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WAITING
FOR TOMMY: BOB MORALES
By
Richard Johnston RICHARD:
So how would you fix this wacky industry that employs you?
BOB:
American publishing as a whole is in a state of flux, and
in many ways book publishing, magazine publishing, and comics
publishing are as different as Federation, Klingon, and Romulan
technologies. Most people from any of those publishing categories
find the others incomprehensible - they have different editorial
schedules, different payment criteria, audiences, goals, etc.
Frankly,
what will save the industry is more comics from non-comics
publishers. Right now, there are only three book categories
that are expanding: historical narrative, chick lit, and graphic
novels. Movies and manga will keep the industry afloat while
book publishers scramble for a credible way to do non-superhero
comics. In the meantime, the mainstream comics business will
have to bend from their traditionalist thinking. There need
to be more magazine-formatted comics from DC and Marvel aping
Heavy Metal in form if not content. For example, Marvel should
think of a way to do Savage Tales and Epic again, and I've
always thought (as have others I've spoken with through the
years) Action and Detective would work better for DC in the
same revitalized pulp magazine-spirited format. I think traditional
comics readers would be happy to buy an oversized, fairly-priced,
monthly Detective, with multiple Batman-related storylines,
rather than a dozen different Bat-titles.
Whether
it's Chris Ware or the Ultimate Authority, it's obvious that
many readers are into books as beautifully crafted objects,
and that care - you see it in Sandman: Endless Nights - belies
the notions of value and disposability that have dominated
the industry for so many years. The industry's misplaced respect
for crap and the quick buck is catching up to it - the rewards
won't be able to slow its crash if it doesn't rethink its
business plan. I'd like to see more of a backlist of creator-owed
titles from both companies, like, say, Marc Hempel's Gregory,
which is insanely out of print, as is Elaine Lee and Mike
Kaluta's Star Struck. Not every creator-owned title, mind
you - just the good ones.
It would
be healthy for DC and Marvel to do true, creator-owned books
- in short, be publishers for original work, and ONLY be publishers
rather than angling to control every copyright application
- but they've too swiftly evolved from the bullpen plantation
mentality of the pulp era to become properties factories for
their respective holding companies. That makes the cross-pollination
of talent throughout the mainstream industry much harder.
There's
probably not a single creator-owned deal among the majors
that's contractually as fair to authors and artists as standard
publishing deals - where if they screw you, they KNOW they're
screwing you. In comics, the right to have true authority
over one's work is still treated as a business indulgence
because the industry has little practical experience otherwise.
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