Sunday, August 17, 2008

Kirkman, Making the Industry Invincible?

A few days ago, Robert (Walking Dead, Invincible) Kirkman released a video explaining that he was leaving Marvel Comics and becoming a partner at Image Comics to "save the industry". Robert Kirkman, Huh?!

OK, I've occasionally referred to myself as an apprentice savior of comics but RK, seems to be serious. Well here's the video, you decide.



Now while I do sell a lot of Walking Dead and some Invincible and other Kirkman work, proving that a lot of folks think he can write, with all due respect, almost every point Kirkman makes about the industry is just flat out wrong.

The most important being, that increasing creator owned work is somehow going to "save comics", whatever that means. It makes good sound bites but that's about it.

Robert, people do watch movies and aspire to only ever make Pulp Fiction 2 and yes people do read novels and decide to only ever write Moby Dick 2 and yes there are people who have decided that they only want to write the WFH Superheroes. But that is neither here nor there, as it has NOTHING to due with the ills of the industry.

She probably didn't mean it this way but Lea Hernandez proves it with her comment, "Here’s hoping that Kirkman saying what I and others have been saying as long as I’ve been in comics (... twenty-two years...)".

Why, if this was known twenty two years ago, is this STILL an issue? Because it is not THE ISSUE, it is an excuse that has been handed down from small press creator to small press creator like a cherished heirloom. But in reality there has never been more creator owned work commercially available (and viable) in the marketplace than there is now and even more is available online. Book publishers are fighting to lure creators away from comic publishers and establishing their own imprints to publish them.

Jeff Smith, Kazu Kibuishi, Ariel Schrag, Jeffrey Brown, Craig Thompson, Roman Dirge...

So, why are we still hearing the same tired refrain from creators?

I've been in the industry (as a creator, publisher and retailer) longer than Kirkman has been alive and despite the unprecedented level of creator owned work on the market, the one constant remains, the blaming of work for hire, particularly via Marvel & DC and retailers inability to embrace any work beyond the Big 2.

Well, I'm not sure how folks like Lea, Ellis or even Kirkman have missed it for twenty two years but Marvel, DC, WFH or retailers have not damaged the industry nearly as much as creator owned work (and the publishers who love them) has. OK to be fair it's not the work but the lack of professionalism surrounding the work that is the culprit.

From unprofessional and nonviable work by folks with to much cash in hand to fantastic work with untenable publishing schedules and utter lack of business/marketing savvy, this work leaves not only a frustrated consumer with no lack of alternative entertainment options but a also a line of business partners (distributors & retailers) who become increasingly gun shy over such product because it cannot be counted on to pay the bills and not to actively piss off their customers (and to be fair, the Big 2 share some of these same problems).

D&Q, Fantagraphics, Slave Labor, Top Shelf... all produce a staggering amount of creator owned work. Warren Ellis touted both financial and critical success of Fell. And yet the aforementioned publishers have had to go begging hat in hand and must fight retailers for sales at conventions because the work isn't selling as well as needed and who knows if or when Ellis will reward us with more Fell, which now seems to be on an annual schedule.

No, folks, the problem lies not in whether the work is WFH or creator owned. Nor does it lie in whether its interior sports slice of life or brightly colored spandex.

The problem is whether or not creators/publishers want to meet the responsibilities associated with running a business. If, Kirkman wants to save the INDUSTRY, he can start by using his new position as a partner at Image to educate creators publishing through Image Central as to the benefits of having a strong editor, in not rushing product to solicitation, in marketing and PR to build a demand for the work prior to publication and establishing and meeting realistic and appropriate publication schedules.

Creators capable of doing this will not have to worry about anything or anyone else and I can guarantee that they will have distributors and retailers beating down their doors for their work.

Or they can continue to treat the work as a part time job, fail to market it, solicit unrealistically and deliver haphazardly and wait another 20 years or so for the next Kirkman.

9 comments:

  1. Robert, could you tell me when SLG (which is what we call ourselves) "had to go begging hat in hand"? Perhaps it was before my time because I can't recall us ever doing anything that could be described this way in the seven years I've worked here. Thanks!

    -Jennifer de Guzman

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  2. Hi Robert,

    I am not 100% certain what you mean by "hat-in-hand", but SLG (SLG Publishing Robert, please) has never had a telethon or gone begging or done anything other than ask people to buy, stock or sell our books. That's not to say that we have never faced a tough time or that we will never make pleas for people to buy our books to help us through a tough time, but the fact that you pointed a finger at a bunch of indy publishers and considered them all as having the same issues caused by the same thing destroys any other argument you might have to make.

    Actually, reading the rest of the column, you did a pretty good job of doing that on your own.

    "... Marvel, DC, WFH or retailers have not damaged the industry nearly as much as creator owned work (and the publishers who love them) has."


    Really? Seriously? You BELIEVE that? Publishers like me have done more damage to this business than the flooding of the marketplace with crappy reprint books, or direct market distributors going under owing money all over the place? Or the inability of LARGER publishers to get their highly promoted big tent projects to market in a timely manner?

    Really? I never realized we had that much power.

    I don't want to get into a long and drawn out argument with you over the problems of this business, there is some merit to the rest of your column, but seriously you are never going to be able to make a serious case for any argument about any of this industry's issues until you include among those issues the comic's direct markets inability to expand the audience for comics at all. Period.

    The Dark Knight movie is closing in on $500 million in business. Iron Man tosses in another $300 million or so. Two movies about super-heroes are going to out-gross the entire direct market. Looking at it from that perspective the direct market isn't even doing all that good of a job of reaching the potential audience for work-for-hire super-hero comics.


    Yes, that's simplistic and perhaps not fair (my theory is that the general public likes the IDEA of super-heroes more than they like the super-heroes themselves) but the fact remains that most smaller publishers HAVE to depend on sources for sales outside of the direct market because the direct market has shown that it cannot support them alone.

    The fact that getting into other markets is expensive and filled with a lot of risk, so much so that on a couple of occasions some publishers have resorted to doing sales to help get them out of jams caused by distributors not paying them, has nothing to do with the books those publishers published not selling. The explosion in Manga in this country did not happen until the big Manga publishers got their books into bookstores, had they depended on the direct market they would still be struggling.

    Distribution chaos is not limited to the book market. When I started publishing 22 years ago there were 18 different distributors of comics to the specialty market, maybe only three or four big ones, but there were a lot of distributors. Most of them went under owing me SIZABLE amounts of money. SLG's biggest financial issues have come from direct market distributors going under owing us money.

    Professionalism in this business does not begin and end with publishers, it needs to go up and down the food chain. Again, no real issue with your basic argument except where you try to say that creator-ownership has hurt the industry more than say bad business practices on the part of many retailers and distributors over the years.

    You also need to come to grips with the notion that most comic book stores cannot seem to expand beyond the audience that turns in Previews every month. I am not saying DM retailers are 100% of the problem, but I can't seem to get anyone to admit that they might even have some small roll in the way things are for the marketplace.

    I can't speak for other publishers, but from my experience I have NEVER seen a greater sense of direct market retailer apathy towards SLG than in the past couple of years. My complaint isn't that the direct market can't sell our books, it's that it doesn't even seem to try anymore. We sold more copies of one our most recent graphic novel releases at Comic-Con this year than the entire direct market ordered. That direct market order was less than 200 copies. Sure, we had the benefit of having the creator at our booth, but even if he hadn't been it would have meant that we would have sold a sizable fraction instead of outselling the ENTIRE direct market on that book.

    So, seriously, physician heal thyself. Then maybe, if you WERE in charge things might be better for all of us.

    Dan Vado

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  3. Jen, SLG has definitely gone public with offers to the public that were near or at wholesale cost in your tenure, however
    if you want to nitpick the paragrapgh down to that single point, perhaps I should have said, "And yet the aforementioned publishers have had to go begging hat in hand OR must fight retailers for sales ... instead of and?

    Other than that we're in agreement?

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  4. Robert, I don't recall that, but I don't remember everything that happens. I recall having sales, but that's a far cry from "begging hat in hand." That was really loaded language you used, and it's not nitpicking to point out the negative way you portray independent publishers. And from where I'm standing, we're not really "fighting" retailers for sales. It's that kind of aggressive, combative language that really characterizes the conversations in the comic book industry. Call it nit-picking if you want, but I think that the language is reflective of attitudes.

    And just as we prefer the company to be called "SLG," I prefer to be called "Jennifer," not "Jen." No offense taken, it's just a preference. Thanks.

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  5. Hi Dan,

    ... but the fact that you pointed a finger at a bunch of indy publishers and considered them all as having the same issues caused by the same thing destroys any other argument you might have to make.

    Dan, nowhere did I did say that you all faced "the same issues caused by the same thing" nor do I believe, even imply it. The statement was that despite the fact that all of you were already publishing a lot of creator owned work, you all were still less than satisfied with sales levels. So the mere movement of creators towards more creator owned work did not automatically did not automatically solve everything as Mr. Kirkman seems to be implying in his video.

    Really? Seriously? You BELIEVE that? Publishers like me have done more damage to this business than the flooding of the marketplace with crappy reprint books, or direct market distributors going under owing money all over the place? Or the inability of LARGER publishers to get their highly promoted big tent projects to market in a timely manner?

    You seem to have missed the part where I said, "and to be fair, the Big 2 share some of these same problems", but yes I do believe that small press publishers may very well have done more to damage the "business" than Marvel and DC. Even the comment you make above implies that there is something inherently better about any creator owned book than a WFH book which underscores the sense of entitlement I so often see from the small press. It also fails to deal with the problem as stated which is that publishers like you are just as guilty about flooding the market with crappy product as the big guys. Unfortunately for you the big guys have cultivated a market where even "crappy reprints" have thousands of active buyers, where even the best small press books don't because too many publishers begin and end their promotional activities at soliciting in Previews.

    I'm thrilled to see Terry Moore crack the Top 150 with Echo. Terry is a creator and publisher I can bank on just like the big guys. Excellent work with a track record of showing up as solicited. I can budget for his work and I can unabashedly promote it to my customers knowing that I am not going to have to explain 3-6 months delays between issues. Perhaps that is why the book, one of only two projects that are not put out by Previews Premier Publishers or based on existing franchises to crack the top 150 (Ellis' Black summer is #138). And that is issue #4 after reailers were able to gauge sales on #1 and #2 and cut orders if necessary.

    Really? I never realized we had that much power.

    I believe that and it is truly a shame. All publishers yield tremendous power too many abdicate that power.

    I don't want to get into a long and drawn out argument with you over the problems of this business, there is some merit to the rest of your column, but seriously you are never going to be able to make a serious case for any argument about any of this industry's issues until you include among those issues the comic's direct markets inability to expand the audience for comics at all. Period.

    I'd love to hear what you think the DM participants should be doing that they aren't. Also in what you mean by the DM, since retailers obviously can't control what the other parts of the marketplace do.

    Brian Hibbs just wrote a Savage Critic piece addressing the same thing I've been saying for quite awhile, maybe hearing it from him will make more sense but what it boils down to is that it is primarily the Publisher's (like you) responsibilty to expand the audience and the Retailer's, to fulfill it. If there is no demand for a product, it is ridiculous to expect a retailer to take 100% of the responsibilty in buying the product and then to also generate the buyers for it. Movie Theaters, Book/Music/Game and even Grocery Stores don't have to do that. Every other retail market has some form of outreach to promote their product(s) in a way that generates consumer interest and also has a way to assist retailers in that marketplace to promote themselves as the spot where that product is available. In other words there is a symbiotic relationship, a life cycle. Too many creator owned/small press work lacks the symbiotic nature, it is more like a relay race where they race to produce the product and then simply hand it off to Diamond or the retailer and yell GO!

    The Dark Knight movie is closing in on $500 million in business. Iron Man tosses in another $300 million or so. Two movies about super-heroes are going to out-gross the entire direct market. Looking at it from that perspective the direct market isn't even doing all that good of a job of reaching the potential audience for work-for-hire super-hero comics.

    No disagreement there but than again it's not like I saw much from SLG during Invader Zim's reign either but we digress since that wasn't the point of this article, which again was to point out that more creator owned work will not save the industry in and of itself.

    ...the fact remains that most smaller publishers HAVE to depend on sources for sales outside of the direct market because the direct market has shown that it cannot support them alone.

    Still off topic but personally I don't begrudge any of you any opportunity to sell your work just your inability to recognize the negative impact it can have on existing market like the DM and... I really haven't seen a new approach from any of you nor any results showing that these efforts are bearing fruit and as a retailer who has a heavy investment in small press work (probably more than all of the rest of the San Diego retailers combined), if things like your retail presence at SDCC was growing the market for your work, I think I would have noticed.

    The explosion in Manga in this country did not happen until the big Manga publishers got their books into bookstores, had they depended on the direct market they would still be struggling.

    Although there may be a smidge of truth to that, it was also built on the strength of the acceptance and support from the Direct Market going all the way back to Dark Horse's early manga offerings as well as Mike Kiley's Mixx line of comics while he was at UC Irvine. Were it not for the support of the DM for the Sailor Moon, Card Captor or Viz's Pokemon and Dragon Ball comics and even the early adoption of the Pokemon CCG, I wonder how much longer it would have taken Manga to even enter the Book Market?

    Distribution chaos is not limited to the book market. When I started publishing 22 years ago there were 18 different distributors of comics to the specialty market, maybe only three or four big ones, but there were a lot of distributors. Most of them went under owing me SIZABLE amounts of money. SLG's biggest financial issues have come from direct market distributors going under owing us money.

    Cause and effect maybe? Were they selling boat loads of (your) product its doubtful they would've gone under and again with the majority of product just being churned out with no consumer demand evident, I'm not suprised that small press dependent distributors had problems.

    Professionalism in this business does not begin and end with publishers, it needs to go up and down the food chain. Again, no real issue with your basic argument except where you try to say that creator-ownership has hurt the industry more than say bad business practices on the part of many retailers and distributors over the years.

    Well it certainly begins with creators/publishers since without them there is no reason for distributors and retailers. And if distributors and retailers cannot count on creators/publishers to live up to their responsibilitcreators/publishers ies to provide and market a quality product on a timely basis so that distributors and retailers can in turn meet the demands of their customers, it doesn't necessarily end with creators/publishers BUT it certainly can make it difficult for distributors and retailers to be both professional and supportive of them.

    You also need to come to grips with the notion that most comic book stores cannot seem to expand beyond the audience that turns in Previews every month. I am not saying DM retailers are 100% of the problem, but I can't seem to get anyone to admit that they might even have some small roll in the way things are for the marketplace.

    I understand the notion, I'm just not sure why even if true, you believe that is something that is necessarily a need or goal of the DM retailer. If a retailer has decided that their niche is Marvel and DC and they can do it well enough to make a living doing it, why would you argue they are unprofessional or problematic? Are you going to begrudge McDonalds for not selling Hot Dogs or Chateau Briand or Baskin & Robbins for not selling Apple Pie or Creme Brulee? They have chosen their culinary niche just like all independent DM retailers do. There is no obligation for any of them to carry product that doesn't fit their product plans just like comics publisher can choose not to do color books or super heroes.

    I can't speak for other publishers, but from my experience I have NEVER seen a greater sense of direct market retailer apathy towards SLG than in the past couple of years.

    We've talked about this before and it suprises me that you seem suprised by this. I've repeatedly said that underminng retailers, whether selling at shows or online is going to affect orders from retailers who carry your work. You've always countered that by selling at shows and online you are expanding the market. I haven't seen that to be the case and on top of that, the titles that I do get requests for are not Chumble Spuzz, Gargoyles or Haunted Mansion (despite suggestions, posters in the window and register racking) but Lenore, JHTM and Squee, books that haven't seen new issues in ages. If a retailer can't get the work they need and have trouble selling the work they can get, that seems like a recipe for apathy.

    My complaint isn't that the direct market can't sell our books, it's that it doesn't even seem to try anymore.

    That should be a hint that you may not be meeting their needs and that if you want a stronger DM presence, you need to re-evaluate how you are doing business.

    We sold more copies of one our most recent graphic novel releases at Comic-Con this year than the entire direct market ordered. That direct market order was less than 200 copies. Sure, we had the benefit of having the creator at our booth, but even if he hadn't been it would have meant that we would have sold a sizable fraction instead of outselling the ENTIRE direct market on that book.

    Dan, the only retailers you hurt by selling at cons and online are the ones who actually order(ed) your books. It's not hard for retailers to figure out which books you are likely to have at SDCC and which of their customers might buy it there, especially if a creator is there to sign and order accordingly. The other problem lies in the fact that when there is no apparent followup work from a creator shipping anytime soon, as with graphic novels, it can be more prudent to wait for demand to justify ordering it, especially from publishers without strong marketing efforts, in or out of the DM.

    Once again, when (all) publishers begin taking all of their publishing responsibilities more seriously, they will see that effort rewarded in kind from distributors and retailers and sales will grow in response.

    Oh and to close on topic, it won't matter one bit whether those books are WFH or creator owned.

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  6. And from where I'm standing, we're not really "fighting" retailers for sales. It's that kind of aggressive, combative language that really characterizes the conversations in the comic book industry.

    Jennifer,

    You are making this a confrontation by choosing to read words that way, not me. Do you reslly think that "from where you're standing" is the pnly possible point from which to view things?

    I am a retailer and while you may not see it as fighting for customers, I am most certainly fighting SLG for sales because of SDCC and even online if your presence there leads a consumer to buy from you online.

    I'm not sure why you feel that mentioning this is agressive, combative or derogstory or what phrase you would prefer so as not to offend you, since you don't suggest one.

    Would calling it competing be preferable and even so, would it actually mean anything different or even be accurate?

    As the publisher SLG has too many advantages which prevent direct sales to consumers from being a competitive excercise.

    SLG enjoys first opportunity to sell to the consumer, a lower unit cost for the items sold, the opportunity to provide signed product...

    That's not competing, that implies to me that the single most importsnt thing to SLG is making a buck, everyone else be damned.

    Now it might not be true at all but this is how it appears to me and now, seeing that Dan has said over the same time period I've been feeling this wsy the entire DM has exhibited an apathy to SLG titles to the point there was a recent release you sold more of at SDCC than was ordered by the entire DM, it seems I'm not the only one feeling this way.

    It's not even apparent if the DM holds any importance to SLG anymore because despite things like Dan's video newsletter effort and sponsorship of certain industry events, which are appreciated, most of your efforts do not seem DM retailer friendly to me and as such it affects how I choose to order SLG product.

    I remember from a response in another forum. that you don;t feel that publishers should have to bt the ones to change but if you, Dan or any other SLGian ever want to spitball ideas about whether things I or other retailers feel would be mutually beneficial and/or doable let me know.

    As much as I like to drink, I'd be more than happy to pass up the SLG nohost bar to sit down face to face at a summit and discuss how we all can do a better job.

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  7. Robert, I'm not trying to hold your hand to tell you how to communicate. I'm sorry if I came across that way. I have just noticed, generally, that the discourse in the comics industry is not conducted in a way to make people feel good about talking with each other -- as if anything is getting done other than an argument where no one's position will ever change. Again, I don't know what forum post you're referring to, but I don't think publishers should not have to change. In fact we have made several changes in the way we do things in the last few years.

    That's all I really have to say. I'm not interested in arguing minutiae. I'm going to take the larger issue of how we talk about issues in the comic industry. We're dysfunctional.

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  8. Robert,

    Again, not going to get into a long and drawn out bunch of crap with you since my feeling of disconnect with you in particular and the direct market in general is so complete as to put me on the border of not even giving a shit about anything you might have to say. Couple of things though.

    a) I do not believe having an occasional sale to clear room or gather customer information constitutes "begging hat in hand". The biggest discount we ever offered to consumers was 40% off, it lasted for one week, did not include new releases or our best sellers and was not done as an appeal to save my company.

    It is the curse of the internet age that people read intentions into people's words that are not really there, but when you use confrontational language saying that creator-owned work has done more damage to the industry than anyone else, or accusing me of holding out a tin cup and begging when clearly I have not, it's hard NOT to assign a motivation to your writing. Seriously, speaking as an editor, your column was FILLED with smug and arrogant phraseology. It DEMANDED a response from me.

    b) If I didn't HAVE to sell at conventions or online, I wouldn't. Chicken and egg situation perhaps, but the fact of the matter is that if I could make our monthly nut by just selling to the direct market, I would. The tremendous hassles associated with selling at shows or online would be well worth shedding if I thought people would buy our books from stores like yours.

    c) SLG, and I am sure other publishers, do our fair share of work to try and build consumer demand, the problem is that the consumer is never going to find most of our product in your store or most DM stores. Most people will end up coming to our site, going to Amazon or trying some other outlet to find a book of ours they may have heard about online.

    In closing, and the last I will speak on this thread, if I were to have listened to the direct market and the way retailers ordered and responded to our books I would still be publishing Samurai Penguin and Johnny, Lenore, and Milk & Cheese would never have gotten past issue #1.

    Brian Hibbs, perfect example. Noo greater supporter of indy comics than Brian Hibbs told me when I showed him an advance copy of JOhnny the Homicidal Maniac to get perhaps a quote from him, and I am going to quote him because I have never forgotten what he said. "This has no market in my store and I won't be ordering this for my shelves."

    A couple of years later Brian was writing a column for the CBG retailer magazine where he used Johnny as an example of a comic he should get a better discount on because he was moving more copies of it than most of the middle to lower end Marvels and DC's he carried (no argument from me) and that he deserved a better discount because of all the work he did in heling the book sell.

    Brian Hibbs did NOTHING to helo my book sell other than sell it when the demand became so overwhelming he finally decided to put it on his shelf. Jhonen and I created the demand for the book and his work.

    If I didn't sell Johnny online, and at shows I would never have been able to build an audience for Jhonen's or Roman's or anyone else's work. Getting those books into Hot Topic created a trickle down effect for the direct market. You want cause and effect, there it is. That is MY experience.

    So, when you tell me that you can't sell Haunted Mansion, Chumble Spuzz or Gargoyles in your stores dosn't tell me that those books are not sellable, it tell me that YOU can't sell them.

    Since I can't publish X-Men or Batman I am truly incapable of giving you or most direct market retailers what they need. Staying in your junk food analogy, if I produce high end food then logically I should not even BOTHER trying to sell it at McDonald's.

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  9. Speaking of disconnect, how do you twist:

    the titles that I do get requests for are not Chumble Spuzz, Gargoyles or Haunted Mansion (despite suggestions, posters in the window and register racking) but Lenore, JHTM and Squee, books that haven't seen new issues in ages.

    into:
    So, when you tell me that you can't sell Haunted Mansion, Chumble Spuzz or Gargoyles in your stores dosn't tell me that those books are not sellable, it tell me that YOU can't sell them.

    I did not say I don't/can't sell those titles. I said I don't get customers asking for them, which means that the copies I sell are due to our pushing them rather than SLG creating buzz that sends customers looking for them.

    And books like JtHM which has become something that consumers do look for has nothing new for them to buy.

    That said, yes, there seems to be a HUUUGE disconnect between SLG and the DM and from this exchange, maybe even moreso with me.

    I have never seen a company with problems selling through a specific channel. so violently argue against someone within that channel. Especially someone who is absolutely known to carry their product and has actively supported efforts to sell more.

    If you feel your cureent business model works for you and that you do not need retailers like me, that's cool, Previews ain't getting any smaller.

    But ss I said to Jennifer, if ever you wish to discuss mutually beneficial opportunities at a Summit, Con or CPRO event. I am more than willing to give up the free booze for an opportunity to so and I doubt I'm alone in that.

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