Thursday, July 26, 2007

Pissing In Your Wheaties Since 1926


I realize everyone's either trying to be polite or, or is honestly optimistic, but in all seriousness - this whole IDW thing? Bad news. I mean, sure, it looks nice on paper. But in the history of the comics industry - and this is going back a long way - every single time a company has put itself in a position to be sold like this, despite the best of intentions, it's ended up demolished within six months or a year. You can say the circumstances are different this time - OK. IDW is a good company. I know Chris Ryall, at least, a little bit, since way back in the days of Movie Poop Shoot. He's a good guy and he's done some really good things with the company since he's taken the helm. But history is not kind to this scenario... sure, both Marvel and DC survived being bought (Marvel more than once!), but there's just so many others that have fallen by the wayside. If history teaches us one thing, it's that once a company starts making major structural changes of any kind, no matter how seemingly healthy, things can go from good to horrible in a blink of an eye.

I'm just saying, I don't want to see IDW office furniture on eBay in 2009. I like IDW, they publish good books. But this is the comics industry we're talking about here, people.




Speaking of the comics industry -

"Shouldn’t there be business opportunities in a growth period instead of wheezing, scale-downs and closures? What is it about the shape of that comics market where a boom period is felt more through articles claiming 'This is a boom period!' than it is in the wallets of creators and retailers?" - Tom Spurgeon


This quote from a fews days back got a bit of attention, and with justification. It's as cogent and canny an analysis of the current manic-depressive fortunes of this industry as I've seen. It got lodged in my head for a few days.

And then something occurred to me. Please, if this is just totally obvious conventional wisdom, somebody point it out to me - or if this is just totally unfounded and wrong-headed, I want to know. Because it may seem obvious but it really seemed like something no one else was saying . . .

1) You can't open a comic book store, any kind of comic book store in the entire country, without having Marvel and DC as the bedrock of your costumer base. A lot of stores sell a lot of stuff besides superhero books, but even stores like Comic Relief, the Beguiling, Comix Experience - they only get the luxury of specializing in such a wide and diverse array of products because they built their bread and butter on superheroes. For all the occasional talk about a manga-only model, manga stores are still few and far between (if not outright urban legends).

2) You can't sell superhero comics in the direct market without going through Diamond. Diamond is a big business and they do a very good job of getting comics where they need to be on a weekly basis, but all indicators point to the fact that their current distribution system is tapped to the max. And the current business model, while profitable, does not seem to be giving them a lot of incentive to expand their direct market logistics capacity.

3) Who does Diamond make more money off of, retailers or suppliers? That make seem like an idiotic question but bear with me: the only news you hear from Diamond anymore is when they sign a publisher to exclusive distribution through either the direct or bookstore markets. When was the last time you heard anything about initiatives for new retailers?

4) The last boom-and-bust cycle of the comics industry involved many, many undercapitalized, incompetent and just plain wrong-headed store launches, people who were enticed in by the boom and demolished by the bust. At the time, if memory serves me well, there were allegations of predatory practices on the part of both Diamond and Capital City, in terms of enticing fledging retailers to set up accounts with the promise of easy money.

5) As so many people have pointed out, we are living in a second Golden Age in terms of both the quantity and the quality of comics being made available in all genres - from manga and artcomics even through to plain vanilla superheroes. The books are selling everywhere but the direct market, where the pipeline is unaccountably clogged. Too few retailers in too few locations to really take advantage of any kind of "critical mass" - which may or may not be illusory, there's really no way to tell - and retailing is still too risky under the best of circumstances for most to ever take the plunge.

6) Is it in Diamond's best interest to promote a diverse market? Obviously not, that goes without saying. The market as it stands now could not be better situated to serve Diamond's needs - it's not sinister, it's not even shady, it's just capitalism. They were handed a plum opportunity and they took it.

So the question is - when do the Big Two's exclusive contracts with Diamond run out?

It may seem like a silly question. They may have already re-upped for some umpty-billion years and I may have missed it. But no contract exists in perpetuity. I'm not saying history is going to repeat itself - but it's been a long decade. Marvel and DC aren't the same companies they were back in the days when Capital City and Heroes World roamed the earth. It's something to think about.

Because . . .

If there were ever again a situation where more than one distributor held the keys to the bread-and-butter weekly superhero world, one of the happy side-effects might just be a more diverse industry. If it seems obvious, well, so be it, but I don't think I'd ever heard anyone connect the dots in quite that fashion before.

Maybe this is idiotic - but it's been rattling around in my head for a week. Kick it around and see if it holds water. If not, holler in the comments.

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