WAITING
FOR TOMMY
By
Richard Johnston
RICHARD
JOHNSTON: Peak and slide is good business, responding
to the needs of the market, and growing them. Boom and bust
is irresponsible business, and will cause more harm to the
industry overall. Responsible business loses peaks and troughs
but keeps business higher that it otherwise might be. Brownism
vs Thatcherism.
NICK
BARRUCCI: Those that don't remember history are doomed
to repeat it! Let's make great comics! Let's present them
to as many people as possible. Let's not f**k up again and
then produce sh*t.
MARK
MILLAR: Exactly. The bust didn't come from people hating
comics; just people hating three sh*tty Thor comics every
month like Nick said. I've noticed some negativity on the
boards about this already, but I think it's the inherent self-loathing
that can sometimes come with such an optimistic field -- some
guys genuinely don't want the success because it means letting
cool kids in to play in their little gang. I think that group
is shrinking, mercifully, but the doom-sayers are still out
there.
It's
all about timing. Brown was lucky (as was Clinton) to be in
office when the markets were breathing out. Whoever's in charge
when the markets are breathing in takes the sh*t. The global
economy, like the comic-book medium, is a living organism.
Comics breathed in through the fifties, the seventies and
the nineties and breathed out in the forties, the sixties
and the eighties. We're due another good time in just the
same way that the global economy is f**ked for the next ten
years. It's impossible to bring in an end to boom and bust.
It's what keeps world markets alive and has done all the way
back to Adam Smith.
[Well,
this was a red rag to my bullish nature. I didn't study politics
at University for nothing. and Millar didn't write political
journalism for nothing either, sadly. But most people weren't
interested in that kind of thing.]
BRIAN
BENDIS: I was working in a comic store during the bust,
the bust came from one thing, speculation. Guys with jobs,
everyday guys, buying multiple issues looking for quick cash
return, they didn't get it and moved on, I watched it, nice
guys, normal guys they banked on the Image/Valiant crossover,
it didn't pay off and they left.
They
had no appreciation of the art, story or characters.
Now we
have readers, the readers need a morale boost. They need to
feel cool.
[I
wasn't listening. I was off on one.]
RICHARD
JOHNSTON: Mark, the economy here has been breathing in
for a few years now. Our economy has (so far) weathered the
storm. It did this by Brown knocking off the edges by paying
back debts, not cutting taxes and not increasing public spending
during the boom.
Brown
has spend the last years fighting Adam Smith economics and
has (to some extent) succeeded.
[Mark
Millar continued talking on two fronts.]
MARK
MILLAR: See, I mostly hang out with guys who don't read
comics. I grew up with guys who don't read comics and what's
interesting is that, between 87 and 91, I had them all reading
comics. I started them on Dark Knight, then Watchmen and all
the usual sh*t we all love and, before long, they were all
picking up two or three books a month. Then they just gave
up because they couldn't trust the brand-names anymore. The
companies got greedy and had their pals writing 5 times as
many books as the market needed and when customers can't trust
a brand they bugger off. Marvel should be Calvin Klein, but
it ended up being a discount store label. Who wanted to shop
there?
But step
back and look at the big pic, Rich. All Brown did was continue
the same mixture of monetarism and Keynesianism that Thatcher's
chancellors did and, for the most part, chancellors have followed
for 150 years. Like Nigel Lawson, he was in the right job
at the right time. He paid off debts because there was an
economic surplus-- just like Clinton's guys. World trade was
good. However, that's changed and that's why Britain's economy
is2 years away from being f**ked along with the US economy,
but it's all necessary to perpetuate capitalism.
What's
interesting is that comics perform quite poorly in good times
and very, very well when things are tough (wars and economic
downturns). We've had our recession during the golden international
economy. This is another reason why I think we're primed for
insanely good times because we're an avenue of escape as the
world economy disappears down the sh*tter next year.
Thank
God for Bush. What's bad for Earth is good for us!
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| 7 | 8
| 9 Continued
Here...
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