OS POSITIVOS

comércio em casta ( nho )

hum... esta página é antiga (2020): lê o disclaimer ou procura outra mais recente

e abrindo a arte dos segredos em quarentena

De segredos que não o são, onde a arte está doente ou não se recomendam proximidades, no resumo de duas entrevistas, dois festivais, dois editores, muitos lojistas e artistas: puro gold, se por amarelo esperam encontrar castanho, o tipo de merda que não sabes só de ler gente bruta 30 abr 2020. Simon Hanselmann, "entrevistado pelo boss" Gary Groth, Ilan Manouach, pequenas editoras, portas que se fecham, catálogos e autores? Senhores... Amanhã é sexta? Let's get this party started! Fanboys e haters 29 abr 2020 escolheram erradamente o rant de Gary Groth aos floppies da Marvel / DC como o de mais interessante na sua última entrevista no TCJ 28 abr 2020. Acrescentando achas à fogueira, não estamos acima de uma boa discussão acesa e surda...:

I would certainly not be unhappy if 95% of the periodicals vanished tomorrow.
in "Art In Quarantine: Gary Groth" 28 abr 2020

...mas zero novidades aqui, o próprio admite "I felt the same way 30 years ago so that’s nothing new". Mais dignos de nota à revolução em arte quadrada foram os comentários na digitalização da economia:

KS: What do you see for the future of the comic shop?
GG: Most of the comic shops are closed. So I assume what they’re doing is online business. They’re getting a little bit of cash in there, but that’s almost a zero sum gain. I don’t think there’s any real profit involved. I would not be surprised if 25% of the comic book stores go out of business.
in "Art In Quarantine: Gary Groth" 28 abr 2020

E com esse pensamento fresco em mente, os naysayers conseguiram uns segundos de validação antes do twist que lhes arrancou o sorriso da cara:

KS: How does Fantagraphics survive this?
GG: We are hoping to ramp up our own consumer sales. Which is the one thing we have the most control over. You’ll be seeing a brand new, completely redesigned website unfurled in about six weeks, with a much more serious outreach to consumers. So we’re hoping to increase our e-commerce substantially. We’re doing an awful lot of virtual marketing.
in "Art In Quarantine: Gary Groth" 28 abr 2020

Fim. Finito. Kaput. Bom fim-de-semana senhores. Mic drop — ...diria uma mente mesquinha. Hell no, há mais. Uma outra (terceira já? três!) pérola esperava-nos nesta entrevista. Algures GG diz-nos a propósito dos "best comic shop owners" e "indie bookstores as well":

The best comic shop owners tend to be social outliers.

These are people who are incredibly committed to the whole concept of books—books as an object of knowledge, wisdom and art and they’re devoted. It just so happens they express their devotion through commerce.
in "Art In Quarantine: Gary Groth" 28 abr 2020

Oh-sim-Jebus-sim!, uma editora a fantasiar das lojas que expressam o seu amor através do comércio. A nossa deixa, viramos mesas e seguimos de lojas a comentar mesmo amor que une editoras. Caso-em-ponta: a Nobrow, "imitators will abound" da Fantagraphics. No Fuck Up Some Comics do Austin Lanari o essencial das polémicas 29 abr 2020, do qual fazemos o nosso caso.

The news in question was not just one thing about Nobrow coming to light but an entire range of unacceptable business practices, including low rates, lack of payment, and a pattern of attempts to assert control over artists in terms of what other projects they took on for other publishers or events.
in "'Nobrow is old news': the Power Dynamic of Open Secrets" 29 abr 2020

O AL já marcou presença entre nós anteriormente a propósito do Ilan Manouach e sempre no tópico das "unacceptable business practices" do $$$ cruzado aos comics. No próprio dia de publicação da entrevista acima massacrava outra anterior no TCJ pelas razões que lhe conhecem à economia dos festivais:

Yesterday, TCJ published an interview with SPX festival director Warren Bernard, conducted by Michael O'Connell.
It was truly awful.
in "SPX is Waiting for Your Unemployment Check" 28 abr 2020

E nesse espírito, o docinho de hoje:

"Nobrow sucks"
We need to nip them on the bud before they get a foothold

The cherry on top of this burgeoning scandal was a bookseller tweeting a screenshot of an e-mail sent by Alexander Latsis (a.k.a. Alex Spiro), majority shareholder of Nobrow, to his co-founder and a couple of other people, in which he refers to creators as Nobrow's "quarry" and bemoans Nobrow's mistakenly lax attitude towards other small publishers. "In the interests of protecting our market, we should be wary of small and well-intentioned 'artists collectives'" is a choice snippet.
in "'Nobrow is old news': the Power Dynamic of Open Secrets" 29 abr 2020

Para os restantes snippets ler printscreen — e admitam nuances, senhores!, nunca atirar a primeira pedra, mas tê-las sempre à mão — com direito a adaptação do Simon Hanselmann publicada no The Comics Journal #304 do mesmo Gary Groth onde o próprio AL teve a um longo dossier:

"although Gary Groth asks Hanslemann if the comic in question is about Nobrow, Hanselmann refuses to actually say whether it is or not"

Com este "be wary of small and well-intentioned artists collectives" apontamos a todas as direcções e não separamos a Nobrow da Fanta da DMC (DC & Marvel): neste mercado ninguém sai de mãos lavadas. Se discordarmos das finalidades que movem a cruzada do Austin, a sua moral na utilidade de segredos que todos conhecem serve-nos às despedidas:

The primary mode in which comics currently communicates about these issues is expressly anti-collective, anti-union, and thus, anti-labor.

Everybody in a position of power in the industry who was not publicly doing something about this "old news" is being disingenuous on two levels. First, there is their aforementioned passivity. But that is exactly the point. By publicly calling out the fact that you knew and did nothing, your action serves to reaffirm your status as part of the comics glitterati. From a position of power, public announcements of "old news" or "open secrets" are simply an expression of your institutional knowledge, a sign for all that you are, in fact, "in-the-know" enough to hold some sway over an industry that tends to insist on being pathetically crooked.
in "'Nobrow is old news': the Power Dynamic of Open Secrets" 29 abr 2020

Conclusões: do somethin', ou sai de cena.

outro filme