Part of it comes down to the collaborative side of comix. Trained as a painter, I think collaboration is a really exciting facet of comix. Obviously, I grew up thinking Lee and Kirby were like one gestalt mind (yes, I grew up in the Seventies).

I remember joking with friends about how drawing comix took so ridiculously long and how the only thing that saved an artist from that trial is knowing he was working with writing that might consistently challenge his decisions about narrative voice.

Yeah. Joyce. Chapter after chapter. Again, “careful what you wish for…”

Great thing is working with Joyceheads. Some of these guys are like Trekkies with. Ph.Ds. There’s a deeper, broader understanding these guys can give to the first-time reader of ULYSSES, but only comix presents a forum for that kind of interaction.

Hey! If this s the kind of strip you’d draw yourself, then maybe you’ll tell me what I’m doing wrong…

Thanks again,
-Rob

But I did want to stop in and thank you for the mention on my ULYSSES “SEEN” comic, Chad. I’ve been a lurker on your “random thoughts” for awhile now. I’ve found it to be a great way to keep up with the mainline word of comix as I spend more time in the studio than a comicshop these days. Imagine the treat I got making the rounds of my messageboards and seeing a plug for my own comic!

Thanks again, man. And you’re completely right, it’s a crazy idea adapting Joyce into comix. Problem is that from a year of playing with different ideas this one seems to be catching some attention so I’m signed on to the ten year plan. A classic example of the most important lesson in comix; “be careful what you wish for…”
-Rob

However, since books saved by write-ins are inevitably cancelled eventually anyway, it might be time to rethink that logic.

How does me knowing about a possible cancellation change anything?

Well, you can go onto message boards and tell off everyone who likes something you don’t like which is successful, for not buying the book you do like!

Or, you can organise a write in campaign to save books no one cares about, like Manhunter!
(I’m not sure why companies don’t wait until they’ve had more write-ins than sales on those last issues, but they only ever seem to need a few hundred).

It seems to me that that is something only the publishers would have any interest in. Unless maybe you’re looking for advance warning that one of your favourite books might be cancelled.

If we had accurate one’s, not just diamonds figures which are known for not being accurate, you’d be able to look and see how a shift in policy at a company affects sales, spot trends, see companies experimenting and learning etc.

You can do it a little with the current one’s, but not much.

I do wish more people would look a them before jumping on message boards and going ‘Why do they exer let X write a book? They are terrible. It makes no sense.’, because often, the answers are in the sales figures.

Also, I enjoyed the first issue of Clone Saga, but the second just showed that it will be the story on fast forward with some random changes thrown in (and, I don’t buy the changes happening at the beginning as much since the beginning of the story played out as they intended, so nothing should be different).

Yeah, that’s fair.

While I was impressed by the first issue, not so much for the second one.

So are you referring to that new Clone Saga thing? What is that, anyway? Is it a retelling, or a summary, or reprints, or what? I keep thinking that maybe I should read some of the old clone issues. I never have, except for three issues of Ben Reilly as Spider-Man, which occured during a break in the storyline. (And I didn’t seek those issues out. I got them at a garage sale years ago; I didn’t even know they starred Reilly until I read them.) I skimmed through a few issues back when the clone mess was going on, but they looked so bad I couldn’t ever get myself to buy them. But I keep thinking now that I should read them, just so I can learn about an important part of Spider-Man’s history. And it would certainly help me to understand the story that’s going on right now in Amazing.
Anyway, I think wanting to read bad stories that are historically important to a series is clearly justified. And there’s always the simple fact that some books that are widely considered to be bad are actually pretty good. And you can’t ever be certain if you don’t read them yourself. (I happen to like Englehart’s Fantastic Four, for instance [although not ever single issue], but it seems most people really hate it.)

(Oh. I guess I should clarify that when I said I haven’t read any of the Clone Saga, I meant the stuff from the mid-90s. I do happen to own #149, with the original Spider-Clone story. I never saw much point in a sequel, though.)

On impact webbing and stingers — Impact webbing was a web bomb. A quick way to trap and take out an opponent. The Scarlet Spider used it effectively against Venom to keep the symbiote and host apart in order to defeat him. Stingers were small, metal spikey things… that looked like the stingers on bees or wasps… not spider-related as much, but a nice offensive weapon.

On sales figures — they belong in the business section of the news and that’s a section I don’t really care about.

When reading reviews, you get to know the tendencies of the reviewer, so it is often possible to know when one reviewer’s 6 is another reviewer’s 8. Then you can tell when you might like a book that got a lower review by any one reviewer. This theory goes out the window when a reviewer is unknown to you.

When Siskel and Ebert disagreed, I most often agreed with Siskel. When Ebert disagreed with Roeper, I knew it was because Roeper was an idiot and didn’t know squat about movies.

Not knocking Chad’s opinion. He doesn’t like it, he doesn’t like it. I disagree with his opinion, but that doesn’t make Chad an idiot, just a guy with a different opinion. (But he is Canadian.)