It being labeled as a kid's book was sort of a blessing, because it was by far the most mature and intriguing thing in my elementary school library. I couldn't get enough of it.
This is how i found it! I adored this series when i was younger. It reminds me a lot of LOTR and calvin and hobbs in retrospect in the way it was clean yet mature enough to not make the reader feel stupid
my brother got into it back in the day and at first i had no interest. but finally one day when my brother was about to return it to the library (book one) i stole it and slowly read it and he was freaking out about not having it to return and found me one day reading it at first he was piossed but i had barely ever read any books at the time in first grade before then so he realized it got me to read once he returned it i immediatley rented it out of the school library and read it entirely and loved it at the time i didnt get most of ther jokes aside from kid humor but as i have re read it as an adult over and over again i love the adult jokes and just how adult the series was
It was kind of funny. When I first discovered it, it was in the children’s section in my local library. But then as the issues came out, it was then moved to “fantasy- young adult”, and later to “graphic novel section”. Quite the journey it was.
One of the biggest drawbacks of DC and Marvel, counterintuitiveliy is that they produce too much content each month and that everything is intertwined. Whereas independent comics and manga are largely self contained, so you can just pick them up and jump in or at least you know where to start. Probably why the new Ultimate comics and Absolute comics are selling so well.
The same has been the tradition in European comics. Even series mostly have wrapped up storylines in one or a few albums, so it's not like you need to buy a huge amount to read the full story
I just don't think readers want the "soap opera" storylines like they used to, where storylines contradict and repeat over and over through the years. People seem to have grown past that and want the ability to read a single creators vision from start to end. They want to consume graphic novels and comics the way they consume movies, videogames and other modern media.
This is the whole thing. DC and Marvel don't have self-contained stories. Everything is tied to existing characters, the canon changes on a yearly basis. The stories that might be worth reading get ignored by long time fans. It makes it hard to read comics. Marvel and DC have a vision of unending immortal characters they can just keep using. Manga and the Scholastic books (a few others as well) don't view the stories that way. With few exceptions, those stories end. They don't keep going forever 30 volumes is a lot, but that's on the high end. 10-12 is far more common. It's not as big of an investment in time or money.
@@mikew466 The success of manga shows that readers like convoluted and long storylines. The problem with Marvel and DC is the interconnection between the storylines. You start reading a serie, where wolverine is alive. Then in the middle of the serie, you learn that wolverine is dead and you don't know why because it's another serie. The first time it's fine, the second time less so, the fifth time, you're buying Demon Slayer or MHA.
I will also say that accessibility is a HUGE issue with marvel and dc. Yes, we need to support our local comic book shops, but a lot of people simply don’t have one near them and don’t have the time or money to go out of their way to buy comics through cbs. Dc and Marvel have terrible online shopping websites with little stock of comics people actually want. Hell, try explaining what a pull list is to someone with no comics experience. The whole system is archaic.
DC and Marvel simply do not want to sell you comic books any longer, they want to sell you media content, and this is another business completely. You’d think that comic books businesses should still be their priority, their backbone, since most of their IP comes from their old graphic novels, but this is not where they are planning to source their material going forward. They’re multimedia companies now, their writers, even if they still use old IP, write directly for the screen (or games), and graphic novels business is not what they genuinely care about any more. For them, it’s a legacy medium.
I think this is a big part of it. According to wiki, MCU (just the movies) grossed ~31B over 17? (2008?-2025) years. That's ~1.7B/year. The entire comics industry is roughly 2.2B/year, of which they are
@@pierrecuriethey see comics are research and development for movies/tv shows. they test out what sells and what doesn’t, then they attempt to use what works in another medium.
Damn what a spoton opinion✌️🤘 I’ve been trying to form these words for decades as I watch another hobby be consumed an told ‘I was bad for supporting said hobby’.
Funny part is the vid acts like this is news 😂 it's been like this for at least 3-5 years. They overcharge (why would I pay $5-$8 for a single issue number 1 when tpb digitally is under $5) and sales undermine similar to video games, which yeah spiderman 2 sold despite being buggy, but suicide squad kills the justice league was panned. Fear state was expensive and Marvel's blood hunt censored digitally.
I bought Bone as it came out, when it first came out. I'm one of the OG fans, and my art is SUPER influenced by him. He is one of my top comic guys of all time. I watched him in real time get bigger and bigger. There is one or two pages in one of his early comics that BLEW my mind when I read it. Really kind of a throwaway scene almost. It was full panels, but he had put these black panels BEHIND the illustrations, and I subconsciously read it in sequence as he intended me to even though it was full large illustrations. I went back and looked and saw the black panels and when "oh my god, this guy totally forced me to look at full illustrations in sequence as if it was a paneled comic book WITHOUT panels." Sheer damn genius. I'm like 18 or 19 at this point. Seriously, dude is my hero.
Everything in Marvel is ongoing with no intro and no end. Without an intro, a non-fan will need to use a wiki to know your character, without an end, there is no satisfaction.
@@EcopiuM I stopped reading most western comics around the snowflake and safespace new warriors crap. Even before that I lost interest because comics had issues with being impossible to keep up with until the internet arrived, but i'm not interested in wikis. My favorite compliation paperback is the Hush storyline in batman due to Jim Lee's art, and also because that ACTUALLY has a conclusion. Modern ongoing comics are guarded issue by issue, so they're barely read since they're money sinks, meanwhile manga sells volumes, not issues, so they're easy to keep up with and binge read online and are much easier to collect offline. Most of the western comic storylines get shafted before a story even STARTS and writers constantly retcon eachother's stories into pointlessness. I do actually read comics and manga and have for decades, but tourists like you who spout political propaganda and get salty when people push back, never learning your lesson, are not only the death of many industries in a functioning society that was improving without you, but you also refuse to learn and have become the modern racism and sexism crowd. Read a book!
I aggree. There is no satisfactory ending in recent superhero comics. It's basically "villian is gone forever. or is he?" dın dın dın "buy the next collab to see them again"
One thing I’ve noticed - Bone’s art looks fresh to my modern eye. You could say it’s essentially timeless with how it was done. That sticks out from all the other 80’s and 90’s comics, cause as great as those may be, the art does feel old today. I’ve never heard of bone before, but the way it’s drawn alone makes me think I should check it out
Great point. The pages shown were interesting enough that I found myself pausing the vid a few times to read the panels. Haven't done that previously with any of the other vids on this channel that I can recall.
I grew up in the 80s and 90s and I remember when Bone started appearing in interviews and press releases despite a really loud noise being produced by giants, like Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane, and just Image comics in general at that time. I was like, "Huh?" Around then I saw it popping up in Scholastic book fairs and I was confused why adults were cherishing some kids comic. (No joke, I was engaged in a reverse discrimination of the discrimination being pointed out in this video, lol.) Interesting thing is that I do remember the discrimination of comics in schools as a kid growing up. I saw kids reading comics being told by teachers that it didn't count as reading. Schools today are way different now. Oh, and by the way, Bone is a good read. You won't be disappointed. =)
@ funnily enough, I’m the kind of guy to not consider comics a read - something feels off about holding an 800-page book and going through it in a couple hours. But I do enjoy the medium still. And from time to time things do catch my eye - for instance, I was blown away by Invincible, or Chainsaw Man and Berserk if we talk about manga. Really hope Bone goes onto the list as well when I’ll have a chance to get to it
@@Hydrodictyon I read Invincible (really good and I like seeing the differences with the show). I only read the first volume of Chainsaw Man. I read 11 volumes of Berserk and I'm still trying to figure out my feelings on it, lol. What I like most about Bone is the characters. Rose and Lucius are by far my favorite characters (but it's packed with many really good characters to be clear). Hope you like it!
Jeff's wife is the hidden MVP of this story. She was committed to fully support his husband's dream, but she also set up fair and reasonable boundaries so it wouldn't get out of hand and overly delusional.
...not to talk out of school, but; she's why I tracked down an amazing woman from my past, at almost forty, to trap into family bliss. 😂 comics will be coming out next year!
Yeah. I've known Jeff and Vijaya since shortly before he met her in the 1980s. She took a silicon valley job in CA for several years to support him financially while he worked on the first several books. Once sales started to take off, they moved back to Columbus and she became the president of Cartoon Books. She's the one with the head for business; we artists struggle with paperwork, contracts, deadlines and such (haven't watched the video yet, but hopefully they touch on this). She's also whip smart and funny AF; a lot of Bone's humor comes from her offhand comments.
@@nerfytheclownHeh, friends have often asked me over the years what Jeff's secret to success is and what they could do to replicate it. I simply tell them "Get your own Vijaya".
Being a Kids Book isn't a problem--kids are an ideal audience--it's this perception, expectation, or pressure to neuter your story in order to market it. People see "kid's book" and assume it must have been neutered even if it hasn't been, simply because so many are.
I really admire Jeff and I really admire that you and him clearly stated his wife's merit and that she could herself take part in the interview as she was a real part of the success. it is beautiful to see a couple support each other, a partner supporting another dream and with fair and logical expectation such as telling his to do a business plan and covering expenses for a year and then joining it. congrats to both of them.
@@Scrambled_Egg_Boi While I mostly agree, I'm gonna say that guy who makes stuff out of his own feces is a con man, not an artist. Otherwise, you are right: Art has as many expressive forms as their are people to express them.
That's actually what it feels like working in creative industry. Sometimes you need to hold your wild young-ish spirit and ideology to able to stand up in the middle of an already saturated market.
The market for children’s books has gotten more childish over the years. So it’s not just the comics getting more mature. For instance kids of the past enjoyed tales from the crypt, Prince Valiant, flash Gordon, fist of the North Star, swamp thing, the shadow, tomorrows Joe, Voltron, and Thundercats while modern kids like captain underpants and SpongeBob
@reginaldforthright805 Please. You've forgotten about a lot of funny animal comics along the way; those have existed for as long as cartoons and comics have existed. Even then, the quality varied from book to book and across the lifespan of a single book (as with Sonic for example.) Also a lot of childish cartoons existed back then too. It's dependent on age range. Don't lump toddlers in with school age kids or preteens. I can't fathom showing a young child Fist of the North Star without parental guidance lol. One of the bigger issues is that Cable companies don't seem to know what to do with teen-aimed cartoons which is why Infinity Train got the axe (which is sad because it's amazing although it appeals to a certain audience and I doubt you've ever watched it.) Besides, SpongeBob is one of those cartoons that is akin to the Simpsons, it started out stronger and then got watered down over time because the IP became more important than the cartoon itself. It was always aimed at kids with stuff sprinkled in for adults, whereas the Simpsons was the opposite as it ended up lowering its demographic over time and becoming more family oriented, I guess, but see that's the kind of context and history one has to take into account with individual franchises. And the remake of She-Ra got a lot more traction than the remake of Thundercats so it varies a lot, just as each iteration of TMNT cartoons has different draws. The best animated version of TMNT got cancelled because it flew under the radar and people didn't want to take a chance on it shaking things up in the beginning. I mean, yes, I missed out too, I kept meaning to watch it and now I've gotta sail under the jolly roger to find it probably. And this isn't to say it had no downsides but reviews point out I might've missed out on something pretty impressive overall. But even the newest version of TMNT won't necessarily be awful and it may appeal to a slightly different demographic. (Minor edits throughout.) MAJOR EDIT: although that said, Bluey is genuinely fantastic for young kids and adults. Teens will assume it's beneath them but that's not true; it's good for anyone with an open mind. I can see why it has gained so much popularity that other companies have tried to create knock-offs of it. They basically slotted into the niche MLP: FiM left behind (which it only gained ironically at first but became a genuine phenomenon because it was generally well-made.) And they had their faults too. Nothing is perfect.
I've known Jeff and Vijaya since shortly before they met in the 1980s, though we've fallen out of touch in recent years (I went through some very hard times and found myself in hermit mode). They still rank among my all time favorite people. He even dedicated his graphic novel "RASL" to myself and Vijaya, and that's still the most meaningful gift I've ever been given. Truly two of the best human beings you'll ever encounter. I miss them.
At least tell them what they mean to you, without expectation. Thats the least you could do, tbh, for them as much as you. It may be hard after all this time but at the end of the day its something lost for all of you if you dont.
when you learn that Bone was the reason we got Amulet, those are the works that kept my hope in comics survive the grotesque enshitification of DC and Marvel.
@@arostwocents I have read gwenpool, a while ago. I loved it, with all its flaws it was an amazing comic. don't know about the reinvention, don't even think I read beyond the original run of the comic.
It’s definitely an all ages series. My dad bought me the first book when I was 10 and I fell in love immediately. The entire series wasn’t published all the way yet and I think I read the last one as a teen. I still love those books as an adult. It’s sad that the all ages label kills good franchises because I love all ages media.
Great video! Never heard of Bone before, but was never into comics and was out of school before it became such a hit. Bought a copy to see what it's about. You got me intrigued, and I loved the details about pacing and such.
I think one of the main problems is simple access. Scholastic puts their books almost everywhere. Grocery stores, book fairs, working directly with libraries, department stores, you can find them at almost any kind of store. But where do you find Marvel and DC? Almost exclusively at comic book stores, which some towns might not even have. Sure it’s gotten somewhat better with their graphic novels and trades showing up in bookstores but that’s just a small step. Comixology was helping with accessibility but then Amazon blew that whole thing up…
If Marvel and DC are to survive as publishers, not just licensors of old IP, they need to shift into trade paperbacks as the primary source of stories. Monthly floppies are the past. Long, contained stories are the future.
@@TheChancellor212 kinda frustrating too since they’ve both tried that in the past but then just gave up when they didn’t sell a billion copies. It takes time to build up an audience, especially a new one. And I’m sure they’re frustrated too because from what I’ve seen the publishers and creators liked that method, but the parent companies pulled the plug for “taking too long”.
The funniest part is that Marvel and DC do have very good self-distributing platforms in Marvel Unlimited and DC Universe Infinite. All they really need to do to make them work is marketing, reducing the subscription fee by like 10 dollars, give limited, ad-supported reading capabilities and lift the 3 month embargo on recently published comics
The problem is no one wants to read worn out men in tights stories anymore. Marvel has been rehashing the same dozen super heroes for over 50 years. There is absolutely not one new story they could do with any of them that would revitalize interest at a scale like demon slayer or Jijutsu Kaisen. If they want to survive they have to follow the interest of the youth. A contained multi book graphic novel of a NEW original IP. Adopt a model similar to the manga industry with shonen jump where new ip are test ran in some quarterly magazine and distributed it to schools, libraries, grocery stores, etc. It would take a complete brand override which they are too stubborn to do and I doubt it would pay any dividends in the short term. The least they could do would be to support indie creators original projects instead of feeding new talent into their "Just draw a new spider man story" factory grinder. Give the most promising original IP a chance and see where it goes. And don't choose a cape wearing hero.
Fantastic video, as always. I can't understate how much this one hits home for me. My youngest kid never read for pleasure. It was just something she had to learn in school. One day, she came home from class (grade 4?) and had checked out a copy of Captain Underpants from the school library because, you know, "hehe underpants". She ended up plowing through it. Took it back and came home the next day with the second CU book. Then asked for the rest so we picked her up a big box set. Then she asked for Dog Man. Plowed through those. Then we handed her a copy of the first Harry Potter book. By the end of the year she had read the entire HP series. Comics, specifically the Scholastic comics that you talk about in this video, not only made my youngest blossom into a voracious reader, it sparked her huge interest in writing and last year she was accepted into the local Art School for the Literary program. This whole "we should ignore comics and get kids to read prose" and "prose good! comics bad!" (and "real" art good, comics bad) is such bs. As long as kids are reading, the rest will take care of itself.
I think a big part of a lot of people's resistance to reading prose is because a lot of school districts are teaching a method of reading that actively teaches kids not to read, but guess words based on "context." We moved away from phonics towards this thing called three cueing which is basically a kind of evolution of whole word learning into an even worse technique. Since a lot of kids, and now adults, can't really read, graphic novels are a great stepping stone towards becoming literate for the people that were unfortunately taught to guess rather than to read. Plus, everyone likes pictures.
@@bardsamok9221 No, he isn't wrong. The way kids are taught these days is counter-intuitive. Working with a bunch of high schoolers shows me that every single day. We need to return to phonics, not this blob that doesn't teach anyone anything of value. The literary scores in the US drop every single year. Part of it is parents being lazy and dumping screens in front of their children's faces as young as like 2 years old, but the other problem is the methods schools go about teaching. Even still, parents need to actually be involved. If they aren't it won't matter what the school teaches. It won't stick because the parents don't care.
Its funny, that's all I remember from those too - and I didn't even really read them because they plopped me into the middle of the story and my brain wasn't fully formed so it was a struggle to comprehend them. But it was still intriguing. I finally read Bone entirely for the first time only 5 or so years ago (and reread recently, I love it.)
Vijaya is so incredible in this story, sets boundaries but supports him, not only emotionally either, she also brings her own strengths to the table. Wow!! I hope American libraries start carrying European comics more, Asterix & Obelix and such I think kids would LOVE those comics as they do here in Europe.
Diamond Distributing. If you want to know why Marvel, DC, and other non-Scholastic/non-Manga publishers are fairing so poorly, your answer has to address the monopoly that has been strangling small comic book stores for decades. It completely skews all of the metrics for traditional comic book publishers, making it nearly impossible for accurate forecasting or feedback. Add to that, the outsized emphasis on IP over storytelling that comes from the massive media industries buying out comic book publishers and the insane decimation of creative staff in those companies, and you have a recipe to bury these nearly century old universes.
100% right. And it's a misnomer these days to tallk about Marvel and DC as real companies. There is no Marvel company and no DC company. These are just bylines on the PL sheet of Disney and Warner Bros, two companies who only retain comic publishing so they can mine the IP for film.
@@M4TCH3SM4L0N3 doesn't DC distribute themselves now? Another thing that is scary to think about is what percentage of the measly 5% market share is Watchmen? Make something new and great, dammit!
Dude who ever is the main distributor now maybe it’s diamond I can’t remember has been so late each week. Supposedly they are changing warehouses or whatever. It’s sucks a a collector and a seller.
I never knew that Bone was that special in the way it was, since for me it seemed to fit right in with the european (mostly french and belgian) comicbooks and graphic novels i grew up with. Long epic stories, told in hardback books were a normal things. At the same time Comics for children is one of the most normal things in the world here in europe, where Donald Duck comics have always been incredibly popular. Bone reminded me of the Donald Duck comics by Carl Barks and Don Rosa, and of Francobelgian comics like Tintin, Asterix, Spirou, Lanfeust, Incal and many others in how approachable they were for people of all ages and what grand fantastical adventures they told. Bone definitely has remained one of my favourite Comicbooks and is one of my go to comics to recommend to people who want to either get into comics or branch out from either superhero comics or Manga.
My first experience with comics was TinTin - I still love those books. Now that the frothing political screech machine is coming for them, I like them even better.
For me Bone reminded me of Smurfs, Moomins, these ducks and Tolkien fantasy. And yeah the series feels like these european comics, Asterix, Tintin and others. Luckily I did grow up with those and Yoko Tsuno. Only read Watchmen and Dark Knight rises after MCU had started.
I was that kid that was immediately drawn to Bone as a semi-dyslexic public school student forced to read. At the time, the colored editions were slowly coming out. My parents couldn’t afford to purchase each new edition that came out, but they surprised me with the whole 9 volumes in black and white. I read and cried to a damn comic book as a child, and it still holds such a fond spot in my heart today. I hope to also pass along this great tale to my future kids 😁
What made me move away from comics is that there is no finality in them. Everything stays the same. "Big Change!" And a couple of years later, everything is back on the beginning. And you can predict what will happen. Because its just an endless repetition of the same tropes and the same motivations. Infinity rehash. Then I get something like Bone or Berserk. I want to know the ending. I NEED to know. No DC/Marvel comics made me feel like that since the Clone saga of Spider Man when I was a kid. And, well... At least in Brazil, DC and Marvel are expensive. You get less pages and pay more. So almost everyone that still likes Marvel/DC comics just waits for the complete volume to go on sale after a couple of years. Or read it online.
Thank god I discovered Creator owned and European comics before I burned out on marvel and DC comics . It feels great to read a comic from the first to last issue and get a satisfying conclusion .
I was in 6th grade when the 1st issue of Bone came out and within a month my buddy Chris and I were drawing Bone all over the margins of our notebooks. We were immediate fans. Also, RE: that falling panel at 15:15, it's also so nice how Fone Bone hits the ground in the bottom right panel directly below where he steps off the cliff in the top panel. That's a subtle detail that connects the action across the page. His work is so brilliant. His work was one of the sources that inspired award winning children's book author illustrator Molly Bang to start working in the comic format. My dad still has all the Bone action figures.
Fantastic video Matt! I met Jeff at San Diego in 2002 and showed him my little 24 page ashcan comic Missile Mouse I had just finished. He raved about it and gave me a massive confidence boost. Such a cool and supportive guy. Fast forward a few years and I found myself sitting in David Saylor's office on Broadway in Manhattan pitching Missile Mouse to him. He has been and continues to be a massive champion for comics of all stripes especially those that come from indie creators. The publishing industry is incredibly lucky that a person with his unique talents and love for comics was put into a position to do something about it at one of the most influential publishing houses. Again, great video about two of my favorite people in comics.
Hi, Jake! Just saw your comment by chance. You probably don't remember me, but I'm related to the Shoemakers and met you long ago when we were all still around high school age. Congrats on all your own great work over the years!
So… I was the Lead Comics Editor at CBR (yes, I contain multitudes) and the biggest problem we had was superhero comics underperforming. Our writers wanted to write about Spider-Man’s latest moral dilemma and our readers weren’t interested. I encouraged the team to cover popular newspaper comics like The Far Side and we did much better. People who love Superman (like me) are emotionally invested in that segment of the medium. However, new readers aren’t. I think the desire to sell superheroes to adults sacrificed Marvel and DC’s future. It’s not that they don’t have good books for kids. They stopped selling them to kids, though, and never courted librarians. I wrote a guide to comics for librarians and only a handful of my recommended books were “mainstream.” This video helped me put some things together. Great job. 🎉
I don't know what kind of numbers they're doing, but DC really made a push with their series of reimaginings of character origin stories and the like in their two graphic novel age ranges, one of which is the same age range as the main comics imprint and one of which is younger. So I feel like they're making some amount of onboarding attempt. On the other hand, DC's actual floppies only have two age ranges, one of which is 13+ and the other one of which is 17+. Marvel at least has younger ratings, even if they can't keep a character in the same age range for more than a couple years at a time because of how frequently series reset. On the gripping hand, as a librarian working a section of the library for high school students and adults, when I get a middle school student coming over from the middle school section and asking me for a particular comics character by name, they are inevitably asking for Batman. Regardless of sales, the mindshare of that character is immense.
IMO, the thing everyone eventually figures out about Marvel and DC is that they're systemically unable to do anything interesting. All the moral dilemmas and such eventually fall flat. Why? Because long running series are like zombies shambling around. Spiderman can't ever truly learn anything. A change will never be permanent. The story won't ever end. The character will just be forever jerked around back and forth with different writers pulling in different directions and editors imposing their vision, render the total sum of it vague and incoherent. I believe one of the big appeals of manga and non-Marvel/DC comics is that they fix this. There's a single vision, a single plot with a meaning and end. And even if the work isn't amazing (say Naruto) it still has a coherent plot that's going somewhere. The problem isn't superheroes themselves. There's successful superhero manga (OPM, MHA, arguably the whole magical girl genre), and western comics (Invincible). They work because they don't jerk the character around back and forth without going anywhere.
@@vadimtrochinsky2078 I don’t disagree, exactly, but I think the problem you’re describing comes from unreliable systems. Serial comics can be great for a while. However, popular IPs owned by big companies always get handed off to a new creative team eventually. Of course, even great creators eventually get tired of juggling the same set of characters around while nothing meaningful changes. So you’re also right. That said, manga and indy books like Cerebus face the same obstacles. Stories have to end to matter.
@@vadimtrochinsky2078 The problem here is several things: 1. The infinite serial. It means they can never do an ending, and they get tied into ever-increasing amounts of canon. Instead, run a story for a few years and end it. Then run another story, by another writer (or writing team) about the same character, that isn't tied to anything but the loosest canon. If it's Spider-Man, then he's raised by Aunt May and Uncle Ben, he dates either Gwen Stacy, she dies, then he dates Mary Jane, he has the suit and the Spider-Man powers, he lives in New York, he has the enemies list, but you can add new original ones if you want, and that's about it for the basic structure of the character. The writer can pick up the character at any point in his career, and write any story they find interesting. 2. Canon. There is too much of it; The Amazing Spider-Man has been in print since 1963 and is at over 900 issues. There's no reasonable way that all of the events of that can be compiled into a single internally-consistent story and even if there were, then it would be nearly impossible to have any new idea that didn't contradict some part of the past. Nothing wrong with doing a reset at the end of a story. If someone wants to do a sequel, let them; if they want to contradict one of the previous stories, also let them. Don't expect readers to pick up on something that happened 400 issues ago. 3. Cross-overs. Some are fine - a disposable cross-over that just showcases five characters from their own stories and is entirely skippable and doesn't need you to read all of the other stories to know what is going on is fine. But the big "cross-over events" like Secret Invasion, or Infinity Wars or Crisis on Infinite Earths that try to make permanent changes to every superhero are just never going to work. Writers won't stick to a new continuity like that across dozens of series. Instead, let each story be independent, and if they collide, write something that makes sense for that cross-over and then when the stories end and new ones start, just don't worry about them being compatible. One of the reasons something like the Dark Knight Returns was so successful was that it was a complete story, and it wasn't tied to a giant continuity; it could decide for itself what from the massive Batman past it wanted to include and what to leave out. If you ever watch or read anything about one of the public domain characters that are widely known (King Arthur, Robin Hood, Sherlock Holmes, Three Musketeers, etc), then, instead of there being a single canon, each new story picks and chooses a canon for that story from the giant pool of stuff about that character. DC and Marvel should treat all their super-well-known characters like that. Let an author or a team tell the story they want to tell and don't try to have an official standard canon of what happened and force everything into that; accept that there have been too many writers over too many years for there ever to be a single absolute canonical official Superman. It lets them have stories with a beginning and an ending - and those stories can start and end at any point they want in the character's life; if they want to tell a story about Spider-Man in his forties, why not? Sure, he's usually a teenager or in his twenties, but his mid-life crisis might be an interesting story. Then when that finishes after a few years, the next Spider-Man story might be right back to him being in high school. And if that kills off someone that the mid-life crisis story showed as middle-aged, so what?
I would love to learn about superman and other classic superheros as a young adult, even as a kid..... but the latest offerings are not great. If I have to stop and think about politics, political correctness, or other woke stuff that interrupts the fantasy and story that a comic has to tell (especially if it is near constant) it makes me the reader feel like I'm being beaten over the head for just wanting to enjoy a good story with good art. Its disruptive and not an enjoyable read. I just give up and move on to another story I can dive into and explore uninterrupted. Manga is doing that for me.... comics is not.
This and your elfquest video really make me cry. While I learn a lot of comics as a business you never lose sight of how they are made by people, people devoted to their stories and to each other other
This whole video is incredibly good. My kids have read a PISS LOAD of Dog Man, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, etc. It had never occurred to me to ask how the current market mix came to be. The fact it’s (mostly) one dude who liked the Sunday funnies, had his own spin, and had a supportive wife…amazing. It’s one of those shocking facts hiding in plain sight: Scholastic is the biggest non-Manga graphic novel publisher. Had I bothered to be more observant that would have been readily apparent but I just never thought about it. What a fascinating story!!
His wife is truly the unsung hero in this crazy success story. What a graceful human being. She cared and sacrificied her own funds to help her husband get his shot. Thats love, trust and commitment y'all.
Месяц назад+28
Why unsung? She's clearly a hero, and gets ample recognition for that in the video, too.
I will speak from personal experience. Having a significant other who believes in you is absolutely game-changing. I dropped out of college after a year and a half convinced I wasn't going to have a chance to go back. My wife, who believed in me and was willing to financially support me, supported me every step of the way to where I am now, a college graduate. I attribute about 50% of any success I have nowadays to having her in my corner. I should say as well that it is *not* a one-way street. It can't be. I have done everything I can to support my wife, including supporting her when I was working full time and she was finishing her degree. Mutual love and respect is one of the most powerful forces in this world.
On the video is alredy mentioned the common ground with manga, having clear, one author, conclusive stories, but i caught another similarity. Jeff Smiths animation backgroung, making his moving scenes with great panel composition, and drawings that feel like its moving reminds me of tezuka. Tezuka was also an animator and imprinting his knowledge in his manga is what, I think, made most manga onwards have this characteristic that makes the reading expierence much more engaging. Might be one of the factors that keeps manga an industry more successful over comic books.
@@HandOn-c40009 honestly, even if the ending isn't amazing, the fact that most manga is a contained story that leads to an ending is way better than the common superhero comic books going on for fucking eternity. That's why when it comes to DC and Marvel stuff, I only go after specific runs from some writers. Like Morrison's Animal Man, or the Immortal Hulk.b
The Japanese manga market is founded on anthology magazines (and now apps). These magazine and the market in general is also just cutthroat. If you can't sell and keep circulation decent and sell collected editions etc (or merch, a lot of manga makes money via merch) and make enough money in one way or another you won't get published or will go to indie publishing etc. Most marvel and DC comics would have been cancelled and something new given a chance. Not what seems to be the case where the same things keep getting rehashed and given a chance
@@HandOn-c40009 manga and anime is famous for being a hit or miss with the endings, like they do it great or horrible, but people let it be because what happens in one story doesnt affect the next one
This video made me bring out my giant All-in-One Bone volume and reread the whole thing. Man, it’s been 13 years since I read it and it’s blowing my mind. I am 23, fresh out of college and I’ve been absolutely loving comics from the 90’s & early 2000’s. It’s crazy to think Bone was the first comic I read, finding it in my School’s library. Jeff Smith is a genius! Amazing video!
@@jchinckley You people literaly gatekeep yourselves insane. If you actually were serious about wanting to READ them you'd see that @unfunniestman is wrong.
It's not an issue of length, I've been reading One Piece for almost half of my life, soon to be 20 years. And if somebody new wanted to start reading it, all they would need is the first volume. When I tried to get into comics like X-Men or Superman, and started asking knowledgable people where should I start, they gave me their favourite runs from the last two decades instead. Like, I want to know the story from the beginning, but it began so long ago and had so much restarts, relaunches, retcons, spin-offs, cross-overs that nobody but the most dedicated fans can navigate this swamp easily. That's the main problem, at least for me.
What a fantastic video. Beautifully composed and right on the money. As a public librarian for the last 25 years, I appreciate the long overdue callout. Yes, librarians made graphic novels and comics part of the mainstream for both publishers and the reading public. Explaining to parents that reading is reading, whether it’s a prose novel, a magazine or a comic book, changed a lot of minds and shifted the zeitgeist. Yay librarians! Glad to know about Jeff Smith’s continued success and popularity. He deserves it.
I feel like the next person you gotta profile, even though he’s the most elusive person on earth is Bill Watterson. Calvin and Hobbes lives in this same kind of realm as Bone, and a comprehensive view of how Watterson stuck to his guns and made something like that (and recently, something like The Mysteries!) would be a cool thing to examine.
I agree wholeheartedly with that. My retired father, from his 60's into his 80's, loved reading Calvin and Hobbes and for years I gave him the bounded books as gifts for his birthdays and Christmas. He passed 14 years ago and so I now have his collection and I immensely enjoy reading them while I think about my dad.
Exactly. Calvin and Hobbes is a deceptively simple comic with a creator behind it who stood firmly in his vision defending his creation from what others wanted it to become.
2:38 pretty much my exact experience with the faculty in art school. Meanwhile, Jeff Smith was so generous with his time in Artist Alley back in the late 90’s when I met him. He was incredibly supportive when looking at my work which was the boost I needed at the time. I’ll forever be grateful to him for that. 🙏🏼
I remember in elementary school, first time seeing a Bone graphic novel. I ignored it for a couple of weeks. Then i decided to read volume one. I was smitten. I loved the book. I finished the series within a couple of weeks. The book really influenced me. It is one of the single greatest comics ever written.
That “get serious or GTFO”attitude I’m sure has crushed several people’s passion, and contributes to the suffering artist mentality. My mom makes pottery and she loves it. There is so much joy to be had in art. Manga and anime are taken seriously. I just hope that animation and comics are taken seriously too. There’s a stigma attached to them here. My dad didn’t understand until I showed him Cowboy Bebop that all these cartoons I’m watching were more than just bugs bunny. Edit: the bit at the end where you talk about marvel ad DC speaks volumes, pun intended. I took a history of Manga college class and that reignited my love of manga. I have a hundred volumes and counting. I do have some graphic novels Maus comes to mind.
That is American shit. In every American industry, the most powerful bully gets to the top, and this runs from the president of the United States to a fucking school.
I had kind of the same thing happen to me in college. I was very interested in writing, so I asked my English professor if she'd read some of my writings. They were just short snippets, incomplete, just me trying to get my bearings. I was way more focused on the prose than trying to write a complete story. Coming up with an entire story felt like it was trying to run before I knew how to walk. So, I give my little writings to her, and she just absolutely rakes them over the coals. She basically tells me that I'm a bad writer and I should just give up. I mean she was brutal about it. Which was crazy, because she was a younger professor and was really nice in class. I figured there would be some camaraderie, or at least some encouragement for a young writer. When I asked her why she thought this, she said the stories were incomplete. I just started laughing at her and walked away. It was so clear that she was just being critical and hateful and wasn't going to be any help at all. I now write all the time, and it's one of the most enriching parts of my life!
Manga and anime have only been taken serious VERY recently, and even now I don't think the common demoninator person actually believes they are for adults.
In Cincinnati, there was one comic shop, Queen City Comics, and they did TV Commercials. Every commercial would say "We have all the best comics including BONE and Spawn".
Could you clarify what you mean by "one comic shop"? Because there are more comic shops than just one in Cincinnati. (Not a dis on Queen City. That's my go-to every time I'm in Cincy.)
@spaceknight793 in the before times Queen City was the only mainstream shop at the time. There are a bunch of small little indie outfits around Clifton. But that was to go to place in the early nineties to go for any type of comic book. That and your occasional stuff you would find at the supermarket.
I'm thankful that I got lucky and was able to buy Bone when it started, and managed to buy each issue as it came out before others snapped them up. I have always been a fan of Pogo since I was a kid in the 60's so Smith's art style and humor really hit home. Thanks, Jeff and Vijaya, for giving us this great world!
I collected all the bone books a few years ago. A decade before that, in grade school, I read those books understanding that they were much more than just comic books. They grabbed ahold of you and could impact you better than a movie, better than a tv show, better than most games at the time. Those books pulled you in like a magnet, and that's probably because it wasn't intended for kids. You read the book and you felt like you were equal, like you had grown up a little without having to do things you didn't want to do or didn't enjoy. It wasn't a kids book, it wasn't grossly violent, and the adults weren't making you read it. It was *the* perfect book for young readers. I just wish that I understood how much effort it really took to get to my hands back then. I wish I knew how much of a risk that Jeff, Vijaya, and scholastic had taken to get that far. I understood how special the book was to me and the fans of the book, but I didn't realize just how groundbreaking the series actually was in all these circles. I think there's a lot of people to appreciate in the making of this book. Not only the people who supported it, but the ones who turned it away, too. Had Jeff stayed with the newspaper, or continue to be lectured by smarmy college professors who think the path to success is a creative process that looks like a straight and narrow line, we'd never had gotten the version of Bone that we all love today. It's the only real 'thank you' they deserve, but the pushback Jeff received only made him more determined to do the things he really wanted to do. Without that determination, Bone wouldn't, couldn't, have survived.
Bro we finally got a Bone video! Bone was the first comic book series I’ve ever finished. I remember being in elementary and not really caring about reading. Saw the first volume of Bone and decided to try it cause it looked fun. I never expected myself to get hooked and read the entire series. One day we’ll get that animated adaptation!
I remember vividly that during the last half of my elementary school I was really struggling with reading, cause all the books the teacher had me reading weren't interesting so I just didn't bother. So my teacher had the brilliant (life changing, maybe) idea to have me read graphic novels, especially Jeff Smith's Bone, to help me read and I got hooked. One of the many influences that got me into drawing comics.
Exactly. Nothing motivates a child more to learn something than the prospect of enjoying the experience or the reward at the end. I wouldn't even be writing this here if it wasn't for english subbed/ translated comics, mangas and US tv series. Because i 100% sucked at english in school and learned it by myself later in life to understand those forms of art (english isn't my first language). In a very real way the child in me wanted to experience those "pointless" things so much that i put the effort in to learn.
I can see a pattern in these success stories in your videos, and it involves a couple being together since young age for decades, who kept supporting each and their dream through difficulties, refusing to compromise with the status quo, and eventually shaping the reality of the business to their will instead of the other way around.
They just adapted the European comic market model. Nothing really new, only to the American market, after them daring to look over the pond due to the succes of Harry Potter. The European comic market is vastly different with it's own traditions and art of storytelling. I have come to realize the average American does not really grasp the extent of it. Even American comics have to adapt to the European market to reach their readers, altering the format to an more approachable access, as selling them there one-on-one, would not have worked there. Bone feels really European. As is how the couple is presenting themselves.Their way of cooperation feels not ingrained in "following your dreams", but just in working with the natural elements and talents that are there, and bring them together in feeling being a part of a collective. On the outside it may look the same, but they sell well because they taped into this need by American readers, to feel this different kind of storytelling approach, since they live it themselves. Not "shaping the reality of the business to their will".
I remember whenever I went to my elementary school library, I would always see Bone there and I'd always crack it open, but I was a very anxious kid and the art unnerved me so I never read it. I am now a grown man and I realize I need to pick this up and read it, it looks amazing.
I'm a creator of kids graphic novels and in my experience it is so much easier to recommend a book that is a self contained story, it just starts at Issue 1. If I wanna recommend a spiderman or batman, I don't even know which timeline to recommend or how many other books they'd need to read first to understand who all the characters are. Even whenever marvel or dc introduces new characters, a few issues in they always get tangled up in massive events or face villains with so much lore you need to have Wikipedia open while reading. I recently got into dragonball and I just read issue 1 onwards and was never lost and it's all very accessible. With my own books I can just hand them the first volume and they don't need any other info. Heck they could even get volumes 2 or 3 and follow pretty easily.
The reason why I think Marvel and DC can't sell what they used to is a couple of things: 1) A lot of times reading Marvel and DC, you aren't exactly reading characters, rather they are reading living IPs. Characters can't change too drastically because there is too much-vested interest in the characters at the corporate level. No matter the story everything will snap back on itself eventually. 2) No strong means of exposure. The problem with single issues these days is that they are pretty much exclusive to comic book stores. The problem is that anyone going to a comic book store is already committed, they already want to be there. With the DC and Marvel having pulled out of the spinner rack newsstand market it means that no one will encounter single issues by happenstance as an impulse purchase. I know a lot of people who understood the newsstand market will tell you that it was an awful deal because unsold inventory could be returned to the publisher, but if anything that should just be motivation to sell your books, it's a non-issue if you sell your books. So you end up sacrificing potential accidental readers as well as turning the ship towards complacency. 3) Marvel and DC, even though they felt a lot of the hurt from the market bottoming out in '93, still keep trying to appeal to speculators who don't even read the material, too many variant covers, and they keep trying to make those single issues into collectibles rather than reading experiences. 4) Inconsistent creative teams tie-in events and the obsession with relaunching. This one kind of adds to the last point but They need to stop with the whole relaunch the title with a new number 1 every time the writer changes, it's so obnoxious too because you know its because the 1st issue always has a bump in sales but the sales graph is still charting downward, its just they get a little spike every time a new number one comes out because and then the decline continues because I guess they aren't interested in consistent long-term growth. Cross-overs and tie-ins make reading experiences confusing as hell and are more alienating, also too many cooks in the kitchen most the time with those. 5) Keeping the seminal stuff in print. This is more a dig at Marvel because DC at least has an evergreen list, much to Alan Moore's chagrin, but Marvel has this problem where they don't keep their collected editions in print, not even their seminal stories. Not only do they not keep their stuff in print, but anytime they produce anything, they underproduce. From what I understand the reason is that the guy who makes the decision to print x amount of copies was at Marvel when the market collapsed and all their inventory became worthless, so he is scared of having a surplus of inventory at the warehouse, which is why Marvel under-produces. Except that Marvel is owned by Disney so inventory holding costs really shouldn't be an issue at all. A large reason why Manga and Scholastic have taken the Graphic Novel market is that they know how to keep stuff in print, Bone is always in print, Berserk, Dragon Ball, One Piece, all these massive series that in some cases are 40-something volumes long or more are always available at all times, yeah occasionally stuff stocks out but then it goes right back to press. Meanwhile, Marvel can't even keep Frank Miller Daredevil complete collections 1-3 in print even though name recognition would ensure that it would always sell, or they only keep volume 1 in print, because they sell more, but if they hook someone with that volume one they don't have the rest of them in print so that that new reader could get the rest of them, which would then push that reader away, and towards a publisher like Viz who knows how to keep things in print.
To be fair I did think about this earlier today in how the Marvel and DC characters are (for better or worse) owned by corporate entities and who’s quality is largely based on whichever artist or writers been given the loan to use them for such and such run. Most Consumers these days seem to get their understanding of the characters like Spider-Man for instance more from adaptions rather than the source which also raises the question wether they could survive without the comics at all.
Commentnfor the algorithm because this is completely right. In fact, if Marval and DC could do one thing, it would be focusing on One-Shots, Episodic issues and Mini-series. Namely, stories that end. Then have a canonical continuity on the side.
In my opinion, the biggest issue by far with Marvel and DC is their insistence on a shared universe. You can’t do nearly as much as a creative if you can’t shape the world you’re writing in. It’s inherently harder for a newer character to stick when everyone knows the biggest names will take charge when it really counts. One of their most successful new characters, Kamala Khan, gets fridged for a random Spider-Man comic storyline. Because, as long as Spider-Man exists, newer characters will have to take a backseat to his story. And Spider-Man’s story is tired. Because what these shared universes lead to is tired, decades long soap operas where people realize nothing can really change. People liked Invincible because not having it tied to a larger series gave the creator way more freedom. Frankly, Marvel and DC faltering is an extremely good thing for the industry. Imagine if every new manga needed to share the same universe as Goku or Luffy. They’d be terrible It’s almost funny how much the west has clinged so tightly to this shared universe concept when it’s done near irreparable damage to their existence. The shared universe originally just existed for silly crossovers as a marketing gimmick, and that’s how it should have stayed
@@DerrickWilson-fm7vc It's a great point that any new character in the DC / Marvel universe has to compete with all of the established, decades- old characters who always need to have comics in print. Since the market isn't infinite, newer characters are more likely to get pushed aside in favor of the established ones. It also risks fossilizing those established characters since there's no risk that they will go out of print.
0:50 "a publisher that didn't even exist 20 years ago" - totally misleading. The publisher is Scholastic, which is more than 100 years old. It is Scholastic Graphix, which is their graphic novel imprint that started in 2005.
Im curious sematically if an imprint counts as a totally seperate publisher. But this rhetorical trickery is what hooks people (i know i was hooked) ngl though i think this video underplays how much of a behemoth scholastic is which i get is a totally different very long video idea but still.
On a legal standpoint it doesn't matter, legally imprints of an original company are treated as their own publishing brand despite being part of the greater business of a publishing front. It's kind of misleading, but it's a case of "kinda wrong, kinda right" not completely misleading.
Mattt you should really do a video on some French comics like Asterix and Obelix, Tintin, Gaston or Game Over! I think these comics are as much as deserving of their own videos as Bone or Teenage mutant ninja turtles. Also I’d like to learn the history and background behind them.
The funny thing is that only Asterix is French, the rest is from that list are Belgian artists from the French speaking part of the country. A small country with a big comic book history.
@@tremorstudio9766 Blake&Mortimer is well available in English(through Cinebook) so there'd be plenty reference books. However Spirou in English is another story. Only a handful of stories have been translated(also through Cinebook) with a questionable logic.
I read Bone back in 2012. A classmate of mine was super into the series and would talk about it all the time. I never bought any of the volumes, but I did get vol 7 for free. I still have it to this day.
This is so similar to the Elfquest story, right down to one partner supporting the other in creating their art, and eventually running the publishing side to free up the creative to focus on the art side.
Mattt, i just want to say as an avid college student with an affinity for pop culture with aspirations to create and design stories, your channel is utterly engaging and inspiring, keep up the amazing work
I just want to say that you’re having an impact on the industry yourself. 50yo, I hadn’t read comics since I was a teenager but every video of yours I watch introduces me to something new, and more importantly, I have purchased those books.
I remember jumping into Bone from almost the very beginning back in the 90’s. As an aspiring writer and artist, it was hugely inspiring to see such a perfectly crafted and drawn indie series do so well, and it really helped me take the plunge myself. It was also personally gratifying to see humor and FUN on the shelves amid all the “dark and gritty” of the day. I’ve met both Jeff and Vijaya over the years on a couple occasions at conventions and store signings and it’s always been such a huge pleasure. I don’t think I ever expressed to Jeff just how much Bone inspired me to want to be a good storyteller myself. But then I’m sure he gets that all the time! And it’s great to hear Vijaya given so much attention. I consider myself extremely lucky to also have a very supportive partner who has believed in my comic’s potential even on days that I don’t. That kind of love and support has been vital.
brother. watched this full. every writer, every artist, whatever medium they work on, should know this story. youre a great storyteller too my man, loved every second of this
RUclips recomended me this. Bought Bone the same day. Its amazing! its style is something that i would consider childlish couple of years ago, but its really, really good.
Bone is such a generational book. My dad loved bone, my older brother and cousins, hell, onetime when I was in the 6th grade I was sent down to the principals office and he had 3 copies on his desk
I just want to end the year thanking you, Matt. I’m a young adult who spent his teenage years engrossed in comic book movies, and while those films did encourage me to explore the world of western comics, their influence wasn’t nearly as strong as yours. Videos like this show that American comics are more than just superhero time wasters. They’re an art form, an art form that has far more influence on pop culture than I initially realized. I can’t wait to see what comics you’ll introduce to me in the coming year. Keep up the excellent work.
Your videos have made me want to get into comics from an artistic standpoint in the same way I look at great anime animation studios making creative art!
I remember that fateful day when i read Bone. I was in elementary school in the deepest corner of the library, and decided to pick it up. I became obsessed, I read every issue available to me and then moved on the amulet. I will forever think of those two series extremly highly and I am so grateful that Bone was the series that got me into graphic novels as it pushed me into making art! Now im a sophmore in college for graphic design and I hope to self publish my own graphic novel one day. Thank you Jeff!!
I'm a Brazilian independent comic artist, and watching your videos about these great artists of the industry always inspire me to follow my dreams and keep going! Thanks Mattt!
I have a cool Jeff Smith story: It must have been '93 or '94 so I would have been 13 or 14. I had asked my Mom for several Bone TPBs for Christmas as I was behind on issues and they were kind of hard to find individually. Come Christmas I was super happy to get a bunch of Bone reading material, but there was only one problem: several of the pages in one book were printed out of order, making the story confusing, if not impossible, to follow. So, my Mom called the number in the back of the book listed for customer inquires. She spoke to them briefly and then handed the phone to me. There was a pause on the line as the call was being transferred and after a moment a voice came on and said "Hi, this is Jeff Smith." My jaw just about hit the floor. He was so nice and wanted me to explain exactly what the problem was. I told him, and after a brief chat and taking down my address and promised to send me out some replacements. True to his word in a few weeks they arrived and all was good. I still joke with my Mom that not only did she get me the Bone collections I wanted, but also a chat with Jeff himself!
Your channel continues to produce (by a pretty healthy margin) the highest quality and most in-depth videos on the medium of comics I’ve ever had the pleasure of watching. Few creators are able to so effortlessly weave a creator’s personal history and analysis of the composition of their works together in such an interesting way. From someone who loved Bone as a kid keep on hitting it out of the park.
I discovered Bone in old Disney Adventure magazine at the grocery store checkout as a kid and instantly fell in love. It’s still not just one of my favorite comics of all time but one of my favorite books of all time. It’s a modern classic. Thank you for doing this video.
Your videos are excellent, so well put together! I worked in a bookstore in the 90s and read all the comics on the rack, Archie through X-men. I had random comics from yard sales or bargain bins and rarely knew the beginning or end of a story arc but I always enjoyed the art and storytelling. It's really cool to see these deep dives into topics like Liefeld or Bone and learn so much about an awesome era in comics. Thanks for celebrating these artists.
People love self-contained stories. They want an Ending. And they also want broad range of appeals. That's what drives manga sales, that's what drives indie comic sales, that's what keeps Image Comics going, and that's what happened here with Scholastic and Bone. Not everyone wants superhero soap opera (though when they're good, they are very good). Manga and indie comics have that huge range where everyone can find something they enjoy. A series with an ending planned from the start is always going to be more satisfying to a reader than a series that repeats itself because they can't afford to stop the cycle and don't want to risk not being able to make another hit.
I knew the overall story of bone but hearing it directly from creators and people involved hits closer to heart. Its truly incredible how the Bone came to be and its legacy. Thank you for your incredible work 💐
Darwyn Cooke explained it best. He said that in the 1980's, Marvel and DC decided to shift from comics for kids to comics predominantly for adults. He said that superheroes stopped being what kids looked up to as a result. The reason, 'The Big 2' can't sell their graphic novels to kids in because, A. they haven't pushed much content towards that audience. B. let's face it, most of the content both publishers have created in the last decade or so... has sucked. Plain and simple.
I think it's also hard for them to market for kids or event teens, and not feel constricted because of limitations that age puts on what you can and can't show. Even if official age ratings are not so strict now, culturally it's hard to justify all ages or teen rating if you want to show some graphic materials or touch on controversial and hard themes. I don't read a lot of american comics, but I always felt that there is a clear line between adult and kids stuff in other forms of entertainment. But in something like manga lines are more blurred. Sure, there are clearly comics for kids with nothing graphic or serious, but then you have shōnen manga that is targeted on 10-12 years old kids as a lower limit. It's quite low to call it comics for children, but man, they don't mess around. Tragic and violent deaths, genocides, even occasional nudity, smoking, drinking, swearing. I still don't know how the heck One Piece is rated for 12+ in US, which makes me think that age restriction is kinda loose now, but big publishers seem hestitating on marketing their works towards younger audiences
@@NazgNurglych That's because in American culture, we don't give children enough credit. They're far more savvy than we might think. You don't HAVE to show controversial or graphic material for them to understand what is being talked about. That's my belief anyways. But in the case of superhero stories, I feel they should be accessible to adults AND children. Adults should feel the imagination and excitement of children watching or reading them and children should feel inspired to be the best adults they can be from them.
I ran a comic store in San Diego from 91 to 04, and Bone played a massive role in our journey :D I did have to fight with the boss about reordering the indies and black and white books, even the manga at our stores, before he would let me get things on the shelves. I would go to the SDCC to pick up lots of demo books to hang up in the store, and nudge people to order them. The same time that there were brilliant indie books, we were losing mainstream buying hand over fist. (the biggest one was Wonder Woman when Byrne took over, which was an unmitigated disaster for us going from 70 to 3 copies sold in 3 months...) I'm a bit disappointed that I left the industry in 04 since this seems to be where our story here takes up! I do have art by Jeff and still have such a big place in my heart for Bone. The unique story and how it was told, and its success.
I’m a children’s librarian and one of my favorite things about my job is advocating for comics. And kids love them- they’ve got big circulation numbers. I always order some Marvel and DC for the collections when I get the chance to order graphic novels because they’re still my favorite. They don’t circulate like Dog Man or Heartstopper but I still like that they’re there so I can recommend them when I get the chance.
Feels like I wanna say this after every video you make but…this is one of my favorite videos regarding comics I’ve seen! Truly love the storytelling and emotion you’re able to put into these videos. The fact that you not only cover well known books, but also shine light onto books that someone who is just getting into indie comics / the history of comics might not know makes me appreciate the channel even more.
I’m a librarian and a big comic reader; I’ve got a weekly pull box at my local shop. I’m constantly trying to get affordable hardcover collections of superhero stuff for a 11-13 year old audience, and it’s shocking how little Marvel/DC offer. They still don’t seem to get that certain sexual/violent content makes it impossible for us to get their books into kids hands. But Scholastic figured it out and now has a whole generation connected to their books.
“Instead of letting the reality of the industry warp his dream, his dream warp the reality of the industry around itself” is actually a line that goes hard. Great video, btw💛🦴.
I'm 41, and was always aware of Bone, but it wasn't until Scholastic that I finally found copies for myself. What a great success story. I see them everywhere now, so many kids and adults have enjoyed the series.
As one of the small press that got wiped out in the mid-90s, I need to chime-in that as much as the speculator bubble was warping the market, the real cause of the crash was Marvel. In '94 they decided to become their own distributor and retain most of the profit. They pulled their books from all other distributors, meaning everyone suddenly lost 40-60% of their market. DC and Image struck exclusive deals with Diamond which was the death knell for Capital (the other big comics dist. in the US) and all the regional distributors. The cost of being a comics retailer jumped because books for most retailers now had to be shipped in vs picked up in person and we went from about 9,000 retailers across North America down to under 3,000 in just a couple of years. My book launched the month Marvelution began and so things started rough and just got worse. Never made it to its first collection. Still - managed to push out 11 issues in a real tough market.
I love your video essays! Learning about people like Jeff Smith has inspired me to pick up my pencil and once again pursue my dream in creating my own comic book. I only hope my work can be HALF as good “Bone”.
The 80s in comics will never happen again. It was an epic time to be alive. Fair cover price. Before Hollywood corporatization and Image. Peak super hero but sophisticated suspense. Comics were our screens.
I agree. And, talking specifically about Marvel now, I believe a lot of the credit should go to Jim Shooter. Plenty of people who worked for him like to complain about the experience, and it's certainly possible that he's very unpleasant to have as a boss...but even if he was a grade A A-hole, you can't argue with results. The 70s were before my time, but as I understand it, Marvel wasn't enjoying the same success in much of the 70s as it had in the 60s. That changed after Shooter took over, and it continued until he was let go. That's not to imply that Marvel immediately collapsed after Tom DeFalco took over as EIC. But it wasn't too many years later, and I do kind of wonder if the same thing would have happened had Shooter been kept on.
It's not an overstatement to say that Bone changed my life forever. I read it once a year since I discovered it, and it's in part guilty of my career in art.
I’m a 2005 CCAD grad who went to a Jeff Smith guest lecture during my time there. Got a signed copy of Bone at the end. It’s a very fond memory of mine!
matt!!!! love your videos and this was fantastic as always!! two things for you, one a suggestion and one a request: PLEASE read paranatural!! as a fellow comic lover i am CERTAIN you will fall in love with it. it’s a webcomic that i’ve been reading since middle school and it’s SO great and so funny. next, have you ever thought about making videos about emanata? i’d love to see you talk about it, even if it seems hard to structure into a video i guess. thanks for the great comic history as always!!!!!! this is one of my favorite channels and ive recommended it to all of my comic friends a hundred times
I'm from Ontario and Prisoners of Gravity was a life changing show for me. As a teenager hearing about comics, sci-fi and fantasy discussed in the same manner you would hear 'regular' books discussed was amazing. Seeing interviews with the likes of Gaiman, Sienkiewicz, Miller and so many others.... the best!
Yeah...but what was with that nausea inducing pseudo-cinema verite camera work? It was a infection that music television spread to other media. Thankfully that era is over. And especially thanks that it hasn't spread to RUclips uploaders like this excellent documentarian.
@@drmodestoesq Are we talking about the same show? It was a pretty fixed camera with a talking head style show full of interviews. Low budget, yes, but it's TVO so....
@@merk638 Hey....you're right. I just watched a few grainy clips that were uploaded to RUclips. I absolutely retract that accusation. And apologize. I must have been thinking about MuchMusic. Definitely the films of Lars Von Trier.
@@merk638 I just read the Wiki on the show. It turns out it hasn't been re-released due to the usual reasons....copyright limbo. There's a whopping 139 episodes. Well, hopefully someone is going to do the metaphorical legwork...and try to get it uploaded into cyberspace. Oh....cyberspace....I just remembered that William Gibson was a frequent guest.
Great vid, matttt. I stopped buying comics in the late 80's when I realised that I didn't know who half the current characters were in XMen or a number of other Marvel titles I was buying (and I was spending about $80 a month). DC was more consistent but harder to get, here in New Zealand, but they lost the plot for me when they started redesigning the DC multiverse. It seemed like change for change's sake and the nature of the Big 2's work, for episodic story-telling that lurches from issue to issue, means that they're really soap operas rather than stories and the best you can hope for is a trade collection of issues. That's not a novel. Bone is a novel - a looooong novel - but reading it, you know that Jeff KNEW where it was going to end before he drew the first page. DC and Marvel don't make novels (Death of Captain Marvel excepted and that was more an expanded issue than a novel). They want you buying the next issue to see what happens, which is very different from writing a story, no matter how similar the techniques may be. It's just product for them, with multiple crossovers so that you have to buy more titles if you want the full story. And then there's the corporate mindset of Marvel and DC, where profits to the shareholders matter more than the delivery to the readers. So you get variant covers, new universes with the same heroes (I mean, Absolute DC is just copying the Marvel Ultimate Universe) and Elseworlds and 1602 and the like, without actually changing the episodic nature to convey a full story. And every new writer wants to reimagine the character, often removing them totally from their backstory and destroying the continuity. Fans in earlier years *existed* for the continuity. If you look at 60's and 70's LoC pages, more than half the letters were questioning how such and such could have happened in ish 191 when it was already stated in ish 14 that so and so was really responsible. The eternal retconning has driven many readers away. The writers and publishers want to create more product but fewer people want to read it, so they have to make it bigger and gaudier and hype the crap out of it, but the stories don't live up to the sales pitch. I read Bone from the local library, which started with a small graphic novel section that has since grown immense. I also found more recent DC and Marvel trades there, but the true gold is the independents that cover heroes and children, puberty and old age and everything in between. Stories. Novels. That's what people want to read, IMHO.
It really is. Bone comics along with Scholastics entire catalog are easily outselling Marvel & DC with the greatest of ease! Tim got the ultimate win. Even the school that rejected him have to accept his success. Great stuff. It's sad. They used to be focused on telling good stories. Now all they wanna do is push an agenda and put out crap that doesn't make sense to the characters or the legacy of these companies. They'd rather hang a nuice on themselves & these companies than put out good stories that respects these characters.
This wasn't at all what I thought it would be when I clicked the Start button but it is so much more inspirational than I could have hoped that I just wanted to say two words. Thank you.
It being labeled as a kid's book was sort of a blessing, because it was by far the most mature and intriguing thing in my elementary school library. I couldn't get enough of it.
Yeah, it is how I found it since my mom was a children's librarian.
This is how i found it! I adored this series when i was younger. It reminds me a lot of LOTR and calvin and hobbs in retrospect in the way it was clean yet mature enough to not make the reader feel stupid
@jewelscoop3570 i compared it to LOTR but never thoght of calvin and hobbes but now i cant unsee it
my brother got into it back in the day and at first i had no interest. but finally one day when my brother was about to return it to the library (book one) i stole it and slowly read it and he was freaking out about not having it to return and found me one day reading it
at first he was piossed but i had barely ever read any books at the time in first grade before then so he realized it got me to read
once he returned it i immediatley rented it out of the school library and read it entirely and loved it
at the time i didnt get most of ther jokes aside from kid humor but as i have re read it as an adult over and over again i love the adult jokes and just how adult the series was
It was kind of funny. When I first discovered it, it was in the children’s section in my local library. But then as the issues came out, it was then moved to “fantasy- young adult”, and later to “graphic novel section”. Quite the journey it was.
Who would win:
1. Two internationally known comic multiverses, totalling over 80000 issues combined
2. A sentient femur
One is coherent while the other can’t keep it together for more than 2 seconds
And the reason why is in the question.
💀💀💀💀
Sentient femur when femur breaker walks in: 💀
When the sentient femur belongs to Chuck Norris…
One of the biggest drawbacks of DC and Marvel, counterintuitiveliy is that they produce too much content each month and that everything is intertwined. Whereas independent comics and manga are largely self contained, so you can just pick them up and jump in or at least you know where to start. Probably why the new Ultimate comics and Absolute comics are selling so well.
The same has been the tradition in European comics. Even series mostly have wrapped up storylines in one or a few albums, so it's not like you need to buy a huge amount to read the full story
I just don't think readers want the "soap opera" storylines like they used to, where storylines contradict and repeat over and over through the years. People seem to have grown past that and want the ability to read a single creators vision from start to end. They want to consume graphic novels and comics the way they consume movies, videogames and other modern media.
This is the whole thing. DC and Marvel don't have self-contained stories. Everything is tied to existing characters, the canon changes on a yearly basis. The stories that might be worth reading get ignored by long time fans. It makes it hard to read comics.
Marvel and DC have a vision of unending immortal characters they can just keep using. Manga and the Scholastic books (a few others as well) don't view the stories that way. With few exceptions, those stories end. They don't keep going forever 30 volumes is a lot, but that's on the high end. 10-12 is far more common. It's not as big of an investment in time or money.
@@mikew466 The success of manga shows that readers like convoluted and long storylines.
The problem with Marvel and DC is the interconnection between the storylines.
You start reading a serie, where wolverine is alive. Then in the middle of the serie, you learn that wolverine is dead and you don't know why because it's another serie. The first time it's fine, the second time less so, the fifth time, you're buying Demon Slayer or MHA.
I will also say that accessibility is a HUGE issue with marvel and dc. Yes, we need to support our local comic book shops, but a lot of people simply don’t have one near them and don’t have the time or money to go out of their way to buy comics through cbs. Dc and Marvel have terrible online shopping websites with little stock of comics people actually want. Hell, try explaining what a pull list is to someone with no comics experience. The whole system is archaic.
DC and Marvel simply do not want to sell you comic books any longer, they want to sell you media content, and this is another business completely. You’d think that comic books businesses should still be their priority, their backbone, since most of their IP comes from their old graphic novels, but this is not where they are planning to source their material going forward. They’re multimedia companies now, their writers, even if they still use old IP, write directly for the screen (or games), and graphic novels business is not what they genuinely care about any more. For them, it’s a legacy medium.
I think this is a big part of it. According to wiki, MCU (just the movies) grossed ~31B over 17? (2008?-2025) years. That's ~1.7B/year. The entire comics industry is roughly 2.2B/year, of which they are
@@pierrecuriethey see comics are research and development for movies/tv shows. they test out what sells and what doesn’t, then they attempt to use what works in another medium.
To be fair it’s a legacy medium for basically everyone. Good luck breaking out in it without being amazing, people barely read.
Damn what a spoton opinion✌️🤘 I’ve been trying to form these words for decades as I watch another hobby be consumed an told ‘I was bad for supporting said hobby’.
Funny part is the vid acts like this is news 😂 it's been like this for at least 3-5 years. They overcharge (why would I pay $5-$8 for a single issue number 1 when tpb digitally is under $5) and sales undermine similar to video games, which yeah spiderman 2 sold despite being buggy, but suicide squad kills the justice league was panned.
Fear state was expensive and Marvel's blood hunt censored digitally.
I bought Bone as it came out, when it first came out. I'm one of the OG fans, and my art is SUPER influenced by him. He is one of my top comic guys of all time. I watched him in real time get bigger and bigger. There is one or two pages in one of his early comics that BLEW my mind when I read it. Really kind of a throwaway scene almost. It was full panels, but he had put these black panels BEHIND the illustrations, and I subconsciously read it in sequence as he intended me to even though it was full large illustrations. I went back and looked and saw the black panels and when "oh my god, this guy totally forced me to look at full illustrations in sequence as if it was a paneled comic book WITHOUT panels." Sheer damn genius. I'm like 18 or 19 at this point. Seriously, dude is my hero.
Everything in Marvel is ongoing with no intro and no end. Without an intro, a non-fan will need to use a wiki to know your character, without an end, there is no satisfaction.
You people don't actually read comics and it's blatantly obvious with comments like this.
@@EcopiuM I stopped reading most western comics around the snowflake and safespace new warriors crap. Even before that I lost interest because comics had issues with being impossible to keep up with until the internet arrived, but i'm not interested in wikis. My favorite compliation paperback is the Hush storyline in batman due to Jim Lee's art, and also because that ACTUALLY has a conclusion. Modern ongoing comics are guarded issue by issue, so they're barely read since they're money sinks, meanwhile manga sells volumes, not issues, so they're easy to keep up with and binge read online and are much easier to collect offline. Most of the western comic storylines get shafted before a story even STARTS and writers constantly retcon eachother's stories into pointlessness.
I do actually read comics and manga and have for decades, but tourists like you who spout political propaganda and get salty when people push back, never learning your lesson, are not only the death of many industries in a functioning society that was improving without you, but you also refuse to learn and have become the modern racism and sexism crowd.
Read a book!
@@EcopiuM Who's "you people"?
@@bloodyidit4506people who don’t read comics
I aggree. There is no satisfactory ending in recent superhero comics. It's basically "villian is gone forever. or is he?" dın dın dın "buy the next collab to see them again"
One thing I’ve noticed - Bone’s art looks fresh to my modern eye. You could say it’s essentially timeless with how it was done.
That sticks out from all the other 80’s and 90’s comics, cause as great as those may be, the art does feel old today.
I’ve never heard of bone before, but the way it’s drawn alone makes me think I should check it out
Great point. The pages shown were interesting enough that I found myself pausing the vid a few times to read the panels. Haven't done that previously with any of the other vids on this channel that I can recall.
I just found out about bone too, through this video from an ad
I grew up in the 80s and 90s and I remember when Bone started appearing in interviews and press releases despite a really loud noise being produced by giants, like Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane, and just Image comics in general at that time. I was like, "Huh?" Around then I saw it popping up in Scholastic book fairs and I was confused why adults were cherishing some kids comic. (No joke, I was engaged in a reverse discrimination of the discrimination being pointed out in this video, lol.) Interesting thing is that I do remember the discrimination of comics in schools as a kid growing up. I saw kids reading comics being told by teachers that it didn't count as reading. Schools today are way different now. Oh, and by the way, Bone is a good read. You won't be disappointed. =)
@ funnily enough, I’m the kind of guy to not consider comics a read - something feels off about holding an 800-page book and going through it in a couple hours.
But I do enjoy the medium still. And from time to time things do catch my eye - for instance, I was blown away by Invincible, or Chainsaw Man and Berserk if we talk about manga. Really hope Bone goes onto the list as well when I’ll have a chance to get to it
@@Hydrodictyon I read Invincible (really good and I like seeing the differences with the show). I only read the first volume of Chainsaw Man. I read 11 volumes of Berserk and I'm still trying to figure out my feelings on it, lol. What I like most about Bone is the characters. Rose and Lucius are by far my favorite characters (but it's packed with many really good characters to be clear). Hope you like it!
Jeff's wife is the hidden MVP of this story. She was committed to fully support his husband's dream, but she also set up fair and reasonable boundaries so it wouldn't get out of hand and overly delusional.
She really is. Clearly she was raised to be emotionally intelligent, well adjusted, and grounded. What a great partner he got!
Yeah it was so nice of her to support Jeff's husband's dream like that
...not to talk out of school, but; she's why I tracked down an amazing woman from my past, at almost forty, to trap into family bliss. 😂 comics will be coming out next year!
Yeah. I've known Jeff and Vijaya since shortly before he met her in the 1980s. She took a silicon valley job in CA for several years to support him financially while he worked on the first several books. Once sales started to take off, they moved back to Columbus and she became the president of Cartoon Books. She's the one with the head for business; we artists struggle with paperwork, contracts, deadlines and such (haven't watched the video yet, but hopefully they touch on this). She's also whip smart and funny AF; a lot of Bone's humor comes from her offhand comments.
@@nerfytheclownHeh, friends have often asked me over the years what Jeff's secret to success is and what they could do to replicate it. I simply tell them "Get your own Vijaya".
Funny, Jeff didn't want his book to be labeled as a kids book, yet it was kids that made him successful. Good thing someone saw that gap.
Being a Kids Book isn't a problem--kids are an ideal audience--it's this perception, expectation, or pressure to neuter your story in order to market it. People see "kid's book" and assume it must have been neutered even if it hasn't been, simply because so many are.
I really admire Jeff and I really admire that you and him clearly stated his wife's merit and that she could herself take part in the interview as she was a real part of the success. it is beautiful to see a couple support each other, a partner supporting another dream and with fair and logical expectation such as telling his to do a business plan and covering expenses for a year and then joining it. congrats to both of them.
“Grow up or get out”
*Gets out.*
based. its not a problem of groing up. comic is not a lesser art form for such a thing does not exist
@@Scrambled_Egg_Boi While I mostly agree, I'm gonna say that guy who makes stuff out of his own feces is a con man, not an artist.
Otherwise, you are right: Art has as many expressive forms as their are people to express them.
That's actually what it feels like working in creative industry. Sometimes you need to hold your wild young-ish spirit and ideology to able to stand up in the middle of an already saturated market.
The market for children’s books has gotten more childish over the years. So it’s not just the comics getting more mature. For instance kids of the past enjoyed tales from the crypt, Prince Valiant, flash Gordon, fist of the North Star, swamp thing, the shadow, tomorrows Joe, Voltron, and Thundercats while modern kids like captain underpants and SpongeBob
@reginaldforthright805 Please. You've forgotten about a lot of funny animal comics along the way; those have existed for as long as cartoons and comics have existed. Even then, the quality varied from book to book and across the lifespan of a single book (as with Sonic for example.) Also a lot of childish cartoons existed back then too. It's dependent on age range. Don't lump toddlers in with school age kids or preteens. I can't fathom showing a young child Fist of the North Star without parental guidance lol. One of the bigger issues is that Cable companies don't seem to know what to do with teen-aimed cartoons which is why Infinity Train got the axe (which is sad because it's amazing although it appeals to a certain audience and I doubt you've ever watched it.)
Besides, SpongeBob is one of those cartoons that is akin to the Simpsons, it started out stronger and then got watered down over time because the IP became more important than the cartoon itself. It was always aimed at kids with stuff sprinkled in for adults, whereas the Simpsons was the opposite as it ended up lowering its demographic over time and becoming more family oriented, I guess, but see that's the kind of context and history one has to take into account with individual franchises.
And the remake of She-Ra got a lot more traction than the remake of Thundercats so it varies a lot, just as each iteration of TMNT cartoons has different draws. The best animated version of TMNT got cancelled because it flew under the radar and people didn't want to take a chance on it shaking things up in the beginning. I mean, yes, I missed out too, I kept meaning to watch it and now I've gotta sail under the jolly roger to find it probably. And this isn't to say it had no downsides but reviews point out I might've missed out on something pretty impressive overall. But even the newest version of TMNT won't necessarily be awful and it may appeal to a slightly different demographic. (Minor edits throughout.)
MAJOR EDIT: although that said, Bluey is genuinely fantastic for young kids and adults. Teens will assume it's beneath them but that's not true; it's good for anyone with an open mind. I can see why it has gained so much popularity that other companies have tried to create knock-offs of it. They basically slotted into the niche MLP: FiM left behind (which it only gained ironically at first but became a genuine phenomenon because it was generally well-made.) And they had their faults too. Nothing is perfect.
I've known Jeff and Vijaya since shortly before they met in the 1980s, though we've fallen out of touch in recent years (I went through some very hard times and found myself in hermit mode). They still rank among my all time favorite people. He even dedicated his graphic novel "RASL" to myself and Vijaya, and that's still the most meaningful gift I've ever been given. Truly two of the best human beings you'll ever encounter. I miss them.
Reach out to them. Life is short.
@@chevon5707 yeah, i second this. do it. reach out.
Please reach out to them, if they are as lovely as you say they are, then reaching out wouldn’t hurt
RASL is brilliant. don't give up on yourself when those two believed in you
At least tell them what they mean to you, without expectation. Thats the least you could do, tbh, for them as much as you. It may be hard after all this time but at the end of the day its something lost for all of you if you dont.
when you learn that Bone was the reason we got Amulet, those are the works that kept my hope in comics survive the grotesque enshitification of DC and Marvel.
Read Unbelievable Gwenpool. A truly great modern series and character and they ended it after 25 issues and then did a woke reinvention of her 😢😢😢
@@arostwocents I have read gwenpool, a while ago. I loved it, with all its flaws it was an amazing comic.
don't know about the reinvention, don't even think I read beyond the original run of the comic.
@@arostwocents Sadly it's only work for people who read comic for a long time. Gwenpool is love letter to fans but not for beginner comic reader.
It’s definitely an all ages series. My dad bought me the first book when I was 10 and I fell in love immediately. The entire series wasn’t published all the way yet and I think I read the last one as a teen. I still love those books as an adult. It’s sad that the all ages label kills good franchises because I love all ages media.
Great video! Never heard of Bone before, but was never into comics and was out of school before it became such a hit. Bought a copy to see what it's about. You got me intrigued, and I loved the details about pacing and such.
I think one of the main problems is simple access. Scholastic puts their books almost everywhere. Grocery stores, book fairs, working directly with libraries, department stores, you can find them at almost any kind of store. But where do you find Marvel and DC? Almost exclusively at comic book stores, which some towns might not even have. Sure it’s gotten somewhat better with their graphic novels and trades showing up in bookstores but that’s just a small step. Comixology was helping with accessibility but then Amazon blew that whole thing up…
If Marvel and DC are to survive as publishers, not just licensors of old IP, they need to shift into trade paperbacks as the primary source of stories. Monthly floppies are the past. Long, contained stories are the future.
@@TheChancellor212 kinda frustrating too since they’ve both tried that in the past but then just gave up when they didn’t sell a billion copies. It takes time to build up an audience, especially a new one. And I’m sure they’re frustrated too because from what I’ve seen the publishers and creators liked that method, but the parent companies pulled the plug for “taking too long”.
The funniest part is that Marvel and DC do have very good self-distributing platforms in Marvel Unlimited and DC Universe Infinite. All they really need to do to make them work is marketing, reducing the subscription fee by like 10 dollars, give limited, ad-supported reading capabilities and lift the 3 month embargo on recently published comics
I just saw Barnes and noble have 5 copies of volume 1. Of the new ultimate spider-man. They are definitely getting better at it.
The problem is no one wants to read worn out men in tights stories anymore. Marvel has been rehashing the same dozen super heroes for over 50 years. There is absolutely not one new story they could do with any of them that would revitalize interest at a scale like demon slayer or Jijutsu Kaisen. If they want to survive they have to follow the interest of the youth. A contained multi book graphic novel of a NEW original IP. Adopt a model similar to the manga industry with shonen jump where new ip are test ran in some quarterly magazine and distributed it to schools, libraries, grocery stores, etc. It would take a complete brand override which they are too stubborn to do and I doubt it would pay any dividends in the short term. The least they could do would be to support indie creators original projects instead of feeding new talent into their "Just draw a new spider man story" factory grinder. Give the most promising original IP a chance and see where it goes. And don't choose a cape wearing hero.
Fantastic video, as always. I can't understate how much this one hits home for me.
My youngest kid never read for pleasure. It was just something she had to learn in school. One day, she came home from class (grade 4?) and had checked out a copy of Captain Underpants from the school library because, you know, "hehe underpants". She ended up plowing through it. Took it back and came home the next day with the second CU book. Then asked for the rest so we picked her up a big box set. Then she asked for Dog Man. Plowed through those.
Then we handed her a copy of the first Harry Potter book. By the end of the year she had read the entire HP series.
Comics, specifically the Scholastic comics that you talk about in this video, not only made my youngest blossom into a voracious reader, it sparked her huge interest in writing and last year she was accepted into the local Art School for the Literary program.
This whole "we should ignore comics and get kids to read prose" and "prose good! comics bad!" (and "real" art good, comics bad) is such bs. As long as kids are reading, the rest will take care of itself.
Antitrans, huh? Sure, why not?
I think a big part of a lot of people's resistance to reading prose is because a lot of school districts are teaching a method of reading that actively teaches kids not to read, but guess words based on "context." We moved away from phonics towards this thing called three cueing which is basically a kind of evolution of whole word learning into an even worse technique.
Since a lot of kids, and now adults, can't really read, graphic novels are a great stepping stone towards becoming literate for the people that were unfortunately taught to guess rather than to read. Plus, everyone likes pictures.
@@ax14pz107 I don't know where you live but in most places kids and adults can read. Are you sure it's not just you?
@bardsamok9221 I'm not talking about the bare minimum of being able to parse words slowly.
@@bardsamok9221 No, he isn't wrong. The way kids are taught these days is counter-intuitive. Working with a bunch of high schoolers shows me that every single day. We need to return to phonics, not this blob that doesn't teach anyone anything of value. The literary scores in the US drop every single year. Part of it is parents being lazy and dumping screens in front of their children's faces as young as like 2 years old, but the other problem is the methods schools go about teaching. Even still, parents need to actually be involved. If they aren't it won't matter what the school teaches. It won't stick because the parents don't care.
At 8 years old, I was reading Disney Adventures Magazine with their monthly Bone excerpts. Now I read Bone to my son.
I don't remember much from Disney Adventures, but I certainly remember Bone.
That magazine is where I first read Bone and I fell in love instantly.
Same!!!! I had those. Now I am a 5th grade reading teacher.
Omg I knew I had seen Bone before. I was a huge Adventures reader
Its funny, that's all I remember from those too - and I didn't even really read them because they plopped me into the middle of the story and my brain wasn't fully formed so it was a struggle to comprehend them. But it was still intriguing. I finally read Bone entirely for the first time only 5 or so years ago (and reread recently, I love it.)
So glad Scholastic stepped in. Thanks to them, elementary school me was fortunate enough to discover Bone.
Vijaya is so incredible in this story, sets boundaries but supports him, not only emotionally either, she also brings her own strengths to the table. Wow!! I hope American libraries start carrying European comics more, Asterix & Obelix and such I think kids would LOVE those comics as they do here in Europe.
Diamond Distributing.
If you want to know why Marvel, DC, and other non-Scholastic/non-Manga publishers are fairing so poorly, your answer has to address the monopoly that has been strangling small comic book stores for decades. It completely skews all of the metrics for traditional comic book publishers, making it nearly impossible for accurate forecasting or feedback. Add to that, the outsized emphasis on IP over storytelling that comes from the massive media industries buying out comic book publishers and the insane decimation of creative staff in those companies, and you have a recipe to bury these nearly century old universes.
100% right. And it's a misnomer these days to tallk about Marvel and DC as real companies. There is no Marvel company and no DC company. These are just bylines on the PL sheet of Disney and Warner Bros, two companies who only retain comic publishing so they can mine the IP for film.
@@M4TCH3SM4L0N3 doesn't DC distribute themselves now?
Another thing that is scary to think about is what percentage of the measly 5% market share is Watchmen? Make something new and great, dammit!
Dude who ever is the main distributor now maybe it’s diamond I can’t remember has been so late each week. Supposedly they are changing warehouses or whatever. It’s sucks a a collector and a seller.
REALTALK, SON!
@@JosephTavanosad
I never knew that Bone was that special in the way it was, since for me it seemed to fit right in with the european (mostly french and belgian) comicbooks and graphic novels i grew up with. Long epic stories, told in hardback books were a normal things.
At the same time Comics for children is one of the most normal things in the world here in europe, where Donald Duck comics have always been incredibly popular.
Bone reminded me of the Donald Duck comics by Carl Barks and Don Rosa, and of Francobelgian comics like Tintin, Asterix, Spirou, Lanfeust, Incal and many others in how approachable they were for people of all ages and what grand fantastical adventures they told.
Bone definitely has remained one of my favourite Comicbooks and is one of my go to comics to recommend to people who want to either get into comics or branch out from either superhero comics or Manga.
Barks, Rosa, Hergé, Goscinny & Uderzo. The Mount Rushmore of my youth.
My first experience with comics was TinTin - I still love those books. Now that the frothing political screech machine is coming for them, I like them even better.
Agreed but maybe not Incal hahaha. I read it as quite young and it's def not for all ages.
For me Bone reminded me of Smurfs, Moomins, these ducks and Tolkien fantasy. And yeah the series feels like these european comics, Asterix, Tintin and others. Luckily I did grow up with those and Yoko Tsuno. Only read Watchmen and Dark Knight rises after MCU had started.
I was that kid that was immediately drawn to Bone as a semi-dyslexic public school student forced to read. At the time, the colored editions were slowly coming out. My parents couldn’t afford to purchase each new edition that came out, but they surprised me with the whole 9 volumes in black and white. I read and cried to a damn comic book as a child, and it still holds such a fond spot in my heart today. I hope to also pass along this great tale to my future kids 😁
What made me move away from comics is that there is no finality in them. Everything stays the same. "Big Change!" And a couple of years later, everything is back on the beginning. And you can predict what will happen. Because its just an endless repetition of the same tropes and the same motivations. Infinity rehash. Then I get something like Bone or Berserk. I want to know the ending. I NEED to know. No DC/Marvel comics made me feel like that since the Clone saga of Spider Man when I was a kid.
And, well... At least in Brazil, DC and Marvel are expensive. You get less pages and pay more. So almost everyone that still likes Marvel/DC comics just waits for the complete volume to go on sale after a couple of years. Or read it online.
Thank god I discovered Creator owned and European comics before I burned out on marvel and DC comics . It feels great to read a comic from the first to last issue and get a satisfying conclusion .
I was in 6th grade when the 1st issue of Bone came out and within a month my buddy Chris and I were drawing Bone all over the margins of our notebooks. We were immediate fans.
Also, RE: that falling panel at 15:15, it's also so nice how Fone Bone hits the ground in the bottom right panel directly below where he steps off the cliff in the top panel. That's a subtle detail that connects the action across the page. His work is so brilliant.
His work was one of the sources that inspired award winning children's book author illustrator Molly Bang to start working in the comic format.
My dad still has all the Bone action figures.
These are probably some of if not the most interesting comic book videos on RUclips that I’ve seen. Great stuff.
Indeed😮
Be sure to hunt for the Bone full documentary
@@Hobo613 oh ok 👍
Yeah, this is a great channel. Matttt does a good job!
Aye, I liked this video and plan to share it.
Fantastic video Matt! I met Jeff at San Diego in 2002 and showed him my little 24 page ashcan comic Missile Mouse I had just finished. He raved about it and gave me a massive confidence boost. Such a cool and supportive guy.
Fast forward a few years and I found myself sitting in David Saylor's office on Broadway in Manhattan pitching Missile Mouse to him. He has been and continues to be a massive champion for comics of all stripes especially those that come from indie creators.
The publishing industry is incredibly lucky that a person with his unique talents and love for comics was put into a position to do something about it at one of the most influential publishing houses.
Again, great video about two of my favorite people in comics.
Hi, Jake! Just saw your comment by chance. You probably don't remember me, but I'm related to the Shoemakers and met you long ago when we were all still around high school age. Congrats on all your own great work over the years!
So… I was the Lead Comics Editor at CBR (yes, I contain multitudes) and the biggest problem we had was superhero comics underperforming. Our writers wanted to write about Spider-Man’s latest moral dilemma and our readers weren’t interested. I encouraged the team to cover popular newspaper comics like The Far Side and we did much better.
People who love Superman (like me) are emotionally invested in that segment of the medium. However, new readers aren’t. I think the desire to sell superheroes to adults sacrificed Marvel and DC’s future. It’s not that they don’t have good books for kids. They stopped selling them to kids, though, and never courted librarians. I wrote a guide to comics for librarians and only a handful of my recommended books were “mainstream.”
This video helped me put some things together. Great job. 🎉
I don't know what kind of numbers they're doing, but DC really made a push with their series of reimaginings of character origin stories and the like in their two graphic novel age ranges, one of which is the same age range as the main comics imprint and one of which is younger. So I feel like they're making some amount of onboarding attempt.
On the other hand, DC's actual floppies only have two age ranges, one of which is 13+ and the other one of which is 17+. Marvel at least has younger ratings, even if they can't keep a character in the same age range for more than a couple years at a time because of how frequently series reset.
On the gripping hand, as a librarian working a section of the library for high school students and adults, when I get a middle school student coming over from the middle school section and asking me for a particular comics character by name, they are inevitably asking for Batman. Regardless of sales, the mindshare of that character is immense.
IMO, the thing everyone eventually figures out about Marvel and DC is that they're systemically unable to do anything interesting. All the moral dilemmas and such eventually fall flat.
Why? Because long running series are like zombies shambling around. Spiderman can't ever truly learn anything. A change will never be permanent. The story won't ever end. The character will just be forever jerked around back and forth with different writers pulling in different directions and editors imposing their vision, render the total sum of it vague and incoherent.
I believe one of the big appeals of manga and non-Marvel/DC comics is that they fix this. There's a single vision, a single plot with a meaning and end. And even if the work isn't amazing (say Naruto) it still has a coherent plot that's going somewhere.
The problem isn't superheroes themselves. There's successful superhero manga (OPM, MHA, arguably the whole magical girl genre), and western comics (Invincible). They work because they don't jerk the character around back and forth without going anywhere.
@@vadimtrochinsky2078 I don’t disagree, exactly, but I think the problem you’re describing comes from unreliable systems. Serial comics can be great for a while. However, popular IPs owned by big companies always get handed off to a new creative team eventually. Of course, even great creators eventually get tired of juggling the same set of characters around while nothing meaningful changes. So you’re also right. That said, manga and indy books like Cerebus face the same obstacles. Stories have to end to matter.
@@vadimtrochinsky2078 The problem here is several things:
1. The infinite serial. It means they can never do an ending, and they get tied into ever-increasing amounts of canon. Instead, run a story for a few years and end it. Then run another story, by another writer (or writing team) about the same character, that isn't tied to anything but the loosest canon. If it's Spider-Man, then he's raised by Aunt May and Uncle Ben, he dates either Gwen Stacy, she dies, then he dates Mary Jane, he has the suit and the Spider-Man powers, he lives in New York, he has the enemies list, but you can add new original ones if you want, and that's about it for the basic structure of the character. The writer can pick up the character at any point in his career, and write any story they find interesting.
2. Canon. There is too much of it; The Amazing Spider-Man has been in print since 1963 and is at over 900 issues. There's no reasonable way that all of the events of that can be compiled into a single internally-consistent story and even if there were, then it would be nearly impossible to have any new idea that didn't contradict some part of the past. Nothing wrong with doing a reset at the end of a story. If someone wants to do a sequel, let them; if they want to contradict one of the previous stories, also let them. Don't expect readers to pick up on something that happened 400 issues ago.
3. Cross-overs. Some are fine - a disposable cross-over that just showcases five characters from their own stories and is entirely skippable and doesn't need you to read all of the other stories to know what is going on is fine. But the big "cross-over events" like Secret Invasion, or Infinity Wars or Crisis on Infinite Earths that try to make permanent changes to every superhero are just never going to work. Writers won't stick to a new continuity like that across dozens of series. Instead, let each story be independent, and if they collide, write something that makes sense for that cross-over and then when the stories end and new ones start, just don't worry about them being compatible.
One of the reasons something like the Dark Knight Returns was so successful was that it was a complete story, and it wasn't tied to a giant continuity; it could decide for itself what from the massive Batman past it wanted to include and what to leave out. If you ever watch or read anything about one of the public domain characters that are widely known (King Arthur, Robin Hood, Sherlock Holmes, Three Musketeers, etc), then, instead of there being a single canon, each new story picks and chooses a canon for that story from the giant pool of stuff about that character. DC and Marvel should treat all their super-well-known characters like that. Let an author or a team tell the story they want to tell and don't try to have an official standard canon of what happened and force everything into that; accept that there have been too many writers over too many years for there ever to be a single absolute canonical official Superman. It lets them have stories with a beginning and an ending - and those stories can start and end at any point they want in the character's life; if they want to tell a story about Spider-Man in his forties, why not? Sure, he's usually a teenager or in his twenties, but his mid-life crisis might be an interesting story. Then when that finishes after a few years, the next Spider-Man story might be right back to him being in high school. And if that kills off someone that the mid-life crisis story showed as middle-aged, so what?
I would love to learn about superman and other classic superheros as a young adult, even as a kid..... but the latest offerings are not great. If I have to stop and think about politics, political correctness, or other woke stuff that interrupts the fantasy and story that a comic has to tell (especially if it is near constant) it makes me the reader feel like I'm being beaten over the head for just wanting to enjoy a good story with good art. Its disruptive and not an enjoyable read. I just give up and move on to another story I can dive into and explore uninterrupted. Manga is doing that for me.... comics is not.
This and your elfquest video really make me cry. While I learn a lot of comics as a business you never lose sight of how they are made by people, people devoted to their stories and to each other other
This whole video is incredibly good.
My kids have read a PISS LOAD of Dog Man, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, etc. It had never occurred to me to ask how the current market mix came to be.
The fact it’s (mostly) one dude who liked the Sunday funnies, had his own spin, and had a supportive wife…amazing.
It’s one of those shocking facts hiding in plain sight: Scholastic is the biggest non-Manga graphic novel publisher. Had I bothered to be more observant that would have been readily apparent but I just never thought about it.
What a fascinating story!!
His wife is truly the unsung hero in this crazy success story. What a graceful human being. She cared and sacrificied her own funds to help her husband get his shot. Thats love, trust and commitment y'all.
Why unsung? She's clearly a hero, and gets ample recognition for that in the video, too.
I will speak from personal experience. Having a significant other who believes in you is absolutely game-changing. I dropped out of college after a year and a half convinced I wasn't going to have a chance to go back.
My wife, who believed in me and was willing to financially support me, supported me every step of the way to where I am now, a college graduate. I attribute about 50% of any success I have nowadays to having her in my corner.
I should say as well that it is *not* a one-way street. It can't be. I have done everything I can to support my wife, including supporting her when I was working full time and she was finishing her degree. Mutual love and respect is one of the most powerful forces in this world.
And I'm so glad they gave her the shout-out she deserves :)
Literally everyone's singing bro.
Too right!! Someone backed you up!!
On the video is alredy mentioned the common ground with manga, having clear, one author, conclusive stories, but i caught another similarity. Jeff Smiths animation backgroung, making his moving scenes with great panel composition, and drawings that feel like its moving reminds me of tezuka. Tezuka was also an animator and imprinting his knowledge in his manga is what, I think, made most manga onwards have this characteristic that makes the reading expierence much more engaging. Might be one of the factors that keeps manga an industry more successful over comic books.
They also know to end stories on high note or at least giving them a few year.
@@HandOn-c40009 honestly, even if the ending isn't amazing, the fact that most manga is a contained story that leads to an ending is way better than the common superhero comic books going on for fucking eternity. That's why when it comes to DC and Marvel stuff, I only go after specific runs from some writers. Like Morrison's Animal Man, or the Immortal Hulk.b
The Japanese manga market is founded on anthology magazines (and now apps).
These magazine and the market in general is also just cutthroat. If you can't sell and keep circulation decent and sell collected editions etc (or merch, a lot of manga makes money via merch) and make enough money in one way or another you won't get published or will go to indie publishing etc.
Most marvel and DC comics would have been cancelled and something new given a chance. Not what seems to be the case where the same things keep getting rehashed and given a chance
@@HandOn-c40009 manga and anime is famous for being a hit or miss with the endings, like they do it great or horrible, but people let it be because what happens in one story doesnt affect the next one
This video made me bring out my giant All-in-One Bone volume and reread the whole thing. Man, it’s been 13 years since I read it and it’s blowing my mind. I am 23, fresh out of college and I’ve been absolutely loving comics from the 90’s & early 2000’s. It’s crazy to think Bone was the first comic I read, finding it in my School’s library. Jeff Smith is a genius! Amazing video!
And this is what I’ve been saying to Marvel and DC fans. The reason why the films suck is that the source material is DIRE.
It's almost like people don't want to read 20+ years worth of comics to understand a recent, asspull-filled one
You don't need to. It's painfully obvious when tourists like you haven't actually read comics.
@@EcopiuM Stop gatekeeping. It ruins everything for everyone.
@@jchinckley You people literaly gatekeep yourselves insane. If you actually were serious about wanting to READ them you'd see that @unfunniestman is wrong.
It's not an issue of length, I've been reading One Piece for almost half of my life, soon to be 20 years. And if somebody new wanted to start reading it, all they would need is the first volume. When I tried to get into comics like X-Men or Superman, and started asking knowledgable people where should I start, they gave me their favourite runs from the last two decades instead. Like, I want to know the story from the beginning, but it began so long ago and had so much restarts, relaunches, retcons, spin-offs, cross-overs that nobody but the most dedicated fans can navigate this swamp easily. That's the main problem, at least for me.
Idk, marvel has relaunched their main series like 3 times in the past decade, thats a ton of easy, recent places to start from
What a fantastic video. Beautifully composed and right on the money. As a public librarian for the last 25 years, I appreciate the long overdue callout. Yes, librarians made graphic novels and comics part of the mainstream for both publishers and the reading public. Explaining to parents that reading is reading, whether it’s a prose novel, a magazine or a comic book, changed a lot of minds and shifted the zeitgeist. Yay librarians! Glad to know about Jeff Smith’s continued success and popularity. He deserves it.
I feel like the next person you gotta profile, even though he’s the most elusive person on earth is Bill Watterson. Calvin and Hobbes lives in this same kind of realm as Bone, and a comprehensive view of how Watterson stuck to his guns and made something like that (and recently, something like The Mysteries!) would be a cool thing to examine.
I agree wholeheartedly with that. My retired father, from his 60's into his 80's, loved reading Calvin and Hobbes and for years I gave him the bounded books as gifts for his birthdays and Christmas. He passed 14 years ago and so I now have his collection and I immensely enjoy reading them while I think about my dad.
Exactly. Calvin and Hobbes is a deceptively simple comic with a creator behind it who stood firmly in his vision defending his creation from what others wanted it to become.
Weird: out of nowhere, seeing my art at 8:10. Boy, that was a long, LONG time ago!!
Hey Steve Moncuse creator of Fish Police!
2:38 pretty much my exact experience with the faculty in art school. Meanwhile, Jeff Smith was so generous with his time in Artist Alley back in the late 90’s when I met him. He was incredibly supportive when looking at my work which was the boost I needed at the time. I’ll forever be grateful to him for that. 🙏🏼
I remember in elementary school, first time seeing a Bone graphic novel. I ignored it for a couple of weeks. Then i decided to read volume one. I was smitten. I loved the book. I finished the series within a couple of weeks. The book really influenced me. It is one of the single greatest comics ever written.
We all had the same childhood theory applies here
That “get serious or GTFO”attitude I’m sure has crushed several people’s passion, and contributes to the suffering artist mentality. My mom makes pottery and she loves it. There is so much joy to be had in art. Manga and anime are taken seriously. I just hope that animation and comics are taken seriously too. There’s a stigma attached to them here. My dad didn’t understand until I showed him Cowboy Bebop that all these cartoons I’m watching were more than just bugs bunny.
Edit: the bit at the end where you talk about marvel ad DC speaks volumes, pun intended. I took a history of Manga college class and that reignited my love of manga. I have a hundred volumes and counting. I do have some graphic novels Maus comes to mind.
That is American shit.
In every American industry, the most powerful bully gets to the top, and this runs from the president of the United States to a fucking school.
Great pun man
I had kind of the same thing happen to me in college. I was very interested in writing, so I asked my English professor if she'd read some of my writings. They were just short snippets, incomplete, just me trying to get my bearings. I was way more focused on the prose than trying to write a complete story. Coming up with an entire story felt like it was trying to run before I knew how to walk. So, I give my little writings to her, and she just absolutely rakes them over the coals. She basically tells me that I'm a bad writer and I should just give up. I mean she was brutal about it. Which was crazy, because she was a younger professor and was really nice in class. I figured there would be some camaraderie, or at least some encouragement for a young writer.
When I asked her why she thought this, she said the stories were incomplete. I just started laughing at her and walked away. It was so clear that she was just being critical and hateful and wasn't going to be any help at all.
I now write all the time, and it's one of the most enriching parts of my life!
Manga and anime have only been taken serious VERY recently, and even now I don't think the common demoninator person actually believes they are for adults.
Manga and anime still aren’t necessarily taken seriously by the general populace, but the young people who take it seriously are getting older
In Cincinnati, there was one comic shop, Queen City Comics, and they did TV Commercials. Every commercial would say "We have all the best comics including BONE and Spawn".
Could you clarify what you mean by "one comic shop"? Because there are more comic shops than just one in Cincinnati.
(Not a dis on Queen City. That's my go-to every time I'm in Cincy.)
@spaceknight793 in the before times Queen City was the only mainstream shop at the time. There are a bunch of small little indie outfits around Clifton. But that was to go to place in the early nineties to go for any type of comic book. That and your occasional stuff you would find at the supermarket.
I'm thankful that I got lucky and was able to buy Bone when it started, and managed to buy each issue as it came out before others snapped them up. I have always been a fan of Pogo since I was a kid in the 60's so Smith's art style and humor really hit home. Thanks, Jeff and Vijaya, for giving us this great world!
I collected all the bone books a few years ago. A decade before that, in grade school, I read those books understanding that they were much more than just comic books. They grabbed ahold of you and could impact you better than a movie, better than a tv show, better than most games at the time. Those books pulled you in like a magnet, and that's probably because it wasn't intended for kids. You read the book and you felt like you were equal, like you had grown up a little without having to do things you didn't want to do or didn't enjoy. It wasn't a kids book, it wasn't grossly violent, and the adults weren't making you read it. It was *the* perfect book for young readers.
I just wish that I understood how much effort it really took to get to my hands back then. I wish I knew how much of a risk that Jeff, Vijaya, and scholastic had taken to get that far. I understood how special the book was to me and the fans of the book, but I didn't realize just how groundbreaking the series actually was in all these circles.
I think there's a lot of people to appreciate in the making of this book. Not only the people who supported it, but the ones who turned it away, too. Had Jeff stayed with the newspaper, or continue to be lectured by smarmy college professors who think the path to success is a creative process that looks like a straight and narrow line, we'd never had gotten the version of Bone that we all love today. It's the only real 'thank you' they deserve, but the pushback Jeff received only made him more determined to do the things he really wanted to do. Without that determination, Bone wouldn't, couldn't, have survived.
Bro we finally got a Bone video! Bone was the first comic book series I’ve ever finished. I remember being in elementary and not really caring about reading. Saw the first volume of Bone and decided to try it cause it looked fun. I never expected myself to get hooked and read the entire series. One day we’ll get that animated adaptation!
I heard that’s been batted around for a while now the adaptation.
I remember vividly that during the last half of my elementary school I was really struggling with reading, cause all the books the teacher had me reading weren't interesting so I just didn't bother. So my teacher had the brilliant (life changing, maybe) idea to have me read graphic novels, especially Jeff Smith's Bone, to help me read and I got hooked. One of the many influences that got me into drawing comics.
Exactly. Nothing motivates a child more to learn something than the prospect of enjoying the experience or the reward at the end.
I wouldn't even be writing this here if it wasn't for english subbed/ translated comics, mangas and US tv series. Because i 100% sucked at english in school and learned it by myself later in life to understand those forms of art (english isn't my first language). In a very real way the child in me wanted to experience those "pointless" things so much that i put the effort in to learn.
I can see a pattern in these success stories in your videos, and it involves a couple being together since young age for decades, who kept supporting each and their dream through difficulties, refusing to compromise with the status quo, and eventually shaping the reality of the business to their will instead of the other way around.
They just adapted the European comic market model. Nothing really new, only to the American market, after them daring to look over the pond due to the succes of Harry Potter.
The European comic market is vastly different with it's own traditions and art of storytelling. I have come to realize the average American does not really grasp the extent of it. Even American comics have to adapt to the European market to reach their readers, altering the format to an more approachable access, as selling them there one-on-one, would not have worked there.
Bone feels really European. As is how the couple is presenting themselves.Their way of cooperation feels not ingrained in "following your dreams", but just in working with the natural elements and talents that are there, and bring them together in feeling being a part of a collective. On the outside it may look the same, but they sell well because they taped into this need by American readers, to feel this different kind of storytelling approach, since they live it themselves. Not "shaping the reality of the business to their will".
I remember whenever I went to my elementary school library, I would always see Bone there and I'd always crack it open, but I was a very anxious kid and the art unnerved me so I never read it. I am now a grown man and I realize I need to pick this up and read it, it looks amazing.
I'm a creator of kids graphic novels and in my experience it is so much easier to recommend a book that is a self contained story, it just starts at Issue 1. If I wanna recommend a spiderman or batman, I don't even know which timeline to recommend or how many other books they'd need to read first to understand who all the characters are. Even whenever marvel or dc introduces new characters, a few issues in they always get tangled up in massive events or face villains with so much lore you need to have Wikipedia open while reading. I recently got into dragonball and I just read issue 1 onwards and was never lost and it's all very accessible. With my own books I can just hand them the first volume and they don't need any other info. Heck they could even get volumes 2 or 3 and follow pretty easily.
Great video BTW!
The reason why I think Marvel and DC can't sell what they used to is a couple of things:
1) A lot of times reading Marvel and DC, you aren't exactly reading characters, rather they are reading living IPs. Characters can't change too drastically because there is too much-vested interest in the characters at the corporate level. No matter the story everything will snap back on itself eventually.
2) No strong means of exposure. The problem with single issues these days is that they are pretty much exclusive to comic book stores. The problem is that anyone going to a comic book store is already committed, they already want to be there. With the DC and Marvel having pulled out of the spinner rack newsstand market it means that no one will encounter single issues by happenstance as an impulse purchase. I know a lot of people who understood the newsstand market will tell you that it was an awful deal because unsold inventory could be returned to the publisher, but if anything that should just be motivation to sell your books, it's a non-issue if you sell your books. So you end up sacrificing potential accidental readers as well as turning the ship towards complacency.
3) Marvel and DC, even though they felt a lot of the hurt from the market bottoming out in '93, still keep trying to appeal to speculators who don't even read the material, too many variant covers, and they keep trying to make those single issues into collectibles rather than reading experiences.
4) Inconsistent creative teams tie-in events and the obsession with relaunching. This one kind of adds to the last point but They need to stop with the whole relaunch the title with a new number 1 every time the writer changes, it's so obnoxious too because you know its because the 1st issue always has a bump in sales but the sales graph is still charting downward, its just they get a little spike every time a new number one comes out because and then the decline continues because I guess they aren't interested in consistent long-term growth. Cross-overs and tie-ins make reading experiences confusing as hell and are more alienating, also too many cooks in the kitchen most the time with those.
5) Keeping the seminal stuff in print. This is more a dig at Marvel because DC at least has an evergreen list, much to Alan Moore's chagrin, but Marvel has this problem where they don't keep their collected editions in print, not even their seminal stories. Not only do they not keep their stuff in print, but anytime they produce anything, they underproduce. From what I understand the reason is that the guy who makes the decision to print x amount of copies was at Marvel when the market collapsed and all their inventory became worthless, so he is scared of having a surplus of inventory at the warehouse, which is why Marvel under-produces. Except that Marvel is owned by Disney so inventory holding costs really shouldn't be an issue at all. A large reason why Manga and Scholastic have taken the Graphic Novel market is that they know how to keep stuff in print, Bone is always in print, Berserk, Dragon Ball, One Piece, all these massive series that in some cases are 40-something volumes long or more are always available at all times, yeah occasionally stuff stocks out but then it goes right back to press. Meanwhile, Marvel can't even keep Frank Miller Daredevil complete collections 1-3 in print even though name recognition would ensure that it would always sell, or they only keep volume 1 in print, because they sell more, but if they hook someone with that volume one they don't have the rest of them in print so that that new reader could get the rest of them, which would then push that reader away, and towards a publisher like Viz who knows how to keep things in print.
To be fair I did think about this earlier today in how the Marvel and DC characters are (for better or worse) owned by corporate entities and who’s quality is largely based on whichever artist or writers been given the loan to use them for such and such run. Most Consumers these days seem to get their understanding of the characters like Spider-Man for instance more from adaptions rather than the source which also raises the question wether they could survive without the comics at all.
Commentnfor the algorithm because this is completely right. In fact, if Marval and DC could do one thing, it would be focusing on One-Shots, Episodic issues and Mini-series.
Namely, stories that end. Then have a canonical continuity on the side.
In my opinion, the biggest issue by far with Marvel and DC is their insistence on a shared universe.
You can’t do nearly as much as a creative if you can’t shape the world you’re writing in. It’s inherently harder for a newer character to stick when everyone knows the biggest names will take charge when it really counts.
One of their most successful new characters, Kamala Khan, gets fridged for a random Spider-Man comic storyline. Because, as long as Spider-Man exists, newer characters will have to take a backseat to his story.
And Spider-Man’s story is tired. Because what these shared universes lead to is tired, decades long soap operas where people realize nothing can really change.
People liked Invincible because not having it tied to a larger series gave the creator way more freedom.
Frankly, Marvel and DC faltering is an extremely good thing for the industry. Imagine if every new manga needed to share the same universe as Goku or Luffy. They’d be terrible
It’s almost funny how much the west has clinged so tightly to this shared universe concept when it’s done near irreparable damage to their existence. The shared universe originally just existed for silly crossovers as a marketing gimmick, and that’s how it should have stayed
This is a great comment. And I agree with Matt's point that the passion of indie comics is very hard for the big IPs to match
@@DerrickWilson-fm7vc It's a great point that any new character in the DC / Marvel universe has to compete with all of the established, decades- old characters who always need to have comics in print. Since the market isn't infinite, newer characters are more likely to get pushed aside in favor of the established ones. It also risks fossilizing those established characters since there's no risk that they will go out of print.
0:50 "a publisher that didn't even exist 20 years ago" - totally misleading. The publisher is Scholastic, which is more than 100 years old. It is Scholastic Graphix, which is their graphic novel imprint that started in 2005.
Im curious sematically if an imprint counts as a totally seperate publisher. But this rhetorical trickery is what hooks people (i know i was hooked) ngl though i think this video underplays how much of a behemoth scholastic is which i get is a totally different very long video idea but still.
On a legal standpoint it doesn't matter, legally imprints of an original company are treated as their own publishing brand despite being part of the greater business of a publishing front. It's kind of misleading, but it's a case of "kinda wrong, kinda right" not completely misleading.
Mattt you should really do a video on some French comics like Asterix and Obelix, Tintin, Gaston or Game Over! I think these comics are as much as deserving of their own videos as Bone or Teenage mutant ninja turtles. Also I’d like to learn the history and background behind them.
I'd love to see matttt's high-quality vids of European Comics!
The funny thing is that only Asterix is French, the rest is from that list are Belgian artists from the French speaking part of the country. A small country with a big comic book history.
Yep, we definitely need a video on Astérix!
Yes! And don’t forget others mega hits like Blake and Mortimer and Spirou!
@@tremorstudio9766 Blake&Mortimer is well available in English(through Cinebook) so there'd be plenty reference books. However Spirou in English is another story. Only a handful of stories have been translated(also through Cinebook) with a questionable logic.
I read Bone back in 2012. A classmate of mine was super into the series and would talk about it all the time.
I never bought any of the volumes, but I did get vol 7 for free. I still have it to this day.
This channel is the greatest thing on RUclips. Thank you for all your hard work you put into these videos.
This is so similar to the Elfquest story, right down to one partner supporting the other in creating their art, and eventually running the publishing side to free up the creative to focus on the art side.
Mattt, i just want to say as an avid college student with an affinity for pop culture with aspirations to create and design stories, your channel is utterly engaging and inspiring, keep up the amazing work
I just want to say that you’re having an impact on the industry yourself. 50yo, I hadn’t read comics since I was a teenager but every video of yours I watch introduces me to something new, and more importantly, I have purchased those books.
It's endlessly fascinating to me how much your choice of partner can make or break your dreams
Love your videos. This is like investigative journalism but for comics. Amazing job.
I remember jumping into Bone from almost the very beginning back in the 90’s. As an aspiring writer and artist, it was hugely inspiring to see such a perfectly crafted and drawn indie series do so well, and it really helped me take the plunge myself. It was also personally gratifying to see humor and FUN on the shelves amid all the “dark and gritty” of the day.
I’ve met both Jeff and Vijaya over the years on a couple occasions at conventions and store signings and it’s always been such a huge pleasure. I don’t think I ever expressed to Jeff just how much Bone inspired me to want to be a good storyteller myself. But then I’m sure he gets that all the time!
And it’s great to hear Vijaya given so much attention. I consider myself extremely lucky to also have a very supportive partner who has believed in my comic’s potential even on days that I don’t. That kind of love and support has been vital.
brother. watched this full. every writer, every artist, whatever medium they work on, should know this story. youre a great storyteller too my man, loved every second of this
What a great story! As a librarian who wrote webcomics for seven years, I loved hearing this.
RUclips recomended me this. Bought Bone the same day. Its amazing! its style is something that i would consider childlish couple of years ago, but its really, really good.
Bone is such a generational book. My dad loved bone, my older brother and cousins, hell, onetime when I was in the 6th grade I was sent down to the principals office and he had 3 copies on his desk
I just want to end the year thanking you, Matt. I’m a young adult who spent his teenage years engrossed in comic book movies, and while those films did encourage me to explore the world of western comics, their influence wasn’t nearly as strong as yours. Videos like this show that American comics are more than just superhero time wasters. They’re an art form, an art form that has far more influence on pop culture than I initially realized. I can’t wait to see what comics you’ll introduce to me in the coming year. Keep up the excellent work.
Your videos have made me want to get into comics from an artistic standpoint in the same way I look at great anime animation studios making creative art!
I remember that fateful day when i read Bone. I was in elementary school in the deepest corner of the library, and decided to pick it up. I became obsessed, I read every issue available to me and then moved on the amulet. I will forever think of those two series extremly highly and I am so grateful that Bone was the series that got me into graphic novels as it pushed me into making art! Now im a sophmore in college for graphic design and I hope to self publish my own graphic novel one day. Thank you Jeff!!
I'm a Brazilian independent comic artist, and watching your videos about these great artists of the industry always inspire me to follow my dreams and keep going! Thanks Mattt!
One of the best comic channels. Keep up the good work. Desperately waiting for the inevitable Tezuka video.
I have a cool Jeff Smith story: It must have been '93 or '94 so I would have been 13 or 14. I had asked my Mom for several Bone TPBs for Christmas as I was behind on issues and they were kind of hard to find individually. Come Christmas I was super happy to get a bunch of Bone reading material, but there was only one problem: several of the pages in one book were printed out of order, making the story confusing, if not impossible, to follow.
So, my Mom called the number in the back of the book listed for customer inquires. She spoke to them briefly and then handed the phone to me. There was a pause on the line as the call was being transferred and after a moment a voice came on and said "Hi, this is Jeff Smith." My jaw just about hit the floor.
He was so nice and wanted me to explain exactly what the problem was. I told him, and after a brief chat and taking down my address and promised to send me out some replacements. True to his word in a few weeks they arrived and all was good. I still joke with my Mom that not only did she get me the Bone collections I wanted, but also a chat with Jeff himself!
Your channel continues to produce (by a pretty healthy margin) the highest quality and most in-depth videos on the medium of comics I’ve ever had the pleasure of watching. Few creators are able to so effortlessly weave a creator’s personal history and analysis of the composition of their works together in such an interesting way. From someone who loved Bone as a kid keep on hitting it out of the park.
This channel is a real gem for comic book fans. Just amazing content across the board.
I discovered Bone in old Disney Adventure magazine at the grocery store checkout as a kid and instantly fell in love. It’s still not just one of my favorite comics of all time but one of my favorite books of all time. It’s a modern classic. Thank you for doing this video.
Your videos are excellent, so well put together! I worked in a bookstore in the 90s and read all the comics on the rack, Archie through X-men. I had random comics from yard sales or bargain bins and rarely knew the beginning or end of a story arc but I always enjoyed the art and storytelling. It's really cool to see these deep dives into topics like Liefeld or Bone and learn so much about an awesome era in comics. Thanks for celebrating these artists.
People love self-contained stories. They want an Ending. And they also want broad range of appeals. That's what drives manga sales, that's what drives indie comic sales, that's what keeps Image Comics going, and that's what happened here with Scholastic and Bone. Not everyone wants superhero soap opera (though when they're good, they are very good). Manga and indie comics have that huge range where everyone can find something they enjoy. A series with an ending planned from the start is always going to be more satisfying to a reader than a series that repeats itself because they can't afford to stop the cycle and don't want to risk not being able to make another hit.
Wars were fought in my elementary school trying to get the next bone volume in our school library 😭 fucking love this series
Same here, man! All the boys in my class loved Bone
I knew the overall story of bone but hearing it directly from creators and people involved hits closer to heart. Its truly incredible how the Bone came to be and its legacy. Thank you for your incredible work 💐
Darwyn Cooke explained it best. He said that in the 1980's, Marvel and DC decided to shift from comics for kids to comics predominantly for adults. He said that superheroes stopped being what kids looked up to as a result. The reason, 'The Big 2' can't sell their graphic novels to kids in because, A. they haven't pushed much content towards that audience. B. let's face it, most of the content both publishers have created in the last decade or so... has sucked. Plain and simple.
I think it's also hard for them to market for kids or event teens, and not feel constricted because of limitations that age puts on what you can and can't show. Even if official age ratings are not so strict now, culturally it's hard to justify all ages or teen rating if you want to show some graphic materials or touch on controversial and hard themes. I don't read a lot of american comics, but I always felt that there is a clear line between adult and kids stuff in other forms of entertainment. But in something like manga lines are more blurred. Sure, there are clearly comics for kids with nothing graphic or serious, but then you have shōnen manga that is targeted on 10-12 years old kids as a lower limit. It's quite low to call it comics for children, but man, they don't mess around. Tragic and violent deaths, genocides, even occasional nudity, smoking, drinking, swearing. I still don't know how the heck One Piece is rated for 12+ in US, which makes me think that age restriction is kinda loose now, but big publishers seem hestitating on marketing their works towards younger audiences
@@NazgNurglych That's because in American culture, we don't give children enough credit. They're far more savvy than we might think. You don't HAVE to show controversial or graphic material for them to understand what is being talked about. That's my belief anyways. But in the case of superhero stories, I feel they should be accessible to adults AND children. Adults should feel the imagination and excitement of children watching or reading them and children should feel inspired to be the best adults they can be from them.
I ran a comic store in San Diego from 91 to 04, and Bone played a massive role in our journey :D I did have to fight with the boss about reordering the indies and black and white books, even the manga at our stores, before he would let me get things on the shelves. I would go to the SDCC to pick up lots of demo books to hang up in the store, and nudge people to order them. The same time that there were brilliant indie books, we were losing mainstream buying hand over fist. (the biggest one was Wonder Woman when Byrne took over, which was an unmitigated disaster for us going from 70 to 3 copies sold in 3 months...) I'm a bit disappointed that I left the industry in 04 since this seems to be where our story here takes up!
I do have art by Jeff and still have such a big place in my heart for Bone. The unique story and how it was told, and its success.
When I was a kid, I read Pogo from start to finish via old newspaper microfilm at the library.
As a dude that’s done mostly indie comics for the past 2 decades, this video was hugely inspirational. Thank you!
I’m a children’s librarian and one of my favorite things about my job is advocating for comics. And kids love them- they’ve got big circulation numbers. I always order some Marvel and DC for the collections when I get the chance to order graphic novels because they’re still my favorite. They don’t circulate like Dog Man or Heartstopper but I still like that they’re there so I can recommend them when I get the chance.
Feels like I wanna say this after every video you make but…this is one of my favorite videos regarding comics I’ve seen! Truly love the storytelling and emotion you’re able to put into these videos. The fact that you not only cover well known books, but also shine light onto books that someone who is just getting into indie comics / the history of comics might not know makes me appreciate the channel even more.
My favorite channel releases another awesome video! I’ve heard of Bone but didn’t know anything about it. Definitely gonna have to read it now
I’m a librarian and a big comic reader; I’ve got a weekly pull box at my local shop. I’m constantly trying to get affordable hardcover collections of superhero stuff for a 11-13 year old audience, and it’s shocking how little Marvel/DC offer. They still don’t seem to get that certain sexual/violent content makes it impossible for us to get their books into kids hands. But Scholastic figured it out and now has a whole generation connected to their books.
“Instead of letting the reality of the industry warp his dream, his dream warp the reality of the industry around itself” is actually a line that goes hard.
Great video, btw💛🦴.
I think not only tolkiens stories but their rankin/bass animated adaptations had a real influence on Jeff’s figures
This is my favorite comics youtube channel. It's always worth the wait.
I'm 41, and was always aware of Bone, but it wasn't until Scholastic that I finally found copies for myself. What a great success story. I see them everywhere now, so many kids and adults have enjoyed the series.
As one of the small press that got wiped out in the mid-90s, I need to chime-in that as much as the speculator bubble was warping the market, the real cause of the crash was Marvel. In '94 they decided to become their own distributor and retain most of the profit. They pulled their books from all other distributors, meaning everyone suddenly lost 40-60% of their market. DC and Image struck exclusive deals with Diamond which was the death knell for Capital (the other big comics dist. in the US) and all the regional distributors. The cost of being a comics retailer jumped because books for most retailers now had to be shipped in vs picked up in person and we went from about 9,000 retailers across North America down to under 3,000 in just a couple of years. My book launched the month Marvelution began and so things started rough and just got worse. Never made it to its first collection. Still - managed to push out 11 issues in a real tough market.
I love your video essays! Learning about people like Jeff Smith has inspired me to pick up my pencil and once again pursue my dream in creating my own comic book. I only hope my work can be HALF as good “Bone”.
The 80s in comics will never happen again. It was an epic time to be alive. Fair cover price. Before Hollywood corporatization and Image. Peak super hero but sophisticated suspense. Comics were our screens.
I agree. And, talking specifically about Marvel now, I believe a lot of the credit should go to Jim Shooter. Plenty of people who worked for him like to complain about the experience, and it's certainly possible that he's very unpleasant to have as a boss...but even if he was a grade A A-hole, you can't argue with results. The 70s were before my time, but as I understand it, Marvel wasn't enjoying the same success in much of the 70s as it had in the 60s. That changed after Shooter took over, and it continued until he was let go. That's not to imply that Marvel immediately collapsed after Tom DeFalco took over as EIC. But it wasn't too many years later, and I do kind of wonder if the same thing would have happened had Shooter been kept on.
@@Trustme77Both Jim Shooter and Stan Lee were the comic book industry’s Steve Jobs (for better and for worse). . .
same with the 90s, it's crazy to think of a time where a freaking Turok comic could sell over a million copies.
It's not an overstatement to say that Bone changed my life forever. I read it once a year since I discovered it, and it's in part guilty of my career in art.
50% of Art School's purpose is to give artists something to rebel against.
I’m a 2005 CCAD grad who went to a Jeff Smith guest lecture during my time there. Got a signed copy of Bone at the end. It’s a very fond memory of mine!
matt!!!! love your videos and this was fantastic as always!! two things for you, one a suggestion and one a request: PLEASE read paranatural!! as a fellow comic lover i am CERTAIN you will fall in love with it. it’s a webcomic that i’ve been reading since middle school and it’s SO great and so funny. next, have you ever thought about making videos about emanata? i’d love to see you talk about it, even if it seems hard to structure into a video i guess. thanks for the great comic history as always!!!!!! this is one of my favorite channels and ive recommended it to all of my comic friends a hundred times
I'm from Ontario and Prisoners of Gravity was a life changing show for me. As a teenager hearing about comics, sci-fi and fantasy discussed in the same manner you would hear 'regular' books discussed was amazing. Seeing interviews with the likes of Gaiman, Sienkiewicz, Miller and so many others.... the best!
Yeah...but what was with that nausea inducing pseudo-cinema verite camera work? It was a infection that music television spread to other media. Thankfully that era is over. And especially thanks that it hasn't spread to RUclips uploaders like this excellent documentarian.
@@drmodestoesq Are we talking about the same show? It was a pretty fixed camera with a talking head style show full of interviews. Low budget, yes, but it's TVO so....
@@merk638 Hey....you're right. I just watched a few grainy clips that were uploaded to RUclips.
I absolutely retract that accusation. And apologize. I must have been thinking about MuchMusic. Definitely the films of Lars Von Trier.
@@drmodestoesq all good buddy. Cheers.
@@merk638 I just read the Wiki on the show. It turns out it hasn't been re-released due to the usual reasons....copyright limbo. There's a whopping 139 episodes.
Well, hopefully someone is going to do the metaphorical legwork...and try to get it uploaded into cyberspace. Oh....cyberspace....I just remembered that William Gibson was a frequent guest.
Great vid, matttt. I stopped buying comics in the late 80's when I realised that I didn't know who half the current characters were in XMen or a number of other Marvel titles I was buying (and I was spending about $80 a month). DC was more consistent but harder to get, here in New Zealand, but they lost the plot for me when they started redesigning the DC multiverse. It seemed like change for change's sake and the nature of the Big 2's work, for episodic story-telling that lurches from issue to issue, means that they're really soap operas rather than stories and the best you can hope for is a trade collection of issues. That's not a novel. Bone is a novel - a looooong novel - but reading it, you know that Jeff KNEW where it was going to end before he drew the first page. DC and Marvel don't make novels (Death of Captain Marvel excepted and that was more an expanded issue than a novel). They want you buying the next issue to see what happens, which is very different from writing a story, no matter how similar the techniques may be. It's just product for them, with multiple crossovers so that you have to buy more titles if you want the full story.
And then there's the corporate mindset of Marvel and DC, where profits to the shareholders matter more than the delivery to the readers. So you get variant covers, new universes with the same heroes (I mean, Absolute DC is just copying the Marvel Ultimate Universe) and Elseworlds and 1602 and the like, without actually changing the episodic nature to convey a full story. And every new writer wants to reimagine the character, often removing them totally from their backstory and destroying the continuity. Fans in earlier years *existed* for the continuity. If you look at 60's and 70's LoC pages, more than half the letters were questioning how such and such could have happened in ish 191 when it was already stated in ish 14 that so and so was really responsible. The eternal retconning has driven many readers away. The writers and publishers want to create more product but fewer people want to read it, so they have to make it bigger and gaudier and hype the crap out of it, but the stories don't live up to the sales pitch.
I read Bone from the local library, which started with a small graphic novel section that has since grown immense. I also found more recent DC and Marvel trades there, but the true gold is the independents that cover heroes and children, puberty and old age and everything in between. Stories. Novels. That's what people want to read, IMHO.
30:48 is so powerful
It really is. Bone comics along with Scholastics entire catalog are easily outselling Marvel & DC with the greatest of ease! Tim got the ultimate win. Even the school that rejected him have to accept his success. Great stuff. It's sad. They used to be focused on telling good stories. Now all they wanna do is push an agenda and put out crap that doesn't make sense to the characters or the legacy of these companies. They'd rather hang a nuice on themselves & these companies than put out good stories that respects these characters.
This wasn't at all what I thought it would be when I clicked the Start button but it is so much more inspirational than I could have hoped that I just wanted to say two words. Thank you.
This was an amazing story! I was one of those who discovered Bone when it first came out and I am so impressed with his storytelling!