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".
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
30:20 this is exactly why I never got into American comics. But I do buy full graphic novels like The Watchmen, Killing Joke, Dark Knight Returns, Batman Year One, etc
On a side note DC made a lot of animated adaptations of their most famous stories like Under the Red Hood which helps promote them. DC understands their audience a lot better than Marvel does. With the MCU not being the same juggernaut it was in the 2010s Marvel is going to have to cater to their comic fans more.
“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💛🦴.
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
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.
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!
It’s pretty refreshing to find out the industry is actually doing better than things would appear at first glance. I picked up Bone because I was going to be living out of town for work. This graphic novel and a feature at the time on the PlayStation Portable called Digital Comics (my main read had been Marvel Civil War) were my main sources of entertainment in an incredibly small town.
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.
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!
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.
In 4th grade I remember my best friend, who i still keep in touch with, showed me Bone volume 4 and even without context I still read the whole thing in one night and loved it. I soon found the rest in our school library and checked out them all (up until vol. 5 which is all they had)
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.
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".
I don't mince words, but the original boom in sales in the late 80s to 90s? That was a prototype of the NFT hype market, this is the same thing with the 2008 housing crash, just inflate the value/ratings to make it seem valuable and the end result is to just grift money. The comics were being sold to people that cared about about making an artificial scarcity, antiquing comics to make cash like the supposed idea of the NFT flow before Dan Olson killed it.
I got Bone #1 first printing. I got lucky as a bunch of comics I usually buy were sold out to speculators, so I had to buy something that day. Lo and be hold there was the Bone #1 cover staring at me. That was a great day. 👍
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 having have this characteristic that make the reading expierence much more engaging. Might be one of the factors that keeps manga an industry successful over comic books.
Amazing storytelling and I'm so glad you were able to interview Jeff and Vijaya. I'm glad to hear that people indeed do want more comics controlled fully by creatives.
8:49 Prisoners of Gravity! It only lasted one season, but it was a brilliant show! It was a show about science fiction and fantasy hosted by Rick Green, formerly of comedy group The Frantics, and most famous for playing Bill Smith on the Red Green Show. He also directed what I think is The Red Green Show's golden period (season 3 until the departure of Patrick McKenna).
I stumbled across the first volume of Bone in one of my classroom's bookshelf in primary school. Though I didn't have much literary awareness yet, it really hooked me! Cartoony characters in a crazy dark fantasy epic? Mindblowing for my little brain! Actually lead to me asking my parents for a library card so I could read more of it (as well as Harry Potter and the other Bone series of the Charlie kind). Also enjoyed the game adaptation way back after I saw a relative playing it. Thanks for doing a video on it, and here's to a new year of your fantastic content!
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 not only 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 its ultimately that Marvel and DC provides really bad value for money. I could spend $20 on a TPB of 200 pages or I could spend half of that for a manga pocket. The manga pocket will also have a self contained story that I know will end some day and won't have tie ins to events or characters I don't care about. Lastly, and this varies a bit depending on what you read, but modern superhero comics are laid out in such a way that you can blaze through a TPB in 15 minutes. A manga pocket effectivises its panels and text to the point some of them can take an entire hour to read.
Matttt these videos are so great! I love Bone! Bought my first one (german translation) in 94 and collected until the last one came out. It's so great to learn about the context of a thing so close to your heart, even after all that time. Thanks!! p.s. If you need inspiration for future videos here a whishlist: - Dupuis, Franco-belge Comics and their decision to follow storylines driven by whit and creativity rather than violence (Spirou & Fantasio, Gaston, Marsupilami etc.) as a contrast to the then very prominent western comics at the time. (saw this in a documentary and it was a light bulb moment. cant find it though...). Maybe this can also be linked to André Franquin (turned 100 this year). - Katsuhiro Otomo, Progression from Legend of mother Sarah over Domu to Akira. (Why was Legend of mother Sarah never finished?) - Some other Artists I would love to know more about: Louis Trondheim, Regis Loisel, Massimiliano Frezatto (died just this october).
I remember I once when i was 8 I brought a copy of bone at a goodwill, and the story has stuck with me so much that I can remember the story by memory 10 years later
I don't know about DC, but Marvel comics seems to always be a day late and a dollar short . After the first Avengers movie I had a few people ask me how to get into reading Avengers. I just assumed there would be some sort of graphic novel that summed up the Avengers and key issues to get you onboard. Nope, nothing like that. The comics side is always too wrapped up in whatever nonsense they have going on right now to expand their fanbase.
I found bone and amulet through scholastic like 15 years ago. What a baller move on their part. I loved Bone, and reread it every year of elementary school. Another great video too👍
I think DC and Marvel comics are just harder to get into than Manga or something like Bones. There tends to be too much history and attachment to previous runs. Anytime there is a new run, whatever it does will be compared to what was done before by the last authors - which leads to the new potential reader getting 4 different answers of what the best run of X character is to read - all with very vocal critics and defenders. On the otherhand, Manga and series like Bones just tend to be linear. Where do I start? Volume 1. Its just easier and not as daunting.
Been loving all your videos recently, as someone who had only ever read a few graphic novels as a kid, I had no idea there was so many unique and wonderful stories to be told about comics. Hope to see more videos in the future! side note: I was quite happy to hear Amulet mentioned, as it was one of the few graphic novels I read and was a huge fan of
Growing up, my brothers and I loved reading Bone. Read every book I could get my hands on and bought Quest For the Spark book one with my lunch money via the scholastic book fair as a kid. I hope that one day I can meet him, and that one day someone can make a video like this about me in the far far future as an aspiring creator myself. Love your videos Matt, they're always so informative and you can feel the passion in your content. Thank you for a whole year of amazing content.
I remember an interview with Paul Pope on Cartoonist Kayfabe where Pope recounts Smith as the pinnacle of indie success. The real insight to this story (and a recurring theme in all of your videos) is not just people taking a chance on their dreams but never giving up despite their circumstances. Showing up day after day despite setback after setback is what real success looks like and that’s hella inspiring
The only annoying part here is that I have to wait for my friends to watch it tonight. We're all comic book fans, so every time you release a video, we try to watch it together
Love this video! Bone has always been a love of mine since I stumbled upon it at my LCS back in the day. I actually just completed my collection of all 1st print issues. It’s my most prized part of my comic collection. So happy Jeff and his wife stuck with it over the years and so happy for their success. Thanks for a great video!
I started reading manga as a kid because there's no clear starting point for American comics and generally speaking I didn't find them to be as engaging or visceral.
When I dropped Marvel almost cold turkey in the mid-90’s (I kept collecting Silver Surfers but all of the X-titles and annuals and covers and collabs just wore me out) one of the few other titles I kept on with was Bone. Such a great title. I didn’t stop collecting comics in general tho, I just steered into manga due to Ranma 1/2. And this was the heyday of single-issue floppies for manga, and introduced me to Viz and Dark Horse and looking at all of the other publishers outside of Marvel and DC. (Tho I had never really collected DC anyway.) I’d give Image and Valiant a try as well during their heydays, but manga is the only thing that stuck and never left.
Interesting to hear a Moebius mention, so soon after the Nausicaä vid. Certainly his art is fascinating, and he needs a deep dive for sure. It would be interesting to trace out all the tendrils of his influence. It’s Moeb’in time!
I've been following you since your first video. I thought it was great back then, but somehow you manage to improve with each video. Thank you for your work, I learned so much, and it reignited my love for the media.
Bone was the first non-superhero comic I’d ever seen, the first comic I’d read consistently, and one of the most important forces in pushing me to fall in love with not just comics but literature in general. I was in elementary school as the color rereleases were coming out, they had at least a full shelf of the first volume, but only a handful of the rest. They were the most popular books at my schools library, after the first few volumes I couldn’t wait for my spot in the queue, so Bone pushed me to go my towns library for the first time. Not only did I find the whole series available to borrow, but I realized that actual libraries were a lot bigger than the one at school. It was almost overwhelming, I remember excitedly telling my friends that the “real” library had every book ever written, because I couldn’t imagine it possible for there to be more than what filled the two stories of that small local library. Throughout the rest of elementary, and more so during middle school, I would essentially live at that library, and this fervent love only began when it did because I read Bone.
Self contained comic book stories are easily accessible. You can have themed series like goosebumps where people are familiar with the general vibe but not giant soap operas or never ending stories. Marvel and DC sometimes don't even listen to their fans . This is what hurts them.
Another phenomenal video, these are easily the best comic videos on TH-cam! I especially agree with the point about the American comics industry near the end, as someone who went from reading stuff like Bone and Amulet to mostly manga as I got older. I would love to see a video on Amulet, since that was a favorite of mine as a kid. Keep up the great work!
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.
man, why are your videos always so emotional to me? make me all sad and happy and melancholic. is it just me? great video as always, maybe i reread bone now.
Showed up for a video about Bone and ended up having the state of the comics industry recontextualized for me in a way that makes everything we have observed over these past few years make sense, hats off bro
I remember when I first saw the first bit of Bone in some digest of comics when I was 10 or 11 years old. I found Bone at a comic shop after that and it became my lifelong favorite comic series. Nothing since has ever come close to capturing my attention like Bone did. I still have the two Christmas cards Jeff sent to me (and all subscribers) as he self-published.
If BONE is selling more than DC and Marvel and is a non-manga ed, evidently the two powerhouses has so much to do if they want to recover. And is surpising seeing many denials in many channels saying DC and Marvel are fine, they are selling more, like they were paided or bought to say stuff like that.
I think Marvel and DC are struggling with graphic novels because the access is challenged. DC's Compact Edition sold really well, or at least we were told that, because the price point is low, and are available all over the place. Marvel, I believe, is catching up to DC, but the issue of accessibility still exists. You have to be comfortable with researching comics, how they're numbered, and what runs lead into each other, etc.
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.
God bless his wife cuz omg it's sooooo hard for an artist to find an understanding mate to help. When it comes to Marvel/DC ...in all honesty those 2 companies are dying and will be a thing of the pass.
25:05 Putting the sound of a propeller on a picture of a jet engine is a classic Zucker Brothers trope. If that was the intention, I salute you, sir, as a man of impeccable taste 👌
I love Bone, and when you mention time it really enforces why I prefer the black and white version, somehow when you add color it always slows things down for me. I know the colorist did a good job breaking things up and keeping the integrity of the story telling but for me it still slows down the pace too much for me.
Our (my) interest is video games. This showed up in my feed. It almost brought a tear to my eye. It was so educational. I had no idea any of this happened. My last real look at comics and comic market conditions was in the 90's. Thank you for the exposé. I am so gratified to hear Jeff Smith's tale. And the revolution he has brought. Alan Moore, Frank Miller, and Steve Ditko are my favorites - J
The main reason Marvel and DC don't sell many graphic novel collections of their books is because they sell single issues. Once people read all the single issues then they know the story and since they wait months until they release a 6 issue run as a collected edition, most who wanted to read it have already read the single issues. Most of those collected books like Smile and so fourth only come out as collected editions.
Loved the video to bits, read Bones as a child growing up and I never stopped thinking about it. Hearing about how often it got pitched a show and cancelled just broke my heart. Btw, seeing calvin even for the briefest second makes me really want a full video on calvin and hobbes!
I picked up the first issue or two before losing track. It was after the collections came that I got fully on board. Then later the complete collection
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".
These are probably some of if not the most interesting comic book videos on TH-cam that I’ve seen. Great stuff.
Indeed😮
Be sure to hunt for the Bone full documentary
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
30:20 this is exactly why I never got into American comics. But I do buy full graphic novels like The Watchmen, Killing Joke, Dark Knight Returns, Batman Year One, etc
On a side note DC made a lot of animated adaptations of their most famous stories like Under the Red Hood which helps promote them. DC understands their audience a lot better than Marvel does. With the MCU not being the same juggernaut it was in the 2010s Marvel is going to have to cater to their comic fans more.
“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💛🦴.
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.
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
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.
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!
This is my favorite comics youtube channel. It's always worth the wait.
The consistent quality and production value from a channel with less than 300k subs is unreal. New favorite channel
It’s pretty refreshing to find out the industry is actually doing better than things would appear at first glance.
I picked up Bone because I was going to be living out of town for work. This graphic novel and a feature at the time on the PlayStation Portable called Digital Comics (my main read had been Marvel Civil War) were my main sources of entertainment in an incredibly small town.
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
Bone, to this day, is still the greatest graphic novel I've ever read.
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!
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.
In 4th grade I remember my best friend, who i still keep in touch with, showed me Bone volume 4 and even without context I still read the whole thing in one night and loved it. I soon found the rest in our school library and checked out them all (up until vol. 5 which is all they had)
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.
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".
I don't mince words, but the original boom in sales in the late 80s to 90s? That was a prototype of the NFT hype market, this is the same thing with the 2008 housing crash, just inflate the value/ratings to make it seem valuable and the end result is to just grift money. The comics were being sold to people that cared about about making an artificial scarcity, antiquing comics to make cash like the supposed idea of the NFT flow before Dan Olson killed it.
I got Bone #1 first printing. I got lucky as a bunch of comics I usually buy were sold out to speculators, so I had to buy something that day. Lo and be hold there was the Bone #1 cover staring at me. That was a great day. 👍
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 having have this characteristic that make the reading expierence much more engaging. Might be one of the factors that keeps manga an industry successful over comic books.
Amazing storytelling and I'm so glad you were able to interview Jeff and Vijaya. I'm glad to hear that people indeed do want more comics controlled fully by creatives.
Let this amazing video be the catalyst for the Bone animated series to get picked up.
This channel is a real gem for comic book fans. Just amazing content across the board.
That was honestly beautiful man
FINALLY SOMEONES TALKING ABOUT ONE OF MY FAVORITE GRAPHIC NOVELS
8:49 Prisoners of Gravity! It only lasted one season, but it was a brilliant show! It was a show about science fiction and fantasy hosted by Rick Green, formerly of comedy group The Frantics, and most famous for playing Bill Smith on the Red Green Show. He also directed what I think is The Red Green Show's golden period (season 3 until the departure of Patrick McKenna).
I stumbled across the first volume of Bone in one of my classroom's bookshelf in primary school. Though I didn't have much literary awareness yet, it really hooked me! Cartoony characters in a crazy dark fantasy epic? Mindblowing for my little brain! Actually lead to me asking my parents for a library card so I could read more of it (as well as Harry Potter and the other Bone series of the Charlie kind). Also enjoyed the game adaptation way back after I saw a relative playing it.
Thanks for doing a video on it, and here's to a new year of your fantastic content!
“Grow up or get out”
*Gets out.*
The editing, information, and presentation of your videos are s teir! Keep up the stellar work!
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 not only 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.
Not just great comic book chanel but brilliant chanell overall. Your way of presentation and research are some of the best on TH-cam
I really have no idea why bone isn’t bigger-everyone around my age seems to know of the character.
Also hello bearded matttt
This video gave me full body goosebumps I think you just changed my life.
I think its ultimately that Marvel and DC provides really bad value for money. I could spend $20 on a TPB of 200 pages or I could spend half of that for a manga pocket.
The manga pocket will also have a self contained story that I know will end some day and won't have tie ins to events or characters I don't care about.
Lastly, and this varies a bit depending on what you read, but modern superhero comics are laid out in such a way that you can blaze through a TPB in 15 minutes. A manga pocket effectivises its panels and text to the point some of them can take an entire hour to read.
Indeed😅
You got me to read Scott Pilgrim, now you got me to read Bone
Matttt these videos are so great! I love Bone! Bought my first one (german translation) in 94 and collected until the last one came out. It's so great to learn about the context of a thing so close to your heart, even after all that time. Thanks!!
p.s. If you need inspiration for future videos here a whishlist:
- Dupuis, Franco-belge Comics and their decision to follow storylines driven by whit and creativity rather than violence (Spirou & Fantasio, Gaston, Marsupilami etc.) as a contrast to the then very prominent western comics at the time. (saw this in a documentary and it was a light bulb moment. cant find it though...). Maybe this can also be linked to André Franquin (turned 100 this year).
- Katsuhiro Otomo, Progression from Legend of mother Sarah over Domu to Akira. (Why was Legend of mother Sarah never finished?)
- Some other Artists I would love to know more about: Louis Trondheim, Regis Loisel, Massimiliano Frezatto (died just this october).
Fantastic interviews. Great video. I highly recommend.
I remember I once when i was 8 I brought a copy of bone at a goodwill, and the story has stuck with me so much that I can remember the story by memory 10 years later
I don't know about DC, but Marvel comics seems to always be a day late and a dollar short . After the first Avengers movie I had a few people ask me how to get into reading Avengers. I just assumed there would be some sort of graphic novel that summed up the Avengers and key issues to get you onboard. Nope, nothing like that. The comics side is always too wrapped up in whatever nonsense they have going on right now to expand their fanbase.
Wars were fought in my elementary school trying to get the next bone volume in our school library 😭 fucking love this series
I found bone and amulet through scholastic like 15 years ago. What a baller move on their part. I loved Bone, and reread it every year of elementary school. Another great video too👍
I think DC and Marvel comics are just harder to get into than Manga or something like Bones. There tends to be too much history and attachment to previous runs. Anytime there is a new run, whatever it does will be compared to what was done before by the last authors - which leads to the new potential reader getting 4 different answers of what the best run of X character is to read - all with very vocal critics and defenders.
On the otherhand, Manga and series like Bones just tend to be linear. Where do I start? Volume 1. Its just easier and not as daunting.
I'm totally convinced that neither MARVEL nor DC has a single comic book fan on staff. Change my mind.
thaank you mattt once again for making such amazing piece of media!
The video I’ve been waiting for-thank you matttt 🤝
Been loving all your videos recently, as someone who had only ever read a few graphic novels as a kid, I had no idea there was so many unique and wonderful stories to be told about comics. Hope to see more videos in the future! side note: I was quite happy to hear Amulet mentioned, as it was one of the few graphic novels I read and was a huge fan of
Growing up, my brothers and I loved reading Bone. Read every book I could get my hands on and bought Quest For the Spark book one with my lunch money via the scholastic book fair as a kid. I hope that one day I can meet him, and that one day someone can make a video like this about me in the far far future as an aspiring creator myself.
Love your videos Matt, they're always so informative and you can feel the passion in your content. Thank you for a whole year of amazing content.
I remember an interview with Paul Pope on Cartoonist Kayfabe where Pope recounts Smith as the pinnacle of indie success.
The real insight to this story (and a recurring theme in all of your videos) is not just people taking a chance on their dreams but never giving up despite their circumstances.
Showing up day after day despite setback after setback is what real success looks like and that’s hella inspiring
The only annoying part here is that I have to wait for my friends to watch it tonight. We're all comic book fans, so every time you release a video, we try to watch it together
Man, your enthusiasm for the medium is so infectious!
one of my favourite channels, amazing videos
Love this video! Bone has always been a love of mine since I stumbled upon it at my LCS back in the day. I actually just completed my collection of all 1st print issues. It’s my most prized part of my comic collection. So happy Jeff and his wife stuck with it over the years and so happy for their success. Thanks for a great video!
Matttt, you're an inspiration
Amazing video, keep up the good work!
I started reading manga as a kid because there's no clear starting point for American comics and generally speaking I didn't find them to be as engaging or visceral.
I read bone in middle school, and in my 20s, im looking to read it again. It is fantastic.
What a beautyful essay ❤
Great job, as always Matttt. Thank You!
When I dropped Marvel almost cold turkey in the mid-90’s (I kept collecting Silver Surfers but all of the X-titles and annuals and covers and collabs just wore me out) one of the few other titles I kept on with was Bone. Such a great title.
I didn’t stop collecting comics in general tho, I just steered into manga due to Ranma 1/2. And this was the heyday of single-issue floppies for manga, and introduced me to Viz and Dark Horse and looking at all of the other publishers outside of Marvel and DC. (Tho I had never really collected DC anyway.)
I’d give Image and Valiant a try as well during their heydays, but manga is the only thing that stuck and never left.
Interesting to hear a Moebius mention, so soon after the Nausicaä vid. Certainly his art is fascinating, and he needs a deep dive for sure. It would be interesting to trace out all the tendrils of his influence.
It’s Moeb’in time!
I've been following you since your first video. I thought it was great back then, but somehow you manage to improve with each video. Thank you for your work, I learned so much, and it reignited my love for the media.
Love checking in every vid and seeing the quality get noticeably better. Love the content bro
Bone was the first non-superhero comic I’d ever seen, the first comic I’d read consistently, and one of the most important forces in pushing me to fall in love with not just comics but literature in general.
I was in elementary school as the color rereleases were coming out, they had at least a full shelf of the first volume, but only a handful of the rest. They were the most popular books at my schools library, after the first few volumes I couldn’t wait for my spot in the queue, so Bone pushed me to go my towns library for the first time. Not only did I find the whole series available to borrow, but I realized that actual libraries were a lot bigger than the one at school. It was almost overwhelming, I remember excitedly telling my friends that the “real” library had every book ever written, because I couldn’t imagine it possible for there to be more than what filled the two stories of that small local library. Throughout the rest of elementary, and more so during middle school, I would essentially live at that library, and this fervent love only began when it did because I read Bone.
Self contained comic book stories are easily accessible. You can have themed series like goosebumps where people are familiar with the general vibe but not giant soap operas or never ending stories. Marvel and DC sometimes don't even listen to their fans . This is what hurts them.
Another phenomenal video, these are easily the best comic videos on TH-cam! I especially agree with the point about the American comics industry near the end, as someone who went from reading stuff like Bone and Amulet to mostly manga as I got older. I would love to see a video on Amulet, since that was a favorite of mine as a kid. Keep up the great work!
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.
man, why are your videos always so emotional to me? make me all sad and happy and melancholic. is it just me?
great video as always, maybe i reread bone now.
I would really love a video going over in detail the reasons for comic sales decline. I think you would be the right person to do it.
Ohmygod, I have been waiting for you to cover Bone for so long this is amazing
Showed up for a video about Bone and ended up having the state of the comics industry recontextualized for me in a way that makes everything we have observed over these past few years make sense, hats off bro
I remember when I first saw the first bit of Bone in some digest of comics when I was 10 or 11 years old. I found Bone at a comic shop after that and it became my lifelong favorite comic series. Nothing since has ever come close to capturing my attention like Bone did. I still have the two Christmas cards Jeff sent to me (and all subscribers) as he self-published.
Exceptionally well made video! Congrats!
Dude your videos are awesome!! Love the way you tell the stories and the clear passion you have for comics. keep it up!!
If BONE is selling more than DC and Marvel and is a non-manga ed, evidently the two powerhouses has so much to do if they want to recover. And is surpising seeing many denials in many channels saying DC and Marvel are fine, they are selling more, like they were paided or bought to say stuff like that.
Lets go, I woke up early for somereason and it must have been the world telling me "a new matttt video is up bro" lol
"every bit as legitimate as a newspaper cartoonist" is also a good description of frank miller in the 2020s, ironically.
I think Marvel and DC are struggling with graphic novels because the access is challenged. DC's Compact Edition sold really well, or at least we were told that, because the price point is low, and are available all over the place. Marvel, I believe, is catching up to DC, but the issue of accessibility still exists. You have to be comfortable with researching comics, how they're numbered, and what runs lead into each other, etc.
new matttt video !!!
and i just got my new bong this is a perfect Saturday morning
honestly would love a Dave pilkey video, feel like his story would be perfect for the channel
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.
Are you gonna make dedicated Dav Pilkey and Raina Telgemeier episodes? If not, could you?
God bless his wife cuz omg it's sooooo hard for an artist to find an understanding mate to help. When it comes to Marvel/DC ...in all honesty those 2 companies are dying and will be a thing of the pass.
U should make a video about Watchman
25:05 Putting the sound of a propeller on a picture of a jet engine is a classic Zucker Brothers trope. If that was the intention, I salute you, sir, as a man of impeccable taste 👌
I love Bone, and when you mention time it really enforces why I prefer the black and white version, somehow when you add color it always slows things down for me. I know the colorist did a good job breaking things up and keeping the integrity of the story telling but for me it still slows down the pace too much for me.
Our (my) interest is video games. This showed up in my feed. It almost brought a tear to my eye. It was so educational. I had no idea any of this happened. My last real look at comics and comic market conditions was in the 90's. Thank you for the exposé. I am so gratified to hear Jeff Smith's tale. And the revolution he has brought. Alan Moore, Frank Miller, and Steve Ditko are my favorites - J
The main reason Marvel and DC don't sell many graphic novel collections of their books is because they sell single issues. Once people read all the single issues then they know the story and since they wait months until they release a 6 issue run as a collected edition, most who wanted to read it have already read the single issues. Most of those collected books like Smile and so fourth only come out as collected editions.
i love your channel
Loved the video to bits, read Bones as a child growing up and I never stopped thinking about it. Hearing about how often it got pitched a show and cancelled just broke my heart.
Btw, seeing calvin even for the briefest second makes me really want a full video on calvin and hobbes!
Bill Waterson is another Ohio legend!
GREAT as always ❤
I picked up the first issue or two before losing track. It was after the collections came that I got fully on board. Then later the complete collection
new video, nice to see
This was incredible! Thank you so much for making it.
So great to hear about the unsung hero(s) of the industry. Glad to see another happy ending for a creator.