Cbr:

[CBR News]

More lessons of San Diego and how fans (no, not you, the other fans) are killing comics, plus Russ Heath, writing advice, great Firefox news and lots of other notes from Steven Grant this week.


Full article here.

[Spectreguy]

Wasn't Mighty Sampson that one that took place after an atomic war, and Sampson was the guy in the bearskin(?) rug and an eye patch? I think he lost his eye getting the bearskin...or from some post apocalyptic PETA group.
spectreguy(post apocalyptic PETA groups don't play dude)

[Charles RB]

I love this column because Stephen Grant points out Fletcher Hanks is crap.

And I was waiting for a "name" figure in comics to do that.

[Michael P]

This column reminds me of an anecdote, I don't know if it's true, that's stuck with me ever since I heard it.

A friend of mine who runs a comic store in a major American city was attending an industry function and found himself talking to a top creative executive at one of the Big Two, someone whose name would be instantly recognizable to pretty much anyone who's read that company's comics in, oh, the last thirty years or so. During the conversation, so my friend told me, the executive said, "[Big Two Comic Company] is not interested in expanding our audience."

Again, I have no idea if it's true or not, but if it is, it sure explains a lot.

[comicsmetal]

More lessons of San Diego and how fans (no, not you, the other fans) are killing comics, plus Russ Heath, writing advice, great Firefox news and lots of other notes from Steven Grant this week.


Full article here.

Great read .That what I feel about why the industry is failing ,they can not change their formant and go try to get the general audience to comics. I hope someone can say to the publishers that we are going to stop what we are doing right now ask what general public like to read in a comic book.

Comic con is a great place to get people into new comics but they have to start learning to market better.Having better looking booth ,maybe having artist sing their art(which includes not siting in the booth ,but walking around the con also.).Even having the girls in naughty outfits holding sings saying come to the publishers booth.

[comicsmetal]

This column reminds me of an anecdote, I don't know if it's true, that's stuck with me ever since I heard it.

A friend of mine who runs a comic store in a major American city was attending an industry function and found himself talking to a top creative executive at one of the Big Two, someone whose name would be instantly recognizable to pretty much anyone who's read that company's comics in, oh, the last thirty years or so. During the conversation, so my friend told me, the executive said, "[Big Two Comic Company] is not interested in expanding our audience."

Again, I have no idea if it's true or not, but if it is, it sure explains a lot.

And that what is killing the comics but when it get's worse they will flock to expand to get their new audience.

[IamNemesis]

" it's eBay that wiped out the back issue market. No one needs to sell to dealers, they can be their own dealer, with an international market and the side effect of caved-in prices because the Overstreet values are based on scarcity, and scarcity is based on lack of access.".....from Stephen Grants latest Permanent Damage.

I am afraid the comic book industry has been permanently damaged.

Lets get a couple of things straight: The Overstreet Guide and speculators drove the market prior to Ebay's appearance, and dealers routinely quoted pennies on the dollar for books, even hot books, that collectors wanted to sell at a fair market price. Not all, but many dealers, gouged buyers, and even did a little speculation for themselves on the side. The comic book dealer could be a blessing or a curse to a buyer or a collector, depending on how fairly they did business. Internet auctions sell back issue books at what the market determines the book is worth, not what some rich fanboys are willing to pay or what the Overstreet guide(with its layers of grading crap)says the book is worth. Comics have not generally been worth the paper they are printed on, moreso the last 20 years, and reason for that is the industry itself.

The Comic Book industry marginalized itself during the eighties and nineties, by going direct market, by going to slick paper, and expensive formats, more or less reducing the average comic book to being not even worth paper it was printed on. The only way for the major comic book companies to compete in the real world, is to do go back producing books cheaper, meaning cheap paper, cheap labor, or just reprinting (Or maybe producing fewer books at much higher quality standards for art and story; this seems unlikely).

The industry always had viable characters for development in Hollywood, but clearly, once the major comic book character movies all get made, then you will see a lot less of them around. The characters featured in the movies have all been around for many, many years. The industry is dying, but people are still making money by selling a peek at the ravaged body. Ragnarok appearently takes several years in mortal terms to unfold, giving us all a front row seat for the Twilight of the Gods.

[Steven Grant]

The Comic Book industry marginalized itself during the eighties and nineties, by going direct market, by going to slick paper, and expensive formats, more or less reducing the average comic book to being not even worth paper it was printed on. The only way for the major comic book companies to compete in the real world, is to do go back producing books cheaper, meaning cheap paper, cheap labor, or just reprinting (Or maybe producing fewer books at much higher quality standards for art and story; this seems unlikely).

The problem with reprinting is that much of the stuff looks antiquated. It'd be hard to pass it off as modern work.

As far as the business "marginalizing" itself with the direct market, please recall that prior to the direct market the business had already been almost totally marginalized, with most newsstands and former usual outlets like grocery stores and drug stores simply dumping comics because they weren't cost effective, and the profit margin was ridiculously slight. Rather than killing comics the DM gave them another 20 years of life, and provided a new financial model that made it possible to make a lot more money on a lot fewer sales. The problem with the DM is that, as most things do, it eventually began to calcify as it became standardized, so that the function of the DM now isn't to sell comic books but to make the DM easy to manage.

The industry always had viable characters for development in Hollywood, but clearly, once the major comic book character movies all get made, then you will see a lot less of them around.

While this is possible, there's no reason at the moment to expect it. Hollywood is already past the "ooh, this is a well-known character, let's make a movie" phase, and is simply strip-mining all of comics for material. Even the best comics sales are minuscule compared to what Hollywood considers good sales. I'm currently involved with about seven film productions, four of them based on my properties, none of which had especially good sales. The producers involved aren't interested because they're awed by me or because the characters are popular (none of the properties even have character names in the title, and most comics fans have never even heard of the books because they weren't published by Marvel or Viz), they want to make the movies because they like the stories, pure and simple. Several of the films expected to be major hits this fall and winter are based on relatively unknown comics, and comics will likely never be mentioned in the marketing. (In fact, quite a few films over the past decade have been "quietly" based on comics, like A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE.) Until comics creators run out of stories Hollywood thinks worthy of translation to film/TV, comics won't be in any jeopardy of abandonment, though minor superheroes might be out in the cold. This is also helped by many of the people in Hollywood today being of a generation that grew up comics fans in the '80s and beyond, not only in creative but in the management end as well, and who are inching closer and closer every year to being the primary decision makers in the town. You wouldn't believe how many comics fans are real producers (as opposed to the multitudes who hang out their shingles and call themselves producers) and production company creative directors now. And most of them seem to genuinely love the medium, so they're unlikely to simply abandon it anytime soon.

The big problem comics face at the moment, vis-a-vis Hollywood, is that comics fans have become disinterested in supporting new properties. That's where the Hollywood burnout factor will come, when there's nothing left of value (in Hollywood terms) for them to stripmine.

- Grant

[comicsmetal]

The problem with reprinting is that much of the stuff looks antiquated. It'd be hard to pass it off as modern work.

As far as the business "marginalizing" itself with the direct market, please recall that prior to the direct market the business had already been almost totally marginalized, with most newsstands and former usual outlets like grocery stores and drug stores simply dumping comics because they weren't cost effective, and the profit margin was ridiculously slight. Rather than killing comics the DM gave them another 20 years of life, and provided a new financial model that made it possible to make a lot more money on a lot fewer sales. The problem with the DM is that, as most things do, it eventually began to calcify as it became standardized, so that the function of the DM now isn't to sell comic books but to make the DM easy to manage.



While this is possible, there's no reason at the moment to expect it. Hollywood is already past the "ooh, this is a well-known character, let's make a movie" phase, and is simply strip-mining all of comics for material. Even the best comics sales are minuscule compared to what Hollywood considers good sales. I'm currently involved with about seven film productions, four of them based on my properties, none of which had especially good sales. The producers involved aren't interested because they're awed by me or because the characters are popular (none of the properties even have character names in the title, and most comics fans have never even heard of the books because they weren't published by Marvel or Viz), they want to make the movies because they like the stories, pure and simple. Several of the films expected to be major hits this fall and winter are based on relatively unknown comics, and comics will likely never be mentioned in the marketing. (In fact, quite a few films over the past decade have been "quietly" based on comics, like A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE.) Until comics creators run out of stories Hollywood thinks worthy of translation to film/TV, comics won't be in any jeopardy of abandonment, though minor superheroes might be out in the cold. This is also helped by many of the people in Hollywood today being of a generation that grew up comics fans in the '80s and beyond, not only in creative but in the management end as well, and who are inching closer and closer every year to being the primary decision makers in the town. You wouldn't believe how many comics fans are real producers (as opposed to the multitudes who hang out their shingles and call themselves producers) and production company creative directors now. And most of them seem to genuinely love the medium, so they're unlikely to simply abandon it anytime soon.

The big problem comics face at the moment, vis-a-vis Hollywood, is that comics fans have become disinterested in supporting new properties. That's where the Hollywood burnout factor will come, when there's nothing left of value (in Hollywood terms) for them to stripmine.

- Grant

So what do you think the industry has to do,get new fans and the fans of comics to be interested in new properties.It is the fault of them and Diamond for advertising their stuff only in previews than going to out side media?

[Steven Grant]

So what do you think the industry has to do,get new fans and the fans of comics to be interested in new properties.It is the fault of them and Diamond for advertising their stuff only in previews than going to out side media?

Traditionally the problem has been money; comics are such a low profit item (per book) that advertising on, say, TV would wipe out most company profits for a year. But, as I said this week in the column, I think the biggest problem is the business' overall mindset. Viz was originally told they had to publish monthly comics to make an impact and there was no way they could make money with book collections, but they did so poorly with the "traditional" method they decided to endrun the standard comics business altogether and promote themselves as something not "ordinary comics," and now they're probably still the real #1 comics company in America. Everyone thinks there are "rools" to promoting comics and no "rools" exist... unless you mean the "rools" Diamond imposes. The problem is three-pronged: you have to publish material a wider audience might appreciate, you have to put it where they can get to it relatively easily, and you have to let them know it's there.

Everyone in comics is waiting for someone to solve these problems one by one, so they can jump the train and profit from someone else's work. The standard comics procedure. But these problems can't be solved one by one, any solutions will only work if they're solved at the same time, and that's the challenge.

- Grant

[comicsmetal]

Traditionally the problem has been money; comics are such a low profit item (per book) that advertising on, say, TV would wipe out most company profits for a year. But, as I said this week in the column, I think the biggest problem is the business' overall mindset. Viz was originally told they had to publish monthly comics to make an impact and there was no way they could make money with book collections, but they did so poorly with the "traditional" method they decided to endrun the standard comics business altogether and promote themselves as something not "ordinary comics," and now they're probably still the real #1 comics company in America. Everyone thinks there are "rools" to promoting comics and no "rools" exist... unless you mean the "rools" Diamond imposes. The problem is three-pronged: you have to publish material a wider audience might appreciate, you have to put it where they can get to it relatively easily, and you have to let them know it's there.

Everyone in comics is waiting for someone to solve these problems one by one, so they can jump the train and profit from someone else's work. The standard comics procedure. But these problems can't be solved one by one, any solutions will only work if they're solved at the same time, and that's the challenge.

- Grant

Looks like a harsh challenge to take ,I just hope they can work throw those challenges.

[Three]

The industry always had viable characters for development in Hollywood, but clearly, once the major comic book character movies all get made, then you will see a lot less of them around. The characters featured in the movies have all been around for many, many years. The industry is dying, but people are still making money by selling a peek at the ravaged body. Ragnarok appearently takes several years in mortal terms to unfold, giving us all a front row seat for the Twilight of the Gods.

This represents the gloom and doom attitude out there and I can't argue it isn't warrented. However, I do strongly believe that things are not as bad as everyone thinks. Yes, comic sales have dropped but a big part of that is the economy. Everything is dropping even video game sales. I read today that some people are speculating that game sales will drop in half. Considering how this is now such a mainstream thing that really shows there is more going on out there than people leaving comics.

Now I truly believe that the industry needs to try harder to bring in new fans. I also believe they need to produce cheaper books even if it means lower quality paper, etc. 4 bucks for a comic is NOT acceptable to many. For me to go into a comic store and walk out with 4 comics with a twenty dollar bill is unreal. They need to give out comic promos at movies and the like with a list of the nearest comic shops. Things such as this.

Now, as FANS, we could certainly do more which includes "sharing the love." Like to read something? Pass it on. Don't be afraid to tell people you read comics.

IMO, the comic industry will NEVER return to the days of giant sales. People do not read print like they used to. However, they can certainly stay a float with more realistic expectations.

[JCAll]

I'm surprised that in his obituary for the Back Order Vendors, Grant didn't mention piracy at all. I'm sure it isn't the nail in the coffin that eBay was, but it's becoming increasingly convient and popular for someone with an intrest in a specific 30 year old issue of Aquaman to forgo the travel, waiting, or cost and just read it off the internet.

[Steven Grant]

I'm surprised that in his obituary for the Back Order Vendors, Grant didn't mention piracy at all. I'm sure it isn't the nail in the coffin that eBay was, but it's becoming increasingly convient and popular for someone with an intrest in a specific 30 year old issue of Aquaman to forgo the travel, waiting, or cost and just read it off the internet.

Honestly, I don't care about that. (Nor do I know of any websites with storehouses of old AQUAMAN comics to read at will, but that's a bit off point.) Anyone collecting old AQUAMAN comics will still want the printed matter. If all they want is to read old AQUAMAN comics, why should they pay $30 per for the privilege? As a writer I don't make one more red cent if someone reads, say, MARVEL TEAM-UP #92 online or if they go buy the back issue, so it doesn't matter to me one way or the other, and from my perspective the more people who can read the material the more likely we are to find those who like it well enough to want a copy around, so Marvel sells another copy of ESSENTIAL MARVEL TEAM-UP, and that does put money in my pocket. Now you can argue that being able to read that material online means people don't need to buy any reprints, and that's probably true, but I'm willing to bet the vast majority of those wouldn't have bought anything in the first place, and, in any case, Archives and Essential volumes are mainly aimed at libraries that are currently soaking up those things like hungry little sponges. In short, I don't see piracy as being especially detrimental to the comics business; played right, it's really more like just another promotional tool. It's probably not a major factor in the collapsed back issue market either...

- Grant

[EuropaBambaataa]

Now, as FANS, we could certainly do more which includes "sharing the love." Like to read something? Pass it on. Don't be afraid to tell people you read comics.

I'm not. I do tell people I read comics. But most of my friends are uninterested in experimenting with comics, so there's no point in badgering them about it.

This comic book fan mentality that we should proselytize bothers me a little. First, because it's not my job to promote comics. I'm the one spending money with comics, the only thing I get from "recruiting" is another person to talk comics with, which is nice but isn't necessary. It's comic book companies that have an interest in selling comics that should recruit.

Second, I'm almost 30. If you're not a regular reader/buyer by age 30, I don't think you're going to become one. The only way I know of creating fans is to start them young. They say kids today aren't reading comics (or reading period). That's not my problem either, once more it's the comic book companies that need to figure out to attract the under-16 market.