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Every single comic book that you pick up is a manipulated environment. The environment in question, of course, is the harried landscape of your brain; still. An environment nonetheless. And why is it that Las Vegas is the biggest repository of cash dollars out side of Fort Knox, and that the lowly comic book industry has to struggle to get its top-selling comic to top sales of 100,000 units a month?

It’s value returned. A dollar spent in Las Vegas yields more satisfaction to your Average Joe than a dollar spent on a comic book.

Actually, there’s a problem right there. In Las Vegas, which, I am told, used to be sort of an adult Disneyland, now has literally something for everyone. Roller coasters and arcades and shopping malls and entertainments of every sort are available in addition to the casinos and the food and the showgirls. People in age from fetus to corpse can find something to do.

Can this be said of comics?

Certainly there are a wide range of entertainments available in comics. Adventure, science fiction, humor, pathos, elegance and joy. Something for everyone.

But there is no access to the form.

In Las Vegas, there are nickel slots. Can you imagine? You don’t have to be James Bond, dressed in an Armani tuxedo and sitting at the baccarat table, to enjoy the quick thrill of possibility. Five cents! Who doesn’t have five cents? Take the coin and spin the wheel! There is no easy entry point to comics. You have to go out of your way to find a comic, and even then, the specialty shop that sells them may not have the one you’re looking for in stock. You can’t just read ‘em at the bar ber shop, or at the corner store, or at the malt shop with Reggie and Jughead because they just aren’t there anymore. Comics have to be sexy again. Then they’ll be everywhere. Comics need to take a page out of the Vegas handbook: creators have to make comics so big and fun and sexy that folks don’t want to go anywhere else. What’s Up, Bro? May 25, 2001

Joe Casey exemplifies All That Is Good And True in Comics, or Joe Casey

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