Mike Gold: Do Comics Belong In Comics?

Mike Gold

ComicMix's award-winning and spectacularly shy editor-in-chief Mike Gold also performs the weekly two-hour Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind ass-kicking rock, blues and blather radio show on The Point, www.getthepointradio.com and on iNetRadio, www.iNetRadio.com (search: Hit Oldies) every Sunday at 7:00 PM Eastern, rebroadcast three times during the week – check www.getthepointradio.com above for times and on-demand streaming information.

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2 Responses

  1. The Lone Comic TM says:

    What you might say is that comic books may not have outlived their usefulness, because they are not a social meme designed for social utility. They are a form of entertainment for escape literature.

    That makes their sociological value lifespan much longer, for we are escapists in many respects.

    As far as comic books and other form of comics not printed onto paper and booked, such as digital comics, that is just a matter of convenience, and will trend higher.

    I can’t definitively say if the books will become history, in some important senses, yes, but the book form will enjoy traditionalist cognoscenti for some time.

    But for practicum’s sake, the digital tools having been created for evolving the art form away from it’s traditional skillsets for producing (writing, drawing, inking, coloring, lettering, publishing) may represent an adaptive phase of the art form to maintain contact with audience, the purpose for which creators produce for in most cases. Madefire would be an example of this. Amazon has it for the Kindle.

    The relevance and access issues are different questions, and I like the suggestion you raise and would like to see more on it.

    In fact, in developing my own comic book for my comedy brand, I deliberately chose incidental superhero power abilities for my character because I wanted a comic book representing the life my character leads instead of the superhero aspect dominating the trope every time out and compelling conflict, violence and other narrow interpretations of what entertainment constitutes.

    So perhaps another question could be, can a comic book maintain sociological relevance without violent application of super powers included? Society is evolving in spite of ourselves. We did get rid of slavery, now war in on the table. Art, as a reflection of self, life and society, would utilize that.

    The Lone Comic TM
    Defender of Creativity and Entertainment SM

    I think this is the future for my comic, but not sure it is for all comic.

    • Mike Gold says:

      Well, I agree with you, The. In fact, I read most all my comics (and magazines, newspapers and books) on an iPad and, due to my nebbish-like eyeballs, the big one at that. I enjoy the experience thoroughly. I like snorting paper and ink too, but carrying around a couple dozen comics, plus books and music and movies and the rest, while I’m on the train or whathaveyou is seriously inconvenient.

      I hoped digital would be doing better than they seem to be doing today, but it’s hard to tell as our friends at comiXology don’t release sales figures. But they certainly seem to be doing fine, as does Sequential and some of the others. Comic book readers are book readers, and book readers seem to enjoy snorting paper and ink. It takes time. After all, I still have my land-line!