The annual ComicsPRO meeting is going on down in Memphis with retail issues being discussed and several publisher presentations, and retailer/reporter Matt Price has been reporting his heart out from the show. ComicsPRO is an organization for some of the more forward looking comics retailers in the country, and the meeting is a chance for publishers to make presentations and new ideas to get a thorough kicking around. Among the news bites:
• Keynote speaker Robert Kirkman talked about the digital wave;
Kirkman said even though his titles “Invincible” and “The Walking Dead” are available online via the comiXology comics iPhone app, sales of the printed editions have not changed. In fact, he said, printed comics sales have increased. “We have this dedicated fan base,” Kirkman said, who will continue to seek out the print product. Digital comics, Kirkman said, will be best used to seek out the next generation of readers.
• President Joe Field offered his take on things:
“We’re not going to get lost because there is a new kind of comics medium on the way,” Field said. “No medium has ever completely replaced the one that went before it. ”
•Oct. 2 will be the next 24 Hour Comics Day
Undoubtedly, the story that will get the most play, however, is a speech by newly-installed DC co-publishers Dan DiDio and Jim lee which announces their plan for DC to be #1 in the direct market:
DC’s co-publishers Jim Lee and Dan DiDio led a discussion on a variety of topics at the ComicsPRO Annual Members Meeting. They were clear about DC’s goal: to become No. 1 in direct-market sales.
While discussing possible changes to DC’s return policies, DiDio said every DC policy would have to be looked at in light of the goal of moving DC into the No. 1 position.
“Our goal is to beat Marvel,” he said. “We have to see if there are tools we can use to make us No. 1.”
Marvel is not present at this year’s ComicsPRO members meeting.
Just what those tools might be will surely be part of the unfolding storyline over the next few weeks and months. But DC still has its work cut out for them — the more retailers complain about Marvel policies, the more Marvel books they order…and sell. Developing.
“No medium has ever completely replaced the one that went before it. ”
Sorry Joe, but that’s not true.
Movies replaced Vaudeville.
Sound movies replaced Silent Movies.
Television replaced Golden Age Radio.
Comic Books replaced Big Little Books.
You don’t see many minstrel shows these days.
Yeah Lee, you beat me to it! I’m not really sure how to read that line, but even if he’s talking about media instead of mediums, he’s wrong.
I’m pretty sure that LP’s completely replaced the cyclinders that preceded them too.
And who still buys VCR tapes?
Lee Hester:
“Sorry Joe, but that’s not true.”
Actually, it is.
Sound was incorporated into movies, but movies didn’t go away; Movies didn’t replace Vaudeville, Vaudeville was dying off anyway; Television became the home for comedies and drama, but it didn’t replace radio, because you’ll still hearing radio when you’re driving; Comics didn’t replace Big Little Books; There are still stage plays, but no one finds the minstrel act funny.
Field might have been trying to reassure people, but he was mistaken. Comic book pricing is already a serious issue, and if circulation were to drop, pricing of paper copies could be subjected to vicious cycles.
LPs still exist, but I believe they’re primarily bought by audiophiles who are willing to pay $3,000 for a receiver — make that $8,500 for an A/V receiver.
I wouldn’t bet money on $3.99 comics still being published five years from now.
SRS
Lee, my friend, read the quote again.
““No medium has ever completely replaced the one that went before it. ”
Movies may have seriously damaged stagecraft, but certainly didn’t end it. Sound movies and silent movies are both movies. Same medium.
Television may have meant the death of story-driven radio, but didn’t kill the medium. Chances are pretty good you own more radio receivers than you do TVs.
I don’t get your BLB-comics comparison.
And there are many reasons why you don’t see many minstrel shows these days and I know you’re enlightened enough to realize that.
My point is that digital comics are not interchangeable with printed comics… and the consumers for each are not all the same people. There’s life in the printed comics’ business.
Finally, did you know that, marginalized as they are, vinyl music albums—which are the fifth generation delivery system past (digital, CD, cassette, 8-track…) have actually increased in sales for the last several years?
Paid digital comics may have an effect on printed comic sales at some point down the road, but the sky isn’t falling yet.
People still love the rush of going into our stores every week— and that’s an experience that can never be replicated with a download.
>> Movies replaced Vaudeville.>>
They didn’t, however, replace the stage. Even the stage revue.
Vaudeville was a form, not a medium.
>> Sound movies replaced Silent Movies.>>
Are those really different media?
>> Television replaced Golden Age Radio.>>
Didn’t replace radio, though. And storytelling on radio doesn’t seem to be fully dead — don’t they still do Dr. Who radio dramas?
>> Comic Books replaced Big Little Books.>>
Big Little Books aren’t a medium. And weren’t replaced by comics; what killed them off was the growing popularity of other forms, including forms within the same medium, books.
>> You don’t see many minstrel shows these days.>>
Would anyone argue that “minstrel show” was a medium?
>> I’m pretty sure that LP’s completely replaced the cyclinders that preceded them too.>>
The LP didn’t replace the cylinder, since its predecessor was the 78 rpm disc. But the phonograph cylinder and the 33 rpm LP aren’t really different media, are they? They’re grooves that make a needle vibrate; making technological improvements to the process doesn’t render it a new media, any more than a Broadway extravaganza and a high school drama club production are different media.
>> And who still buys VCR tapes? >>
Somebody’s buying ‘em:
http://www.amazon.com/Sony-6T120VR-120-Minute-VHS-6-Pack/dp/B002DPOJ16/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1269633064&sr=8-2
I think you can find dead media — clay tablets are gone, but then, carved signs aren’t — but in a broad sense, media adapts, and it’s tough to kill one off. Genres die out, but media finds new uses.
Good point on the cylinders!
Let me use my mulligan and sub out with 8 track tapes.
To be honest, all this concern(?) over whether paper comics will be around in 5 years or not feels like a smokescreen to the real concern which is how will digitial comics impact the direct market.
I mean how many shops are just getting by right now? If paper comic sales are diminished to the point of VCR tapes what shop could really make a go selling them?
8-track tapes may be a thing of the past, but magnetic tape, as a medium, still exists.
Mr. Busiek! Now that you’re here, can you comment on Astro City going monthly? Will you still have the same creative team? Will other creators ever step in for story arcs or to lend assistance?
I’ll admit I fell off the Astro City wagon a while back. Financial belt tightening led to more sporadic visits to my LCS which led to confusion on my part as to whether or not I had the issue at the front of their Astro City shelf display. (This wasn’t just Astro City that suffered from my amnesia. Books like Jack Staff also suffered from my confusion.) Is there a listing somewhere where I can see an up-to-date display of what collections are out and what chronological order I ought to read them in?
Thanks in advance!
The plan is indeed to go monthly, and to keep all the creators we have now. No plans for other creators to step in for story arcs. We’ll have more to say about it, I’m sure, once we’re soliciting and promoting more seriously.
As for book collections, the Wikipedia page lists them and what they hold, but short answer:
LIFE IN THE BIG CITY
FAMILY ALBUM
CONFESSION
TARNISHED ANGEL
LOCAL HEROES
THE DARK AGE 1: BROTHERS & OTHER STRANGERS
THE DARK AGE 2 will be the next collection out, and after that a collection of the character specials that have been coming out between arcs of THE DARK AGE.
kdb
“prose fiction pieces about Astro City will appear in the monthly comic book. These pieces aren’t intended for the trade, but are intended to run indefinitely in the monthly book”.
That’s great news for this reader. Due to it’s high quality I would continue to buy Astro City monthly even if it didn’t include any exclusive material, but lately it has seemed that most titles would prefer that we readers wait for the Trades (see Variant covers and Collection-exclusive material), and so it is especially nice to see a book where the single-issue reader is appreciated.
DC sponsored an entire day of the ComicsPro meeting.
I am glad that DC is challenging Marvel. Historically, DC has made competitive changes, and Marvel (and others) had to change to compete.
Looking at their catalog, DC has more diversity than Marvel, and a stronger backlist.
No media is ever truly dead. In the strictist sense, that’s true, but Joe is evading the actual issue, as stated by Jim Shelley. In a market where most stores are barely breaking even, how can the industry survive *any* impact to sales of physical comics without planning ahead? All of this talk about vinyl records still selling is nice in theory, but not in practice.
Kurt, and Joe,
I love the circular logic you guys use.
So, if it went away, then it’s not a medium?
Golden age radio drama, comedy, detective shows, quiz shows, science fiction shows, Fred Allen, Little Orphan Annie, Suspense, Escape, Amos and Andy etc., that was the primary form of entertainment for the whole nation for over 30 years, and died with the advent of Television. Not a medium? RADIO itself is the medium?
Rush Limbaugh is the new Jack Benny! Hurray!
Silent movies, not a medium. MOVIES are the medium.
Big Little Books, with a picture on one page, and story on the next, not a medium.
Vaudeville, once the leading form of entertainment in America, not a medium, ’cause there are still stage plays.
So by that logic, in the unlikely event that comic books go away completely, we can say that the media, “BOOKS” are still around.
In the even more unlikely event that all books all go digital, then we can say that they are still around, but in a different FORMAT. The medium lives on no matter what happens!
If something exists at all, even if it’s scarce as hen’s teeth, and 4 people in the world still make a living off of of it then, it’s still a medium. I saw a guy riding an old penny farthing bike around town once. He got a lot of attention. I guess those never went away either.
Lets just say that NO medium EVER goes away!
Nothing ever dies.
It lives on, as long as your definition is elastic enough.
We’re completely safe.
- Lee
Lee, a medium is the means by which information/entertainment is transmitted. That’s it. They’re not stretching the definition of medium at all, they’re actually being quite faithful to it.
Not to be one of THOSE PEOPLE, but:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/medium
Definition #7.
The radio examples you use are all formats or genres. And they actually do still exist, albeit as niche forms of entertainment. I know of 1 or 2 groups here in Los Angeles that perform live radio shows with original scripts.
>> I love the circular logic you guys use. So, if it went away, then it’s not a medium? >>
No, those things weren’t media even before they went away.
Detective shows aren’t a medium, they’re a genre of a form within medium. Same for most of your other examples.
It’s no more “circular logic” than saying that the passenger pigeon isn’t a medium, so if it goes extinct a medium hasn’t died. Yes, a species has, but that ain’t the same thing.
I would actually say print is a medium, comics are an artform, and comic books are a variety of formats. Which doesn’t seem to be how Joe was using the word, but it’s accurate to the definition.
Vaudeville isn’t a medium and never was. Big Little Books were a format.
>> If something exists at all, even if it’s scarce as hen’s teeth, and 4 people in the world still make a living off of of it then, it’s still a medium.>>
No, there’s lots of stuff around that’s still around but not a medium.
>> I saw a guy riding an old penny farthing bike around town once. He got a lot of attention. I guess those never went away either.>>
If someone’s still manufacturing them and people are still buying them, then no. But they’re not a medium either. They’re a contraption!
But since what Joe said was that no media is ever completely replaced, then yeah, as long as a media is being made and consumed, it’s not gone; that’s what completely means. But a lot more than four people are making a living off of VHS tape, to pick one of the examples that came up.
>> We’re completely safe.>>
Hey, if you want to put words in someone’s mouth, don’t look at me. I never said any such thing; I pointed out that your examples aren’t media.
Formats go away, or become commercially unviable. I can think of numerous examples. I tend to agree with Joe that the market for printed comics isn’t going to evaporate any time soon, but heck, the traditional American comics format has been fading in circulation for decades, since the late 1940s, so I wouldn’t declare it safe forever. Book collections are doing a lot better, and electronic comics seem to drive sales of comics in book form, at least so far.
But none of that is anything I addressed about. It’s not necessary to think everything’s great with comics sales to recognize that quiz shows aren’t a medium.
Rush Limbaugh seems to be the new Walter Winchell. Or Charles Coughlin, maybe.
kdb
Lee, a medium is the means by which information/entertainment is transmitted.
Okay, if you want to define it that way, then the Edison Cylinder was a medium. It got replaced by the 78 rpm record, that got replaced by the 33 1/3 rpm record, that got replaced by the CD, which is getting replaced by the MP3.
New media replaces old media all the time.
All things must pass.
- Lee
Comics is comics is comics…
The medium of comics is very flexible. It can be a single panel, a four-panel strip, a single page, or a ten-volume epic.
It can be digitized, printed, painted, inked, projected.
It can be adapted into ballets, musicals, opera, movies, television shows, animation, radio dramas, advertisements, toys…
Do comic book stores depend on the weekly fix of periodical comics? Yes. Do some of them rely too much on that one market segment? Unfortunately, yes. But the smart retailers know what sells when to whom. They sell a lot of other stuff besides $3.99 comic books. They also have a presence on the Internet, use it to send email newsletters, network socially, and sell comics via mail order.
Retail is constantly evolving. Small independent retailers are constantly adapting, usually better than the behemoth box stores (which once were also independent stores).
Digital comics are not much different than magazine subscriptions. Easier and cheaper to ship, but not likely to affect stores dramatically.
Publishers need to work with stores. Some put the Comic Book Store locator in the comic. Perhaps there should be something like the old “Marvel Mart” listings, keyed to a computer’s geological location, where a banner ad appears for a nearby store.
Are fans worried that 32-page comics will disappear? Or afraid that paper-based comics will? The first isn’t worrisome, as the Internet and graphic novels will still exist to present comics. The latter? Unlikely. Books are an exellent way to transmit information.
The Edison cylinder and 78s, 45s and 33s are all the same medium, just different formats, same as paperback books and hardcovers aren’t different media. And vinyl’s still around. So are CDs, for more than just music.
Media evolve. They seldom fully disappear.
kdb
companies like dc and marvel will never go out of business as long as they keep producing their properties in various forms (toys, video games , graphic novels, movies, animation), but paper comics? buying ten comics in 1968 would cost $1.20. now buying ten comics will cost you around forty buck, and the kick in the head is that the format has not really changed since even before 1968. the paper and print qualities have improved over the years, but does that really necessitate a four dollar price tag. how many fans out there buy only one or two books a week? already i hear alot of stories of folks saying their gonna cut down on the number of books they score a week, and would anybody here really pay five dollars a book in it’s current format? how much more can the market bear when it comes to the rising price of comic books? eventually something’s got to give. will it the comic companies or the fans? thanks for letting me rant!
One problem with comics as publications, I suppose, is the speed of an artist, especially the pencil artist. How many of them can do more than two 22 page comics a month well?
One artist per issue is certainly the preferable approach for publishing comics, but as long as publishers insist on publishing single-artist issues monthly, there will be a price vs. page count problem.
I’m among those who would refuse to pay $5 for a 22-page comic, no matter who it was by.
SRS
I’m a little jealous … I made the same points before Kurt Busiek and Joe Fields, but Lee had the verbal skirmish with them.
abc wrote: “buying ten comics in 1968 would cost $1.20. now buying ten comics will cost you around forty buck”
Yeah, but many people earned a great deal LESS than what they earn today. The average family income in 1968, according to government census, was a little over $8,000.
Back when I was in middle school (7th grade), one teacher told me he stopped purchasing comics when the price rose to twenty cents because “It was too expensive.”
I’ve heard this arguement before … “Back in the sixties, a kid could buy twenty comics for less than three dollars!” But things cost less, and wages were lower.
Did ANY kid in the sixties ever purchase ALL of the comics published?? Did any kid in the sixties (with the exception of Richie Rich) have enough money to purchase ten comics at a clip??
If no one has enough money to purchase all comics being published today, then things probably haven’t changed from the sixties …
Several things: The price of comics has increased faster than inflation. The inflation-adjusted price of the 1973 20 cents comic is 96 cents.
Decompression has resulted in less content per issue to read. $3.99 for ten minutes of entertainment is arguably a worse deal than $1 for three pinball games.
A consumer has far more entertainment options than he had decades ago.
SRS
>> I’m a little jealous … I made the same points before Kurt Busiek and Joe Fields, but Lee had the verbal skirmish with them.>>
Saved you a lot of typing, though.
>> Did ANY kid in the sixties ever purchase ALL of the comics published??>>
Hmm. Mark Evanier, maybe?
>> Did any kid in the sixties (with the exception of Richie Rich) have enough money to purchase ten comics at a clip?? >>
Did any kid in the 1960s have $1.20 in disposable income at any one time? Sure, I expect so.
A more key question, though: For any kid buying comics weekly in the 1960s, were there ten comics coming out per week that they wanted? Again, there was Mark Evanier, but someone like Waid, buying all the DCs…were there ten DC’s out per week back then?
For my part, I started buying comics regularly in the 1970s, and they were 25 cents. I had a paper route (at one point, I had three), so I had enough money to buy whatever new comics I wanted. Before I started buying comics, I’d go to Harvard Square on Saturday and blow my income on records and SF paperbacks at The Coop and a patty melt at Brigham’s. Once I started buying comics, I cut back on records and slowed down on paperbacks, but would be hitting the Million Year Picnic and picking up almost all the new Marvels, a few DC books and generally a stack of back issues as well (all those early issues of X-MEN at $1.20…ah, but it felt expensive, then). Plus bus fare, and the patty melt at Brigham’s.
The price of comics has outstripped inflation, but the audience for comics has dwindled severely, and the economies of scale kick in. If you’re only printing 30,000 copies of something, each one costs a lot more than if you’re printing 400,000, and that gets reflected in the price. If someone can figure out how to fix that, they’ll make a lot of money. For now, the system seems to be to sell comics for $3-4 to those willing to buy them, reach out with TPBs and look for other ways to deliver comics in return for cash.
kdb
would anybody here really pay five dollars a book in it’s current format?
I’m sure there are some weekly comics junkies who would stick with it. Personally, I canceled my entire pull list when I paid $5 for the DARK AVENGERS annual. That was a surprise I didn’t need, and the store was grumpy when I asked about putting it on the rack.
To bring this back to the conversation, I would gladly have paid $.99 for a download of the issue and then purchased the collected edition later. Bring on the digital distribution.