Return of the Mighty Observations Thread

[Dr. Medulla]

Just scraped by another round of layoffs at my org this morning. We just had the previous round in 2019, so it seems things are not very healthy. I was sure I was going to be on the block if we had another one but looks like I made it again somehow. My old manager from the team I used to be on before they shuffled me DID get laid off, which I'm really pissed about because she was the most supportive boss I've ever had.

I gotta start putting more into savings and less into comics. But comics decrease my anxiety.

Glad you're still employed! If you can do scanned comics, that's completely free.

Scanned comics INCREASE my anxiety. Plus I like to support my LCS.

[Kory]

Just scraped by another round of layoffs at my org this morning. We just had the previous round in 2019, so it seems things are not very healthy. I was sure I was going to be on the block if we had another one but looks like I made it again somehow. My old manager from the team I used to be on before they shuffled me DID get laid off, which I'm really pissed about because she was the most supportive boss I've ever had.

I gotta start putting more into savings and less into comics. But comics decrease my anxiety.

Glad you're still employed! If you can do scanned comics, that's completely free.

Scanned comics INCREASE my anxiety. Plus I like to support my LCS.

I stare at a screen all day for work, I need paper when I'm off the clock.

Also, I'm still trying to understand how arguments for piracy work. My historic instinct is to think that arts won't exist if people don't support them. The main argument seems to be that the people that pirate things wouldn't have paid for them anyway, so it's not technically lost income for an artist. But as someone who would typically be paying for the books, my turning to piracy would represent a loss of income for them (and contribution to title cancelations), is that right? Especially for my third place, the shop. I know there's a lot of moving parts with this but I haven't seen an explanation that really covers it.

[Dr. Medulla]

I stare at a screen all day for work, I need paper when I'm off the clock.

To each his own. I've had endless conversations about ebooks vs paper. I'm fundamentally ambivalent. I can, and do, read both. Text is text, images are images to me. But paper people are more ardent about the topic, I know.

Also, I'm still trying to understand how arguments for piracy work. My historic instinct is to think that arts won't exist if people don't support them. The main argument seems to be that the people that pirate things wouldn't have paid for them anyway, so it's not technically lost income for an artist. But as someone who would typically be paying for the books, my turning to piracy would represent a loss of income for them (and contribution to title cancelations), is that right? Especially for my third place, the shop. I know there's a lot of moving parts with this but I haven't seen an explanation that really covers it.

I'm thinking a bit out loud here, but I see a distinction between macro and micro here. In the case of you affecting lost income for the artist/publisher, that's a macro argument and I shrug at that. At this point in the digital economy, companies factor in piracy the way retailers factor in shoplifting. In the case of your LCS, that's a micro argument and I understand and respect your allegiance to your conscience on the issue. If you have a relationship with the LCS that goes beyond the economic, that's a solid reason to keep at it. But if it's purely retailer-customer, I don't see a point in loyalty to financial transaction.

[Mimi]

Let's see if this works. https://www.instagram.com/reel/Co_HQipg ... M4ZDc5MmU=

[weller259]

correct me if i'm wrong but don't these AI bots "learn" from the various interactions they have with others? I mean, who programs the bot? And, what if 2 bots were to ask each other questions? The inbreeding could be mindboggling. Not knowing exactly how they work and how they acquire the data they use to formulate their responses to queries gives me many more questions than answers. If only there was a bot I could ask ........

[Dr. Medulla]

correct me if i'm wrong but don't these AI bots "learn" from the various interactions they have with others? I mean, who programs the bot? And, what if 2 bots were to ask each other questions? The inbreeding could be mindboggling. Not knowing exactly how they work and how they acquire the data they use to formulate their responses to queries gives me many more questions than answers. If only there was a bot I could ask ........

Two bots could educate each other assuming they don't share each other's knowledge already. It's all about acquiring more and more data that can be organized and analyzed. That'd be my guess.

[Flex]

correct me if i'm wrong but don't these AI bots "learn" from the various interactions they have with others? I mean, who programs the bot? And, what if 2 bots were to ask each other questions? The inbreeding could be mindboggling. Not knowing exactly how they work and how they acquire the data they use to formulate their responses to queries gives me many more questions than answers. If only there was a bot I could ask ........

Two bots could educate each other assuming they don't share each other's knowledge already. It's all about acquiring more and more data that can be organized and analyzed. That'd be my guess.

Similarly, security analysts are fairly concerned that malicious actors will start targeting AI with "information input" attacks where you just barrage these AIs with lies and propaganda to condition them to whatever your agenda is.

[Mimi]

correct me if i'm wrong but don't these AI bots "learn" from the various interactions they have with others? I mean, who programs the bot? And, what if 2 bots were to ask each other questions? The inbreeding could be mindboggling. Not knowing exactly how they work and how they acquire the data they use to formulate their responses to queries gives me many more questions than answers. If only there was a bot I could ask ........

Two bots could educate each other assuming they don't share each other's knowledge already. It's all about acquiring more and more data that can be organized and analyzed. That'd be my guess.

Similarly, security analysts are fairly concerned that malicious actors will start targeting AI with "information input" attacks where you just barrage these AIs with lies and propaganda to condition them to whatever your agenda is.

That's scary.

[JennyB]

Just scraped by another round of layoffs at my org this morning. We just had the previous round in 2019, so it seems things are not very healthy. I was sure I was going to be on the block if we had another one but looks like I made it again somehow. My old manager from the team I used to be on before they shuffled me DID get laid off, which I'm really pissed about because she was the most supportive boss I've ever had.

I gotta start putting more into savings and less into comics. But comics decrease my anxiety.

Fuck. This just sucks all around. I'm sorry - it must be so stressful even when your job is safe for now.

[Kory]

I stare at a screen all day for work, I need paper when I'm off the clock.

To each his own. I've had endless conversations about ebooks vs paper. I'm fundamentally ambivalent. I can, and do, read both. Text is text, images are images to me. But paper people are more ardent about the topic, I know.

Also, I'm still trying to understand how arguments for piracy work. My historic instinct is to think that arts won't exist if people don't support them. The main argument seems to be that the people that pirate things wouldn't have paid for them anyway, so it's not technically lost income for an artist. But as someone who would typically be paying for the books, my turning to piracy would represent a loss of income for them (and contribution to title cancelations), is that right? Especially for my third place, the shop. I know there's a lot of moving parts with this but I haven't seen an explanation that really covers it.

I'm thinking a bit out loud here, but I see a distinction between macro and micro here. In the case of you affecting lost income for the artist/publisher, that's a macro argument and I shrug at that. At this point in the digital economy, companies factor in piracy the way retailers factor in shoplifting. In the case of your LCS, that's a micro argument and I understand and respect your allegiance to your conscience on the issue. If you have a relationship with the LCS that goes beyond the economic, that's a solid reason to keep at it. But if it's purely retailer-customer, I don't see a point in loyalty to financial transaction.

I want to be clear here that I'm not judging anyone for what they do on this topic, I've pirated plenty in my time as well and still do—I'm kind of dense when it comes to economics so I'm just trying to get a better handle on the counterarguments for the following (also to be clear, I'm speaking mostly about publishers at the size of Image, Dark Horse, and smaller—I don't have many worries about the big two):

1. It seems straightforward to me that if people don't buy comics, they won't get made. The industry currently seems rickety enough to me to classify it as a what I'm interpreting as a micro argument in your post. I'm not sure I'm grasping how direct support of such a struggling industry that provides something I care about is much different from supporting an LCS that gives me a sense of community. A supermarket or software manufacturer, sure, but comics publishers seem to be on a razor's edge, from what I read. How many people are pirating vs. how many are buying, and does this have a noticeable effect on:

2. The ways (I assume) that publishers would factor in piracy the way stores do with shoplifting would be to pay creators less, take fewer chances on interesting pitches, cut corners on promotion (which is self-defeating, of course, but it's already rampant), allow fewer opportunities for series' to exist beyond 12 issues, unless they wind up being REALLY popular. Does piracy affect this, or if we factor in how much money would be gained by everyone buying instead of pirating, it still wouldn't make much of a gain for publishers/creators?

3. Does piracy more broadly lead to a common devaluation of art? A lot of conservatives (particularly techbros) publicly proclaim that artists need to get real jobs and stop "playing with crayons," etc etc. They want AI to make art for us, but the few that "value" art but just want people to do it in their free time, don't recognize that the amount of time anyone has to create art after the workday is pretty limited and certainly not done with a fresh, creative mind. SHOULD art be free? Should all artists work for love of the art rather than to support themselves? I'm ambivalent on this, but god knows there's not enough jobs for everyone as it is. A monthly schedule for comics would certainly be untenable.

[Kory]

Just scraped by another round of layoffs at my org this morning. We just had the previous round in 2019, so it seems things are not very healthy. I was sure I was going to be on the block if we had another one but looks like I made it again somehow. My old manager from the team I used to be on before they shuffled me DID get laid off, which I'm really pissed about because she was the most supportive boss I've ever had.

I gotta start putting more into savings and less into comics. But comics decrease my anxiety.

Fuck. This just sucks all around. I'm sorry - it must be so stressful even when your job is safe for now.

Yeah it really just leads to thoughts of "well when IS the axe going to fall?"

[Dr. Medulla]

I want to be clear here that I'm not judging anyone for what they do on this topic, I've pirated plenty in my time as well and still do—I'm kind of dense when it comes to economics so I'm just trying to get a better handle on the counterarguments for the following (also to be clear, I'm speaking mostly about publishers at the size of Image, Dark Horse, and smaller—I don't have many worries about the big two):

1. It seems straightforward to me that if people don't buy comics, they won't get made. The industry currently seems rickety enough to me to classify it as a what I'm interpreting as a micro argument in your post. I'm not sure I'm grasping how direct support of such a struggling industry that provides something I care about is much different from supporting an LCS that gives me a sense of community. A supermarket or software manufacturer, sure, but comics publishers seem to be on a razor's edge, from what I read. How many people are pirating vs. how many are buying, and does this have a noticeable effect on:

2. The ways (I assume) that publishers would factor in piracy the way stores do with shoplifting would be to pay creators less, take fewer chances on interesting pitches, cut corners on promotion (which is self-defeating, of course, but it's already rampant), allow fewer opportunities for series' to exist beyond 12 issues, unless they wind up being REALLY popular. Does piracy affect this, or if we factor in how much money would be gained by everyone buying instead of pirating, it still wouldn't make much of a gain for publishers/creators?

3. Does piracy more broadly lead to a common devaluation of art? A lot of conservatives (particularly techbros) publicly proclaim that artists need to get real jobs and stop "playing with crayons," etc etc. They want AI to make art for us, but the few that "value" art but just want people to do it in their free time, don't recognize that the amount of time anyone has to create art after the workday is pretty limited and certainly not done with a fresh, creative mind. SHOULD art be free? Should all artists work for love of the art rather than to support themselves? I'm ambivalent on this, but god knows there's not enough jobs for everyone as it is. A monthly schedule for comics would certainly be untenable.

All good questions and, fundamentally, dilemmas. Before I go on, I should be up front with my increasing wariness (leaning even more to opposition) of culture and the profit motive. Art can and should exist without commercial interests.

1. This argument seems comparable to the music industry when Napster emerged: If people can get music for free, music won't be made anymore. The music business is still going strong, tho (at least in terms of income, maybe not cultural influence). If the comics industry is struggling and that it can't co-exist with piracy, then there's probably a bigger problem at heart. Online piracy has been in effect for a couple decades now. Like with music, I suspect more and more money is being made licensing the material elsewhere (movies, tv). Marvel is the most obvious example, but Image properties have also been licensed out. So the comics themselves aren't as key in terms of sales.

2. Is there evidence that comics have become less diverse and risk-taking in the past twenty years? I'm far from knowledgeable, but my superficial sense is that there's a whole lot more options in style and subject matter, as well as creators. If sales are not as strong as they once were, that can be explained more by abandoning the mass audience for the hardcore nerd crowd (and that's been happening since the early 80s, when the industry embraced the comic store model versus the corner store). The emphasis on trade collections also suggests an interest in going narrower and narrower, encouraging the hardest of hardcore to buy the same thing over and over.

3. Piracy might devalue art in an economic sense—maybe—but if it shifts the evaluation on those grounds, that's a good thing. There's a perspective within some punk communities that you shouldn't make money from your art. Your shitty 9-5 job pays the bills, art is your real life and the moment you turn art into a way of paying the bills, your art will necessarily be compromised. Again, maybe. But I've grown more and more sympathetic to that view. Maybe we should be aiding that supposed crisis to help art become untethered from commerce. That's the hugest of macro perspectives, but it's there.

[Flex]

I feel like Kory's asking a deontological question here. I always knew he was a closet Kantian.

[Kory]

I want to be clear here that I'm not judging anyone for what they do on this topic, I've pirated plenty in my time as well and still do—I'm kind of dense when it comes to economics so I'm just trying to get a better handle on the counterarguments for the following (also to be clear, I'm speaking mostly about publishers at the size of Image, Dark Horse, and smaller—I don't have many worries about the big two):

1. It seems straightforward to me that if people don't buy comics, they won't get made. The industry currently seems rickety enough to me to classify it as a what I'm interpreting as a micro argument in your post. I'm not sure I'm grasping how direct support of such a struggling industry that provides something I care about is much different from supporting an LCS that gives me a sense of community. A supermarket or software manufacturer, sure, but comics publishers seem to be on a razor's edge, from what I read. How many people are pirating vs. how many are buying, and does this have a noticeable effect on:

2. The ways (I assume) that publishers would factor in piracy the way stores do with shoplifting would be to pay creators less, take fewer chances on interesting pitches, cut corners on promotion (which is self-defeating, of course, but it's already rampant), allow fewer opportunities for series' to exist beyond 12 issues, unless they wind up being REALLY popular. Does piracy affect this, or if we factor in how much money would be gained by everyone buying instead of pirating, it still wouldn't make much of a gain for publishers/creators?

3. Does piracy more broadly lead to a common devaluation of art? A lot of conservatives (particularly techbros) publicly proclaim that artists need to get real jobs and stop "playing with crayons," etc etc. They want AI to make art for us, but the few that "value" art but just want people to do it in their free time, don't recognize that the amount of time anyone has to create art after the workday is pretty limited and certainly not done with a fresh, creative mind. SHOULD art be free? Should all artists work for love of the art rather than to support themselves? I'm ambivalent on this, but god knows there's not enough jobs for everyone as it is. A monthly schedule for comics would certainly be untenable.

All good questions and, fundamentally, dilemmas. Before I go on, I should be up front with my increasing wariness (leaning even more to opposition) of culture and the profit motive. Art can and should exist without commercial interests.

1. This argument seems comparable to the music industry when Napster emerged: If people can get music for free, music won't be made anymore. The music business is still going strong, tho (at least in terms of income, maybe not cultural influence). If the comics industry is struggling and that it can't co-exist with piracy, then there's probably a bigger problem at heart. Online piracy has been in effect for a couple decades now. Like with music, I suspect more and more money is being made licensing the material elsewhere (movies, tv). Marvel is the most obvious example, but Image properties have also been licensed out. So the comics themselves aren't as key in terms of sales.

2. Is there evidence that comics have become less diverse and risk-taking in the past twenty years? I'm far from knowledgeable, but my superficial sense is that there's a whole lot more options in style and subject matter, as well as creators. If sales are not as strong as they once were, that can be explained more by abandoning the mass audience for the hardcore nerd crowd (and that's been happening since the early 80s, when the industry embraced the comic store model versus the corner store). The emphasis on trade collections also suggests an interest in going narrower and narrower, encouraging the hardest of hardcore to buy the same thing over and over.

3. Piracy might devalue art in an economic sense—maybe—but if it shifts the evaluation on those grounds, that's a good thing. There's a perspective within some punk communities that you shouldn't make money from your art. Your shitty 9-5 job pays the bills, art is your real life and the moment you turn art into a way of paying the bills, your art will necessarily be compromised. Again, maybe. But I've grown more and more sympathetic to that view. Maybe we should be aiding that supposed crisis to help art become untethered from commerce. That's the hugest of macro perspectives, but it's there.

One of the things that makes it hard to answer a lot of these is the lack of solid comics news online, and I have a hard time finding out how the industry is doing other than talking to people that work at my LCS. A lot of comics sales stats get combined with manga, which makes the industry look healthier than it is. As such, I see a lot of trends happening that I could lay at the feet of lower sales, but I don't have real solid evidence for it and a lot of it is just educated guessing. Primary among these is one that I mentioned earlier, that long-form storytelling has gone almost out the window. Most series are 12 issues max anymore, and I find that it's kind of hard to tell a good story with such a limitation. I know I'm not alone in thinking this, so it kind of makes me lean toward lack of money being the issue beacuse I think most creators would tell longer stories if they could. But perhaps it's an oversaturation issue—people have a hard time deciding what to follow each month, because there's maybe 20 miniseries going. Echoes of the way the record industry started working toward the end of the 90s: lots of choices, but they all had to sink or swim on one album, and most sank because there's no A&R/promotion anymore—just throwing things at a wall to see what sticks.

I'm also sympathetic to your answer to #3, but I still get hung up on the fact that it's so hard to create art in your free time when you have about 3 hours of it on any given day, if you're lucky. Not that this isn't something that most artists already deal with unless they're one of the extremely lucky ones, but I'd like to see some kind of subsidy using some kind of criteria with some kind of universal benefit. I don't know what the hell that would be, but with the world the way it is now, having art untethered from commerce would result in a hell of a lot less art, especially something on a schedule like comics. That's a bit where I think the comparison might be more with TV rather than music, because it really is a full time job in itself (drawing, anyway). Some sort of bottom falling out of this may result in more graphic novels instead of monthlies. I think we'd be losing something pretty special, but that depends on where you fall in the binge vs. wait-for-the-next-episode debate.

I feel like Kory's asking a deontological question here. I always knew he was a closet Kantian.

My duty is to comics!

[Dr. Medulla]

One of the things that makes it hard to answer a lot of these is the lack of solid comics news online, and I have a hard time finding out how the industry is doing other than talking to people that work at my LCS. A lot of comics sales stats get combined with manga, which makes the industry look healthier than it is. As such, I see a lot of trends happening that I could lay at the feet of lower sales, but I don't have real solid evidence for it and a lot of it is just educated guessing.

Coinkadinkally, a couple weeks ago I gave a lecture on post-war crime and horror comics. I wanted to give people a sense of the scope of comic readership back then and had a devil of a time finding sales figures for current comics. Dollar figures were easier to come by more than actual circulation. What that is (seemingly) hiding, I don't know.

Primary among these is one that I mentioned earlier, that long-form storytelling has gone almost out the window. Most series are 12 issues max anymore, and I find that it's kind of hard to tell a good story with such a limitation.

Traditionalists who value the old style of single-issue or two-issue stories cock an eyebrow at you. And, somewhat in sympathy to them, if you're requiring over a year to tell your story, you're telling the casual reader to fuck off. That's not a good business model. Ardent fans might love that kind of involved storytelling, but it is problematic from a mass marketing perspective.

I know I'm not alone in thinking this, so it kind of makes me lean toward lack of money being the issue beacuse I think most creators would tell longer stories if they could. But perhaps it's an oversaturation issue—people have a hard time deciding what to follow each month, because there's maybe 20 miniseries going. Echoes of the way the record industry started working toward the end of the 90s: lots of choices, but they all had to sink or swim on one album, and most sank because there's no A&R/promotion anymore—just throwing things at a wall to see what sticks.

Again admitting my ignorance to the comics biz, that does sound like an oversaturation issue. When there's an abundance of consumers who really want to part with their cash, you can get away with lots of selection. But it's not also just a matter of quantity. Quality, however sticky that is to determine, does matter. Not everyone can pull off the "decompressed" model, nor should they. Unless a story really does demand it, and the creators have the chops to pull it off, it comes off as a cynical industry ploy to get people to buy a 3-issue story spread out over 12 issues.

I'm also sympathetic to your answer to #3, but I still get hung up on the fact that it's so hard to create art in your free time when you have about 3 hours of it on any given day, if you're lucky. Not that this isn't something that most artists already deal with unless they're one of the extremely lucky ones, but I'd like to see some kind of subsidy using some kind of criteria with some kind of universal benefit. I don't know what the hell that would be, but with the world the way it is now, having art untethered from commerce would result in a hell of a lot less art, especially something on a schedule like comics. That's a bit where I think the comparison might be more with TV rather than music, because it really is a full time job in itself (drawing, anyway). Some sort of bottom falling out of this may result in more graphic novels instead of monthlies. I think we'd be losing something pretty special, but that depends on where you fall in the binge vs. wait-for-the-next-episode debate.

This seems one of those more abstract private hedonism vs. social benefit arguments I throw at students. For a better position of art (or culture more broadly), it'll require sacrifice of both creators and audiences in terms of private benefit. Like, I know I'm speaking of a radical shift that isn't likely to happen outside of an even greater, society-wide radical shift. But our current trajectory of more more more is not making us better. For several years now, I've been leaning towards a more conservative (as in truly older and modest, not what is right wing) position that encourages restraint and limitation. It's a difficult thing because for a couple centuries now we've accepted the idea of progress—everything should be better, more, upwards—but I think there's reason to doubt that. I know that I'm taking this in much wider, more abstract areas than you're offering—you just want your Richie Rich funny books, damn it!—but that's the perspective that influences more and more of my thinking in these areas.