Retailing & Marketing

What's better than getting free candy on Halloween? Free comics! I offer some crazy ideas for retailers and lovers of comics, using Halloween as the inciting incident to tell a great story about marketing comics!

I have to admit, at this point in my life, I'm not much of a floppy comics reader. I've been fishing SAGA and PROPHET out of my Image comps, and every two months or so I go to Hanleys in search of a missing back issue but...I'm not part of the Wednesday Crowd. Which is why all the talk of pull lists and ordering and racing to get to the store go right over my head. So it wasn't until i read this piece by Todd Allen for PW that I finally understood.

Image publisher Eric Stephenson delivered yesterday's lunch presentation for Image Comics at the Diamond Retailer Summit. Instead of announcing any new projects, he used the time to deliver a speech about Image's history and its present, and to urge retailers not to let readers craving something new slip away to digital by not giving Image's ambitious new slate a chance.

DC is having a special focus group to show off a binder full of BEFORE WATCHMEN pages at the Diamond Retailer Summit.

We're on the scene here in Chicago for this year's Diamond Retailer Summit and survived our biggest challenge, breakfast. No big surprises at the breakfast, but Diamond discussed sales being up for the quarter, a 1% rise in customers (i.e. new shops) and their new Halloween-themed event for retailers to build programs around. Also, as previously discussed at the ComicsPRO meeting, Oni will join the FOC (final order cut off) program, as more and more publishers are hitting their ship dates. More later!

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.