Saturday, August 13, 2011

Marvel Boycott Diary #8: NYT



Well, the New York Times has covered the Marvel Boycott, sort of, by mentioning it on their comic book and graphic novel Bestseller List and linking to Steve Bissette's original call for a boycott and the letter from Seth posted here on Mystery Hoard. So that's something.

In my own boycott news, I went into my local comic shop last week, the first time I've been there since this whole thing started, and cancelled all my subscriptions to Marvel books. I'm not a big fan of current Marvel but I have gone through several periods of buying new comic books from the company over the last few years out of a combination of senile nostalgia and a misguided effort to "keep up" with all aspects of comic art. My tastes these days lean more towards graphic novels and classic comic strips, but when younger bloggers write about the plots of Jonathan Hickman comics or the slick stylings of Kyle Baker in Deadpool Max, I still burn with curiosity and have to see for myself. Usually I'm disapointed, but I have come to appreciate the various virtues of the works of Bendis, Brubaker, et al, and have even come to terms with John Romita, Jr., among many others. Regardless, I dumped the tiny batch of Avengers spin-offs and miniseries I was buying and won't buy another until Marvel does right by Kirby and his legacy. Just to be 100% Marvel-free, I even dumped the nicely-drawn-and-coloured Incognito by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips because the publisher, Icon, is owned by Marvel. (Yes, I realize that the whole idea behind the Icon imprint is to publish creator-owned work, but I still felt badly about Marvel taking even a penny from me when Kirby gets zero royalties or credit, let alone ownership, for any of his Marvel work.)

My thanks to Any Chop, the manager at The Dragon in Guelph for her patience while I explained why I was boycotting Marvel. Hopefully soon we will all have a petition ready to share with comic shops and other fans to take some of the bafflement out of this sort of exchange.

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