By Dustin Cabeal
Hey, there kiddos. Yeah, come on in and sit down, we need to talk. First, you're probably wondering if your mom and I are getting a divorce and the answer is yes. You see, I've loved your mom since I was a little kid. I remember her fondly in the pages of Spider-Man and Captain America. Later that love grew into X-Men and Batman. I grew up some, and we saw each other less and less.
But like all great loves we came back together. Around the time I was exiting high school, we found each other again in the pages of Spawn and X-Men. The love took a new turn with Blue Monday and soon I couldn't stop my head from turning towards anything she had by Oni Press. I know you're not to tell you kids this, but damn she looked good in small press comics. Sin City became the next chapter of our romance, and soon I found myself tearing at the pages of anything that wasn't DC and Marvel. Anything that wasn't what made me fall in love with her.
Perhaps I stayed on the fringe of that love for too long. Maybe I lost what made me love her in the first place; maybe I just wanted her to be what I wanted her to be and not what she needed to be. In relationships, there's always two sides, and usually, both sides play a part in the ending of the relationship. I admit my faults, my desires for her to be more than just superheroes, crossovers, and licensed stories. But I can't ignore her faults and problems anymore.
Like an addict, she continues to focus on the money, the nostalgia, the variants and the fast sells. The "what ifs" that should never be. Believe me when I say I love your mother. I will never have a great love. Not for wrestling, not for video games, anime or baseball. No, comics will always be my great love.
I'll cut to the chase and tell you that Big Trouble in Little China/Escape From New York #1 was the highest selling book in October.
I know. I couldn't believe it either.
Now, it's not all her fault. We have a very open relationship and always have. She supports a lot of men and women and clearly, their need for this monstrosity was far greater than my empathetic cries telling her we can find another way, we can be better; we can be so much more than a crossover the ruins two great films.
I tried to warn people, but I was too late. The sales were in three months before the release, and I only had a week to try and stop the morbid curiosity from setting in. I bite the bullet and read it. I shouted into my microphone, "No, no, don't buy this mangled mess of nostalgia that is trying to send John Carpenter to an early grave. Perhaps I needed to write it down as well. Maybe, I overestimated the distance my voice carried.
The results were unchanged. It was bought. It was praised. It was hailed as a masterpiece and more importantly helped BOOM! get one step closer to premiere status.
I just can't sit idly by, praising comics worth money and time while your mother turns out variant covers and crossovers. She's going through a drought. Without her sister's film and tv I wonder if she's even be holding together as well as she is. I commend her for that. She's tough, always has been, but eventually her actions will chase us all away. Her other husband and wives will die off or run out of money when the economy plummets, and she'll look to me and others and say, "Hey, I still have the X-Men. You like them when they're blue and gold don'tcha? Wait... where are you going?"
It'll be hard at first to turn my back on her, and to leave her in such a state. But then I'll remember... Big Trouble in Little China/Escape From New York was the number one book of October 2016. A story in which two Kurt Russell characters were made to be the same character on parallel planets. I'll remember that someone thought that was a good idea. That it was a story worth telling, and it'll make it easier. But don't worry, I'll see you every other birthday until you're an adult and stop caring.
You can read the entire press release and see all sales info by downloading this file.
