This article was written as a stream of consciousness and is not deliberately structured in any way. Subsequently it may be rather horrible to read, apologies if you subject yourself to it.

Recently I've been going through a bit of a comics revival. That's the problem with trying to organise anything (such as a shelf haphazardly covered in comics), you invariably end up discovering something hugely distracting. This lead me to once again lurk & occasionally post on the X-Books newsgroup (RACMX) and more importantly to long for new comics to read. After months of primarily reading manga (ignoring, for the moment, my two great comic loves - Preacher & Transmetropolitan) it was rather a shock to return to the dialogue filled, fully coloured world of superhero comics. And yes it's purely coincidence that X-Men 2 is hyping and airing at the same time. Superhero comics, not the most mature of genres in comics and certainly not in the same league as Transmetropolitan and Preacher. That said, however, they're still capable of some truly great stories in their own way. The art is a huge factor in their enjoyment too (more essentially than in something like my aforementioned twin loves), which really appeals to the (now sadly dormant) artist side of me.

Having a thirst for new material is not something easily quenched as am unemployed man. I splashed out. I picked up the hardcover volume 1 of Grant Morrison's New X-Men and I loved it. I also regretted that this one collection had cost me the equivalent of two "Transmetropolitan"s or four "Gundam: The Origin"s. As usual the internet came to the rescue. All over the net, spread in poorly maintained, poorly designed and impossible to find websites are whole comics scanned in at a readable size. Check out http://xfactorunderground.20m.com/ for an example. Now as an alternative to the scan-sites there are hubs on direct connect and streams on bit torrent. The precise method of delivery is not what I'm interested in, however. The observant reader will realise that making scanned in comics available on the net without permission is very illegal, as is downloading them. It's also cheating the very talented people who make them out of much deserved money. Mostly, heh.

But should it be? In one day of reading (as well as doing many other things of course) I can go through around 20 comics using CDisplay Comic Reader. Now to me that screams "untapped market". Where are the "pay £10/$16 and get access to 50 back issues of your choice each month" schemes from Marvel and DC? I realise that Marvel provides random online "dotcomics" where you can read a reasonably recent issue of a title. These, however, are shit flash-powered beasts and they do not equate to an archive of back issues (they don't even appear to maintain archives of their older dotcomics). It's something I'd certainly pay for - imagine (comics fans) being able to pick up all 50 issues of the X-Men (in one month) surrounding the Dark Phoenix Saga for a fixed monthly or yearly subscription rate. If you like to have something solid to read (which I certainly prefer) then you stick to the trade paperbacks and new issues. If, on the other hand, you can't afford the incredible time and money involved in hunting down back issues then this kind of thing would be perfect.

Online comics at the moment seem (to me) mainly to consist of things like Penny Arcade and Dilbert. Dilbert is excellent, hilarious and a great thing to have sat in my e-mailbox every morning. It's a comic that only works as newspaper-style strip a few panels long. Penny Arcade.... it's rather mainstream and overexposed isn't it? I mean everywhere I go (online) I'm bombarded with people linking to PA, talking about PA and inevitably typing "OMG! LoL1 PA is so great, did u see todays? LOL! y don't we do something like that". As if it's not already everywhere, now it has 1000 imitators. Now don't get me wrong, I have actually clicked on a few of them and they've been amusing (not to the levels of Dilbert but hardly bad either). I don't dislike the strips per se, I unfortunately dislike how it's just THERE. Everywhere. With everyone. ARGH!

I don't like to dislike things just because they're mainstream and popular, really I don't. I hate those music fans, specifically the militant hard-core punk-fans, that dismiss entire fields of artists purely because they sell large amounts of records. One guaranteed way to get on my tits is to proclaim yourself to be a punk fan, list some most excellent original 70s/80s punk bands and some underground 90s stuff (that I usually haven't heard) and then type "OMG blink 182, offspring and green day are shit! they're not punk man, not punk!". Get the stick out of your ass lads. That's one big stick as well, it's up one hell of a lot of asses. Yes they're punk, they're varying degrees of "pop-punk". Pop-punk existed back in the original days of punk too. Their style of music is blatantly rooted in punk, it's just that they sing in a melody. You want to sing along with their songs, hell you CAN sing along with their songs. If that's such a bad thing then shoot me. "But they're such sell-outs!" Oh fuck off, a musician making money off records? Hell yeah, that's totally wrong! Musicians don't like making money, they want underground status really.

So back to comics then, I think that's roughly where I started. I know there are people making their own comics and providing them online. I haven't had chance to investigate these in the past three years so I can't really comment on their quality. Instead I shall make the observation that web-comics currently are mostly a horde of clones of each other, everything jostling to be the next Penny Arcade. Back in the world of "material with some longevity" we have the real-world comics giants floundering around with one-at-a-time issues online, missing the huge potential to make money and please some fans. Ahhh, maybe that's the real problem. Marvel and DC don't really know what they're doing for who. Their target audience is not what they perceive it to be and so they fail to take advantage of who is actually interested in them. I shall continue to pick up the occasional issue until I can afford to purchase some more TPBs. I'd rather be giving more of my money to the companies but at the moment there's no affordable means for me to do so.

Written to The Beta Band - I Know