Crisis in the Direct Market: A Virtual Roundtable (4 of 5)

Part IV

Todd Allen, Shawna Kidman, William Proctor & Phillip Vaughan

PV

The situation now seems to be changing on a day to day basis in the US, much like the Covid-19 crisis itself. It is hard to keep up! This new report out today fans the flames a bit:  

We are getting very mixed messages here, and the whole situation, let's be honest is a bit of a shambles. What it does look like is that DC is ready to make the break from Diamond, in  the long term. This article on Bleeding Cool also casts shade on the DC deal.

Obviously DC Comics want to keep the market moving, but is this the right strategy? I still think that digital distribution can paper over (no pun intended!) some of the cracks in the short term, but the publisher's show no movement on this. There is no evidence that readers would shun print forever if they were to access comics digitally for a few (hopefully!) months. The industry is again holding itself back, and is trying to please everyone, except it seems the consumer, which is odd. Readers will lose interest in titles if they are not regularly updated, and it does seem like a case of shooting yourself in the foot. Ultimately, if done right, physical and digital comics can co-exist. But in times of crisis, does the comic book industry not need to look at every option to survive? The current system lacks innovation, and certainly seems to exist mostly as a nostalgia market. Where are the new readers? Where is the blow back from the massive success of the film and TV franchises. I have often said, this is a one way street, mining comics for the best IP, but putting nothing back financially. It's a dangerous precedent, and once the big properties have been used up, what is left? Maybe a ‘pruning’ of the market is necessary to pull focus? I have lost track of some books which have multiple versions or titles, such as X-Men and even Spider-Man. What is a new reader entry point here? Where do you start?

WP

I strongly believe the new reader angle is a myth. Superhero comics deal in esoterica (in the main). Targeting the fan demographic is a double-edged sword (which is what happened in the 1970s): on the one hand, you have your faithful and loyal customers as a base. Great!  But then that fannish drive works to deter new readers from picking up a book. I’ve been reading comics all my life, and I’ve read my fair share of DC/ Marvel titles too. So when I heard that Jonathan Hickman was moving onto the X-Men books, I dove in. I bought the jump-on series (two of them), House of X, and Dawn of X. And I hold my hands up and admit: I struggled to understand fully what was going on. Conversely, we have The Immortal Hulk by Al Ewing (which we mentioned earlier). Aside from a lead-in from Civil War II (which I didn’t follow entirely, but got the gist), it’s truly accessible. But the majority of the titles published by the big two demand a great deal—and as I said above, Douglas Wolk’s notion of the ‘super-reader’ is a case in point.  I agree with Phil that a market prune may not only be necessary, but a way to address the quality of product. Even readers that are die-in-the-wool fans complain about the glut, mainly because it hits their wallets and purses, but also because it just takes too much time and energy to keep up! So while The New 52 was a way to provide new readers with access points, most of which failed to do so in a clean way. They may have rebooted Superman, but they largely kept Batman’s continuity the same (albeit with the time frame contracted). It wasn’t long before DC started to prune the line, and release new number ones. It’s exhausting and mindless (or seems that way). So many titles languish below 30K. That’s not even breaking even in a lot of cases. It’s unsustainable. 

I don’t know the reasons why Dan Didio left DC, but he seemed to be the executive driver behind a lot of this (I could be wrong). However, with DC’s next regeneration in 2016, Rebirth, they decided to focus entirely on fans again, the new reader story being more of a myth, but one could certainly blame the books for that. Look what happened to Superman comics in 1986 when John Byrne was poached from Marvel and produced The Man of Steel! Sales soared to a million copies, spread across the Superman titles, and only started to lose momentum when Byrne departed in 1988. It is possible!

BREAKING NEWS.

Just received this in my email box

PV

Lots of interesting articles are appearing, almost hourly! This real-time discussion is very interesting. Saw this earlier.

Brian Hibbs is very vocal in all this, but understandably he has a bit of a bias in all this.

This feed has some very insightful updates: https://twitter.com/comichron

Earlier I saw a very interesting Twitter update from creator Erik Larsen

He argues:

His feed is fairly opinionated, and I don’t really agree with most of this, but it is interesting nonetheless. Some of this does remind me of my recent comic buying habits when we still had a physical store here in Dundee. I started to get way behind on reading the weekly releases from Marvel, DC, Image, IDW et al. The comics just piled up, some still unread years later. I decided that I would ‘wait for the trades’ in most instances. The benefits being, I could read the story arc in one go, I didn’t lose track of issues whereabouts (or storylines!), and the cost of a trade versus the weekly US comics (after conversion to GBP) was significantly lower (not sure what the price difference is in the US?). It no longer made sense to me to buy weekly releases, unless it was something really attention grabbing, or a first issue, or a book by one of my favorite creators. This cut my pull list down by a lot! The retailer still got my business, but just not on such a regular basis.

TA

It seems like we’re circling around a few of the same problems.

I probably should make an amendment to my description of the subscription situation in the US, in light of DC’s distribution effort being centered around how much of it is actually done.  Marvel does has subscriptions, but it’s not particularly emphasized… to the point they outsourced fulfillment to one of the larger comic shop chains that does retail.  That’s Midtown.  The other way people subscribe, and this is probably more common for single issue comics is by monthly mail order.

The difference between a monthly mail order and a “normal” subscription is that you fill out a form once a month for what comics you want… usually 2 or 3 months ahead of time (I experimented with one of those when I was in junior high or high school and the screwed up my orders too much.)  Some of them you can basically say “send me each issue of Batman.”  Some they want to to just fill out a form each month.  And of course, you never know when something’s going to ship late, etc., etc.

DCBS is probably the largest company that does this and has some of the deeper discounts.  Westfield Comics is another that comes to mind.  Midtown has a healthy business of mail order.  Mile High Comics, another one of the very largest shops, has one.  There are a lot of them out there. 

DCBS is definitely the most hated, and hate is the operative word if you look at retailer reactions to this, because they discount deeper than most.  Many comic retailers consider people opting for lower prices through mail order as an existential threat.  When the mail order services are able to operate normally (or close to it), but the shops are closed for walk-in traffic, it gets a little more serious.

Now, almost every store also has an in-store subscription.  Some people call it a pull list.  Some people call it a club.  But it’s usually a variation on “tell me what you want me to hold back for you and I’ll give you a discount.”  Typically, it’s a 10% discount, though it varies by store.  Mail order operations typically offer at least 35% (but postage will eat up some of that).  I used to get retailers bent out of shape when I’d say my hometown store would give me 20%-- before rounding off -- and everything had a bag… and I didn’t even need a pull list.  That’s above average.  Tim also sold his shop about six months ago, so he may be the calmest retailer in comics -- he doesn’t have to deal with this!

Now… the current problem with an in-store subscription is you now have to worry if your retailer is physically able to receive shipments (not everyone can) and if their cash flow is such that they can pay rent AND acquire new stock they may have to sit on for awhile.  And this is one of the real problems with new comics starting up before most of the country is out of quarantine.  Not everyone’s going to be able to acquire and hold those comics until they’re open.

So what percentage of the market has SOME form of subscription?  Probably somewhere in the 10-20% for “through the mail” subscription options.  I don’t think I’ve ever heard numbers for that.  In-store subscriptions?  I want to say it’s likely something like 30% industry-wide, but that’s going to vary a lot by stores.

On the topic of publishers selling directly to retailers, most of the ones who aren’t exclusive to Diamond do sell to retailers.  Marvel also tried to do that when they bought Heroes World and it was a full-on disaster.  Which is not to say it could never be done right, but DC and Marvel would need a larger scale setup than the independent publishers do.

With the question of how to factor in the aftermarket, I take that to mean the role of back issues in the comic shop world.  And to be completely honest, that topic is going to depend almost entirely on which retailer you’re talking to.  Most of the shops I’ve frequented as an adult haven’t really been back issue forward.  Some of them barely have them at all.

I hear two things about back issues from most of those shops.  First, the advent of the trade paperback collection has lowered the demand for back issues in the *individual* shop, sometimes to the point where the only thing you’re going to have much call for are “key issues.”  (First appearance, landmark storyline, etc.)

Second, having a proper back issue section takes a lot of floor space.  Shops in the cities are a lot less likely to have that kind of space.  You sometimes see larger back issue selections in rural settings.

So what seems to have happened is the back issue market has become a bit more of a specialty market.  It’s concentrated on larger stores, particularly ones with warehouse or storage space.  A lot of was done at conventions (beware the scope creep of a year of lost comic conventions).  A lot of it is done by mail order.  A lot of it is done by mail order.  Mile High Comics and Midtown comics are both well known for selling back issues off their websites and mail order catalog tradition goes back decades for this.

With new readers and accessibility, it’s not clear to me how much the publishers are looking for new readers.  Particularly Marvel.  What the general theme of business tends to be is along the lines of “We’ve got 100 readers.  We’re not going to get 150 readers.  Can we make those readers spend like 150 readers?”

Which, in practical terms, works something like “We’ve got 100 X-Men readers.  75 of them will buy two titles.  50 of them will buy 3 titles.  20 of them will buy 6 titles.  We better make 6 titles to fill the demand.”  That’s an oversimplification, but it’s a way to look at all the spinoff and crossover titles.  You’re extracting more cash from a static audience.  That, until you reach a certain level of saturation, another X-Men or Spider-Man or Batman title is going to sell more than starting a Dominic Fortune or Bulletman series (unless somebody can catch lightning in a bottle).

Would reducing the various lines of comics result in the surviving titles selling more?  Probably, if it was done right.  Would it result in more comics overall being sold?  Only if it brings in new blood or brings in lapsed fans who left in disgust over the diaspora of spinoff titles.  (Yes, comics publishers are a LOT more interested in courting old fans than making new ones.  Seems it’s easier.)

A reduced line could end up being more profitable for the retailers (fewer titles with larger sales = easier to manage your inventory), but less profitable for the publishers (fewer overall sales).  And that’s the sort of thing where you’re not likely to know which way it's going to break until its been released into the wild.

Also, if you want to go down that road, you’re wanting the publishers to have layoffs.  Less titles means a smaller staff and fewer freelancers.  Not all of which are going to be able to make enough money in indie comics.

The strange thing about the current system really is that it’s only ideal for particularly large stores whose overall sales numbers make it easier to absorb the risk with less popular titles or digital, where you don’t have inventory costs in the first place.  But changing it the way some people suggest could mean a downsizing.

We’re also in an era when nobody laughs at the notion that AT&T or Disney could decide it would be better ROI to license/outsource the comics.  Keep the IP.  Keep the merchandising.  Keep 3-5 licensing editors.  Take someone else’s money and a piece of the royalties.  Nobody knows how that would end up working, but it’s not a crazy notion, particularly when AT&T and Disney are having quarantine-related cash flow issues.

You ever notice how movies tend to drive more comics sales for self-contained works?  Watchmen sold like crazy when the movie was announced.  Hellboy and Sin City did well.  Batman did in the 80s, but not so much in the Nolan years.  Marvel and movies?  Let’s not go there.

The problem with the most obvious gateway to new readers isn’t just the overwhelming amount of continuity, it’s the new reader figuring out where to start.  “Hey, that Iron Man movie was cool.  I should get an Iron Man comic.  But… why are there 25 different Iron Man books and five of them say “volume 1?  Never mind.”  And it’s worse with X-Men.

Watchmen used to be just the one volume.  Hellboy and Sin City were clearly marked series of modest length.  A superhero?  You better hope the bookstore has somebody well versed in the character and what they’re carrying.  Comic stores DO win hands down for curation, but there aren’t nearly enough of them to properly capitalize on films and television.  (And we’ll ignore the question of how many shops a non-collector is afraid to enter.  Hey, it’s a lot  better than it was in the ‘80s.)

It sounds like most of the roundtable has moved over to reading collected editions (which is sure to make a few retailers angry with us).  There are a few more “benefits” to reading the tpbs.  Heidi MacDonald, my longtime editor at Publishers Weekly and The Beat, came up with the Satisfying Chunk theory.  Which is to say, a comic should have enough substance to it to please you.  Too many recent comics don’t really hold up as an individual unit.  They take 5 minutes to read and it’s not really what you’d call a complete chapter.

Write it off to the “decompressed storytelling” trend.  Blame it on people writing for the tpbs.  It just doesn’t always work and I wonder if everyone from editorial on down takes the individual comic seriously enough as a story unit.

That and you’re not waiting for the final late issue if you only read the collections.  Between decompression and the odd late issue, I’ve only read Warren Ellis in the tpbs since the aughts.  It just works out better for me.

So the big takeaway is that everyone loves Immortal Hulk?

Incidentally, while the debate over whether to have ANY digital rages on, it appears that DC met my proposal halfway:

https://www.comicsbeat.com/dc-expands-their-digital-first-program-with-reprints-from-dc-giants/

They’re releasing the original content from their Walmart 100 Page Giants as digital firsts.  Which is to say they’re going to have new Superman and Batman comics (and Mark Russell on Swamp Thing), but it’s not technically starting up new titles like I’d been thinking might be a good compromise.  On the other hand, most retailers don’t really pay much attention to the Walmart books and most of them don’t sell particularly well in the Direct Market, so perhaps its almost as good as interim material?  Certainly, it was material they already had in the can and could repurpose quickly.

WP

So, what do we think may be a potential balm for the industry going forward? Can it continue with the DM and Diamond, or does it need some surgery? 

PV

Possible Solutions: Severe surgery needed!

Not sure how feasible this is, but the use of the postal system much like our subscription model seems like it is working here in the U.K., but I imagine logistics are more complicated in the US. Could a print on demand option be added to digital purchases? This would mean that no surplus print runs and over stock would exist. Plenty of printers have kept running during the crisis, so this could work. These print editions could be deluxe editions, taking advantage of techniques and processes that can only be utilised in high end printing, such as special finishes and paper stock, making these editions more collectible.

For digital I think we need a more accessible and usable interface, and no barriers to payment (it is very convoluted to actually buy comics through the Comixology app due to them not wanting to give Apple their 30% cut!). The guided view in Comixology is not very popular among traditional comics readers. Madefire have made interesting innovations in this area, but the danger is that comics become ‘bad’ animation sequences or worse still sit in between comics and animation, a deadly hybrid that alienates both audiences. The ‘timeline’ and pacing of the comic read has to be in the control of the reader. Also, extra bells and whistles, such as sound effects and transitions can be distracting, and actually take you out of the story.

For all their critics, music providers such as iTunes/Apple Music and Spotify (with their subscription format) have cornered the market and they have managed to monetise it as well. New music audiences access music this way. There was plenty of resistance to this model from music artists at first but this seems to have settled down. Maybe print comics will become like vinyl records, and have a huge comeback as a collectible, but niche market. We need to look for the new mainstream if comics as a whole are to survive. Some kids don’t even realise their favourite Marvel film is based on a comic book!

Todd Allen is the author of Economics of Digital Comics. He covered the comic book industry for over a decade reporting for Publishers Weekly, Chicago Tribune, The Beat and Comic Book Resources.  As a contributing editor to The Beat, his work has been nominated for an Eisner and named to TIME’s Top 25 blogs of 2015.  He was admitted to the Mystery Writers of America for the Division and Rush webcomic.  He taught eBusiness in the Arts, Entertainment & Media Management department of Columbia College Chicago and has consulting on digital topics for organizations like American Medical Association, National PTA, McDonald’s, Sears, TransUnion and Navistar. 

Dr Shawna Kidman is an Assistant Professor of Communication at UC San Diego where she teaches courses in media studies. Her research on the media industries has been published in Velvet Light Trap, the International Journal of Learning and Media, and the International Journal of Communication. She is the author of Comic Books Incorporated (UC Press, 2019) a history of the U.S. comic book industry and its seventy year convergence with the film and television business.

Dr William Proctor is Principal Lecturer in Comics, Film & Transmedia at Bournemouth University, UK. He has published on an assortment of topics related to popular culture, and is the co-editor on Transmedia Earth: Global Convergence Cultures (with Dr Matthew Freeman, 2018 for Routledge), and the award-winning Disney’s Star Wars: Forces of Production, Promotion and Reception (with Dr Richard McCulloch, 2019 for University of Iowa Press). William is currently working a history of comic book and film reboots for Palgrave Macmillan titled: Reboot Culture: Comics, Film, Transmedia.

Phillip Vaughan is a Senior Lecturer and Programme Director of the MDes in Comics & Graphic Novels at the University of Dundee. He has worked on productions with the BBC, Sony, DC Comics, Warner Bros, EIDOS, Jim Henson and Bear Grylls. He also has credits on published work such as Braveheart, Farscape, Star Trek, Wallace and Gromit, Teletubbies, Tom & Jerry, Commando and Superman. He is the editor of the UniVerse line of comics publications and also the Art Director of Dundee Comics Creative Space and the Scottish Centre for Comics Studies.