Nostalgia vs. Craft in Original Art 0

[Peter L]

14 hours ago, Taylor G said:

Spielberg has compared the current trend in superhero movies to musicals in the 1950s.

Tintin, War Horse, Bridge of Spies, The BFG, The Post, Ready Player One.  There is a meme reflecting this box office trend I'm sure, if only I could think of it.

[Peter L]

17 hours ago, Rick2you2 said:

I think you should be a little less optimistic. The fads of fifty years ago, like Westerns, have basically died off. Its replacement, space opera like Star Wars, is actually showing signs of slowing down at the box office (yes, the numbers still seem huge, but Disney was expecting more, particularly from Solo). In 50 years, I expect people will figure out a way to do a lot of the stuff in the comics, or end up laughing at how absurd some of it is.

And don't count on craft mattering either. Great 19th century furniture has dropped in value, as have exceptional quality Persian rugs, for examples. Sometimes, the list price will stay where it is, but the piece just won't sell.  

Don't misunderstand: I love this stuff. But, I can't see it as being a long term investment vehicle (20+ years) no matter what is going on in the world. 

The decrease in popularity of superheroes caused the cancellation of Captain America and all superhero books.  The year was 1948.

Stan Lee and John Romita tried to bring back Captain America and the company tried to bring other superheroes back and failed.  Their attempt lasted about a year and Captain America was cancelled again.  The year was 1954.   

"Comics had always been a cyclical business, and almost everybody in 1971 thought that super heroes must inevitably be on their way out again. That's why there was such a gold rush on to find the next big genre--sword-and-sorcery looked like it might be a contender, and there were a lot of new mystery (watered-down horror comics without much horror), war and western comics being churned out in this period. But the classic Marvel, Stan's Marvel, was still seen as something of a fad (even by Stan himself), and the common wisdom was that everybody was going to be doing something else very soon (possibly in another field entirely.)" - Tom Brevoort

Due to a continuing decline in sales, pressure from parent companies, and a new lawsuit affecting distributors, Marvel was in crisis.  According to Jim Shooter, Marvel would have gone bankrupt in the late 1970s if it was not for Roy Thomas fighting to persuade them to do a Star Wars comic. Those sales were the one factor that kept Marvel alive.  The year is 1977.

The late-1970's nearly saw the demise of comics publishing. The precipitous drops in newsstand sales more than offset the ability of Seagate Distributing to grow comics sales by shipping comics directly to comics shops.  While the Direct Market comics shops did manage to transfer a great number of fans to themselves that otherwise had been purchasing through newsstand outlets, the harsh reality was that newsstand sales were dropping far faster than the Direct Market was growing.  DC Comics, without warning, suddenly slashed over 30% of their entire line in a single day in the infamous DC Implosion.  Marvel considers shutting down operations completely.  The year is 1978.  

Under innovation both at Marvel and DC, comic sales continue to grow again.  Jim Lee's X-Men #1 is reported to be the #1 selling comic in history at over 1 million copies sold.  The year is 1991.

A combination of too many new comic shops (a classic investment bubble) and a series of bad decisions at Marvel (such as great increases in cover price and number of titles) all started to fall apart in 2003. The last straw was DC's Death Of Superman in 1992. Fans invested in the last issues expecting high returns, only to find it was all just a trick. Collectors lost interest. Marvel tried more gimmicks and price rises to maintain their income, and bought the distributor Heroes World and stopped selling through others, hoping to force the industry to play by its rules. Marvel attempts to salvage their business by making a mostly stock offer to Jim Lee to buy his studio and make him chief creative officer.  A few months after Lee turns down the offer, Marvel declares bankruptcy.  The year is 1996.

Comics eventually have the worst sales in history.  Marvel would not be profitable again for over three more years.  The year is 2000.

The Christian Science Monitor reports "July 2014 is the most profitable month ever in comic book history, and comics are only getting bigger." And of course the movies and merchandising bring in many, many times that revenue. Stan Lee worked out of a single office, but now Marvel has a big flashy global headquarters. The future looks even brighter: the movies are raising awareness of superheroes, and the industry is slowly learning how to sell via the Internet, which solves the distribution problem, always the biggest problem in comics.   The bottom line is that the comics industry is now mature, and so it knows how to make money. 

Avengers Infinity War becomes the fourth highest grossing film of all time at over $2 billion, and Black Panther becomes the ninth highest grossing film of all time at $1.3 billion.  The Academy wants to invent a special Oscar category of Popular Film just to honor Black Panther.  Spider-man on PS4 becomes the highest selling game of the year, more than any other exclusive on any other platform.  The records don't stop there. Spider-Man is not only the fastest-selling Spider-Man game ever, it is now the fastest-selling Marvel-branded video game ever. The previous record holder, Lego Marvel Super Heroes, was beaten by a wide margin.  (DC fans, don't worry - Batman: Arkham Knight holds the record for the fastest-selling comic book hero game release this console generation.)  The year is 2018.

The top two trending topics on twitter for most of the day were 1. Henry Cavill, 2. Superman.
 

Edited September 13, 2018 by Peter L

[Rick2you2]

7 hours ago, Peter L said:

The decrease in popularity of superheroes caused the cancellation of Captain America and all superhero books.  The year was 1948.

Stan Lee and John Romita tried to bring back Captain America and the company tried to bring other superheroes back and failed.  Their attempt lasted about a year and Captain America was cancelled again.  The year was 1954.   

"Comics had always been a cyclical business, and almost everybody in 1971 thought that super heroes must inevitably be on their way out again. That's why there was such a gold rush on to find the next big genre--sword-and-sorcery looked like it might be a contender, and there were a lot of new mystery (watered-down horror comics without much horror), war and western comics being churned out in this period. But the classic Marvel, Stan's Marvel, was still seen as something of a fad (even by Stan himself), and the common wisdom was that everybody was going to be doing something else very soon (possibly in another field entirely.)" - Tom Brevoort

Due to a continuing decline in sales, pressure from parent companies, and a new lawsuit affecting distributors, Marvel was in crisis.  According to Jim Shooter, Marvel would have gone bankrupt in the late 1970s if it was not for Roy Thomas fighting to persuade them to do a Star Wars comic. Those sales were the one factor that kept Marvel alive.  The year is 1977.

The late-1970's nearly saw the demise of comics publishing. The precipitous drops in newsstand sales more than offset the ability of Seagate Distributing to grow comics sales by shipping comics directly to comics shops.  While the Direct Market comics shops did manage to transfer a great number of fans to themselves that otherwise had been purchasing through newsstand outlets, the harsh reality was that newsstand sales were dropping far faster than the Direct Market was growing.  DC Comics, without warning, suddenly slashed over 30% of their entire line in a single day in the infamous DC Implosion.  Marvel considers shutting down operations completely.  The year is 1978.  

Under innovation both at Marvel and DC, comic sales continue to grow again.  Jim Lee's X-Men #1 is reported to be the #1 selling comic in history at over 1 million copies sold.  The year is 1991.

A combination of too many new comic shops (a classic investment bubble) and a series of bad decisions at Marvel (such as great increases in cover price and number of titles) all started to fall apart in 2003. The last straw was DC's Death Of Superman in 1992. Fans invested in the last issues expecting high returns, only to find it was all just a trick. Collectors lost interest. Marvel tried more gimmicks and price rises to maintain their income, and bought the distributor Heroes World and stopped selling through others, hoping to force the industry to play by its rules. Marvel attempts to salvage their business by making a mostly stock offer to Jim Lee to buy his studio and make him chief creative officer.  A few months after Lee turns down the offer, Marvel declares bankruptcy.  The year is 1996.

Comics eventually have the worst sales in history.  Marvel would not be profitable again for over three more years.  The year is 2000.

The Christian Science Monitor reports "July 2014 is the most profitable month ever in comic book history, and comics are only getting bigger." And of course the movies and merchandising bring in many, many times that revenue. Stan Lee worked out of a single office, but now Marvel has a big flashy global headquarters. The future looks even brighter: the movies are raising awareness of superheroes, and the industry is slowly learning how to sell via the Internet, which solves the distribution problem, always the biggest problem in comics.   The bottom line is that the comics industry is now mature, and so it knows how to make money. 

Avengers Infinity War becomes the fourth highest grossing film of all time at over $2 billion, and Black Panther becomes the ninth highest grossing film of all time at $1.3 billion.  The Academy wants to invent a special Oscar category of Popular Film just to honor Black Panther.  Spider-man on PS4 becomes the highest selling game of the year, more than any other exclusive on any other platform.  The records don't stop there. Spider-Man is not only the fastest-selling Spider-Man game ever, it is now the fastest-selling Marvel-branded video game ever. The previous record holder, Lego Marvel Super Heroes, was beaten by a wide margin.  (DC fans, don't worry - Batman: Arkham Knight holds the record for the fastest-selling comic book hero game release this console generation.)  The year is 2018.

The top two trending topics on twitter for most of the day were 1. Henry Cavill, 2. Superman.
 

I'm familiar with almost all of this, but you are not seeing the concern I have. Superheroes represent a pop cultural interest. Comics are a graphic medium which prints stories about superheroes. Pop cultural interests, like western heroes, come and go. The printed medium is slowly shrinking to a small portion of the publishing world (how many newspapers did you read this morning, and were they printed or on line). Add the two up and you produce a small, small market of people who know this stuff in another 20+ years. That's what kills the market. 

[delekkerste]

46 minutes ago, Rick2you2 said:

Add the two up and you produce a small, small market of people who know this stuff in another 20+ years. That's what kills the market. 

There is already a shocking gap in connoisseurship regarding vintage comic art between the Baby Boomers/Gen Xers and the Millennials and Gen Zers.  I don't think that gap will ever be filled, especially as the latter generations' tastes have largely migrated to artwork from the late '80s to the present.  

[zhamlau]

On 9/12/2018 at 8:36 AM, Taylor G said:

Spielberg has compared the current trend in superhero movies to musicals in the 1950s.

Well, Superhero movies have been dominating box office for 20 years now and are one of the more popular genres on TV, and looks to hold much of that ground over the next decade. Hard to think of one broadcast genre that held utter cultural/financial dominance for that long. The world is enthralled with our comic book product. Westerns and Musicals while somewhat popular overseas never enjoyed, as far as i can see, the mass global acceptance and demand this genre has.

Basically, its sorta silly to compare it to any other style/genre in my opinion cause nothing seems to come close.

[Peter L]

On 9/12/2018 at 5:36 AM, Taylor G said:

Spielberg has compared the current trend in superhero movies to musicals in the 1950s.

 

5 hours ago, zhamlau said:

Well, Superhero movies have been dominating box office for 20 years now and are one of the more popular genres on TV, and looks to hold much of that ground over the next decade. Hard to think of one broadcast genre that held utter cultural/financial dominance for that long. The world is enthralled with our comic book product. Westerns and Musicals while somewhat popular overseas never enjoyed, as far as i can see, the mass global acceptance and demand this genre has.

Basically, its sorta silly to compare it to any other style/genre in my opinion cause nothing seems to come close.

I agree that it is silly to compare it because the decline of musicals was a very specific set of circumstances and Spielberg may just be a poor student of film history.  Basically, the big studios had a lock over theater chains, so they continued to make musicals because it was easy with the talent they had under control in the star system.  So even if the musicals weren't very good, they could be profitable because the theaters had no choice but to show them and people had no choice but to see them.  Musicals were not really that popular among most people, so when there were alternate options like tv, and when the studio control over the theaters was ended, people stopped watching them.  

For those that are interested, here are some selected passages from a good article on the decline of musicals:
 

It wasn't until the late 1950's that things within the Star System started to fall apart, and it was just as much the studio's fault than it was that the audiences didn't want to see musicals anymore.

You see, for a long period The Studio System enjoyed Vertical Integration, meaning that they owned and controlled their entire production, distribution and exhibition processes themselves. This level of control may seem beneficial, but it whittled movie production into only 5 competing studios, 'The Big Five': MGM, Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, and RKO. (There was also 'The Little Three', but as their nomenclature would indicate, they weren't as big!)

The result of this set up meant that Studios were only really competing with a small market, and as they had all more or less decided to keep out of each others pockets, very little even there. This meant that there was no competitive market to decline or bargain for movies, so the only thing that could influence what sort of film was being made was a studio executive in his office, who were hardly representative of the masses!

It wasn't until 1948 that the Supreme Court ruled that this system should be broken up, and it was itself only delayed because of the focus on the war. This meant that the studios' control was finally broken up, but it had very little real effect to the Big Five who had used their time wisely to consolidate their assets into a firm grip on the industry.

However, for the time being, the studios continued to prosper. Different Genre's came in and out of popularity, and so not being a genre itself, but more of a method of application Musicals survived by simply adopting the genre a la' mode and wearing it like a mask for a while.

It didn't matter whether or not people actually wanted to see these movies, there was no choice in the matter and as a result of that, they enjoyed the illusion of popularity, not to mention being genuinely popular anyway as a means of family entertainment in a very conservative America.

When this all finally came to a head in the late 60's, the industry was in crisis. It didn't know, or more accurately didn't care, what their audiences wanted anymore.

The only solution to this was tantamount to almost total replacement. Crew and Cast from leading men to lighting operators, Directors to set designers were systematically replaced for younger, fresher and more in touch counterparts. This became known as The New Hollywood, and produced what many people consider the greatest movies of 20th century's second half.

Furthermore, many of these directors looked up to the writing of Cahiers du Cinema, and the European cinematic giants who wrote for it: Bresson, Goddard, Truffaut to name a few. These were figures that hated Musical Cinema, not only for what they considered to be unoriginal copies of stage productions, but for the American Imperialistic intent these films harbored as they washed over Europe. This hatred found its way stateside and embedded itself into the New Hollywood.

The Hays code was finally lifted in 1969, giving these film makers a freedom no one had experienced since the mid 1920's. And what did they do with this freedom? They ran as far away from Musical cinema as possible.

So, until the late 60's, audiences were forcibly saturated with Musicals, and came to collectively loathe them, even if it took a bunch of pretty spiteful up and comers to point this out to them.

[Peter L]

On 9/13/2018 at 5:08 AM, delekkerste said:

There is already a shocking gap in connoisseurship regarding vintage comic art between the Baby Boomers/Gen Xers and the Millennials and Gen Zers.  I don't think that gap will ever be filled, especially as the latter generations' tastes have largely migrated to artwork from the late '80s to the present.  

The art from the late 80s to the present is also more accessible and cheaper so it has a lower threshold of entry.  I don't think a lot of Golden and Silver Age comics and art will be popular unless it features characters still around or ages well.

I think the things that will survive will be the things that are easily accessible to new generations.  I think digital comics make this much more accessible than in previous eras.  I just saw an Iron Fist sale of all different Iron Fist runs from the Bronze Age to today.  No longer do you need to hunt down random issues in small comic shops or conventions, you can just go on your ipad and order.

I read an article that compared the CBR poll of the best comic book runs from their polls from (I think) 2011 and 2016.  It was interesting to see some of the things that completely fell off the list, from being in the top 50 to suddenly not even ranked and forgotten just a few years later.  Strangers in Paradise and Lone Wolf and Cub were two that I can recall that fell off the lists.  People have short memories but the things that are pushed by big companies will still be popular.

When you go to Disneyland, and finish the Guardians of the Galaxy ride, they sell comics there.  I think Disney is going to make their IP more accessible.  The characters that are made accessible will still survive. I love what Marvel is doing with their old catalog True Believer $1 line of comics and DC's push into Walmarts.

I am encouraged that there are signs of original art getting more visibility.  A few years ago I saw the traveling Alex Ross exhibit at a nearby museum.  It was the exhibit that started at the Norman Rockwell museum.  I just recently saw the Marvel exhibit at the Seattle pop museum.  

And if the original art market crashes I'll use that as a buying opportunity.


 

Edited September 14, 2018 by Peter L

[Taylor G]

I find it strange to hear that the American New Wave was a reaction against musicals.  Martin Scorsese, one of the leading lights of that movement, made New York, New York in 1977.

No one watches musicals anymore because people got tired of them.

How many different stories can you tell about Spiderman fighting Doctor Octopus?

[Pete Marino]

1 hour ago, Taylor G said:

I find it strange to hear that the American New Wave was a reaction against musicals.  Martin Scorsese, one of the leading lights of that movement, made New York, New York in 1977.

No one watches musicals anymore because people got tired of them.

How many different stories can you tell about Spiderman fighting Doctor Octopus?

I am still enjoying most of the movies these days.l, even if it's not until they are on Amazon.

but I do feel exactly what you described about the Netflix series, I gave up on iron fist, it was just bad, defenders lost me half way through, I have Jessica Jones 2 episodes, and that was the end for me, they all just feel like the same story, same tone, same beats, over 19 grueling episodes.

[Rick2you2]

On 9/14/2018 at 3:36 PM, Peter L said:

I agree that it is silly to compare it because the decline of musicals was a very specific set of circumstances and Spielberg may just be a poor student of film history.  Basically, the big studios had a lock over theater chains, so they continued to make musicals because it was easy with the talent they had under control in the star system.  So even if the musicals weren't very good, they could be profitable because the theaters had no choice but to show them and people had no choice but to see them.  Musicals were not really that popular among most people, so when there were alternate options like tv, and when the studio control over the theaters was ended, people stopped watching them.  

For those that are interested, here are some selected passages from a good article on the decline of musicals:
 

It wasn't until the late 1950's that things within the Star System started to fall apart, and it was just as much the studio's fault than it was that the audiences didn't want to see musicals anymore.

You see, for a long period The Studio System enjoyed Vertical Integration, meaning that they owned and controlled their entire production, distribution and exhibition processes themselves. This level of control may seem beneficial, but it whittled movie production into only 5 competing studios, 'The Big Five': MGM, Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, and RKO. (There was also 'The Little Three', but as their nomenclature would indicate, they weren't as big!)

The result of this set up meant that Studios were only really competing with a small market, and as they had all more or less decided to keep out of each others pockets, very little even there. This meant that there was no competitive market to decline or bargain for movies, so the only thing that could influence what sort of film was being made was a studio executive in his office, who were hardly representative of the masses!

I'm sorry, but this analysis is simply wrong (and this ties in later to the thread).

What killed the musical was a change in the country from pre-War to post-War development. The musical was at at its peak in the 1930's when we had the Great Depression. Someone who didn't have enough money for food could still scrape up 25 cents to watch a double bill, plus shorts. And if you saw happy sophisticates like Astaire and Rodgers, or some of those other toe-tappers going at it, with music, it took your mind away from the misery outside the theater. That's why comedy was also so popular--a relief from misery. World War II was another miserable period, too, but once "Our Boys" came home, the economic boom created a different world. Instead of worrying about necessities, which we generally had, it could worry about things like fairness, racial equality, and other social issues. Those play better to drama, like Gentleman's Agreement (anti-Semitism), Blackboard Jungle with Sidney Poitier, or some 1960's movies like Birdman of Alcatraz. Even the best of the latter musicals incorporated social commentary, like West Side Story (gang war), Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (sexual inequality/abuse) and Singin' in the Rain (notice the little stabs at social inequality and anti-corporate attitude?).

To claim that musicals were made because there was no competitive market ignores a very basic fact--they are really expensive to make because they require a lot of talented people. And while the studios controlled most of the major talent, it still would have made more sense to use them in small drama's, which cost less, if they brought in the bucks. But, they didn't (usually).  

Changing social conditions are where the comic super-hero will eventually meet his or her match. We will get tired of Spider-Man fighting Doc Ock because it won't fit into the next wave issues (whatever that may be). And if the next wave doesn't care about comic hero fights, it's not going to be interested in the comic art which helped create them. 

 

Edited September 16, 2018 by Rick2you2
Typo’s

[delekkerste]

15 hours ago, Rick2you2 said:

Changing social conditions are where the comic super-hero will eventually meet his or her match. We will get tired of Spider-man fighting Doc Ock because it won't fit into the next wave issues (whatever that may be). And if the next wave doesn't care about comic hero fights, it's not going to be interested in the comic art which helped create them. 

This, a million times this. 

Pop culture icons, characters, genres, franchises, etc. go in and out of favor based on changes in social mood.  There is an entire branch of study devoted to this phenomenon ("Socionomics").  I've read a lot of research on the topic; it is fascinating stuff.  It's not a coincidence that the Universal Monsters films came of age and were so popular at a time of dark economic mood (The Great Depression), for example.  Even longstanding franchises such as Mickey Mouse and the various Disney characters have gone in and out of favor over the decades depending on the social mood of the times.  So have Beatles' album sales and the popularity of James Bond.  Even though all 3 franchises (Disney characters, the Beatles, 007) are all riding high these days, it hasn't always been that way, and nor will it be for superheroes and superhero films. The franchises which endure are the ones which get put on a shelf and freshened up for a later time when social mood is more conducive to their popularity, and/or which change and adapt to the prevailing social mood of the times.  Timothy Dalton's morose 007 did not resonate with the peppy bull market times of the late '80s, but Daniel Craig's morose 007 has resonated with the more jaded populace of the past 12 years.  At some point, people will similarly view the happy-go-lucky wisecracking camaraderie of The Avengers and Guardians to be cheesy and out of the tune with the times.  

The genre has been utterly glutted with content on the big screen and television.  Back in the day, it used to be a big deal to me when a new super-hero film came out. Then, as they started to proliferate like crazy, it was fine to just watch them on DVD on streaming.  Now, there's so many movies and shows that I can't even keep up with them all.  And, frankly, I no longer really care, because I enjoy reading the comics more anyway.  I don't know when the rest of the populace will reach a similar level of burnout, but, I think it will be almost inconceivable to see these films continuing to go from uninterrupted strength to strength for years and decades like many in the comic book & OA hobbies seem to believe will happen.  

Edited September 16, 2018 by delekkerste

[MyNameIsLegion]

I wonder though, if the changes to copy-write law have artificially extended some of the franchises like Disney, Bond, and the Beatles.  If the Mouse has entered public domain like it should have 30 years ago, things would be much different.  On the other hand, pop culture is littered with the cultural obsessions of the past.  The Western is still dead. Kung-Fu movies still dead. Pulp characters like the Shadow, The Phantom, Doc Savage, still dead.  Dynamite has done what they can to keep them alive in comics, but they are not going to reach MCU levels, not ever. Why?  They don't have the benefit of saturation via media, toys, products, licensing, etc that turn a property into a brand. Conan will never spawn a barbarian sword and sorcery craze. It's not gonna go on a happy meal, pop tarts, and electric tooth brush.   Star wars is the success it is not for the movies, half of them were objectively bad. But all those 3.5 inch figures never left our consciousness.  Star Trek perhaps is at greater risk of fading, it lacks the brand equity Star Wars and Batman have.  And speaking of Universal Monsters, look at how much the current effort to revive that has fallen flat.   

[Rick2you2]

8 hours ago, MYNAMEISLEGION said:

I wonder though, if the changes to copy-write law have artificially extended some of the franchises like Disney, Bond, and the Beatles.  If the Mouse has entered public domain like it should have 30 years ago, things would be much different.  On the other hand, pop culture is littered with the cultural obsessions of the past.  The Western is still dead. Kung-Fu movies still dead. Pulp characters like the Shadow, The Phantom, Doc Savage, still dead.  Dynamite has done what they can to keep them alive in comics, but they are not going to reach MCU levels, not ever. Why?  They don't have the benefit of saturation via media, toys, products, licensing, etc that turn a property into a brand. Conan will never spawn a barbarian sword and sorcery craze. It's not gonna go on a happy meal, pop tarts, and electric tooth brush.   Star wars is the success it is not for the movies, half of them were objectively bad. But all those 3.5 inch figures never left our consciousness.  Star Trek perhaps is at greater risk of fading, it lacks the brand equity Star Wars and Batman have.  And speaking of Universal Monsters, look at how much the current effort to revive that has fallen flat.   

Unequivocally, yes. In fact, Disney was a prime mover of the extension of the copyright time period and I believe has been a vigorous enforcer of it.

[buyatari]

Saw this article on millennials and nostalgia pop up on my Facebook home page today. 

https://millennialmagazine.com/2017/09/18/the-power-of-nostalgia-ranks-high-among-millennials/

[Rick2you2]

41 minutes ago, buyatari said:

Saw this article on millennials and nostalgia pop up on my Facebook home page today. 

https://millennialmagazine.com/2017/09/18/the-power-of-nostalgia-ranks-high-among-millennials/

Notice what was not mentioned? Hint: this website.

 

[ESeffinga]

The nostalgia for millennials more than likely will be for things we can’t even think of. If people had known just how big cowboys would be, or superheroes, or Star Wars, or musicals, or rock n roll. 

Could as likely be a resurgence of interest in a video game, or hell for all we know they’ll be desperate for a beanie baby movie. Pokémon, YuGiOh.  Hot for a Hannah Montana reboot or who can say? The fracturing of the zeitgeist by the Internet into sliver sized fragments of popular interest for current generations means having one huge audience is less likely than ever.

Game of Thrones seems a universal hit by HBO number standards, but compared to Network TV numbers of the 80s?

Anything seems as likely as comics, to me. I don’t discount that comic based characters might be a continuing nostalgia trend, but I personally wouldn’t count on comic art being a huge beneficiary of it.

But what do I know.

[The Voord]

I read somewhere that Spielberg is planning a re-do of 'West Side Story'.  

[The Voord]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/steven-spielberg-remake-west-side-story-163512485.html

Maybe cowboys and injuns will be next?  

Edited September 20, 2018 by The Voord

[Garf]

Interesting thread. I think nostalgia will mostly beat out craft in the marketplace because it's going to be what the heart wants and if that heartbeat changes over the years so be it. Life would be so dull if everything just stayed the same or you were forced to stand still whilst everyone else is a blur of motion around you.

However, the marketplace should have nothing to do with where we draw lines to identify craft because it isn't accessible. You might as well pull the shutters down and put up a "Closed" sign. The amount of younger people joining in with this thread in this place speaks volumes.

Are there other reasons for there being fewer people carrying a torch for EC, strip art, the "Studio" era and golden age comics other than the newcomers being divorced from the nostalgia and pop culture of those times? Age, health, availability, visibility, decline in income for the old and young alike, inflated price tags, no way to ease yourself into the fold... is that the line we should take or is it just simply the storytelling has aged alongside the collectors? Plucking examples out of the air look at The Blue Bolt or Alarming Tales or any of the early sci-fi & space operas onwards to the 60's, they don't represent the larger demographic any more. Given the social battlegrounds we see today who is going to appreciate all that storytelling? We could throw the same argument at a slew of other genres from those eras that in attempt to write the stories off as no longer being relevant in the same context.

I can appreciate a lot of the craft in what creators like Joe Simon and Jack Kirby made and there are times when they got all of it so right... however I honestly hope my daughters never ever grow up being able to relate to a large chunk of their storytelling. Why would I want that for them? I wonder if we have to give the pace at which attitudes are evolving a bit more credit now that we can voice our opinions to everyone in the blink of an eye. Was labelling artists who rose in popularity in the 80's & 90's as the new meta when we think of "rebels" at the start of this thread a bit of a whiff or have we all stopped reading print and online? To think there hasn't already been another shift makes me feel like it truly hasn't sunk in for some people how many years have passed.

IMHO some of those listed in this thread will stand the test of time a lot better than others because their imagery transcends the storytelling.

Edited September 20, 2018 by Garf
Punctuation.

[Rick2you2]

11 hours ago, The Voord said:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/steven-spielberg-remake-west-side-story-163512485.html

Maybe cowboys and injuns will be next?  

In most cases, they have repackaged the conventional B movie type theme into war movies with the bad guys having their labels changed from "injuns" to "gooks", "nips", "krauts", or even "the Empire" a la Star Wars. But for Spielberg to take on West Side Story without a repackaging into newer guise sounds horrible.  

On a brighter note, at least he won't be re-doing Pride and Prejudice.