Remember how for years and years everyone said “If we could only advertise comic books on TV, everything would be solved!” Well, as announced on Vertigo’s Graphic Content blog, Vertigo is doing just that with a TV spot for their initial Crime Line releases that is currently running on BBC America. You can view the spot here.

What with advertising on cable TV being, in some places, very, very affordable, this is indeed a bold move into mainstream marketing for books with a mainstream appeal.

We don’t have it in front of us, but Vertigo is also participating in some sponsorship opportunities with some New Yorker magazine events (the imprint ran some print ads a few weeks back.) so they are clearly trying to get the word out about the Crime Line in as many places where regular crime/mystery readers would be found as possible. (You could say that the ID Channel, home of crime, mystery and forensic programming, would also be a good channel for the message, but given crime line author Ian Rankin’s big following in the UK, BBC America makes sense as well.)

Earlier this week it was announced that BOOM! Studios had signed a deal with Haven Distributors to distribute BOOM!’s second printing comics. BOOM! is the LA-based publisher of both original and licensed comics, and they have recently had several critical and sales success, including books based on Pixar, Disney, Fox, and literary sources, such as the much-praised Roger Langridge Muppet comic.

BOOM! has also been making many distribution deals in rent months — with Kable Distribution for newsstand distribution and Simon and Schuster for books.

Haven Distributors is one of the few alternative distributors for periodical comics, mostly working with smaller companies such as Ape, Markosia and Zenescope who aren’t exclusive with Diamond.

Although Diamond’s tighter policies this year have had a lot of publishers and retailers looking at alternative distribution, this deal for second printings still left a lot of people scratching their heads. We hadn’t heard of anything quite like it before. So we asked BOOM! publisher Ross Richie to explain, and he did. His answers are a little inside baseball, but hopefully shine the light on the many, many factors involved in publishing comics and graphic novels these days.

Q: You’ve recently been expanding your distribution partners on all channels, with a bunch of new deals. How does this one fit in?

Ross Richie: Working with Haven to distribute our 2nd prints is simply a supplemental direct market deal designed to help direct market retailers get more product quicker to the fans that want to buy it. 

Diamond is a great partner, but we saw potential in Haven to be able to grow our existing Direct Market business.  What’s really great here especially, is that for retailers who want to go with Haven we can offer a better discount on our 2nd prints.  We have asked Diamond twice to put us in a better discount category and they have decided it is not something they want to do.  Diamond’s in business to make money and needs to make decisions that make sense for what their best interests are.  We’re in business to make money and need to make decisions on our end that make sense for our own interests.  Sometimes those things line up, sometimes they don’t.  In this instance, Diamond decided giving us a better discount to retailers didn’t make sense.  So for retailers who would like an alternative, at least on the 2nd prints, we’ve got one.  Haven thinks it can sell more BOOM! product with a better discount.

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Hopefully we won’t be posting too much any more about the whole FTC guidelines for bloggers things, but here’s a story from Business Week that explains the amount of money changing hands at times, and turns out it’s a lot more than a measly $4 comic book:

More than 75,000 people follow Jason “Shoe Money” Schoemaker on Twitter for his candid takes on news and strategies in search engine marketing, his expertise. Recently, they got something else: a 140-character promotion for the new NBC (GE) comedy series Community. The TV network paid Schoemaker a total of $2,000 for two Twitter posts, both of which included a brief disclaimer that the message was an ad.

First off, if anyone out there wants to pay us $2000 to tweet about something, we’re all ears! But that said, there’s no way we wouldn’t make it clear that it was a paid ad ’cause that would just be icky

Paying bloggers and tweeters to blog and tweet about products is an increasingly common way for marketers to reach their audiences — hadn’t you heard, social networking is all the rage?

Indeed, the traditional way for companies to market their products — obvious paid adverts — is crumbling away just like the dude at the end of 30 DAYS OF NIGHT. Take magazine ads:

Total magazine rate-card-reported advertising revenue for the first half of 2009 closed at $9,095,979,740, posting a -21.2% decline against the previous year, according to Publishers Information Bureau (PIB).  Ad pages during the first half totaled 79,245.30, at -27.9% compared to January through June, 2008.  Total PIB revenue for the second quarter of 2009 closed at $4,905,073,446, posting a 22% decline against the same period in 2008, according to Publishers Information Bureau (PIB).  Ad pages during the second quarter totaled 41,854.95, at -29.5% compared to April through June, 2008. 

Ouch, ouch, and OUCH.

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§ Morning must-read: Over the weekend, Maltdown Comics in LA had a huge manga sale — 2000 titles on sale at $1 each — and Deb Aoki asks owner Gaston Dominguez-Letelier about the state of manga in his shop. The overage is the result of unwise buying early on, he says; manga still sells, but it’s purchased more sensibly:

Gaston Dominguez-Letelier: That time (when we order any and all manga) has passed for us. We are left with 2,000 over-stocked books and we learned a lesson. We’ve since curbed our appetite for taking risks on unproven titles and are just stocking the greatest hits now.

Nowadays for us, it’s all about getting books that appeal to the more sophisticated readers out there and figuring out how best to cater to them.

§ Did you know that when you buy a copy of the new xkcd collection, you help build a library in Laos? That is a good deed. (Via Scott McCloud)

& And speaking of Scott McCloud, Shaenon K. Garrity writes of a recent encounter with him:

Every time I see McCloud, he’s got a new theory. I suspect this would be the case if I saw McCloud every twenty minutes. He just dropped by the Cartoon Art Museum to peruse the Monsters of Webcomics show, and at one point he leaned over and asked me, “Are you familiar with something called the ‘silent issue’ of the G.I. Joe comic?”

Did he mean “Silent Interlude,” issue #21, starring Snake-Eyes? I was familiar. Oh yes.

“I’ve come to realize,” he said, “that comic was a kind of watershed moment for cartoonists of your generation. Everyone remembers it. All these things came out of it. It was like 9/11.”

The payoff to this column is terrific. And worth pondering.

§ Comics professional goes to comics shop; finds little to buy.

§ The venerable comic strip Hi and Lois recently referenced webcomics and the monetization thereof via merchandising in a vaguely humorous fashion, leading to cries from many corners that the strip was attempting to be hip and cutting edge.

§ When being a pack-rat pays off: More of Scott Edelman’s stupendously fascinating collection of memos.

§ John Hodgman spotted the reclusive Brian K. Vaughan at the Emmys!

§ When we read something like this piece by Vaneta Rogers we totally feel like a freak

The anthropologist, who is a long-time comic book fan but recently got involved in “Harry Potter” and “Twilight” fandom, made the comparison of a boy who studies the back of a football player’s rookie card while his sister couldn’t care less about those statistics, instead focusing on how seeing a touchdown made her feel. She said the same can be said about how most men and women communicate about properties like Pokemon or the X-Men.

because growing up, we TOTALLY read the stats on the backs of baseball cards, and studied ERAs and batting averages and so on.

Actually that whole piece is a little annoying because it supposes that women fans are something new. Woman have ALWAYS been big, big fans of all sorts of things, with clubs and membership cards and everything. It just seems that women’s interests and “fan” interests are increasingly overlapping. And why should that ever be a bad thing?

§ Sorta related, Laura Hudson discovers that Marvel Divas isn’t as girl unfriendly as it seemed.

§ Two reports on this weekend’s BangPop show in Bangor, ME. This one focuses on a guy who dressed as a Transformer.

“I’ll take you all on,” Ray Maddocks, 39, of Morrill said as he struggled Saturday in the bulky homemade costume to make his way into the second annual BangPop Comic Book and Pop Culture Convention.

Maddocks and his friend Elmer Nickerson, 38, of Searsport dug out the costumes they made seven or eight years ago for Halloween to show off at the event, which is designed to bring a slice of big-time comic culture displayed at events such as the Comic-Con International in San Diego to the Queen City.

This one provides a nice overview. One story says that 300 people attended on Saturday, which sounds quite petite, but there’s a lot of enthusiasm captured in both pieces.

§ Speaking of enthusiasm, two brothers find happiness opening a comics shop in Joplin, MO:

“It’s a little bit nerve-racking, but it’s the greatest thing we could ever do,” Nathan said. “We’re working harder than we ever have before, and there’s a lot more overhead now. But we’re having more fun than we ever had.”

Retailer Chris Butcher has this Tuesday’s must-read post on how Diamond’s new 2009 policies have left the DM less flexible and less relevant…

…things seem “stable” but really, that’s just a convenient lie that we’ve all bought into. Things aren’t stable, behind the scenes (and sometimes spilling onto message boards and websites) people are very worried. Fans, Retailers, Publishers. Distributors. But the thing that to me is the most disconcerting and heralds the biggest change? Diamond Comics Distributors drastically raising their order minimums. They did this a few months back. This action has shaken a lot of publishers out of the industry, and it’s meant some pretty bad things for a lot of people. But really, and realistically, The Previews catalogue is not any better or of higher quality than it was a year ago. I am reminded of this the last Tuesday of every month, when I race through that thing at break-neck speed, It’s just as tough a slog with most of the same bright spots as before. Hell, 100 pages each of Marvel and DC is more than enough to depress you on its own. But what the increased order minimums have really done is make my job as a retailer much more difficult. Why? Because of the things have been taken out of the catalogue that I have to go hunting for.

Butcher uses the example of a Yen Press manga that isn’t listed in Diamond as the gateway to his discovery that Yen Press’s complete output is not carried by Diamond any more. This, in turn, leads Butcher to use an alternative distributor source through which he can order the entire Yen output.

I can do my job as a Direct Market Comic Book Specialty Store by going outside of the Distributor of the Direct Market of Comic Book Stores. You gotta admit, that’s pretty fucked-up.

We’d quibble with that a little– doing business with multiple distributors is something most retail outlets have to deal with, so for those retailers willing to put on their big boy pants, it’s perfectly fine. But as a symbol of the impending revolution of multiple distribution channels, some not even print based, the rest of Butcher’s essay presents a nice summation of these unsettled times.

One thing we learned is that there WILL be a WINTER MEN collection!. As Chris Butcher writes:

5:17pm: Hey look, it’s THE WINTER MEN TP (page 107, $19.99, 176pages). The beloved, beautifully drawn mini-series by Lewis and John Paul Leon. We did okay with this mini–it never set any sales records or anything–but really it’s the kind of thing we’re going to do well with in trade paperback, and hopfully for years to come. Let’s order it like a VERTIGO trade and see what happens.

Joyous news!

We also learned something that has been going on for a while under our very noses, something that would have changed the way we look at the world, something we CAN’T BELIEVE NO ONE TOLD US ABOUT. It seems that there are several publishers who run a kind of variant cover called the Virgin Retailer Incentive Cover. See?

To which we can only ask: who are these virgin retailers and why do they need so much incentive? Are they like the Jonas Brothers?

The Daily News talks to Tyrese Gibson, whose MAYHEM comic goes on sale today:

Gibson has been trolling the Internet, reading the harshest criticism and vowing to convince naysayers that he isn’t some celebrity dilettante dabbling in a get-rich-quick scheme.

He gets so worked up during his interview with The News that he refers to his hero, a tortured soul looking to torture the drug- dealing mob boss that wronged him, in the first person several times.

He’s not just trying to woo existing comic fans, either. Gibson says he is serious about getting the word out to fans of his movies that have never set foot in a comic store that there’s a larger world of pop culture that they’ve been missing.

The big event is at LA’s Meltdown, where Gibson will perform a signing and a concert tonight for wristband holders. Let us know how it went!

Frank Santoro has posted an important essay on the end of the direct market as a conduit between comics for art and comics for commerce :

The bridge is over. From 1975 to 2005, the Direct Market was the bridge from the old world “Comics-as-ephemera”, returnable periodicals model to the new world “Comics-as-Literature” bookstore model. The bridge changed comics, saved it from sure death on the newsstand and put comics in a place of permanence. Everyone in Comics has noted the consolidation of the DM and the rise of the chain bookstores & the internet as venues for new work. Now, this year, more than ever, I seem to be repeatedly noting to myself the real split between the mainstream and the alternative sides of comics.

The comment section is an all-star think tank and other comments are springing up. We were so busy finishing up our debut novel “Comic-Con report” that we haven’t had time to fully digest it, but we’ll join in as soon as we’ve had our tea.

Posted by Evie

Mile High Comics’ Chuck Rozanski appears to be the first out of the gate with the annual “where are the comics at Comic Con?” lament, and Val D’Orazio has a further discussion. My personal flash-assessment, having not been there this year but having gone in the past and following the news from the perspective of journalists, publishers and creators, is that the shape of this problem depends a lot on where your stake is. For smaller retailers who are losing money, it is perhaps epic. For others who are making the books, the convention is still very much about the comics. The idea that the TV/movie/video game/toy/big money contingent is taking over is, well, that discussion is very much in progress, as we know. One thing is for sure: Chuck Rozanski is not so fussed on Twitter.

It’s also interesting when reading a few of Wired’s Geek Dad’s “Top 10 Reasons I’m Not Sorry to be Missing Comic Con”*:

8. Why should I pay to fly across the country to see people like Bruce Campbell, Nathan Fillion, Neil Patrick Harris, and Eliza Dushku, when I can see them on TV and DVD for free?

7. I haven’t been into comic books since high school, and that’s all the convention’s really about, right? I mean, why else would they call it “Comic-Con?”

Now, I’m going to give Geek Dad Matt Blum credit for intending this subtle paradox, but let’s pretend for a second that he didn’t (and maybe he didn’t). Would it be so terrible if the two biggest reasons to go to Comic Con were that you a) loved comics AND b) wanted to get your picture taken with Nathan Fillion? The argument against the corporate media takeover of comic con always seems to imply that too many of the people who fill up the convention hall are there for the glitter and not for the paper. But almost everyone I personally know in the comics community get equally weak-kneed over both Asterios Polyp and Josh Holloway (or ok Megan Fox), and I would wager it’s these things together, rather than one or the other, that make your average attendee pony up.
*Thanks to Torsten for the link.

Via PR, the nominees for the annual retailing award have been announced:

SAN DIEGO, Comic-Con International (Comic-Con), the largest comic book and popular arts event in the United States, has announced its list of nominees for the prestigious Will Eisner Spirit of Comics Retailer Award (The Eisner Spirit Award). This year organizers are happy to note that Baby Tattoo, publishers of books for kids and adults, is the official sponsor of the Award.

Since 1993, The Eisner Spirit Award has been presented to an individual retailer who has performed an outstanding job of supporting the comics art medium both in the community and within the industry at large. Any retailer established in business for at least two years is eligible for nomination, and retailers, professionals, or fans may place a name in nomination. A panel of industry judges select a group of finalists to be subjected to an in-depth examination based on award criteria. These criteria include:

Support of a wide variety of innovative material: Providing opportunities for creators’ material to reach buyers; stocking a diverse inventory.

Knowledge: Working to stay informed on retailing as well as on the comics field.

Community activity: Promoting comics to the community; maintaining relationships with schools and libraries; keeping active in social, business, and arts community organizations.

Quality of store image: Innovative display approaches; using store design creatively.

Adherence to standard ethical business practices.

This years nominees are:
Acme Comics, Greensboro, NC;
Big B Comics, Ontario, Canada;
Comic Book Ink, Tacoma, WA;
Comic Oasis, Las Vegas, NV;
Comics & Vegetables, Tel Aviv, Israel;
Comicopia, Boston, MA;
Cosmic Monkey Comics, Portland, OR;
Dragon’s Lair Comics & Fantasy, Austin, TX;
Drawn To Comics, Glendale, AZ;
Happy Harbor Comics, Edmonton, AB, Canada;
Krypton Comics, Omaha, NE;
Legends Comics, Victoria, BC Canada;
OK Comics, Leeds England;
Phantom of the Attic, Pittsburgh, PA;
Tate’s Comics, Fort Lauderdale, FL;
The Comic Vault, Chicago, IL;  
Up, Up & Away, Cincinnati, OH.

Past winners are not eligible for nomination.

The Eisner Spirit Awards are part of, and underwritten by, Comic-Con International: San Diego, a nonprofit educational organization dedicated to creating awareness of and appreciation for comics and related popular art forms, primarily through the presentation of conventions and events that celebrate the historic and ongoing contributions of comics to art and culture.

Remember near the end of CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND when the ET research team tentatively plays the five note theme that has been haunting the UFO-chasers…and waits, and waits and then the mother ship ANSWERS BACK? Well that’s kind of what happened at The Beat yesterday!

When we wrote about the marketing clout actor/musician Tyrese Gibson was bringing to sell his new Image Comic, MAYHEM, we kinda suspected we’d get caught up in it, and indeed, Tyrese Tweeted about the post twice and urged his followers to comment:
Very Important! Post comments! Somebody GO!!
and

Your making NON believers Believe! I Love YOU http://bit.ly/SSFjk

and his followers OBEYED with over a hundred messages in a few hours, from different IPs. (We removed some duplicates and obvious trolls.) We think this does have to be noted as a successful campaign — many of the posters mentioned being new to the comics world — who knows if MAYHEM will keep them there, but it seems to be a genuine outreach to a new audience. In the comments, Brian Hibbs wrote:

I ordered 3 copies of MAYHEM #1. Without the sense that Gibson was behind it, based on the cover and the solicitation blurb alone my “natural” order would have been zero copies.

so in that sense it’s already a success.

We’re told that one of Tyrese’s comics advisors is Percy Carey, aka MF Grimm, whose graphic novel SENTENCES came out from Vertigo last year. Carey has already written some sharp things about the comics industry, so we’ll be watching to see how all this plays out.

In the meantime, just to be clear, we think Tyrese and his Twitter street team are swell, and it’s fun to play along. So, pax everyone.

Much goings on about a recent Marvelinvestor conference in which John Turitzin, Marvel’s general counsel and EVP of the executive office, answers a fan’s question about their recent price rise by saying, more or less, they did it to maximize their profits, not because they HAD to. Robot 6 and Rich Johnston have much fuller accounts of the conference, including reax from fans who are shocked, SHOCKED, that Marvel is admitting they are trying to raise their profits! Especially when folks like Dan Buckley and Joe Quesada usually say things like “rising costs…paper costs…blah blah.”

Admittedly, the timing, what with worldwide economic Chernobyl and all, is a bit dicey. You can fit Marvel and DC’s price increases into the “Twilight of the Pamphlets” scenario — Turitzin says as much by mentioning an “inelastic” fan base, which doesn’t really shrink or grow much — with pamphlet sales stalled or falling, it’s the only way to raise money.

Rather than putting too much weight on an impromptu comment by a seasoned exec, let’s look at the slideshow accompanying the conference call. Frankly, we’ve been listening to these things for YEARS and we’ve never seen so much emphasis put on the publishing arm — which produced 25 percent of Marvels profits, we’re told. This slide explains where the money comes from (click for a larger version.)

Notice how “Digital Comics” are now part of the profit mix? And there is “upside potential.” So, publishing is no longer Marvel’s little division in the corner. It has to pull its weight in the mix, and that means…rising profits.

§ Another big Marvel story going around that’s a bit more complicated than we can really get into in a brief posting is the Captain America #600/Reborn #1 story. This first came to our attention via a column by Brian Hibbs where he was complaining about the solicitation/sales divide. Briefly, Marvel will not reveal anything at all about the contents of REBORN #1 — except that it’s by Ed Brubaker and Bryan Hitch — and the fact that the Brub is involved makes everyone think it has something to do with Captain America. Plus..REBORN…duh.

When Cap died, it was big, front page news a few years ago, and evidently, Marvel is planning another media storm — however, the story has to be embargoed or there will be no story, so they can’t reveal anything about it before June 15th. Which means retailers must order it blind, which is why Hibbs was complaining — it MAY be a big Obama/Death of Cap-like media storm that drives folks into the stores, but how will anyone know ahead of time? PLUS. on that day the Octomom could run into Kate and Jon in the Pampers aisle while Newt Gingrich looks on, and every other news story would be relegated to page 27.

Marvel listened to the retailer ire over what they considered a gamble, and recognizing that there could be a better way, Marvel made two pretty huge changes. #1, REBORN #1 will have a final order cutoff that is AFTER June 15th, a week later than it normally would have been. This means if the big event doesn’t come off, retailers have some wiggle room.

PLUS, even more amazingly, Marvel is allowing retailers to sell CAPTAIN AMERICA #600 on MONDAY, JUNE 15th just in case that big news story comes off. This isn’t without some problems — as retailer James Sime points out, CAP #600 already HAD its final order cutoff, meaning retailers can’t order more…they can just sell it early. (Apparently there will be a a second printing available, however, so even here Marvel is trying to get more copies into stores.)

On the one hand, Marvel does seem to be trying to help retailers in an awkward situation. We know how these embargoes work, and if some little blog were to announce tomorrow that Cap is coming back as a Marvel Ape, the big media campaign would be scrapped. On the other hand, we can totally see why retailers don’t like relying on a stunt and ordering blind. So it’s just kind of a gamble for everyone.

This leaves two mysteries. #1, What’s the deal with Cap anyway? Will it be the black Captain America, as some speculate? OR a girl? Or Steve Rogers? Or a MONKEY? Who knows.

#2, Where is this story being planted? Cap’s death took off when it appeared in the New York Daily News, a commuter tabloid. Would that be enough to kick off a mass pilgrimage to the comics shop? Guess we’re gonna hafta just wait..and see…

As if psychically answering our call yesterday for solutions instead of salvos, retailer Brian Hibbs confronts the Warlord of Io Situation with a look at every aspect of the comics chain, from publishers on through distributors and why they are unlikely to work.

It’s a sensible, real world-based look at the problem, although Hibbs kinda lost us right at the top with this:

But if you say “I’ll just wait for the trade”, you’re automatically decreasing the size of the audience. Why? Because: x% of you will keep waiting even once the work is out. Another x% of you is going to balk at the prices needed to finance “OGN” work. Another x% of you are going to completely forget that the work is being produced — 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? ONCE YOU BREAK THAT PURCHASING HABIT, it is extremely hard to get it going again. 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.

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Everyone is justifiably linking to this post at The Comics Reporter as a passionate response to the ongoing winnowing at Diamond that is removing books like James Turner’s WARLORD OF IO from its catalog and why this is bad for EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US.

Unfortunately, what should be the jewel in the crown of multiple comics markets is more like a lump of coal shaped by arbitrarily applied market forces and short-term decision-making into something resembling an armless bust of Black Bolt. The end result is that despite an artistic flowering and sustained high level of craft that might shame any previous era of comics-making, it’s harder than ever to find many comics in the place where for now they should be really easy to find: the shops devoted to them.

While it’s impossible to disagree with Spurge’s basic points — having WARLORD OF IO around is a good thing for comics — every time we read one of these stories, our own problem solving app is involuntarily switched on. The primary point, for us, anyway is this: The comics shop system as serviced by Diamond is no longer (or perhaps never was) an effective way for James Turner to market his books to his readers.

So the question becomes: Can the LCS system be changed to become an effective system to sell WARLORD OF IO? And if they can’t…what can?

Fans, pros, retailers — feel free to post your experiences and observations.

Preliminary reports are good, with many stores reporting sales UP from last year. Given the economy, this is pretty remarkable, so let’s share the good news!

Matt Price at Speeding Bullet Comics in Norman, OK decided to live blog again:

11:45 a.m.: Response to the “Wolverine” film is mixed among the fans filtering in for FCBD. Most of them are excited about “Star Trek,” which has comic-book tie-ins from IDW but nothing specifically for Free Comic Book Day. Probably the fact that Colin Warde, who worked in Los Angeles on the Star Trek auctions, is appearing here this afternoon, is adding to the Star Trek buzz at this location.

Noon: While there has been rain here and there in the first two hours, so so far it doesn’t look like the rain is keeping anybody away. Still hasn’t been much of a letup of people since the doors opened at 10 a.m.

12:15 p.m.: I know a lot of Nerdage readers are also Sterling Gates fans — he’s signing today with Geoff Johns at Atomic Comics in Arizona. Atomic knows how to put on an event, so those guys should have quite a turnout.

1 p.m.: There hasn’t been much of an opportunity to catch a breath, here, but it’s been great to see so many people coming through and having fun.

Image above from Vinh-Luan Luu at More Fun Comics in Denton.

It’s the annual comic book holiday…and they even give them away for FREE.

It’s a day of signings and sightings and fun and frolic for all. Find the event nearest you here. Get out there, get some comic books, and have some fun!

That app for iPhones for finding the nearest comics shop that we told you about a few days ago is now available on iTunes. Via PR:

In a move promising tremendous benefits for comic book specialty shops, Diamond Comic Distributors and iVerse Media have joined forces to create a special “app” for Apple® iPhone® and iPod Touch® that puts the power of the Comic Shop Locator Service (CSLS) in the hands of consumers – for FREE.

“We’re entering a new phase with the Comic Shop Locator Service and we’re excited to expand its reach to customers using mobile and GPS devices like the iPhone,” said Dan Manser, Diamond’s Director of Marketing. “With the help of iVerse Media, this helps extend Diamond’s position as an e-marketing innovator.”

“At iVerse we’re committed to helping publishers sell more comics to new and existing readers, both digitally and in print.” said iVerse founder Michael Murphey. “By partnering with Diamond on innovative mobile solutions like the CSLS iPhone App, we can do just that. “

An outgrowth of the strategic partnership between Diamond and iVerse, and just the first of many planned initiatives, the new Comic Shop Locator Service application is available for free download from the iTunes store and compatible with iPhones and iPod Touch. Combining the searchability and interactive map features of the web-based ComicShopLocator.com, iVerse Media’s version also offers the ability to pinpoint your exact latitude and longitude via the iPhone’s GPS capabilities, giving you the closest possible participating comic shops, even if you don’t know the ZIP code.

Of course, users can still search for stores by entering a ZIP code, just like the original 888-COMIC-BOOK number or website version. Like those earlier resources, the new iVerse CSLS app draws information from a database of hundreds of comic shops worldwide, expanding the cutting-edge service that has been connecting consumers with comic book retailers since 1996. Since its inception, the CSLS has given out referrals to more than one million consumers, driving thousands of fans into comic book specialty shops.

Once the closest shops are located and beamed to your iPhone or iPod Touch– giving you the store name, street address, city, state, ZIP, phone number and distance – you have the option of calling the store of your choice or viewing the location in Maps, all at the touch of a button. Future plans include an International version of the Comic Shop Locator app, widening the Service’s reach even further.

For more information and to download the free Comic Shop Locator iPhone App, go to  or

Hm. Check out this video we found for what looks like a demo of a Comics Shop Locator app for the iPhone. In the demo, the demonstrator uses both GPS and typing in a zip code to find nearby stores. The poster is listed as Diamond Comics, so you can probably figure out who’s behind it.

Definitely handy.

§ In an interview with Percy Carey, musician/actor/model Tyrese Gibson (above) reveals how he got caught up in the glamorous, exciting world of comics books.

Tyrese Gibson: I have always been open minded to new things, and I’ve said this a few times: I’m no comic book veteran, but when I went to ComiCon to promote Death Race, that energy out there really did something to me. I had no idea…So that’s when I decided I wanted to not only be a part of this world, but I wanna create something that I know the die hard comic book followers out there would appreciate.

Gibson was so starstruck that he is getting on board the comics train with his OWN creation, something called MAYHEM, which doesn’t have hasn’t announced a publisher yet. If you took every interview with a celebrity where they explain how awesome comics are and how much they love them, threw them in a stew pot and made a nice reduction of them, you would get this interview. In fact, we don’t even really need to link to them any more, but then we would have no reason to go searching for pictures of Tyrese Gibson any more. So it’s a real win/lose situation.

§ Director Michel Gondry says that cartoon collaboration with Daniel Clowes is still on:

CS: What about the stuff you were going to do with Daniel Clowes, is that still going to happen sometime?
Gondry: Yeah, yeah, yeah, we (doing) a cartoon, an animated film that I co-directed with my son, called “Megalomania,” and it’s being produced by Curious Pictures in New York. Dan Clowes wrote the screenplay and we have Steve Buscemi doing the voice of the main character. I guess I will do that more efficiently after “The Green Hornet” but they already started to work on it.

§ Alex Ross has been named the first guest at next year’s C2E2, the new Chicago-based comics convention being put together by Reed Exhibitions, the guys who bring you the New York Comic-Con. Reed also threw a big launch party in Chicago last night, and we’re sure someone blogged about it somewhere.

§ According to Mel Caylo’s Twitter, he’s just joined Archaia Studios Press:

Just accepted a marketing position with Archaia Studios Press, publisher of MOUSE GUARD. It’s great to be back!

Thanks to everyone for the congratulatory wishes. I’m excited to work for Archaia! Best part? I get to stay in LA!

Caylo was formerly with Wizard and Top Cow.

§ Jud Meyers of the comic shop Each-2 writes a customer’s turn to the dark side:

Tom and Sheila began to change. She became more vocal about what he purchased and his irritation with her grew.

“Do you really need two of those?” Sheila would say.

He’d reply, “Do you ever not get the things you want?”

She’d roll her eyes and scoff, holding her tongue in public.

Eventually, as is usually the case with these types of scenarios, they would stand at my register and hear the words I’ve so often spoken in my time in retail.

“I’m afraid your card’s been declined.”

They would whisper to one another, shrug it off and hand me a different piece of plastic that would work. Or not.

§ Following up on a story we linked to the other day, in his regular Q&A session at Newsarama, Dan DiDio clarifies Mike Kunkel is stil on BILLY BATSON:

19. Finally – can you clarify what’s going on with Mike Kunkel and Billy Batson and the Magic of Shazam?

DD: Sure – he’s not leaving it. That all was started with me trying to make an announcement from a panel audience because Art and Franco were there. What happened was that we wanted to get Billy Batson and the Magic of Shazam back on a monthly schedule. Because of that, we’re very well aware that Mike could not deliver on a monthly schedule, but we wanted to make sure that the book kept coming out, so we lifted Art and Franco to be writing team on the issues that Mike can’t be there for. We’ve got two more issues by Mike that he’s working on now, and once they’re ready to go, we’ll be soliciting those as well. So Mike is by no means away from Billy Batson right now – we just wanted to get our kids books on a monthly schedule, so we had to use two different teams on this.

§ In other retail news, A new version of MOBY, the POS software, has just been released.

Now that the New York Times‘ online-only Graphic Books Chart has been around for a month or so, people are beginning to wonder just how the heck it works. It’s almost like one of those steampunk automatons — shiny and mysterious at the same time, and no one quite knows where it came from.

Kevin Melrose kicked things off by wondering how come a TWO YEAR OLD book (DARK TOWER) could suddenly unseat WATCHMEN and then slink back into obscurity the very next week. Chris Butcher jumped in and declared the list broken, and suspected that the NYT was using Diamond sell-in numbers. To back that up, he had pretty powerful evidence:

So how did we end up with Dark Tower: Gunslinger Born on the list? That’s tricky. Marvel is a very litigious company, and has all sorts of warnings about reproducing their private personal information in public. Blah blah blah. So, let’s talk about me instead, because I doubt even Marvel would be able to argue that retailers aren’t allowed to talk about their own businesses. So: There was a time period last month where I ordered Dark Tower: Gunslinger Born and received a higher-than-average discount on that book, and for every copy I ordered, I got another copy of the book for free. I did this, it happened, and I am talking about my actions as a retailer (litigious!). So the week that all of those discounted copies and free copies of Dark Tower that I ordered shipped to me, the book ALSO appeared on The New York Times Graphic Novel Bestseller list. Do you see the correlation there?

A lively comment section ensued, and Tommy Raiko chimed in with a kind of Occam’s Razor observation:
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While offline (randomly) for two days, we missed the biggest story ever on Twitter, #amazonfail, which is, depending on who you listen to, a technical “glitch” or a incredibly clumsy attempt on Amazon’s part to remove potentially “offensive” material, which ended up being mostly gay-themed literature.

As covered by every media outlet in existence, the problems began Sunday when people noticed that Amazon had removed the sales rankings from gay- and lesbian-themed books. Since the sales rankings are the method by which books go into the search function, this meant that tons of books — from prize-winning classics by James Baldwin, to Heather has Two Mommies — were suddenly unavailable on Amazon. The NY Times has a detailed report on the whole story, and Amazon’s new explanation that it was “an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error” that had caused 50,00 books — not just GLBT books, to be removed.
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As planned for over a year, Dark Horse and Image are joining the ranks of “FOC” publishers at Diamond. Already used by Marvel and DC, “Final Order Cut-Off” allows retailer to raise or lower orders right up until print time in accordance with changing factors, such as increased publicity, or negative reaction to previous issues. Diamond’s PR below:

Dark Horse Comics and Image Comics — including Image Central and Top Cow Productions — have announced that they will implement new Final Order Cut-Off (FOC) programs, effective with products carrying an FOC Date of Thursday, April 23.

“We’re very pleased that two more of our Premier Suppliers have joined the FOC system” said Diamond VP-Marketing & Sales Roger Fletcher. “The change is a welcome one for retailers who rely on FOC to adjust their orders and manage their purchasing and buying decisions in a timely manner.”

The new system allows retailers greater flexibility to increase, decrease and even cancel orders up to the FOC date, which will be Thursdays at 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time. (The same date/time as other participating publishers.) Product will generally reflect FOC Dates with a 20-day adjustment window, meaning that an item carrying the April 23 FOC Date is scheduled to be on sale Wednesday, May 13.

“We are pleased to announce this move to the FOC,” said Dark Horse Comics President Mike Richardson. “As every comics retailer knows, times are tough. It is important that Dark Horse not only support them with great product, but with our best efforts to make their ordering decisions as easy as possible. This system will help every retailer who orders Dark Horse product and should lead to better business for all of us.”

“We’ve been enthusiastic about implementing FOC for quite some time now,” Image Comics Publisher Eric Stephenson said. “FOC allows retailers to test the waters with our all of our new projects, whether they’re by seasoned veterans or comics’ newest names with limited risk while still getting all the benefits of supporting a series from the floorboards up.”

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A few ruminations on the Fate of the Pamphlet:

• Chris Butcher catches the same Chris Oliveros quote that we did and has some thoughts on it:

I’m just like ranting here, but yeah. It’s really, really hard for a graphic novelist to lock themselves up for a year or two, with little-to-no feedback and an ever-dwindling advance, and crank out a book. Back in the old days, the serialization of Louis Riel or Berlin or Optic Nerve provided feedback, interaction, and occasionally periodic injections of cash, all of which made it just a little bit easier to be a graphic novelist. Er, comic book artist. Cartoonist? Illustrator? What did people call themselves in 1996? I was still in highschool.

• At Rocket Bomber, Matt Blind has a long essay examining why the business model has to change:

Times were different then. Not Simpler, not Better, just Different. And while I went through puberty and slowly figured out first that girls were different, and then that girls were fantastic, and then that girls just don’t like me much, the Direct Market for Comic Books was also maturing and comic shops as an entity came into their own, crashed, came back — and even today soldier on.

The ‘drugstores’ of American legend are gone — subsummed into a morass of embedded pharmacies in supermarkets (and Wal-Marts) and 24-hour convenience stores that just happen to also employ pharmacists. Unless you live on Manhattan or within cell-phone-tower range of the exact center of your local Metropolitan Statistical Area you likely have no idea what a ‘newsstand’ even is (or was). Today, if not found on the checkout aisle at the grocer, magazines are bought at the local big box bookstore (as a concept, themselves not even two decades old yet) and comics are bought at a Local Comic Shop, if you bother, or collected into graphic novels which are readily available online and occasionally found on a front-of-store display at BigBoxBooks for an impulse buy. The landscape has changed.

While the idea that “comics do well in a recession” is being sorely tested by the ongoing global economic meltdown, the comics industry really does seems to be riding out the storm better than most sectors. The boisterous moods at New York Comic-Con and WonderCon and the faster-than-ever sellout of this year’s San Diego Comic-Con have created the idea of a “fantasy economy” that is very much a standout in gloomy times.

For comparison, check out this report from PW on a DIFFERENT kind of recent book fair:

Stacks of unsold books and glum publishers stood for three days inside the cavernous Dallas Convention Center this past weekend at the Christian Book Expo, a first-of-its-kind event designed to connect publishers and authors directly with readers in the evangelical Christian market. Only problem was there were few readers to connect with, despite the show’s location in Dallas, the buckle of the Bible Belt and a top market for Christian publishers. The show, sponsored by the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association, attracted 1,500 consumer attendees; it had hoped for 15,000-20,000.

Off the record, exhibitor publishers rolled their eyes heavenward, but spoke with circumspection on the record. “Every new experience has a few nicks and bruises, but things can be worked out,” said Greg Petree, v-p of marketing at Howard Books. A few were more blunt. “We can’t afford these kinds of risks,” said Dennis R. Hillman, publisher at Kregel Publications. “In a year like this the last thing we want to do is something that has no payoff.”

The Christian book market has been one of the fastest growing and stable over the last decade or so; bestseller sales dwarf those of comics bestsellers. Yet people will flood out to see the authors of periodicals that sell barely 10,000 copies a month. Interesting.

By a strange quirk, two big meetings are taking place today that reflect the two branches of the comics industry as it’s evolving.

Up in Easthampton, MA, the New England Webcomics Weekend is taking place, a Woodstock like gathering of webcomickers from around the nation that we’re sure will plot a course to take comics to the 22nd century and beyond in no time flat. If we didn’t have all this other crap going on, we’d be up there for sure, plotting away with everyone else, but in the meantime, we welcome all reports. The Boston Phoenix had a nice preview:

Fans will gather at the New England Webcomics Weekend on March 20 through 22. Originally planned as a small, informal gathering, the event has snowballed into a sort of Web-comics Woodstock — but in Easthampton, Massachusetts.

“We wanted to have a few of our friends who did Web comics come out for the weekend, show them the area, and tell them how we organize our business,” says Meredith Gran, one of the show’s instigators. “But . . . the response was massive.”

In fact, registration has been officially closed because of parking restrictions, so chances of getting in at this point are dicey. (Gran promises, though: “This will definitely be a yearly thing.”) At press time, more than 700 artists and fans are scheduled to descend on the Eastworks Building, a converted factory at 116 Pleasant Street in Easthampton, where they’ll buy and sell merchandise and attend panels and a Web comics award show.

MEANWHILE, down in Memphis, the annual ComicsPRO meeting is winding up, as DC makes lots of announcements (see separate post) and forward thinking comics retailers plan THEIR 22nd Century futures. Matt Price is regularly reporting on the goings on:

Not all was rosy, however. The overall economic slump had affected some locations. Furthermore, logistic problems with a large supplier have become more pronounced in recent weeks. And, something on many stores’ minds is the question of how digital content will impact the comic book industry.

More as it develops.