The Future Cometh

I tell ya, coming up with new stuff to talk about every week can pretty difficult. Usually I try and talk about a new comic I read, or some new thing going on at the store. Occasionally I just can't think of anything and I'll just go out onto the web and see if anything catches my eye. This was one of weeks. And boy howdy, did I find something cool.

Over at Newsarama I found this really interesting article by Mark Millar on the future of the comic industry. He talks about the comic industry as a whole, and where we're going, based on where we've been, the booms and the busts. We all know that right now we're in one of the biggest booms comics has seen since the early sixties, but that may mean we are headed for one of the biggest busts ever in the next decade or so. What I found really interesting though, was what he thought might cause the next big bust. Hollywood. As Hollywood starts seeing the real potential of comics as a fertile feeding ground for new stories, and many Hollywood types come to comics to tell stories the way they want, rather then the way the studio's want to, many creators are being lured away from comics to movies.

Millar said that there is not a single writer that he knows who doesn't have a deal with a movie studio in someway or another right now. Many artists are also being lured away to do things like production design, or in the case of John Cassady (PLANETARY, ASTONISHING X-MEN), to even direct movies. Now I don't want to sum up too much of the article here, I'd rather you read it for yourself, but I just found it fascinating. Over the next could of years comics could just become the stepping stone into big Hollywood movies that small indie films used to be. Instead of making something like CLERKS, the next Kevin Smith may start out in comics, become an overnight success, and promptly be snatched up by a big studio to write or direct movies. And let's face it, the money in movies is a hell of a lot better then in comics. As Millar points out, the four issue mini-series that might get as much as $40,000 from one of the big two, can just as easily be written as a screenplay and sold for anywhere from $500,000 to a million dollars in Hollywood.

That's a big difference, too big to easily ignore. Seriously, if you found out that there was a company out there that paid ten to twenty times what you usually make at your job, for the same thing you do now, how long do you think it would be before you were asking for an application. Probably about as long as it takes you to find their building and go over there. Ok, that's it for today, I've got more to say about this, but it's already turning into a twenty page thesis in my head and I should before it gets to be one on the page as well. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, so feel free to respond here and maybe we can get a little discussion going.

-Dan