Creating Comics, Part 1: Understanding the Market

I hate this question because it’s lazy and because it seeks to take advantage of my experience under the guise of a personal request. I hate this question because it ignores the fact that I have tons of ideas of my own sitting on the back burner, waiting for the right time and place to be developed. I hate this question because these people generally know nothing about crafting a story or working with artists and want me to do all the hard work for them. But more than anything, I hate this question because most of the people who ask it know nothing about the world of modern comics — they assume things are exactly the same as when they were kids.Growing up in the 1980s, I read a lot of comics, mainly because they were inexpensive and could be purchased just about anywhere. When my mom was shopping at the grocery store, I could be found at the comic book rack, reading through the most recent titles. When I walked home from school, I’d stop by the local drug store and browse through the comics every week. When my family was at the mall, I’d stop by B. Dalton or Waldenbooks and read comics while they shopped for clothes. I didn’t collect them, and I couldn’t afford to buy a lot of them; I just read them because they were interesting to me and because they were easy to find. I also enjoyed how imaginative they were. Most comic books didn’t take themselves too seriously during this time; most were simply vehicles for selling advertising designed to reach kids. If you look at books from that time, you can tell by looking at the ads who the target market was.

In the 1990s, things started to change, and a lot of people I knew who were interested in comic books began collecting them instead of simply reading them. At the time, it seemed like there were constantly stories in the news about people getting rich selling off old comics, and comic book readers everywhere wanted in. I remember when Image Comics launched and everyone bought multiple copies of books like Spawn and Youngblood because they thought that the comics would be worth something one day. I also remember when people went crazy over the new Spider-Man and X-Men series, when the media was buzzing with The Death of Superman and the ensuing Reign of the Supermen, and when Batman endured his Knightfall. I don’t remember these comics because they were incredible stories; I remember them because my friends bought every single one of them, bagged and boarded them, and filed them away in long white boxes in their closets, never to be read again.

This was the height of the speculative market that nearly killed the comic book industry; once people started to realize that their collections were worth far less than they’d paid for them, they quit buying comics. I don’t think the majority of these comic buyers were actually reading the comics they were buying, nor do I think that the comic book industry understood that their books began dropping in sales that it was not due to the low quality of their books as much as it was due to people giving up on the dream of becoming comic book collectors. The industry suffered from this trend, and by the late ’90s, you couldn’t find comic books anywhere short of comic book specialty stores, and they were much more expensive than they’d been in the past.

All of the things that had attracted me to comic books as a kid — availability, low price, imagination, being able to read them while I waited for my family to finish shopping — were no longer elements of the books themselves. Comic books were suddenly taking themselves very seriously, since the only people who were really reading them were the folks who loved the decade-spanning stories, the collectible crossovers and the related merchandise. What’s more, a lot of these people were no longer kids and actually had money to spend on this stuff now. The industry shifted accordingly, and comics were no longer primarily for kids; they were for the adults who had grown up reading them. They were also being created by the adults who had read them as kids who now wanted to see their favorite characters “grow up.”

Today, very little of what is sold in comic book stores is appropriate for anyone under the age of 13, and that reflects the market’s shift. Children no longer need what comic books have to offer; portable electronic devices such as the Nintendo DS, the Leapfrog and the Sony PSP have filled the need for entertainment, and books such as those in the Harry Potter and Series of Unfortunate Events series have filled the need for imaginative storytelling. There is nothing quite as comparable in price to what comics used to represent, but kids aren’t lacking for entertainment options with television, video game consoles, the Internet, and so forth. Kids don’t need comics, and the comic book industry is happy to lose them as its core audience because it would rather focus on selling to adults.

But therein lies the other problem — adults have even more entertainment options available than kids do, and many adults feel that they have “outgrown” comic books altogether. The adult audience for comic books has been dwindling over the last few years, and though the market has made some small gains, it’s still recovering from nearly dying off entirely a decade ago. In 2006, the comic book industry (excluding manga) was worth around $400 million in comic book store sales plus another $75-150 million due to bookstore and newsstand sales. Of that $400 million, $300 million was directly related to Top 300 comic books and Top 100 graphic novels. Marvel controlled 45% of the market, DC controlled 35%, mid-range publishers (such as Dark Horse, Image, VIZ, TOKYOPOP) controlled 10%, and hundreds of other publishers lumped together controlled 10%.

That means that the annual market for the hundreds of would-be publishers in the comic book industry is only worth $40 million. While that might sound like a lot, it’s actually a pretty small pie to divide up among so many parties. If 100 publishers carved it up evenly, each publisher would generate $400,000 in sales selling 133,000 copies of their $2.99 books. After Diamond’s cut (55%), printing costs (20%), and production costs (20%), each company could expect to make around 5% of their total revenue — $20,000 — in profits.

And the reality is that only a handful of the publishers in this category are seeing those kinds of returns. Most publishers are lucky to sell 3,000 copies of an issue in a given month, or 36,000 copies of a monthly series in a year. Those that do are often merely breaking even. Quite a few can’t even manage that, and lose their shirts in the process.

Are you a comic creator hopeful? Are you looking to create and publish your own comic book? Great! But before you throw your lot into the fray, please understand these five points about the modern comic book market.

1) Nobody is going to buy your superhero story. There are two companies doing the superhero thing right now, and they’re both doing it incredibly well. Only a handful of other heroes from other companies (like Spawn, The Savage Dragon, Hellboy and Invincible) have been successful. Thousands of others have been introduced — some by big name writers and artists, even! — and failed to gain any traction.

2) Nobody is going to buy a story they can’t understand. Comic books are brief, and they’re also expensive compared to other books. That means that they have to be especially entertaining in a way that only comic books can be, with great art, snappy writing and cool action sequences. If you’re going to try to tell a story with a lot of mystery in it, great. But don’t put together a whole issue of “WTF?” story elements that don’t make any sense, because nobody’s going to want to read the second issue.

3) Nobody is going to buy a book of inferior quality. Remember your target market here: guys, mainly 18-35, most of whom are long-time comic book readers. If your book isn’t up to the standards of quality set by your competitors, you might as well quit before you start.

When I say quality, I don’t just mean in the content, either; the lettering and design needs to be of a professional level, the paper stock needs to look and feel right, and the cover needs to grab the reader’s attention without being gratuitous. Your logo should look like someone with a degree in graphic arts spent some time on it. Your book should be the same size as other comic books on the shelf, both in dimension and in rough page length. And unless it’s a matter of obvious style, your book should be in color, and not cheap-looking black and white pencils that have been digitally inked.

4) Nobody is going to buy adult comics that resemble pornography. I was shocked during my first year as an editor at how many people there are out there who want to produce “adult” comics. There’s no market for that stuff in the United States, and certainly not in comic book stores; if people want porn, they can get it easily online for free. Plus, most reputable retailers won’t carry it because it violates their kid-friendly image. DC’s Vertigo already pushes the limits of how “adult” comics can be, and some retailers refuse to carry them. Don’t waste your time.

5) Nobody is going to buy your comic book just because you think it’s awesome. I’m always astounded at how comic book creators appear on the scene and do nothing to market their books aside from going on message boards and talking about how great and ground-breaking their book is. Not only does it smack of idiocy; it’s hardly ever true. It’s one thing to jump on a thread and offer to answer questions about your book when a website runs a preview on it. It’s quite another to attempt to hijack other peoples’ threads to try to force the conversation to be about yours. It’s even worse when you make yourself into a villain, as some creators have done, by also spouting political views and unwanted opinions!

If your comic is awesome, send it to reviewers and let them tell everyone how awesome it really is. Pay Diamond to send free preview issues to each retailer and let them tell customers how awesome it really is. Self-promotion is fine, in limited doses, but don’t be obnoxious about it, because people will respond by refusing to buy your book.

In closing, remember — publishing is a business, not a hobby. If you want to create a comic, figure out what your market needs before you start creating something you think it wants. In the case of comic books, you’d better start by creating titles like Y: The Last Man that are fresh and original instead of trying to recreate what you thought was cool 10 or 20 years ago.

Writing Scraps

by Sean J. Jordan