Crisis in the Direct Market: A Virtual Roundtable (2 of 5)

Todd Allen, Shawna Kidman, William Proctor & Phillip Vaughan

SK

What strikes me most about Todd's description is how familiar so many of these problems are. A glut of titles, many with very low sales, limited shelf space, the big publishers sacrificing long term strategy to maintain short term market share, and the intransigence and rigidity of an industry ruled by a duopoly in production and a monopoly in distribution. These are decades-old struggles within comic book publishing, compounded by the big problem you note, the one that only gets worse over time: how small the community is.  And of course, you see all of this reflected in the content, as Billy explains here so well--the creative output over the last decade shows all the cracks underlying the business side.

Even so, I don't think comic books are about to disappear. The fact that publishing at DC and Marvel have yielded unimpressive returns since the 1970s, and have held on nonetheless, suggests that the value of this business to media conglomerates is in fact as R&D, as opposed to the bottom line. Right now, that's a good thing for the big guys--it means they may be allowed to operate at a loss this next year. Independent comic shops won't have the same flexibility unfortunately. But the fact that graphic novel sales at Scholastic book fares were booming (before Covid-19), and that indie comics continue to be a vibrant and influential source of creativity in contemporary culture suggests that innovation on the fringes of this medium, both in content and business strategy, remains possible.

Also, people are not going to stop writing or reading comic books any time soon. Media forms of any kind rarely perish (video did not in fact kill the radio star). That said, I think there is a possibility that the business model could drastically change, that consumer and buying practices could transform, that big companies or even whole sectors of the industry could die off. All of these things have in fact happened simultaneously before, in the 1950s and again in the 1970s. And only the first time did a "crisis" precipitate the transformation (although, as I've argued, the 1954 crisis was more flash than substance, and really only facilitated changes that were likely coming anyway). With an actual crisis this time around, we're in somewhat new territory.

TA

This time could be a little different in terms of format.  I have no doubts that book and digital formats are sticking around.  How prominent the single issue remains may depend on how the Direct Market retailers fare during the quarantine(s).  Archie is the only publisher with what I’d consider a real newsstand channel left.  You see very few single issues at bookstores anymore.

At a certain point, you could reach a threshold through a combination of closed retail outlets and readers shifting formats during quarantine(s) that the printed single issue doesn’t make sense any more.  Or perhaps the number of retail outlets shrinks so that fewer print single issues make sense and the smaller stuff goes to digital-first and then a collected edition in print.  The digital first to print has been done a bit over the last few years for titles that weren’t finding their place in the DM.

Now, the numbers being thrown around from when Diamond’s Marvel orders for all their accounts leaked, it sure looks like if the _bottom_ 20% of the market went under, that might not even register as a speed bump.  There are a lot of tiny accounts out there.  If the mid-list of Diamond accounts takes a hit or the indie friendly stores take a hit, things could get serious in a hurry.

It really all depends how the retail sector can weather the storm and it’s far too early to know.  For that matter, we probably need to get past the fall and potential second wave of COVID-19 before we can be sure of anything.  Right now, we aren’t even sure how long the coasts will be under quarantine or how many customers will be allowed in a store when reopening is possible.

WP

Here’s a few comments from readers, which indicate that they’re not a homogenous audience, but have different thoughts and criticisms. Might be worth responding to what they’re saying (and I know this isn’t methodologically rigorous in academic terms, but it would be productive to include readers to some degree. I’ve not included names. As a discourse, I find it fascinating (maybe that’s just me). Readers are clearly tuned into the situation, although they bring different perspectives.

TA

Well, one could go cynical and point out that the fellow rattled off 17 comics he thought were well done… out of ~400 new releases each month and comment on the batting average there.  And that’s what your local retailer was complaining about with too many titles and not enough quality.  And I’d agree that Immortal Hulk is one of the best things out there.  More amazingly, Immortal Hulk is one of Marvel’s best selling ongoing titles.  Some of it grew out of speculator activity, but anytime a legitimately excellent title sells well, that’s a victory for the industry.

Now here’s an interesting phrase that’s a bit reductionist, but cuts to the heart of the matter:

I think it’s more than fair to say YA graphic novels have never been healthier and more profitable.  Raina Telgemeier and Dav Pilkey are more popular than anything the Direct Market is putting out and they’re primarily sold in bookstores and school book fairs. 

The Scholastic Book Fair is probably something no one has heard about outside of the U.S.  It comes in a couple flavors. Scholastic is a publisher that sells books in schools, and not just their own titles.  If it’s a larger school, they’ll show up in the gym and have the books right there.  When I was a kid, and I’d assume this still applies to smaller schools, my grade school had something like 25 kids per grade, so we’d get something like an 4-8 page catalog and the books would get shipped to the school.

Scholastic moves huge numbers and they’re invisible to everywhere book sales are tracked.  It’s not on the Diamond charts.  It’s not on Bookscan’s charts.  I’ve been told a popular book on the Scholastic circuit can easily move over 100,000 copies.  And they do comics.  Raina and Dav are a couple of the most popular creators, but Marvel had a run of popularity there with things like Ms. Marvel and Squirrel Girl.  Things that weren’t exactly setting the Direct Market on fire, but did well in other markets.

It’s also worth noting I’ve heard many retailers complain that they have trouble ordering these mainstream-published YA graphic novels through Diamond and some aren’t even listed.  A sizable number of retailers, if not most, who do a strong business in YA graphic novels order them through bookstore distributors, so those numbers may well be invisible to most of the published sales trackers, as well.

The reason that reader quote is reductionist is that the Direct Market is so thoroughly intertwined with the “Superhero Industrial Complex.” (A term I’ve heard a few times over the last couple years.)  Let me try to tease out the ways how this functionally works.  Unfortunately, it’s got convoluted over the years.

So the first thing we need to put out there is that for the majority of Direct Market comic shops, DC and Marvel pay the bills.  The number of shops that heavily stock independent comics traditionally was around 250.  I suspect it’s krept up a little higher in the last few years as more shops have tried to diversify, so let’s call it 250-350 shops.  The number of Diamond accounts is a bit over 2500 (though that includes some mail order operations, stores that really are convention booths and likely a few fans banded together to form buying clubs have snuck in), but let’s use that as a round number.  It’s hard for an independent comic to sell over 10,000 copies of an issue these days.  That’s averaging 4 copies per store if they were selling evenly across the market.  That’s not the case, but it’s a good illustration about indie comics are going to be pre-order only at most stores. 

That’s how heavily the Direct Market is the DC and Marvel show.  If DC or Marvel take another sales dip, stores are going to close.  Full stop and irregardless of the current COVID-19 situation.  Two questions arise: are any of those golden 250-350 indy friendly shops going to take enough of a hit to close and can some of those sales be transferred over to the bookstores or digital.

Here’s one of the odd things about comics: the common wisdom, and I want to say one of the publishers might have done a study on this at some point, is that when a comic shop closes, a big chunk of the readers just drop out of comics.  Either they’re in an area where there’s not another shop they can get to easily or they can’t find another one they like.  The readers switching venues in the DM is not a given and for indies, the odds are smaller of finding a comparable replacement store unless they’re fortunate to live in the right city.

Unfortunately, the way we usually see the Bookscan data on graphic novel sales is the annual Brian Hibbs column and that column has been delayed as he’s been dealing with mail order while his store is closed due to the shelter in place orders.  I haven’t gotten a good look at the 2019 Bookscan numbers, but my impression from the snippets I’ve seen is that 2019 wasn’t great year for DM centric comics in the bookstore market, unless they were having outsized sales in the independent bookstores that bookscan doesn’t track.

The trend has been that even indie DM comics have their book editions sell better in the DM than in the bookstore markets.  If you give a retailer the opportunity to comment on something like Saga breaking through in the bookstore market, odds are the retailer will tell you that such a breakout hit was only possible because of the word of mouth being spread about because of the single issues.  That’s practically a political talking point with retailers.  It’s also a hypothesis.  I don’t think we’ve seen this tested with DM material and there’s an open question whether independent publishers have the marketing resources to completely launch original graphic novels in the bookstore market without buzz from the single issues.  Maybe they do and maybe they don’t.

If the Superhero Industrial Complex burned down and those indie friendly shops stuck around?  Sure, there would be a minor sales decrease for the indie publishers, but it could well be business as usual.  I’m just not sure that you can completely separate the DM from capes.  It would be a healthier market if you could.

Why is the Superhero Industrial Complex in turmoil?  Let’s look past the cash grab motives for this and look at the editorial content: too much of the material is inaccessible.  Much of the superhero output is “the story of the universe,” not “the story of this character in this title.”  Too much time is spent setting up crossover “Events” and then a block of stories will have to tie into that Event.  It frequently screws up the flow of the title and Events popping up are frequently terrible for reading the book collections of a title.  As graphic novel sales climb and expose a wider market, the superhero world makes it harder to enjoy that format.  As an Englishman I know is wont to say in situations like this, “Skill!”

Not all titles are like that.  Immortal Hulk is blissfully off in its own corner of the Marvel universe.  It’s largely self-contained… so far.

I’ve long had the theory that the superhero editorial suites need to read less epic fantasy novels and more detective novels.

What are the big names in epic fantasy?  Lord of the Rings. Wheel of Time.  A Song of Ice and Fire. Long stories over several books, where if you pick it up in the middle, you’re going to be lost.

Pick up a Nero Wolfe novel and it really doesn’t matter where in the series you are, with a notable exception or two you can just read it.  With most detective series, there may be some character arcs you’ll better appreciate reading it in order, but you can read a random novel in the series just fine.  Oh sure, there will be the odd trilogy, but continuity isn’t as much of a requirement.

I found humor when DC started up the Black Label imprint.  Why, because DC (I think this was Dan DiDio talking) was talking about how so many of their evergreen titles were out of continuity.  Highlights from old volumes they transferred over to Black Label when it launched: The Dark Knight, All-Star Superman, Watchmen, The Killing Joke, Kingdom Come, The Long Halloween, New Frontier.

Were these popular because they were out of continuity or were they popular because they were self-contained books that you could sit down without needing to have read the preceding 12 issues to understand?

Don’t get me wrong, there’s a place for longer stories.  A place for an epic saga.  But if all you do is multi-volume sagas for decades old characters, it can get really tricky for a casual reader to just pick something up and I think that’s working against DC and Marvel when they get away from the collector market.

Incidentally, the rumor is picking up steam that Diamond is going to be resuming shipments in mid-May.  I’ve been hearing this for a couple weeks and there seems to be at least one publisher saying that’s the plan.  There are so many questions about this:

●     How many publishers are shipping while not all the stores are open

●     Are publishers going to be able to print consistently, vis-a-vis printers being open and staying open - i.e. Will the flow of new issues start and stop?

●     Will there be another quarantine mandated pause in the Fall?

The can of worms that is unequal distribution based on quarantine status looks like it's about to be opened and we’ll be finding out what the effects are in due time.

WP

Well, Watchmen has now been subsumed into DC continuity with Doomsday Clock, right? And titles like The Dark Knight Returns may be ‘out-of-continuity’ from one perspective, but it’s included in Grant Morrison’s map in Multiversity, albeit on an alternative world. I think that there’s some editorial disingenuity with these ‘canonical’ vs ‘apocryphal’ stories. post-Crisis, DC claimed that the multiverse was dead and buried, but that wasn’t strictly true. Marv Wolfma complained that his original plan was for the whole DC universe to reset and reboot with all-new #1 issues in the wake of the Crisis across the entire line, but that didn’t happen. It was ultimately Dick Giordano who rejected Wolfman’s proposal, and so what happened next is that the DCU was left even more complex and convoluted than before. Only Superman and Wonder Woman were rebooted fully, and even then, at different times (after Crisis). Batman may have had Millers’ Year One, but in the main line of books, the character ‘remembered’ the Pre-Crisis continuity, so the idea that Crisis would streamline and simplify matters is simply a myth.  So trying to appeal to new readers has always been an Achilles Heel for DC (and by extension, Marvel), often due to editorial chaos. ‘The New 52’ was the same: Batman didn’t reboot but had his continuity contracted in temporal terms. Green Lantern neither. Superman was rebooted again with Grant Morrison’s Action Comics, but again, that pesky pre-Flashpoint continuity kept causing trouble (especially for new readers, if they existed at all outside of older readers jumping back on-board). So, Wolfman’s idea that Crisis would address the rampant chaos inaugurated by the multiverse—in the Silver Age story “The Flash of Two Worlds”—did not in fact prevent DC from experimenting with out-of-continuity tales (or ‘imaginary stories,’ if we go back into the ‘60s). Many of the Elseworlds stories are in continuity right now (again, on alternative Earths). In many readers’ minds, DC has screwed the pooch with a lack of editorial control. I’ve heard it said that DC’s character population refuses to be contained, but that’s surely madness! They’re not living beings, but fictional creations that exist in continuity (or outside of it) by editorial fiat (or as the case may be, editorial malfeasance). Perhaps that’s purposeful. Maybe—and I’m speculating widely here— having an imaginary world that is wracked with continuity issues gives them the rationale for reboots, retcons, relaunches and general continuity patches, as with what happened in the 1980s with the Legion of Superheroes. Byrne’s The Man of Steel showed that Superman emerged as an adult, thus Superboy didn’t exist in continuity, but as the character was formative for the Legion, they had to provide a continuity patch with the Time Trapper story where the Legion were said to exist in a “pocket universe” (I thought the multiverse was dead?!). The Killing Joke has been in-continuity for some time, although its status shifts every now and then. Currently, Barbara Gordon/ Batgirl still remembers being assaulted by the Joker, and the events in the story. From a reader’s perspective, or what Douglas Wolk refers to as the ‘super-readers’—fans for whom continuity knowledge forms the backbone of their engagement and pleasure—it’s not too tough to see where they’re coming from when they argue that the DCU is a mess, and always has been. Sure, Marvel has issues too, but they’ve never rebooted before (although they do retcon and relaunch).

Incidentally, I also think The Immortal Hulk is one of the best books out there right now (although I only buy the trades because of the reasons I spoke of earlier).

I think the fact that Raina Telgemeier and others sell more than anything the Direct Market puts out is interesting. Henry Jenkins discusses this in his new book, Comics and Stuff, wherein he identifies different patterns between Diamond sales and the New York Times. Jenkins states:

“Let’s consider, for example, which comics were selling best in September 2015. According to Diamond, the comics distributor that supplies US specialty shops, ninety-two of the top-one-hundred- selling comics were superhero titles, with most of the other top-selling comics linked to media franchises (Star Wars, The Walking Dead, and Fight Club). Because so many of the top-selling superheroes have already been brought to the big or small screen, many top titles are marketed around a release in another media. Ninety-one of the top one hundred sellers were published by either DC or Marvel, with Image’s Walking Dead the only title not by the two majors to break into the top twenty sellers. However, if we look at the graphic novels on the New York Times Best Sellers list (based on bookstore sales) over this same period, a different pattern emerges. Among the top ten sellers in paperback and hardback, only one is a superhero title (Batman: The Killing Joke, also the only work published by DC or Marvel) and only one title (The Walking Dead) overlaps with the Diamond list. Eleven out of the twenty titles were written by women; ve were written by Raina Telgemeier (Drama, Smile,Sisters, and two Baby-Sitters Club books). The overwhelming majority included some depiction of everyday life, including such perennial sellers as Fun Home,Maus, and Persepolis. Comics are a curious case where “mainstream” titles are increasingly niche and “alternative” titles are increasingly mainstream. In practice, there is a third, intermediate category—works purchased as “graphic novels” through the comic book shops. Superhero stories exist here beside other genres, including fantasy, space opera, and crime/noir. In September 2015, the top-selling titles in this group included Saga, Descender, Chrononauts, Mad Max: Fury Road, Fade Out, The Walking Dead, and Lady Killer” (2020, 7).

I think that’s quite an insight captured in a nutshell.

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.