In tv or movies the special effects are pricy, but for comic books it costs the same to do a heartfelt drama as a space armada battling the Silver Surfer.

In novels, pages and pages of description really cannot compete with the immediacy of seeing the effects of Green Lantern's ring.

Horror is another obvious genre that the medium of comic books has an advantage over the others, but for a time the CCA put a stop to those.

This is why I think that the biggest threat to comic books is happening right now. Heroes did on TV what comic books have been trying to do for 25 years. They sold an audience on the idea that normal-acting people have super powers. I first saw this idea in Jim Shooter's New Universe, and I've seen attempts at duplication since then (Malibu, Defiant) but Heroes was the first time I saw it work on a marketing level.

Comic books simply aren't (IMHO) producing stories that are good enough to compete with Heroes, Hex, Smallville, Supernatural, etc. Even Doctor Who now has a budget to put the SFX on par with comic books.

And, from a story standpoint, I have to say that WWE's continuity is much tighter and more "newbie friendly" than either Marvel or DC. WWE explained, on camera, why Umaga went from being a villian to a hero. Why did Iron Man go from being a hero to a villian? Was there a satisfactory explanation?

Did DC ever explain why Jason gets murdered by Joker and gets a memorial, but Stephanie gets murdered by Black Mask (acting strangely like Joker and I'd love to see a story explaining that Joker was impersonating Black Mask) and doesn't get one? That seems to be a big personality continuity gaffe.

And, IMHO, if comic books can't compete on either a special effects level or a story / entertainment level, then what do they offer to increase their customer base?

Theno

Thanks!

And Death's Head's first's appearance's... sorry, I got caught up, there. His first appearance was indeed in a story called "High Noon Tex," which was printed in all the Marvel UK books... sometime. I couldn't pin down when. It was written by Simon Furman (the guy who wrote the TF stories) and the art was by Bryan "Ultimates" Hitch. How about that!

You could probably turn this whole thing into an Urban Legend Revealed fairly easily...

This assertion is based on absolutely no graphing or mathematical data. But yet it seems like it could be true, right?

Touchmark, the abortive Disney “adult readers” imprint from 1991-92 which ended up becoming Vertigo

This is news to me. Does anyone have more details about that?

but Marvel (thinking that perhaps they had something worth holding onto, here) rushed out a very brief (one page, maybe?) strip that “introduced” DH and ran in a bunch of books, so that they could say he was a Marvel character who crossed into the TF universe, not a TF character who crossed into the Marvel Universe.

Canny - I like it!

And if you bring England into it, it gets real weird, as you have Death’s Head, who was a Transformers character, who then showed up in Doctor Who, and then had his own series where he could fight the FF.

Death's Head is actually simpler than you think. Marvel's original contract with Hasbro said that Hasbro owned any characters created for the Transformers series; in short terms, any character that appeared there first. Death's Head was indeed created specifically for the TF story, but Marvel (thinking that perhaps they had something worth holding onto, here) rushed out a very brief (one page, maybe?) strip that "introduced" DH and ran in a bunch of books, so that they could say he was a Marvel character who crossed into the TF universe, not a TF character who crossed into the Marvel Universe. Everything else was just a dimensional jaunt from there.

And the Micronauts were just mentioned in some book last week, I believe. Can't remember what it was, but some character was reminiscing and mentioned them...

You can get these online for about $35 bucks a pop and they are great back ups to have to save wear on a physical collection. If you are dying for a hard copy, all the comics are printable. The thing I like best is the feature the entire comic; ads, pin-ups and letter columns included. For example, simply because Hulk shared a title with Sub-Mariner for awhile, you get these cool Subby stories on the Hulk DVD.

Licensed books also very on contract. IDW has the Transformers license...but Devil's Due can publish Transformers comics as long they're teamed with GI Joe.

Likewise, Dark Horse has Buffy, IDW has Angel (because Dark Horse let the license rights for Angel expire). Despite their connection, they're 2 separate properties (same with Xena at Dynamite and Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, which is unclaimed to my knowledge). IIRC correctly, Dark Horse can use Angel or Spike in certain circumstances, but not in others.

Marvel, btw, can apparantly have Rom show up...just not Rom as Space Knight. (he was at Rick Jones' wedding, for example).

And if you bring England into it, it gets real weird, as you have Death's Head, who was a Transformers character, who then showed up in Doctor Who, and then had his own series where he could fight the FF.

There's lots of folks digitizing comics for "archival" purposes, but CBR is a legitimate site, so we shouldn't discuss such things here:)

re: Intercompany crossovers, it all comes down to the lawyers. Shi/Fallen Angel can be as simple as Peter David and Bill Tucci swapping beers and saying let's do it. Even Witchblade/X-Men is Marc Silvestri who owns Witchblade calling up Quesada, who has what ever lawyer at Marvel handle such things write up a contract.( or Silvestri calling Didio..though there's probably a few more lawyers involved there). Transformers/Avengers ups the problem since you have IDW, Marvel, and Hasbro involved (though since Marvel and Hasbro has a business relationship already with some toy level crossovers, I'd guess there weren't huge hurdles to cross. Marvel and DC you have to have their editorial folks and they're legal folks all agreeing. And if you picture say Star Wars and Star Trek meeting, you get Dark Horse, IDW, Paramount, Lucas, the butcher, and the baker invovled.

whoo.

This has finally changed, to the point where I think that in ten years, people will no longer think "comic book" when they see a superhero story. We'll see if I'm right.

As to the question of rights: I'm fairly sure that Vertigo uses a rights-reversion contract model standard to the book industry, where they have the rights to a work (e.g., Skreemer, Watchmen) as long as they keep it in print. The creators--the owners of the copyright--can request back the rights to the work, but the company can retain the rights if they demonstrate that they are actively publishing it. (I am certain this is the case with Moore's major non-DUC work, based on comments he's made in interviews. I have seen one contract from Touchmark, the abortive Disney "adult readers" imprint from 1991-92 which ended up becoming Vertigo; they used a standard rights reversion model, and I think that Vertigo used the same contracts.)