What in the actual fuck did I just pay $10 for?!? Ten Buckeroos. Gone. Hey that’s the name of the first actual series from the new imprint DSTLRY. Gone. Coming out this month. It psychologically prepares you to see your comic book budget get gone. Buh bye. Oh that new series is gonna cost you Nine Buckeroos also. And guess what? I will happily pay it! It looks spectacular. DSTLRY’s new website is also all sleek and kinda wow as well. You can check it out here:
They’ve got countdowns for their new books. You could keep
your eyes glued to that or you could, you know, just pull the damn thing
knowing that your LCS will have if stuffed in a box for you so you don’t have
to worry. You can also pay $300 bucks for some tiny little Devil Panda Demon that
some Asian chick made that’s supposed to be the Publisher’s mascot. I mean, yeah, that's definitely putting a lot of cashish in a creator's bank account. Does this thing sing 'Purple Rain' or talk to my doggie while I'm gone or will it get me access to some Hollywood Demon party?
You can also pay $100 for all sorts of different fancy shmancy covers of their Big D on the Devil Book. A Big Old D on the Cover. Yeah, I’m sure that’s purely coincidental.
Chip Mosher: “I’m gonna give the comic world my D!”
Who’s Chip Mosher? Who’s David Steinberger? Are they agents? Are they crypto weirdos? No they’re Doogie Howser wannabes who are Alen/Twins and apparently they love love love comic book creators:
Here’s a link to an article on their whole approach to this new imprint.
As far as their approach to giving comic book creators lotsa love it looks like that means charging an arm and a leg and a left nut while limiting the amount of copies and chances you have to give your body parts to get said copy. So you’re gonna only sell a limited amount of hard copies and digital copies and that’s it? That’s your angle? So artificial scarcity? Sounds like Big Oil to me. So if for some reason I’m unable to get it then that’s it, that’s what you think? So you don’t think any of the free illegal comic book sites online aren’t going to post every single page of your comic for everyone who wasn’t able to get their hands on it? So they’ll blast the readers with a gazillion ads and make buckets of cash because you think only printing a few of your 9-10 buckeroo books is going to change the comic book game? Dude. Anybody can get anything anywhere any time for free. It’s sad. It’s just the way it is. So, what you have to do is you have to give people the incentive to want to pay for your art because they want to support you. Scarcity doesn’t mean shit you Whiskey Wankers. Now, I will support you 100% because the people you have on board are incredibly talented and put the best shit out there. But get out of their way and leave the gimmicks for Penn & Teller.
Look, I know, I’ve been boasting about how I’m willing to pay up for prestige books like since they usually deliver the goods unlike what most $4 books are delivering these days, yet I am bewildered as to why this $10 ADD Fest was put out as the first book from the new creator owned imprint that is going to reinvent the industry.
Before I continue I would like to say that everything in this ‘Anthology’ looks amazingly beautiful and it’s clear these writers and artists are at the top of the Comic Book game now. It’s just a glorified ‘We are the World’ video. Each creator gets a line to sing and then it’s on to the next one except there’s no chorus and there’s no sham charity run by a complete idiot save for the lining of the pockets of the best in the biz; which I don’t really have a problem doing, just, you know, give me a coherent happy ending story for my hard earned ten bonez.
Anthologies absolutely suck. It’s like going to a Strip Club and seeing comic book creators come out and spin their stories around the pole for a few pages to Def Leppard and then disappear. They pour their sugar on you for a blip and then they’re gone. None of the stories are satisfying. They’re all big teases, “Hey, that’s awesome, wait, don’t stop, is there a champagne room???”. I have an immense amount of respect for Will Dennis and all the creators that joined in this ADD Give us the Big D anthology but I don’t get the point of it. Is it to show how cool you are and how many bad ass comic book peeps you know? Did they just reach out to all of them and go:
‘Hey send me whatever three or four pages you have of a story or comic that you never got off the ground and I’ll put them in a $10 book and give you a chunk of the proceeds’
Ten bucks is like the far reaches of comic book pricing. Once you go past 10 you’re in graphic novel land so you better come wit dat boom bap if you’ve got the sack to charge ten. What it also does is it makes you go ‘Wow, they do have the sack to charge ten, it must be amazing’. You know what this reminds me of. It reminds of that gluten-free coffee cake mix I got from Whole Foods last month. I always peruse the ‘Cake and Muffin’ mixes in the baking aisle. I’ve tried a bunch of them, most of them are okay, some are yuck. After you make one you always are reminded that baking your own stuff is always far superior to the store bought crap. Yet one day I walked by and there on the shelf right at my eye line was a new brand. It looked sexy. It looked delicious. It wasn’t on a dating app. I was sold. But, oy, it was pricy. The coffee cake mix was $13. I thought, wow, if they have the chutzpah to charge thirteen then that coffee cake must be a party in the mouth. It turned out to be awful. I threw it out, it was barely edible. The difference here is that this book is yummy AF but it changes flavors so much you have no idea what it is that you’re eating.
I’m sure that when we all saw this list of writers and artists that were joining this publisher we all got ridiculously excited. Yet this book feels like an old school ‘Battle of the Network Stars’ from back in the day. You’re like, ooh, Wonder Woman is going to be in a swimming race! Then you watch Wonder Woman in a normal old swimsuit do an average job at swimming, then it’s over really quickly and then another star is doing something that’s over quickly and it’s never satisfying. My goodness Linda Carter was so unbelievably beautiful:
The stories in this Anthology of the Big Erect D were over so quickly I had to flip backwards and forwards to make sure I didn’t miss a page. Like, seriously, three pages and then done. Are any of these going to be continued at all? You got my Comic Book Johnson all up and excited and I have no idea where to go next to fulfill it’s comic booky needs. Here’s what I thought as I read every inch of this Big D:
Wow this is great I wonder what – hey what the fuck, it’s over? What’s this, ooh, wow, cool visuals, who’s this chick, she seems – wait, that’s it? Oh man I am dying to know what – huh. Oh. Next one already?
I’m going to go through all these lightning quick stories so you don’t have to. Better that you save up your shekels for the AI created mascot of your face on a Demon Armadillo for $700 next month.
1. Spectregraph. Tynion/Ward - I dunno, some dude goes to steal something and his ghost comes and kills him or some dude hammers the thief's head. Looks great, Ward is a beast. Not a fan of Tynion. He gets the NBA 'over-rated' chant.
2. Shepherd. Bernadrin/Kristantina - Some futuristic tale about colonists in pods going somewhere in a space ship who need a robot/AI/human chick to protect them from space thieves. Mnyeh, it was aite. But quick!
3. 8 Rules etc. Charretier/Cowles - Woo hoo! The amazing team behind Tom King's spectacular 'Love Everlasting' is doing their thing. Some blonde super spy babe kills a bunch of people on an island in a bikini. Elsa draws a wonderful pair of boobies at the end. Now it feels like I paid $10 for comic boobies like I'm some Oni Anime Jungle Chick Comic pervy Dynamite Red Sonya drooler. I think this gets its own comic soon. Yay. Did I mention Elsa drawing boobies?
4. What's Mine is Hearse. Phillips/Jones - Umm. A sexy Asian chick bangs the corpse of a handsome dead dude and then either kills or gets rid of the guy driving the hearse so she can drive off while laughing like a complete wacko. Ohhh-keedokee. Art is ridiculously gorgeous though aaaannnnd I feel unclean.
5. A Blessed Day. Andolfo - An actual Demon manages and runs a huge Pop Star and a record label. Ho hum. I run into Demon Managers at Trader Joe's all the time. This gets made into a series later this year, may or may not pass. Andolfo drew the recent White Knight debacle written by Mop Top Loser kid so still got that icky taste on my comic book mouth.
6. The Stowaway. Jock - Kid steals food off a helicarrier. Jock is great. Super short like the others. Really looking forward to forking over $9 for Gone.
7. Deleted Scene #2. Azzarello. Risso - Three pages of a Western scene over a campfire where, I dunno what the hell this is about, Azzarello! Get Chiang and take over Wonder Woman again for goodness sake!
8. White Boat. Snyder. Francavilla - The same team that did the underwhelming super silly 'Night of the Ghoul'. Interesting tale about a ghost boat or whatever. Snyder! Get Capullo and take over Batman again for goodness sake!
9. What Happens Next. McElvie - By this point my brain was spinning and I hit a wall. Some futuristic AI soul in a cloud avatar love story, I dunno. I'm gonna need another gluten free twinkie to wake up and be alert for the final two stories. Did I really pay $10 for this?
10. Waiting to Die. Ram V. Garbett - Another boobie shot, nice. A couple has sex and then one goes outside to watch a solar flare that will kill everyone. Oh, a weiner shot also. So that's 2 Pairs of Boobies, a Big D on the cover, a tiny D and a corpse banger for those who aren't keeping score.
11. What Blighted Flame Burns in Thee. Cloonan. Lotay - They saved the best for last. They gave this unbelievably talented duo 11 pages to tell their tale about a man who saves a woman from being executed for being accused of being a witch. The art is breathtaking. They did the right thing by leaving this until the end because now I want more more more. I think this duo gets a comic soon also. Somna in December? They have a clock on their website you can watch for 40 days if you want.
Here's the big D-eal Doogie Dudes: Just put out great stuff. Hard stop. You don't need toys or $100 variants or artificial scarcity. You've obviously assembled a who's who of genius comic creators so just let them do their thing and you'll sell a bunch of books. I'm down. Just leave the gimmicks to the Big 2. Their gimmick is pretending to be a comic book publisher while actually being a cog in a TV/Film machine.
Speaking of which, I've got this throbbing comic book stiffy from reading this anthology that gave me zero happy endings. Let me see here, ooh, the new Daredevil #1, oh yeah, that's a major turn off and wait, ooh, let me find that White Knight Jokers kids book, ahh, yeah, that's Janet Reno and Elizabeth Warren in fetish gear bad. Yeah, I'm down to a shriveled turtle, DSTLRY, you may carry on.
Rating: 7.0
Verdict: Pay through the nose to get their Actual Series coming out soon.
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