Yesterday's post about the lack of serious news reporting in the comic field brought some very welcome comments. Sadly, it seems that pretty much all of us agree that it is a goal that will never be achieved. The simple act of being removed from retribution would appear to be the hardest factor to overcome.
Glenn Walker chided me (and rightly so) for not mentioning Rich Johnston's "Lying in the Gutters" column which appears regularly on COMIC BOOK RESOURCES. I read Mr. Johnston's column the second it appears on my viewscope and always find it to be both informative and entertaining. However, I would argue the point that Johnston's column is more akin to the old Rona Barrett type of reporting in that a great deal of his items could be classified as 'gossip'. Still, Johnston hits with those rumors far more often than he misses and both he and CBR are to be commended for reporting what news items that are often very unwelcomed by comic companies. I know of several cases where items that Johnston reported ended up causing his sources some grief but, so far as I am aware, they were not sorry for providing the information in the first place.
Kudos again to CBR for posting an article today about the Wowio implosion which can be found here. The article neatly summarizes Wowio's rise and collapse and brings in information from several sources. It is a nice piece of reporting despite the fact that it says virtually nothing new that would not have been read in any of the other comics news sites or blogs. And throwing stones at Wowio and Platinum at this late date is about as dangerous as saying something bad about Charles Manson. Still, good to have it all in one place.
So there are efforts to bring strong journalism practices to the comic industry. I fear that it can only go so far, however, while the workers keep quiet for fear of losing assignments now or in the future. Strange, sounds like just the type of thing unions are made to fight, doesn't it? I wonder what Neal Adams is up to these days?
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