expatNERD

Category: Solicitations

  • 05 – Tariffs

    05 – Tariffs

    The big news last week originated from the political side of things when the Trump Administration announced tariffs of 25% against Canada and Mexico. This affects the comic book industry because a lot of the printers that print comic books are based in Canada. Many have speculated, and rightly, that this would lead to an increase in the price of comic books and probably harm the industry.

    So needless to see, Curt took this as a sign to make some moves and wheel and deal and Franka captured it beautifully.

    Sadly (only for Curt), the Trump Administration postponed the decision for thirty days, allowing room for cooler heads to prevail and I do hope that the tariffs will not happen at all.

    I suppose if you are a student of economics and have interest in relations that are international, you would know that tariffs are never a good idea. I think I saw that in a movie once.

    This is not the first time that a huge conflict between Canada and the United States transpired. It also happened in 2015, albeit in comic book form. Brian K. Vaughn and Steve Skroce released a mini-series via Image Comics titled We Stand on Guard, depicting the United States invading Canada. And due to the current political atmosphere, sales of the book have been skyrocketing.

    Let’s just hope this stays in comic book form.

  • 04 – The Great Debate

    04 – The Great Debate

    Franka was a bit hesitant to include herself as one of the ‘characters’ in Solicitations. But I knew she had to appear at some point. This cannot just be a Curt and Marv show after all. And I think her introduction to the stage is very good.

    When you own a comic book store you do have a lot of debates that rage within it. Who is stronger? Weaker? Who can beat up Wolverine? That sort of thing. But I think one of the most popular debates has to be who started the comic book movie fever. Was it Blade, starring Wesley Snipes? Or was it X-Men that introduced Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine to the world?

    It is hard to say. But being a teenager at the time when Blade came out, and someone who actually saw it in the cinema, I might have an opinion on this.

    Frankly, there were a whole lot of vampire movies during this period, both good and bad (*cough* Van Helsing *cough*; *hack* Dracula 2000 *hack*). Vampire movies were cool, and face it, comic book movies were not, thank you Batman and Robin. So if you had a vampire property on your hands you would push that production right up to the top because they were getting green lit left and right. If Blade was pitched as a comic book movie, would it have made it through that studio oversight scrutiny and be allowed to live? Probably not.

    So for this, I do have to agree with Franka. And not just because she is our in-house artist and drawing this comic, which incidentally gives her a lot of power especially as it pertains to my depiction. But simply because she is right.