So a guy came up to me at the Wizard Philly con with “Fallen Angel #22” and he told me he hadn’t gotten any issues since. When I asked why, he said the store manager said they’d stopped carrying it because he was the only customer buying it.
I told him that if the store couldn’t be bothered to accommodate a customer, he could order it directly from IDW.
PAD
• 
“There’s only one comic book store left in Minnesota worth going to anymore, and who knows how long it’ll will still be around.”
I don’t know where you shop, but I count at least 5 in the St Paul/Minneapolis area. And all caryy Fallen Angel!
“There’s only one comic book store left in Minnesota worth going to anymore, and who knows how long it’ll will still be around.”
I don’t know where you shop, but I count at least 5 in the St Paul/Minneapolis area. And all carry Fallen Angel!
“Would that be the Hot comics chain? or The Source? Dreamhaven is a great store also.”
Add that both the Source AND Dreamhaven are Eisner Retailer of the Year Award winners! And the Hot’s are great, too. (And I used to own the defunct Hot Comics St Paul, so I may be biased!)
but it really doesn’t seem to have much to do with Jerome’s comment which appeared–to an outside observer–to be rather innocuous.
Because his comment doesn’t strike me as innocuous.
It strikes me as “why are you too cheap to buy 5 titles; just fork over the money already”.
Let’s reexamine Jerome’s comments, shall we:
Why would 5 titles be such a burden?
So that would be about $15 of books…
why would you simply stop going because they would ask you to order 5 books a MONTH?
And, the kicker imo:
Why is that too much to ask?
If I’m not interested in 5 titles, why should I buy 5 titles? Why is THAT too much to ask? Because apparently it is.
Because his comment doesn’t strike me as innocuous.
Well, that’s pretty obvious.
It strikes me as “why are you too cheap to buy 5 titles; just fork over the money already”.
Which makes me think that either you’re sensitive about money issues or you’ve been accused of being cheap, because you’re taking personal offense at something that doesn’t strike me as intending such. It’s the out of proportion thing I was talking about.
Let’s reexamine Jerome’s comments, shall we:
If we must.
Why would 5 titles be such a burden? So that would be about $15 of books…why would you simply stop going because they would ask you to order 5 books a MONTH?
Well, first of all, Jerome was specifically saying that it was $15 before discounts. And no one is saying that anyone has to stop going. He’s saying that he doesn’t see it as an unreasonable condition for extending the courtesy of a pull list to certain customers. Sort of a frequent flier benefit, as it were. Personally, I don’t agree with that; I think a pull list should be extended to all customers regardless of how many copies they order. Clearly Jerome feels otherwise. But I don’t see it as insulting to you that he does.
And, the kicker imo:Why is that too much to ask?
It’s only a kicker if you ignore everything else that he says. He put forward a series of arguments, one on top of the next, suggesting that being a five comic a month customer in order to qualify for pull list privileges isn’t that big a deal.
If I’m not interested in 5 titles, why should I buy 5 titles? Why is THAT too much to ask? Because apparently it is.
No one’s saying you HAVE to. Just that if you want a pull list in that particular store, that’s their requirement.
Personally, I happen to agree with you, as I said above: I think it’s a stupid requirement, and short sighted. Let’s say someone just wants “Fallen Angel” in their pull list. So you agree to do that. Then, after a couple of months, once you know the customer is coming in regularly, you put the latest X-Factor in the pull file along with it and say, “Look, this is also by Peter David, and it has a noir feel to it. Check it out. If you don’t want to keep it, bring it back. If you like it, I can start putting it aside for you as well.” And if the customer likes it, then a month after that, She-Hulk does a guest appearance in X-Factor. So maybe you get him interested in She-Hulk. There are indeed retailers who take that kind of time; they’re among the more successful ones.
Anyway, I still think you’re overreacting.
PAD
Well, for every local customer MHC loses for the 5 comic minimum, there are probably 4 customers who go along and throw in 1 or 2 comics they wouldn’t normally buy to make the minimum. That’s more money they’ve taken in by losing 1 customer they now no longer have to serve. That seems perfectly reasonable.
PAD,
Thank you for your imput on this thread. Because no matter what else my opinions may be on other matters, let there be no doubt that I truly love this industry.
And there is no “right” or “wrong” in this. The most successful – by far – comic store in my hometown area of Scranton, PA has no “minimum quantity” pull list requirement at his store, which has done nothing but grow and move into bigger buildings since he has been in business. So that policy has obviously worked for him (though he has talked about getting burned by more than a few customers on issues he has put away, sometimes LOTS.)
On the oither hand, one of the bigger comic stores in Philadelphia does require a “minimum issue” pull list. the owners have said it has increased efficiency and had people try new titles they now enjoy they may not have picked up otherwise. So that approach has worked for them.
Couple that with my experiences with MHC and my concern when anyone becomes disinterested or disheartened by this genre I love so much, for any reason, and the result is my statements and questions above. That’s all.
I think you meant to refer to comics as a medium, not as a genre. Your devotion seems to make using the appropriate term more urgent.
Mike,
Thanks.
Jerome
Well my LCS has the five comic minimum, but that’s part of the package that includes the discount off the cover price and other specials as well. Which makes sense.
If someone only buys one or two books a month why should they get the same discount as someone who buys 15 to 20?
It may be the minimum is there so there’s no confusion between who gets the discount and who doesn’t. I’ll ask and report back.
As for whether or not he’s successful he’s been in business for 21 years. He’s expanded his store. It’s not huge, but really in Toronto I can’t think of a big store. The Silver Snail is two floors, but in terms of floor space not that big.
He does tend to run the store himself with a couple of part timers, but again with the exception of the Snail and Beguiling (which I think has a staff of three, but they specialise in independent and alternative comics)
I can’t think of a store that would be like an Isotope or Midtown or Golden Apple. (though to be fair I’m not particularly familiar with those stores so maybe they don’t have all much floor space either)
I’ll ask my LCS about why he wants minimum requirements for pull lists.
The situation PAD wrote about is a prime example of the bad influence that Brian Hibbs has had on the comics shop business. Hibbs has a half-sensible understanding of economics, so he sounds like he knows what he’s talking about, but he has some very bad ideas that have propagated throughout the business. In particular, here, Hibbs was big on the idea of allocating overhead costs across your entire product line, so that every comic “pocket” in the store has to return a minimum amount of revenue — which meant that every comic had to sell a minimum number of copies, rather than focusing on marginal return — the title that was one copy short of the artificial “minimum” was still profitable, but Hibbs’ cost analysis said it wasn’t profitable enought. It’s the same wrongheaded idea that’s driving major music labels down the tubes with their focus on platinum sellers with huge marketing costs that show profits only because marketing costs are amortized over the whole catalog, even though their Duke Ellington or Bill Monroe or Byrds backlist sells pretty much the same number of copies without any substantial marketing costs. Hibbs doesn’t actually run his stores along the lines he writes that he does, but too many comics shop operators don’t recognize that. For most comics shops, the top 20-50 titles pay their overhead costs, and very little the shop does makes much direct difference in average monthly revenue(short of turning the air conditioning off in midsummer to save on utilities costs), while the real profits come from store attention to customer demand on small-volume titles. The guy who can’t get his favorite small press book from his regular comics shop ends up being a customer of a big mail-order service, and the local comics shop ends up losing a customer who typically spend in the low four figures per year because the store operator didn’t want to risk being stuck with about $15/year (cost) in unsold product.
N. Caligon,
Thank you. While I do not know Brian Hibbs or his business practices well enough to comment, the idea that any retailer would not have a copy on the shelf of a Marvel or DC title that sold as “poorly” as say “Manhunter” or even “Catwoman” drives me insane. Especially when those same people will then stick their chest out and say they are carrying an indie title that sells much less because one is a “corporate” title and one is “indie”.
Such thinking is bad economics (unless the comic is not profitable in that particular store), is bad for the long-term of the industry as well.
For example, there ae embarasiingly few Asian heroes out there. Yet DC took a risk and made a longtime character Asian. One of the best writer’s in the industry chose to write it. If that book made one more Asian kid want to read comics, what’s the harm? If those interested in a different take on a long-time character chose to pick it up, what’s the harm? If Gail simone fans decided to pick up the title instead of the plethora of titles starring Spider-Man or Batman (which people will complain about as well) well, isn’t that a sign of a healthy industry?
The survival and strength of ‘peripheral” titles is important because not only will you have diversity in number of titles, but to paraphrase PAD, someone who picked up a low-selling title such as She-Hulk may be interested in a crossover with an X-book like “X-Factor” or something completely different like “Fallen Angel”. They are gateways, and if they are entertaining and can support themselves, why not reserve shelf space for them?
Krayz says: Add that both the Source AND Dreamhaven are Eisner Retailer of the Year Award winners! And the Hot’s are great, too. (And I used to own the defunct Hot Comics St Paul, so I may be biased!)
That was my favorite Hot comics, It is greatly missed.
N. Caligon, You typed ‘stores’, but I think Hibbs only has one store. Probably just a typo, but wanted to be clear.
Hibbs advocates that retailers should maximize their profit just as other businesses do. I agree and disagree, for reason’s others have said here—1 customer lost because a book isn’t available is 1 too many. But, if Hibbs sells 3 copies of a book every month, then orders 4 the following 3 months and the extra never sells, he has to go back down to 3 copies. Having a copy ‘for the shelf’ is not always a wise business decision. If he is selling 29 copies of a book, then there is good reason to order an extra copy or two: there is obviously something about that book that interests customers.
Jerome Maida:
I’m confused, you argue that “the idea that any retailer would not have a copy on the shelf of a Marvel or DC title that sold as “poorly” as say “Manhunter” or even “Catwoman” drives me insane…unless the comic is not profitable in that particular store.” Those two points would seem to contradict each other.
Also, quite often in local arenas, certain indie titles sell quite higher than certain corporate titles. Would you push the higher-selling indie titles off the shelf to make room for non-selling corporate titles?
Errata:
I don’t mean specifically Catwoman or Manhunter; I am speaking more generally.
Anthony Barry,
No. They don’t contradict each other at all. I was using poorly in a sarcastic vein, hence the quotes. My point is even books like “Manhunter” and “Catwoman” which struggle on the sales charts in relation to other titles from the Big Two, still tend to sell better than 95% of independents.
So my question is “Why stop ordering those books, – which have a Marvel or DC “brand” and, in the case of a book like Catwoman, name recognition to the general public that might entice someone entering a store to pick it up – in favor of ordering an indie that sells 1/3 as many copies, if that? this is not a knock on the independent title. It just doesn’t make much business sense to me, unless said store literally only has one person picking up “Catwoman” every month, but has 60 people who religiously pick up “Witchblade”.
The superhero books then become like antibiotic-resistant microorganisms in that they dominate, and their domination makes the industry sick.
At his peak, CC Beck reached something like 10,000,000 readers every month. Now the best-selling books reach 1%. And it’s not because of any failing on the part of comics as a medium. No published superhero creator will ever reach that wide a readership again, and thanks to superheroes dominating the access points for published comics, comic book stores, no other genre will ever reach that wide a circulation, either.
Mike,
I disagree that superhero comics’ domination of the market makes the industry “sick”. i feel they are used as a convenient scapegoat.
the industry as a whole has enjoyed steady growth since 2002.
And with more and more different comics being published and more attention drawn to them, it is possible to see a significant upswing. “Civil War”, “Dark Tower” and “Captain America” #25 all did monter numbers last year. There were more books that sold over 100,000 copies a month than has happened in years, including “Buffy” which brought in new readers. Dynamite, Dark Horse and Image all had books regularly crack the Top 100, for such diverse books as “Spawn”, “Walking Dead”, “Project Superpowers”, “Red Sonja” and “Star Wars”.
You never know. Sometime soon comics could have their own Harry Potter.
With comics, the readership to circulation ratio is not 1:1.
Let’s say “Dark Tower” reaches ½m or 1m readers. For all I know, they do better. But how could the publishers not be embarrassed that the next best-circulated storyline doesn’t reach 10% of the readers? Are superheroes choking access to the medium, or does the industry attract only creators who are retards?
Yeah, Shakespeare, Austen, Steinbeck, and Miller are all spinning in their graves at their lost opportunity to jump onto the zeitgeist of comics-diversity we’re enjoying now.
If franchises could marry, comic franchises wouldn’t be able to inter-marry from laws prohibiting siblings from having children. But, hey, I’ll bet there’s no list banning those publications from any high school curriculums.
It’s called the Books of Magic, it came first, and as well as it’s done in the industry, it’s no Harry Potter. Outside of the comic store, no one even knows it even exists.
Jerome Maida:
I fear you are missing my point. “It just doesn’t make much business sense to me, unless said store literally only has one person picking up “Catwoman” every month, but has 60 people who religiously pick up “Witchblade”.” See, that’s my point exactly.
At my store we carried Marvel’s “Foolkiller.” We carried it all the way through both series but had exactly one sale on the title. That means since it has seen 10 issues so far, we’ve lost money on 8 of them. The sale on the first succinctly cancelled out the sale on the second; thus all in all, we’ve lost about $10 (after our Diamond discount) on carrying “Foolkiller.” That then couples with the shelf-space it took up when we could have had a selling title there.
In another section of the store, we took an oddball chance on a title called “Locke & Key” from IDW and Joe Hill (a relatively known name but not at all in the comics industry). Since then we’ve barely been able to keep it stocked. It has been a very profitable title for us, one which has allowed us to make up for losses on titles like “Foolkiller.”
Now, we’re looking at “Foolkiller” volume 3 in this month’s Previews. Will we be ordering it? Likely not. But its a Marvel title! Don’t care; nobody wants it. Should a customer come in asking about it, we’ll tell them we can get it for them. We are a relatively small store, there are a finite number of titles we can carry, and this one simply doesn’t justify shelf-space.
Given that we are now stuck trying to find ANY way to get money back out of this title (let alone cover price – which customers refused to pay for 10 months straight), can you honestly argue that it would be good business sense to order Vol 3? Further, would you have it push “Locke & Key” off the shelf in the vain hope that some random customer will come in months down the line wanting “Foolkiller” NOW and who will refuse to wait for a special order to come in?
Mike,
I do not feel superheroes are choking access to the medium. I just feel A.) Most people feel comics, like Disney cartoons, are strictly for kids (which we know is not true, but the myth still exists and B.) Most people don’t even know WHERE TO GET comics. If there were a comics version of Borders, sales would be much higher.
And you dare lump in Chuck Austen with Shakespeare, Miller and Steinbeck? Just kidding.
But really, why does every comic have to be serious literature. Why can’t they be fun? And I would argue that certain comic writers DO produce flat-out literature, only it’s in comic, not novel, form.
Anthony Barry,
No. I would argue you are doing the intelligent thing. Obviously, there has been no interest in “Foolkiller” at your store. So it would be silly to order more for the shelf. Likewise,I would commend you for pushing a title like “Locke and Key”. I’m all for diversity in the marketplace. From what you’re saying, “Locke and Key” has earned shelf space at your store, whereas “Foolkiller” has not. My argument is against not ordering “low-selling” Marvel or DC titles simply to make a point, regardless of how they sell at your individual store.
Oh, and Mike, I was referring to comics needing a Harry Potter, in terms of a book having those incredible sales, not referring to a specific theme.
You like comics. What makes you think superheroes dominating the medium isn’t what you want, and therefore your tolerance of the drop in comics sales doesn’t reflect a healthy industry?
Unfortunately, almost no one feels comics are for their kids, otherwise you’d see parents buying comics for their kids at a respectable interval.
From your excuse, you’d think comic retailers never go out of business.
And I agree, but they’re getting çøçk-blocked from the public consciousness by a single genre.
As did I.
Mike,
In regard to the “You like comics/What makes you think superheroes dominating isn’t what you want” argument, let me say that I enjoy books like “Criminal”, “Scalped” and loved most of “Y:The Last Man”. I like “Dan Dare”, too. Is he a superhero? If so, doesn’t that make james Bond one?
But I personally think superhero comics are what companies are not only known for, but what they do best and what is their STRENGTH. I can see a storyline similar to one in the late, lamented “Gotham Central” almost every day – and often done better – in “Law and Order” reruns.
But people want larger-than-life stuff and ideal heroes and being taken to other worlds. Look at the top 50 money-grossong films, even adjusted for inflation, and you will see a list dominated by action-adventure/sci-fi/fantasy films. The only reason those don’t come out more often is because budgets are sky-high. As many writers/artists will say, comics have an unlimited budget for those kinds of stories. And from Superman to captain marvel to the heyday of Image, superheroes have led the way in terms of sales. There is really nothing wrong with that.
What does hurt the industry is retailers who don’t advertise and are not knowledgeable about and passionate about their product. Even one of the better ones I have encountered reads less titles than I do. How are you going to pull in female readers if you can’t talk intelligebtly about titles ranging from “Helen Killer”, to “American Dream” to “Buffy” to “Spider-Girl” to “Red Sonja” to “Manhunter” to “Painkiller Jane”? One black man I work with said the upcoming “Hancock” movie looks cool and the only other black hero he remembers in comics was “Luke Cage. he would likely be interested in “Black Panther” but had not heard of him, John Stewart, Steel, etc. Why is that? That’s what I’m talking about. And retailers go out of business specifically because potential readers like these don’t know comics like these and where to get them.
Greater awareness of the art form in general and where to purchase comics would allow books like “All-New Atom” and “Bue Beetle” to have sizable readerships, let alone the icons. We need more shops and more willingness to market to potential customers to truly have the industry reach it’s potential.
It would thrill me to know end if 8 million kids were waiting at midnight outside comic shops for the release of a “Harry Potter” comic. while there, the younger ones could discover “Tiny Titans” and “Marvel Adventures Hulk”; and everyone else picked up “Iron Man” because the movie was cool, “Red Sonja” because the art is gorgeous and scores of others from “Star Wars” to “Battlestar Galactica” to “The Simpsons”. It would be a beautiful thing. We just need something like that to hook a whole new generation.
For the traditional practice of a discipline, whether it’s a science or an art or an athletic discipline, the conventional path to mastering it is to drill, to acquaint your intuition with the basic iconic units of the discipline until they’re second nature to you. Sun Su said we have 5 primary colors, referring to the 3 primaries as we know them and b&w, but our mastery of color, even as we know it today, is founded in our acquaintance with them.
The distinguishing virtue of art is in its meta nature; art isn’t like science where it’s highest manifestations take place between conditioned practitioners. Its highest manifestations don’t take place between artists, but between artist and non-artist. Art accesses the intuition of anyone human.
It’s been said the arts are like holding a conversation in a restaurant. You speak to hold the attention of the people at your table, but clearly enough for anyone listening in. There is a balance of intimate and epic elements to access the intuition of the beholder. How much more powerful an example of this is there than Maus?
It wasn’t until the Eichmann trial, 20 years afterward, that concentration camp victims started giving accounts of their experiences on a substantial scale. They didn’t have the means to frame their accounts of their experiences in a manner to access the intuitions of outsiders. They could provide their account, and it could be hit-or-miss whether the degree of what they went through would mean anything to anyone else — much less whether or not they were even believed, having only their word of what happened for the most part — so they didn’t rush to say anything that would mark them as more different than the differences people already knew them for. How do you then establish an intimate attachment with the reader to agendas so epic, they fall outside the intuition of most people?
What seems to be your general attitude, “Why should comics extend beyond impotent power-fantasies?” segregates and marginalizes what should be a powerful means of expression into inactivity requiring life support for who knows how long. Why nurture this dysfunction? It’s like a child’s obsession with the motion of his or her favorite video, seeing the fleeting sequence of presentation over and over again. It just isn’t interesting to people with a larger life-experience and a larger field of vision, and that’s whose attention comics have to attract to fully blossom.
Mike,
As I’ve stated many times, I am all for different themes popping up on comics shelves. But I just don’t see the same correlation between the domination of superheroes and lower sales since superheroes have always dominated and there IS a big difference between Alan Moore’s Watchmen and Chuck Austen’s X-Men. There are historical comics, realy out-there independents; comics based on recognized classical literature, etc.
And while I consider my own life experience and field of vision to be more expansive than average, I just feel saying superheroes are THE REASON why comics are not reaching a broader audience is scapegoating.
Those projects exist. Let’s promote them. One thing I think we can agree on is we want we both want an expanding, healthy industry. We just have different ways that can be achieved I guess – and that’s fine.
In other words, you’ve never seen things any other way, therefore no alternative solutions have been demonstrated to succeed where the status quo fails.
While that’s literally true, there’s no innovation that can’t be portrayed as a disobedience to convention. All you’ve done is observe a convention whose disregard we depend on for our survival.
They are the dominating genre to hold accountable.
If you were wrong and I was right, what would be different from the way things are now?
Guy who started all this clarifies his points here:
http://www.icv2.com/articles/talk_back/12721.html