Opinion: The NFL Doesn’t Want Colin Kaepernick, And We Don’t Want His AI Comic Books
Colin Kaepernick has finally packed up from stalking the NFL and has taken up residence in comics and AI for… reasons? Four million of them, from the looks of it.
Kap’s new venture Lumi claims it will be “democratize storytelling” and “free creators”. It’s an AI platform, AI having now become a buzzword to just mean “computer internet things” rather than “artificial intelligence.” For example, the Meta AI ad being run during the Olympics features people basically just Googling something.
The dumbest prompt in the ad being, “Imagine Little Italy NYC in 1954” when you could, you know, just look up an actual picture of the place? Or maybe ask his Grandpa, “Hey Grandpa, you have any photos from your time growing up here?” rather than asking the phone. But generational knowledge and human ability are out, and allowing the computers and phones to complete their process of taking over our brains is in.
It’s unclear exactly what tools Lumi is referencing will be – is the end-to-end creation simply building comics with AI image generation? Is it help with fulfillment and printing logistics? The group behind Lumi, Seven Seven Six, is also invested in Kickstarter, a platform that has truly democratized comic book distribution and funding.
Reading the press release on Lumi, the firm promises to “provid(e) [creators] with the tools needed to independently create, publish, and merchandise their stories both digitally and physically.” The strange thing with all of these tech moves into comics is – to this cartoonist – it completely misunderstands the beauty of the medium. Comics is, at its core, the most accessible art form. All it requires of the creator is a piece of paper and something to write with.
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The distribution and sales end is obviously more complicated, but making a comic requires little in the way of expensive equipment and frankly, the more complicated the making of the comic becomes, the less charm the final product tends to have. In my opinion the over abundance of traced off 3D models and photos in comics is draining the art form of its greatest gift, which is the individual hand of the cartoonist.
Take this statement from Colin Kaepernick, as featured in Lumi’s press release:
“Lumi addresses an unnecessary dependency on gatekeepers that slows creators down. This allows creators to get back to what they ultimately want to do: create . The platform empowers creators to work freely and independently, deciding when and how they want to collaborate with others. This independence is crucial for fostering a vibrant and diverse creative ecosystem.”
Who exactly are the gatekeepers being referred to here? Publishers? If they’re the gatekeeper, there are already places like Kickstarter or Indiegogo, or Zoop, or heaven-forbid your own website, that can be used to fund your comics. What is stopping Kaepernick from creating? Taking this line, “deciding when and how they want to collaborate with others,” maybe it’s artists, the pesky collaborator, that actually makes the comic. To put it in football terms it reads like Kaepernick is frustrated with his wide receivers and would like to just replace them with himself.
The Lumi press release continues: “Lumi was founded out of the barriers that Kaepernick discovered publishing his own works. This included high production costs, long production timelines, and gatekeeping within the industry. These challenges generate significant friction for creators, preventing many projects from getting off the ground.”
The production costs he’s referring to can only be a few things; paying the art team and printing and distribution. The long production timeline is a fact of humans doing work. And again, what “gatekeeping” is he talking about? He founded his own publisher! Is the frustration that there isn’t a market for the types of books he wants to make? That seems to be the one thing Lumi isn’t addressing – the lack of readers. It’s also the only real problem within comics at the moment. It’s not “there aren’t enough stories,” it’s that there aren’t enough readers to support the amount of books that are being made.
The democratizing line sounds nice, but ultimately the issue in comics isn’t that people can’t make the stories they want – it’s that they can’t sell them, and Lumi doesn’t seem to be a tool made for manifesting more readers. Instead it’s about flooding the market with more junk by people who don’t care to develop their own skills and abilities.
As a result, they will inevitably utilize all of this incredibly expensive technology to make nothing more than trash.
(And hey, what do you know: Whether in regards to his failed NFL career or his activist endeavors, the same could be said of Kaepernick himself.)
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