Archive for September, 2011

Big Trouble In Little Mogadishu

Thursday, September 22nd, 2011

White Guys Talking To White Guys About Selling To White Guys: Latino U.S. Market: $750 Billion. Black U.S. Market: $892 Billion. Marvel and DC Minority-Targeted Publishing Lines: 0.

Latino and African American markets are worth hundreds of billions of dollars in the U.S. So far as I know, both majors have stupidly and arrogantly dismissed those markets, along with the Christian/Evangelical market, which virtually no major and precious few indys will touch—like they’re afraid of all that cash waiting to be collected. That’s money, lying all over the floor, and these guys are too lazy to pick it up. techniques for penis growth

Mainstream comics have long had an arrogant Anglo point of view. All of Marvel’s films are Anglo-centric. At least the Batman film people were savvy enough to put Morgan Freeman front and center, while the Iron Man franchise has utterly wasted both Terrence Howard and Don Cheadle. This sends a message to minority communities, whether or not DC or Marvel realize it.

Look, you’re either a businessman or you’re a fanboy. It’s tough to be both. A businessman sells. He doesn’t just sell to whites. He doesn’ t just sell what he likes. A businessman sells both Coke and Pepsi. A businessman looks for any avenue available to get his product out there. I could be wrong, and I’ll gleefully admit so if someone wants to set me straight. But in twelve years behind desks at Marvel and DC, what I saw from the sales force were white guys talking to white guys about selling to white guys. They were woefully inept at connecting to women or minorities, and, to my knowledge, have never developed strong relationships in black or Latino markets.

You Are Here

Sunday, September 18th, 2011

I have no idea what I’ m doing, so bear with me. All I can tell you is my old website is, well, old. Very old. With lots and lots of bad code. I’ve wanted to re-code it for years, now, but haven’t had then time. I have finally admitted that I will never get around to it. There’s just not enough hours in a day, and, frankly, I haven’t been in this business in a very long time so I’m not sure what the point of fixing the site might be. Therefore, I have done the reasonable and responsible thing: shoved everything under the bed and moved on. The old site is still here, but it’ s a lot like that Christmas tree you stupidly shoved into a box last year, lights and all, and now have to unravel and reconnect everything. That I’m fairly certain I will get around to, but it’ll be done in fits and starts.

Beyond that, I am rattling off some self-serving observations about whatever, mainly for the sake of hearing myself talk. Most of my blogging is done over on the PraiseNet these days, so if you’re at all interested in what I have to say, there’s a lot more of that sort of thing there. I may or may not have some new projects to talk about, but most of that won’ t look anything at all like comics.

I do miss chatting with you bloggers and apologize for the vanishing act. Moving forward I will do my best to be less of an absentee landlord, but time is not my friend. I had to steal a great deal of it just to get this far. Hope everybody’s well. —Priest

The New Black Mambo

Sunday, September 18th, 2011

At some point I was no longer a writer. I had, somehow, become a black writer. This perplexed me, considering the halcyon 80’s, where Marvel was a hotbed of scathing, litigiously un-PC sexism and racism (reference: Rescue Me’s potty-mouthed fire house), I was never seen as a “black” writer. I competed with everybody else, with guys who had much more experience than I, and did the grunt work and odd jobs just like anybody else.

Nobody at DC hired me to reboot Green Lantern in Emerald Dawn because I was a black guy, and Fabian Nicieza seemed to not notice or care about my skin color when he approached me to dream up a Power Man/ Iron Fist-esque buddy book for his startup imprint Acclaim.

Pre-Milestone, the subject just didn’ t come up. Somewhere along the way, Marvel became much more PC and I became inexplicably much blacker.

Essay Is Here

The Busboy

Sunday, September 18th, 2011

Back then, there really wasn’t language for this business, but today we call it “Social Anxiety Disorder,” which is just lipstick on the pig Depression. Sometimes I get overwhelmed by people and just can’ t be around them. A side effect of this disorder is people being mad at me all the time because I don’t call or I don’t write or I don’t come to their party. Because the paraplegic won’t go bowling with you. My in-laws seemed offended and my wife routinely upset because they were all extremely social and they assumed I didn’t like them. I liked them just fine. I have a disease.

Essay Is Here

Wave This Flag Or Else

Sunday, September 18th, 2011

9/11 coalesced the nation, but coalesced it around distinctly white, middle American values and did so in an extremely megalomaniacal way. Good ol’ boys, huge garrison flags anchored to gun racks in their Ford trucks snapping in the breeze. God Bless America and all of that national pride. For me, and for many of my friends, most of that was a spectator sport. Heartwarming, like a Jimmy Stewart movie, but Blacks weren’t starring in Jimmy Stewart films, Jimmy Stewart films were, for me, a window into another world, another America. That’s the America that came together after the attacks: Ronald Reagan’s America, Jimmy Stewart’s America. A place that welcomed blacks, Latinos, Native Americans and Asians only conditionally into the periphery of their great parade. All that Bob Seger music, Like A Rock. Never heard that playing growing up in my neighborhood.

America came together but merely papered over deep divisions among us. The love-in welcomed us so long as we sang along in harmony to their tune—the American tune, “American” as defined by huge corporate interests which made out like bandits in the post-9/11 hysteria. The hopeful (and insidiously manufactured) good will and jingoism in the country was shattered years later in the days following Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of the city of New Orleans.

Beginning with the indifference demonstrated by the vacationing president and continuing with the staggeringly inept emergency response led by “Heckuva Job” Brownie, this unified, flag-waving, Arab-hating, America-love-it-or-leave-it crowd sat on their sofas and watched the desperate poor of New Orleans suffer in unimaginable, unacceptable ways, fracturing the manufactured post-9/11 unity.