DC Conspiracy[dots pattern]

3.26.2007

Putting comics into perspective

I'm crossing posting this from my MySpace page because, well, I think it's relevant and because it took me some time to complete it.

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Someone who doesn't know me told me that I need to push harder until I become a household name. It made me wonder who, exactly, could be considered a household name in comics. I originally figured Frank Miller and Stan Lee where the only two who could hold that title and I think I used Google to help me prove my hypothesis.

Google news search. Relevance. Who's being talked about in the "real world" and how often are they being talked about. A Google news search on Frank Miller brings up 2,352 recent matches. As far as I can see, the majority of them are from non-comic periodicals.

Stan Lee? 358 recent matches. Not even close to Frank but, in Stan's defense, he doesn't have a major Hollywood Blockbuster out this summer based off of his creations.

Oh - except Spider-Man 3. I guess the "real world" considers Ditko to be Spider-Man's creator. Nope. Too bad, to.

What about our other stars? Bendis gets 26 hits, most of them from comic book websites. Vaughn gets seven. Mark Millar, the architect of the crazy media extravaganza that's in all the major periodicals, gets 41 hits. Alan Moore gets a respectable 225 hits, mainly thanks to people not being able to say Frank Miller's name in an article without mentioning Alan Moore as the father of modern comics.

(As a funny aside, the Boston Globe recently mentioned Postcards in an article and said that Alan Moore did a story for it. I guess if that's all you know, that's all you know.)

What about my favorite cartoonists and creators, though? The bookstore guys? The movers and shakers? What about Dan Clowes? Craig Thompson gets more pings from his Google Twin. Alison Bechdel! Time magazine's book of the year! In my opinion, the author of one of the most important books published so far in this century! 16 hits. And ABA nominee Gene Yang? 1 hit.

Truth is, none of us really seem to be household names. We just make silly little pieces of art. That doesn't put us at Anna Nicole Smith's level..

Jason at 4:21 PM  |  link to this   

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