Comic Book Resources

The last issues of both Dark Knight and Watchmen were way behind.

Wasn’t Watchmen only one month late, and then only at the very last issue? I seem to recall Dave Gibbons saying something about this once the CW delays were announced.

Otherwise, I agree with you, though I’d also add that more companies (i.e., Marvel and DC) should be regularly putting out OGNs of their big characters. Line up a gang of creators, let them go wild, and release quarterly (if that) books featuring complete stories.

The big difference, of course, and one that has been made with regard to Civil War, is that those books of which you speak DID NOT tie in to dozens of other titles, forcing them to be late. I doubt very much if anyone would whine about Civil War being late if it didn’t make every other Marvel title late as well. I know retailers wouldn’t whine, but they lose a huge chunk of business because not only is the top-selling Marvel title late, so are almost every other Marvel title, and Marvel zombies simply don’t look for anything else. That’s the annoyance.

I have no problem waiting months for books I like. Did I drop Planetary when it went, what, two years between issues? I did not, because you’re right - I won’t care when it’s completed and I can sit down and read the whole thing. The thing that bothers me about Civil War (and, mind you, I’m not buying it and don’t really care about it) is the contempt Marvel is holding the retailers in - the very people who are selling their product. If you’re going to do a big crossover tent-pole kind of event, either don’t get Millar and McNiven to do it or give them something like two years of lead time, because, you know, they’re artistes.

Yeah, Watchmen wasn’t that bad compared to some of the others… but look at what we had to listen to with CW just being one month late. ANY lateness causes the tantrum. I’ve seen people get pissy if it’s a week late. And Howard the retailer was shuttling his people all over Seattle this week picking up books because he has customers that won’t put up with HOURS late. Addicts, tweaking. That’s what it is. Let’s own up to it.

As for the OGN thing… I already did that column, actually, it’s archived as “Friday on the Hamster Wheel.” But I absolutely agree that embracing the book publishing model is the answer for all of comics, period.

I have recently switched from getting my comics weekly to getting them monthly due to my LCS shutting down, and it has changed how I look at comic news and information on-line. The entire comics world seems to be built on it being a weekly soap opera, and I’m happy to let all of the controversy, on-line fights and other such stuff pass me by.

Now, I just read the comics as I get them and I find I like them a lot more.

It’s not just that CW’s delay pushed the tie-in titles back as well (as Burgas said), it’s that the delay takes the air out of the crossover “buying frenzy” atmosphere that boosts the sales of those tie-in titles.

Look, the main Civil War title is going to sell unless it goes into Secret War territory delays (and maybe even then). But that’s not the point of such a crossover event. The point is to suck readers into a short, full-impact finite series, hope that the readership spills outside the pages of the main titles and samples some of the ancillary titles, and then sticks with those ongoing series when the hubub’s done.

What Marvel and DC have learned over the years is that the best way to maximize sampling is to create a buzz so overwhelming that impulse buys become practically “compulsion buys.” You don’t just WANT to pick up CW: Spider-Man, you HAVE to pick up CW: Spider-Man. They have also learned that they can’t sustain the buzz forever, but they only have to do it long enough to hook you to Spider-Man when the noise is over.

The drawback in this case is that the buzz disappeared for 7 weeks. So now you have thousands of readers hooked onto various titles that temporarily vanished for 2 months. The question now is whether those readers care enough on their own–without the buzz–to continue reading Spider-Man. What happens when the pusher starts shoveling drugs at you at a Zeppelin concert, then the pusher, drugs, and concert disappear for three hours and then reappear? Are you hooked on the drugs, or would you rather just watch Stairway to Heaven and go home? Or worse, do you get so mad at the pusher for leaving you without your high that you swear off the drugs forever and devote yourself to the ecstatic sexual voyeurism of the Distinguished Competition (never mind the horribly appropriate metaphor)?

And this is the same reason Marvel gave for Civil War’s lateness, as I recall. Civil War’s not Watchmen, God knows, but the reason’s just as valid. (Now it’s here and you all hate it. Bet you feel stupid now, lateness whiners.)

This makes no sense. It was late and we complained. Then it finally came and it was bad. Why exactly would that make us feel stupid for being mad that it was late? If we didn’t complain about it being late the quality would have magically been better? Or the badness wouldn’t have been easier to deal with?

Greg, I think sometimes you overanalyze comic fans in a vacuum and apply such a harsh standard to them that you critcize them mercilessly as freaks for engaging in what is basic human behavior. Comic fans aren’t the only people to go somewhere else when things come out one day late. In any form of entertainment there are going to be people who are fanatical enough to want something the first day and more casual people who can stand to wait. There were teenage girls in the 90s who waited in line on release day for N’Sync and Britney albums. If their local record store didn’t have them that day they would have gone somewhere else. There are people who simply have to see certain blockbuster movies on opening day, like the Matrix sequels or Lord of the Rings or King Kong or a Spielberg picture. If their local theater isn’t showing it the first day for some reason and says it’ll show a day later, I can bet you they’ll go someplace else. Same goes for people who really want the newest Harry Potter book or latest video game system. Not only do they want them opening day, sometimes they pay months in advance just for the privilege of getting it opening day. So in every industry there are people who need things the first day, no matter how irrational that need is, and those that can stand to wait a day or two because they are more casual about their interest. Every action of comic fans is not necessarily indicative of some bizarre behavioral disorder. Sure comic fans occasionally do some weird things, like primarily buy DC books, but overall I don’t think we’re THAT strange.

What the owner of your local shop suffered was just the part of the risk of doing business in a capitalist society that gives consumers choices.

And as far as how we can’t have it both ways by expecting timeliness AND expect art as well? Sure we can. Other industries do it all the time. Because it’s not just art, it’s also mass entertainment, meaning it has to please the masses. Real art…PURE art…hangs in museums, subsidized by grants or bought at the whims of the occasional rich oddball or remains in private collections. Mass entertainment like posters, comic books, movies, novels, etc. are commercial and have to please the masses. The TV show Lost is a form of art, sure, but it lost ratings big this year because it had too many repeats and lost momentum. Similar things happen to TV shows with too many repeats all the time.

I like your writing, but sometimes I think you analyze comic fan behavior with tunnel vision and end up being too hard on them.

Interesting column as always, Greg, but T. said pretty much exactly what I was going to say.

Comics fans aren’t quite the freaks and weirdos you want them to be. I mean, yeah, it makes for provocative reading to paint them that way, but there really is nothing particularly ‘broken’ about that system, and certainly nothing worth getting mystified about.

I’m a box customer at my store too, so I could care less if my stuff comes in right on time. I normally don’t even get a chance to head into the city and pick up the stuff in it until the week after it comes out. But, you know, I can understand people who do want their stuff to be on time. It’s exactly like a new album or film coming out, and there’ll always be people who are keen to get their stuff on opening day.

I just think it seems like you might be confusing what you want with what everybody else wants. You want trades only, but a lot of people don’t- you just made a big thing of how much some of them prefer the current method- and you can’t force people to want something.

I disagree with the Capital A Art thing as well. Again, to think that means you’d have to think comics exist in a vacuum. Very, very few forms of corporate entertainment- which is what comics are- are completely ‘Capital A Art’, or completely worthless. There are virtually ALWAYS commercial considerations to…well, consider… and it’s kinda ridiculous to expect otherwise.

Sometimes stuff is on time. Sometimes stuff is late. Some people get upset over that, and some people don’t. It’s not a big deal, but if you see it that way there’s not much of a column in it, I guess.

You know what I think is the biggest problem with comics these days? No? Well, I’ll tell you anyway… I think it’s the need to over-analyse everything. I think it’s everybody wanting to be the one to make the grand statement about how bad a book is and how the mainstream superhero comics sky is falling. Seriously, if we’d had this attitude back in the Silver Age, there’d barely be any ‘classics’ in the superhero canon.

Comics are supposed to be good, but they’re also supposed to be fun.

Anyway, you’re obviously doing something right to continually get these sort of responses. Great column, thanks for the food for thought.

Hey, you missed V for Vendetta from the list - as far as A-grade stories with a delay in the middle go, that’s a doozy!

Yeah, and ‘V’s a special case because the skill level, ideology and political knowledge of the people involved changed a little bit during the delay, by their own admission.

Actually, looked at from that point of view, ‘V’ is a good example of timeliness being an important factor in Capital A Art from the point of view of coherency. I don’t really mind either way, though, the finished product is still great.

Honestly, my problem with lateness is just that it happens so damn often. Once in a while to make absolutely sure you’re going to have the best product ever, sure. Schedule changes every week, not good. It starts to look really unprofessional when editors and writers say “oh, yeah, we had to reshuffle some things, you’ll see it in three months- look, you can’t rush Art!”

I’m sorry, but your intro completely undermines your argument.

As you explained, *Diamond* screwed up and left your retailer to take the hit, and then it’s the fans’ fault? If your supermarket runs out of milk, do you wait, or go get it elsewhere? If the store you’re in doesn’t have the DVD you want, do you wait for it to get back in stock, or do you go look in the store next door?

I like my friendly, neighborhood LCS where I’m recognized, but when you get right down to it, that’s a clubhouse mentality that’s just as much part of fanboy zeal as the Wednesday fix. If the comic is in stores, there should be nothing wrong with buying it where you find it. Plus, of course, that many Wednesday fix readers will be people who also browse comics websites, and they know that even if they’re careful, spoilers tend to pop up.

You also mix up comics being published late and already published books being unavailable in a specific store. Those are two entirely different subjects.

Ok, I’ve thought about this column waaaaaaaaaaay too much, but I was just thinking: if the industry does suddenly go with books instead of single issues, how will that solve the problem you’re talking about?

It seems like you’re taking issue to a couple of different things in that article, but in the specific case of the store owner getting his books later than other stores because of a Diamond screw-up (as opposed to books just being behind schedule), won’t the problem remain exactly the same?

I mean, I’d like to think that even if single issues were done away with, the Big Two would retain a degree of professionalism and actually set release dates for the books they bring out. Fans would know what these release dates were, and in the case of books they were really after, they’d treat these dates like New Comics Day.

And if a particular store, for whatever reason, didn’t have the book they wanted on the day they wanted it, these fans would go elsewhere. Especially if they don’t go to a particular store for single issues anymore anyway.

So, under your idea, isn’t Howard just as screwed?

I think Greg is on to something; I think there is a basic problem with the industry and the fan community that supports it. I am not sure the problem is really as simple as “the fans are junkies!”, though. I think the problem is that the American comic book industry, right now, is one-tenth the size it should be. T brought up video games in his post, so I’m going to elaborate on that example to unpack my idea a bit.

Yes, it’s true that there are people who will pay in advance for the privelige of owning a new console or game system on the first day. Those people, though, tend to constitute at most 20% of a product’s final base of customers, though. Often it’s much less, like 10%. Simply put, you sell to the die-hards to get by; you turn your profit on the people who come in to buy the system in the 2nd or 3rd year that it’s out, or to buy the game in its 2nd or 3rd month. So, you want to keep the pre-order types happy and excited, since their excitement drives good word-of-mouth and leads to more sales. You don’t, however, expect selling to them and them alone to result in a big hit. A title the diehards like is only niche; it’s a big hit when it’s moved over a million copies.

In comics, the people who absolutely have to have books the day they come out are demonstrating the same sort of behavior as those who pre-order video game stuff. They are diehards and they absolutely want the new product as soon as it’s available. The problem as I see it with comics, is that only titles that get support from a big media tie-in like a movie can really hope to have anyone at all coming back to the product in its 2nd or 3rd year out, or even its 2nd or 3rd month. You certainly can’t count on 3/4 to 9/10 of your business showing up like that!

Right now, the die-hards seem to make up anything from two-thirds to three-fourths of the comics buying audience, rather than the ten percent you get in most other entertainment mediums. So if the diehards aren’t pleased, then nobody else is showing up to buy the books and Howard is screwed. This would not be a problem if comics were operating on the same scale as other mass-media forms, with successful products moving one million to two million units. Instead, judging by the last figures I saw, the most successful comics only seem to move in the range of 250,000 copies. Most of those sales have to be to die-hards who primarily want superhero comics presented to them in a certain format and a certain timeframe.

If the video game industry only sold to its die-hards, it would be a very different and, frankly, much worse place for it. I think it would be something like the current comic book industry, and no entertainment media needs to be stuck there. It’s why Marvel and DC are rapidly turning into little more than licensing farms that happen to put out comics on the side. You can’t make a living off of die-hards, you need to groom them into overall mainstreaming of your product if you want to maintain a healthy business.

To digress a bit, I think indies are making a killing in the bookstore culture simply because it lets them connect with a pool of potential readers that isn’t likely to be defined first and foremost by an interest in monthly superhero comics. I strongly believe this is the same reason why manga started making a killing once it got out of the comic and hobby shops and into bookstores. I’m not sure superheroes as we know them could survive a transition into bookstore culture. I think bookstore readers wouldn’t respond to a big event like Civil War the way comic shop readers obviously do. I’m not sure this would necessarily be a bad thing for superheroes, though, and transforming the genre radically might lead to that sales boost everything’s looking for.

In a sense Howard s just as srewed if everything m oves to books, but on average he isn’t. Current Marvel and DC output relies heavily on hyped events, generating a “must have” mentality through storylines, creators and stoking the urge to maintain complete collections. Which is nice, and many retailers probably enjoy the undemanding rabid customers this generates. The junkie mentality is perfect for most retailers (as long as their supply keeps coming).
OTOH, retailers wishing to generate a sustainable, diverse customer base are hurt by companies investing into junkies. The junkies (and the product they buy) make the place look less desirable to normal people. If Marvel and Dc changed they way they offer product to “when it’s finished” and sold books instead of floppies those retailers could care for the “Wednesday crowd” just as well, gently guide them to the good stuff and perhaps even sell an indy or two on the side. Less people would buy stuff they hate, increasing overall happiness.

Howard still suffers if Diamond messes up, but far less because the proportion of his business depending on the Wednesday crowd is far smaller even if he continues to sell the same proportion of Marvel and DC stuff.

Well, hopefully Diamond won’t deliver books late every week, and it won’t become an ‘average’ problem for Howard anyway. Although, yeah, it probably already is something that retailers have to deal with regularly.

If you switch solely to books, I don’t think it will just be the proportion of retailers’ business that depends on Wednesday crowds that decreases. I think retailers’ business will decrease, full stop.

Think about it: if you released ‘Civil War’ only as a book, and only when it was finished, then you wouldn’t be able to sell people a trillion other Marvel titles as tie-ins, and you wouldn’t have people Marvel fans coming in every week.

And yes, there will still be Marvel zombies. Comics fans’ preferences won’t change just because some people don’t like them, and nor should they be. Free market, and all that.

An issue of ‘She-Hulk’ went to a second printing because of ‘Civil War’. So, you know, it’s not all bad, and it’s clearly attracting readers to titles they might not have read otherwise.

The message to take out of the plight of Howard is that Diamond are dicks, not that fanboys are slobbering sub-human junkies.

Did I get across that the assumption was “less Wednesday junkies, more “normal” customers”? If I didn’t, sorry. It’s just, without that assumption it’s kind of a no-brainer that not exploiting the junkies as much as you can will reduce overall business. I don’t have to “think about it” at all, it’s obvious.

I have no idea what’s the true situation. Them being zombies _I_ imagine the loss among them from a switch to books wouldn’t be that substantial. The hardcore would still be completionist, still be there every Wednesday and still buy every potential tie-in. Otherwise they wouldn’t be hardcore.
But yes, you’d loose a lot of custom on people who get swept away by the hype of the current system and might not purchase the same books otherwise. I don’t know how large that fraction is, and crucially, I don’t know whether that fraction would buy more (or longer) or less after the change. The likliest course of events seems to be an increase in regular folks and a decrease in hardcore, no idea whether compensatory, under- or over- compensatory. And we haven’t even accounted for changes in strategy at the company level there. The books would likely improve.
What I do know is that every healthy entertainment market out there seems to have a lower percentage of harcore users than the comics industry. I do know that a rabid fanbase has not saved Firefly/Serenity or Snakes on a Plan or Enterprise etc. and that it’s the exception to the rule to see the hardcore make a difference.
Doesn’t mean the OGN format is the solution, but it at least seems to have promise.

Markus said…
“Did I get across that the assumption was “less Wednesday junkies, more “normal” customers”? If I didn’t, sorry. It’s just, without that assumption it’s kind of a no-brainer that not exploiting the junkies as much as you can will reduce overall business. I don’t have to “think about it” at all, it’s obvious.”

Yeah, you got that across, but I admit I didn’t really take it on board, because it seems like a fairly strange thing to say, even if you didn’t mean it that way.

Basically, this is a comics blog, for comics fans, and you’re saying that hardcore fans are hurting the industry and inherently make for an unattractive shop. I’ve seen really great-looking comics shops that cater to mainstream superhero fans, so it can be done, and I can’t help but find that assumption a little offensive.

I just think, if you’re a comics retailer, and you don’t want hardcore comics fans in your store, then you need to just open a fucking bookshop.

My problem with this post, insofar as I have one, is that it does seem to shift the blame from the publishers (where it belongs) to the consumers. You’re essentially saying, “How dare you expect publishers to stick to a schedule that they set and promise retailers, distributors, and customers they’ll stick to?! You jerks!”

The fact of the matter is, yes, Watchmen and Sandman were late–but frankly, Civil War ain’t Watchmen. It is not an Earth-shattering medium-redefining statement of Art, it is a piece of cheap, disposable entertainment. If it can’t reach me when I am in the mood for cheap, disposable entertainment–namely, the day that the publisher promised me and tens of thousands of other people that it would be there–I don’t see why I should feel guilty for spending my money elsewhere.

Are there things I’ll wait for? Absolutely. I waited for ‘Fray’, I’m fine with waiting for ‘Planetary’, and I’ll wait for ‘Eternals’ should it fall behind. But it’s a decision I make on a case-by-case basis, and I don’t feel one bit bad about doing so. You don’t have to wait for Kevin Smith’s Black Cat comic just because you waited for Watchmen…and if the difference between the two needs explaining to you, you’re clearly in need of the comics remedial class.

It’s all about the quality. I’ll wait for Planetary as long as it takes, it’s that good. But Kevin Smith’s Spider-Man/Black Cat mini? No dice. If it had come out on time, I might have gotten it out of habit, but Marvel broke that habit, by either not putting the screws to Kevin Smith or getting someone, anyone to finish the story.
When you have a book that heavily depends on a cliffhanger for momentum, you need to wrap it up quickly, while peple still care. When they delay #4 and you get a chance to go back and re-read #1-3, you realize that resolving the cliffhanger was the only thing it had going for it.

More food for thought: If comics go to strictly book format like you suggest, which I personally wouldn’t mind, comic stores are even MORE screwed. Why? Because now they are going to have to compete exclusively with the big box retailers like Wal-Mart, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Borders and others. Those guys offer HUGE discounts. I even go to Strand Books in NYC for trades and receive deep Amazon-like discounts. The local comic shops biggest advantage in the market is the quick-fix monthly. They have razor-thin margins and simply can’t afford to give the deep discounts big stores do. Look at manga for example, it sells exclusively as graphic novels and it sells a LOT more in bookstores and Amazon than comic shops. Viz dropped monthlies years back and focused on only trades and its business shot through the roof thanks to bookstores. I’m an acolyte of free-market darwinism so it’s fine by me, but it’ll suck for your friend Howard.

I am afraid that I am one of the lunatic customers. I am a creature of habit, and when I go in on Wednesdays, I expect there to be books. On occasion, UPS hasn’t delivered, or delivered late, or there has been some sort of kerfuffle. Sometimes the books that I want are late.
I stamp my dainty foot and sob a little bit. Matt, my beloved proprietor pats me on the shoulder and steers me over to the back issues, and I leave later happier and $50 dollars lighter in the wallet. However, I would never DREAM of going to another store! Yes people have been occasionally disappointed, but when the problem is explained, mostly everyone just comes back the next day, and we all yell at Diamond or Marvel or DC and feel better for it.

Damn straight we are junkies.

And the next time your column is late, I’m gonna break into your car and steal your iPod.

Late comics don’t bother me too much because I know that most of them will be out eventually.

It took me a long time to get to this point. I used to scan Previews with a fine toothed comb, making a list of which comics I wanted and when they would be out.

When the list of late comics got almost as long as the list of comics due that month, I gave up.

Now I just look through Previews for books other than Marvel and DC. I don’t have any expectations of the coming Marvel or DC titles that way. I also avoid all previews that might get posted online.

Makes life simpler and much saner that way.

I think Lynxara built on my points perfectly. Local comic book stores are an entity that made it’s whole bread and butter off the die hard junkie. It not only made its money off this type of fan, it helped cultivate it. Anyone who specifically goes through the trouble of hunting down a local comic shop is likely to be a junkie, as opposed to someone who comes across a comic section at a newstand or bookstore. If video games only sold primarily at Electronic Boutique and Gamestop and were hard to get at Wal-Mart and Best Buy, I’m sure a vast majority of video game fans would be the die-hard preorder, first-day release guys too. Likewise, if comics were available on newstands again and big box retailers, the more casual fan base could grow again.

The rise of the local comic shop was a big factor in the demise of the newstand comic market, and once that died the casual fanbase died and all that was left was the junkie. And the local comic shop made the junkie’s habit worse by giving an even bigger selection of niche products: expensive statues, memorabilia, merchandise…all stuff that gets the junkie excited but stigmatizes the hobby to the casual fan and makes him feel like a dork just for setting foot in the store. So after all local comic stores have done to feed and grow the junkie market and weaken the casual fanbase market, now they want to cry foul when their chickens come home to roost?

Greg’s right, you people are insane.

To respond seriously, the dominance of the specialty shop plays a major part in the stagnation of the American comic book market (and that market’s dominance by obsessive, die-hard fans). It’s a vicious circle: comics can only be really found at a handful of hobby shops, and the only ones who go to them are die-hard fans, so you end up with an insular and inaccessible medium. I’d love to see comics change from pamphlets to book publishing, and be sold mainly in Borders, Barnes & Noble and Amazon, but it’s going to take a major initiative on the part of the major players to do this. Marvel and DC will have to invest some serious money and take a risk in building up a line of accessible books that ordinary shoppers can find in ordinary bookstores and understand without a decade’s worth of detailed knowledge of DC backstory.

The comments are all very interesting and keep it up, but here is where I ask what I always do when we get to this point: if there are any retailers out there reading this, please, chime in. I’m interested and I think everyone else would be too.

Moose pretty well summed up what I think about it all, with this: “It’s a vicious circle: comics can only be really found at a handful of hobby shops, and the only ones who go to them are die-hard fans, so you end up with an insular and inaccessible medium. I’d love to see comics change from pamphlets to book publishing, and be sold mainly in Borders, Barnes & Noble and Amazon, but it’s going to take a major initiative on the part of the major players to do this.” …although I’d add to that: “…everyone working in the business knows this but no one wants to be the one to take the first step and TRY it, because the one doing the initial R & D investment will take a huge chance and might very well go down in flames experimenting to find the format that will absolutely WORK.”

And in the meantime mainstream comics are locked into a system where both the distribution mechanism AND the customer base is continually shrinking.

I like fans, hell I AM one, but the complete unreasonableness of our demands hits me every so often. We want booklets, not books. (Except we’ll buy books collecting them after the booklets have come out, often even if we already have the materieal the book is collecting.) But we don’t want the story in one booklet, we want it spread out over six or ten or thirty. The booklets must arrive every Wednesday on time on an unvarying schedule or we are enraged. Sometimes the schedule and the numbering of the set is more important than what’s IN the booklet. And so on.

The only really comparable entertainment consumable that follows essentially this same system, as far as I can tell, is illegal drugs. We want it this way even though in the abstract we are generally agreed that it’s bad. To me that just seems mental, especially when so many demands are centered on format, which I talked about in an earlier column, and schedule — this week’s column.

Now, you can talk about the quality of Civil War as much as you want. Lots of people like it and that’s fine. But it was just the handy example — you can just as easily use Kevin Smith or Danger Girl or whatever. The point is that when the SCHEDULING of ONE story arc from ONE publisher can A) cripple an entire retail outlet and B) apparently influence hugely how people feel about the story’s MERIT, well, THAT’S what’s broken.

i really need some snark free corner right now…that’s MY fix

I like fans, hell I AM one, but the complete unreasonableness of our demands hits me every so often. We want booklets, not books. (Except we’ll buy books collecting them after the booklets have come out, often even if we already have the materieal the book is collecting.) But we don’t want the story in one booklet, we want it spread out over six or ten or thirty. The booklets must arrive every Wednesday on time on an unvarying schedule or we are enraged. Sometimes the schedule and the numbering of the set is more important than what’s IN the booklet. And so on.

The only really comparable entertainment consumable that follows essentially this same system, as far as I can tell, is illegal drugs.

Oh Greg, there you go again. Like I said earlier, you continue examine fans in a vacuum to make them look like some kind of irrational nutjobs. You really can’t think of any analogous behavior in any other form of consumable entertainment?

How about people who watch every episode of a show during a TV season and then choose to buy the box set DVD anyway? Or people who own an album but by it again when it gets remastered or repackaged? Or own a DVD but go back out when the 2-disc special edition hits? Or will get pissed when someone buys them a movie and gets them the *gasp!* full screen version instead of the letterbox? Or owns a book but buys another copy because they just release the replica of the books very first edition/printing (I did this with Atlas Shrugged for the anniversary edition). There were limited edition Doors CDs that were exactly the same as the previous Doors CDs except they recreated the album art and liner notes of the original vinyl releases. And people scooped them up.

So comic fans choose to have their stories spread out for 5-6 issues instead of in one? Well 24 fans like to have their stories spread out in 24 episodes instead of one. And don’t get me started on Lost. And do comics pad its monthly doses for the trade? Sure. But TV has begun padding its weekly doses for the DVD boxed set and movies pad for the inevitable trilogy.

Yet the only comparable analogy you say you can come up with is illegal drugs?

These fans and entertainment phenomenons you mention are just part of the changing entertainment landscape. They can be found in every form of entertainment. The real problem is not the existence of the hardcore fan in comics. He exists in every media. The problem is the death of the casual comic fan, and he was killed by a combination of Diamond, the publishers and the direct comic market. Like I said, retailers have done their part to create a fanatic-only base.

T: Yet the only comparable analogy you say you can come up with is illegal drugs?

For the BEHAVIOR? the attitude? Yes, absolutely. Movie, TV, DVD consumers all have casual fans, We do not. We have the addicts and a system that caters only to them.

I think we basically agree, T., except the part where you’re saying it’s fine and I’m saying it’s BAD.

EDIT–okay, on second look that seemed a little too snide. To amplify the point –what I’m getting at here when I do these columns is that hardcore fans are going to have to let go of some of these things. Take a chance. You can’t complain that comics need to grow up and get better on the one hand, and on the other one throw every dollar of your purchasing might into keeping them exactly as they are. That’s addictive behavior. That’s my point this week.

“…everyone working in the business knows this but no one wants to be the one to take the first step and TRY it, because the one doing the initial R & D investment will take a huge chance and might very well go down in flames experimenting to find the format that will absolutely WORK.”

Unless I’m mistaken, First Second is more or less doing this, although they’re well outside the mainstream… or at least the Big 2 mainstream.

Personally, I’d love to see more of a book-centric approach to comic publishing, and I don’t think it’d cause the huge shift in economics and practice that everybody seems to think it will. I don’t think it’ll doom the comic shops, because whether they sell floppies or trades they’ll always be able to offer advantages over a traditional book retailer. After all, have you looked at the selection of trades and GNs in a Borders or Barnes and Noble lately? The selection varies from store to store, but most can’t offer what a specialty shop could… after all, there are a lot of comics out there. I don’t think a shift to more book publishing would doom the comic shops anymore than Best Buy selling media has killed specialty videogame stores (it hasn’t) or specialty record stores (it hasn’t).

On a sidenote, I stepped into Zanadu on my first visit to Seattle a couple of months back, the week Civil War #3 came out, and was very, very impressed. Great shop, run well. Would that everybody had access to such a great store.

For the BEHAVIOR? the attitude? Yes, absolutely. Movie, TV, DVD consumers all have casual fans, We do not. We have the addicts and a system that caters only to them.

I think we basically agree, T., except the part where you’re saying it’s fine and I’m saying it’s BAD.

You still don’t get it. I’m not saying it’s fine, we need casual fans as well as die-hard fans. My point is that you’re attacking comic fans for doing some type of behavior you claim is so out of the ordinary that no other type of person does it except for drug addicts. Then you say that this “drug addict” type of fan is hurting the industry, particularly people like your retailer friend.

What I’m saying is:

A) The hardcore fan and his quirks (padding, collecting multiple copies, etc) are not some anomaly unique only to comics and drug addiction, and

B) Don’t blame the hardcore fan for the fact that the industry was shortsighted enough to cater only to him and him alone

C) Don’t act like the retailer is some innocent victim of the hardcore fan’s insane addiction when he’s the “pusher” (to carry your drug analogy) that helped create this environment in the first place.

It’s not the hardcore fan’s fault that the industry and the retailers were stupid enough to abandon casual fans. I’m not happy about the situation either, but I’m placing the blame where it actually belongs.

What I think is (relatively) unique about the comic industry, T., is that it only has the hardcore, die-hard fans. Yes, every medium has its obsessives, but any medium that only consists of fanboys and loons won’t last for long.

It’s not the hardcore fan’s fault that the industry and the retailers were stupid enough to abandon casual fans. I’m not happy about the situation either, but I’m placing the blame where it actually belongs.

And yet at the same time, the current crop of obsessive fans shriek and moan when they aren’t being catered to. Like I said, it’s a vicious cycle. The fault lies with the fans as much as it does with the publishers right now: they’re selling the product we’ve demanded they produce.

You really can’t think of any analogous behavior in any other form of consumable entertainment?

That’s a great list, T, but you forgot one: soap opera fans. The folks who get on the phone and call TV stations if a news bulletin bumps their program for one day. The folks who are so obsessive that local stations will often schedule special programming around them, to avoid the onslaught of irate fans if an episode is preempted.

Granted, I imagine most people tend to view those fans as crazy, so maybe that’s not the best analogy. But it’s a lot more common than obsessive comics fandom.

I have to question how much the shrieking and moaning affects sales and what books are produced, however. God knows there’s plenty of hate for the new Supergirl, but they’re gonna publish her that way until sales drop or a new editor takes over. Fan moaning is almost impossible to translate into the kind of hard data that you can use to influence production- ALL STAR BATMAN may be the most frequently flamed book on the stands, but obviously there are people who like, nay, LOVE it.

As for what’s causing the industry to shrink around the fans, I hate to boil things down to simplistic one-word answers, but: Distribution. The big two are basically firing blind when they try to get something in the newsstands and grocery stores- it’ll show up in some places, maybe it’ll hit, who knows, they haven’t tried to gauge the tastes of the mainstream in years. To be sure, this does mean that you do get the bigger hardcore fan influence, because we’re pretty much the only ones paying attention at this point. And it’s virtually impossible to get an actual consensus out of us, so the editors just take an “as long as they’re paying attention” approach.

What I think is (relatively) unique about the comic industry, T., is that it only has the hardcore, die-hard fans.

That’s been said by several people in these comments already, including me. But like I said, that isn’t the fault of the obsessive fans if the companies just want to cater to them and no one else. Obsessive fans shriek about change in every medium, not just comics, but any businessperson with the least bit of intelligence knows that the obsessives stick around no matter what you do or how much they bitch. It’s the casual fans that are fickle and actually leave when they’re dissatisfied.

Really? There are no casual comics fans? At all? So, nobody just buys the occasional trade from Borders or whatever? Don’t you think we’re maybe using the sample of harccore fans in the blogosphere and overrating their importance just a bit much?

I’m amazed at how determined you are to paint comics fans in such a negative light, Greg. T. gave you a long list of people we could be compared with other than drug addicts, and you just completely refused to take it onboard. I guess because the other examples makes your argument sound less sensational, I don’t know.

I’m really, really unsure about what the problem is here. Trades exist, yes? OGNs exist, too? So if we already have them, and the time it takes for them to come out supposedly doesn’t matter to the people who buy them, then what does it matter if stories are released as floppies first?

And please, please stop insisting that EVERYONE KNOWS your proposal is the right one, when people have disagreed with you in these comments alone.

Again, interesting column and I enjoy reading your stuff, but there seems to me to be a touch of tunnel vision at work here.

I’m a casual comics fan! That might seem strange since I am actually posting on a comic book blog and took the time to read all these comments, but I bought most of my comics (all TPB’s) from the local Barnes and Noble bookstore and Amazon.

The funny thing is, I recently sought out the closest comic shop, which is a few towns over, simply because I HAD to have book 3 of Fables at THIS very moment. I wasn’t going to wait for B&N to order it for me. It cost me more but I didn’t mind because a) they had it, b) I actually prefer spending my money at a mom & pop store and most importantly, c) hope to keep them in business and stocking the things I want.

Personally I prefer trades. Perhaps that is because I am used to regular books. I also don’t watch TV these days, I wait and pick up the DVD sets.

I don’t know what to think about the whole “junkie” analogy, but I will admit that if my local Best Buy doesn’t have the DVD I want on release day I will take my money elsewhere. The difference, for me at least, is that Best Buy is a giant faceless corporation. At the local indie video shop (which sadly closed), I would wait for them to get it just because I wanted to support them and they had fantastic customer service. I guess I just wasn’t that hooked. I’m more dissapointed that people with access to what sounds like such a nice comic shop would choose to go elsewhere.

I don’t think this “junkie” mentality is unique to comics. Maybe the ratio of hardcore fans to casuals, but it exists in all mediums.

Heh, thanks for reminding me why I skip half the articles on this site. It’s amazing how you guys manage to shift from well written, insightful articles, to absolute bottom of the barrel childish bullshit.

Why is it so strange to be upset if you go to the store on Wednesday and find out that half the books will be in the next day? I can see the logic behind that pretty clearly.

Going to the comic store is, for most of us, not an impulse thing. It’s not a pause on the bus schedule or a stroll at lunch. It’s a special trip. Before I moved, my comic shop was half an hour away - even though gas was a dollar cheaper then, I wasn’t going to take another one-hour round trip the next day to pick up a book I missed. Is it really so strange to hold reasonable expectations about when books will arrive?

I’m definitely not talking about marking a date on your calendar based on a Previews listing (though I do do that for DCD, but that’s more for budgeting reasons). I mean looking at the NCRL or whatever source so you know what will be at the store in two days. You make your special trip, you go out of your way, and you find that your book’s not there? Any normal person would be thrown off by that. And if they get upset? Not outside the realm of believability.

Now, personally, my response is to say “‘f’ it” and just get the book next Wednesday, same as if I spot a book I wanted after I’ve already been rung up. Toss it in the hold file, I’ll read it later. No big deal. But just because I don’t stress over these things myself, it doesn’t mean I don’t understand why a normal, rational person might.

To be honest, if not for the online furor, I wouldn’t have known Civil War 4 was delayed. I might have wondered why it felt so long since Spider-Man came out, but I doubt it. I go to the store every Wednesday, anyway: I’ll get it when I get it. And then CW4 comes out, and it’s really good, and I forget I had to wait an extra two weeks to get it. Quality tends to overwrite flaws.

So am I an addict? Sure, of course - I wake up early on Wednesdays to go buy comics that I could get just as easily on a leisurely afternoon any day of the week. But I’m also an addict within reason: whether the book is there when I expect it or not, a week doesn’t mean much to me…

The defensiveness is killing me.
You guys need to listen to yourselves for a moment there. Nobody said that the retailers, distributors and producers are not to blame but crucially they’re beyond our control. Our own behavour isn’t. And we are the Wednesday crowd, or at least close to it. Even if we show junkie behaviour (whole or in parts), we can try to get better. That can mean changing our buying habits, the books we read and the stores we frequent. Small steps toward positive change right there. Further, we can and should reflect on our own behaviour and next time we see something highly dysfunctional, just say so. There really is no reason to not respond to the Wednesday hardcore the same way we would to girls fainting at boyband concerts. Except they have the excuse of puberty.

But markus, what possible ‘positive’ changes could come out of making the switch to OGNs only?

If some of us sound defensive, it’s because people seem to be saying we should change the existing system without making a coherent argument in another system’s favour.

Consider:
-Trades and OGNs exist already, so you wouldn’t be replacing the floppies with anything that isn’t already there.
-If it doesn’t matter to these non-junkies that are so much better than the rest of us when the books ship, then why do those same people have a problem with waiting for the trade while the floppies come out?
-What about the lack of advertising revenue? Do you want to see ads in trades and digests?
-Floppies give folks a chance to try a series out before they commit to the cost of a trade.
-Without regularly released floppies to get people into the store, how do you expect to keep up the flow of customers?

If the only answer to these questions is, “if there were less geeks in the store then more normal people would come in!”, which is basically what you said earlier, markus, then maybe you can understand why that makes people defensive.

If comics fans do have such a bad reputation that their mere presence inherently hurts a store’s presentation, maybe a big part of that reputation is because of whiny fans that are ashamed of their own sub-culture.

I’m not addicted to the floppy format, so my world wouldn’t be shattered if the Big Two suddenly went all trades and OGNs. But I don’t see how it would help Greg’s friend Howard, or any other retailers for that matter.

Change for the sake of change is just stupid.

Art. I’m willing to wait for. I’m not willing to wait for product.

As relevant and well-crafted as comics can be, they are product once the publisher sells ad space to various companies and slaps a price tag on the cover. The least these publishers can do is get said product out on time (for their advertisers if not for the consumer).

Let’s face it: Comics, be they by Moore, Dixon, Morrison or Byrne are nothing but soap operas acted out by buff dudes in spandex. Comics are:

- things we read once then seal in plastic sleeves out of either a misplaced notion that a periodical with a print run of 20,000 and an interested (present and future) audience of 12,000 could possibly worth big money in a few months’ time

- or, more likely -

items that we have come to purchase out of sheer habit, making sure that one is bagged, sealed and sometimes even momentarily enjoyed before being filed away in a box or plastic tub in an almost pathological need to “collect all”.

Though it’s frankly pretty cute that some creators and fans out there insist that there is something more to this mode of communication, Comics are capital-”C” crap… at least the way the 7-11 and grocery store crowd whose sole exposure to comic books are a squeaky spinner rack that contains months worth of dog-eared and unsold Archie, X-Men, Spider-Man and Batman comics know them, anyway.

What’s either better or worse (depending on your point of view) is that we know they’re crap. We love that they’re crap.

Comics companies churn out crap because the majority of the folks buying into this dying hobby crave crap. If we wanted art, we’d collect paintings and such.

Yeah, I’m a collector. I want my little junkie fix as much as anyone here, but come on… It’s not like Marvel’s erecting a new Colossus at Rhodes, here. They’re just making a stupid super-hero comic book. If the creators can’t work on a monthly schedule then perhaps this isn’t the best job for them, don’t you think?

It’s common sense, really. If I showed up to work a month late and delivered crap work I’d probably not only be fired, but I’d probably have a hard time finding a job in any field again.

And that’s how it should be.

I do think that, to borrow some terms from Pauline Kael, too many comic writers have been so wrapped up in making great art they’ve forgotten how to make great trash. The big events are trying to be serious and dignified events that change the universe, but they’re not even great potboilers- the stories keep falling apart at the seams. Not to mention, in the absence of new characters and concepts being created, a lot of the product is just too inward-looking. Superheroics are becoming not just the subject of supers books but the theme (which is problematic because, well, superheroes don’t exist and so the question of whether they should be registered or not, to pick one example, is not that compelling.)

There actually are a couple of anaologous examples that might be less controversial than drug addiction.

Two hobbies I’ve participated in are wargames and computer flight simulations. Both nearly died because of the hardcore behavior. Both have now been relegated to niche status and aren’t coming back. It used to be that you could buy wargames in the ’70s equivalent of your local Target.

The flight sim example is particularly close. In the heydey of PC games, several companies competed with best-selling flight sims and created some classics. But through the wonder of the internet, the hardcore started applying pressure for more “realism.” I was a fan–had an expensive joystick and throttle rig–but the games got so complicated that I didn’t have the time or inclination to play them. Plus, the pressure (both financial and from the hardcore complainers) to get the software out on time led to very buggy stuff. I quit playing–and so did a lot of other people, because flight sims are now few and far between, a tiny part of the market.

I’m not certain if anyone had pointed out one of the possible problems the industry hoists upon retailers that makes the fans fussy if they can’t get their books on Wednesday: the very real possibility that if you are in the stores on Wednesday and the books come in on Thursday, that same comic might be out of stock by the following Wednesday. If books are late (due to Diamond and not because of a Monday holiday) and I wind up missing ‘em, I generally wait until the following week to pick ‘em up. But I make the very real risk that the book will be sold out and, because of the archaic and restrictive reordering process Diamond enforces on the industry, not to mention the frequently-poor reprint policies of the Big Two at one time or another, I might never see that issue.

In the end I shrug and say “Well, it’s just a funnybook.” But I do realize there’s a large number of fans who are upset about it. Not all fans are like this, but they are the obvious, vocal ones.

And the story and characterization, not the lateness or the schedule-shuffling, is what has made Civil War #4 my final issue that I’ll buy in this series.

PS: This is no defense against fan and customer bad behavior, but I’ve worked in the publishing world long enough to know there are poor sports in all aspects of fandom, including signings for mainstream books. And don’t even get me started on sports fandom. The exact analogies of weekly books don’t apply in these two cases, but the sense of entitlement and anger over being “owed” something is startling similar.

My personal view is that Marvel does owe the comic book retailers monthly books that are mostly on schedule, however.

My problem with this article also is that it’s too all over the place. You say Diamond hurts local shops with its policies. You say immediate-gratification fans hurt local comics shops by wanting their product when they expect it, making them like selfish drug addicts. You say only comic fans and druggies hate late product. But then you say all comics should be graphic novels. This is where you contradict yourself in my opinion. If all monthly pamphlets were cut out like you advocate, it would cut out a major competitive angle for local shops and end up hurting them even more. It’s only because I’m already in the comic store to get monthly issues that I just say screw it and buy my trades there as well, to save an extra trip to the bookstore. If I wasn’t there already for monthlies, I wouldn’t go to comic shops just to buy trades, I’d stick strictly to Borders and get a deal using their regular coupons or use Strand, Half.com, Buy.com or Amazon’s across the board discounts.

So you start by chastising fans by saying their narrow obsession with timely monthlies hurts your friend Howard’s comic shop, then go into your own narrow obsession with graphic novels, which would also hurt your friend Howard.

Someone may counter this argument by saying comic stores will still thrive in a trade-only market because people may not find the trade they want in the first bookstore they go to or may not want to wait for the book to arrive via mail. But aren’t these impatient immediate gratification types the same “junkie” type that’s supposedly so bad in the first place?

If you want the hardcore fan and the monthly comic gone, there prepare for the local comics shop to disappear along with them. If on the other hand you want the local comics shop to thrive, you’re going to have to tolerate the oddities and idiosyncracies of hardcore fandom in some form. But to expect the hardcore fan to cease existing AND your friend Howard’s business to somehow improve? That’s just not realistic.

I’m increasingly hitting the point at which I don’t want comics shops to stay in business. And that’s hard for me to say, because I’ve enjoyed comics stores most of my life and been friends with a number of people who work at them, too. But the Direct Market apparatus, fed by an audience of hardcore fans and run by shortsighted publishers and monopolistic distributors, is simply a bad thing. And unfortunately, taking it apart probably cannot happen without killing the LCS everywhere other than major metro areas.

Is there any other form of entertainment product, excepting perhaps pornography in some locals, that can only be bought at specialty stores? Is there any other entertainment product with a monopolistic distributor who can, in effect, cancel launches by supposedly independent producers simply by refusing to distribute them?*

At any rate, I rather suspect that my mini-rant here is moot. The LCS is already dying. My LCS, for instance, has been running massive inventory burn-off sales to break even on cash flow thanks to the Civil War delays.** And most of the LCSes I’ve visted in my lifetime have wound up making this move, converting the back issues to either cashflow for new comics (which generate more back issues when an event or a “hot book” fizzles unexpectedly) or TPBs (which are typically cheaper to buy and more often in stock via chain bookstores and online retailers). And in the end, they’re much more a distribution point for brand-new single-issue format comics than they are anything else. In short, most LCSes I have visited are a few Diamond screw-ups or a few fizzled crossovers away from bankruptcy.

The one exception is an indy-oriented store that has a limited new comics display and sinks most of its inventory into bookshelf and TPB editions, with privileged display space given over to non-superhero stuff. It’s much closer to a specialized local bookstore than an LCS, and it gets that sort of clientele. I’ve no idea what their financial situation is like, but either from professionalism or lack of worries I’ve never heard their managers or staff openly worrying about the future. I present this not as a possible direction for comics retailers, but simply for the sake of demonstrating that I’ve encountered exceptions to my stereotype of the LCS.

Comics aren’t going back to the newsstands, by the way. Even at three and four dollars a pop, single issues don’t manage the same “price point” as magazines, their chief competitors for space on the racks at most sales outlets.

And that’s part of why, as historical data shows, sales for single-issue-format comics have, excepting the ultimately destructive speculator boom of the 1990s, quite literally dropped since the medium’s peak in the mid-to-late 1940s and early 1950s. It’s old hat to say that a 2000s comic sells at what would have been cancellation levels in the 1980s. It’s less known that the best-selling comics of the 1960s and 1970s were selling well below the levels of the top sales draws of the 1940s and pre-moral panic 1950s. The industry does see spikes and lulls — but the spikes do not generally match, let alone exceed, the spikes of the decade prior.

Check it out if you don’t believe me. The second part furthers my point. Why would any retailer who isn’t a specialist look at that half-century-long trend and throw capital investment at single-issue comics? Why, when magazines are mor eproftable, offer better distribution deals, and have a comparatively slower circulation decline, not to mention a better public profile. Comic-book movies may be cool, but comic books still aren’t.

We can at least partially — maybe wholly — blame the moral panic for the decline, and for stunting the potential maturation of American comics. What we can’t do, however, is undo the marginalization and genre ossification of floppy-style comics that has gone on apace for 50 years by clinging to a retail model and a genre model built around the LCS.

The future really is in the bookstores, and the longer we hold onto our LCSes, the longer we will continue to harm comics. Oscar Wilde once said that each man kills the thing he loves. He also said, at the end, that he was dying as he had lived: beyond his means. The thing he loved and killed was Oscar Wilde, and he killed it by clinging too hard to the comfortable persona he had crafted for himself, the genre of living called being Oscar Wilde . I’d rather not see comics die because we have clung too hard to a version of the medium and a means of obtaining its iterations that, while comfortable, are killing comforts.

Kill the LCS, for the good of comics. It will hurt, because many of us love it. But we’re already killing it now, and I’d rather not see comics go with it.

*Even NC-17 movies kicked from theaters by the MPAA can go to DVD distribution, and sometimes they turn up in indy theaters.

**The manager has told me that I’m literally the only one of his regular or semi-regular customers not buying Civil War, so perhaps this is an atypical shop. With 300,000 sales figures, though, I doubt it.

I think its incredibly telling how angry and defensive fans get when confronted by questions and statements about how niche the market really is. It becomes impossible to have a real discussion because suddenly everything is personal (”you’re not attacking the niche market, you’re attacking ME!” of course that might be a bad example, because I actually am attacking you, but Greg wasn’t).
I’ve noticed that many fans (and actually, many comics professionals as well) seem to have this strange conflict where they want comics to be respected and considered capital ‘A’ Art, but they also it to be completely catered to them and not have to give up any of the ridiculous crap that mainstream comics is full of, wether artisticly (continuity and boobs everywhere!) or financially (serialized fiction rather than OGNs, niche stores over bookstores, ridiculous prices). They want it both ways. That no one makes fun of them and everyone respects them for their hobby, but they don’t have to get rid of the “no girls allowed” sig