I wonder how much serial comics publishers depend on people with addictive personalities for their business? Publishers should be able to promote their publications based on their merits as entertainment, even as standalone products, and not as something that temporarily satisfies a need for a weekly fix.

It’s not that difficult to think of a Marvel Universe in which stories were published as graphic novels and the “shared universe” concept had been abandoned, with continuity and references to other characters within a story being very general. One has to wonder, though, whether writers would be able to adjust their views of the characters sufficiently to produce novel-length stories that provided real drama and suspense.

SRS

At the end of their runs, Nightmares and Fairy Tales or GloomCookie would have come very close to not making Diamond’s benchmark, if not falling under it. Does that SHOCK anyone? Not if they were paying attention to Diamond’s Top 300 lists. That people are SHOCKED that an indie book isn’t selling well isn’t such a comforting perspective. It’s just another example of other perspectives that– I have to say — are apparently far more limited than my own.

Isn’t this entirely beside the point? There are a handful of blockbusters at the movies every year, and a bunch of movies no one saw. Oprah makes a few books sell a gajillion copies, and other new releases flounder. I’m pretty sure that everything ever has a few great successes, a few moderate successes, and then a bunch of things that don’t quite make it, regardless of quality. Saying that manga is like that is kind of like saying “Manga has pictures, just like comics!”

Also, modern comics seem to me to be very much by committee. To quote from Chris Eckert @ Savage Critic(s): “There have been sixteen pencillers and twenty three inkers so far.” That’s out of 21 issues, and a few of those art changes were completely unannounced. If it’d been by sixteen dudes who drew exactly the same, I’d bet it would have been better received.

I don’t think that modern superhero readers would think of comics-by-committee as that much of a big deal. We already know that editors have a hand in many a story, and sometimes the EiC decides the whole direction for a company. Doesn’t Marvel make a big deal about how all of their writers go on retreats to plot out the over-story for the next 12-18 months?

Marvel and DC can’t copy manga point for point, but like Heidi said, manga’s audience is an audience that wasn’t there not too long ago.

You said: Have you read all of the other Love and Rockets books/collections? Great characters like Maggie and Hopey and Luba are what made Love and Rockets great, but the creators are what really sell the books. It’s not really a great example for someone like you. A better example would be the Joker HC by Azzarello and Bermejo. Did you buy/read that one? or will you buy the SC version? or not at all?

Agree with you about L&R’s creators being the selling point. Bought about half of the original run of single issues, but have stayed away from most of the big collections that FBI has reprinted a number of times, partly in lieu of looking for new stuff and the rest just the passage of time between work. There’s very few folks whose work I’d buy automatically these days, and all but one (Alan Moore) is a cartoonist.

As far as the Joker book, a pal of mine whose taste I trust warned me to stay far, far away from it (even though I like both creators) and the hardback was overpriced, in my opinion, so I took a pass. Maybe, I’ll read the trade, maybe not.

Regarding reluctance and changing times, that’s what I believe will fuel the tsunami that will overtake the traditional way of selling comics much sooner than later. Will Amazon’s newest Kindle device change habits? Not now, perhaps, but eventually…

I know it’s frustrating from your perspective, but there’s many other perspectives you need to look at. It’s like people are SHOCKED that an indie book isn’t selling well. Getting out more than an issue or two is a goddamn miracle these days, it would seem.

I’d probably order a bit more from SLG if books like Gloom Cookie or Nightmares & Fairy Tales were still coming out in single issues. (I won’t bring up Vasquez or Dirge, obviously)

Maybe becuase Naruto the manga came first and that’s there the inspiration lies?

Or because neither Marvel nor DC has the wherewithal to create or promote these books properly?

Speaking as someone who edited DC’s Cartoon books a decade ago, I can say that these books were not looked on as “real comics” by some — not all, certainly not all — of the folks tasked with making and marketing them. Plus, even 10 years ago, there weren’t any many kid friendly comics shops as there are now. Plus working on the kids line is still seen as a stepping stone to creating “real” comics by most of the people working on them and I don’t think any of them feel what they’re doing is at the level of Masashi Kishimoto. (I think Paul Dini and Bruce Timm were an exception to this, and guess what, MAD LOVE is still in print and considered a classic.)

Scholastic, Viz, Del Rey, Harper Collins and Simon & Shuster all have decided that they can make money publishing kids comics and now they make money publishing kids comics, starting from scratch.

More recently, Marvel is doing really well with its kids digest lines, and DC has invested in early readers with the line that Jann Jones created — and here, at least, she cleverly tapped into the group of creators who are really PASSIONATE about making comics for kids.

That’s great for you, Ryan, but for a lot of us, it seems like “I’ve got nothing” will soon mean something much, much different. I’m not trying to sound melodramatic, but you’re the guy whistling on his front porch when a tornado has taken out his neighbors’ houses. Heidi is right: I am sad and I am frustrated. I don’t really have much else to say, which is rare for me. I appreciate the discussions going on, though. I’m always learning.

Have you read all of the other Love and Rockets books/collections? Great characters like Maggie and Hopey and Luba are what made Love and Rockets great, but the creators are what really sell the books. It’s not really a great example for someone like you. A better example would be the Joker HC by Azzarello and Bermejo. Did you buy/read that one? or will you buy the SC version? or not at all?

” So I understand the reluctance first-hand that Brian describes.”

I understand reluctance as well. There’s great comfort in familiarity, and that’s something on which comic book stores thrive.

But times, they are a-changin’.

Heidi: I’m constantly amazed by how long you’ve done The Beat, how you’ve grown professionally to keep up with “your competition” — from what I’ve been reading over the years you have few “real” competitors — and that you’re still finding reasons to keep doing it even after 20+ years on the comics beat, the last part of the equation being the hardest.

Bleakest Year: I leafed through a copy of the newest L&R trade for the first time at my closest B&N last week, not at my LCS. Liked what I saw, but because of the long, long time between issues/trades/whatever, I had next to nothing invested in the characters due to the major gap in time so I didn’t buy it. I may later, but not right now. So I understand the reluctance first-hand that Brian describes.

Then again, I’m a 50-something guy still making visits to his world-class LCS, but leaving with fewer books in my hands to read. Why do I still go? Force of habit, the collegial experience and the promise of finding something I’ve never experienced before and can’t live without. Like JH Williams’ III upcoming run in Detective Comics or the Wednesday Comics experiment or the newest Neil Gaiman/Dave McKean storybook (Crazy Hair) or the latest work of my pals in the biz. Those things keep me coming back, despite evidence — corporate crossover comics and reprints of old material because it’s old, not because it’s any good — to the contrary.

As smarter folks than me have pointed out here, the shopping market on the Internet for music, books, movies and, down the road, comics — both digital and physical — is easier and better exploits that urge to buy on impulse. So what can the typical comics retailer do to recreate this kind of experience and survive a long time?

Think, plan and operate their business as would an independent bookseller. Of course, that means there will be a fraction of retailers who can survive this transition because they’re so wired into the weekly, periodical thing they can’t imagine any other way to do business.

Then again, scary is what I thought at first about buying music digitally. Times change.

Of course, the other thing is translating the manga method to indie books. Again, good in theory, but try finding an indie/startup company that can afford to create 200 page b&w comic every few months for $9.99. Manga works in the west because these are books that are already long since finished in Japan, they’re reprinted here for a licensing fee. People always ask why Marvel and DC (and indie companies, too) don’t get all the issues of a series in the can before they publish it, so it’s on time. It’s kind of hard to pay the writer and artist when you’ve made no money on the project.

So yeah, I’ve got nothing. I’m happy with the way the comics industry is right now.

1. The manga model, in the end, isn’t so dissimilar from the western comics model. Format and price might be different, but the end result is a dozen books that make up all the sales. And I highly doubt that the comics-by-committee method of making manga would go over well in this very creator-dominated field of western comics. Sure, you can joke about editors writing certain titles, but imagine if 5 writers and 15 artists (who all draw the same) drew every issue of New Avengers? I don’t see that going over well.

2. The American western comic audience has, for the most part, ignored anthology titles. I love anthologies. I wish Marvel and DC made a ton of them, but for whatever reason, the audience isn’t there for them. Flight is an amazing books, and sells very well for me, but we’re talking one anthology out of dozens. The rest sit and collect dust. I’d kill for a Batman anthology title every month, but it’s clear that they don’t work for whatever reason (see: Spider-Man Family, Solo). Maybe the back-up features are heading us towards anthologies, who knows. I just don’t see monthly (or weekly) b&w anthologies in our future.

3. You talk about growing an audience. That’s great, but from what I’ve seen, a lot of American interest in manga comes from the anime they show on Cartoon Network, hence why books like Death Note and Naruto are so popular. By that reasoning, why didn’t sales of JLA or Wolverine spike when their shows are on the air? Western comics and manga are all COMICS, but I do not think that the audiences are the same, nor should they be treated the same. I wouldn’t recommend probably any manga to half my customers for the same reason I wouldn’t recommend any one of the dozens of indie books I carry, because they’re Just Not Into It. They like superheroes. Hey, I think it’s dumb, but I’m not the customer. I wouldn’t give my few manga subscribers Blackest Night #0, either, because they’re Just Not Into It.

So, where does this lead us? Marvel and DC making digest-sized, b&w, comics-by-committee graphic novels every few months? No thanks.

I would choke a bunny for 0.05% market share. Heck, 10 bunnies, if we’re talking unit share.

Ryan, obviously manga is the savior of MANGA and not superhero comics. That doesn’t mean it isn’t comics, or that it isn’t a perfect example of an audience that didn’t exist 10 years ago. Ya know, the same way everyone is always saying we need to find a new audience for this or that but it can’t be done?

Why people are so eager to discount clear examples of how to grow an audience is beyond me.

No, not the game of global domination, though it would be awesome if that were the case. Alas, it’s plain old economic risk — and in any recession, risk is the driving force behind all economic decisions.

Each new title carried by Diamond creates risk by bloating the Previews catalog, thus devaluing the “real estate” of each page therein. Good content gets lost in the shuffle, and retailers are given more choices but fewer tools to decide which choices to make. Plus Diamond has to hire more sales reps (or increase the workload of existing sales reps) to handle these marginal accounts — increasing systemic risk for the company as a whole.

Each new title carries a risk for retailers who have to buy their content on a non-returnable basis. They already cater to a niche audience, so any expansion beyond that carries with it substantial risk to their bottom line. This is especially so with periodicals that have an extremely limited shelf life. After three months (one, really), a periodical that hasn’t sold most likely never will. Graphic novels may cost more per unit, but they have a longer “tail,” greatly increasing the probability of a return on investment when viewed in the long term. Still, there’s risk involved isn’t there when deciding how many copies of “Amazing Spider-Man” to purchase.

Finally, each new title carries a risk to consumers. It’s a blind faith purchase for the most part, and the page-count-value of periodicals is too low to justify that kind of blind faith purchase except in the rarest of circumstances.

As someone who’s worked in small press (Platinum Studios) or written marginal titles for bigger publishers (”Batman Strikes” for DC), I certainly appreciate it when distributors, retailers and consumers all take a risk and buy my books, and I work very hard to convince them that it’s a risk worth taking.

That being said, it’s their money on the line, and they have the right to spend it as they see fit. I have no right to demand that Diamond or my Local Comic Shop or the customers patronizing that shop purchase my book. As a comic shop proprietor friend of mine once said, just because I grow peas in my backyard doesn’t mean that the local grocery store has to stock them.

Do I think it’s unfortunate that some books have been cut from the Diamond catalog? Yes, of course I do, but there are economic realities to consider. Risk has to be managed, and the best way to do that is by slimming the portfolio to only the most profitable products.

We live in a world with too many choices. There are too many comics published in a single month all over the world for any person to read in their entire lifetime. Consumers need content filters so that when the time comes to actually purchase a product, they’re purchasing something that they’re reasonably sure they’ll enjoy.

That filtering mechanism is the reason publishers want their books in the Diamond Catalog and racked in comic shops in the first place. If it’s in those places, then it’s probably worth reading and paying for. There’s real economic value in those filtering mechanisms, and the less discriminating they are, the less valuable they become.

If you want a universal distribution system that has no filters — it already exists and it’s called the Internet. Put your book online, find an audience and eventually comic stores will come to you. Just don’t demand that other people take a risk on your product because doing so would be “good for comics.”

Sure, companies want the sales that Naruto gets. They also want the sales Secret Invasion get.

Most comic shops don’t have the time, money, etc to get involved in manga, and that’s understandable. Only so many hours in a day to maximize sales to the people walking in the door - I understand. Manga is selling itself without the benefit of comic stores somehow and I think trying to understand the how is really important. Or, you know, don’t try and keep talking about how there is no solution and all that….

But guess how much the first book sold originally? Some 6000 copies.

Luckily it was sold in bookstores, not on the direct market.

Best,
Hunter (Pedro Bouça)

That’s a good one. Almost sounded sincere, but since you essentially solicited that post, any other response would have been distasteful.

Hibbs via quote–”But if you say “I’ll just wait for the trade”, you’re automatically decreasing the size of the audience.”

Do you mean the overall audience for the work or the audience for the monthly comic? The latter is self-evident. The former is just an unsubstantiated guess.

“Why? Because: x% of you will keep waiting even once the work is out. ”

If they’re still waiting, they’re still part of the overall audience for the work. Just not yet.

“Another x% of you is going to balk at the prices needed to finance “OGN” work. ”

This doesn’t follow. Are we talking about TPBs or OGNs?

In most cases (or at least it used to be this way), the TPB has a lower retail price than the total cost of the individual comics collected within. I assume this can be acheived as a result of offsetting the cost of producing the work by selling monthly comics. OGNs don’t have monthly comics to offset this cost, so one would assume they would have a higher retail price than what it would have cost to publish the story in monthly chunks to be collected at a later date. Quite a few people would choose to pass on the work as a result. Thems the breaks.

For years people have been extolling the virtues of comics as an equal to literature, and now that more people are beginning to come around to that way of thinking, the comics faithful are expecting them to get a “pullbox” and become a kool-aid drinking member of the Cult of Wednesday. In most cases, that’s not gonna happen.

Unfortunately, I have no idea what you were getting at becasue “waiting for the trade” has nothing to do with the cost of producing an OGN. I tried to comment on both acronyms in an effort to cover all the bases, but I still don’t know what my response should have addressed since I’m unclear on your point.

“Another x% of you are going to completely forget that the work is being produced”

Again, are we talking OGNs or TPBs? In the case of “waiting for the trade”, it is certainly possible people will forget about the existence of the work in question because all of the marketing dollars are spent to promote the loss-leading monthly publications. You can’t fault a consumer for letting it slip their mind to keep an ever-vigilant watch on the racks at the local book or comic book store in rapt anticipation of the TPB release of a comic series that they had interest in several months ago. It’s like releasing a feature film in iTunes episodes and wondering why no one showed up at the multiplex when the collected product hit the big screen when the distributor didn’t even bother to send out trailers and posters and purchase ad space in print and on television to let people know. Even if they did promote it, who’s gonna be in a hurry to see it except “wait for the movie” people, and if they don’t catch it on the big screen, there’s always going to be people selling off their unwanted iTunes downloads and dvds for sale for all of eternity to allow the viewer to catch it eventually. (I believe a better comparison would have been iTunes to DVD release, but I was already vested in this one that I didn’t want to change it. In any case, film and television always advertise the hell out of something even if it’s a secondary market release, so neither comparison fits perfectly… but then again, they never do.)

If you’re talking about OGNs, then that argument doesn’t hold water. How can someone forget about a work that has just been released and promoted for the very first time? Maybe its simple release isn’t enough to pack them in and blow the roof off the place with its sales figures, but that’s how it goes. It’s a complete work with an audience, and that audience can sometimes have patience. The Cult of Wednesday has no patience and probably can’t really understand why some of us weren’t camped out at the comic store on Free Comic Book Day to get a copy of Blackest Night #0… or even didn’t bother to show up for Free Comic Book Day at all.

“if LOVE & ROCKETS is produced only once a year, where’s the percentage for the Hernandez Brother’s readership to come in looking for L&R more than once a year?”

Uh.. should be 0.00%. Why would they? It comes out once a year. Only need to go looking for it once a year. This comment makes it sound like you’re just worried about losing those people who spend more money on impulse buys rather than worrying about losing the audience for a specific published work due to its style of publication. Seems like retail paranoia instead of concern for comics as a whole.

“If you’re only looking once a year for something, then you’re just as likely to only think of it every 18 months, 24 months, whatever.”

This too seems like an unsubstantiated guess. I get it. The habitual regularity of comics customers keeps you in business and you enjoy that comforting feeling of people committing to buying something two months in advance sight-unseen. What keeps you up at night is if this business on which you’ve staked your livelihood were to change from comforting habitual regularity to random occasional bouts of purchasing from well-informed consumers who can see a product before they buy it and buy it where it’s most cost-effiecient and convenient instead of the same place every time, you might not be able to make it. It’s a valid concern. Thems the breaks.

I believe that most comics which keep most comic shops alive and well are never going to subscribe to the OGN method of publication because the Cult of Wednesday is a loyal–if dwindling–consumer base. The “big two” have painted themselves into their respective corners, and they’re probably not going to change until the money starts to dry up. What they produce caters to and mostly benefits the Cult of Wednesday exclusively, and it’ll be enough to keep the monthly comic book around for quite a while longer. Anyone else who isn’t Marvel or DC should begin exploring options other than the monthly comic book and Diamond Comics Distribution if you haven’t already. The Cult of Wednesday doesn’t give a crap about you, so why should you bother trying to appeal to them.

Want my advice? Of course you don’t, but here it is anyway. Publish your work in as many different ways as are available to you for as long as you can until expenses dictate a change is necessary. When a change is necessary, begin eliminating the most costly non-essential methods until your profits and losses get back to your ideal ratio. If that ratio again reaches an intolerable level, then it’s probably time to stop. Good luck.

Well, for me personally, it wasn’t the fact of L&R coming out once a year or “waiting for the trade” of an ongoing series that broke my weekly purchasing habit, it was the lack of variety (anything other than Marvel or DC) that did it for me.

Week after week I’d see more and more a wall of sameness and less and less of anything new or different. And what was the retailers response to me when I asked why? Marvel & DC superhero titles sold, the others didn’t.

So I left the shops, moved to book stores or online sites.

I understand what the retailer is up against, how his already strained budget can’t afford taking a chance on a little known title by an unknown creator but had that shop continued to purchase independent titles, I would have continued to show up every week. And as a browser, along with buying that independent title, I’d more than likely (hell, I know I would, because I often did it in the past) buy more than I had originally planned.

Now, it’s B&N, Borders or the net for me.

I’m befuddled by why you keep talking about there being some “industry burden” in carrying books that sell 4000 copies.

Diamond doesn’t consider it a burden; even a $3 item that sells 4000 copies is well within what they consider worthwhile. It’s not a burden on the retailer who doesn’t order it, beyond th effort of skipping over one more item in Previews. It isn’t a burden to the retailer who feels the book gives him an opportunity to profit, or to make his store more like he thinks his store should be. If it’s a burden on the creator or publisher, it’s a burden they’ve chosen to bear. It’s not a burden on the printer; it’s a source of profit for them. So where does this supposed burden lie?

Doofer, by the late Paul Ollswang, comics’ Charles Portis:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/buckaroobob/3026144907/
http://www.lastgasp.com/d/1302/

“Manga absolutely belongs in this discussion because manga comics sell *huge* numbers despite the comic stores all but ignoring them.”

I think that when Mike referred to “manga business model” he wasn’t speaking of sales, he was talking about the PRODUCTION end — how the creative costs on Manga are generally a tiny fraction of what they are on “Western” comics because it is (often? Usually?) just a licensing fee being paid up front, with all of the money on the back end.

Whatever else one might think of the superhero production line and Marvel & DC’s business practices, they’re generally paying something that could be considered a “living wage” UPFRONT to comics creators. Manga is created in a TOTALLY different fashion natively, and is brought to the US in a completely different fashion than that.

ONE of the reasons Manga made such dramatic sales in-roads was because of the 200-pages-for-$10 format… but that format would be largely completely impossible using anything even slightly resembling US page rates…

(If I’m wrong in judging his intent, I’m sure Mike will jump in and correct me)

-B

I wonder if the cost of shipping is a factor? Or the size of the Preview mag every month?

Other than that…a Cheap Trick cover band is never a bad option.