It’s amazing that in many ways comics seems to have a visibility and respectability that I don’t think has existed since maybe the 60s at least (unless you count when Rob Liefeld was in a jeans commercial and Marvel actually ran a TV ad for a comic with a cartoon crossover- DAN CLOWES WAS ON THE SIMPSONS, PEOPLE!!!), and yet so many seem to be stuck in a state of perpetual gloom about “the industry” that they can’t see how GREAT things are. Obviously, given history that’s an understandable defense mechanism- whenever things are good in comics they usually fall apart quickly thereafter, but I see the recent period as a time of amazing diversity and seeding of new areas of growth so that I think much of this is sustainable and can actually continue to grow for some while longer. However, I think Spurgeon is right when he worries about how well this growth and revenue seems to “trickle down” to less-well-known creators.

As a nobody creator I’d love it if more of that stuff seemed to be coming my way but I think what we’re seeing in comics is a great example of the long tail which sees comics at an apex with sales increasing, but with more creators having greater exposure to a mass audience the guys who aren’t on top are stuck fighting for the small amount of people able to find them amid the noise of our mass media culture.

There have never been as many great comics to buy as there are now. I seem to have a harder time every week deciding what to spend my paltry amount of disposable income on. In order to buy Get a Life I have to put back Klezmer and so on. How many Absolute, Essential, and Complete volumes come out in a month now- as many as once came out in a year or decade? Where there was once 300 cartoonists doing work worth watching there seems to be 3,000 and some days more like 30,000. Who can buy all the stuff worth buying (not to mention all the time spent reading Scans Daily, free web comics, blogs, etc.)? Who can even remember all the great comics that are out? I think in many ways the amount of amazing new talent (and re-discovery of old talent ala Fletcher Hanks) has been great and helped create the new rich diversity comics has but also makes it harder for that new talent to stand out in the way Los Bros and Peter Bagge could 20 years ago.

Precisely. And “floppies” doesn’t work either.
I wonder why “singles” hasn’t really stuck? Nothing undignified about that.
45’s and CD singles usually represent a larger body of work (an album) that is either already available or soon to be available.

Perhaps manga-format anthologies are one solution, for publishers big and small. Both with continuing series *and* fairly self-contained excerpts from upcoming graphic novel releases.

I feel one things for sure, though: This medium is going to vary rapidly convert to a model that is primarily consumed electronically. I don’t think printed comics (even “singles”) will be obsolete, but their existence is going to depend greatly on how widely received web comics are.

Not that long ago, countless people reached first and foremost for the Sunday Funnies. Family members bickered over who got to read them first.
Comics were truly mainstream.

That day can come again, in this new medium.

Superhero readers are divided between those who prefer trade paperbacks and a still-strong contingent of readers who follow single issues month to month. From the continuing sales of singles, I assume that those readers are not bothered by the common net complaints of extended plot threads or lack of “enough content” per issue. They still like buying their comics every week and following continued stories as they come out.

Indy comics readers, in contrast, have largely abandoned the single-issue format. They prefer a larger chunk of work and are willing to pay for it. For most indy publishers, including (I’m hearing) Slave Labor, singles are no longer worth the expense to publish.

There are, of course, exceptions on both sides, particularly for long-established creators with an existing following. It’s definitely true that if fans really want to read a new comic — any new comic — they’ll follow it to the format it’s published in.

And along those lines: I seem to be the only one, but the new LOVE & ROCKETS format mystifies me. I understand the impulse to try something that fits the material better, but this strikes me as combining the high price of a trade paperback with the short shelf-life (and lack of bookstore salability) of a single issue. Sam Henderson tried something similar a few years ago with, I recall, disastrous results. ACME NOVELTY LIBRARY works, but that’s a real art object. And I say this as someone who will buy it — I’d buy LOVE & ROCKETS if it was stencilled on the side of shipping containers.

And as far as “chaining ourselves to the the drawing board for an outmoded sales cycle” - it’s called wanting to get paid every month, and not twice a year.

To be honest, I have no idea how often Love and Rockets comes out. I know when I was cleaning out my apartment recently I found more comics with covers by Gilbert Hernandez than any other cartoonist. Beto, at least, could maintain a bi-monthly schedule, I think.

But, just to make myself clear, I have no wish for Evan Dorkin, Jhonen Vasquez, Roman Dirge, Gilbert, Jaime or Mario Hernandez or anyone else to chain themselves to a drawing board or an outmoded sales cycle.

It seems even from the above discussion, that in addition to the Superhero/Indie divide, we now have the pamphlet/collection divide and the paper/pixel divide. Quickly, Robin, to the Venn diagrams!

You’re right, though, there’s too much ground to be made up between us. As I admit freely, I don’t have the answers here. I apologize, and withdraw.

Let’s just wait for Marc Oliver and Paul to come along, shall we?

IcV2.com’s top 25 estimates are actually down about 175,000 collectively between 2006 and 2007. If things were as simple as more people liking serials, or retailers expect to sell more serial comics, one would guess those numbers would be up, too.

*****

Jennifer, I’m not suggesting Dork would stop being a floppy, but that’s not the standard I’m using in his particular case. I’ll leave it at that, though, for obvious reasons.

The likely reason to explain retailers ordering more is that they expect to sell more.

Anecdotally, two years ago I bought one or two trades a year, a year ago I bought a couple trades a month; now I’m buying 3-5 trades and roughly thirty pamphlets a month. So new readers do exist.

Perhaps that’s the real rub here as far as this divide goes… Comics for me, and for most of the folks I interact with, isn’t a hobby. It’s a pleasurable activity, even a passion like reading prose novels, or being interested in modern art, as opposed to a hobby, like collecting pogs or building ships in bottles. I think if comics is something that you derive pleasure from in _that_ sense, then the rituals that to some of us seem like a pain in the butt (going to a comics shop, putting the books in little mylar bags after you’ve read them) is all part of the fun. While it’s not necessarily my bag, if more people are indeed buying more monthlies, I say good for them–and comics in general, I suppose.

It doesn’t work less well now, though, not really. In the post that Heidi linked to, added an edit it to make clear that we’re continuing to publish irregularly scheduled floppies like Lenore and Dork and that I was referring to new regularly scheduled series when I said we’re not really looking to publish them anymore.

The people who read something like Buffy or Gargoyles will buy floppies. They’re fans and readers in a different way from Scott Pilgrim or Love and Rockets fans and readers, who probably would be willing to wait for the trade because they prefer that format. Why? There are the obvious differences in story style and the fact that, as you pointed out, Tom, people who read the latter aren’t going to find a lot they like at comic book stores. Now, is this a matter of publishers moving away from comic book stores just … ‘cuz … or is it because the direct market doesn’t really cater to the latter kind of reader, thus causing publishers to move to a model that is wider than concentrating on selling that market?

And has anyone done a comparison to see if additional comics outlets are being created or is it just a deepening of the ones that are already existing?

But Jhonen, Roman and Evan aren’t going to do regularly scheduled books–or at least “All signs point to ‘no.’” We can’t hang our hat (I like hat metaphors today) on a situation that does not and is not likely to exist. We have to make decisions that are best for the new creators whose work we want to support, who don’t have that name power yet and probably never will to the same extent as someone like Jhonen, who could spit on a piece of paper, scan it, print the same image it on 24 pages with nonsensical dialogue and still sell near 10,000 copies.

Is that it, then? That the direct market will only support pamphlets from small publishers that have “names” attached to them? It’s tough to make a new name now. Even names that don’t have the same “icon” level but once made a project do quite respectably, Serena Valentino, for example, aren’t enough to keep sales afloat. It could be a changing in tastes and perception of what kind of books Serena does, though Nightmares and Fairy Tales is by no means a “goth” comic in the stereotyped view of such things.

I honestly don’t know why people think this is such a big deal. Look at publishers like Oni and Top Shelf. How many series do they publish? Is anyone calling their move to graphic novels “a mistake”? Oni has been quietly moving to a mostly-graphic-novel lineup for years. Why should SLG be uphold the pamphlet form in the indie comics world when it’s dragging us down? That would be the mistake, michaels of this world.

While I’m at it, michael: Several creators we worked with first *have* gone to work on larger projects … projects that are graphic novels. So is DC Minx making a mistake, too? They seem to think the audience for creators like Aaron Alexovich prefer graphic novels. (Aaron is returning to working on his title with us, Serenity Rose, which will mostly likely be published as a graphic novel.)

The more I look at our sales figures, the more I realize that the direct market alone cannot support our books. For some of our trade and graphic novel titles, nearly half the sales come from book stores. Bookstores bought more than twice as many copies of The Clarence Principle as the direct market. Bookstores do not buy pamphlets. However, comic book stores *do* buy graphic novels. The graphic novel is a format you can sell to two markets instead of just one. I have an MFA, not an MBA, so perhaps my business sense is wonky, but that seems like a good choice to make to me.

And who knows, perhaps things will change.

Wow, that was long. I really should get back to reading this script. Last time I say something that people find quote-worthy!