Amazing Joy Buzzkill

This is the story of a journey of discovery, but mostly of a girl and her dog. The Gnome was roaming on Twitter, because everything of interest is on Twitter, and found someone who linked to Dan Hipp’s site and to the original sketches that he had posted and was selling. When she found them, she had no idea who Dan Hipp was (nor did I), but that didn’t matter. He was an artist of some sort who had sketches online for sale, so she went and took a look. Among the several great sketches he was selling was one of Ed & Ein from Cowboy Bebop.

We haven’t really talked about my love of anime on this site, which is rather surprising. Actually, not really that surprising as I’ve fallen behind in my anime watching as of late, but trust me - it’s there. Cowboy Bebop is the first anime that I ever watched and is still one of my favorites. Of the whole colorful cast of Bebop, Ed is definitely my favorite character (only because it would be weird to consider the dog my favorite character) and Ein made me want a Welsh Corgi for the longest time. I’m not sure why Gnome even bothered showing it to me because she should have guessed that my reaction would be to scream “Buy it!! Buy it now!!!” in the high-pitched voice of a little girl faced with a tiny pony.

We got the sketch on Friday and it is as awesome as I thought it would be. Included with the sketch was a signed copy of issue #2 of the second volume of The Amazing Joy Buzzards, co-created and drawn by Dan Hipp. I’d never heard of TAJB, but this made me realize that Dan Hipp wasn’t just some random artist, he was actually Somebody who had Published Work. I read that issue and even though it was the second issue of the second volume of the series and I had absolutely no idea who the characters were or what was going on, I absolutely loved it. It had everything: car races, vampire robots, samurai sword fights during the car races, luchadores, and a story of forbidden carnal love with a Yeti.

I had to know more about this series, so immediately jumped onto my first source for all things comics, Comic Vine to see what I could learn. All Comic Vine could tell me was that a series called TAJB might have come out in 2005, but other than that it had no information. I then jumped to my favorite online comic shop, Heavy Ink who could barely tell me that it might have something called TAJB that it could possibly sell me, if they could find it, but it was greatly backordered. My local comic shop had nothing. This series was only 5 years old and POOF it was gone.

I was immediately struck by how transient the comic industry really is. Pick any other entertainment medium, and it is easily possible to get a copy of something that is five years old. Even small, niche, unknown or unpopular products are obtainable, but in the comic industry five years is a life time. Not only have stories and characters progressed, but stories written just five years ago can be completely disregarded. If you actually wanted to buy something that originally came out five years ago, you could very well be out of luck.

Penny-Arcade has talked often about how game stores like GameStop are really nothing more than glorified pawn shops that prefer that you buy their used games instead of a new game. In reality, so is your local comic shop. If you walk into most comic shops, the bins of back-issues take up a lot more floor space then the actually new comics on sale. As often as they want you to buy the latest Batman or Superman, they also would be perfectly happy with you buying a used copy of Batman from four years ago. What’s so strange about this is that unlike the game publishers who dislike the used-game market, the comic industry is perfectly okay with it because they no longer make and sell the older comics. If you want something that’s older then last month, most likely you’re buying it used because there is no other option.

While I understand the economies of scale and other business decisions that go into forming the transient nature of the comic medium, it still strikes me as very weird. Especially for a new reader who recently discovers something from a couple years back, they get punished because they’re interested now instead of then. If they’re lucky, they can find one of those coveted used back issues, but it’s equally likely that they’ll be plain out of luck. All we want to do is find great stories and support the creators of the stuff we like. It’s hard to do that when you can’t find any of their stories to buy.

I’ve since found that a new trade of Amazing Joy Buzzards Volume 1 is available on Amazon and that volume 2 is supposed to be re-released sometime this year. I’m definitely going to look into getting both. I’ve also realized that one of Dan Hipp’s other works, a manga called Gyakushu!, has been in my Instapaper feed for a while, waiting to be read. I thought I remembered from the first time I found it, that the original reason he posted Gyakushu! online was that it wasn’t available in print, but all three volumes are now available by TokyoPop. I’ll definitely look into that as well.

Hope you’ll forgive the very long, semi-ranty post. This weekend was the first time that I’ve ever been frustrated by my inability to find a comic that I wanted. It made me look at things in a new light, hopefully it’ll do the same for you.

See you later, Space Cowboy.