I really envy those who can write newsletters with a very specific theme and create sort of real episodes every single time. Until recently, I used to be able to do that as well.
Instead, these days, maybe for health reasons, maybe because summer vacation summer for me is always a time for reflection…
For example, I wonder if AI, all things considered, could end up just being a fad, as Ted Gioia meditates in this article. This happens while Meta is reportedly offering millions to celebrities like Awkwafina, Judi Dench, and Keegan-Michael Key to use their voices in upcoming AI projects across Meta's platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses (I think I’ve already told you that if you want to stay updated on the AI front, this is the newsletter to follow). But then again, this other article restates so strongly the idea that the end of the generative AI boom has started that maybe its effects will just amount to be instrumental in helping to cut more jobs in Hollywod and in the music and videogame field (Brian Merchant again: “It’s still very much an open question whether or not these changes will be permanent, or permanently used as leverage against workers, or will pass in the wind after the AI systems fail to improve to a point that studios find their output satisfactory, and they turn out to be more trouble and expense than they’re worth”).
Oh, and I wonder what direction old Tinseltown is taking: after a Spider-Man movie that was an extension of a meme, we get a Deadpool&Wolverine flick that is basically meme-editing ... and still shatters several box office records. Needless to say, if these operations are successful, they will continue. I also wonder what pop culture has become, where you don't enjoy a movie but the pre- and post-movie conversation, based on a higher or lower coefficient of geek knowledge.
Hollywood plans future remakes of 90s movies but more importantly continues cost-cutting (which also implies continuous layoffs), and this specific aspect will perhaps bring back a situation that has existed in the past, let’s say in a pre-Star Wars world: if apart from a few big titles, all tv shows will be made on smaller budgets, if you want to create epic stories, you can do it ... in comics. See for example the ambitious space opera Thellus written by Simona Mogavino (an amazing bande dessinée scriptwriter and a national treasure, even if she’s famous in France and not in Italy), which starts with two #1 issues of two parallel cycles, the Eva Samas’one drawn by Carlos Gomez and the Kad Moon’s one drawn by Laura Zuccheri. You don't know French? Ah, welcome to the global world, where Yours Sincerely is forced to speak and write in at least two other languages (for now) to be able to get paid work. Learn new languages, it’s fun (and sometimes it’s a survival requirement).
I'm also thinking about how you have to work when you manage big and valuable IPs: it’s all about guidelines, guidelines and more guidelines. Clearly if you agree to do such work, you know very well what kind of rodeo awaits you. At the same time, I wonder if you can really win against manga and anime, which even if aimed at a teenage audience, unabashedly present violence and fan service (not necessarily nudity), and in general are just… freer? [Japan aims to quadruple overseas market for anime and games by 2033: how this will be possible, given the frailties of the anime industry (consistently low wages and grueling working hours that cause labor shortages), I cannot exactly imagine]. The need to create such super-controlled entertainment products undermines that "spontaneity" that is an essential and crucial element of the global success for manga and anime. What I learned (“learnt” for the British English speakers) from my brief direct experience with a Japanese editor (and other interactions with Japanes editors I have been told about) is that in manga there is always an element of improvisation that is literally inconceivable to us in the Western entertainment world. I refer to this interview with Buronson (part one and part two: only available in Italian but automatic translation on line services are you best friends), in which he talks about Hokuto no Ken and among the statements that made my eyes and jaws go wide open there was this one: "Initially I was supposed to take a break for several months, but in reality they didn't cut me any slack. When I finished the Raoh saga, the next day they told me, 'Very well, in four days you have to create a sequel for us.' Four. Days. To create a story-arc that lasted 11 tankobon. Unbelievable. I cannot imagine this level of madness, audacity but also freedom in any Western product right now. And now manga and anime are "the" global forms of storytelling through images. Replicating a style of drawing and a certain kind of storytelling is not enough, if there is a lack of both freedom (yes, I’m willingly repeating here), risk, and pleasure that prevents an “improvisational” (is that a real world in English?)/jazz approach. “DON'T KILL ANYBODY'S INNER CHILD" (to understand better what I mean, is a direct quote from this interview to one of my favourite human beings, Javier Grillo-Marxuach).
OK, as I wrote a few lines above: an installment of the newsletter that is more of a grounding of some things that I have been mulling over but so far have not led to any conclusions, creative or of any other kind. For now, I keep brooding and writing current projects. By the end of 2024 a slew of stuff I wrote should come out (clearly just for the Italian market): the secret project in the works since 2020, a hardcover volume (Mr. Evidence #5, have I already mentioned that it is available for publication in languages other than Italian?), a 464 [not a typo]-page team-up between Martin Mystère and Nathan Never, the newsstand edition of Nathan Never/Justice League. 8 issues (ranging from 62 to 94 pages) in bookstores and newsstands between September 2024 and January 2025. Weird. More on that in the fall.