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Last Updated: Aug 21, 2008 - 3:13:23 PM

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Why The Comic Book Bin Does Not Gossip By Hervé St-Louis Jun 27, 2008 - 12:25:51 AM

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While all of the comic book industry punditry is busy chasing and covering the latest crisis, the folks at The Comic Book Bin look elsewhere. Why is that?

Entertainment media coverage is fickle. It’s based most of time from testimonies from secondary sources, insights, and impressions. In a smaller industry like the comic book industry where there are often no clear boundaries between the press, customers and vendors, the situation is exacerbated.



Well known examples of undefined boundaries are ComicMix, published by DC Comics and First Comics’ alumni, Mike Gold. Gold was an editor at both companies and worked with many of the collaborators he works with today at ComicMix.com, a Web comics’ portal that also doubles up as a news magazine on comic books.

Another well-known example is Journalista, a Web blog edited daily by Dirk Deppey and published by comic book publisher Fantagraphics.  Last year, comic book publisher Platinum bought and then divested from the comic book news Web site, Broken Frontier.  There are many more examples of this than I care to list.

There is also another type of relationship going on in the comic book industry. Many of the current marketing/and management crop were once reporters. Several of Wizard Comics, the decades-old print magazine on comic books, have found jobs in the comic book industry. Over at DC Comics, Alex Segura was once a prominent blogger covering the comic book industry. Mike Doran, one of the partners at comic book and entertainment portal Newsarama was once the marketing representative for Marvel Comics. When he was fired from the job, he simply returned to Newsarama discreetly.

What cements all these links is the personal relationships and often feuds that all this comic book intelligentsia shares with one another. They know each other well; have often worked with friends of friends. They are a microcosm of what larger entertainment-based industries, like video games and film can be.



With the advent of blogging, many more voices are heard and graduate to the upper echelons of this elite group. Part of the game is to look indispensable and to be the first to come up with the most smashing piece of news that a secondary group of hopefuls and faithful that closely follow the politics of the first group can latch on to.

At some point in this game of a dog chasing its own tail, there is a risk that one will lose the purpose of what one is really supposed to be doing as a press unit covering a specific industry. Is the news provided by the comic book media intelligentsia really relevant to the average comic book reader or does it only serve to feed the curiosity of the inner group and the outlying ring of faithful and hopefuls in the antichamber?

I made the decision years ago, before it was popular to say that one was above such things, that The Comic Book Bin would be free of gossip, rumours, personal attacks, and industry chit chat that one can find elsewhere.

For one thing, call it my French sensibilities (I’m a Canadian whose first language is French), stuff like that sounds indecent and not worth reporting to me. Before the current French Republic’s President Nicolas Sarkozy made it impossible to avoid, the French press never covered the private lives of its leaders and political class. It’s not news. But the Americans press loves this stuff. For them it’s news. The parallels are the same in regards to the comic book industry. There is something cultural at play here, which is why ultimately it would be chauvinistic to say The Comic Book Bin’s approach is the best. It’s just different.

Source: Reuters

Second, I care more about comic books, than about the people who make them. I’ve read comic books from South America, Asia, Europe, North America, and Africa. I love sequential art. I care about the creative process, but not the politics that comes with it. I respect people professionally, but I really have no favourite comic book creator or even friends in this industry. Sure, I love Hugo Pratt and Alex Toth’s work, but I care less about them as persons, than the body of work they have left us.

Third, I believe in informing our readers and encouraging them to think and disagreeing with what I or the writers on this Web site say. But in order to have something worth disagreeing about, one must be independent. Independence is not just about being at arm’s length from vendors and special interests. Independence means having the freedom of not covering the same stories, the same angles as others.

A variety of voices and unique ways to present information is necessary to foster a developing discourse on comic books. My peers, at other blogs and comic books magazines, do engage in discourse and cover interesting topics. The only problem is that once one of them covers something, all the others jump on the same story. This story will last for about a week, until the next “crossover” is found. Meanwhile, the comic book of a 22 year-old in Iowa is ignored by all, because it does not fit the current agenda and discussions.



Over the years, like a drill sergeant, I’ve imposed values of reserve, discretion and professionalism to the staff of The Comic Book Bin. It’s not easy for many of us to resist the urges to just jump in the mêlée and be rowdy.  But doing so would not be beneficial to our readers. The mom from North Dakota, who reads our review of The Amazing Spider-man to decide whether the comic book is suitable for her eight-year-old child, does not have to know about the latest story elevated to a crisis by the comic book industry’s punditry.

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