by Brian Hibbs
(#165 January
2008)
"People identify things like Countdown to Mystery
and Countdown to Adventure and even Lord Havok as
Countdown crossovers, but I really don't - I consider those
books to be 'spin-outs' of Countdown featuring characters
that were in Countdown, and have spun out into their own
miniseries and stories. They're not different than when say; Iceman
or Nightcrawler got their own miniseries
spinning off of X-Men. So if you say we're putting out a
lot of Countdown, 'Countdown' is a brand name the
same way that Superman is a brand name, Batman is a brand name,
or X-Men is a brand name."
Dan Didio, interview with Matt
Brady, 12/20/2007
Oh.
Well, now I understand
just where that all went wrong.
We (well, "I")
call that "The CrossGen move" - thinking
that you can create a brand out from thin air, rather than
A) doing the long and hard work it takes to create awareness of
and interest in of your brand, and B) having the underlying
quality of the base work be strong enough to reinforce that brand
in every iteration of branding.
I mean, that's
not to pick on CrossGen, or anything,
but they essentially line-expanded themselves out of business because
they thought the CrossGenbrand, in and of itself, was strong enough to keep
leveraging new work against the brand. It wasn't, and what it ended
up actually doing was diluting the value of the brand. Of
course, CrossGen had such a massive overhead
with the salaried creators and the Complex and Perks and everything
else, that they pretty much had to keep trying to expand
their line to cover their nut.
(I know that phrase
sounds slightly risque, but to "cover one's nut" is to have enough
cash inflow to at least pay for your fixed day-to-day expenses -
the ones you can't reduce or cutback)
But here's the
thing: "brand names" aren't something that can be generated - they're
something that need to evolve out of a genuine interest on the part
of the audience. "X-Men," as a brand, wasn't created overnight -
it took years of growing the awareness of the characters and situation
(let's not forget that X-Men was nearly canceled in the
1970s - being all-reprint from #67-93), slowly adding titles before
they ever got around to doing secondary character spin-off mini-series.
If you put out expansions of a title before solidifying your audience
for the original work you run the enormous risk of alienating your
total customer base.
And there's one
of the key problems with Countdown - this "spin-out" material
was clearly well in the pipeline long before the audience had formed
an opinion (good or ill) of Countdown itself. And
probably before the point where the audience was even aware of what
Countdown was!
Let's remember
that Countdown didn't even indicate what it was counting
downwards towards until the half-way point of the series. So, from
just a basic marketing POV, you have a product that was reasonably
vague in nature, without any particular specific thing or event
propelling it forward in the consumer's mind. We were told that
it was the "spine of the DC universe," certainly - but that doesn't
actually tell you anything of the goals or the remit of the series.
Is it any real surprise that there didn't turn out to be a tremendous
built-in audience for the "franchise" of "Countdown"? Not only didn't
anyone really know what Countdown was, but the "spin-outs"
were a disparate bunch of items, encompassing anthology series (like
Countdown to Mystery and to Adventure), reprints
(the various 80-page giants), the expansion of a mystery that was
virtually guaranteed not to be revealed in the outlying books (the
various "Search for Ray Palmer" titles), and mini-series revolving
around C- and D-list characters (like Lord Havok and the Extremists
or Captain Carrot) - there didn't seem to be much of a focus,
or much of a plan, just a desire to manufacture a "brand" that seemingly
no one was looking for.
Now, clearly,
this is Monday Morning Quarterbacking -
there was a mathematical chance that all of that could have
resonated with the audience, and become a giant hit. It's just that
the odds were very much against it because there wasn't any particular
clarity about the program or the franchise in the first place.
There's something
else working against Countdown as a franchise, and that's
the limited and finite nature of the title itself. Clearly, even
when we didn't know what exactly it was, Countdown was counting
down to something - and when it reaches that point, it is
over. I'd have to say that customers aren't looking for franchises
that are finite in nature - if they're going to make the commitments
needed to support the expansion of a franchise, they need to know
that the time and effort and money they're investing is going to
continue over the long haul. Countdown, by both name and
nature, can't be that - once they hit issue #1 (or #0, or whatever),
it is over.
That's the other
problem with designing this kind of a publishing plan from the top-down
- by the time you know whether it is working or not, be it either
creatively or commercially, it is both too late to capitalize on
your successes (witness the less than astonishing results of the
post-52-related series like Crime Bible or Black
Adam), nor to avoid your failures. That is to say that since
the Countdown "spin-outs" had to already be in the creation
stages before Countdown was released, in order to come out
in the middle of Countdown, DC really couldn't do anything
but release the material, despite Countdown's relatively
lackluster reception by the audience.
It seems to me
that they looked at the success of 52, and thought, "Oh, if
only we had other projects that could have capitalized on that heat
during the run of 52," and when they planned the next weekly
series they tried pre-building all of that material into the pipeline.
The problem was that Countdown wasn't a success in
the way that 52 was, and none of the "spin-outs" have seemed
to engage the audience either; and that's served to drag down the
entirety of the DC line.
As usual, that's
always the biggest risk in tying your publishing plan into a narrow
channel of events - and you would have thought that DC would have
learned this with "One Year Later" - if your core idea isn't resonating
with the audience, it then makes it easier for them to ignore your
total output. That's an entirely risky thing to do with a product
where one of its key selling points is its relationship with other
products. (aka "continuity")
*********
I've been thinking
a lot about the announcement
that Love & Rockets is ceasing publication as a periodical
and moving to an "annual" format.
This is, I think,
real "end of an era" stuff for "art" comics, though maybe I should
define a little terminology here.
There's a couple
of different splits in the way most people discuss comics publishers,
the most typical one being "mainstream" (or "big four" - DC, Marvel,
Dark Horse, Image) versus "small press" (or: everyone else) This
is generally a description of national market penetration, and doesn't
have much of a distinction of how individual titles perform in individual
stores.
By way of example,
Love & Rockets is an excellent performer for me here
at Comix Experience, invariably ending
up in my monthly top 20 sellers each time an issue is released.
We also carry, on our racks, and not tucked away in a bin somewhere,
every issue of L&R going back to the start of the current
series. These older issues don't fly out of the door, but the turn
steadily enough that it is worth giving them rack space - heck they
often sell better than brand new C-list material from Marvel
or DC.
Yet, I think it
is safe to say that most Direct Market stores don't carry any copies
of L&R on their racks whatsoever, and nationally, Fantagraphics
is really lucky if they can hit even a 1% marketshare in a typical month. Thus, the market tends to
divide things between "mainstream" and "small press."
But neither of
those divisions particularly speak to content,
or any concepts other than aggregate market share. So, generally,
it's useful to make a distinction in the so-called "small press"
between genre-driven work, and what tends to be called "art" comics.
Take for example,
the difference between publishers like, say, Avatar or Boom!, and Fantagraphics and Drawn & Quarterly. The former
publishers publish predominately "genre" work - science fiction,
crime, action/adventure, things that aren't very far from superhero
comics except for the specific tropes they are using. Genre-driven
work almost always shares the same "natural constituency" with the
typical or average Direct Market consumer. A Spider-Man reader
is only a few steps away from a (say) Warhammer
or a Black Summer reader.
On the other hand,
a Fantagraphics or Drawn & Quarterly book very seldom has genre
elements, or if they do, they're typically secondary to what the
work is trying to achieve. These publishers tend to produce work
that is more about (for lack of a better phrasing) "the human condition,"
or where they're using the Medium of comics to try and create capital-A
Art, rather than producing capital-E Entertainment. That's not
to say, of course, that Love & Rockets isn't "entertaining,"
but it isn't there to give readers a thrill about the events of
the story, in and of themselves.
Generally speaking,
"Art" comics don't have the exact same "natural constituency" as
those of "Genre" comics. See, in comics there are people who more
appreciate the tropes and trapping of the genre(s), and there are
people who are more interested in the Medium, itself. A reader who
likes Spider-Man purely (or primarily) for the genre elements is
somewhat different from the reader who likes Spider-Man as a character,
but is more interested in the Medium of comics, of which Spider-Man
is just one point on the spectrum.
(And, yes, I realize
these are extreme and gross over-generalizations of pretty nuanced
ideas, but this is a column of retailing, not taxonomy!)
On the flip side,
there's a large body of customers (or, perhaps for most stores,
potential customers) who may be
interested in the Medium of comics, but are much less interested
(if not actively turned off) by genre trappings. These tend to be
the people who when they dismiss "comics" are actually dismissing
the idea of super-heroic individuals with powers and abilities far
beyond those of mortal men.
What's curious,
to me at least, is that those people who tend to be more interested
in genre-driven work can be open to "art comics;" while those whose
primary allegiance is to Art tend to turn their noses up at genre-driven
material. There are, of course, many exceptions to these general
tendencies, but I tend to think this is generally true, and a rough
look at the data generated within my Point-of-Sale system seems
to confirm this.
There's another
way of thinking about it - "Spider-Man readers" will buy Love
& Rockets, but "Love & Rockets readers" are almost never
interested in Spider-Man.
Now the "art comics"
contingent isn't necessary looking to read comics in general - they
tend not to make regular weekly or monthly trips into the comics
shop, but it is specific works or creators they're interested in.
They can move laterally between other "art" creators, but they're
less likely to generally purchase comics just to buy "comics".
What the heck
does this have to do with L&R "the periodical"? In a
nutshell the issue is that when material isn't being produced regularly,
the "art comics" guy has less reason to go into the comics shop
- it is, usually, a special trip for them.
In a way, L&R
was the last hold out. I can remember well a period in the 90s where
there was a lot of "art comics" comics
coming out. Besides L&R there was Eightball and Hate and Optic Nerve and
Peepshow (and on and on), all of which were being produced
on at least somewhat regular schedules. It was a really rare month
that at least one "art comic" didn't get released, and more likely
you could find two or three any given month. Virtually none of those
books, individually, were being produced monthly, but collectively
there were enough that got "that type" of customer coming in regularly.
But now, as the
"art comics" creators have started to switch to more of a graphic
novel based system, you can go months without a new publication
from the Hernandez/Clowes/Tomine/Bagge/Ware/etc axis. The net
result? Less "art comics" readers come in because there�s
less regular production of work from within that axis.
I first noticed
this happening years ago when Peter Bagge's
Hate switched from being a (more or less) bi-monthly comic
to being an (more or less) "annual". As a regularly produced comic,
we'd sell 100+ copies of each issue of Hate within a four
week period. I ordered 25 copies of the most recent Hate Annual
(#7).
The "regular customer",
be they someone who checks in each and every week, or if its every two months or so, generally has a range of money
that they're willing (or able) to spend on a single visit to the
comics shop. When "art comics" were "regularly" produced in an inexpensive
periodical format, its easy for those sales to happen, be it on
an impulse or not. But when the "base format" is a $20-ish book,
it degrades the ease of those sales.
It also tends
to reduce experimentation amongst the customer base, because the
price of entry makes it prohibitive for many people. Finally, I
think it is going to make it that much harder for the next generation
of "art cartoonists" to "break out" in the first place. Anthologies
like Mome are interesting experiments,
but without a low cost opportunity, how are new voices going to
emerge?
**************************
Brian Hibbs has owned and operated Comix Experience in San Francisco since
1989, and is a founding member of the Board of Directors of ComicsPRO, the Comics Professional Retailer
Organization. Feel free to e-mail
him with any comments. You can purchase a collection of the
first one hundred Tilting at Windmills (originally serialized
in Comics Retailer magazine) from IDW
Publishing. An index of Tilting at Windmills on Newsarama
can be found right here.
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