Marc Ellerby is featured in the third issue of the UK version of tech, geek bible Wired. Under the headline “Pow!Zap!Clik!” – even the coolest mags need some cliché it seems – Ellerby is featured holding a comic portrait of his alter ego beside the sea in Southend. Wired reckons that comics are yet another industry being disintermediated (yeah we looked it up too) by the web.
(‘Samlat’ – a new, free collection from Marc Ellerby, Adam Cadwell & Lizz Lunney, made especially for their recent Swedish comics excursion)
Marc says “Audiences are bored with superheroes” and outlines his “Ellerbisms” series and new comic “Chloe Noonan, Monster Hunter“. Wired notes Ellerby is “building a reputation and an income stream” by self publishing backed by additional online material. Asked if he ever dreams of a 22 page monthly he laughs and says ” The format is dead! Graphic Novels are the future, and that’s OK. The web is quickly replacing the redundant ‘floppies’.”
June 5th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
Would that be “household name” Marc Ellerby?
Reading his comments, I sure do regret skipping his blockbuster “Ellerbisms” movie in favour of Wolverine Origins, Watchmen, Iron Man, Incredible Hulk and Dark Knight over the last 12 months. Clearly Ellerby is a man with his finger on the pulse here. Damn those audiences and their boredom with superheroes.
“Pow! Zap! Clik!” indeed. Nice try, Wired.
June 5th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
Oh you got me good there, Krusty! You got me good there. Well done to YOU. They made a movie out of Wolverine and not out of my diary comic?! WOAH!
My point was audiences want more than the regular spandex beat them up comics and there’s a desire for more than the same old heroes doing the same old things. Go to conventions, talk to punters, do they want something new and fresh or 40+ years of the same thing?
June 5th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
Thank you, I try.
I just get a bit tired of hearing “audiences are bored with superheroes”, “No one likes superheroes”, etc. If YOU don’t want to do superheroes that’s fine, there are plenty of other genres and I’m certainly not locked into solely superhero comics as a reader. But stating that “audiences are bored with superheroes” and that the floppy format “is dead” is being willfully narrow-minded. Perhaps those things don’t interest you, but that’s very different to them being “dead” and the audience being “bored” of them.
The whole entertainment media industry – comics, books, TV, film – has been changing dramatically in the last decade and audiences are becoming fragmented, most especially (though not exclusively) because of the internet. DVDs and internet hosting is changing television viewing, just as one comparable example. My point is that people are still happily enjoying superheroes in various formats – video games, blockbuster movies, cartoons, TV shows (e.g. Heroes), audio adaptations and even, yes, comic books – and that in fact, superheroes are more popular and mainstream than they have been in a long time thanks to the movie industry. Reel off the blockbusters of the last seven years – someone is paying money to watch them and it can’t only be me.
If you had said “There’s MORE than just superhero comics, and there’s a thriving audience out there for other genres” that would make a lot more sense, particularly if you bring in the concept of POD publishing and the use of an internet website as part of an ongoing format shift.
As for the convention question you posed – your question is flawed. You say to ask punters if they want something new and fresh or 40+ years of the same thing? – it’s a weighted question, so obviously they will choose the former, in that scenario who wouldn’t want “new and fresh”?
But if you believe that superhero comics have been telling the same story for 40+ years, that’s a cynical and close-minded standpoint to take. Would you say that something like The Invisibles (comic book with superhero trappings from mainstream publisher DC Comics) is the same as every other superhero comic of the last 40+ years?
Perhaps a better question is to ask how many of those conventions can manage without the backing of Marvel, DC and their “40+ years of the same story” ilk?
Don’t get me wrong – your diary comic has a place, and long may it thrive. But why take shots at other genres and formats, especially in a magazine that’s striving to reach beyond that traditional audience? You may be bored of superheroes – 100,000+ Wolverine and Batman readers last month… not so much.
June 5th, 2009 at 5:41 pm
“do they want something new and fresh or 40+ years of the same thing?”
The answer to this question is an unequivocal yes! :)
//\Oo/\\
June 6th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Not sure there is much perspective here. Marc is doing well creating something of his own and being able ultimately to make a living from it – perhaps a good one. He’s also engaging a ‘new’ comics audience that for the most part aren’t interested very much in superheroes. It doesn’t mean his work is as popular as that which have huge corporate machines behind them – of course it isn’t. It doesn’t mean there is a movie in the works – although things like Ghost World, Hellboy and Scott Pilgrim prove it can be done. There is a chance the monthly comic will die out in the next few years to be replaced by downloads and that may be, for major characters as well as the small/art press who currently, to a greater extent, don’t rely upon it. With some Vertigo titles selling in under 10K numbers, it seems almost inevitable. When they go to digital only then it may be harder for creators to earn what they even do now creating work which others own. At least Marc will always maintain the ownership of his creations and may sometime reap the reward of that. There’s room for both models right now but if anyone really doubts that graphic novels are the future, and probably the near future at that, then they are probably reading the tea leaves wrongly.