Industrial Vigilante: One-In-Ten Americans Reads Comics...Or Do They?

If you or someone you know hasn't picked up a comic or graphic novel lately - or ever, the Industrial Vigilante says you might want to consider a trip to the bookstore or your local comic shop this afternoon, especially if you or that unnamed someone aren't the sort of folks who like feeling left out.

According to Simba Information's compilation of Winter 2009 data as collected by the Simmons Market Research Bureau, one in ten adult American book buyers also reads comic books. That's 10% of the book-buying public over the age of 18. In addition, 70% of adults who have read comics have also purchased at least one (1) prose book - fiction, non-fiction, what have you - during the last twelve months. While buying just a single book would be serious torture to me, recent literacy data has indicated that 44% of adult Americans don't even buy one in any given twelve-month period.

US News online reported the US population to be about 306M in January of 2009 and Wikipedia places the current total over 308M. It also states that 27-percent of the population, roughly, is below the age of 20. For this blog's purposes, we'll figure that 25% - or 77,000,000 people - are below the ripe age of 18 and weren't counted in the Simmons/Simba studies. That means, then, that 102M American adults don't buy books or read comics at all. It's possible these folks may read library books or the fine print on internet porn sites instead, but the implication here is that American literacy and the general interest in reading is pretty damn bad.

On a much more uplifting note, the recent information also suggests and supports the conclusions made by several other comics studies, that reading comic books is associated with a greater interest in reading other material, as well as improved academic performance in younger readers.

Simba's research has been noticed because the reported number of comic book readers comes as a surprise to the industry, and a welcome one at that. But when you've been in comics as long as Ivy, the Industrial Vigilante, you know there's more to the 'The Big Panel' than meets the eye. Finding any real value from the One In Ten requires a Vigilante to ask some tough questions, such as:

• Why are the number of readers so high? And who are they, specifically?
• What types of comics are the One In Ten reading?
• Is the comics industry addressing their customers and potential customers well enough, or even at all?
• How is the economy affecting comics?
• And oh yeah, what's the story with the younger readers? Where did they go?

Hmph! Dabblers, 'looks like the Industrial Vigilante's going to be sticking around for a while. We'll get these questions figured out, so keep reading... and stay vigilant.

Shout!: Creatively Speaking with Summer Pierre, Blogger

"But for now, it was easy to lay out and pour over the colorful pictures

and dream up my own stories -- of something that was still yet to come."

- from Comic Books

Summer Pierre's not specifically a comics writer or artist; she's not a comic book industry name but I don't think she intends to be, either. She's an artist, a writer, a musician, a Bay Area native, and a fellow blogger. It's quite by accident that I found her blog, An Accident of Hope, but it's a great name (like abbracadabbling) and I'm happy I did.

Industrial Vigilante:Shout!''s last (and first) blog featuring the quote by Grant Morrison captured his beliefs about the essence of superhero comics with words. But quotes just as meaningful can be found in photographs and drawings, too. In comics, they often are, whether from text and image or image alone. A story, or at least a single, meaningful moment of one, can be captured within the size of a small panel. And though it's not much, any of us who might look at it would certainly get the picture.

My first discovery on Summer's blog was her entry Comic Books. Her single image captures an anecdote of significant time, like a well-written short story, as well as conveys to her reader not just the joy of that moment but her feelings about comics and their role in the story. While she might have just written the story with text sans any illustration, making it a drawing frames and defines this moment in ways a paragraph alone could never do.

Words and image combined make a very powerful quote - Pierre calls it a 'one page story' - that tells of her passion with comics as much as it makes a statement about the power of comics storytelling. Take a look:

Pierre's blog is peppered with one page stories. Her Artist in the Office 'Zine is just one more example of so many that have resonated with me. Exploring An Accident of Hope was a fun and inspiring, and it's more than earned my bookmark.

I recommend a visit to An Accident of Hope for every abbracadabbler. Summer Pierre doesn't know the word for what it is you and I are doing, but she's doing it along with us -- and very well. We're all accidental abbracadabblers, by definition. See for yourself here. Also, Pierre's comics, 'zines, and illustration can be viewed at her Flickr page.

More germane to social networking than comics, I wanted to include a few examples of Summer Pierre's creativity with the blogging medium below. Being a new blogger myself, and someone who's in love with ideas and images period, I really enjoyed her Creative Blogging entries -- photographed attempts to blog using other forms of communication - other mediums - than just keyboard and computer screen.

Another excellent example of inspired blogging communication is the series I've excerpted below. It's A Message Pierre posted for her readers in 2007 for her blog's second anniversary. You can see the entire message at the link.

Thanks for the borrow, Summer. Like the X-Files' Fox Mulder would say, "The Truth is Out There."

Photographs by Summer Pierre

Grant Morrison:The Essence of Super Heroes

Quotes are like perfect diamonds, formed and cut from the coal of another's experience, freely discovered yet infinitely priceless. Each of us, of course, determines the value or benefit of a quote by how it speaks to us specifically. It's no surprise that many of the best words ever said came from individuals whose voice spoke to the most people.

I'd left comics behind through high school and college, and may never have returned to them if not for 1996's JLA #1, written by Grant Morrison. Grant returned the Justice League to the stature its members deserved, while closer to home, he rekindled a passion and challenged my dreams. Ten years later, a 2006 Comic Book Resources survey of its readers 100 all-time favorite comic book writers placed Grant in the Number-Two spot, out-voted only by Alan Moore (Watchmen, V for Vendetta). Clearly, Grant's voice has been heard by many. In the three years since, he hasn't slipped an inch.

Industrial Vigilante begins its blog run with a quotation from my favorite comic book writer, Grant Morrison.

Born in Scotland, Grant Morrison is one of the foremost writers in comics today. His body of work is known for its non-linear narratives, counter-cultural leanings, deconstructed superheroes, metaphysical motifs, metafictive interpretations, and widespread fan appeal.

To narrow his list of notable works in next to impossible. Except for 1996's JLA, Morrison's 90's decade characterized the mainstream fringe. He established new boundaries for comics storytelling and new understandings of the super-heroic in titles like Animal Man, Doom Patrol, Flex Mentallo, and his unparalleled opus, The Invisibles. His original Batman: Arkham Asylum coincided with the release of Tim Burton's film, and has since become one of the best-selling graphic novels ever written as well as the inspiration for the award-winning 2009 video game of the same name.

The major franchises at both DC and Marvel Comics became Grant's creative playground post-Y2K. His three-year stint on Marvel's New X-Men ended in a brouhaha of scandal and bewilderment that's now remembered as a one of the titles few highly regarded classic runs. At DC, Morrison's influence has carried beyond any one group of characters and instead has affected the DC Universe as a whole. Recognized as the individual with perhaps the greatest imaginative reach at DC, Grant was given the deity's challenge of restructuring DC's fictional geography, as evidenced by Final Crisis, Seven Soldiers, 52, and his rewiring of the company's biggest property, Batman. Along the way, he's resequenced the essences of Superman, Batman, and Robin the Boy Wonder for a legion of new readers with his All-Star Superman and DC's current top-selling title, Batman and Robin.

Grant Morrison's complete biography can be found here, and a DC Comics interview with Grant can be found on YouTube here. For more on Grant's interview with Wizard Magazine try here.

Our Amazon.com store offers abbracadabblers an extensive collection of Grant Morrison's many collected creations. Scroll down the blog and take a look.

We'll be seeing a lot of Grant Morrison on abbracadabbling -- so stay with us, dabblers!