First, I wanna say thanks to Ike for fixing the thread title for me. If you were a female and attractive I’d ask you to bare my children.
Some people asked some questions about current comics market sales practices that weren’t answered so I’ll give a couple of quick responses to them, and then I’m going to expound on the direct market and the effects it has had upon the industry, and then I’m going to list what I think should be done to fix the current state of the industry. I know some people already know most of this stuff but this is for the people who don’t.
Comics come out on a weekly basis, however that’s just how the publishers have planned the distribution of their titles, most of the individual titles themselves come out on a monthly basis; in other words Spider-Man comes out this week, The Hulk next week and people are running to the comics store on a weekly basis for different comics. There have been a few comics that went weekly for periods of time, Action Comics did in the eighties I believe, but that’s unusual.
As for returning unsold comics to the publisher, that depends on who they are sold to and what arrangement the publisher has with them. In the late seventies the direct market was formed, separate from the traditional mainstream stores that sold comics. The key difference that led to the formation and explosion of the direct market was that the direct market buyer could order whatever he wanted from the publisher, whereas the mainstream sellers took whatever was handed to them; this enabled the comics reader to be able to go to one place (a direct market shop) and pick up whatever he desired instead of running all over town looking for Captain Carrot #54. The direct market pays a lesser dollar amount for the comics than mainstream retailers, therefore garnering higher profits on individual comics sold, with the catch that unlike mainstream retailers those books purchased from the publisher are unreturnable and that’s why any comic shop you go into will have a bin of comics being sold for a quarter when their cover price is $2. So the short answer to the question is the returnablity of comics depends on who ordered them.*
The formation of the direct market has been a boon to comics’ content and a bane to comics industry sales.
The direct market has allowed the telling of longer multiple-issue stories with greater complexity within the comics by giving the readers someplace they could go and be sure to pick up the next issue, whereas before the direct market was formed it was hit or miss whether or not the reader could get his hands on the next issue in the series thus limiting the length of the story. After the direct market appeared epics told within the confines of a single comics series became commonplace (does anyone really think there’s no direct relationship between the popularity of Chris Claremont’s character driven X-Men in the late seventies-early eighties and the fact that it coincided with the rise of the direct market?).
It also allowed the publishers to put out material that wouldn’t fit on supermarket spinner racks, such as more adult oriented comics or single issue comics that greatly exceeded the 22 page format the majority of comics have, hence the sharp rise in graphic novel comics and self-contained stories and experimentation that they can provide.
Another benefit of the direct market was that it allowed greater accessibility to independent comics, because comics shop owners would usually order at least a handful of them, thus giving comics readers easier access to comics that would never have been sold in spinner racks.
The three factors above have done wonders for the complexity of stories told within the medium, thereby helping comics gain a bit of respectability (although far from enough), but this is still far outweighed by the negative stigmatism attached to what is primarily a one genre driven industry. They also caused an initial surge in comics publishers’ profits because they allowed comics fans to be able to purchase more comics that interested them than ever before. Ultimately though, the way the direct market has been run has wound up making it a self-defeating proposition for comics publishers, retailers and, by extension, potential readers.
As was already pointed out by numerous other posters the comics industry caters to the fanboy and that is a large reason for its decline in sales. Direct Market shops started placing orders based upon what sold the most, which unfortunately happened to be what the fanboys of the time wanted: super-heroes. Although super-heroes had risen back into prominence within the industry by the time of the formation of the direct market there were still plenty of other genres available; however by the direct market concentrating primarily on that one genre the majority of other material faded away, which in turn has alienated anyone who was interested in non-super-hero comics. The comics shop owner has inadvertently doomed himself and the industry to lower sales.
The rise of the direct market has also largely pushed comic books out of most other markets. Anyone who is old enough and has been in a supermarket or convenience store has noticed the disappearance of the spinner rack. This is largely due to comics fans no longer buying comics from anywhere but specialty shops, and as been pointed out above, comics fans turning their noses up at the slightest imperfections of a book, something guaranteed to happen on a spinner rack. Although bookstores have started to have a section for graphic novels they are usually ill-kept with little thought given to organization, filled with super-hero titles and also usually buried somewhere in the back of the store. This means that when someone goes into a bookstore they are unlikely to stumble upon any of the graphic novels it carries, and even if they do they will likely show disdainful disregard for what is frequently just a bunch of super-hero books jumbled together.
I have several ideas on what could be done to fix the industry, and it involves efforts on the part of comics retailers and publishers, and a few small sacrifices from comics readers, to make them happen.
Like everyone’s suggested, the return of spinner racks to supermarkets is a good idea. However instead of having them be the primary selling point of comics it should only be used as a jumping off point for potential new readers. The comics sold in spinner racks should keep the smaller page format, although perhaps jumping back up to a sixty-four page size with an anthology format inside (good idea JRDelirious), with the stories contained within being of no more complexity than what you would find in your average prime time TV show, but being from a variety of genres to show that comics has more to offer than just super-heroes (I’m only suggesting single issue comics and anthologies be put in supermarket type settings, they should not be the industry standard, graphic novels should). It would help hook young people into the market and might snag a few adults as well. Also it would be a good idea for comics publishers to include non-comics specialty shops in their next free-comics-day and include more non-super-hero books in what is given away. But spinner racks (or whatever variation of them) and free comics giveaways won’t be a cure-all for the industry and instead there needs to be a focus on the comic book’s primary outlets as well.
Direct market shops need to reshape themselves and change their self-presentation. They need to increase the variety of comics they carry so as to appeal to non-super-hero readers. They also need to lose most of the toys and other clutter, because that turns off non-fanboys when they enter the store and reinforces the image that comics are for kids or geeks; at the very least they need to put that stuff in the back of the shop. I’m not saying that the toys and assorted knick-knacks are for kids, I’ve bought some of that stuff myself, I’m saying that it projects a negative image to potential readers about comics and its readers.
They also need to move the graphic novels from the back of the store to the front (the fanboy will trek the extra twenty feet to get his single issue fix) and stop arranging them by publisher and instead focus on genre like traditional bookstores do. This means a potential reader can skip over super-heroes, if that is his desire, and browse through the dramas or thrillers or whatever his interest is without hunting all over the store. It would also help to have the graphic novels placed with their bindings facing out, instead of the current practice of displaying their covers, because that would help associate comic books more with traditional books and hopefully improve their image (and I know that I pointed out that comics are their own art form and are different from normal books, but the most important thing right now is getting people reading comics, there can be work done on distinguishing the mediums later).
I don’t think there needs to be an emphasis on selling comic books primarily out of traditional bookstores, although I could see how that could easily come about, and as long as bookstores change their placement habits with regards to comics I wouldn’t have a problem with that. I think the direct market can do it on its own however, and each, the bookstore and the comics store, can focus on their own specialties with some cross marketing of books and comic books being fine. However, within the bookstores there should be a push from comics publishers to get them to move the comics towards the front of the store, instead of the dark corner they’re usually in, and have them be organized along the lines I listed for comics direct market retailers. The current arrangement in bookstores is revolting.
As for the publishers, they need to put more original, non-super-hero genre, graphic novels out. I’ve said it multiple times, but lack of variety is a large reason for the oncoming death of the industry. They also need to remove the emphasis of targeting children as new readers because that helps the impression of comics being for kids that most people have. They can still target children, but they should emphasize targeting another group: specifically they need to target mainstream teenagers, because if you can get the proverbial varsity football player to start openly reading comics the rest of the youth culture will follow. Targeting teenagers is also a good idea because most teenagers consider their pursuits to be grown-up and will likely carry the reading of comics into adult hood where they can pass it on to their children. In other words Marvel and DC need to stop targeting Sesame Street and start targeting MTV.
These are all of course my own suggestions, and I’m sure some people will disagree with them, and who knows, if implemented they could all fail, and that’s assuming that they are implementable, because it is easy to talk about performing these ideas but execution is far more difficult. But the comic industry is dying and something needs to be done relatively soon to save it.
-I need to make a quick correction to my OP. According to a website on the history of super-heroes (which is currently down, otherwise I’d link to it) comics did not go to a largely original material format until the nineteen-thirties, not around the turn of the century like I claimed, and instead primarily published collected comic strips for most of its early years. I see this as having little effect upon my argument that comics can contain non-super-hero material and thrive because comics did still exist for forty years before super-heroes hit the scene, they carried a greater variety of genres before the rise of the direct market, and during the late forties to fifties super-hero comics were dead (with the exception of DC’s big three, Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman) with other genres ruling the market.
*I called my local comics shop to make sure that direct retailers could still not return comics and he told me that in very rare circumstances they can. For instance, say a book is six months late in coming out, the interest in it may have declined at no fault to the retailer. In a situation like that the retailer may return the book because its lateness has in effect rendered it unsellable. However, as a general rule it is safe to say that direct market retailers cannot return comic books, but nearly anyone else can.
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