>>The major points of disagreement that I see are that Pat seems to believe: 1) book stores might
really be viable venues for a revitalized comics field,<<

Yes, provided the people publishing comics in a graphic novel/TPB format are willing to commit to that venue as more than an afterthought. (BTW, Nat seems to think bookstores are already a viable venue, even without the kind of promotion I consider a prequisite.)

>> 2) there ie some cost-effective way to advertise comics to mainstream audiences,<<

Not advertise, promote. I'm not talking about TV or even print ads, here. I'm talking about participation in display programs in bookstores, so that graphic storytelling volumes get the same kind of promotional space in bookstores that prose volumes do. I'm talking about relatively inexpensive things like providing review copies on a regular basis to newspapers and magazines. I'm talking about making creators available for interviews, maybe even sending them on a book tour.

>> and 3) book publishing is a real business, as opposed to one
where (as I read yesterday in the NY Observer) success is always a surprise.<<

Big successes may be surprises, but everyday profitability is not.

Best, Pat

>>What original graphic novels do you find in with the kids, humor and SF titles, Nat? In every chain bookstore I walk into (Borders, Waldenbooks, B Dalton), they are shelved by themselves, along with the reprint collections from the major comics publishers. <<

And yet, in some of those very same chains as well as other chains like B&N and independent bookstores, I find things such as The Big Books and Why I Hate Saturn in with the humor books, I find Tin-tin and Asterix in the Kids sections, I find a variety of graphic novels (sometimes inappropriate ones, admittedly) in the oversized SF section. I see Larry Gonick's work popping up in a number of appropriate sections.


And yet, they are both books of comics, which was the topic under discussion. And your repeated attempts to treat the topic of discussion as if it were about some smaller subset of what has been mentioned before is a typical Pat tactic. I say "book-format projects", your trying to contradict that refers solely to "graphic novels". I actually respond to your "graphic novels" remark, and you slide it to "original graphic novels" (a description which conveniently leaves out Dark Knight, Watchmen, Sandman TPBs, ElfQuest TPBs, Maus, and oh so much more). Let me guess that what's coming next is "original full-color hardcover graphic novels", right? Oh, wait, that might include There's A Hair In My Dirt, which shows up in both the Humor section and the Kids section... maybe you better put something in it that requires that the book has pictures of cats in it.

>>And yet, they are both books of comics, which was the topic under discussion. And your repeated
attempts to treat the topic of discussion as if it were about some smaller subset of what has been
mentioned before is a typical Pat tactic. I say "book-format projects", your trying to contradict that
refers solely to "graphic novels". I actually respond to your "graphic novels" remark, and you slide it
to "original graphic novels" (a description which conveniently leaves out Dark Knight, Watchmen,
Sandman TPBs, ElfQuest TPBs, Maus, and oh so much more). Let me guess that what's coming
next is "original full-color hardcover graphic novels", right? Oh, wait, that might include There's A Hair
In My Dirt, which shows up in both the Humor section and the Kids section... maybe you better put
something in it that requires that the book has pictures of cats in it.<<

We WERE talking about the success or failure of the projects *DC* places in bookstores, weren't we? DC do any newspaper strip reprint collections? (Other than the Superman and Batman volumes in conjunction with Kitchen Sink--which have little in common with collections of current ongoing strips, right?)

Who's moving the goalposts, Nat?

Best, Pat

Optimism and pessimism seem to be the dominant characteristics of the disagreements about the viability of the bookstore market for comics or TPBs (though the pessimist might arguably consider it as realism).

God, who knows? Check out the attendant thread on comics and advertising next door.

Jumping around a little. Pat said:


My understanding is that everyday profitablitlity in prose sales is quite rare. In many ways they have done to themselves exactly what you have suggested we do to our industry. They spend every last dime they have promoting books hoping to have a few big winners that turn into cash cows. Why do you think the publisher didn't pay Marvel for their prose novel line? Even though they were publishing a "successful" line of novels, the publisher had no money in the bank. The whole thing is a giant shell game where the real money is in getting into the supermarkets and the Wal-Marts. If comics are going to make any money at the book stores it's not by playing by those rules.



The best thing for comic shops today would be for the X-men movie to be as good as the first Batman movie for bringing in new fans. The worst thing would be for it make comics look dumb like Batman 4.

Jim


Actually, I think this is a huge problem. Personally, I've got lots of Marvel runs of over ten years that now end with the last issue. I followed those titles through good times and bad. Now Marvel ends it to re-launch it and I have to evaluate it as an "title to add". Since I buy more comics than I should, even Mark Waid's return to Cap didn't make the cut. Marvel doesn't seem to realise that a jumping-on issue shouldn't look like a good place to get off.



I agree that lowering the cover price will do nothing helpful. We need to either raise the value of the leftover comics or resign ourselves to the idea that no one is going to order much of anything for the shelves.

Rik

>>quote:

FBOFW has a daily "promotions" program working for its collected volumes--it's called
a daily and Sunday comic strip appearing in several hundred newspapers nationwide.


The best thing for comic shops today would be for the X-men movie to be as good as the first Batman
movie for bringing in new fans. The worst thing would be for it make comics look dumb like Batman 4.<<

But the movie "bounce" never lasts more than a year (often less than six months). FBOFW's presence in the newspapers is a daily, ongoing "promotion" for the collected volumes.

Oh--and the first Batman film might have made comics attractive to the high-school and college crowd, but (as a guy who was a parent with kids in the right age bracket at the time) I couldn't take my elementary school-age kids to that film; I wouldn't even let them watch the animated series in its initial run. (The oldest was seven at the time.)

We NEED the kids right now...and a movie that parents can't comfortably bring their kids to will not help.

(Oh, and the fourth Batman film, for all its faults, featured a Batman and Robin that were much closer to my best memories of the comics' versions than any of the first three films.)

Best, Pat

Jim

Yes, until you slid the goalposts with:

When that was addressed, you shifted the goalposts repeatedly in a way that eliminated Sandman, Watchmen, Moonshadow, Mad collections, Transmetropolitan, and so much
more.

Why, yes! They're currently planning to reprint The Spirit, a newspaper feature by Will Eisner.

You, Pat. It's one of your standard tactics. I can't recall it particularly fooling anyone, though.

I guess I wasn't the only one who liked Batman 3 & 4 better than 1 & 2.

Since Pat keeps moving the bar (bookstores to advertising to promotions to who knows what) as actual evidence is provided to him, I just want to contribute a few more facts here.

>>DC has never really gotten behind its bookstore-targeted product. Where are the ads?<<

DC uses outside advertising when appropriate. Helix, for example, was advertised in science fiction magazines. A TV Guide ad was put in in particular regions in connection with local bookstores. As I suspect you know, though, any ad expenditure must be balanced with the expected return ... and most of the time, the numbers just don't make sense.

>>I wonder if having a separate "graphic storytelling" section in a bookstore isn't simply another form of ghettoizing the medium.<<

Dunno... do you also consider audiobooks "ghettoized"? It's another format with its own section, like comics.

Then again, I found Ethel & Ernest in the literature section, Bitchy Bitch on the New Releases table, and Maus in Jewish studies, so maybe it's just your store.

>>I'm talking about relatively inexpensive things like providing review copies on a regular basis to newspapers and magazines.<<

DC did this. (I'm speaking in past tense because it's been several years since I worked there, and I wouldn't want to appear to be talking outside my actual knowledge.)

>>I'm talking about making creators available for interviews, maybe even sending them on a book tour.<<

And this.


------------------
Johanna

Reviews of Comics Worth Reading - www.comicsworthreading.com

Isn't it true that every thread runs off topic?



I wasn't trying to make a value judgment on the movies, just the way they affected fans. I don't think any of them comes close to what the Batman Animated series has given us.

I was glad to see Burton go, esp after the all-visuals-no-plot Batman Returns (Batman 2, for those of you who have dedicated free brain cells to advertiseing jingles instead of which unrelated name goes to which movie). Tim Burton's take on the characters was very different from the comics, some people would use the term "wrong" to describe it.

Schumacher's Batman was a Batman I had seen before, played by Adam West. Yes, it was played straight, not for laughs, but it was still a kind of a farce. The characters were closer, like they had read the comics once or twice, but the plot was rather by-the-numbers and they introduced WAY too many characters in every movie except the first (which also would have been a better movie if they could have used the original ending.)

That said, I think Batman (1) sent more fans to the shops because it was not your father's superhero. Three and Four didn't inspire so many new fans because it was much closer to what they expected.

If the Barnes and Nobles list from another thread is to be believed, Mystery Men sold a few copies of it's trade, probably to people who don't regularly collect.

Rik
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I reserve the right to edit my posts to correct mistakes.

[This message has been edited by Rik (edited 02-22-2000).]