I Can See Your House From Here - Archives
vol 2 number 43
Oh, woe is the comics industry. Everything is horrible, sales are down and profits are even lower, all the good titles are being ignored by the masses or getting canceled by businessmen with no sense of taste, the sky is falling! Gather up Cocky Locky and Henny Penny, and have a bucket of the Colonel's tasty chicken, while you're at it.
The basic fact of the matter is that, in this economy, it's a wonder to me that any of the entertainment businesses are surviving. Watching the theater industry boom through the summer blockbuster season like it is has been positively astonishing to me. Spider-Man rakes in nearly $400 million domestically while the stock market hits a five year low thanks to Arthur Anderson and friends; MTV pays the Osbournes a couple of million for their privacy, while California bakes under yet another year of deregulated power shortages. And yet, there's substance to the cries of woe from the comic industry insiders; something does stink in Denmark, and it's not just Cleveland this time around.
The late eighties and early nineties were perhaps too good to the industry. In a hobby that has maybe a million enthusiasts, there were titles selling upwards of 2 million copies of a single issue. The collector's aftermarket skyrocketed, and while retailers were able to make a healthy profit based on both new issue speculation and back issue sales, every boom is followed by a bust. As soon as the outsiders (the same type of investor that helped the dot-com crash along a few years ago, coming in, making a million dollars, and getting out) had made their money, they got out; the problem was that they left all at once, and as nature abhors a vacuum (much like my car floors), the market collapsed. It took a few years before the industry was walking on steady legs again -- a recovery that largely came about because of licensing like the Batman animated series and the big-screen success of properties like X-Men and Spider-Man -- but the current generation remembers with fondness and no small amount of exaggeration how great it used to be, and so today's conditions are comparably squalid.
To be fair, there's room for improvement, and plenty of it. For instance, there's an issue of public perception: "Comics are for kids." As long as the average Joe thinks this, it's a really tough proposition to help the industry grow. It's even harder when you understand that the saying is not really true at all. I've always said that comics are for far more than kids -- there have always been titles that would appeal to varying age (and maturity, so as not to confuse the two) groups. While the majority might be aimed at adolescents and older teens, there have been books like Alan Moore's Watchmen , Colleen Doran's A Distant Soil , Dave Sim's Cerebus , and Art Spielgelman's Maus right next to them.
Lately, though, comics are seemingly for anyone but kids. As the current generation grew up, the writing grew up with them. And, as a recovering comic reader, I can't really complain; it was nice to have writing and art that grew in pace with me. Part of that was, I'm sure, due to the grim and gritty style that got so popular along with Nirvana and NYPD Blue , but a larger part was and is probably due to demographics and marketing concerns. Regardless, the adult comics are obviously not aimed at kids, and even the ones that are appropriate for them are not interesting to 99% of anyone younger than 16 (and the other 1% thought Daria was cool and enjoy reading Dickens). The "kids comics" -- the majority of the business, superhero titles and crossover fare like Buffy the Vampire Slayer -- may be appealing to kids, but more and more of them are too edgy, too mature. What seems to be happening is a classic doomed niche market: the current market will continue to adjust to its aging fanbase, and once that base is gone, so will be the industry that grew itself out of business.
This is a problem across the entertainment board, and since entertainment is ultimately dictated by the spending public, there may not be a solution. There are efforts being made: Marvel's Ultimate Spider-Man , DC's comics based on the cartoons (which are loosely based on -- er, comics) like Batman Adventures and Justice League Adventures , and most all of CrossGen's lines are very kid friendly, and all have the same magic that I remember from the mid-1970s, when I started reading comics. More needs to be done, though, both to cater to the public perception by making more kid-friendly titles available, and to destroy the public perception by publicizing in mainstream outlets titles like The Age of Bronze , The Red Star, Jimmy Corrigan , and Queen and Country .
Marketing is a key element to the success of any product, from movies to music to clothing to Ronco's Pocket Fisherman™. If you have an absolutely astounding product, people will find it by word of mouth -- think of films like The Blair Witch Project , or books like The Celestine Prophecy . And while you're thinking of them, remember that they are one in a million. Without marketing, without hitting the streets and screaming to anyone who will listen and some who won't that your product is the most amazing thing since pre-sliced deli-thin roast beef, odds are that your creation will sit on the shelves, gathering dust and rotting withthe passing months. Now, I see plenty of comic ads and promotion -- but the problem is that I see them only because I pick up trade magazines, visit comic book websites, and see the house ads that fill comics. Why is it that the comics industry, as maligned and pigeonholed as it is, spends all it's time and money preaching to the choir?
There's a genuine excitement in the community of creators and readers when a mainstream publication like Entertainment Weekly or Newsweek reviews a comic book, and that, to me, is indicative of a serious problem. It's expected that the latest Stephen King book be reviewed; ditto a Quentin Tarantino flick or the latest masterpiece from Stephen Bochco (is he even still making TV? Did I show my pop culture ignorance?). It should be the individual creators that are excited and bragging, not the industry as a whole. And I think this is because the industry as a whole is rather reactive when it comes to publicizing it's efforts.
Instead of spending money trying to convert readers from one company to another, why aren't ad dollars being poured into other media? If you've got a massive success with the film version of Spider-Man , make sure that you work with local retailers to put their addresses at the tag end of the TV commercials. Drop in some ads for the Superman titles during Smallville , or J. Michael Straczynski's Rising Stars and Amazing Spider-Man during Babylon 5 (I did it again, didn't I?). Take out a full-page ad for Global Frequency in a sci-fi magazine, or Hellblazer in a horror magazine. Buy billboards. Work out deals with Borders and Barnes and Noble to place your books up front on the fancy promotional stand-ups.
The only way for the comics industry to survive, much less to thrive, is to bring in new readers. Some of those readers will find their way in on their own -- because of movies or TV shows, or because their friends turned them on to a title or three. Back in the 1970s and 80s, this wasn't as much of a problem, because the spinner racks that held the week's new books were everywhere: grocery stores, convenience stores, flea markets. The direct market hadn't been established, and while comic book stores existed, they usually were part of a larger idea, like "Comics and Records" or "Comics and Used Books." It was impossible not to be exposed to comics growing up, as much so as books or magazines or overpriced breakfast cereal. Now, though, things have changed. The spinner racks are gone; the bookstores that actually carry comics hide them as best as they can; comic specialty stores are only slightly less stigmatized than porno shops.
Along with the marketing -- an undertaking that has to start with the publishers -- needs to come a change in image. I'm not entirely talking about fandom, although there are a lot of comic readers that make me fondly recall Paul Riddell's Cat-Piss Man. This is more the stores. Now that the only place to buy comic is in comic stores, those retailers that have chosen that path need to make the stores more friendly. I understand that the comic market is a different beast than 95% of retail. I worked in a store off and on for almost 7 years. But remember that your goal is to make money, and money comes from new customers as much if no moreso than old. Make sure your store is clean, tidy, and kid-friendly. Don't leave stacks of crap everywhere. Turn the stereo down so that you're not deafening half the neighborhood, and, as much as it kills you to do so, take the Slayer disc out of the changer. Don't ignore the unfamiliar older couple that just walked in to keep talking about how cool the latest Star Wars flick was -- that older couple probably has more money than your loser friends (wouldn't they be at your store less if they had jobs?). If you carry the adult titles -- and here I mean the porn -- put them behind the counter or in a back room, and certainly out of reach of the really young kids. Once again, keep in mind that you are running a business, not a clubhouse. Businesses need to grow, picking up new customers as well as keeping the old; if you have a hard time grasping the difference between successful businesses and comic book stores, go visit a retail store for the day. Pick one -- the cool clothing store, your favorite record shop, Neiman Marcus, whatever. It does no good to get people excited enough to overcome the stigma of entering a comic shop only to lose them by proving their every fear right.
Yes, the industry has it's problems. It's dominated by two companies, both of which put out as much crap as they do quality material. The public has a long-running mental image of horrible things associated with comics, from the Comics Code issues to geekdom. There's an elitist attitude running underneath a lot of the community, which is a lot like having a wrestling fan make fun of another wrestling fan for supporting a mainstream wrestling promotion instead of their local indie group. There's hope, though. The medium is a viable one, and one whose time and respect are coming due. There's a lot of incredible talent in the field, creative and business. The only trick now is letting more people know about that talent, and the work it is producing, and convincing them that appreciating that talent is nothing to be ashamed of.
Ah, well. Rome wasn't built in a day, either.
17 plugs in one column. Not bad, although I was shooting for 30.