Comic Book Resources

Yeah, that sucks. Over the past year-and-a-half or so more than half the new DC product I really liked was from the Minx line.

Which, I guess, means that DC was completely failing to reach it’s target audience, since I’m an old guy.

I just read Janes in Love this morning and already started wandering what a third book might offer. Oops.

Perhaps it’s all my fault because I didn’t buy the Brian Wood/Ryan Kelly entry into the line.

I, too, enjoyed most of Minx’s offerings. I, too, am not their target audience at the ripe old age of 35.

Yeah, I’m a mid-20s male, and while it sounded interesting, I didn’t bother picking up any of them, because it felt strange, given who their target audience was supposed to be.

Ah well, looks like it makes no difference, given that bookstore distribution appeared to be the big problem. You’d think they’d ensure that that crucial piece was already in place before launching the line to such fanfare, but apparently common sense is another casualty to comic publishing practices.

It sounded interesting, and I read a lot of the shojo manga that is up the same alley but I hadn’t really heard anything about the line since it was announced it was being created. Maybe I don’t read/view the right media to hear about it (being a 26 year old male), although I suspect not.

Astounding that bookstore placement is such a factor; doesn’t everyone buy everything except toothpaste over the Internet these days?

Not Manga. Look at the Amazon sales rankings for Graphic Novels.

I couldn’t quite call the news “stunning”. It was a brave thing to try and always had a good chance of failure.

It is sad though. I enjoyed the two I’ve read and still plan on reading more. BTW I’m a 36 year old man so again not the target audience - but I don’t imagine the target audience are on this board…

When you market it to ‘ Teenage Girls’ call it Minx, expect MOST (Male) of the Marketshare to stay away.

Really liked PLAIN Janes, Water Baby not as much, and I am going to buy the Janes sequel. Maybe DC should have advertised to their target audience more? I don’t know.

I bought Plain Janes and New York Four.

I was going to pick up the one by Derek Kirk Kim, but decided the line was actually too girly for me.
Still I admired the line.

I don’t know if I ever saw the line outside of comic book stores (at least in Australia)
Maybe that’s where it went wrong?

It’s interesting that the article takes great pains to point out that DC and Shelly Bond are NOT to blame for the failure. It really puts the onus on the bookstores for not stocking them. That may or may not have been the case, but I would like to have seen a rebuttal quote from a B&N or Borders rep explaining their reasons why they didn’t get behind the books…

I’m not a B&N rep, but I can speculate from the retailer’s end what the problem was. First and foremost, nobody was picking the books up. I didn’t sell a single copy of any of last fall’s titles (I stocked at least everything up through “Good as Lily”. I didn’t even pick up a copy of any of the books off a table or something indicating that anybody was browsing them. There just wasn’t a clamor for them.

Reading the article, they mention specifically that DC was trying to get the books placed into the young adult sections. I’m reading that and I’m thinking they wanted the books on the shelves next to prose titles rather than next to the rest of the shojo manga, and the retailers balked. If that’s true, and DC wanted Minx on the shelves next to, say, the 4205 Gossip Girl knockoffs and vampire romances that are out there, then it becomes critical that Minx have an aggressive expansion plan and branding to make sure that they claimed a good foot or two of shelf space right away. Four titles in four months through the holiday season last year doesn’t give a dominant shelf presence.

Or they could have embraced the placement in the manga section - if I recall, i think the Minx titles were a little taller than standard - but once again, you had four non-serialized titles spread apart across an eight to twelve foot spread of manga properties. Even if you did hook someone on “Minx”, it wasn’t obvious that there were other titles in the product line or that there were more volumes coming for each sequence.

Overall, Marvel’s digest-sized line (including Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane) was better packaged and had a better chance of success. On the other hand, I don’t think I carry those, much, either.

That’s actually a pretty good analysis, Goinalon. If that is the case, then the blame does fall squarely on DC (bot not necesarily Bond herself) for trying to market and brand the books in a way that wasn’t going to give them the right kind of foothold on their potential market (i.e. teen and young girls)

Well I think there is some question of who the market is was. To me, the most likely market would be shojo manga people, but I am not sure if average shojo sales would be considered a success here either. For us number of guys who read/might of read these due to our liking of shojo and related placement in young adult would mean we didn’t if see them .

@R. J. Sterling
Not me - I hate the built-in waiting period for mail order. If it’s a book, I probably want to read it right now - most of my book purchases come from finishing my current book and just hopping out to get a new one - usually at the first B&N or Borders I come across. I’ve yet to see a new DVD release on Amazon that wasn’t available at the same price or BETTER locally on release, and tax is cheaper than shipping unless you qualify for super-saver.

I won’t buy computer parts online either (it helps that we have a B&M store nearby that will price-match NewEgg and Tiger Direct). I’ve seen my friends deal with enough RMAs from NewEgg that I never want to go through that myself… I have a friend on his second CPU RMA right now - maybe the third one’s a charm.

it always comes down to marketing

Can’t be anything but marketing, because a ton of people would have bought this if they, you know, knew about it. They had some good titles out.

I liked the line - but I’m a 35 year old male who bought them at my LCS. I do shop for trades and manga at my local Borders from time to time, and I always thought it strange that Minx titles were in their “Graphic Novels” section - usually shelved with Vertigo and other non-licensed Indy books - and not with the manga. Always seemed like a big mistake to me: the manga aisle usually has two or three young women browsing or sitting in it reading, while the “Graphic Novels” section is usually me and one other Gen X white dude.

Despite having some great work to it, I think that naming a young women’s comic book line ” Minx ” might have doomed it from the start; it’s the kind of term that could only be envisioned by a group of middle-aged white guys in a boardroom ( in other words, not the target audience ).

I’ve seen them shelved just as s1Rude described at Borders. I don’t think the average teen girl is checking out 100 Bullets and Hellblazer, which is what these things were racked with.

Barnes & Noble does carry the Marvel digests in the YA area, and I’m mystified as to why a book program handled by Random House couldn’t get shelf space for Mink right along side Runaways in that section.