As usual, on one side we have the Right wing who through their policies try to punish the poor, support business growth at the expense of ecology and culture, and when their members retire from politics, settle into cushy, make-work jobs provided by those companies which were best 'looked after' during the politician's time in power. On the other side we have the Left Wing, who generally oppose and condemn all such practices, and try to promote the sorts of ideals we see in the Star Trek universe, (where everybody is happy, prosperous and well educated). The Left, much like Trekkies, are not always taken very seriously. And so the battle rages!

And sure, that's the simple, get yourself into fist-fights version, but that's how I find myself looking at it these days.

I tend to generalize. i think there are only two politicians;those who want everybody to be Happy, Healthy and Okay, and those who think only a few people should be Happy, Healthy and Okay.

Carson's sister is studying business and political science at a large university which is well known for producing young professionals of high mercantile acumen. It is amazing to hear her and her fellow students speak. Almost without exception, students in the program are well insulated from the rest of the world by wealthy, conservative parents. Among these students persists the general belief that the world and its inhabitants exist for the primary purpose of being exploited for profit, and that anybody not smart enough to get out of the way deserves to be abused, (and certainly not respected.) I recall one student sitting in front of a television watching a story about an earnest but struggling family being evicted from their home because the parents had lost their jobs during the recession and were unable to pay their rent. Many of their significant possessions were being taken away in order to help pay their bills. They planned to sleep in their car that night, but this too was to be taken from them by debt collectors. In a moment of pity, the creditors allowed the family to keep the car until other arrangements could be made. The student was outraged. 'What? That's not fair! They shouldn't be allowed to keep their car!'

While this is an extreme example, it is one which remains indicative of the sort of mind-set found at this particular school. Carson's sister, in fact, had been showing signs of adopting similar convictions early in her university career. Her father, however, who works in news media and public relations, is aware of many aspects of the government most people are not, and after conversations with her father and brother, (both confirmed Lefties), she came away with a confused view of both Left and Right sides of the equation in full color. The result is that Carson's sister, ranking in the absolute top of her class, finds herself in the uncomfortable position of having all the qualities and abilities of the most successful Right Wing business students, but has most of her moral grounding in the mind-sets of the Left. Friction between her and the other students arising from this actually caused enough trouble. that the faculty moved her from student residence she was living in and put her in a different building

1. It is somewhat less expensive to print one thick book rather than several comics.

2. Since so few publishers have put out successful anthologies filled with highly readable stories, pulling it off might garner some good publicity and, if marketed well to the outside world, might possibly spark new interest in comics as a whole.

3. I can't remember any other immediate advantages, and number 2 is pushing it.

Anyway...As for the difficulties in making square-bound anthologies...

Whoa-boy!

To begin with, each of the artists, including myself, were all far too in love with the high levels of control self publishing provides to part with any of it in the form of compromises. We debated endlessly over the most minute points, and the best solutions were always watered down to something weak and half-baked. Committees are extremely frustrating when made up from lots of strong-minded people.Anyway, among the debates, these questions came up:

'I'm making a living from comics now. If I only get a cut of the cover price on an anthology, what assurance do I have that I'll still be earning enough to live on once the money is divided?'

'How do we decide who gets to do the cover in a given month? What if Joe's cover stinks and we lose sales as a result?'

'What if one of us is late with pages while the rest of us aren't? Do we go ahead and print anyway to avoid cancellation? - Do we have to change the cover price? How do we force each other to stay on time?'

'Which one of us is going to take care of the drudgery of finding advertisers? If we want to net the largest number of advertisers we'll have to provide graphic art and design services to potential clients. Which of us wants to spend their time designing ads instead of drawing pages? Do we hire more people to cover these extra tasks? With what money? We'd definitely need a big loan of some kind, and again, we'd need somebody right now to take time away from his or her book in order to go find all these people and put the whole operation together.'

And my favorite:'We're all friends here and we'd like to be in this together, but how so we tell Joe that his work doesn't cut it?' -And worse,'How do we tell Joe to get lost after we've been publishing his stuff for a year and people still aren't warming up to his work?'

These are just some of the problems. There were several others.

Essentially, it all boils down to this: To make an anthology work, it must take on a very similar profile to that of a newsstand magazine, with a large managing staff and pay structure. Control must be given over to a non partisan editor in chief, and the cover price could not go over about six dollars, so the advertising department would become the engine behind the book, not the reader's dollar. And that means trying to woo significantadvertisers with B&W comics. -And based on general B&W sales records in the industry, I think that would be VERY difficult. (Naturally at this point, the prospect of going 'color' comes up as the easiest way to attract big advertisers, but with that comes a whole raft of other problems and costs.)

All in all, it would be very difficult to pull off. -Books like Taboo and Negative Burn, while they had their own charm, were either too expensive or too obscure, or had too few reliable episodic stories to catch public interest and make a significant impact on the industry. On top of that, I don't believe any of the contributing artists were able to survive on the money they made from selling to either book. For an anthology to be successful, I believe it would have to go a lot further, and with entirely different company directors.

Yet, despite all these problems, I can't help but think the challenge would be exhilarating. I would LOVE to takle the launching of a really good anthology in the mainstream market. Despite the cultural biases of today, and despite the current lousy market structure, I'm absolutely positive it could be done. But it would require lots of time to find investors and a good production staff, it would take high levels of sustained personal energy and interest, and it would be impossible to write and draw your own comics while doing it. -There is no way I could lay aside the joys of writing and drawing Thieves & Kings in order to put together a successful anthology. (So that other writers and artists, clueless to the difficulties of publishing, could whine about how I mis-treat them by doing things like demand their best workk on time always or goodbye.) Yow. No thanks. I have trouble enough doing that myself!

The right kind of anthology could revolutionize the comics industry, but it hasn't happened yet. and unless somebody with enough zeal and influence and brains decides to take up the mantle, I don't think it will.