Alienmorph wrote:Okay. Still doesn't make too much sense, because there's a ton of people who both play the Pokemon videogames, watch the anime and spend time and money the card games. The audience tends to be younger than comic-books and c.b. movies, but still...
The comparison works I think because like comic books, Pokemon has to constantly add new stuff to keep a steady number of players. You will always have fans even if the franchise stops producing new content, but their number will steadily go down.
There aren't many heated debates about Pokemon as a whole except for a fringe part of creationnist morons who aren't worthy of anyone's time, so I won't push the comparison further. I only wanted to compare the marketing plans. Comic books, Pokemon, Call of Duty, Magic the Gathering: rely on constantly expanding content. TLOTR, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones: the content does not need to be expanded upon (in GOT's case, it needs to be finished first).
Alienmorph wrote:Yes, but a drop in sales so huge that comic book stores are closing left and right and that even Disney has to aknowledge it's a problem? I don't think I'm being Alex Jones leves of paranoid to say it's more than just changes in the market that's causing it.
It has to do in part with politics, because there's a lot of hack writers and authors who think needlessy being political is a substitute to good writing. It's not that there's no place for social commentary in art, quite the contrary, but it seems a majority of creators in wester media only care about that. And it is/will be going to backfire.
Book stores in general are closing because, basically, of Amazon. Comic book stores are no exception. Paper has to adapt to new media and to the fact that everyone and their mother owns a phone and a tablet nowadays. And aside from the "time rivalry" with comic book themed TV, movies or games, comic book store have the issue that compared to novels, mangas or albums, CB are probably the ones that transition the best towards digital versions because they're shorter. CB stores don't sell digital prints and can't expect to cash-in on tablet use.
And if the only series that failed were the "political" ones, then the CB industry would still be super fine. But there's still the same amount of non-political series that fail, just because they're not good enough. As it has always been. Except now, there's the internet echo chamber that makes it look like everything is rotten to the core and openly political and dismissive of readers, while it's just the same bad minority as usual, except whatever they say is repeated an infinite amount of times to the point many believe they're the norm instead of the exception.
Alienmorph wrote:
Then what was the problem with Last Jedi and Solo: aSWS, if people just care for the setting and the spectacle? And why did we even NEED to bring back Luke, Han and Leia and make a direct sequel to the original movies? There is people who care for the brand more than the movies and characters themselves, but many of them are butthurt fanboys who refuse to believe there is such thing as bad Star Wars stuff, outside of the prequels, but that's the same as console fanboys or manga and anime fanboys. It's unhealthy, backwards logic.
From what I gathered in Solo, and from personal experience with TLJ, they were just poorly written - but TLJ is a "direct series" movie so it was still a success. Rey had little if anything to do with what worked and didn't in TLJ. If I take just one example - the Admiral who might be a traitor except no but at that point Poe has launched his own action - it's a plot device that relies on poor communication, something that tends to piss viewers off as weak writing. Plus, it's one of many "twists" inside the movie, so if "the Admiral is actually loyal" was the crux of the movie, it might work, but fifteen minutes later we're treated to yet another "big surprise", and another one after that, to the point that the pacing becomes horrendous. You end up with twists that fail because viewers expect them to happen, and since they're not THAT clever, it ends up being a disappointing movie, especially after the excellent Rogue One which was the total antithesis of TLJ writing-wise.
And yeah, you will have people who love stuff to the death, all the time. Solo just proved that they were not enough to get a financial success out of the Star Wars brand anymore.
Alienmorph wrote:It shown black people can be more than low-class citizens, and that both extremes on the spectrum are wrong, yes. I'm not even sure I'd call that political, it just seems common sense to me. Which is why despite the undertones and the other flaws of the movie, I still really liked B.P. I just don't think it's as much of a milestone as it's being hyped to be, and I'd be really careful with the political subtext in the sequels.
I kind of expect it to go the other way tho. Especially considering what could be added to the MCU once in a few months the stuff sold to Fox is returned to Marvel. One word: Genosha.
Since BP aired in an era where black people were more likely than not to make the headlines because a policeman shot them, then depicting an advanced, wise and powerful black nation is a political statement. Imagine an Italian thriller is released, in which the main cop character is the son of African immigrants: even if the movie is not about immigration, airing it right now with Salvini screaming his hate whenever possible would be political. It doesn't have to be in your face to be political.
As for Genosha, it's kind of hard not to be political about it indeed, but we're a long way from it being added. Even if he does 2 mandates I'm not sure a Genosha arc would happen under Trump.
Alienmorph wrote:Nowadays instead, you get stuff like the Iceman comic, that wastes half a issue to show a Gay Mutant Pride parade instead of actually telling a good story about an interesting character that is LGBT, and if people criticize that as being bad writing/hamfisted political content they are told thei're just homophobes that should go fuck themselves, and should not buy comics. Same for hamfisted feminist, or race-related content. So people stopped buying alot of the stuff, and the industry is having problems. The quality has dropped, the creators are turning against their customers and what can be an added value when telling a story has often became an hindrance.
The only difference with what happened 10 years ago, is that now you have internet flame wars to artificially amplify the fringe opinions. So you'll get assholes who will post their outrage of LGBT characters being depicted, which leads to assholes becoming enraged about it and reacting to any attack on the story as hateful commentary. Which leads to assholes of both extreme sizes being the ones responsible for setting the mood around comics.
The comic book community has changed more than the industry really. Nowadays, if character X makes a quip about women's rights, the same speech bubble will be shared by the assholes of both sides, either adding "Hell Yeah" or "Shameful", which leads to one more iteration of the same sterile debate.
And really, it only serves the extremes, whose importance is artificially inflated, and who get joined by people of both sides who think that they're the norm because they scream louder. But overall, there hasn't been a bigger revolution recently than before. There already was fan backlash back when Alan Moore got the Joker to paralyze Barbara Gordon, it's just that back then there was no echo chamber so that the fringe idiots on both sides of the debate could make it look like they were the centerpiece.
Comic books have always evolved with society since their inception. Now is no different than before. But now, the most extreme conservatives and progressives are sadly the ones who dictate what fans are talking about. And many seem to fall for it.
Alienmorph wrote:The political bits in Fables are the one thing that makes me groan when reading the thing (I'm 7/10s in... I will probably talk more in detail about it once I'm finished with it). And you don't have to tell me about writers like Miller... I've stopped reading his stuff after Dark Knight Strikes Again, and I can't really say I feel like I've missed anything worthwhile. Excessive uses of politics and commentary has always been a thing that annoys me in fiction, it isn't just a issue I picked up six months ago or so.
There is no fiction without social commentary or political content. Pretty much all notable books for centuries of French literature were political - Rabelais was mocking the elite in Gargantua, La Fontaine's Fables are satire through and through, Dumas' Monte-Cristo is ripe with social comment, etc etc.
The main problem recently is that conservatives have tried (and apparently succeeded) to establish what "is" and "isn't" political. That was the entire point behind their rotten Sad Puppies campaign, even though it boiled down to the fact that with a few exceptions (Orson Scott Card...) most creators are not conservatives (and they have never been as far as I know). So they sed the middle ground fallacy to say that since there weren't (m)any conservative creators, then there shouldn't be (m)any progressive ones either.
What makes it worse in comic books is that the media has been running for a long time, and society has changed a LOT since their inception. So while it was progressive to create black characters in the 60's, now some of the content can be pretty deeply conservative if not outright racist. And they're still used as fallacious references by those who can't suffer to see society evolving.
So basically, forcing non political content in comics is a political move.
