Broken Frontier

Ben Urich is a character I have a certain… affinity with. I work in the media, although I am not strictly a journalist—I don’t work for a newspaper or a radio station or television news bulletin.

However, after seven years in PR and media, I can smell out a story like the best of them, and my power for detecting cataclysmic copy is as honed as Wolverine’s adamantium claws.

There is a song referenced in the title of this column (see below for a No Prize competition) and the song essentially sums up the affliction that befalls many of us comics junkies.

Our insatiable need for more sequential stories is matched only by our need to know the ins and outs of how these books are created, by whom they are created and how the books are doing on the sales charts, when the next blockbuster story arc is going to begin, who the mysterious, enigmatic villain is, what the new costume is going to look like, who is going to rise from the grave… again, who is the clone, etc.

There is no end to the questions, so much so that even when there is no question to ask, fans ask why there are no questions to ask!

I seriously doubt that there are other areas of pop culture as dissected as comics.

Jump on to Google (AFTER you have read this article, of course!) and type in the words “comic book news” and you will get more than 33 million hits. Now, I am not for a moment suggesting that there are 33 million comic book news sites on the web, but there would be thousands, I would suspect.

What is generating all this news? It seems there is barely a week that goes by without a major convention, a HUGE announcement, a sell-out book, a new creative team or… a scandal.

Here are some of the big headlines of the last week:
X-MEN 3 SETS MEMORAL DAY RECORD
LEGENDARY ARTIST ALEX TOTH DIES
NEW YORK TIMES NAMES BATWOMAN

While those headlines have been sourced from other websites, the stories they boldly announce have been reported here on Broken Frontier and on all the other 30 million or so sites that carry some comic book news.

The issue that strikes me about this plethora of reporting paradises is that the comics industry and its readership is supposed to be shrinking.

If our industry is indeed in decline, how can we explain the (according to Google) millions of websites, forums, bulletin boards and blogs, where fans are writing about and talking about the latest goings on in the world of comics?

Which brings me back to THAT song. The first officially awarded Industrial Evolution No Prize will go to the reader who can name the album and the band referenced in the title and introduction (Check out the Industrial Evolution forum to play!).

Have we become information junkies? Take this test: Do you have more than five comic book news sites bookmarked? Do you check these sites more than once a day? Do you post on their message boards as soon as news is posted? Do you ever cross reference (check a story on a number of sites) to determine a story’s validity?

How else would you explain fandom’s collective addiction to rumor and gossip?

Certain rumor columns are a must-read for me every week. The odd thing is that many of the books, creators and characters referenced in these stories are ones that I don’t know much about, as in I don’t read them, but I just have to know!

The worst thing for me, living in Australia, is the wait. Australia is between 14 and 17 hours ahead of the USA. Often you will read about announcements due to be made on a certain day, for example a Tuesday. Of course, the time refers to Tuesday in America, which is almost always Wednesday in Australia.

As someone recently put to me on another forum, I am from the future, but when it comes to comic book news, I am from the past. Still, one good thing about it is that I often wake up to have the news there when I first log on.

There is no doubt in my mind that this explosion in comic book news is a good thing. But what makes comics news? Terms like “sell through” and “sell out” when used to describe a certain book’s sale figures make news. However, why is it news when a publisher prints the total number of books that were ordered?

Is it really news when a company announces a 1/50 variant or a stand-in creative team?

With a captive audience that is so hungry for information, it is extremely easy for a comic creator or publisher to make news. Comics work in a sort of bizarro world of media where the traditional rules of PR are turned upside down. I should know—after all, placing news stories is my career.

However, I can struggle to get a major daily paper to carry news about a medical breakthrough while virtually any indie creator can get their story run on BF, Newsarama or Comic Book Resources.  This insatiable desire for more and more and more news and commentary gives independent creators their best outlet to reach fans and convince them of the merits of their product. By placing stories on a number of websites, independent and mainstream creators and companies can manufacture a frenzy of interest in their products.

Like any aspect of this industry, there is a dark side to all this. In a climate where fans are desperate to know … something … anything … we place ourselves at the mercy of the Spin Doctors at DC, Marvel and even, for example, Ape Entertainment. 

For me, both as a practitioner of the mystic arts of PR and as a fan, what I love most about the comics industry is that fans have the ability to make and shape news. Through the countless bulletin boards, through columns such as the one you are reading, through real-time chat rooms, fans hungry for information, or fans with information, can spread the word.

This is the ultimate in media democracy.

There is an odd statistic that relates to news carried in the business section of the newspaper—more than 80% of the stories printed are generated from company press releases.

In the world of comics, I would say that 95% of the news on comic book sites is sourced from company PR. This demonstrates for you just how powerful comic book companies can be in not only making, but placing news.

So me? I report and analyze the news. I am an Info Freako. Chances are that, if you have just finished reading this article, you are too.