The Platinum Age - pre-1935
Publishers sell reprinted collections of newspaper cartoons with no original material.
The Golden Age - January 1935 to June 1947
January sees a new publisher National (later DC) debut with New Fun Comics #1 - the first 64 page periodical featuring all new material for a 10 cent cover price. A few years later, the same comic introduces Superman in Action Comics #1 to huge sales, ushering in the new superhero genre that spearheads massive industry growth. Kids become crazy for comics and new publishers arise hoping to entertain them. Disney, Dell, Archie and many others sell millions of funny animal and humor comics to young readers who call them "Funny Books."
The Atomic Age - July 1947 to November 1958
Comics begin decreasing page count to avoid raising prices. 52 pages for ten cents becomes 32 pages for ten cents. This desire to keep prices low eventually led to newsdealers losing interest in selling comics because they could make more money selling more expensive magazines. Postwar comics see an increase in darker, more mature content with most superheroes pushed aside for new genres for older readers like romance, true crime, western, war, more risque "good girl" titles and graphic horror. This adult content leads to backlash from conservative interest groups which leads to the creation of the industry's self-censoring comics code authority. Marvel experiences a distribution implosion, causing massive cuts to their publishing line and their Atlas imprint. Throughout the agel, funny animal and teen humor genres maintain dominance with younger readers while the rapid growth of television leads to a rapid increase of licensed titles based on TV shows.
The Silver Age - December 1958 to August 1970
As DC begins to find an audience for superheroes beyond Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman, Marvel slowly recovers from implosion but with very strict limits on number of titles. Joe Maneely’s final work is published the same month Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko return to what was branded as Atlas Comics. With those creative pieces in place, Marvel tries to emulate DC's success with superheroes, arguably surpassing them by the end of the 60s. Marvel’s characters begin sellings millions of comics as well as getting deals for licensing of tie-in products and TV cartoons. The live action Batman series is a massive, if short-lived, hit showing the continued viability of superheroes in other media. Funny animal and teen humor continue to entertain younger readers.
The Bronze Age - September 1970 to April 1985
Kirby moves to DC as Marvel overtakes DC in sales for the first time Stan Lee gives way to younger wave of fans turned pro writers. Near the halfway point, DC suffers it’s own implosion and sees large cuts across its entire line. The success of licensed comics helps Marvel and DC as Star Wars, GI Joe, Micronauts and other movie and toy tie-ins become incredibly successful for their respective publishers. The birth of the direct market leads to new publishers and an increase in cover prices and paper quality. Newsstand sees sales drop as the most devoted customers move their business to comic shops. Longtime publishers of niche genre or kid-friendly titles including Harvey, Gold Key and Charlton are forced to shut down because they aren’t publishing what the specialty shops want to order for their aging customers. Marvel’s Secret Wars concludes the same month DC’s Crisis on Infinite Earths begins. Inflation sees prices quadruple from 15 cents to 65 cents but direct market non-returnability renders this increase less important since retailers must order new comics to stay in business.
The Copper Age - May 1985 to August 2000
The direct market assumes dominance as what’s left of newsstand sales erode to near nothing. Black and white indie publishing era rides the success of Ninja Turtles then crashes even as the Turtles become international movie, TV and toy sensations. Adults become publisher’s main customer as kids become more interested in other entertainment such as video games, video tapes/DVDs and the growing internet. Indie publishing starts to get noticed as a talent farm as more publishers take advantage of comics’ relatively low cost of entry compared to movies and TV. Indie publishers become licensing machine as their own original content hit becomes hit movies like The Mask and Men In Black. Popular creators become more important than their characters. Star creators like Jim Lee, Frank Miller, Todd McFarlane and others take advantage of new creator-owned publishing deals with larger publishers or form their own imprints and self-publish (usually via Image). Comic prices more than triple again as mainstream publishers know retailers have to order their comics to stay in business and the higher cover prices equal increases in dollar share of market.
The Plastic Age - September 2000 to April 2020
Joe Quesada assumes EIC and the intended audience for comic book publishers moves from older readers to increasingly jaded retailers who make ordering decisions based on novelty and nostalgia. Higher cover prices mean most comics are purchased with credit cards instead of pocket change. Variant covers make it clear that the industry goal is to get retailers order as many copies as possible, regardless of whether any customers will ever read them. Marvel creates Marvel Unlimited to deter the rapid rise of digital piracy. Trade paperback and hardcover collections of every possible story arc whether important or not eat up more retailer dollars and move readers to order these collections via online retailers. Indie creators recruited to abandon house style of superhero writing and use postmodernism and decompression to make superhero comics feel more “real” and consistent with the massively popular film and tv versions of characters in the 2nd half of the Age. The easy access of digital content and collected editions lowers interest in readers collecting back issues to complete runs for reading. CGC creates a definitive set of parameters to increase value of key issues and key issues begin to dominate what’s left of the back issue market. Publishers add single issue reprints and facsimiles of those keys to get in on the frenzy. Scarcity of variant covers further fuels speculator market. The last vestiges of making mainline superhero comics that are appropriate for younger kids goes away completely.
The Pixel Age - June 2020 - present
Covid-19 shuts down industry for several weeks, leading DC to abruptly end their distribution partnership with Diamond Comics. The entertainment trend of corporations cutting out the "middle man" and selling their content direct to consumers via digital platforms begins to dominate corporate-owned comic book publishers. Marvel and DC cut costs by canceling print series and making them digital exclusives to keep pipeline of new comics flowing to their digital apps. Finally, in response to the binge culture popularized by online streaming services such as Netflix, Sitcomics introduces the Binge Book format which gives print readers a "greatest hits" of previous comic book ages giving the value of the Golden Age, the innovation and fun of the Silver Age, the story complexity of The Bronze Age and the printing quality of The Plastic Age. Having grown tired of the corporate-think guiding other publishers, readers of all ages embrace The Binge Book format, buying millions of copies of Sitcomics in a few short years!
(Okay, we took a few liberties with the last few sentences but the future is unwritten and we set lofty goals! You can it all happen by going to your local comic shop and buying copies of The Blue Baron, Super 'Suckers or our other Binge Books today!)
]]>The desire to keep publishing new comics is understandable. DC and Marvel’s corporate owners will soon be tightening their belts and a drastic reduction of titles is looming which means fewer employed editors, artists, writers and production staff. Retailers who were struggling before the pandemic may see this as a good time to bow out of the direct market permanently. This massive disruption to our personal and professional lives also means that veteran comic book customers will be re-examining the way they spend money on entertainment and the longer the economy stalls, the more comic books will become expendable.
But it is not all gloom and doom. This unprecedented crisis has also created an amazing opportunity that comics will likely (and hopefully) never get again. No matter how tough times get, people still crave entertainment and I know from experience that to produce even the worst movie or TV show requires dozens of expensive professionals working closely together for weeks and months. The lingering risk of infecting those expensive professionals means it may be back a looooong time before there is a steady supply of new TV shows and movies. Fortunately, comic books can be produced by a tiny handful of individuals working separately which puts publishers in an excellent position to take advantage of this suddenly barren media landscape. I do publish comics but as much as I wish my own superheroes including The Blue Baron, Startup and Headhunter possessed the star power to fill this entertainment void for the entire world, only the real “celebrities” of comics -- Superman, Spider-Man, Batman and The Avengers -- can save us now.
It seems clear that the current financial crisis will shrink the ranks of people shelling out cash for serialized superhero comic books. If this self-isolation lifts and the big 2 publishers just pick up where they left off without inviting new customers to replace the ones who drop out, it's possible that comic shops may end up being finished off, not by the coronavirus, but by the stacks of unsold, non-returnable big 2 comics. Comic shops need reinforcements for the customers they're about to lose which brings us to step one of this two-step process.
STEP ONE: MARKETING
Engaging a large cross-section of potential new readers requires a marketing campaign unlike any ever attempted by comic book publishers but now is the perfect time to do unprecedented things. It isn’t just regular folks who are trapped at home right now. Celebrities are trapped too. Actors can’t act, athletes can’t play, singers can’t perform. The biggest names in entertainment are all just sitting around like the rest of us, waiting for the curve to flatten. Marvel and DC need to fire up their zoom apps and put their PR departments to work, reaching out to rap stars, country stars, authors, baseball stars, soap stars, comedians, talk show hosts, international TV and movie stars – any and every celebrity beloved by any and every audience publishers and retailers want to see buying comics when this is over -- and hire them to take a few pictures of themselves, sitting at home reading Marvel and DC comics alone or with their kids. The literal and figurative stars are aligned and the chances are better than they will ever be that these stars’ high-powered reps will tell their extremely famous, A-list clients to take some money and take some pictures.
The temptation to immediately share these photos of celebrities reading comics on social media must be resisted. These images didn’t come free and marketing a product that can’t yet be sold is a bad idea. Instead, the big two publishers need to turn to the other half of this strategy.
STEP TWO: EXPANDING THE BASE
The direct market is the only reason superhero comics have survived long enough for Hollywood to realize their box office and Neilsen rating potential. For that reason and many others, the direct market should always remain the exclusive home to new comic book content. But it’s hard enough to get folks to read comics without also forcing them to make a special trip, so as much as I love comic shops, to gain new readers in large numbers requires distributing comics into places where potential new readers can easily find them. That means returning comics to large chain drugstores like CVS or Walgreen’s. As we now all know, drugstores don’t even shut their doors for a pandemic which means anyone can buy these "drugstore comics" the minute they arrive in the shop. And that brings us back to step one of this plan.
Just before the comics hit store shelves, it’s time to release all those photos of quarantined celebrities reading comics into the world. The sales pitch will have nothing to do with coronavirus - the message should simply be – ‘All these famous people enjoy reading comics. You probably will too.” Put that message in front of as many people as possible and reserve display space by the cash registers where anyone who's heard that message can easily find them.
THE FINE PRINT
So how many of these “drugstore comics” should be published and in what format? Well, to answer the format question first, I believe selling serialized single issues would be a very bad idea. Wednesday Warriors will happily pay good money for an incomplete story, but the general public? Not so much. These drugstore comics must deliver a satisfying amount of self-contained content at a price that won’t create sticker shock. 13 quarterly family-friendly titles from each publisher, featuring their biggest name characters, collecting 64-pages of classic stories for $3.99. Using reprinted stories will cost far less than all-new content and avoid ruffling the feathers of the independent retailers who’ve supported the comic book industry during prior economic downturns. Though the interior content of these drugstore comics won't be new, the covers should be. Big-name artists should be recruited to draw new covers exclusively for CVS or Walgreen's which feature an image that actually reflects the story being retold inside.
A content-driven event would help get lapsed and current readers excited which is why a brand new monthly DC/Marvel crossover series should absolutely be part of the initial wave of releases. This DC/Marvel crossover will be available in the Direct Market as well, but the drugstore editions will again boast exclusive covers.
Which characters and genres should be featured in the 26 non-crossover titles? Well, ask a million comic fans and you’ll get a million different answers, but here are mine:
DC 13: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Justice League of America, Teen Titans, Black Lightning, Supergirl, Green Lantern, Aquaman, House of Secrets, Sgt. Rock, Sugar & Spike
MC 13: Spider-Man, Captain America, Captain Marvel, Black Panther, X-Men, The Avengers, Hulk, Black Widow, Iron Man, Star Wars, Conan, Millie the Model, Our Love Story (yes, Our Love Story!)
I've included romance, war, sci-fi, horror and humor comics because the diversity of the mainstream audience should be reflected in the diversity of the content available to them in the mass market. Of course, the more exposure these non-superhero properties receive, the more potential they have to become movies and TV shows.
As the initial wave of reprints is being prepared, top-notch writers and artists would be hired to produce all-new, in-continuity adventures, featuring the above characters to be sold exclusively in the direct market in three issue arcs (that would NOT be sold digitally!) These three act stories would then be collected into “new”, 64 page reprints to be sold quarterly at Walgreen’s/CVS market six months after they’d been released to comic shops. Three months of shelf-time may be anathema to the comic shops who mainly cater to Wednesday Warriors, but it might take three or four trips to a drugstore before a new reader finally pulls the trigger on buying their first Aquaman comic. And if these new fans can't wait three months to see what else these characters can do, the triple-sized reprints include the comic shop locator hotline inviting them to find other, all-new stories featuring these same popular characters at a comic shop near them.
And that’s my simple, 2-step solution to save comics in a post-pandemic world. If these Marvel and DC drugstore comics perform as planned, a flock of young, new LCS customers would quickly join returning regulars leading to greater financial security for comic shops and a healthier comic book market in general, which can only be a good thing for those of us still publishing our comics from the margins.
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Take the back issue. No, please, take it because if it’s more than a couple weeks old, nobody's ever gonna buy it. 20 years ago, as long as a comic book series could keep putting out new issues, its back issues retained or increased their value. This steady rise in back issue values was a key financial perk retailers enjoyed in exchange for ordering more non-returnable copies than they could immediately sell. And since over-ordering by retailers was the main reason many series were able to stay ongoing, those additional profits seemed only fair.
Then in the early 2000s, publishers decided that they deserved a piece of all that sweet back issue action. So instead of limiting trade collections to only those back issues that were too expensive for the average fan to track down, they began collecting everything. And who can blame them, since trade collections required no new creative content and allowed publishers to sell retailers the same non-returnable story content twice in the same year -- but at a much higher price point! Instead of rejecting this brazen double dip into their ordering budgets, retailers actually embraced it.
Why?
Because creative teams had begun decompressing every story into six issue arcs and comic shop customers were growing fed up with paying an increasing amount of money for a decreasing percentage of story. Thanks to trade collections, these disgruntled readers no longer had to keep buying new single issues, much less piece together a consecutive run of back issues. And once month-old issues of their favorite series started popping up in the dollar bin, the folks who still wanted to read single issues had far less incentive to pay cover price on release day.
To make matters worse, instead of trekking to their LCS six times to buy six single issues, devoted comic book fans can now stay home, click a couple buttons and have trade collections (plus exclusive bonus content!) delivered to their doors at a bigger discount than their local independent retailers could offer.
In response to declining rack sales, retailers cut back their single issue orders. To get stores to continue subsidizing their monthly output so those new higher-margin trade collections could keep coming, publishers started renumbering their ongoing series and created rare variant covers which could only be acquired if a store ordered way more copies of the standard cover than it could ever dream of selling.
Calculated scarcity has become the key ingredient to direct market success in 2019 and if a new single issue is not considered to be hot, key or rare, it is effectively worthless two weeks after it goes on sale. When a new single issue does manage to heat up, retailers have cut their shelf copies so severely that they can't benefit from these suddenly spiking values. Which means publishers get to look like heroes by selling retailers non-returnable 2nd, 3rd or 4th printings of the same story content, adding more risk for even less reward.
By now you’re probably wondering when this depressing article is going to start delivering the solutions promised in this article’s clickbait headline. Sorry, folks, but that’s being saved for part two of this article, available next month for only $3.99!
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Okay, not really. But if this article were a comic book, most publishers probably would have held back the good stuff until issue 2. Which brings us to the serialized comic book's number one problem which is actually its “number two” problem: the dreaded issue 2. Forcing retailers to order non-returnable second issues before they’ve even seen how their customers react to issue 1 is without question, a terrible way to sell entertainment. The percentage drops in sales between issues 1 and 2 tell that story better than this writer can.
Any story that's told over more than one issue requires its audience to be, by definition, collectors since they have to collect 2, 4, 6, etc. issues to get the complete entertainment experience. Back when drug stores, supermarkets and convenience stores sold comics, collecting didn’t really require much effort because most people already had to go to those places anyway. Unfortunately, once comics began to be sold exclusively at shops where people didn’t already have to go, most casual readers simply dumped comics for a less needy hobby.
Today's Binge Age audiences don’t want to “collect” their entertainment. They sample it and if they enjoy the sample, then they binge. Sitcomics' new, print-exclusive format called a Binge Book owns this new reality by giving readers a 64-page, self-contained story for only $3.99. The unique Binge Book format eliminates the perishability problem by offering standalone stories that provide the reading satisfaction and corresponding shelf-life of a trade paperback at the cost of a standard single issue.
But since the economics of a hybrid format like the Binge Book aren’t feasible for all publishers, here’s another solution: the Series Sampler. Under this system, publishers could still solicit their single-issue number ones in Previews, but the solicitation for issue 2 wouldn't appear until the month after that Sampler issue hits shelves.
While issue 1 still fresh on the minds of their customers, retailers would be offered the choice of either ordering issue 2 (as well as re-ordering issue 1) or just ordering the trade paperback that collects the entire story arc.
If pre-orders for issue 2 meet a pre-determined threshold (say 65% of issue 1's sales), then the trade paperback is canceled and resolicited after the release of all single issues in that story arc. If issue 2's pre-orders fail to meet that 65% threshold, then all pre-orders of issue 2 are canceled, and the series goes straight to trade.
In a way, Series Samplers are the comic book equivalent of the TV pilot: if issue 1 takes off with audiences and retailers, it gets green-lit to ongoing series. If not, the solicited trade collection would still enjoy guaranteed comic shop distribution, giving the publisher a completed product which can then be sold to other markets. With its serialized survival at stake, publishers would be encouraged to beef up the story content in every first issue to give it the best possible chance of hooking readers. The higher the quality of that lower-priced first issue, the easier it'll be for the retailer to convert that customer enthisasm into orders for the more expensive collected edition or the subsequent single issues.
With fewer non-returnable copies of issues 3, 4, 5 and 6 eating up their ordering budgets and shelf space, retailers would have more money to invest in buying more copies of the far less risky Series Sampler issue 1s. And higher orders for a hot issue 1 is never a bad thing - unless of course you're a speculator.
Publishers who still insist on soliciting issues 2 and up before the release of issue 1, could be required to observe a new Single-Issue Exclusivity Window wherein they would have to wait a certain number of months after the release of the last issue of that story arc before soliciting the trade paperback which collects it. This exclusivity window would give those retailers who invested their money into the non-returnable single issue format more time to sell-thru their remaining shelf copies before the inevitable trade collection makes them all totally obsolete.
Exasperation about the state of the comics industry is nothing new and history lessons on past mistakes are useless if the industry insists on repeating them. Whether you want to call it a reboot or not, it's clear that drastic new solutions are needed to reverse comic book publishers’ ever-increasing reliance on gimmicks that boost sell-in without boosting sell-thru. The Series Sampler, the Single-Issue Exclusivity Window and Sitcomics' Binge Book format are three possible solutions to the single-issue's perishability problem.
Retailers repeatedly ask publishers to change, but the current system benefits the biggest companies so much that they will never change until a smaller company proves that those changes can be financially successful. When a retailer sees a smaller publisher trying something that he or she wishes the bigger companies would try, they need to invest in that innovation. If enough retailers united to promote those innovations to their customers and each other, the comic book business could actually look very different one year from now. Until that happens, it'll be business as usual and unless you're lucky enough to be a multi-billion dollar corporation, that's definitely not a good thing.
]]>Howdy, fun fans! Today we're finally showing off the covers for our first two Sitcomics releases: The Blue Baron #1 and Super 'Suckers #1. Starting next Monday July 13th, you'll be able to buy these very limited edition comic books at select retailers across South Central Pennysylvania while supplies last.
To help promote our Central PA test-marketing campaign, writer/publisher Darin Henry will be signing copies of both books this Saturday July 11th at Bookfest in State College. Then on Wednesday July 15th, Darin will be joined by Blue Baron artist Ron Frenz & Super 'Suckers artist Jeff Shultz and Sitcomics colorist Glenn Whitmore at the following signings:
The Comic Store in Lancaster from 11:30 to 1:30
Comic Store West in York from 3:30 to 5:30
Comics & Paperbacks Plus in Palmyra from 6:30 to 8:30
And on Thursday July 16th, our fab four will be signing at Comix Connection in Mechanicsburg, PA from 4:30 until 6:30.
So if you're in Central Pennsylvania next week, pop in to any of the above events and check out Sitcomics for yourself. Our creative team can't wait to meet you and neither can our creations! Sitcomics--it's TV you read!