We debated a few members of Blood Syndicate, but ultimately he accepted gang membership = perception of criminal intent = criminal background. Nevertheless, let me do this right:

Mister McDuffie, I, Hannibal Tabu, being of somewhat questionable mind, yet sound body, hereby issue forth my most sincere apologies for incorrectly stating your editorial hierarchy and missing five of your characters who defied the industry's answer to the Anti-Life Equation, the Black Hero Origin Algorithm.

The new total count, lest someone else decides to correct me, of non-Algorithm heroes in the "Big Two" (Tangent and Elseworlds don't count) is 18. Now, on to our regularly scheduled ranting...

I had planned to do an Ultimate Spinnerrack Team Up with Johanna Draper Carlson of Comicsworthreading.com, but both of us have had scheduling issues and haven't been able to get our email conversation anywhere near a point I could publish it. If she doesn't get too busy with her rumored upcoming Spinnerrack project, hopefully I can do that, if only so I can use the Punisher's line from his latest series' second issue: "We had a team up. You were great."

"Hannibal, you've been going on for several column inches and not actually said anything yet." Well, yes, that's true. Life's strange that way.

Oh, and about my marriage, about the downward spiral of the US economy, and the state of the world in general, but let's focus on my thoughts about comics.

I've worked in "bealeguered" industries before. Hip hop music. Publishing. The Internet. The idea that I'm looking out of a handbasket bound for Hell only to see a wide road paved with good intentions is nothing new to me. I've done more than enough yelling at a jolly eeking man in New York, but his words and actions are all I questioned, never his motives.

Things are not jump-of-a-skyscraper bad. Maybe jump-off-a-duplex, but not a skyscraper. The key in all the industies I've mentioned—music, publishing, ecommerce—is to start small. Do what you do as well as possible, and then move on to the next step.

For instance, I read an article on a group called Ill State Assassins, who sold something like 50,000 records off every release. One of the members was quoted as saying, "Yeah, I only sold 50k, and Puffy or whoever went platinum. But with that 50k, I bought my momma a house, funded the next three releases my company wants to put out, and bought a house for myself." It took him a lot of hard work, and it was a constant struggle, but he was carving out a level of success for himself.

I'm a consultant for a small comics company that centers on the ethnic market. But they're not in Black college bookstores, they're not for sale at Black bookstores, not making appearances at big ethnic events like LA's African Marketplace. But with my help, they will be. They'll center on a market that's starving for their product, one that Diamond can't serve, one that the direct market doesn't even acknowledge exists.

And by saying all this, my point is simply that finding your niche is a crucial step in the wackiness of today's Bush-league economy, and that's as true for comics as it is for any other industry. Recapturing newsstand sales is one piece of that. Discovering new distribution channels is another. Grappling with online technology and distribution is yet another. Oh, and of course, it's in everybody's best interest that we all try to make fewer crappy comics.

So I packed up my blanket and trudged away from the sand, but just like those few grains of sand that inevitably find their way home with you, I couldn't quite shake these thoughts. Hopefully, we can all make use of 'em.

Next week, I'll try to find something to be mad at. That's normally a lot more entertaining.