Sheesh!

Random thoughts from the road…

For the tenth summer in a row it’s the summer of super heroes at the box office. We’re right in the middle of it now…Avengers ($1.5 billion worldwide so far), Spiderman ($140 million domestically so far), and Batman coming in a week. With all of this this box office smashing record business, it brings the debate, just who is the best super hero.

If there were a March Madness kind of round robin, who would you go with? Thor vs. Captain America vs. The Hulk vs. Batman? It doesn’t matter as long as you don’t go with Aquaman as your number one choice. Remember that story arc in Entourage where Vince Chase is freaking out that James Cameron is directing the Aquaman movie? He should have never worried because Aquaman is the bottom of the barrel when it comes to battling the bad guys. This brings me to the standard bearer of all super heroes: Superman.

The only people that like Superman above the others are the front runners of the world. I have a news bulleting for everyone…he’s made of steel. That’s a stacked deck if I ever heard of one. He’s faster than a speeding bullet and more powerful than a locomotive. His top rival is a bald, middle age guy with a 180 IQ. The only way to stop this indestructible man is with Kryptonite. Where do you get this stuff? I mean it blew up decades ago in some super nova blast from another galaxy. Where is everyone getting this stuff anyway?

As far as super heroes go, he’s the safe choice. Sheesh!

Even Dana Gordon knew Aquaman was the worst...

Back to reality…I have been awaiting feedback from book chapters that were submitted to the publisher. Now keep in mind that I was told that when I started submitting chapters the feedback would be spotty and slow. I would get it when I get it and that’s the way the cookie crumbled. However, with the first round, I received instant feedback. When I asked why my editor got back to me so fast, they said that since the writing was flowing so well he just couldn’t wait to get information back to me. I thought, well that’s nice and it allowed me to get into the next batch of writing which I submitted soon thereafter.

Weeks went by and I heard nothing, so I sent an email to my editor, Maggie, saying something like, “Did you get the chapters? Any new feedback?” and of course I got nothing. Then when I spoke to my agent a week later, I asked him if he heard anything. He told me he sent an email and heard nothing back. And then we waited another three weeks. At that point I called my editor’s assistant and asked him to see what’s up. A few days later—now remember this is now five weeks since I sent in batch two of chapters—I get an email forward to me through the assistant from my editor:

From: XXXXXXX [mailto:xxxx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx.com]
Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2012 12:42 PM
To: 'Michael Lloyd'
Subject: FW: Lloyd Book Feedback

New titles department. No need information on Lloyd book.

I know how desperate Michael is to get this information.

There should be something soon, Maggie

That caught me a little off guard. I really dislike when people ignore you for a while and them make it seem like it’s you who is anxious and in this case “desperate”. From the side of the sanity perspective, it seems desperate because my first few communication attempts were not replied to in any timely fashion. I know she didn’t mean it to be negative, but still….”desperate”? Sheesh.

It’s like that thing people do in a retail setting when you need help. You know that person behind the cash wrap who is fiddling with the straws or straightening cups or something and they are half turned away from you. You wait, but then you give the little, “Pardon me” and you get no reaction so you go with the “Excuse me…” And you still get nothing so you say, “uh, sir..” and there’s finally a sharp burst of “I heard you!”

More great customer service

Meanwhile you’re standing there thinking “I’m not impatient; a grunt or a moan or some type of acknowledgement would have served me just fine.” Really, the mental “I’ll be with you in a minute” doesn’t cut it because I’m not a mind reader. Sheesh!

Thank goodness the Kardashians have been pushed back to page three of the gossip hound and replaced with of all things the shocking TomKat split. I was listening to the radio while stuck in Los Angeles traffic gridlock when the great escape was described something like this: “A determined Katie Holmes plotted her escape from domineering hubby Tom Cruise like a “Mission: Impossible” operation — using a pal’s disposable cellphone to talk to lawyers in three states so Cruise couldn’t trace her calls or location.” Whatever happened to letting this all play out on Divorce Court. Sheesh!

Finally, since the second-to-last-episode of this season’s Mad Men revealed that Peggy was due to make a cool $120,000 a year managing accounts (Sheesh!), I wondered what other characters would be making today. Luckily there are a lot of people with a lot of time on their hands and these same people came up with this handy chart:

Dust Off Your Capes

Hail ye Spiderman, Superman, Batman. Time to dust off your capes and come out and play. Super heroes, and acting like one, have long been a running theme in The Media Guy Struggles. Connecting with your favorite hero just go easier.

I know that few of you realize, but August 28, is the second annual celebration of International Read A Comic in Public Day. So grab your favorite comic or graphic novel and grab a spot in the park with your kids. Some of you are now wondering—perhaps you already Googled—what a graphic novel might be. Graphic novels and collected editions came into vogue following Marvel Comics’ emergence from bankruptcy in the mid-90’s when they shifted focus away from single issues sold in the direct market to these specialty items sold through mass-market bookstores.

While you’re sitting there saying, “Media Guy! Take off those nerdy Clark Kent goggles and see the forest among the trees…comic books are for booger-eaters living at mom’s house.”

Au contraire, comics are bank and generate copious revenue for both the independent publishers and the big boys. Now with the intellectual property firmly entrenched into our movie going experience, the sky is the limit for what kinds of revenues will be generated. The major economic shift occurred in 1997 when New Line optioned the rights to make Blade. You remember pre-jailed, IRS-hating Wesley Snipes portraying the obscure vampire-hunter character from the 1970s, right? The 1998 movie was a hit bringing in $125+ million and when X-Men was released in 2000 grossing almost $300 million, it was on like Donkey Kong (whoops, do I have to pay Nintendo for saying that?)

The Blade and X-Men series showed that smaller comic properties could open films and sell DVDs. They revived the superhero film genre almost instantly opening the door for Spider-Man’s $800 million dollar payday.

Recently, The Walt Disney Company proved just how far comics have come with their $4 billion acquisition of Marvel Comics and all of their intellectual property. Even Donald Trump would agree that comics aren’t nerdy any longer.

On a side note, the thing about this media I find ironic is the term “book” in the “comic book.” When we speak of books, we imagine verbose narratives with grand words and deep Lawrence Durrell-like thinking. It’s about the words, right? Comic books are just the opposite. Their narratives are all about the pictures telling the story with minimal words. They are the ultimate “a picture is worth a thousand words” medium. Words aren’t completely dismissed, but a great deal of the word’s value rests in the typography and unique tradition hand-lettering.

In the advertising world, we build copy points first and visuals second. In the comics world often an entire story is composed visually and then text is added in response to those images. From an Ad Man perspective, this is a bizarre was to work, but originally the most successful comics were created in this exact manner.

So, short story long, grab your capes and nerdy glasses and come out on August 28th with your favorites. Leave your secret identity at home; there’s no need to hide.