Retailing & Marketing

It is the time of the month when industry figures fret about the Future of Comics. No slight intended—we do it all the time, too, and a few remarkable clear and essential posts about The Way It Is have just been made. So let's review:

Are you looking forward to seeing the mancave that is Secret Stash evolve into a place full of well rounded human emotions? Well, that could happen.

A recent scan of graphic novel bestsellers on BarnesAndNoble.com from 15 March.

Over at iFanboy, Jim Mroczkowski points out that the battle between Good and Wednesday has been very clearly won by Wednesday, with both Marvel and DC sticking to schedules even if it means the artist rosters are in constant flux:

Bongo is the successful comics publishing company that nobody knows about. Although it will celebrate its 17th anniversary this year, and has mastered the periodical-to-trade business model, and has been happily plugging along publishing essentially creator driven comics for all that time....no one in the comics industry EVER talks about Bongo. Sure, publishing Simpsons comics seems like a no-brainer...but do you think the books would have lasted this long as a licensed title at DC or Marvel? Well, now there have been some changes. And some new branding. It has a new logo to start with—three's a trend! And long-time art director Nathan Kane has been promoted to Creative Director, replacing Bill Morrison, who, we're told, has joined Simpsons creator (and Bongo owner) Matt Groening to work on secret projects.

Last week, I conducted a survey on how people buy their comics. The results of which are eye opening. 67% -- a little over 2/3 -- of respondents listed a form of pre-ordering as the primary purchasing method.

And here's the official word and examples of treatment. Looks like the Vertigo and MAD logos have been adjusted to include the Gotham-lettered branding for now. Now that we can see the actual treatment, it's clearer how "the Peel" works as a symbol as opposed to a readable name—so even with the peel, the lettered DC Comics part is included. On that basis alone the peel works a lot better.

A piece at business site Fast Company has unveiled the new DC logo — and yeah, it's been chosen because it can be animated and — probably — make a sound. John Rood and Amit Desai, senior vice president of franchise management, roll out the new malleable, adaptable, interactive logo:

A snapshot of graphic novels bestsellers from BarnesAndNoble.com, taken at 3 PM, Monday, January 15, 2012.

Diamond has just hired Chris Powell to the slot of Executive Director of Business Development for the comic book specialty market (CBSM). Powell is a familiar industry figure due to his many years at Lone Star Comics and as the head of ComicsPRO, and as a CBLDF board member. This new position was advertised by Diamond last year, and Powell will work with Chuck Parker and Roger Fletcher to create new programs for comics retailers, with a stated goal of creating more brick-and-mortar stores.

Over at Publisher's Weekly, I was writing about how Marvel has trouble keeping their books in print and had some retailers tell me how Marvel's sales suffer for it. Now with Diamond's 2011 year-end sales charts coming out, WOW, do things look odd.

ICV2 has their December 2011 Diamond sales estimates up and the downward correction would appear to be continuing. The big debating point here would be DC returnability. IIRC, Diamond's been adjusting the numbers to allow for returns (10%?), but relatively few people believe that retailers are returning that much, when taken across the industry. So anything returnable is probably a little under-reported.