The new comics rack at The Beguiling. Photo courtesy Photosapience

The problem with disagreeing with Brian Hibbs’ column, “Tilting At Windmills,” is that it always feels a little like telling a business owner “hey, you don’t know how to run your business” when really, you just have different ideas about the nature of how businesses are run.

For example, in Hibbs’ last column, he talks about how single issue comics (and specifically longer storylines which are serialised over any number of single issues before being collected in trade paperback), are necessary for comic shop owners…. not so much for their bottom line as for their cash flow. Here’s Brian talking about it:

In the micro, the periodical comic book provides a tremendous amount of cash flow to both publisher and retailer. Book publishing tends to be “burst”-y – weeks will pass where nothing especially significant gets published, then half a dozen major books will all drop at once. Without the (relatively) steady week-in, week-out publication of serialized comics, your friendly neighborhood comics store will never be able to keep their doors open.

At Comix Experience, over half of our sales come from book-format material (as opposed to comics-format), but I’d have to shut tomorrow without the steady, and reliable cash-flow that the periodical provides. Periodicals provide cash-flow, books provide the profit.

This totally rubbed me the wrong way. Hibbs is right, of course, in saying that without periodicals “your friendly neighborhood comics store” would close their doors. This is because their operations, their business plan, all of it is rooted in this system of periodical comics serialisation and release. If everything that eventually would get released in trade paperback was instead only released in trade paperback starting tomorrow, yeah, the whole system would collapse.

But if you took the percentages Hibbs puts forth in his piece, ‘more than half’ of his gross coming in from book-format titles, and told him to try and operate under similar conditions 10 years ago, he’d have a similar system collapse. His observation that periodicals provide cash-flow is, while accurate, also irrelevant, because it’s far from the only method of generating cash-flow as a retailer and I don’t personally believe it’s the most effective in a market that is increasingly moving away from periodical production. It’s simply “how things are done because that’s how we’ve always done them” and if there’s one thing I’m tired of seeing in comics, it’s that. I’m not arguing that it’s not useful to have these comics for cashflow purposes, but again, it’s not the only way.

Particularly when the customers are telling you, in increasing numbers, that those comics aren’t what they want.

If the complaint is that Vertigo in particular have trained customers to wait for the trade, then developing systems to punish readers who do so is not the answer. Actually, that sounds a lot like you actually don’t like your customers very much, which… again. I’m not telling you how to run your business, we just disagree that making it harder or more annoying for people to buy things in my store serves me in the long run. Mr. Hibbs, if Vertigo can’t launch a series these days because their audience is either entirely divided or has massively switched to a different format preference, then Vertigo needs to follow the money, so to speak, and start publishing the way that their customers want. Their original graphic novel program has been doing fairly well as of late, so far as I can tell and so far as I’ve heard, with good word-of-mouth and press for SENTENCES, PRIDE, FABLES 1001 NIGHTS, and lots of buzz surrounding upcoming titles. If something like Crossing Midnight or American Virgin can’t catch on sales-wise in single issue format, which leads to poor sales on the collection, ‘enh’. Hibbs makes the argument that Crossing Midnight in particular is a good book, “as high in quality as Fables”, but Crossing Midnight was a book with an exceptionally, painfully slow start that crippled sales in our store. I’m glad that the series has (apparently) found its creative feet, but the most common compliment about the book that I’ve heard is that “it really took until issue 4 for the premise to become clear and for it to get good”. That’s four months, including a heavily-promoted first issue, for readers to encounter the series, not enjoy it, and either spread the word (negatively) or just skip it all-together. “I tried it, didn’t like it. On to something else.” If that book were an OGN and came together in the last third and then ended on a great, positive note? Great! A new series of books that we can sell! One that hadn’t been poisoned by consumer apathy after 4 months of mediocre comics!

Hibbs’ other argument is the cost of moving to trade paperback-only releases; are consumers going to try out a new title that will run them $20 instead of $3? They didn’t mind doing it for Pride of Baghdad, which may have been a fluke, but let’s look at Sentences: The Life of M.F. Grimm. It launches at 1,700 copies, which ranked it number 63 on the top 100 graphic novels for that month. Retailers are notoriously cheap about ordering OGNs, particularly hard covers, but those numbers aren’t bad. Particularly when, at $20 a pop, that’s the equivilent of sales of about 11,400 copies at three bucks a pop, placing it alongside DMZ and 100 BULLETS rather than American Virgin… Also, has a black lead character, which is usually sales death in the male/white/hetero-centric direct market. Actually, hah, if the MF GRIMM hardcover had its sales translated to the single-issue charts, it would be the top-selling book with a black lead character for the month. Sentences isn’t just a success for a Vertigo Original Graphic Novel, it’s a TRIUMPH for the comics industry.

Okay, seriously, 1705 sales is pretty mediocre through the direct-market, but it’s still better than a 10th of the top-seller of the month, The Walking Dead Volume 7, which moved around 13k during the month, and which shows you that these aren’t vast gulfs of numbers we’re talking about here, like the 150,000 copies and 8,000 copies that mark the top and bottom of the top 300. Speaking of the best-selling graphic novel of the month, although it wasn’t listed as part of Hibbs’ thesis (being as it isn’t a Vertigo book) TWD sells about 23k in serialization and that 13k in collection, which (while not at par) is pretty interesting. It’s another one where the collection comes out directly on the heels of the serialisation, quicker than any Vertigo collection, and usually following a much more eratic serialisation schedule. And yet? It totally works, there are distinct audiences for both formats… The series gets stronger and stronger in collection, with new readers funneled into the collections stream, and yet there are a ton of readers who still find the single issues incredibly compelling. Why is this, do you think? Maybe it’s because EACH ISSUE IS INCREDIBLY COMPELLING. I don’t even care if you think it’s “good” or not, but you can’t argue that ending each issue on a “literally anything can happen” cliff-hanger makes for a compelling read. This is a characteristic that it shares with the successful titles in Vertigo’s line; Fables, Y The Last Man, 100 Bullets, DMZ, these are titles with compelling larger narratives as well as individual issue-to-issue reads that reward the reader for coming back every month (the exact opposite of wanting to punish the reader who only wants to come back every 6 months…). Maybe the problem with series like American Virgin (recently cancelled) or Un-Men (unspectacular launch) is that through both execution and concept, they just aren’t grabbing people! You can argue that Army @ Love is as high-quality as Fables all you want, but Vertigo’s had a long, successful history with fairytales and fantasy that enabled it work to find an audience for that series. They’ve got no history at making something like Army @ Love work… hell, I’m actually not sure who the audience for that series is other than “Vertigo readers” and “Fans of Rick Veitch”, who’re both lovely groups of people, but quite a bit smaller as a prospective audience than Fables’ “Fantasy/Fairy Tale Readers” and “Fans of Neil Gaiman” demographics.

Also: Quality doesn’t mean fuck all when it comes to sales. They cancelled The Invisibles twice for low sales, and that’s better than anything Vertigo is publishing these days by a good solid measure.

Getting to my eventual point: Vertigo is training readers to wait for the trade: Fantastic! I don’t know why they’ve decided to take the financial hit to do so, but someone needed to do it to clear out some of the clutter of single issues that dominates the Previews catalog. There’s between 20 and 40 book-format comics being released to the direct market every week, at $10-$50 a pop. It’s nice when we get to build an audience for something over a couple of issues, but it’s just as nice to build an audience for something like NAOKI URASAWA’S MONSTER by selling them the first $10 trade, and then having them be hooked on a series of $10 evergreen books, rather than $3 periodicals with a 30 day shelf life. We’re not hurting for product to sell outside of the single-issue format, I don’t think any other forward-looking retailer is facing that problem either…

If the readership is seriously moving towards collections on the Vertigo titles, lets support that and get behind it sales-wise rather than trying to do anything to cripple it. Follow the money, not the past.

Oh, and I outright don’t-buy the argument that readers won’t sample a new IP (intellectual property) when it’s $20 rather than $3… They do it in every popular medium including dvds, cds, video games, movies, oh and BOOKS, like from bookstores. Between internet previews, magazine previews, advance reader copies, POP material and more, there’s plenty of ways to get the customer interested in your project well before it arrives in stores, and rather than instituting an earnings-cap at Vertigo by telling them how infrequently they’re allowed to publish trade paperbacks, I’d rather they used any money they’re making by pumping two FABLES trades out a year (thanks, DC/Vertigo!) to print up previews and promotion for their OGN program, like that preview the published of the forthcoming CAIRO Original Graphic Novel (that generated quite a bit of advance interest in the book for us…). Sounds like a better use of everyone’s money to me.

My two cents.

- Chris
Sorry for the delay, I’ve been sick.

I was saving this for tomorrow, but I figured I’d bump the other stuff down the page for a little bit because I don’t think it needs any more attention positive or negative, it’s been pretty thoroughly torn to pieces by this point.

So, with that: another awesome post about Japan!

- Chris

Over at Precocious Curmudgeon, David Welsh reminds me that I’d been meaning to post a little something about Perry Moore’s new superhero-populated Young Adult novel Hero, released by Hyperion Books this fall. Hero is about a young man named Thom Creed who, nearing the end of his high-school career must deal with coming out as both a gay teenager and as a superhero.

The thing that strikes me most strongly about the work is the tone. Hero is… dark. Really dark. As a character, Thom doesn’t have a friend in the world–no refuge from a strongly (and often violently) homophobic society and family. I think all gay teenagers can feel that they’re alone, and that the whole world is against them, but there was definitely a heightened sense of those feelings at work in Hero that matched the heightened senses and abilities of the superheroes that populated the book. The novel felt to me like the notion of The X-Men’s “Protecting a world that hates and fears them!” but to the Nth degree–at least the X-Men are a team, the gay kid here is a hated outcast even among outcasts. I was a gay teenager once upon a time, and as hopeless and shitty as the world can seem at that age (and it can and does), there’s always something or somewhere to turn. Whether it’s that one friend who ‘knows’, or the internet, or hell, ‘Kids Help Phone’ there’s something out there for gay teenagers… and something that Hero’s gay teenager is never afforded. And then aside from having no friends, no family, and nowhere to turn, even Thom’s first sexual experience ends up being profoundly damaging, ending with his being outed and scandalized in the international media. For a novel that wants to put forward a positive message about being a gay kid, it’s deeply sex-negative in punishing the lead character, his father, his friends, and superheroism in general for acting on his gay desires. Like I said… DARK.
On the one hand, I think that makes the tone really successful in a lot of ways: the story is written from the perspective of a kid in distress and the novel is genuinely menacing throughout. I can’t tell you the dread I felt at Thom coming home to his father’s house a couple of times towards the end of the book. On the other hand, even though the kid completes the hero’s journey in the end and the novel aims to be a positive statement about coming of age as a homosexual in American society, I’d kind of be afraid to give this to an at-risk gay teenager because it’s so incredibly bleak, right through the ending of the book during which the superhero establishment still can’t… or won’t… cut the kid a break specifically because he’s gay. Sure, I’m a fan of happy endings, but I’m also a fan of balance, and I found the tone really unbalanced in an off-putting way.

That realization was a tough one for me, because the book is genuinely well-written otherwise. Author Moore has a fantastic grasp of writing action scenes that are detailed and especially illustrative, a high compliment for a book that owes so much of its soul to comic books (and superhero comics in particular). My memories of the book are entirely visual, scenes and dialogue playing out in a near-comic format and stopping short of word-balloons popping up in my mind’s-eye. There are no confusing or poorly-written passages in the story, all of the author’s intent comes across perfectly clearly. Granted, there are several large plot problems and the afformentioned pervading darkness, but the book moves along so crisply that you probably won’t notice the former until you’ve set it down with a happy sigh. The latter…?

Another strength of the narrative is the characterization, primarily of Thom but also in his relationships with several key characters including a fiery red-headed teammate, a straight-talking old southern woman, and an emotionally distant and troubled father. Read that again and you’ll see how all three of those character types are archetypes that border on cliché, and it’s to Moore’s credit that they avoid that fate. He manages to imbue each character with a good measure of humanity, mostly due to cribbing directly from conversations and relationships in his own life, according to this interview at AfterElton.com. It’s a good example of how to turn personal experience into a narrative with broad appeal. Thom as a character both coming to terms with his homosexuality and his place in the world (a shitty, oppressively dark world…) was easy to relate to as someone who’s done the same; Thom as a character coming to terms with his superpowers was easy to relate to as someone who’s read as many superhero comics as the author obviously has. Superhero fans–gay or straight–will find a lot that is both familiar and enjoyable in this novel.

But as I said, this is all at odds with a general bleakness that makes the book very hard for me to recommend to its target audience. I think I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Moore, being a gay man of a previous generation or two didn’t have a confidant, the internet, or telephone help lines for queer and questioning youth. In that way the author’s experiences directly reflect his character’s and I feel that it’s to the characters’ detriment–as well as that of a teenaged reader. As someone who is a great fan of seemingly timeless gay-themed young adult novels like James Howes’ The Misfits and David Levithan’s Boy Meets Boy, I personally prefered the way that the characters could be challenged without a situation being necessarily undertaken alone, and without an air of hopelessness. Even Frodo got to have Sam on the trip up Mount Doom, y’know? But reading the numerous positive reviews around the internet (and helpfully catalogued at the author’s website) it seems that mine and David Welsh’s interpretations are in the minority–that the world really is that dark for queer and questioning youth and that this is the book for them.

Hero is most likely going to be enjoyed by comics fans who enjoy work like Kurt Busiek’s Astro City, comics that draw on the iconic power and history of superheroes to tell smaller, more personal and human stories (with the requisite occasional huge battle). I haven’t read the recent superhero/novel hit Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman, but Hero seems, in focusing on a voice not often heard in the straight-white-boys-club of contemporary comics, likely to appeal to the wide swath of readers who enjoyed that tale (it even has a smart, layered, and ballsy female character to get behind as well!). But for readers either in the target audience or a few years outside of it, I’d much rather slap Levithan’s Boy Meets Boy into their hands than Hero.

But then Boy Meets Boy doesn’t feature a bitch’n fight scene between Batman and Wolverine, so it really is a tough call.

- Christopher

This review is based upon an uncorrected advance proof provided by the publisher.

One of the things I was really looking forward to, when I got back from Japan, was the freeing-up of my schedule. I’ve been ‘in the shit’ as they say since June or July at this point. The lead-up to San Diego, the lead-up to TCAF, the lead-up to my Japan trip, and finally, the lead-up to Toronto’s The Word On The Street where I organised and co-hosted a full day of programming (with special thanks to the always-wonderful Mark Askwith, of course). With WOTS finally over (it went fabulously, thanks for asking) there’s now nothing on my plate, extra-curricular-wise, until Christmas. Business as usual at the store, no major changes coming up at home, things will hopefully be if not calm, then more managable than the past 4 months.

Meanwhile, comics has continued at an astounding pace without me. TEKKON KINKREET, my most-recently championed project, has done phenomenally well for us. I haven’t checked in with Viz yet, but here in Toronto it’s selling particularly well (although mentioning it in the blog 10-15 times probably didn’t hurt none). I’d say we’ve moved better than 20 copies at this point, and about 8 of the DVDs (which is by all accounts phenomenal, I’m waiting for a quiet night to enjoy it), and I’m pretty happy with those numbers, particularly as the velocity actually picked up, last week. I hope this isn’t a situation where what we do at The Beguiling isn’t reflected anywhere else in the industry, because at the very least this is a great book by a great creator, and it deserves an audience.

I actually read a LOT of comics last week, both getting ready for my “History of Comics” presentation as well as just wanting to catch up on everything I’d missed while I was away. The new issue of Giant Robot (an Asian culture magazine, not just about robots but also books/film/lifestyle/etc.) features a cover-story on Adrian Tomine in advance of his new graphic novel Shortcomings, and the interview and lovely cover art are worth the price of admission. Shortcomings is very good as well, I’ve even got a half of a review written on it that talks about liking a book even though you don’t like any of the characters in it. I might get it finished or I might not, we’ll see.

Actually it’s just after 2, I should probably get to bed early for a change. Tomorrow our orders are due to Diamond, and I’m only about 50% done at this point. I know it’s pretty late in the game to be complaining about the September Previews (the new one’s been out for a week already), but my god, there are a lot of crappy, crappy COUNTDOWN spin-offs coming down the pipe, aren’t there? Our COUNTDOWN sell-through has slid to about half of what it was at the beginning of the series (and about a third of our 52 numbers), so I don’t know who DC expects will be buying all of these terrible-looking mini-series, but I’m certainly not going to risk any money on it. Yikes.

Anyway, I’d rather go out on a high-note, so I’ll show you the lovely cover to the recent Giant Robot magazine that I was talking about. It’s by Adrian Tomine, and it’s available in better comic book stores (like The Beguiling) and on better newstands everywhere, right now.

- Christopher

Oh shit… what’s this? Could it be? It is! It’s:

Yes, it’s NAMJATOWN, a multi-floor themed indoor amusement park. Sort of. While there are three over-riding “games” you can participate in (if you both read and speak perfect Japanese), really, you just go to see one of the most amazing, tacky, fucked-up places you’ve ever been. Seriously. It’s NAMJATOWN. I was first made aware of NAMJATOWN by my buddy Jim Zubkavich of Udon Comics. He, sleep-deprived and in total culture-shock, traversed NAMJATOWN within his first couple of days of being in Japan his first time, and found it thoroughly surreal, and dammit if that wasn’t an experience I wanted for Andrew and I. NAMJATOWN, by NAMCO, makers of Pac Man. Hang on to your hats, kids!

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I’m heading to Japan in early September, thanks to the very gracious hospitality of friends of mine who are living just outside of Tokyo that will make the trip less financially impossible. I’ve been really looking forward to going to Japan for years; the Japanese culture has had a hold on me since I was 14 and I’m really looking forward to scratching the itch that has developed.

I’ve already been fortunate enough to get some great advice from friends who’ve visited the region before on business and for vacation, but I have something of a broad and diverse readership here with their own impressions of the country, so I thought I’d open the floor. What should I see? Where should I go? In particular, can you recommend any great vegetarian cuisine for my husband who is afraid of fish? If you could list a few things that I shouldn’t miss in the comments section? That’d be great.

A little background: We’re going to be spending most of our time in the Tokyo area, with quick trips to Osaka, Nara, and Kyoto on this trip. Obviously I’m interested in manga (and to a lesser extent, anime), but other cultural happenings or unique experiences would be great too. We already plan to hit the larger interesting neighborhoods like Akihabara, Harajuku, Shinjuku, Roppongi (and the ridiculous Roppongi Hills complex), Ginza, etc., but we’re looking for the wonderful things within those neighborhoods that shouldn’t be missed.

Also, if you’re in Japan and want to meet up for an Asahi, let me know and we can try to work something out.

All suggestions will be read and appreciated.

Best,

- Christopher

- All of my time is taken up with prep for The Toronto Comic Arts Festival right now (August 18-19). Everytime I actually want to write a post here about what’s going on in the wide world of comics, I shake my head and invest that time back into making sure there’ll be event schedules ready to go tomorrow, and that the signage will be printed, and things like that.

- That said, there’s still lots of TCAF-related stuff I’m looking forward to posting here. Notes from artists, event info, oh, and that panel schedule I was just talking about. I think it’ll be at least a little bit interesting even if you’re not coming to the event? But if you are it’s gonna be awesome.

- Oh, and I did get my cell phone back in the end. I’d left it on the table at the D&Q booth, and Tom Devlin was nice enough to scoop it up for me and send it back to Toronto.

Thanks for your continued patronage,

- Christopher

Sorry for the interruption, but this is just an FYI that it looks like my old cro2@212.net e-mail address is over and done with. I had that address for like 10 years, and I’m sad to see it go. I mean, if you want to find me it’s not like it’s hard or anything, but still. Sad days.

(All the other ones still work.)

- Chris

Hey folks, sorry for the recent dearth of material. I feel like I turned a corner, 12 minutes ago, when I updated this month’s PREVIEWS order. I’m not attending MoCCA this year, and aside from a brief sojourn to the Toronto Comicon in a few weeks, my plate is remarkably clear until San Diego. Of course, by ‘clear’ I mean ‘I can’t believe how much TCAF stuff there is to do’, but I should be able to get my life and blogging back in order, anyway.

Speaking of blogging, thanks to the folks at “Fandom Wank” the “AFRAID OF COCK” post got another go-round on the internet, sparking more comments and snickering. I honestly had no idea that post would push as many buttons as it has… A friend didn’t believe me when I told him I had no idea anyone would read it or care (”Come on man” he said. “You’re Chris Butcher, that means something.” I was sitting on my couch in my underwear, eating cereal and an hour late for work at the time.), but I guess this stuff has legs. Ah well. I wish you were all reading CASANOVA, it’s got actual penises in it (and a great story, and lovely art…). That hard cover last week sure was pretty, wasn’t it? Damn.
Barring catastrophe, I should be updating daily for the next little while (and this post doesn’t count, real content later today, hopefully). Thanks for continuing to tune in here.

- Christopher

My friend Rich Stevens (creator of Diesel Sweeties) posted some really sage words of advice over at his LiveJournal this week, about “The How and Why of Making Webcomics“, but it’s really about finding the drive and strength for any artistic pursuit. Rich is one of the 5 or 6 people making his living from being a webcomicker, and as such I find his opinions on the subject tend to carry a lot of weight.

He’s come up with seven… well, he probably wouldn’t call them “rules” but let’s say seven pieces of advice for folks that want to produce webcomics (or any kind of art). They’re good rules, in my humble opinion, and at the link he actually backs them up with examples and… you know, stuff. Sorry, my head’s not in the game today, but the info at the link is really good. Go check it out.

“You’re here for the audience. People should be able to count on your being there for them when you say you’re going to be there. Life is annoying, uncertain and full of problems. Comic strips exist to give comfort, make people think and generally help them get through their day/week/geological epoch.

“Stick to your schedule and do your best. Your audience will quietly appreciate you and help you out when you need it. If you work out some personal issues and make yourself feel better for creating something, all the better.”

- Richard Stevens

- Chris