"Young People don't READ anymore" and other B.S.

The problem with a sweeping statement is that it’s a sweeping statement. It conveniently deals with careless generalizations that are not really true. The term “young people” for instance is general; broadly including all kinds of young people from age seven to twenty two, from any nationality, from any income class and from any period or generation. This is followed by the equally careless and general predicate: “don’t read anymore”.

Not reading anymore means a complete and total stoppage of abstracting and comprehending the meaning of words and symbols from any language, appearing on any text, chart, graph, flowchart, equation, formula, circuit, screen, computer monitor, book, pocketbook, newspaper, magazine and yes, even a printed comic book.

Putting them together and reviewing the whole poor excuse of an oxymoron: “YOUNG PEOPLE DON’T READ ANYMORE”, and another idiotic dictum has just been made--probably coming from some of those parochial, narrow-minded, unemancipated “young people” in the internet (or message board—take your pick). And its not surprising considering that a lot of these “young people” today don’t really READ anymore. Now THAT’s an oxymoron.

If any of it were indeed true, then millions of readers (young and old) of the “Da Vinci Code”, the Harry Potter books, Archie digests, various translations of the Bible (and Koran), English translated Shojo and Shonen manga, “Pera mo Palaguin Mo”, the entertainment gossip magazines, FHM magazine, discounted second-hand books and pocketbooks, Tagalog romance pocketbooks, “Bulgar” and other daily Tagalog newspaper tabloids, aren’t really reading at all(!)

The irony of it is that many globalized Filipino comics creators and publishers maintain this absurd dictum as gospel truth. Yet, while proclaiming that “young people don’t read anymore” they continue to publish or self-publish their expensive western or Japanese inspired comic books in low print runs, that appear irregularly and sold in a few imported comics specialty shops, bookstores, and other commercial urban establishments. Naturally, their works are not bought or read by a great many “young people” hence their claim that “young people don’t read anymore.”

Selling expensive, low print-run, glossy 32-paged superhero-action-fantasy comics in few comics/hobby specialty shops catering to the small "collector" market, is what is being done right now by mainstream American comics publishers. And what is the result? Sales and awareness by "young people" of the American comic book has gone down over the years forcing mainstream publishers like DC, Marvel and Dark Horse to use the internet in advertising their product; specifically by providing preview pages of their comics' latest issues in the internet, even providing for free, online reproductions of their past issues in an effort to stimulate sales and public awareness. Its the other way around. The internet did not bring comics down. U.S. comics did it to themselves when mainstream publishers like Marvel and DC ruined the fan-based direct market that saved them.

From: http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/books/11/13/comics.online.ap/index.%20html:

"LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Marvel is putting some of its older comics online Tuesday, hoping to reintroduce young people to the X-Men and Fantastic Four by showcasing the original issues in which such characters appeared.

Marvel Comics, and other comic book companies, are putting their product online.

It's a tentative move onto the Internet: Comics can only be viewed in a Web browser, not downloaded, and new issues will only go online at least six months after they first appear in print.

Still, it represents perhaps the comics industry's most aggressive Web push yet. Even as their creations -- from Iron Man to Wonder Woman -- become increasingly visible in pop culture through new movies and video games, old-school comics publishers rely primarily on specialized, out-of-the-way comic shops for distribution of their bread-and-butter product.

"You don't have that spinner rack of comic books sitting in the local five-and-dime any more," said Dan Buckley, president of Marvel Publishing. "We don't have our product intersecting kids in their lifestyle space as much as we used to."

Translate "kids' lifestyle space" into plain English and you get "the Internet." Marvel's two most prominent competitors currently offer online teasers designed to drive the sales of comics or book collections.

Dark Horse Comics now puts its monthly anthologies "Dark Horse Presents" up for free viewing on its MySpace site. The images are vibrant and large.

DC Comics has also put issues up on MySpace, and recently launched the competition-based Zuda Comics, which encourages users to rank each other's work, as a way to tap into the expanding Web comic scene. Company president Paul Levitz said he expects to put more original comics online in coming years. (DC Comics is a unit of Time Warner, as is CNN.)

"We look at anything that connects comics to people," Levitz said. "The most interesting thing about the online world to me is the opportunity for new forms of creativity. ... It's a question of what forms of storytelling work for the Web?"

For its mature Vertigo imprint, DC offers weekly sneak peeks at the first five or six pages of upcoming issues. The publisher also gives out downloadable PDF files of the first issues in certain series, timed to publication of the series in book or graphic novel format.

The Web release of DC's "Y the Last Man" sent sales of that book collection soaring at Bridge City Comics in Portland, Oregon, the shop's owner Michael Ring said.

"They really do tend to be feeder systems," Ring said of online comics. "They give people that initial taste."

For Marvel, the general public has often already gotten its initial taste through movies like "Spider-Man" or the "Fantastic Four" franchises.

The publisher is hoping fans will be intrigued enough about the origins of those characters to shell out $9.99 a month, or $4.99 monthly with a year-long commitment. For that price, they'll be able to poke through, say, the first 100 issues of Stan Lee's 1963 creation "Amazing Spider-Man" at their leisure, along with more recent titles like "House of M" and "Young Avengers." Comics can be viewed in several different formats, including frame-by-frame navigation.

Ring expects Marvel's effort to put a slight dent in the back-issue segment of the comic shop industry, where rare, out-of-print titles sell for hundreds of dollars on eBay and at trade shows.

Though most comic fans are collectors, some simply want to catch up on the backstory of their favorite characters and would no longer have to pay top dollar to do so.

About 2,500 issues will be available at launch of Marvel Digital Comics, with 20 more being released each week."

The highlighted paragraphs above hint and show that even the few comics collectors serviced by comics specialty shops are inconvenienced by high cover prices. It also shows that increase in sales could be attained if the standard comics format were exposed more to the non-comic collector, or the public at large and had reasonably low, affordable prices. Had these expensive, low print-run, 32 glossy paged mainstream comics been re-formatted and sold beyond the now dwindling comics specialty shops in the U.S., the fate of the standard U.S. mainstream comic would have been different.

Here in the Philippines, the same procedure is BLINDLY being followed. It starts with a false, misleading statement: “Young people don’t read anymore.” Followed by even more absurd claims: “Filipinos are into the internet now. So why bother making affordable newsprint comics in Tagalog? Nobody will read them. Let’s just create these westernized or Japanized classy-looking comics for a local upper income and international “global” audience who will pay us foreign exchange and we’ll all be rich.” Since 1992, globalized Filipino comics have been doing this but until now, no new industry based on their ideas has yet prospered or blossomed.

To add insult to injury, they cover-up their failure by proclaiming: “we can’t ever revive or make a new comics industry in this third world country ever again.” They then deliver the final blow: “let’s just be content in self-publishing “whatever” it is we love with all our hearts and to hell with what the public thinks or wants.” With that, a new “hobby” and “artform” was created for the elite, rich, westernized few to “love” and enjoy.

How many imported comics specialty shops do we have right now in the country? Less than a handful and they’re all concentrated in imperial Metro Manila. The same with the few bookstores and specialty bookstores. Yet, this is how globalized Filipino comics are being distributed. Is it not any wonder then why comics right now are a marginalized medium, mocked by many and supported by only a few cult comics collectors and a sympathetic few members of the academe as an “artform” ?

“Young people don’t read anymore.”

Are these the kinds of comics creators we have now? Making careless, poorly thought-out broad statements? Are they easily intimidated when confronted by long readable text? Do they often read just two or three paragraphs? Is that their limit? Do they have short attention spans? Is their education half-baked? Can’t they talk or think in straight English or Filipino? Why “tag-lish”? Are their thought processes often disjointed and disorganized?

Why do they often get ahead of themselves by second guessing; creatively pulling thoughts out of thin air and making unfounded, general assumptions? Are they really simple-minded, emotionally volatile, over-courteous, folksy-friendly, gullible artists? If the answer is yes to all of the above, then its no wonder their comics works aren’t read and appreciated by a great many people.

How to make great, new Tagalog comics affordable to the general public of low-income Filipinos? Forget it. That’s old school. That kind of cheap, low-quality newsprint comics is too “alien” and should only be sold in the far-off planets of Mars or Jupiter. Ah, but Mars and Jupiter are not the issue here, are they? Rather, the conundrum facing us is why keep on making globalized Filipino comics for the limited, exclusive consumption of that self-indulgent, narcissistic world of URANUS?