[Comic Book Publishing] – 5 Ways Comic Books Can Cheat Death

In my previous article, “5 Reasons Comic Books Must Change or Die,” I offered several elements that are contributing to the death of the comic book industry. But today, I’m going to outline some ways that comics can change for the better… and cheat death to live on in the digital era.

But first, let’s take a moment to gain some perspective. According to CBGXtra.com, In May, 2008, 7.08 million copies of the top 300 comic books were sold, with the top ten accounting for 15% of the entire market. ICv2’s analysis says that both comic book and graphic novel sales are slowing down, and that the quarter overall has been weak. I should add that these numbers are not representative of what fans are buying; these are repesentative of what retailers are ordering. Many of the retailers I’ve spoken to claim to only sell around 50-60% of all of the books they order in the first month. That means that sales to readers are closer to the 3-4 million range.

There’s no question that these numbers are better than the numbers 10 years ago, when 6.99 million copies were sold in May, or the numbers from 5 years ago, when 5.63 million copies were sold in May. (Comparing actual dollar sales is not a fair analysis since books have gone up 33% in price over 10 years.) But that’s nowhere near the 11 million copies that sold in September, 1996, when Diamond first took over distribution to the direct market. And, for what it’s worth, 1996 was one of the years when the industry was in a sharp decline.

In other words, the comic book industry managed to turn itself around from extinction, but ultimately, the industry is stagnating. That means earnings will level off, investments will dry up, and retailers will go bust. The industry may have righted itself for the short term, but in the face of a declining economy, it may have simply delayed its demise.

Fortunately, there are ways that the comic book industry can plant new seeds for growth. But what I need to make clear here is that the current industry, with its overemphasis on superheroes and collectibles, may prove hostile and infertile to these new ideas. The next generation of comic book creators will need to look outside the established direct market, and they will likely have to carve out a new niche of their own. The next generation of comics may simply be a larger part of the publishing industry as a whole, fragmented into different genres and scattered around bookstores with their respective topics. And as digital options become more and more available, it’s quite likely that successful indy books will start out online, and not in print, in the near future.

But a lot of this will come at the expense of the next generation of creators separating themselves from the icons of the industry. So, with that said, let’s look at my own vision for changes the medium can use for growth over the next ten years:

1. Comic book creators should eliminate the periodical model and focus on longer, self-contained stories. As I’ve said many times on this site, the days of the serialized story are over. They’re simply not accessible to new readers, and they aren’t appealing to the mass market. But single, mini and maxi series stories, on the other hand, seem to have a much greater appeal to readers. One book that’s doing quite well this summer is the reprint of Batman: The Killing Joke. Originally, this was a 48-page one-shot story from the 1980s written by Alan Moore that helped redefine the darker side of the Joker. It’s obviously doing well this summer because of the tie-in to The Dark Knight, but it’s been a strong seller in general due to the fact that it’s a single, compelling, inexpensive way to read a great Batman story.

If comic book companies focused on releasing books every quarter instead of every month, they would have the time to produce the “prestige” editions of books that aren’t quite graphic novel length, but which are substantial enough to be assigned ISBNs and sold in bookstores. These books could have longer shelf lives, better content, and stronger stories since they wouldn’t be chained to the 22-page standard. They could be sold for more than a standard magazine-style book, and they’d be easier for a larger number of retailers to carry. And while some fans might be annoyed at first, the vast majority of readers would welcome the chance to read comics again… but without all the hassles of having to buy magazines that had to be bagged and boarded once they were read.

2. Comic book creators should tell stories that aren’t stuck in the comic book mold. Stories with superheroes, gunplay, and licensed characters from popular TV shows and video games make up the majority of comic books today. Of course, there are other books — Vertigo often puts out unusual titles with unique premises, Archie Comics continue to explore the adventures of the Riverdale teens, Gemstone republishes some of the Disney classics and Fantagraphics fills the need for more artsy endeavors. But those books make up a small percentage of the comics that are actually sold, and the low enthusiasm in the industry for new things discourages new creators from trying to break out of the current cliches into uncharted territory.

But the problem is that the current market doesn’t usually want these new books. In order to make them succeed, creators have to go out of their way to either produce a book that’s of an incredibly high quality, about an incredibly trendy topic, or designed to be incredibly media-friendly. Everything else gets left by the wayside, at least where the direct market is concerned. Manga titles appeared to be turning this around slightly when they helped to open up the bookstore market, but manga’s influence is waning, and graphic novel sales are reaching a point of maturity in the bookstores.

With that said, there are still plenty of opportunities to produce new styles of comic books. The problem is that the creators behind these books are going to have to work hard to find new audiences. I know that it’s possible to do, since I was behind the marketing effort to launch the Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter comic books, which were a huge hit despite the fact that they were geared at women and weren’t about superheroes. Granted, the license had some power to it, but what was most rewarding was hearing from retailers that our book was bringing in women who had never shopped in a comic book store before. The audience was out there; we just had to create a product they wanted to read. (Sadly, the book tanked in quality and in sales once the author realized that it was a hit and decided to be more hands-on; that’s the trouble with doing licensed books.)

Still, I am convinced that the comic book medium itself is powerful; the problem is the industry built up around it. As long as the public perceives comics to be mostly about superheroes, the medium will never be taken seriously by the mass market. The next generation of creators have a lot of work to do in that regard, and it’s going to be a tough thing to build a new industry if the old industry insists on clinging to its old ways (as I believe it will). Seeds will have to be planted, and then given time to grow before the public can truly take notice.

3. Comic books should be sold in places other than comic book stores and bookstores. I remember being very excited a few years ago when I saw a small rack of “Marvel Age” titles in the toy department at Target. “Finally,” I thought. “They’re getting a clue.” Sadly, when I was in the same toy department a few months ago, I didn’t see the comics. And that’s too bad, because it’s the perfect place to sell them.

When I was a kid, comic books were everywhere — the drug store, the grocery store, bookstores, toy stores, and even airport news stands. That’s because comics were sold and distributed like magazines. These days, they’re sold like books, movies, or video games, with street dates, pre-orders, and the occasional marketing campaign. In the old days, only about 30-50% of comics printed actually sold each month; the rest were returned or destroyed as the new batch came in. The money was made in the high margins. Today, most comics that are printed are sold to retailers on a non-returnable basis, which means less overall risk… and lower rewards as a result.

Comic book publishers and comic book retailers have a precarious relationship today — the retailers need the product in order to keep their doors open, and the publishers need the retailers to buy their product so that they can make more of it. But since most of a retailer’s dedicated customers are interested in buying Marvel and DC books, that’s all that most retailers can afford to carry. Most will pre-order books for customers, but many can’t afford to keep large amounts of backstock or fill orders for older titles. This means that publishers who aren’t Marvel or DC can really get the shaft; if they’re not able to maintain the support of comic book retailers, they won’t sell enough copies to break even, let alone make a profit.

Some publishers have suggested that getting back into the bookstore market with monthlies is the next logical step. And I agree. But it can’t stop there. Comic books need to find their way back into the mass market, and publishers need to be more creative about finding new distribution channels. This is difficult to do with today’s books, since so many are based around superheroes and licensed material. But if books were designed to appeal to wider audiences, they would probably be more mass-market friendly. To offer a wild hypothetical, a publisher could work on producing a spin-off comic that ties into a popular daytime soap, and then sell it on the grocery store stands. If the book included articles about the show, interviews with the cast, and a comic, it’d be a surefire success.

On a more realistic level, guidebooks to popular topics could be written in comic book form and sold on impulse racks. Comics function very well as instruction manuals, and they could be easily produced to walk people through household repairs, baking, or hobbies. And while this might sound like a novel idea, it’s not something I came up with on my own; the great Will Eisner was a big believer in making comics into something more than just stories, and he was a pioneer for comics as a mainstream medium.

In today’s society, where people don’t read often enough and aren’t ashamed to buy “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Sex” or “Wine for Dummies,” comics could be filling an important niche.

4. Comic books should not be restricted to having panels or hand-drawn artwork. When I was at the University of Illinois, I had the opportunity to take Dan Yezbick’s “Comic Books as Literature” class. In that class, we read a lot of comics, including one I never would have otherwise picked up: The Compleat Moonshadow. I wasn’t sure I liked the book at first; the tone was fairly pretentious, the story was weird, and the artwork had lots of wispy watercolors that gave the story a surreal quality. Looking back on it now, I realize what an amazing effort it was, especially in the days before Vertigo.

I lost my copy of this book in a fire in 2004, and I haven’t yet purchased a replacement (though I should). But what I remember about it was that the book didn’t always have clearly defined panels, and that towards the end of the book, there was a side story that completely abandoned the comic book trappings and read like a storybook instead. The fact that the creative team had the vision to create something outside the expectations of the audience was impressive to me, and the book had an extremely literary quality about it.

Another book I picked up, by chance, was called Veils. It was produced in 1998 and must have been very cutting edge for the time, since it featured digital artwork in some scenes and hand-drawn artwork in others. Both styles were used to tell two parallel stories, and I found the effort intriguing. I remember showing it to my girlfriend at the time and watching her eyes light up as she read through it; though she didn’t like comic books in general, she enjoyed this graphic novel immensely.

With the capabilities of today’s digital artists, comics could be a tremendously exciting medium, full of big ideas and interesting new styles. Sadly, they’re not, because so many artists are still trying to imitate the popular styles rather than innovate with new ideas. Those who do go “indy” are often paired up with writers, colorists and editors who are below par and who aren’t able to help the project succeed in its ultimate vision. It’s unfortunate, but that’s the way the comic book industry tends to work.

5. Comic books should not be restricted to being books. It’s amazing how far the Internet has come since I first began running a video game review website 10 years ago. Back in those days, streaming video, Shockwave applets, and animated buttons were something that only a major design firm could handle. Today, updating websites is automated, it’s easy to stream video and audio, and much of the mystery has been removed from Flash and Shockwave as developers design tools that make both programs easy for a novice to use.

Comic books could be using this new technology, and comic books should be using this new technology. But most publishers aren’t willing to make their products accessible online, and even when they are, they want to get paid a lot of money for giving customers eBook downloads that are, quite frankly, unreadable on a computer screen. A reader can either zoom out and appreciate the artwork, or zoom in and read a book one bubble at a time. Neither is as easy as just reading the darn book.

Scott McCloud tried to figure out how comics could evolve into the digital era in his book, Reinventing Comics. Sadly, Scott proved a better historian (with Understanding Comics) and guide (Making Comics) than he did a visionary. But he did realize that comics were going to have to change to become popular online, and he was right.

It wasn’t long after that a company got the idea to set comic books to DVD, displaying images onscreen with voice actors adding dramatic effect for the characters. The DVDs played out somewhat like poorly animated cartoons, and they were a really bad idea as a home entertainment option. But the same idea could easily be applied to a flash movie (sans the voice acting), displaying the comic panel by panel and including some neat animation effects to make the stories visually interesting. The stories could be played automatically, and pages could be flipped with a DVD-style menu in the bottom corner of the movie. And easter eggs could even be hidden in the background for those with sharp eyes and itchy mouse fingers.

“But how do you make money doing this?” someone might ask. It’s a fair question, because the only plans that have worked thus far have been subscription services, ad-supported services, and merchandise-based models. Clearly, these flash movies would cost quite a bit of money to produce (~$5,000-15,000 per video, if it’s the length of a standard comic book), and it’s doubtful that people would pay to watch them. They might be better used as a promotion vehicle to encourage book sales than as a product themselves.

It is interesting, however, that several web-based comic strips have been able to build large communities and generate revenues solely based on having a dedicated fanbase. That means that there’s probably a similar market for indy comic books on the web; some creator just needs to figure out how to do it and blaze a trail for the rest of us.

Make no mistake, though — using the web to distribute comics is the wave of the future, and companies like Marvel and DC that are slow to respond are going to find themselves in trouble when the paradigm shifts. It’s just the “how” that needs to be worked out.

In closing, I’d like to remind those of you who have made it through this article that the status quo exists only because people allow it to. The comic book industry may never change, but it doesn’t have to. Comic books and daily newspaper comic strips can exist in separate industries and still have a medium in common; the same can be true of the next generation of comic books and the established generation of the “direct market.” The only thing that holds new creators back is the sense that they are alone in what they want to achieve. But hopefully, after reading this article, they’ll realize that they’re not.

Writing Scraps

by Sean J. Jordan