The Comics Journal: Essays

My New Year's Eve as a Fly on the Wall
Bitter Vitriol Posing as Resolutions of All the Comics Publishers
By Eric Evans

In the year 2000, I resolve...

At Marvel:

Not, under any circumstances, to suck.
Not to drive away the few talented creators we have left.
To realize we can say "no" to a TV show or animation proposal that seems shoddy.

PLUS, Marvels' new CEO Peter Cuneo has a number of resolutions, among them...

To find out who the hell this punk Peter Parker is.
To find out why his staffers feel that comics should be marketed any differently than deodorant or dish soap.
To read this Dazzler all the kids are talking about.

At Dark Horse:

To better exploit every dead movie franchise with six or seven new Aliens/Predator crossover series and at least two Darth Maul books.
To get some of their decent books into supermarkets and Quik-E-Marts, even at the cost of that seventh Star Wars title.
To keep Mike Mignola fat with Hellboy merchandise so that he'll stay happy and productive no matter what.

At Eros:

At ABC:

To finish research on revolutionary "No Sleep" drug so Alan Moore can keep up this pace for another year.

At Drawn & Quarterly:

To publish a book or two this year (not counting calendars).
To really lean on our roster of genuinely talented creators to produce regularly (and by regularly I don't mean yearly).

At Wizard:

To occasionally feature an Alex Ross cover or two -- the kids seem to respond to his stuff.
To acknowledge the better alternative creators -- not! (Fratboy humor, y'know).

At Sequential Tart:

To wear tighter, more revealing clothes, even if no one can see them online.
To consider printing a yearbook on real paper that a guy can read on the toilet.

At CBG:

To move on to a new generation of creators -- we've milked this Carl Barks thing for all we could.
To try and produce one page of content for every three pages of ads.

At DC/Vertigo:

To take better advantage of all the potential of Golden-Age characters left untapped by clever Brits.
To re-think this whole "the title has run its course" thing we allowed with Neil Gaiman --if Siegel wins the lawsuit, we'll need every copyright, and title, we can get.
To milk that Bruce Timm cat dry.
To at least consider putting MAD Magazine out of its misery.

At Acclaim:

To try it again (with all the same crappy books that failed to click the first time around).

At Viz:

At Image:

To somehow gratify those Top Cow weasels enough that they won't break away completely.
To publish dozens upon dozens of weird, odd new comics, and actually support them for more than 3 issues to see if they stick.
To ask McFarlane to at least mention comics once while discussing his balls on ESPN.

At Radio Comix:

At Archie:

At ONI:

Two new Clerks spin-offs? The time is now!
To keep eyes peeled for signs of dissatisfaction on the part of Dark Horse's Mavericks.

At Slave Labor:

To find the next Evan Dorkin, and hope he's half as funny -- that whole goth thing didn't work out as well as hoped.

At Aardvark Vanaheim:

At Fantagraphics:

To somehow persuade/bribe Dan Clowes and Jim Woodring to produce more than one comic every year or two.
To get Measles into the hands of a reader under 20, and feature content that would appeal to that fictional reader.
To convince those apes at The Comics Journal to drop the whole mainstream-friendly thing they've been up to, and get back to raking muck and making enemies.