Young woman in Wellingtons invited me to save the badgers. Pointed out to her that badgers were a deuced menace, no fitter to live on God’s clean earth than a weasel or a Frenchman, and that if I’d brought my shotgun would be happy to demonstrate traditional country solution to badgers in general.

    Asil placated outraged young woman with explanation of how I was old fashioned country sort of chappie with fixed ideas. Said I thought political correctness was raising my hat to Baroness Thatcher. Probably offered her CND badge or something.

    Admit I was in a bit of a grumpy mood that day. Papers full of economic crisis, blaming bankers but making no firm proposals for stringing the feckless oiks up by their braces in Trafalgar Square. Also phone-hacking scandal, newspapers trying to be outraged by News International’s doin’s while hoping their own doin’s didn’t come out. Politicians happy on top of dungheap crowing now that their expenses weren’t biggest scandal in country. Country going to the dogs. Said as much.

    Also day bulldozers apparently due at Feywell Woods. Exciting new 10,000 home development in idyllic pastoral setting in sympathy with the essential character of the village, evidently. Needs of yuppie second home owners greater than need to preserve ancient tract of woodland undisturbed since Roman times. Back-hand payments to right planning authorities, Asil reports.

    Hence my appearance at protest meeting. Earnest young student chappies laying in front of tractors hoping to impress grubby girls with placards. More experienced protestors sitting quietly under umbrellas sharing flasks of Horlicks.

    Paused to correct spelling on placard of particularly malodorous specimen of protestor. Pointed out that there is a C if fascist and no H. Doubtless he is a sociology undergraduate.

    Looked round past unamused labourers in hard hats shielding their faces from BBC cameras to oily blighter in expensive business suit talking to press about the economic prosperity that would inevitable follow their bland pointless development project. Given two years and a significant research budget, chap might have found his chin. Not enough money in world to mount expedition to find his genitalia.

    Led Miss Ashling past damp protestors and irritated workforce to where fleet of lawyers were remonstrating with hairiest activists. Writs were waving in the air like battle flags. Apparently badgers, lesser spotted newts etc. abounded in local habitat. Evidently expensive eco-survey had determined that their lives would also be improved by 10,000 home development. Argument continued at £220 an hour per solicitor.

    Miss Ashling cut the barbed wire keeping folks out of the wood. Fellow with suit rushed over to argue that we were trespassing and vandalising his company’s property. Told him that as freeborn Englishman had God-given right to remove health and safety hazards from countryside and had spotted unsightly and dangerous barbed wire with no warning notice; time spent courting Miss Waltz not entirely wasted, do y’see?

    Asil further explained that she intended to invoice company for timely and safe neutralisation of litigation hazard.

    Oik called police officer over to arrest us for civil disorder offence. I told young bobby he should come back when old enough to shave and wear long breeches. Good copper knows when to leap into action and when to go take a tea break. Pointed him at girl with flask of Bovril who might scrub up quite nicely given series of baths and clothing that hadn’t been salvaged off a rag and bone wagon. Thought for a moment young chap might actually try and detain me but nerve failed at last moment – it’s the side-whiskers that do it every time - and he went off to interview Miss Oxfam.

    Entered woods with Miss Ashling, with suited oik trailing us, bleating. Took old straight track down into Morgan’s Deep. Time-shifted brambles away from Asil as we pushed forward, of course. Let them come back for suited chappie and his hired thugs. Expensive suits and designer shoes not so good for muddy arboreal trekking.

    Arrived at old dolmen. Asked trailing oik if he was interested in endangered species. Away from cameras he was less interested in them than in making enormous profits. Suggested he knew what to do with troublemakers. Pointed out four accompanying hench-thugs and noted that he’d got both legal and actual muscle to do whatever the hell he wanted now.

    Asil suggested she could take his four thugs down in something under a minute. If they were lucky.

    I wasn’t so sure about the oik’s commitment to endangered species, however. “Reckon you’ll be a lot more concerned when you’re the endangered species,” I told him.

    Ã¢â‚¬Å“Are you threatening me?” he simpered, confident in his thug/legal shields.

    Pointed out that I wasn’t. Had led him to Morgan’s Deep, at the heart of Feywell Woods. Didn’t need to do anything else.

    Business oik now noticed the hundreds of ravens gathered in the trees, watching him. A murder of crows.

    Ancient fear of woods once attributed to god Pan. Our word for it is panic.

    Lots of other words have old meanings, too, y’know. Amazing comes from amaze, to be stunned from your wits. Stupendous comes from stupor, where you’re too shocked to talk. Fabulous comes from fables, where the mythic breaks into everyday life. Terrific comes from terrified.

    Morgan’s Deep comes from Morrigan, the ancient goddess of horror and destiny at the fey well.

    Round her humans are the endangered species.

    Oik started running first, then his men, all sprinting away through woods, blindly slamming into trees as they fled. Screaming.

    Most satisfying.

    Felt malevolent attention gathering on Asil and I. “Don’t glare at us, madam,” I said – best to be polite but firm, like talking to a waiter or a foreigner. “We’re just drawing your attention to the situation.”

    Ã¢â‚¬Å“The construction firm’s a shell but we can trace it back to ZOXXON Enterprises,” Asil added. She held out the dossier to the gathering storm. “Their homes addresses are in the back.”

    Decided it was best we headed home now. Tempest was rising, scattering placards and writs and lawyers and TV crews. Young PC saved Oxfam lassie when tree dropped on business oik’s BMW; trust she was suitably impressed. Badgers sensible enough to stay underground.

    Was back home reading the cricket scores at the time the freak lighting bolt hit the bulldozers and fried them. Mood much improved.

    Tomorrow may saunter down to London town and indulge in some smiting of the ungodly. Or buy a new waistcoat.


Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2011 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2011 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved.

By the way, that quote is from UHF. Nearly word for word.

Clever solution, using the formidable forces of nature against the false unstoppable forces of lawyers.

Side note: I've been posting my own stuff very slowly because a) it takes an average of 3 weeks now to get ONE reply; and b) because I've been trying to get ahead of the current post on writing because it and developing iphone apps on time occasionally conflicts - if I'm ahead, it doesn't matter so much; and c) At the egging on by a friend or two, I've been toying with writing fanfic again to combat some of the most painful stuff DC comics is doing this fall.

Mumph's been around a while. He knows where the bear traps are."

Quote:
Side note: I've been posting my own stuff very slowly because a) it takes an average of 3 weeks now to get ONE reply; and b) because I've been trying to get ahead of the current post on writing because it and developing iphone apps on time occasionally conflicts - if I'm ahead, it doesn't matter so much; and c) At the egging on by a friend or two, I've been toying with writing fanfic again to combat some of the most painful stuff DC comics is doing this fall.

Yes, I suspect several of us are pacing ourselves to match the board and prioritising our PV writing accordingly. We'll just have to see how things go.

As for fan-fiction it's as good a form of excercising the writing muscles as any and allows for a different cognitive challenge.

I try to avoid stacking chapters up so that people visit, and they see Part 3 posted but they missed Part 1 and 2 so it's not worth their time to catch up and comment.





It's also an excersize in calm for me and at least one or two others who read DC's solicitations for fall.

I've long maintained that eight is the minimum number of active posters required to make the board viable. We dipped below that a year or more since and we're seeing the consequences.







I have serious doubts about any marketing strategy that releases 52 new comics products over the course of a year and expects many of them to prosper. Indeed, even those with existing followings might suffer from "jumping off". I'm with most commentators in predicting a short-term sales spike followed by massive event fatigue.

And going to competetive e-comic release at the exact moment you want the retailers to be on your side is lunacy.

But I have nowhere else to go!

I don't know where they've all gone, and I can't see myself posting stories to Facebook, it's mostly family and work contacts, and not much of an audience. Google+ maybe someday, because I was smart enough to split that off into two groups, but not all that much promise there, either.

I used to post stuff to my web sites, but that wasn't all that effective either - I'd get maybe one or two people a month stopping by, if that. And that was with fanfic, which has its own audience - World Class was a perpetual ghost town.





I think the fact that it's all being done by a small pool of writers/artists, planned centrally by two people, is going to cause problems almost immediately.





That might work, since a lot of people are collectors and need the paper copies to archive. Right now they're at a point where people are giving up comics entirely because it's inconvenient to go to a local comic shop once a week. Electronic distribution will get those people back in.

I'm sure the badgers will be properly thankful.

Loved the short story, and that you set it within current events. On this side of the pond there have been plenty of editorials wishing that Captain America was real so that the might knock some common sense (or some actual, self-sacrificing Patriotism in the form of putting what's best for the country ahead of party politics) into Congress.

It's the simple solutions (like enraging ancient deities) to complex problems that make super-heroes such effective escapist entertainment to begin with.

Fun little romp. A different style of Mumph but i like it.

It's a bold experiment, but I suspect an ill-timed one.







I don't think the collector's market is what is was. Collectors are completists, and when a company is putting out 70+ titles a month few purchasers can afford that level of completeness. An Avengers of X-Men fan needs to invest in, what, five or six titles a month at a cost of around $25 just to follow that one "franchise".

I suspect that the move to e-comics will simply drive many readers to pick up their comics at Pirate Bay or some other illegal distribution source.

I watched with mounting horror as the US played out a live action episode of The West Wing. The budget debate and the threatened shut down was the centrepiece of the first half of series five.




That's probably true. We enjoy the illusion that problems have solutions. How depressing.

It is, but I think the worst ingredient in it is the central planning aspect. There's something to be said about allowing natural divergence instead.





That's completely true, I've seen that people are getting smaller and smaller subscriptions (aka pull lists) at comic stores. That also implies that the more peripheral titles - i.e. not Batman or Superman or X-Men etc are going to hurt most.





That all depends on how they treat e-comics. Apple succeeded in selling digital music only because they priced individual songs at a very attractive rate. If they would have sold the same music but forced people to buy the entire album (like CDs), it never would have taken off.

Likewise, if e-comics cost the same as paper copies or more, people are going to hesitate. If they sell by subscription-only (like some magazines) they aren't going to sell many. If they price it attractively enough, some people might be tempted to get one paper copy and one digital copy so they have one to collect (paper) and one to read (digital) at a savings over buying two paper copies.

I think it falls between two stools. There's either not enough co-ordination to offer a coherent and thought-trough reboot or there's too much interference on individual storylines in individual comics. The path they've chosen appears to incur the negatives of both while not getting all the positives of either.







In 1969 the original X-Men series was cancelled when its sales fell below 70,000 issues per month. Marvel's top-selling properties struggle to do that now. Their third-tier titles have print runs of 10,000. of course, there's the TPB market to factor in now, but those sales are also in the 10-15,000 mark usually.

The sales model is that selling a "flimsy" now should only break even. The TPB is profit. The downside of this is that while you could theoretically break even on a comic selling 20,000 for the first of a six month series declining by 20% sales each issue plus 10,000 TPB collections, that's still only exposed your property to a maximum of 30,000 readers. Next time only a percentage of them will pick up the sequel. It's a very short-term sales and marketing strategy.

What this means is that every comic now is planned to fail. For the ongoing titles there are then new "jumping on points" that will spike sales through hot new creators signing up or through "event issues". For the smaller titles its about retaining as much of the declining sales base after #1 as possible to reach the planned cancellation point.










My understanding is that DC are pricing their online editions at the same cost as their paper editions, presumably under the impression that e-versions are "more valuable" in today's marketplace and can therefore be positioned at that proce point. After three months the back issues will be available at $1 less than published cover price.

This seems to be a serious misunderstanding of the e-marketplace. It means that, for example, a reader can choose between e-buying I, Vampire #3 or e-buying my Robin Hood novel and having enough change for a packet of gum. Let me tell you, at the moment my sales are winning.

And given the amount of music and video e-piracy going on, comics piracy is a given. In fact its actually much easier, given that a video file might be 3gB and a folder containing EVERY single comic published in a calendar month might be around 100mB. A single issue is around 15mB.

When the consumer's perception is that the price of a product is a rip-off it becomes much easier for many consumers to justify stealing the product. Comics readers faced with easy download of illegal copies have method, motive, and opportunity.

I'm not saying this is okay. Just now there's a website in China that's probably selling more copies of my books than the legitimate one that actually pays me royalties on sales, but there's nothing at all I can do about it. But I am saying that it is inevitable that this stuff will happen, and neither DC nor Marvel appear to have factored that into their e-marketing aspirations.

This is the unfortunate side effect of one person or one group of people having a "vision" and trying to force it upon everyone whether it makes sense or not.





And THAT is part of the thinking every U.S. company and CEO is promoting nowadays. The question is always how can we satisfy the stockholders' return THIS QUARTER? As in they don't expect to have jobs, or a company, after that, as in everything after December 31st, 2011 does not exist. They just want to retain enough value not to get fired, and to possibly have someone buy them out after that so that same question is someone else's problem next quarter.

Besides comics, it's leading to a whole lot of short-term products and thinking. It's the reasons most companies no longer do R&D, the reason why banks don't want to loan money (you can't pay it back in 3 months? get lost!).





It's not so much planned failure as a lack of a plan beyond a certain point.





I sincerely hope they're joking about that part: 1) There is no paper or ink or shipping cost involved with e-comics - people are not stupid, and can figure out this is a bad deal. And 2) even collectors will realize this is a bad deal because they can't wrap an e-comic in plastic, archive it for 5-10 years, and have it double in value - in fact, e-comics are worth NOTHING after you buy them or years later.





Exactly what I said. Too many people don't understand how it works, and they figure e-print is for "convenience", and people will pay extra for that convenience. There are magazines and books, and especially newspapers, which cost MORE for e-print editions right now. Yes, it is convenient, but it's also not (paper is still far more portable) and digital is also less archivable.





The higher the cost, the more likely the piracy. Apple taught the music industry that lesson positively after several other upstarts failed. Make the product convenient and cheap enough, and the vast majority of people won't bother pirating it. Really, if they price comics at $1.99 US each, the piracy will drop to a trickle.

Alternately, I kind of get the feeling that e-comics are not taken seriously by the D.C. or Marvel brass, and they figure they'll pay lip-service to this "new fad" and make people pay extra for it, until it fades into the sunset and they go back to their old model.





People will always seek a better deal, even when it looks a little shady. They'll weigh the risk, and then take action. This is why there are always those fake Rolex watch stands in big cities that people are fooled by. People pay their $50, they look at the watch and wonder if they threw away the money, but hey, it looks enough like a real Rolex that the $50 might be worthwhile. Or they buy burned DVD's off a street stand because they're only $1 each, and so what if the quality is bad. After all, they probably won't get arrested for it.