Off Message

A friend of mine – let's call him Marcus, because, well, that's his name – is suffering from comic shop guilt. This is a little known but surprisingly commonplace affliction whereby the sufferer feels he or she must continue to shop at his or her local comic shop in case the withdrawal of his/her custom leads directly to the closure of said local comic shop. In Marcus' case, his comic shop actively guilts him into continuing to shop there by telling him every time he goes in how bad business is. There's also a more widespread version of this disease, this one known simply as comics guilt, which is a strange mindset whereby comics fans as a whole feel somehow obliged to keep Marvel, DC and the other comics companies afloat, the thinking being that if a fan cuts down on the comics they buy, the whole industry will collapse in on itself.

And to be fair, neither of these propositions are that far from the truth. For, like a dying sun, the comics industry – or at least the American superhero comics industry – following a period in the early 1990s where it ballooned into a bloated red giant of speculation fuelled by truly terrible comics, has shrunk down to a white dwarf (albeit an intensely shining, creatively vital white dwarf) teetering on the brink of extinction. Despite big blockbuster films like Spider-Man, X-Men, Batman Begins and the rest, sales of US superhero comics have resolutely failed to budge overly much for the past five to ten years. The top-selling comics generally shift just over 100,000 copies, which is pretty much what they've always sold over that period. Average comics sales are probably more like 40,000. Compare that to magazine sales, where the top titles sell in the hundreds of thousands or even millions, and you can see how much of a niche pursuit comics reading has become.

The main reason for this static and comparatively paltry readership (and, by the way, I wouldn't blame you for giving up here; this post has been going on far too fucking long as it is, and I have no idea what my ultimate point might be) is something you've almost certainly never heard of: the direct market. In essence, this is the collection of comic shops in the US and the UK which, these days, are pretty much the only places you can buy comics. That's comics as in the 36 page pamphlets, not graphic novels, which are the square-bound collections of said comics, and are available in most decent book shops (but still aren't successful enough in and of themselves to allow the publishers to stop publishing the 36 page pamphlets). Anyway, there are estimated to be something like three thousand or so comic shops in the US, and around one hundred in the UK. And now that comics have virtually disappeared from newsagents (for a variety of reasons that we won't explore here else this post gets even fucking longer), comic shops are where you go to buy them.

And therein lies the rub. Because unless you already know that comic shops exist, and that that's the only place where you can buy American superhero comics, and even that those still exist, you'd have no reason to seek them out. And most people don't. Your average Spider-Man moviegoer is probably vaguely aware that Spider-Man maybe used to be in a comic (although they're more likely to know that he was in a TV cartoon show), but they wouldn't know that Spider-Man is still being regularly published in comic book form, with multiple titles coming out each and every month. And even if they knew that was the case, they still wouldn't know where to look for them.

So comic shops are stuck with an utterly static customer base and so, by extention, is the comics industry. Which is why my friend Marcus has comic shop guilt.

Uh, okay, it looks like I had no ultimate point. Sorry about that.

A notice period is a strange thing. Once I'd resigned, that was it for me. I could've walked out the door without a glance backwards. So staying on for weeks and carrying on working as if nothing's changed seems faintly ridiculous. Maybe it's different for other people. Perhaps other people – those with a stronger sense of responsibility than myself, say – do their utmost to square away everything they can before they leave. I can't see the point. I'll do what I can, and someone else can pick up the rest. Fuck it. I've already moved on.

I should really examine what this says about me, I suppose. Possibly it means I'm self-centred yet also self-unaware, cold, calculating, heartless, a cad, a bounder. Possibly. But really, who cares?

A friend has pointed out that if Off Message really is akin to wanking, I should be posting a lot more often than I am. A fair point, well made.

In other news, I've quit my job. And now I'm in that weird dead zone where, effectively, I've already left in my head, and nothing really matters anymore. All those terribly pressing issues and seemingly nightmarish problems which once kept me awake at night no longer have any hold over me. It's like going on holiday to an office. Which isn't as pleasant as it might at first sound. For one, the entertainment leaves a lot to be desired, consisting as it does of the whir of the air conditioning, the clattering of keyboards and the occasional special guest appearance by an attractive marketing or press lass as she wafts past on her way to the kitchen.

Perhaps I'll go for a wank.

Today The Observer published a list of the top 50 most powerful blogs. Predictably, Off Message was nowhere to be seen, and there is a good reason for this. Actually, there are many good reasons for this, but let's concentrate on one for now, else I'm likely to slump into a Sunday funk that will ruin the remainder of the afternoon.

What these 50 most powerful blogs have in common is they all spring from a good idea, or at least an idea that no one else had either thought to blog about up to that point, or had done so so ineptly and amateurishly that it was only a matter of time before someone with more braincells or more money swanned in and grabbed all the glory. The ideas range from blogging about the New York media to writing about dating mishaps to posting pictures of smiling cats with daft captions, but it's that word, 'ideas', that's the key.

See, Off Message will never rank among the most powerful, or popular, or even enjoyable blogs, because (among, as I mentioned above, many, many other deficiencies), it is singularly bereft of ideas. I'd be tempted to liken the writing of this blog to a mundane, faintly unpleasant yet sometimes strangely pleasurable bodily function – taking a shit, say. Except, unlike Off Message, that's actually a vital and necessary event, and certainly a lot more regular.

In fact, there is one bodily activity that this blog resembles. It's an activity that has no real worth or merit, offering only a fleeting moment of pleasure, swiftly followed by a period of self loathing and disgust that darkens the mind and corrupts the soul. Yes, you guessed it – Off Message is rather like having a wank: essentially, it's a load of old toss.

what's the point, what's the point, what's the point?

I haven't written anything here in a while. I have been feeling guilty about it, although evidently not guilty enough to do anything about it.

Until now.

I sense a bold new era approaching for Off Message. The winds are changing, the tides turning, the leaves falling from, or possibly even returning to the trees. A brave new world is rushing towards us, a world where Off Message gets updated regularly with hilarious entries stuffed with penetrating insight and pithy jokes. It's a world I yearn for, but, conversely, a world that can only come into being if I pull my fucking finger out and do something about it. And really: how likely d'you think that is?