‘Annual’ Notions

Originally published December 1996, in Comics Buyer’s Guide Annual 1997

Some assorted thoughts on some of the things upon which this year’s annual is themed:

Five years ago, Image Comics was launched, and I wrote a column which (a) noted that the Image boys should watch what they say in public forums, (b) observed that combining friendship and business was “a volatile mix,” and I hoped they all had good lawyers, and (c) I wished them luck because, if anyone succeeds, we all succeed.

Several Image personnel, who shall go nameless, promptly sprung—not to respond—but to attack. Attacks upon me continue to this day.

In the meantime, Rob Liefeld has been fired or quit or quit so he wouldn’t be fired. And several of the Image founders are actively bad-mouthing him, while suits and countersuits are being lobbed. But Image has managed to have its share of successes, as well.

So, considering that pretty much everything I ever said about Image turned out to be accurate, I’m trying to figure out why some people still believe that I was remotely unfair in my earlier treatment of Image. Then again, consider this: I just finished writing Spider-Man/Gen13. Who would have thought that my participation with Image would outlast Rob Liefeld’s?

*   *   *

My first inkling that the black-and-white craze might take off was when I returned to my office at Marvel Comics, having just completed a road trip in my capacity as Marvel’s sales manager. I’d picked up the last copy that a retailer had had of a new black-and-white title called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. As I sat in my office, going through the assorted material I’d amassed on my trip, I pulled out the issue of TMNT and started to flip through it.

And someone came past, gaped, and said, “Where did you get that?”

“From a retailer in Illinois. Why?”

Apparently the cover price had already skyrocketed. The comics were in scarce supply, hard to find anywhere. There was a demand. Tons of it.

And where there are tons of demand, there are always tons of supply. The comic book publishing industry is no different from any other: supply the demand until the demand is sated.

Whereas, once upon a time, black-and-white comics couldn’t be given away, now you couldn’t get enough of them—turtles, hamsters, whatever.

Thank God for Marvel. Because as soon as Marvel planned to jump on the bandwagon with Power Pachyderms (which I, I blush to disclose, actually thought was dámņëd funny), that was enough to kill it. Marvel usually manages to kill whatever fad it tries to get in on.

Hey, don’t laugh. If Marvel hadn’t introduced the Disco Dazzler, we’d still be stuck with the BeeGees and leisure suits. We can only hope for the imminent arrival of Macarena Man to polish off that dance craze.

*   *   *

Speaking of gluts and Marvel—

Aside from black-and-white comics, Marvel managed to flood the market with a glut all its own: reprint comics—collections of various Marvel titles from the past, popping up like chicken pox all over the body of fandom. There were quite a few people who believed that Marvel was doing this for one reason and one reason only: to try to force smaller publishers out of business. To try to obliterate them by taking up the racks with nothing but Marvel product.

Now, I freely admit that I was not present at the upper levels of management. I suppose it’s possible that, at the highest reaches of Marvel’s brain trust, the notion was, “Let’s see what we can do to eliminate the competition.”

But I don’t know if I buy that. Because the independent publishers were such a negligible draw on the market share at the time, it’s hard to believe that Marvel was especially worried.

All I can tell you is that at my level, the motivation behind the reprint glut that Marvel created had nothing to do with trying to force out other publishers. For that matter, far from trying to force out or downplay other publishers, Carol Kalish was always urging retailers to display and intermingle smaller publishers’ comics with Marvel titles. Why? Because she felt that it was important to have a diverse market with as many strong-selling titles as possible. Diversity meant lots of customers, and lots of customers was—ultimately—good for Marvel.

No, in the direct-sales department, the creation of the reprint glut had zero to do with a cold-hearted attack on the indys.

It was money.

Money, pure and simple. The edict came down that the powers that be wanted Marvel making more money. I don’t know why it came at that particular time. Maybe some comics weren’t performing up to expectations. Maybe it was a ploy to make the company look better for potential customers. Maybe someone wanted to build an additional wing on his summer house. Who knows?

All I know is that Carol and I were told to come up with recommendations for assorted reprint packages, because Marvel wanted to make money.

I wouldn’t say that greed is necessarily a more noble motivation than aggressively trying to wipe out other publishers. But it’s certainly more—I dunno—benign, somehow. When smaller publishers started claiming that Marvel was launching an offensive against them, I know that Carol and I were both surprised at the reaction. Neither of us felt as if we deserved the Nobel Peace Prize for coming up with a dozen different potential reprint packages, but to us it was simply a “let’s make money for the Hou$e of Idea$” and nothing more than that.

Independent publishers—again, at least at our level—simply didn’t pose any sort of threat to Marvel’s dominance of the market. For an indy to accomplish that trick, it would have to have had a bunch of hot artists and a huge war chest at its disposal. And, since the only possible source of superhot artists and large amounts of money was Marvel itself, the only way there could possibly be a serious challenger to Marvel would be if Marvel itself manufactured it.

Which would be, of course, preposterous.

Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to a Second Age Inc., P.O. Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705.