(Commentary) Last week brought a goodly amount of email, and it's time to take a look at the most interesting of the lot. We begin with the ongoing discussion about the Neil Gaiman/Todd McFarlane feud over Miracleman. A letter in last Monday's Mailbag offered up an estimate of who owned what rights to the character. This week's first correspondent begs to differ:
"This is how the percentages go. Initially, when Marvelman started up in Warrior (based on a belief it was in the public domain and could be 'seized'), it was divided thus:
"Dez Skinn 20% / Alan Moore 40% / Garry Leach 40%
"Alan Davis comes on board, everyone gives Davis a piece so...
"Dez 10% / Moore 30% / Leach 30% / Davis 30%"
"Eclipse buy Leach and Moore's rights, Davis doesn't gets consulted, gets
pissed off, gives his lot to Leach, which also get snapped up by Eclipse. So
"Eclipse 70% / Moore 30%
"Moore gives his share to Neil Gaiman and Mark Buckingham. Todd McFarlane
buys Eclipse. Bucky gives his share to Neil to manage. So.
"Todd 70% / Neil 30%
"Unless there is, as rumoured a reversion clause in the Eclipse contract
after a period of non-publication. In which case
"Dez Skinn 10% / Neil Gaiman 30% / Garry Leach 60%"
Is anyone surprised by the Rashomon-like nature of all this? I must confess to being over my head at this point. Then again, if it were a simpler matter, Neil and Todd probably wouldn't be at loggerheads at the moment.
Last Monday's Mailbag also brought further letters concerning Marvel's new attempt at an Epic imprint. As you'll recall, I was more than a little cynical about the deals the company was offering. Our second correspondent has offers up another example for comparison:
"Regarding the phrase 'creator participant' in the Epic story: it's most likely the same thing as 'creator participation', which DC has been using for a while now. I'm not sure of the exact details thereof, but Warren Ellis claims it's a decent deal for creators:
"At this point, everything I'm doing is either creator-owned or 'creator-participation' -- which means I and my collaborators get more control and a much bigger slice of the revenue pie than a regular company-owned project (like the 15% of the development option fee paid to DC/Wildstorm by Warner Brothers to consider PLANETARY for television that I just received, moo hoo ha ha). This would seem to me to be close to an ideal situation -- owning and controlling my own work, working in tandem with publishers to ensure the work is done properly and gets seen in the right places and makes us all some money. That I can achieve this while not exactly burning up the Diamond sales charts is indicative only of the fact that any bastard can do it if they put their mind to it and they're prepared to take the long view. I'm far from the cleverest writer in the business, but I'm damn sure that when I'm forty-five I won't be producing fifty pages a month that I'll never see a penny off again."
There's decent deals and there's decent deals. My understanding is that in the more legitimate publishing realms, that 15% is the amount the agent or publisher is likelier to take than what the creator gets. The only creator to actually tell me his or her take of such a deal is one of the artists Fantagraphics publishes, and both discretion and the obvious conflict of interest prevents me from saying much more, but I will say this: said artist kept considerably more than 15% of the money. Most if not all creators who publish through non-corporate companies and retain ownership of their creations would probably scoff at such an amount -- I don't mean to knock Warren Ellis, but it sounds like he's bragging about getting paid in dimes rather than the customary nickels.
I suspect this is why Marvel's been so eager to hook up online fans to Epic projects: they're vocal about their enthusiasm, and they don't have the business savvy that many of the more experienced indy cartoonists possess. As I noted a week ago, I've heard from several such cartoonists who approached Marvel with possible projects but balked when shown the terms and were subsequently shown the door. Having seen actual creator-friendly contracts, they weren't quite so willing to sign on the dotted line.
It's also a matter of trust, of course. The only person I'm aware of who's got a "profit participation" deal with Marvel at the moment is Stan Lee, and look where that got him. Marvel's track record in this regard is less than sterling.
Last Tuesday's look at the initial comics-shop orders for March drew a fair amount of mail as well. Correspondent #3 writes:
"Powerpuff Girls #36 (7,923 copies)
Looney Tunes #100 (5,454 copies)
Betty and Veronica #186 (2,801 copies)
"Any way to find out what the newsstand/grocery store sales are for books like this? I would imagine that there could be around 8000 copies of 'regular' Powerpuff Girls books sold in a week or two in bookstores and Wal-marts. That's really sad when properties with built-in mainstream appeal aren't pushed like they should be. I'm just glad I go to a shop that makes its dough from spandex books but still has a well-stocked section of kiddie comics.
"On the other hand:
"Metal Hurlant #5 (4,754 copies)
James Kochalka's Sketchbook Diaries Vol. 3 (1,081 copies)
"Woo-hoo! I have actual limited editions! I'm gonna get rich off these two books in a few years!"
As a certain Maggie Chascarrillo once said, "Don't count your eggs before your britches is hatched." Regarding your question, getting ahold of newsstand data is difficult. Last I checked, publishers had to file information with the post office which includes some limited circulation information, but it's vague -- if I remember right, it's little more than a yearly average of all sales, with newsstand, Direct Market, overseas sales and subscriptions all lumped into one. Beyond that, it's all proprietary, and hard to come by.
Our next correspondent is worried by the numbers as well:
"What's really interesting about the latest ICV2 Top 300 is the wide gulf between the top 8 books and the next 50 or so. Basically, only 8 books clear 70,000, which is all that's keeping the direct market afloat right now. Very, very fragile."
I'm currently nurturing a theory as to just how fragile the DM is, but don't want to get into specifics until I have a little more information; tomorrow's Marvel investor's call just might provide me with what I need, but we shall see.
Our final correspondent gently but firmly takes me to task for some things I said about retailers while looking over the numbers in the same entry:
"My name's Amanda Fisher, and my partner and I own a comic book store in Missoula, MT. I've been working behind a comics counter for about eight years, though I've been an owner for little over one year. I've been reading your blog regularly after being directed to it so frequently by my friends in retail and others who work in comics, so first, thank you for an interesting and intelligent read.
"The reason I'm emailing you, though, is to tell you how frustrating it is when direct market retailers are all lumped together as though we work toward the same goals. It's easier to describe the book trade as one entity; at least most of the larger outlets making it up are part of large chains with similar goals. The direct market is often thought of that way, but it isn't similar at all, and the reason I'm bringing it up to you springs from your comments, 'Retailers whine in ICv2's Talkback section about the lack of kids' comics, while the ones that do get published never seem to get ordered. Retailers whine about the lack of good girl-centric comics, while the ones that do get published never seem to get ordered.' The retailers who are asking for more kids comics and more girl-centric comics are the retailers who are ordering them. Unfortunately, not all (or even a majority, apparently) of the other retailers in the direct market have those same goals.
"I have a small store, so what I order doesn't make much of a dent in icv2's initial numbers (our store's order would make up less than half a percent of the Shonen Jump initial orders), but I order all of the titles you listed, I have a designated Children's section and a designated Young Adult section in my store. We created a large display for Shonen Jump when it premiered, and we also focus on stocking comics that would appeal to older and younger women. I am fairly vocal when it comes to these kinds of comics; I ask any publisher and creator who will listen to me for more and increasingly better comics aimed at children and ones aimed at women, though I do understand when they don't put their efforts into stories that aren't supported by our current market.
"I have plenty of ideas about why kids comics and girl-centric comics aren't ordered (or selling well, really) in many stores, and they lean more toward those retailers not having the knowledge and experience to properly recommend and push those titles to the right readers than assuming that they just don't want kids or women reading comics.
"But I did want to jump in and say that you are probably confusing those of us who do 'whine' for more kids comics with those retailers who don't ask for and don't order them."
I suppose I could explain my sweeping generalizations away with something pithy like "You do know this is all written at 2 AM, right?", but you bring up a valid point.
I'm glad to hear about your store; if there were more like it, the Direct Market wouldn't be in the awful mess in which it currently finds itself. I'm lucky that there are in fact several good, wide-ranging retailers here in Seattle, like Xanadu Comics and Comics Dungeon, and even a few artier bookstores that carry comics (Confounded Books being my favorite). It's a far cry from living in Arizona, where most retailers simply didn't have any interest in the sorts of comics that appeal to me. I had to work like a dog to chase down the titles I wanted (exception to this rule: Tucson, which when I lived there had a few decent shops).
I certainly don't mean to lump far-sighted retailers like yourself into the same boat with all the Comic Book Guy clones. The fact remains, however, that you're in the minority. I mean, I undoubtedly don't have to tell you what a hot seller Shonen Jump is -- from the sound of things, your balance sheet does this just fine -- but the news that manga is the hottest selling form of comics hit the rest of the industry far after the fact. There's a reason for this. The Direct Market, by and large, is an almost hermetically-sealed bubble of retailers and fans with like-minded interests, and that bubble is notoriously resistant to anything that doesn't cater directly to its occupants' prejudices. The popularity of Japanese comics has been known for some time now; certainly long enough for national retailer orders to reflect this fact. And yet it doesn't. Why? Because most retailers don't care for that sort of thing, and the idea that other people might -- and that thay might buy it, putting money in their pockets -- is completely alien to them. If a Borders manager decided to stop carrying romance novels because that sort of thing didn't appeal to him or her personally, the head office would likely as not fire the person: they like the money, even if our theoretical manager doesn't care.
Much of "mainstream" comics culture, by contrast, sneers at the very thought of other kinds of comics appealing to anyone. "Stories about ordinary people living their lives? Who needs that crap?" No one, unless you're one of the millions of people who, say, made Oprah's Book Club so successful. But their dollars don't matter, right? Ignore the fact that the top-selling graphic novels in bookstores at the moment include romance comics like Love Hina and Chobits -- that stuff sells to girls, after all. If autobiographical works are so unmarketable, why does Harvey Pekar (surely among the biggest offenders) keep getting such interest from the mainstream? The real mainstream, I mean; David Letterman, HBO and the like.
The proof is in the numbers, and at the moment, Shonen Jump makes for a convenient Exhibit "A". The first issue sold over a quarter of a million copies; by all accounts Viz Comics has been extremely pleased with the reaction their efforts has received... on newsstands. In the shops, the title can't crack five digits.
You refer to retailers' naivete in selling other kinds of comics, but some of the things they could do to broaden their market are so basic as to be almost not worth mentioning. How about putting posters in their windows of characters other than Spider-Man and Wolverine? How about not shoving the manga and non-genre titles in back? How about actually telling someone the other books are there, and displaying them more prominently? Any idiot could come to these conclusions if more than thirty seconds of thought were applied. I see little evidence that more than a handful of retailers are taking these kinds of steps; I'm grateful for the ones like yourself that do, but it's not enough. The industry is dying slowly, and all its movers and shakers can think to do is to pour on more of the same thinking. You think I'm a fatalist in these matters? My employers have been beating their heads against this particular wall for decades, with no luck whatsoever.
I sincerely doubt there's much I can do about this, but I like the industry too much not to at least try raising my voice a bit. If it seems that I focus on more shortsighted elements of the funnybook market to an excessive degree, Amanda, it's because you clearly don't need the reminder. They do.
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