in February, is to be written by G. Willow Wilson and drawn by Adrian Alphona and will feature a new character, a shape shifting Muslim-American teenager named Kamala Khan. Today's announcement came by way of a New York Times article: 

The creative team is braced for all possible reactions. “I do expect some negativity,” Ms. Amanat said, “not only from people who are anti-Muslim, but people who are Muslim and might want the character portrayed in a particular light.” 

But “this is not evangelism,” Ms. Wilson said. “It was really important for me to portray Kamala as someone who is struggling with her faith.” The series, Ms. Wilson said, would deal with how familial and religious edicts mesh with super-heroics, which can require rules to be broken.

I've read Wilson's work before, and remember particularly liking her graphic novel, Cairo. I have every confidence that this book will be very good. That Times article goes a little too far out of its way to pat Marvel on the back, though, and it is important to remember that comics' diversity problem is not going to be solved by little, well publicized displays here and there. This is definitely a step in the right direction, moreso than Mighty Avengers was, and it will be interesting to see the reaction, both inside the comics community and outside of it, as we move closer to seeing this new Ms. Marvel in print. 

Archie Comics Embraces Digital As Immediate Delivery System

In the world we are slowly creeping towards, print will be a niche market for alternative communication seekers, collectors, and history buffs. All mainstream media will be provided digitally.

Well, at least that's a distinct possibility. But if it is a possibility, and it is, the print publishers of the world would do well to branch out now and branch out bravely. One comics publisher is, and has been for several years now.

Quite honestly, this is some remarkable recent news we missed:

"Beginning in April, Archie Comics will offer digital versions of its comics on the same day that the print editions arrive on newsstands. The company will be starting with six monthly titles: Archie, Archie & Friends, Betty, Veronica, Betty and Veronica, and Jughead.

“We have a very exciting little business here,” said Jon Goldwater, the co-chief executive of Archie Comics. “We have to keep figuring out ways of pushing it forward.” ... “The more I thought about it, and the more I saw the sales, I realized these formats aren't competitive, they are supportive,” Mr. Goldwater said."

~ from The New York Times Arts Beat blog, George Gene Gustines, January 12, 2011

And the digital edition's price will be a full dollar less per issue. $1.99 instead of $2.99.

Those six titles are the series the company itself described later as "its 6 core titles" in the recent press release wherein it announced that the same material will be offered through the third-party digital comics publisher Graphic.ly as well as in Archie's own downloadable iPad app. ("Archie continues to lead the comics industry in embracing the digital medium, as well as making it easier than ever for our fans to get their favorite Archie comics." (ArchieComics.com blog, February 16, 2011.) Yeah. Pretty much. Couldn't have said it better.

The move to place their most popular titles in a digital format represents a seriousness in the purpose of this initiative. The fact that Archie Comics, among the oldest publishers of comic-books in America as well as the most often derided, has been the first in America to step up and accept digital is nothing short of remarkable.

That said, will there be a backlash from comics shops fearing a cannibalization of their sales? Probably not. Why? Because comic shops no longer sell many Archie comic-books. Archie has long been a mainstay of the newsstand, itself a shrinking market for the past twenty years. It was pointed out to me by a friend and manager of a NYC comics shop: 'Of course Archie has gone digital before everyone else. They had the least to lose.' This is probably partially true.

In his interview with Ron Richards of iFanboy, Co-CEO Goldwater said: "We value our partners in the direct market [i.e. the non-newsstand, comics retail shops market] ... We see the print and digital reader as two different groups, with some overlap. Some people enjoy going to the shop each week and picking up the hard copies of their titles. Others enjoy the convenience of downloading titles via their mobile devices or tablets." This is probably partially true.

I say: Remarkable nonetheless.

~@JonGorga

P.S. ~ By the way, again we had a big digital move forward announced on a New Comic-Book Wednesday, i.e. the day of the week new comics arrive at comic shops. I'm beginning to realize that's more than coincidence. Drive a few curious people into comics retail shops to see the physical copies on the day you announce your digital move? Very smart comics publishing world. Very smart.

Jon Gorga's Precious Little Time!

Last year's "Watchmen" film adaptation came out and there was a huge fan-fare and the trailer was magnificent, advertisements appeared everywhere, the world seemed to scramble to book stores and comic shops to read it and it sold like crazy for a few months, the action figures were gorgeous and, amazingly, in recognition that something was in the air, The New York Times finally created a 'graphic books' best-seller list (only online, however) and all us comics types were very happy.

Whew! Yeah! Awesome!

[Rorschach action figure image at right from DC Direct website.]

But then something happened. The film was a garish, occasionally unintentionally hilarious, extravaganza of superhero violence.

That was my initial reaction anyway. Can you tell I was disappointed? I've calmed down a lot since that day but I stand by my core reaction: in making a Hollywood motion picture out of Alan Moore's and Dave Gibbons' mini-series Zack Snyder took out all the quiet character moments and amped up the violent/sexual ones. The resulting film had a lot of the core spirit of the comics, but none of the beauty or honesty.

I said to everyone beforehand: 'Hey, if the movie is great more people will come out jazzed to read it than there are already. If it sucks, millions of regular, everyday people across the world will say 'It wasn't as good as the comic' and mean it." Still, the resulting film was so self-indulgent and violent I feared that there would be a backlash. That people would say: 'See? In reality all that superhero and comics stuff just comes to violence and sex. No more.' Generally, we didn't get that outside of a few cranks. (Despite the fact that we saw it big time when "Sin City"'s adaptation came out years earlier.) More importantly we didn't, thank god, move backward; but the movie's release slowed the progress we were making. Junot Diaz, awesome novelist and establishment geek, said something that amounted to: 'the Watchmen movie trailer was the best thing to happen to the comics industry in a long time.'

ENTER: Bryan Lee O'Malley's series of graphic novels that began with "Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life" and Edgar Wright's upcoming film adaptation "Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World" that opens tonight at midnight. The process that came before the release of "Watchmen" has happened again, but bigger because both the film and the last comic are summer releases! Let's hope the last part of the story doesn't repeat as well.

Clare has informed me that not only is the last comic "Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour" sold out in the comics store she works at, but that ONI Press itself has run out of copies of the book and has to go back to the printer and thus only the chain bookstores have copies.

That's pretty remarkable. Superhero comic-books sell out of stock. Indie graphic novels do not.

I think it shows that people really are willing to find comics shops (at least Graphic Novel sections) and try something if they've heard good things/they want to be informed about a big cultural phenomenon at the zeitgeist. That's the one solo difference between this moment in time and past big-scale adaption film releases or films based on non-superhero comics: The sixth book just came out. Everyone can be pretty nearly on the ground-floor together and enjoy the latest (and final) comic and the adaptation of the whole series together.

But if it's a bubble ready to burst (not jinxing it, not jinxing it, not jinxing it) I want to enjoy it too, and the window is closing fast. At time of writing I am 35 pages into "Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together", the fourth book in the series. That means just about three graphic novels to go. I am going to finish them by midnight tonight.

So help me god.

Oh and Twitter. So help me Twitter. Because that's where you'll see my updates on this adventure over the next... YIPES! less than twelve hours! I better get back to reading!

~ @JonGorga (<--See if I make it on my Twitter account! Not the LongandShortbox account.)