It's great that magazines on the shelves of stores like WHSmiths dedicate pages to show your average shopper that there's much more going on in the world of comic books than the 20 Avengers or Justice League books every month.
I confess that I was once a Marvel Zombie, well more specifically an X-Men Zombie, Spending my entire comic budget on the ever increasing line of X-Men related books every month. As I've always been employed I was able to increase my budget a little to accept the odd crossover event, but one day I realised that actually they actually weren't very good. There were a few gems at the time, Bill Sienkiewicz's run on New Mutants for example, but a lot of them were actually very similar and the stories overblown in what felt like an excuse to bring in as many characters as possible, to get me to buy more comics than I wanted.
One day I just stopped.
I picked up Dark Knight Returns (Frank Miller), Marvels (Alex Ross), Weapon X (Barry Windsor Smiths's version) and Elekra Assassin (Mr's Miller and Sienkiewicz again).
I actually enjoyed them. Cover to cover.
I read that Marvel sales are slipping whilst Image sales are up on a lot of their books, Saga being a great example.
I think the days of dedicated fans are over,
I think the big two killed them off by greedily trying to drag more an more of their money out of them, throwing out that weren't very good, quantity over quality.
I'm old enough to remember when there was one X-Men book. I don't have the time or the inclination to count the number out these days.
I get my Marvel fix from the thoroughly enjoyable movies,
I'm sure I'll pick up a Marvel and DC book now and then, but it'll be because they've had great reviews or are recommended by someone, not because Wolverine is in it.
So, rant over, it's great to get at least our name out there in a magazine like this.
Distribution is a challenge but we're trying to crack that by doing as many shows as we can across the country.
