ACTION: EVOLUTION
BY DAVE POTTER

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SAVANT is about changing things.

Always has been and always will be. That's why activism has been at our core as a publication. We want our readers to realize they hold the power to make thing better for this industry and understand the actions they can take to make things better.

And then we want them to spread that knowledge like a virus and infect more people. We want these ideas to be self-replicating in the body public. Because that is the only way to change things.

The ideas that SAVANT has been putting forth in ACTION and the rest of our magazine over the last year and a half have made a difference. We've helped make people aware of activism, and inspired others to try it as a way of bringing in new readers or trying to change their store's buying habits or trying to alter a publisher's publishing practices.

But we've reached a saturation point with our readership, and a maturation point as a publication. Most of our reading audience has been with us for awhile, and they've seen and heard all we've said about activism.

People have seen the activism messages and principles the first time we said it, the second time we said it, the third time we said it, and so on. It was an easy lesson to learn: The principles of activism are simple, and while stories illustrating those principles are plentiful, they become repetitive on the weekly (or almost weekly) basis that has been SAVANT over the last 18 months.

Our audience has become the collective bunny, to use Larry Young's immortal phrase. You all are out there making comics better with your bare hands.

We have, through everyone's activism, established a beachhead. But now that we have a staging area for the revolution, its time to change our strategies a little. As a result, ACTION-- at least as a regular weekly feature-- isn't really needed anymore. When ACTION gets to the point (as it has) where it's published weekly no matter who's writing it, then a threshold has been crossed, and not one for the better. It's time to move on.

Perhaps more importantly, we're spending too much time preaching to the choir now, when what we need to be doing is giving the choir tools to enlarge itself. One of those tools will be the SAVANT Activism Handbook, a .pdf file of our best activism ideas. That should be up in the next couple of weeks or so, as Alec and I go through and pull together something that can easily be handed out to help get a new activist started down the road to enlightenment.

People should not be confused here-- the fight is in no way over, and we are not throwing in the towel or anything. There is still a lot of work to be done, and we are trying to adjust ourselves into the niche where we can do the most good. The problems of the comic industry aren't going to be solved overnight, or even in a few years. The hole that's been dug is that deep, and the only way out is good old fashioned, one-person-at-a-time activism that we've all become more conscious of doing.

SAVANT is about evolution, and to keep ourselves immune from evolving would be foolish and hypocritical. So we're changing. And first up, this is the last ACTION column you'll be seeing in our pages. We'll still be giving advice on changing comics and activism will remain at our core- but it will no longer be a weekly, featured area in our pages.

There will be some other changes that you'll see in the coming issues of SAVANT; some small and some not-so-small. We're not going to stand still. We're still constantly striving to be the bunny.

And hopefully, our continued actions will make all of your bunny efforts easier.