Image Comics Community

And Jay, you haven't read Bone? You have got to get on that, dude.

Interesting database list. I found fifty different series / TPB / OGNs that I would have bought when they came out, but didn't because I didn't have a comics shop anywhere near to buy from. Whee.

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Coming soon: A new Louis Bright-Raven site, featuring new art, fiction, comics journalism, and original comics.

Thanks for the database link, Adam. It's nice to see all of that information in one place. I hope much of that backlist material has been resurrected in digital compilations. In another thread I'd mentioned how I don't buy books that I like until they're collected; someone pointed out to me that if a book doesn't receive sufficient support during its initial print run, it may never be collected, so hopefully I'm not alone and these creators will see some additional sales dollars post-print.

Also, I do understand your point about creators producing a limited series and not wanting to milk the property despite a reasonable degree of success. Earlier, I'd suggested that the only reason a limited series wouldn't continue in some form was due to lack of reader response. That's was a completely unqualified comment on my part, I just find it hard to believe that a creator wouldn't respond to exceptional sales and consumer interests with more installments (besides Alan Moore).

I'd brought up Battle Pope earlier, but didn't quite articulate the idea I was trying to convey by mentioning it. So to clarify: I think that the brilliance of a book like that is in the name itself. I'd remembered it after all these years precisely because of the uniqueness of the title. When I see a book entitled "Battle Pope" it suggests a degree of irreverence and whimsy which lends itself well to the comics medium. The idea makes an instant impression and is easily able to be absorbed in the abstract.

When I hear the title "Battle Pope", I know that the Pope is a respected man of the cloth and that he will do battle, we know that the novelty of this contradiction of ideas is its core appeal and it places few interpretive requirements upon the reader, as opposed to a more opaque title like "The Leadership of the Catholic Church in Conflict", could you imagine if Kirkman had chosen that as a title? *lol*

Further, no one's going to berate you for not telling an incredibly good story; it's not supposed to be exceptionally well-crafted; but if it is, then your twice as smart for it.

It's a book in which an author can say,"Look here, it's a light premise and interesting visuals. I'll still tell an entertaining story and display enough competency as a story-teller to earn your trust as an auteur. Allowing me to have your full attention and patience when I attempt a more complex and layered story."

Quick question, has anyone else noticed the resurgence of old superhero concepts being resurrected and re-envisioned for a modern audience? Not just the Extreme stuff, but I noticed Bloodshot and a couple others...

On the other hand, I've about two dozen different retailers at conventions over the past four years tell me they don't (and won't) order Image books like BOMB QUEEN, JACK STAFF, HAWAIIAN DICK, and MORNING GLORIES because 'they sound like porn comics'. And don't bother trying to correct them. They don't care. It's like they're looking for excuses not to order books.

So what you title your book can have adverse effects too, depending on the point of view of who's ordering.

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Coming soon: A new Louis Bright-Raven site, featuring new art, fiction, comics journalism, and original comics.

LOL! That's funny, I never considered that...

I suppose you could do that with a lot of comics titles... X-Men would be about guys who had a sex change operations, Youngblood would be about pedophilia etc.

But all joking aside, I understand the mentality; there is a lot of product out there in the market and if books with titles that could be misconstrued as vulgar is the criteria by which certain books aren't considered then that's another unfortunate reality of business.

A "gimmick" title can be memorable but it's definitely a calculated risk...

The difference is, X-MEN has had cartoon tv shows and movies out, so the general public knows that's not what the book is about. Nobody knows what MORNING GLORIES or JACK STAFF is, by comparison, and the reality is, most retailers are not interested in promoting each and every single book they carry to build an audience. They expect the creators / publishers to have done that for them so they can just sit back and wait for the readers to come buy them and rake in the dough.

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Coming soon: A new Louis Bright-Raven site, featuring new art, fiction, comics journalism, and original comics.

A retailer who does not know who Paul Grist is and what book he is doing should look for out for an other profession.

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Brightraven, I think the tools are there to build awareness for a new product without necessarily putting any promotional expectations on the retailer. In addition to the standard Previews advert, there are podcasts, promotional giveaways, banner campaigns and things of that nature...

The typical retailer is primarily interested in selling product, not necessarily taking risks on new products which may or may not sell. In my opinion, it falls to the publishers and creators to build interest in new books.

From the retailers point of view, if he is presented with a new book that looks interesting, they may decide to buy 6 copies and see if they move or they may feel that those potential sales will only take away from the sales of an already established book (and that's probably correct). I think retailers want to believe that a new comic product is going to mean additional sales to what they're already moving rather than eat into existing sales from something they're already ordering.

One of the difficulties of creating new superheroes (as we were discussing earlier) is that you need to be able to say something new with the premise, otherwise, the best you can hope for is to eat into the sales of some existing property which is already expressing the superhero narrative in that manner. There's no incentive on the part of the retailer because no new dollars are added to the till...

Wait. What? So, Bomb Queen isn't porn?
DAMN! I've been doing it wrong all this time. Haha!

It's the retailer's job to build awareness of their own store brand and reputation within their communities, and one can't do that without being an apt representative of the entire industry without favortism / prejudice towards any given product. Publishers and creators certainly cannot build interest directly in your community. We're too busy producing the product to come to every town and city and interact with the local businesses and educators and libraries and other societal elements on the retailers' behalf. And I don't care how many adverts we put in PREVIEWS, how many TV commercials we do, how many internet interviews and podcasts and banner ads we do, how many movies and/or TV series we make, or even if we're constantly on the road touring to conventions and visiting your stores, NONE of that translates into direct interaction with your general community. All of that effort merely targets an ever diminishing fanbase that cannot afford to sustain the current model. This is evident in the mass loss of comics retailers we've seen over the past 10-15 years.

That is the retailers' responsibility. If you don't know how to interact with the rest of your general community, it really doesn't matter what kind of business you run, you're not going to get the amount of business you should. It's not promotional expectations of or on our behalf, as it is THEIR STORE as a brand, and their store brand should be one of such diversity of content as to appeal to everyone, and not just a tiny niche market that alienates the vast majority of the population. We're just providing the diversity of product for them so that they can build their own brand. If they choose to be a dorkcave playing the goddamn Superfriends theme on the sound system and having mannequins dressed up as Lady Death and Emma Frost on display, we really can't help that. If they choose to trash talk everything that isn't Marvel / DC as "Well, that really doesn't sell well here..." (unless they personally happen to be a fan of it, then they talk it up), nothing we can advertise is going to change that, because they are deliberately creating negative reenforcement and urging the customer NOT to buy.

Imagine going to a shoe store and being told you should only buy NIKE, ADIDAS, or CONVERSE, when what you're looking for is a dress shoe, not sneakers / high top basketball shoes. What good is that?

Imagine going to a Chinese restaurant where all they want to serve you is chop suey. You may like chop suey, but what if you're in the mood for moo goo gai pan or schezuan chicken? It may be on their menu, but the waiter replies, "Nah, that stuff no good. Get the chop suey..." You plan on staying and eating / going back to that restaurant? I sure as hell wouldn't be.

But that is effectively the same thing as what comics retailers do when they say 'that title doesn't sell well here', or refuse to order something (and believe me, I've had retailers who were so fucking assholish they wouldn't order SANDMAN or HELLBLAZER from DC because 'only goths like that shit', to not ordering indies regardless of the publisher ad nauseum, to not ordering Marvel books because they boycotted the creator because creator said some thing on a message board the retailer didn't like...). It's ridiculous. The DM is a broken mess. And what's worse, is we, the publishers and the retailers both, allowed it to get this way.

So people are looking for other alternative methods, to get out of the bottlenecked distribution method that is Diamond and the Direct Market. Be it digital comics or other systems. That's why we've got a "How would you improve comics shops" thread on this board, and a "How do we better promote Savage Dragon?" on Erik Larsen's personal board. Because nobody really knows what to do to try and fix things.

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Coming soon: A new Louis Bright-Raven site, featuring new art, fiction, comics journalism, and original comics.