Eric Stephenson talks to ComicsPRO
Transcript is HERE: http://www.bleedingcool.com/2014/02/28/star-wars-comics-will-never-be-the-real-thing-eric-stephenson-publisher-of-image-comics-talks-to-comicspro/
I've seen some of us speaking about it at various places around the internet. I thought we could move the discussion here, where there's no fear of trolling.
Thoughts?
I agree with about 95% of what he says, but I think he gets a little antagonistic there at the end, which dilutes his message somewhat.
Comments
Which makes sense considering the audience, but it rubs me the wrong way to hear someone go on and on about how amazing and full of potential this medium is for reaching all kinds of people (which it is, and which I love about it), then go "but they should only be getting that from this one type of place".
Like, I don't have a dog in the fight of whether the toys or a movie or a comic are the "real" thing (except I think that's a dumb distinction to make)...but he does seem to contradict himself by saying "People watch The Walking Dead, then they go buy the comic, because they want the original. But people who play with a Transformer and buy the comic just want more Transformers content" just to seem cooler.
If you're buying a comic of a thing because you got introduced to it by another medium (which is great!), I don't...what's the difference between The Walking Dead fan and the Transformers fan? Why wouldn't you want your comics being sold in Target and Wal-Mart? I guess I lean more towards "get people to read comics, period" versus "where or how from".
I like what he said about people knowing who X superhero is doesn't equate to greater comic sales for that character, and I think he could have even have pushed it further and noted that regular doses of movie and TV superheroes gives potential customers the fix they need so they don't go looking for the comics. I'm not sure if that is a legitimate theory but is something I've wondered about and would be interested in seeing any metrics on the subject.
I'm with everyone else that the Transformer analogy killed his momentum and didn't make a bunch of sense. I've read it a few times and I don't see the difference because whichever medium\version you come into contact with first defines how you view the others. I could read Transformer comics first and then discover the toys or movies, unlikely but it will alter my perspective. So viewers who watch Walking Dead and then find the comics may regard them as supplementary.
I also think his examples are a little off the mark because to me Walking Dead and Saga are stand out titles, they are the once-every-ten-years success stories rather than the marginal titles the stores and the industry have to promote better and make more of.
So, Eric Stephenson’s speech.
Read it here, if you haven’t: http://www.bleedingcool.com/2014/02/28/star-wars-comics-will-never-be-the-real-thing-eric-stephenson-publisher-of-image-comics-talks-to-comicspro/
(Note that headline is misleading as fuck – really, Rich? But we’ll get to that in a bit)
Some context: This was a speech to retailers that went to the ComicsPro meeting dealie. So when he’s saying we, he means the retailers and Image. He’s not speaking for or to other publishers, and he doesn’t mean fans. This is actually important to remember.
Now what he mostly talks about is growing the comics industry. Not making more money, as such, but actually increasing the number of people who buy and read comics. This too, is important context.
So when he talks about 4.99 and 7.99 issues, for instance, or shipping more than one issue, what he’s saying is that those tactics are designed to bring in more money from existing fans. Likewise, variant covers and new number ones are designs to get people who are reading comics to spend more money.
Now I don’t think (and I could be wrong) that this is meant to be a blanket condemnation of those things in and of themselves. Indeed, Image does some of them. What he’s condemning is doing those without doing anything to grow the comics reading base.
Because they don’t.
Don’t get me wrong – comics is a business. Even in my creator owned work I keep an eye to maximizing the amount of money I squeeze out. I am actually kind of amazed that ways Marvel (and Marvel seems to better at this than DC) has found to maximize their revenue. They understand who is reading their books and how they purchase them, and designed their business to get them to buy the most product.
But all of the above – expensive comics, variant covers, double shipping, reboots, hell, events – are things that only service people who are already reading comics. They are not things that are bringing new people to comics, and focusing only on getting most milk with the minimum of moo without breeding new cows is not good for the long term.
(I will push a metaphor until it breaks, yes)
So I agree with him there.
(I may also be wrong – the music industry analogy sort of sounds like he’s down on the whole practice. Hey, I’m not a mind reader. Not until I reach level 99 in Jordanology)
I got into comics because when I was a kid, comics where everywhere. I grew up in a rural county in Pennsylvania with a current population of around 40,000 people. As you might guess, there weren’t any comic shops around.
But every grocery store and every convenience store and what not had comics. I could go three miles down the road and but Ninja Warrior and Thrash at the AP. I got into comics because when I was a toddler my mom grabbed Popeye comics for me to…well, look at, I couldn’t yet read…when she was shopping.
I understand why comics aren’t, for the most part, in any of those places now. I do. But the truth is that thirty odd years ago, comics were infinitely more discoverable than they are now. And that’s a problem.
Where Stephenson and I part ways, to a certain extent, is on licensed comics.
A tangent: I said that Star Wars headline was misleading as fuck. And it is. A lot of people are reading it to say that Star Wars comics, and licensed comics, aren’t “real” comics
He isn’t.
He’s saying that people reading those comics are reading them because they can’t get the source material. They read Star Wars comics, but what they want is more Star Wars movies.
I don’t necessarily agree with that, but it’s a different notion than implying he was saying they weren’t real comics. He wasn’t. He said that The Walking Dead TV show isn’t the real thing either, but what he meant isn’t that it’s the original source material.
Now I’m going to thread that tangent back into my main point. Stephenson is of the mind that people that read licensed comics want that thing, and aren’t interested in comics per se, so licensed comics don’t do anything to grow the comic market.
I don’t think that’s precisely true. For one thing, I think that people that read licensed comics are, by and large, comics readers who happen to like that property. Again, this doesn’t really grow the market, so no disagreement there, I just think he’s mischaracterizing them.
Now some of the people who are reading those licensed comics surely are people who just want that property. And again, selling comics to those people doesn’t really grow the market as a whole.
But I do think that some of those people must start buying other comics. I mean, that has to be a thing that happens. But I also don’t know that it amounts to much, growthwise. So I don’t entirely disagree with him.
I do agree with overall thrust, which is that the comic industry needs to devote more time and energy to expanding their base.
If I were a retailer, I would give free comics to kids. Not just kids that came into my store, but I’d give out free issues to kids in schools. I would make sure every school and high school and library in my area was stocked with trades (and if I could, I’d make sure they all had plates that said who donated them).
If I were a publisher, I would do the same thing. I would make digital comics that kids could read on their game platforms or computers. I would make sure they had an interest in comics, not just toys or characters.
Yes, all of this would cost money. But it’s a relatively small investment against future gains.
But that’s me.
But I think it's a fair point: I leaf thru those pages and wonder if the industry is returning to the days when publishers would throw together and crank out a comic book for of any TV show they could get the rights to, most of which were just hack work to cash in on the popularity of something in another medium. What's to keep that buyer coming back when they lose interest in that franchise? Especially if the shelves are dominated by just two things: corporate superheroes and licensed franchises?
It makes sense for retailers to not stock it. Despite being thinner, the slimline format takes up the same amount of space on the shelf, which is finite. As long as raising the price doesn't result in less sales (and specifically, a loss in sales that is larger than the profit gained by raising the price) the higher the price you can get for each piece of space the better.
And the elasticity of demand for comics isn't symmetrical: a higher price will stop someone from buying it, but a lower price won't entice them into it (which is why, if you intend to raise prices, you better be sure about it, because you can't roll the price back and expect to get all of your buyers back).
(Incidentally that fifty cent increased make for a LOT of extra money to the creators because of the way Image works. I personally made about five grand extra over six issues from it. Not the team. Me.)
Thing is, cheap in the sense that worked when we were kids doesn't work now. A 1.99 comic is going to take up nearly as much space as a People magazine for double the price, and that People is returnable. So even if you're going to make comics returnable, you're still skating uphill. Archie pays to get into grocery stores and such.
Some of that is a chicken and egg problem - if there were enough people buying them, it might be possible to make the economics work in terms of shelf space, but there aren't, and it won't.
Instilling a love and familiarity with the medium in kids is the future, but cheap comics in stores is a non starter for getting there.
The best selling comic book I've ever had at my con table? STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE. I've sold hundreds of them in two years. AW YEAH COMICS kills for me. Superman Family Adventures and Tiny Titans? Monsters for Art and Franco.
But DC didn't give a damn about marketing or selling those books (or batman strikes or the other young-readers books), so they died on the vine. The stores that have good all-ages sections, though? Challengers in Chicago, for example? MONSTER SALES.
Don't tell me kids books don't sell. It's my bread and butter. Kids want 'em and parents want to buy them for their kids. If we don't hook a new generation, comics will continue to wither.
But a not trivial percentage of people running comic shops think their job is to put people in the vicinity of comics and hope for the best. They don't actually SELL things, they just provide them. You could but one copy of every comic Image, DC and Marvel put out every month for about 250 dollars a month. This is not actually a lot of money.
But if you aren't finding out what your customers like and suggesting new stuff based on it, then yeah, this stuff is going to be a risk. It's not that every thing will sell - not everything will. But a lot of stuff WILL sell if you get it in the right hands.
There's a comic shop that makes about a thousand bucks on every issue of Luther Strode. Because they sell a shit ton of copies. And the reason they sell a shit ton of comics is because they know what people like to read and have gotten my book in the hands of people who will enjoy it. What they haven't done is put stuff on shelves and hope for the best.
And not coincidentally, this shop has gone from starting six years ago to being the highest selling shop in their populous and wealthy state.
This applies to kid's comics - there IS an audience for kid's comics, which is largely the kids of comic book readers. But if you're not trying to sell them, if you're just taking a "build it and they will come" approach, you're going to be fucked.