Except that's not true. Looking at the trade stands in Fry's Electronics or Suncoast Video makes that clear.
That may be everything you learned, but it's not everything I learned. People value durability, and people sometimes tie the value of something to its price, with low-priced items coming with presumptions of flimsiness and worthlessness.
Also not true, as some of the challenges of keeping track of pamphlet format comics involve trying to keep storylines together. Trades also have multiple points of identification; there are few comics that one can identify by the spine.
Yup. Retailers can't order copies of Spider-Girl 75 at this point, most likely. They can order trades that came out at the same time.

More cheap original graphic novels:

Quit Your Job: $6.95

One Bad Day: $9.95

Magic Boy & the Robot Elf: $9.95

Minimum Wage Book One: $12.95 (this one was an original graphic novel; the rest of the series afterwards was serialized)

Reinventing Comics: $19.95

Ummm, no, that's not what she's said at all. She's buying comics, even if they are reprints. That serves the publishers, the creators, the distributors, and the retailers. And yes, even the next generation of readers, who are more likely to have access to the already-existing good material because it's printed in sturdy form and may well be kept in print in that form.

It's not the consumer's job to want to buy what the creator and publisher offer. It's the creator and publisher's job to offer things that the consumer will want to buy. If I put out a Nazis-raping-zombies comic and Johanna doesn't want to buy it, that's perfectly fine. I'm not making money off of her, she's keeping her money for something she wants more... but to have her buy it just for the convenience of the various other folks you rattle on about would be to treat my Nazis-raping-zombies comic as a charity. Believe me, if she has money for charities, there are far better ones to give to.

Melodramatic much?

Besides, your rant is a pretty accurate summation of what consumerism is all about. Give me what I want. If Mr. Creator and Mr. Publisher don't give the marketplace what it wants, Mr. Creator and Mr. Publisher don't get the marketplace's money. So yeah, fuck them if they don't. Boo-frickin'-hoo.

Happy?

That's not my point. My point is how many trades that occupy a similar spot on trade sales lists as SPIDER-GIRL occupies on the monthly sales lists, and first came out over 6 and 1/2 years ago, are still on the shelves the way SPIDER-GIRL is?

The theory is that trades stay on the shelves for sale forever. That's not true. Low selling trades will get taken off the shelves for better selling or just new material. And they'll get taken off in a relatively quick fashion, especially in an industry that's producing a large number of new trades every month.

It all goes back to Mr. David's worries about "mid-list" titles, that trades would leach just enough readers from those monthly titles to make them unsustainable, but there wouldn't be enough trade-only readers to sustain those titles as trades or OGNs.

Mike

First, let's be clear about something. Buying trades is not saying "F**k you". Buying only trades is not "F**k you". The "F**k you" sentiment was only attatched to someone who stated that if the American comic business did nothing but reprints, that would be pretty much okay with her.

That would mean NO new stories for new generations of readers. That would mean the elimination of, what, 70, 80 or 90% of the jobs that now exist in the comic industry. It would also mean far, far less money for creators who get paid much less for reprints than for first-run material. And all of that wouldn't really disturb her that much, as long as there was stuff for HER to read.

That is a "F**k you" attitude. That's not an entirely inappropriate attitude to have for a consumer. But I assumed, and perhaps made a jerk of myself for doing so, that people who take the time to post someplace called "Comicon.com" aren't just consumers. I thought we were all fans, and a "F**k you" attitude isn't all that appropriate for a fan.

As far as Mr. David needing to "broaden his thinking", I don't want to become an idiot and appropriate Mr. David's status to shine up my position. But Peter David has been in the comic book industry for, I believe, over 20 years. He's been involved in both the creative side and the business side, which means he has a perspective on it that even many other comic creators don't have. He also has a decent amount of experience is writing novels and seeing them sold in bookstores.

So, not only does Mr. David understand what the comic book industry was, is and might be...he also understands the business model that trades are supposed to follow, at least he understands it better than any of us who are not published authors.

Now, that does not mean Mr. David's criticism of the "wait for the trade" mentality is automatically right. (And I should point out, I don't belive Mr. David has ever endorsed or expressed many, if any, of the criticisms of trades that I have, so don't confuse what he says with what I say) But when someone with his qualifications makes a specific complaint, people need to do more than say "lalala, it won't happen, lalala, it won't happen".


Mike

Haven't we recently had a couple of comic publishers, and even a comic store I believe, essentially asking for charity. Didn't they put out pleas for people to buy more stuff?

And before anyone says that wasn't charity, people were just buying books they wanted, it was more than that. People were asked to buy stuff right now, that otherwise they were not planning to buy right now. And the primary motivation to buy the stuff right now was not to benefit the consumer, it was to benefit the publisher and, I believe, the store. There's at least a charitable aspect to that. People did something they otherwise wouldn't have done to help somebody else out. The people who responded to those pleas did not have a "F**k you" attitude.

Mike

No, it wasn't. Your statement was addressed to Johanna, who had just specifically said "That would be terrible". As is often common in online discussions, when you choose to restate someone's positions in your own words, you actually invent a new stance and attribute it to someone else.
That depends on how much the new readers want to read the old material. The majority of jobs in the industry are not creating comics, they're in retailing comics.
For the creators that do, yes. That does not apply to all creators.
It's a nice quote, but who are you quoting?

That's not a point, that's a question. And it's a question of comparing apples and ennui. The Spider-Girl that came out 6.5 years ago is not still out. The characters who were in trades that came out 6.5 years ago may still be out in another trade, if they aren't still out in the same one.

What was actually written was...


"1. if I haven't read it yet and it's enjoyable, why should I care whether it was originally created last year or last decade?
2. there's so much great comic stuff that's already been created that I could last a good while not seeing anything new. That would be terrible, of course, because I like seeing the medium grow and explore new subjects, but I would still have stuff to read."

Now, while the phrase "That would be terrible" is used, when put in context, I think it's fair to say the writer doesn't think it would be all that terrible as long as she had stuff to read.

Mike