It’s tough to gain traction in today’s market.  As much as we might like to wish that a rising tide will lift all boats, the truth is that any mature open marketplace is going to favor established players. Like it or not, having a great new idea or product is not enough and never has been.  New market entrants must be willing to pay the costs of entry in order to compete.  They must be willing to spend heavily at the beginning in order create product and brand recognition with consumers.  It costs real money to establish infrastructure, create quality products, and then build brand awareness around those products.

How much?

Last week I told you that Johnson & Johnson spent roughly half a billion dollars on advertising last year in order to ensure that YOU will have heard of their products BEFORE you see them on store shelves.  Certainly that’s on the high side of major corporate ad budgets, but even so, $500 million is a lot of money even for a Fortune 100 company.  To put that sum into perspective, consider that Marvel is borrowing roughly that same amount from some of the nation’s major investment banks in order to create its own movie studio almost from scratch.  Thus, in establishing an ad budget that’s that large, J&J is saying that advertising is a critical part of their day-to-day operations.  They are acknowledging the simple truth: the success of their ad campaigns will largely determine the success of their product lines in any given year.

The major comic companies spend on advertising too.  I would argue that Marvel’s main ad focus is B2B so that much (if not most) of their ad dollars go towards informing other businesses about the value of Marvel’s character brands, but Marvel is also spending real money to advertise their comics too.  Heard about Civil War?  House of M?  Spider-Man’s new costume?  That didn’t happen by accident.  Marvel planned a marketing campaign to make sure that you’d hear about these events before they actually happen.  And Marvel spent real money getting their message out.  That’s how the game is played.  It’s how real companies compete successfully in an open market.

Here are the results.

If you read my fill-in column a few weeks ago, then you may remember a survey I did for Diamond’s Top 300 from August 2004.  Well, I did that same survey again last week, this time for April 2006.  I learned that the Big 2 are competing successfully for your dollars, but almost nobody else is – at least in the Direct Market (for better or for worse, I don’t have data on the Bookstore Market).  To my mind, the only noteworthy exception is ASP’s Mouseguard, which sold out its initial print run of about 8,000 copies and then did another 1,200 in its second printing.  Now Mouseguard – and by extension ASP - seems ready to gain moment through the summer, perhaps even building a brand with a real national following.  Other than that, the rest of the market (especially Darkhorse and Image’s Kirkman-verse) seem to be surviving on Trades…  Or on little more than hopes and dreams.  It’s impossible to gauge the financial success of most of the larger independent companies without more months of data on their TPB performance, especially in the Bookstore Market, but these numbers show clearly that the monthly singles market is an incredibly tough place for indies, especially indies that aren’t based on licensed properties. 

A few items I found interesting:

·         In April 2006, Mouseguard was the ONLY independent, non-Big 4, non-licensed property title that did enough sales to sustain its own production costs

·         In August 2004, there approximately 130 superhero titles in Diamond’s Top 300.  By April 2006, that number had grown to 169.

·         Not surprisingly, sex sells:

o        Red Sonja outsold Conan in our study month

o        Three of the Top 300 had value propositions that were essentially pornographic

 

Okay, so now we’re all depressed.  Why bring this stuff up?  I brought it up because this week’s Comic You Should Be Reading is NISHA from Crossover Comics, probably the best but least commercial comic I’ve ever seen and certainly the best comic I’ve ever seen that Diamond refused to distribute.

 

NISHA

In the mid-1970’s, the United States and the Soviet Union were deadlocked in arms control talks that seemed doomed to failure.  Then suddenly a still unknown breakthrough occurred.  In NISHA, writer/artist Robert Gavila speculates that the breakthrough happened as the result of an event that scared both sides so much that each felt it had no choice but to compromise for the sake of national security.  Robert then goes on to give his book the following tag line: “On the list of internationally banned weapons, one stands apart from the rest…  This one wants to be left alone.”

Despite that great tag line and what I personally think are a pair of catchy covers, it’s not hard to see why Diamond passed on this book.  There’s nothing commercial about it at all.  The art isn’t romantic, the story isn’t romantic, and there isn’t one single sexy character in the entire story.  Instead, this is a book about family and about politics and about a whole bunch of other stuff that have lately been total non-sellers in the Direct Market.  Plus, the book is in black and white, it’s printed on newsprint, and it isn’t even greyscaled.  I can well imagine a Diamond rep opening up his copy, taking one good long look at it, and then setting it aside without even reading it while thinking, “Man, this isn’t at all like anything else on the market.”  

And it’s true.  NISHA just isn’t like any other comics I’ve read lately.  To be quite honest, until you read this book you’re almost guaranteed to underestimate it. It doesn’t rely on flash or color or any other form of sexy artistic bullshit to get the reader’s attention. NISHA is a great story that relies on quality writing and quality sequential storytelling to get the job done. And make no mistake; it does get the job done.  NISHA grabs you by the throat, and it doesn’t let go.  Like a great novel, it’s a genuine page-turner.  I read it fast, gulping it down like a victim of literary dehydration.  Intrigue? Politics?  A life and death family struggle?  Sign me up for every issue of this series right now!  Until I read NISHA, it had been so long since a comic grabbed my attention like this that I had honestly forgotten what it felt like. Simply put, this comic reminded me why I’m a fan of comics.  It was that good.  It blew me away.

The joy of reading and reviewing independent comics is discovering great unknown work like this. In writing about indies, I’m always torn between writing about work that I think readers might see in their local shops and work that I personally like but which is created for an audience of maybe a few dozen people at best.  I’ll cover a book like TRON because it’s a major event from a fairly well-known publisher (SLG), and so I feel like you, my readers, have a good chance of being able to impulse-buy it out in the open market. And that’s good.  Plus, most other comics sites didn’t cover TRON despite the fact that the book was based on a popular movie and videogame series, so covering it made sense all the way around.  However, although TRON #1 was an entertaining book, it’s still a licensed property coming out of the Disney family of properties, and as such it lacks the creator passion that you see in creator-owned work.  TRON is a work-for-hire piece.  It wasn’t made from love. 

Going the other way and covering exclusively creator-owned small press stuff isn’t much of a solution, either.  The very vast majority of small press books are not good.  I wish they were, but they aren’t, and they give the few true indies that are good a bad name.  All those bad books are keeping the good ones out of shops, and covering books that aren’t in shops too often will cause this column to lose its relevance to the casual reader and retailer.  What good is a column that recommends comics you NEVER see?  For most readers, those comics might as well not exist.  Thus, I typically try to focus on indies in PREVIEWS and hope to strike a balance.  Do you have a great color indie?  That’s what I’m looking for; that’s what I want to cover.  Really small press B&W stuff is a tough sell, even to me.

I only cover truly books like NISHA when they are AMAZING.  By covering it, I am asking you to go online and spend as much as fifteen minutes and (in this case) $6 + shipping and handling on books you’ve never heard of from a creator with whom you have no familiarity at all. I know it’s a stretch. I’m not stupid.  And I wouldn’t do it if it weren’t worth your time.  But NISHA is worth your time, and I’m not the only one who thinks so.  It was nominated for the 2004 Howard Eugene Day Memorial Prize, presented at this year’s SPACE Con by Dave Sim. It’s a great story with great art and an unbelievable amount of suspense.  It’ll keep you on the edge of your seat from the word “Go!” in a way that you’ve forgotten is possible.  Do do yourself a favor: break your routine and go order NISHA today.  It’s a truly small press Comic that I guarantee you Should Be Reading. 

 

Repercussion Comics Presents

I liked NISHA so much that I recommended it to my friend and new publisher Jason DeGroot.  Jason has spent much of the last six months or so getting his little enterprise Repercussion Comics ready for a monthly print and production schedule to be distributed by independent distributor Tony Shenton, and it is my fervent hope that NISHA can find a home with Jason and with the RC Group.  So far, the RCG has firm orders from MidTown Comics and from Jim Haneley’s Universe as well as from a few other large independent shops, and with any luck, the eventual monthly title (tentatively called Repercussion Comics Presents but certainly subject to potential future name changes) will be able to grow its circulation up from zero through 100 and then beyond.  I personally believe this is possible so long as the Group maintains its a commitment to quality and regular production, and I hope that the Group can find a way to integrate NISHA into its plans. 

What that has to do with me, beyond mere friendship, is that Jason is getting my OGN Bronx Angel: Politics By Another Method greyscaled so that it can run as a four issue mini series starting early next year as part of the new monthly title.  He’s even arranging to get a new back-up story (called BOOT CAMP) done so that it can run as a companion piece to the 14-page BORN LEADER short story. Or, to put it another way, Jason rescued me after I had to close my own company down.  That doesn’t suck.  I don’t really have all of the details on the RCG and its plans yet, but the whole thing is pretty exciting, especially in a world where the current market players have made it abundantly clear that small press indies are not wanted.  However, I can promise you that you’ll know more when I know more.

 

Stray Voltage

I gave some investment advice last week.  After I did it, I thought it might be more fun if I also kept score.  So using the Wall Street Journal’s online fund tracker and several of Vanguard’s standard mutual funds, I set up a fictional $5,000 investment along the lines recommended last week.  I used Vanguard for two reasons: 1) it’s very common, so you can probably pick these funds in your 401K program if you want to, and 2) it’s cheap, and I wanted to ignore fees.  I set up the following investments:

·               Vanguard International Value Fund - $2000

·               Vanguard Money Market Reserves Fund - $1500

·               Vanguard US Value Fund - $1000

·               Vanguard S&P 500 Index Fund - $500

After a week, here’s the score:

I was pretty happy with that considering that it’s been a tough week on Wall Street.  If you’re wondering, what you’re seeing here is a broad-based international sell-off that was belied by the fact that the dollar lost ground to most overseas currencies so that even as the value of our overseas investments dropped in absolute terms, they rose in terms of US dollars. Also, the Money Market Fund will be a stabilizing influence in an otherwise volatile marketplace.  That should help over the next few months as well.

 

Steve Offenheim published a new episode of Awesome Storm Justice 41 this week, marking the start of the series’ new bi-weekly publishing schedule.  This week’s episode is part of a new mini series staring Saiko, a character who got her own series because we felt like she had gotten lost in the shuffle during the first story arc.  We forgot to give her any lines!  Anyway, I’ve had nothing whatsoever to do with this new mini series (I didn’t even read it until it was published this week), so I feel like I’m qualified to tell you that so far it’s excellent.  If you have five minutes, go check it out.  It’s only six pages long, and it’s in full color.  Click the pic to follow the link. à

If you’re wondering, I get back into the ASJ mix in two weeks.  I wrote episodes 11 and 12.  After that, I’m moving over to nearly full-time editing duties as I have been asked to manage the production of the ORIGINS project, by far our largest project to date.  ORIGINS will tell the stories of how our heroes all came to ASJ, a total of seven mini series running perhaps 150 pages.  Wow!  I can’t believe I signed up for that.

While we're talking about it, here's the teaser for Episode 11. Pencils by Sheldon "Cuddly" Goh.

 

Overall it was a kind of a tough Memorial Day.  The big BBQ was cancelled on account of rain, and then things kind of went downhill from there, but I still managed to get my garden planted, and I grilled out every night, so I suppose it wasn’t that bad.  Also, Sally and I also took the kids to the beach.

 

There’s no Preview of the Week this week.  No one sent one in, and I didn’t go seek one out.  If you were looking forward to it, I’m sorry. And if you have a comic that you’d like for me to preview, then let this be a lesson to you.  SEND IT IN!

And finally, this week is the big Wizard World Philly show, and I’ll be there covering it for PBR.com.  Now that you’ve seen me, flag me down if you see me and show me your stuff.  I love comics and want to talk about you!

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About the columnist:

Dan Head is a utilities analyst and occasional freelance writer and editor. He is a 2006 graduate of Fordham University’s Graduate School of Business and winner of the school’s prestigious Irving S. Friedman Award for excellence in International Studies.  His ramblings occasionally amuse his wife, but they always amuse his kids.  Dan is now 33 years old.