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Terry Hooper-Scharf

Thursday 2 April 2015

Blogs are going. Vlogs are going. Comic Geek Chic is going....but they'll be back!

Looking at the stats for CBO it is quite interesting that the UK is never the biggest visitor.  Ukraine, Russia, Germany, France, Netherlands, Switzerland and even India sometimes out does UK views.  The top is always the United States since China started being hit-or-miss (though second highest number of views yesterday and today are from...China!).

CBO gets around 36-37,000 views per month so just over 1,166.6 views per day -with China missing so much these days the 75-80,000 views a month are no longer there.  Google+ is just over 1,400+ views. I'm not including all the other, what I call "Leak sites" that use CBO postings with or without credit.

But I have noticed something.  In the last three months bloggers are getting fewer and fewer visits.  Some who used to get 100-300 per day are down to 30-60 per day and this decline in views seems to be across the board.

Are people going more for video blogs?

I don't think so. What I am seeing here is what I have seen in other fields over the last 40 + years. 

Look at UFO groups for instance.  Big surge in the 1950s.  Things die down but something sparks interest -a TV series such as The Invaders- and things die off slowly.  Then, in 1977, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind hit the movie screens and world-wide another huge surge of interest.  Again, it petered out until 1993 and The X-Files followed by Dark Skies and so many other TV shows it's too much to list!   Cheap 'real life' mysteries series then kicked in -and some are so poor in quality they qualify as "trash TV".

So what do we see? millions of Americans claiming to be abductees, thousands encountering ridiculous "cryptids" such as "Goat Squatch"/"The Goat man"/ "The werewolf of Bray Road" (and other locations/evil goblins and gnomes....now, okay, there are things out in our seas and oceans we know little or nothing about.  I'll not argue Sasquatch.  But there are people terrified to go out in cities for fear of monsters (non-human) and "black eyed children".  See the number of fake paranormal shows on TV -Ghost Adventures, Ghost Hunters, et al.

The same with comics. The Superman/Captain America/Batman and Captain Marvel movie serials and TV shows -the 1966 Batman TV series created a huge interest in comics again. Things died off and the the 1970s saw the Hulk TV series/TV movies.  Then Superman came back in movies followed by Batman later the Captain America movie (I know it is much maligned but the Hoff as cigar-chewing Nick Fury in the TV movie was enjoyable...even the 1970s TVMs of Dr Strange and Captain America were fun).  Then we got to the X-Men and Spider-Man movies and even the Fantastic Four movies -all livened up comics.

Of course, what I termed "Comic Geek Chic" began with The Big Bang Theory TV series.  It was slow at first but then it all took off.  Even the wearing of fake spectacles to look "geeky" -arses.

Suddenly, everyone was declaring themselves a "comic geek" -"Yeah, I been inta comics since the year 2K, dude!"  Wow. I am underwhelmed.

Traders made good money from selling cheap items at high prices.  The idiots buy.  But hang on -they've had the comics for 4-5 years so WHY can they not sell them for huge prices, just for less than they paid? 

SUCKERS!

Traders are not selling as much as they were for various reasons.  Most are saving comics until they can charge more.  Like when?  Well, there is a new Avengers film coming up....followed by other comic book hero films.   ka-ching!

You can see how this is working?

And new bloggers/vloggers!  I've seen so many come and go in the last five years. Grabbing whatever comics they can "I don't know what the story is about but its a cool cover!"  and so on.  Then blogs/vlogs become fewer -"I still love comics, don't get me wrong, but I can't get enthusiastic enough to do a new video" and so on......"oh, I've found a shop selling old vinyl records and I got this deck from Amazon ..." and so comics are less but the LPs get more chat...."I finally got myself a motorbike. Always wanted one....blah blah blah....." videos stop.  

I subscribed to about twenty You Tube channels in 2012.  Five remain.

And if I hear one more "The character(s) in this comic are nothing like the ones in the movies!" I am going to scream.  No, you have NOT been cheated you triple dumb-asses: the Star Lord in the original comic you bought -just like the Guardians of the Galaxy and Rocket Raccoon (well most comic to movies characters) those are the originals -now altered in comics to be like in the movies.

When I watched that bloody gods awful Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters did I shout out "This is nothing like the story in Grimms' fairy tales!"  No. I just sat there and said "What I see floating in the toilet bowl each day is more interesting than this!"

Any you'll notice how the once perfect cast of The Big Bang Theory are now being criticized (gasp!)? Kaley Cuoco -"lousy actress" "Have you seen her new hair-do?"  "She couldn't act to save her life!" and the other actors are getting similar.

Is Geek Chic dying off?????

I predict that blogs and vlogs on comics will increase again after Avengers 2.  Comic buying may pick up for a while but the main dupes have realised their comics are NOT their retirement funds!

Buy and read comics because you enjoy them.

If you want to get into some fad...fad off.

1 comment:

  1. I have my copy of 'The Singing Ringing Tree' and a set of fairy tales illustrated by Arthur Rackham to keep me company . Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters ???? Uhhhh ??? What ? When was that made ? Oh , yes , I had the misfortune of catching 'Ghost Hunters' the other night . In the end I made the preferable choice and watched a lecture that I had from TED . What's that other one , 'Paranormal Witness' ? I'm looking forward to seeing whether they can pull off Doctor Strange . I may have a Marvel film week just to relax .

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