All right, let me toss a bone out here. This is my impression of the 'risk' factor in the industry in terms of publishers, distributors, and retailers. Please correct any obvious gaffes in my logic-- I have no pride about this.

Wiht the advent of the Direct Market, the industry was considered to be either 'saved' or, at worst, granted a reprieve from eventual death and stagnation (sounds harsh, I guess).

How it worked was that the publishers, primarily the big ones, got the best part of the deal with lessened cost risks associated with overprinting. Nice. The retailers got exactly what they wanted at a nicer discount (?) and whatever didn't sell went into back issue bins.

Ten years later, it appears that the retailers are running all the risks because of that very lack of returnability what with prices being so wildly higher, diminished readership, and any other reason you might name.Am I more or less right so far?

So, you have what is an essentially cottage industry of publishers, A distributor, and a lot of at-risk retail shops selling product to a diminishing customer-base who are given absolutely no incentive (barely) to support unproven new titles and the publishers moan and the creators kvetch cause their title isn't selling through, or is ordered at too small an amount.

At this point, the retailers are holding the biggest bag of the risk. Publishers have their risks, too, but how it compares to the beleaguered retailers, I'm not sure, not being able to get behind the eyes of one of them.

Thoughts?

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Chris Juricich
Berkeley, CA

I'd say you've got most parts of it basically right (although I'm probably at risk of attracting more scorn from Groth and Co. for expressing an opinion about the comics business here). Points I'd expand on, are that it appears most publishers are losing money on their comics these days. From what I can suss out, the surviving companies are floating theor publishing lines on licensing revenue.

I also think it would be worthwhile to try and pinpoint when and where the Direct Sales Market decided not to build a readership and instead focused on collectors. A short sighted, quick-buck, suicidal strategy if ever I've seen one.

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Rick Veitch
Invites You To Read THE DAILY RARE BIT FIENDS
updated every day along with news of the world's most popular artform!
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"I also think it would be worthwhile to try and pinpoint when and where the Direct Sales Market decided not to build a readership and instead focused on collectors."

Uh, would that be Day One? The whole idea of buying non-returnable comics is based on the fact that collectors buy non-current comics. Of course, we didn't realize yet that we were moving away from the idea that comics are intended to be read (personally, I collected the back issues so I could read them) -- but then, we also didn't realize that the Direct Market would someday dominate the industry.

Quack, Don

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HUNDREDS of daily comics -- and MORE!
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>>I also think it would be worthwhile to try and pinpoint when and where the Direct Sales Market
decided not to build a readership and instead focused on collectors. A short sighted, quick-buck,
suicidal strategy if ever I've seen one.<<

Unlike Don, I don't think this happened from Day One, but I think it occurred pretty early on, certainly no later than 1980.

Once the publishers began to use the DM as the barometer for sales, as opposed to the newsstand, the death knell was sounded. When the publishers began to use "That won't sell in the DM" as a reason not to publish a title (and began cancelling the existing titles that had poor DM sales but marginal newsstand sales), it was the beginning of the end. That was the point when the publishers put all their eggs in the fan/collector basket and sent only the leftovers to the mass market.

Best, Pat

I can't speak to the question of day one, but my first order form from Phil Seuling was September 1973 (his third.) In it he talked of the exciting first issues being offered. They were Warren's Spirit 1, Sandman 1 from DC, and another that I don't recall.

The complaint about the "collectors" destroying comics rings hollow for me, though. The last 27 years have seen a much more vigorous comics publishing field than we had in 1973. Without the collectors' market, we'd have never seen the variety of publishing options that we still have in this, our darkest hour.

If Phil hadn't thrown publishers a life line, and they had somehow found an alternative means of survival, would they have been welcoming to the Fantagrapics, Aaarvark-Vanaheims, and Drawn & Quarterlys of the world? I'm doubtful.

I recently saw a quote (from Ring Lardner?) that goes something like, "The race is not always to the swift, or the battle to the strong. But that's the way to bet."

Oh, yeah. Pat, the mass market has not existed as an option for many years. Would Wizard be on the newsstands without Direct Market sales?

I bring up Wizard, because it's the only comics related product I can think of that has been introduced to the newsstands successfully in the last 20 years. (Is it even successful, there?)

Jim,
I wasn't complaining about collectors, but of the lack of a reader's market which is something that should have/could have been nurtured and built. Back when I was doing SWAMP THING in the mid 80's, DC was at least making noises about going after real world readers, rather than focusing exclusively on collector's. I think VERTIGO was created with this direction specifically in mind. Fantagraphics is aimed straight at readers too.

But most of the publishers seem to have gone after the inflationary bubble of the speculator market.

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Rick Veitch
Invites You To Read THE DAILY RARE BIT FIENDS
updated every day along with news of the world's most popular artform!
THE COMICON.COM DAILY SPLASHis always refreshing!
www.comicon.com/splash


[This message has been edited by Rick Veitch (edited 02-14-2000).]

Jim Hanley suggests that the collector's market may have actually been the force behind the 'saving/delayed death' of the comics medium. Certainly, the only real solid buyers in the comics shops were the steady fans and collectors, but then, if one considers that, they also would be the only folks who would be willing to pony up the extra $$ as the prices edged higher and higher and higher.

Isn't it a safe bet to say that comics since about 1985 (75¢?) have now nearly quadrupled in cost? Comics fans are like cigarette smokers--they're addicted and will do anything to get their weekly fix. It's that solid fanbase of collector-geeks and fans who have really helped to keep the medium alive, don't you think?

An ancillary question is; and it relates to Rick V's early comments about...well, I forget, but that question is: How much longer can that collector/reader fanbase continue to support an industry that caters to it hand and mouth as it grows older and there are no replacements for that fanbase?

I know I'm buying fewer books each month out of simple requirements of time, interest, and pricing.Some books I actually like and would enjoy even at their price point but I have other things I'd prefer to do, be it work, cartooning, or family-time.Many books are simply not worth the $$ to me.

In 1989-90, there was a large influx of young consumers into the comics market. The sources of this wave were: the Batman movie, Marvel's 1990 series of character revivals and SkyBox's first Marvel trading card series. These new consumers were the basis for the Image/Wizard generation because they had much less brand loyalty than their predecessors.

That the large publishers would try to cater to these new consumers is hardly surprising. That they would try to duplicate successes is also understandable. If cover enhancements caused sales to quintuple, it's hard to fault publishers for doing more of the same.

The problem is that the decision-making process was in the hands of people who had no idea why anyone would buy a comic book. All the information they had to go on was sales. That all these special editions would cause their long-time readers to drop their books was counter-intuitive, or at least seemed so.

There continues to be much criticism of Paul Levitz, here and elsewhere, but he is unique among the big three in that he is a long-time comics reader and fan. DC's actions, during his tenure, have been consistent in their aim to broaden the appeal of comics. He does have to answer for the Diamond decision, but he was not alone in misreading the effect of disrupting the distribution system.

1963 #1 selling 660,000 copies was an amazing aberration. If only those copies had sold-through.

A realistic number for 1963 would probably have been under 50,000, so $600,000 (more or less) was wasted on future land-fill. A nice payday for the creators, to be sure, but that money had to come from somewhere.

I recently had a conversation with a professional who was stuck for a bill by Kitchen Sink and boy, was he livid. In the course of the conversation, he mentioned that when Glenwood went out of business, he owed them money.

I don't think he appreciated my pointing out, "Then, Denis Kitchen only redressed the balance."

Like the man said, let he who is without sin, cast the first stone.

Jim,
Not sure what you are driving at with the stone casting bit since I'm not trying to bop anyone in the noggin with a rock here. Just musing that the opportunity to build the audience for comics into something broader and wider (say akin to what the Romance Novel industry succeeded in doing) was missed. I count myself among those who missed it, too!

The 1963 book was an abberation, not only in sales that caught the speculator frenzy at its peak (April of 1993), but that it actually was a good book of which I am quite proud! Without question we were trying to catch that surging wave at the time (not really conscious of where and when it was going to come crashing down), but my intention was to fund my self publishing efforts. The money I personally made from that series all got poured back in via RARE BIT FIENDS.

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Rick Veitch
Invites You To Read THE DAILY RARE BIT FIENDS
updated every day along with news of the world's most popular artform!
THE COMICON.COM DAILY SPLASHis always refreshing!
www.comicon.com/splash