Dave's Fanboy Sermon

Marvel President Bill Jemas on the retailer reaction to the no-overprint policy and whether or not it is a success:
"It was sort of an IQ test for retailers - you can count the digits in their IQ based on their enthusiastic response to the no-overprint. The smart guys who like to make money are very happy with the increased overall consumer interest and with the just general increase in Marvel's quality that's really directly related to the additional dough that we have to spend on top creators. And then you have the other end of the spectrum, and they speak for themselves pretty constantly, so I`ll just leave it at that."

There is a lot of insider reporting within the comic industry which focuses on the declining state of the business. Most of it cautions that retailers should not relay any of the gloomy information to the fans, as it paints a dim picture of the comic industry and can only serve to run away readers. After all, everybody loves a winner and no one wants to remain in a hobby that has lost ground in recent years. I think that this stance doesn't give comic fans enough credit. As I've said before, comic fans are some of the most passionate, dedicated fans of any medium. They love the hobby. They can handle the truth. One truth that gets little argument is the horrible state of the once mighty Marvel Comics empire. Success killed Marvel Comics. It's fate was sealed the day that it went public and began answering to shareholders. A series of mind numbingly bad decisions derailed what had seemed to be an unstoppable juggernaut. Things change. Old leaders fall as new ones rise to replace them.

The comic industry has changed throughout the years. Once, Comic publishers set a print run of a particular issue based on their expectations of its sales potential. If they had a great deal of faith in the quality of a book, they would print a large number of copies. The books were sent to the newsstand and any that went unsold were returned to the publishers for credit. This meant that the comic companies had to print as many as 2-3 times as many copies as they were ultimately going to sell. This was obviously inefficient, but it is still to this day the way that the bulk of the magazine industry works. Some 20 years ago, the direct market for comic shops changed all this. The comic book business was floundering with too many returned copies, losing too much money to continue doing business the traditional way. The idea behind the Direct Market was simple: Shops ordered the amount of comics that they knew that they could sell at a higher discount than was offered to the newsstands, but with no option to return unsold copies. This shifted the bulk of the risk away from the comic companies and placed it on the retailers. Surprisingly enough, this system worked quite well for a time. Comic shops knew their little niche of the market intimately at a time when comic sales were fairly predictible. They had a pretty good idea exactly how many copies of X-Men they would sell. If fact, they not only knew how many copies they would sell off the racks, but shops knew to order a certain amount over what they would sell to stock as "back issues". Fans were guaranteed their favorite book would be there for them, publishers knew just how many copies to print, everyone was happy. Of course, this only worked for a little while.

Starting somewhere around the mid-90's, the comic market began to shrink. Drastically. It had ballooned to a bloated state due to junior investors who bought tons of comics, convinced that they would resell them later at astronomical profits. When this didn't happen, they left and found a new field to plunder (toys, beanie babies, etc.). Suddenly the comic industry awoke from its' heady period of booming success to find that it had lost readers. Kids no longer read comics (or anything else, for that matter). Their audience was getting older and smaller. Comics that were selling 300,000 copies at the start of the 90's were now selling less than 100,000 copies. Across the board, sales were down more than 70% from just a decade before. It was time for things to change.

At the beginning of the direct market, Marvel Comics was the cash cow that the remainder of the industry rested upon. They accounted for over half of all sales in the industry and led just about every creative trend. Its' relationship with comic retailers was good, if somewhat like a benevolent feudal lord and his serfs. Marvel was willing to take chances with new books. Retailers could order a new Marvel title in large quantities because they new that not only would customers try them, they knew that Marvel would stand behind the book until it found its' audience. As the years passed, this relationship grew more and more strained. As Marvel grew bigger, they began to view the direct market as a source to strip mine, regardless of the consequences. For example, in the early 90's, Marvel introduced W.A.M. (Wild Agents of Marvel), a fan club that retailers were supposed to promote to its customers. Marvel promised that this would be a fan club with would bring excitement to the shops and readers. Unfortunately, as Marvel was now a publicly owned company, its' stock prospectus clearly stated that the actual purpose of W.A.M. was to build a mailing list so that Marvel could begin direct marketing to comic fans and eliminate the comic shops entirely. Somehow, this didn't sit too well with the retailers who were supposed to be signing its' customers up. Comic shop owners may not have been the smartest bunch, but slicing their own business throats still set off their collective alarms.

Other mishaps followed, the most important being Marvel's attempt to become its' own exclusive distributor. It purchased a small, regional distributor named Heroes World and thrust it upon retailers as the sole national source of Marvel product. It was a disaster of Biblical proportions. Soon, Heroes World folded and Marvel declared bankruptcy. The once mighty giant began switching management on a weekly basis. They tried new ideas, but canceled them before they were given a chance to work. Some new titles were even canceled before the first issue hit the stands. Marvel had fallen and it couldn't seem to get up.

Recently, things had began to look promising for the battered behemoth. The X-Men movie was a surprising success (even though Marvel didn't reap the extra profits. They sold the rights to the X-men movie for a flat fee). Joe Quesada had become the new Editor-In-Chief of Marvel and promised a return to greatness. Quesada is one of the most enthusiastic guys in comics, and if anyone could pull it off, he might be the man. He showed that not only could he attract some of the top talent that Marvel had lacked in recent years, but he seemed unafraid to make some bold changes, even if it meant upsetting the status quo. Unfortunately, Joe Quesada only handles the editorial supreme post. Business decisions are still handled by the bean counters.

Make no mistake about my stance here. I have no problem with a company making a profit. I do not in the least feel that commerce has no place in art. Marvel has to be profitable to survive. They are a business. However, their business happens to be art and Marvel can't seem to find a balance that will allow the two to coexist. The most recent storm of controversy is over Marvel's decision to reduce the print runs on their books to meet initial orders only. Bill Jemas feels that this will cause books that are under ordered to quickly rise in value on the after market and restart the speculator frenzy that fueled the comic world a decade ago. Those who forget the past are sadly doomed to repeat it. Retailers have treated this announcement with all the enthusiasm of facing a root canal. Having been burned far too many times lately on unsold books that bombed with comic fans, or were canceled before they even arrived, shop owners have been forced to be more conservative in their initial orders. When a book proves to be a success with customers, shops would then reorder copies to meet demand. Marvel books will no longer be there for any reorder. Whatever shops order initially (usually around three months in advance of publication) is all they will get.

This affects the comic fan in a handful of ways. First, when you hear about a comic that has gotten really good, you had better hope that it is a DC or Image book. If it is a Marvel title, your local shop will not be able to reorder any copies for you. Jemas seems to think that buying issues at an inflated price on the secondary market will make comic collecting more fun for the fans. Second, if that series is good, but copies weren't available, you can just wait for the trade paperback collection, right? Well, most likely not. Marvel determines what to print in its trade collections based largely on initial sales. Which most likely means you're out of luck. Third, what message does this send to retailers and potential readers? The message that it sends to me (as a retailer and fan both, actually) is that Marvel doesn't have enough faith in its' own product to assume part of the risk on its books. So why don't retailers order plenty of Marvel books to begin with? Hindsight being 20/20 makes the hits easy to predict once they are on the stands, but three months before publication, it is often difficult to tell what will strike the publics fancy based on a paragraph in Previews.

The one thing that most of us do not want is a return to the speculator mentality that bloated the industry a decade ago. Buying comics based on their investment potential is hazardous beyond rationality. The idea of buying something at one price because you anticipate someone else will want to buy it at a higher price is simply a bad idea waiting to blow up in our collective faces. If Marvel has decided to abandon the business of making comics that people want to read for the business of making "collectibles", then Marvel is truly finished as a force in the industry. For us long time fans, this is sad to see. However, change is inevitable. Remembering the past and learning from it will be what helps our industry adapt, survive and even flourish. As for the rest, well, they speak for themselves pretty constantly, so I`ll just leave it at that.

Illustration by Gerald Kelley