3 guys, a lot of emails, and the future of comics.

Every few months, Hudson Phillips gets a hair up his ass and starts asking me all sorts of questions about comics and the industry in general, and I spend the better part of a week spouting off in emails about things I really know nothing about.

This time he brought in writer/journalist Van Jensen to mix things up, and balance out my one-sided view of things in this industry.

I sat down with two smart thinkers, (and good friends) who are out there making a difference in the industry, not just talking about it, Kevin Mellon (an artist on books such as GearHead, Thirteen Steps, The Athiest, & CUPID) & Van Jensen (a writer & comics journalist who regularly contributes to Publishers Weekly, ComicMix & Comic Book Resources) to discuss these three areas in further detail.

1. THE RIGHT TO KNOW WHAT CAN BE BOUGHT AND WHY TO BUY IT.
Hudson: This first section, I believe is the one section that is at least somewhat covered. There are literally thousands of blogs, websites, message boards, podcasts, & magazines that can all recommend books that you would like. Not only that, but comics readers love talking comics. If you ask them for a recommendation, they’ll come back to you with a 20-page color-coded print out of books you might like and where to start. Comics has an amazing sense of community and, in my experience at least, that community is willing to take you on with open arms.

Kevin: I agree with this, but I do think we have a long ways to go before we’ve reached a sort of… movie-trailer-saturation point with people being aware of what’s out there. They’re always going to be aware of the big stuff. It’s a matter of making people aware of the indy stuff, and the slip through the cracks vertigo/icon stuff that we’re struggling with.

Van: In my experience, comics is, in many ways, a big scattered mess. Previews is the best attempt at a roadmap, but it’s essentially advertising for Marvel and DC with a largely un-navigable back-of-the-book section on SOME of the indies. So you need to read that, and you need to read all those blogs and sites, and you need to know people who know comics… When you think about the work it takes to become a serious comics reader, you start to understand why readers are so passionate.

Read the rest of the article Here

-mellon