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To Be Continued #11
Comic books are no longer a mass medium. Retail sales are down, way down. Newsstand sales are so low as to be almost insignificant. Direct Market stores are disappearing. Eleven comic book distributors have closed their doors in the past few years. Dozens of comic book producers have likewise gone out of business. Those that remain have cut titles, staffs and expenses in order to survive. Corporate consolidation threatens to drive out innovation, while creating monstrous new pressures on the remaining big players. Kids are ignored as potential customers and return the favor by ignoring the entire medium. Prices have risen dramatically while page count has dropped. A culture of creative and editorial inbreeding has produced an increasingly narrow focus in "mainstream" product. Most comics today are obsessively focused on sophisticated, interlocking mythologies and endless "story arcs." As a result, monthly titles are all but impenetrable, even to the most determined would-be new reader. Morale is low within the creative community. Enthusiasm is even lower within an ever-eroding fan base. I probably missed a crisis or two. And you thought my "Breaking In" series was depressing. Yeah, comics are in trouble. But there's hope. Nearly three months ago, in my first column, I posed a challenge to my readers: The McDuffie Genius Grant is a cash award of one dollar American that I give solely at my own discretion to anyone who does something that I think is particularly bright. Today I'm promoting a special McDuffie Genius Grant to anyone who can figure out a plan to prevent the seemingly inevitable extinction of the comic book industry. If you can save comics, I'll pay you five bucks cash money from my own pocket. Serious inquiries only. And hurry, SPAWN's under a hundred thousand copies a month, we can't have much time left. Well, the great brain trust that is the Psycomic audience has risen to the task, flooding my e-mail with so many suggestions that there's hardly any room left for spam. You know the kind, "Hey Larry, here's that confidential can't-miss investment opportunity you asked for…" I'm going to spend the next few weeks going through them (your suggestions, not the stock tips) and use the discussion as a springboard to talk about all kinds of comic book related stuff. Pedro Bouca of Brazil, after inexplicably apologizing for his English (you should read some of the e-mail I get from people who allegedly speak English as a first language) complained about the format of American comics, calling them "the flimsiest in the world." He talks about how American comics are packaged over there; 80-100 pages, reprinted at approximately 3/5 the size of the originals. I'm guessing he means slightly larger than what we call "digest size." Okay, I've got a bias here and Pedro just reinforced it. I like big fat comics. I love anthologies (although admittedly audiences don't seem to). I'd rather buy a trade paperback of something I've never tried than a single issue. 32 page comics (22 pages of story) are too damn short. That said, the American comics Pedro's reading are reprints, much cheaper to produce than new material. DC's 80-Page Giants, the only examples of all-original comics at a comparable length I can think of at the moment, clock in at a hefty five bucks. I think that's a fair price, especially if they were using top talent all the time (thank God they aren't, I've got a story in the JLA Showcase that comes out this week. Forgive me for that, I'm torn between my conflicting desire to plug Hell out of anything with my name on it and my inclination to try and keep this story a secret, as it isn't particularly good). Still, five dollars is a lot of money, even for three or four stories. Anthologies also present some unique marketing problems. What if I only like one of the series running in an anthology and hate the other three? Will I dump the book? Most comic book readers say they will. I'm not sure I have a good handle on the psychology at play here. While I obsessively read every article in every magazine I buy, surveys say that most folks read one, maybe two articles a month, even in magazines they buy regularly. I like the idea of an anthology book, say Avengers for instance, with a full length lead story and three or more back-ups featuring related characters. I have to say though, if it were my dime, I'm not sure I'd risk it. Okay, you might say, what about titles that already have enough material a month to fill an 80-100 pager? Rather than four Batman books a month, how about an anthology with four Batman stories a month? Me? I like the idea. It's easier for me to figure out what to buy, and I don't have to go to the store every week. But there's little reason to think that a publisher can make the same amount of money on one five or six dollar Bat-book that you can on four two dollar Bat-books. Unless of course, you want to make a major commitment to newsstand sales. But that would involve significant changes to packaging, creative approaches --and oh yeah, an investment from the publisher of several million dollars. I'll talk more about that in a couple of weeks. Department of Corrections. Two weeks ago, while making fun of how Greg Wright spelled Sam Kieth's name, I misspelled Arthur C. Clarke's name. And if you've ever been hoisted by your own petard, you know just how painful that can be. In the same column, while praising the new Astronauts in Trouble trade paperback, I neglected to mention the book's talented penciller, Charles Aldred, whose name I very likely just misspelled. The good news is that it's been well over eight weeks since I misspelled Don McGregor's name, so I am showing some improvement. I'm out of space but in the weeks to come, I'll be discussing the Genius Grant applications of several other readers. This will give me ample opportunity to pontificate on content, packaging and distribution issues. Until then, this is To Be Continued…
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