The Solution for Comics Sales

Not really, but let's try

Hello from Castrum Lusitania, my fortress in northern Portugal. Welcome to another edition of our weekly newsletter.

Sometimes, I see some interesting thing online that I don’t have time to follow through in that moment, so I’ll email it to myself. Right now, my inbox has five unread emails, all from me to myself. One of them is about a Twitter discussion regarding comics sales. In particular, US Comics sales vs Manga sales. And that’s all this week’s edition is gonna be about.

[Important: by US Comics, I mean traditional American Comics (Marvel, DC, Image, Boom, Dark Horse etc), not Western Comics or even American Comics as whole.]

So: Manga is rising in sales. US Comics are not. So what can be done?

Let’s unpack AND solve the problem in one short newsletter.

(Too ambitious? Maybe probably definitely yes.)

US Comis VS Manga

What I emailed myself specifically was this tweet thread by Ron Marz:

Ron’s original post is quoting this tweet that is also quoting another one containing a funny (but very real) meme:

Comparing the two is slightly unfair as they are not aiming at the same exact readership or tell the same type of stories. But truth is undeniable: Manga, which has been on the rise for many years now, has seen a bump in popularity recently and is translating that into many new readers. Not only in the US but all across Europe as well. US Comics (specifically superheroes) isn’t doing much of that at the moment. And the reality is:

US Comics lost its biggest chance to skyrocket sales

Every kid knows who Batman is. Who Spider-Man is. Superman. Iron Man. Wonder Woman. Etc, etc. But they are not buying many comics. Superheroes became the biggest thing in the world of entertainment in the past 15 years, so how come superhero comics sales didn’t blow up? Because nothing was really done to take proper advantage of that on the comics superhero side of things.

And the meme above addresses the issue: lots of people were interested in comics for the first time in their lives after seeing the superhero movies. But when they tried to pick something to read, it turned out there was no obvious answer. Which made many of them simply give up. And we’ll never have that moment back.

Movies take time to make and maybe there was a way that publishers could have prepared for it and created an easy entry point for new readers.

But that’s easier said than done. What could that be? More on that in a second, but first:

Superhero comics are not the entire market

At this point, some of you are thinking: there’s more to US Comics than superheroes. And you’re right. I’ve been doing sci-fi and murder mysteries for the past four years. And I’ll be starting a REDACTED in a few weeks. None of them are superheroes.

What happens is that those books have this starting point problem sorted, we don’t need to address that. Let’s say in 10 years time we’re lucky enough that some kid falls in love with some Phenomena product. Where can he/she start? With Book 1! Righteous Thirst? The complete thing is two volumes or one hard cover collection.

When The Walking Dead became a hit TV show, doves of people went into bookshops and bought (and keep buying), you guessed it, volume 1! Saga is one of the most talked about books of the past few years. Do you know what I’m pretty sure of sells a lot all the time? Saga volume 1!

Image Comics even has this policy of selling the first volume for 9.99 USD, making it as easy as possible to hook people up.

BUT superhero comics, wether we like it or not, are paramount to the traditional market. And the better they do, the better all the other books that share the same market do. More people in the shops will inevitably put eyes on smaller, independent titles.

Hence why addressing the issue of the entry point as a whole would be a fundamental step to grow the readership.

So, back to the question. What can be done?

Give people that sell an easy answer

I love monthly comics. The casual reader does not. They’re too expansive and unsatisfactory for them. They want a complete thing. A graphic novel. A volume. That’s why bookshops don’t carry floppies at the moment, only specialized comic shops.

They also don’t like convoluted storylines with no clear starting point. A casual reader likes an obvious way in.

When Marvel did the Ultimate line of books, it was a mega success. The basic premise was to reimagine the Marvel Universe as if it was created in the early 2000s. And they brought in the top talent of the time to do so.

That, for me, is the answer for superhero comics. Top talent, a clean slate. Not a relaunch, a reimagining. Not only of stories, but of the product itself. How to do it. How to market it. How to sell it.

Continuity is great. It allows you to create long form narratives full of impact and depth. Look at things like titles I mentioned above (The Walking Dead, Saga) or the many manga series that run for dozens of volumes.

But every story runs its course and it’s unimaginable to think that 50 years of continuity is an asset for storytelling. Particularly if you think that as decades pass you have to deal with constant changes in creative teams, editorial goals, market evolution, technological changes and social transformations.

The Ultimate line authors took all the good bits without any of the parts they didn’t want. And they created great stories. Same was true for things like The Dark Knight Returns. Or Batman Year One. Or All Star Superman. Or The Watchmen. All reimaginings of existing characters and books, fresh and adapted to their time, with new language choices in terms of dialog, design, page layout, character designs etc. All of them had in common the idea of Top Talent + Clean Slate.

So is it Graphic Novels? Monthlies? Digital? All of the above?

Different publishers and different books should have different approaches, I suppose. The Ultimate line ran for years, particularly Ultimate Spider-Man, with my pal Brian Bendis writing well past 100 issues. But The Dark Knight Returns was only four over-sized issues. It all depends on the project.

A few ideas for free: if you want to attach a specific launch to a specific movie, you could give the basic premise of the movie to some great creators and allow them to reimagine it for a 200 page graphic novel that would be on sale at the same time the movie premiered.

Or hire top talent to reimagine the big heroes. Not a relaunch. A reimagining. Like in the Ultimate line or All Star line. A project for the long run, that ends up with dozens of issues and a dozen or more volumes. Give it a beginning and then an ending. And then start again.

Or hire top talent and ask them to squeeze into a graphic novel their best idea for Batman. Or Superman. Or Spider-Man. Or the X-Men. And then do it again with other top talent. Bring people from TV, movies or novels. Bring celebrities for some of those. Ask Bill Gates or Taylor Swift to write the plot of a Spider-Man story and get a couple of professionals to help them.

The bottom line is: we need to give these big titles a vol. 1 or more stand alone stories that can be relevant for decades. Give people that sell comics an easy answer for the wanna-be nerd that walks into a book store or a comic shop.

Because that wanna-be nerd will come back again and start noticing all those other non superhero books that we want to sell as well.

What about the existing titles and ways of publishing?

Is there a readership to sustain them? If that’s the case, no reason to terminate them. We want to bring more people in, not replace the existing readers. They’ve brought us this far. In fact, if you expand the sales you’ll have more money for projects that might not be bringing much profit.

The Porsche example

I love cars and I love Porsche. Especially the 911. In the 90s, Porsche was down to that model alone, since everything else had failed. The 90s 911 model, codenamed 993, is one of the best they made. And yet, they were nearly bankrupted. They specialized too much and were selling too little because the 911 was and will always be a niche model. That’s when they thought outside of the box and decided to do the Cayenne, an SUV.

I remember the outrage. The purists were mad as hell. How could they do that? It would dilute the brand, tarnish it, etc etc.

What happened was that the Cayenne sold so well that brand expanded like never before. They created more models, like the Macan (a smaller SUV), Cayman (small middle engine sports car), Panamera (sports sedan) and kept the Boxster going (convertible sports car).

You know what happened to the beloved 911? Not only it survived, thanks to all the others being a success, but it thrived. It allowed Porsche to do all kinds of 911 special models, like the Carrera 2 and 2S, Carrera 4 and 4S, GTS, Targa, Turbo, Turbo S, Cabriolet, Cabriolet Turbo, some with manual gearboxes for the two guys that still want them, the GT3, GT3 RS, we could be here all day.

Basically: by enlarging their buyer profile and growing their sales, they not only continued to cater to their specialized fanbase but they also massively enlarged their options.

The Future is bright

Despite what you read around the web, the future is bright. The talent working on US Comics right now is insane. There are so many brilliant people doing so many brilliant books that only a fool can see other than a bright future.

The original comics (where I’ve been working exclusively since 2019) is completely blowing up with ideas, talent, ambition and incredible titles. That is not going anywhere.

But if we want to preserve a certain way of doing comics, with monthly launches, specialized comic shops, devote readers and authors, I think we need to make an effort to enlarge our readership.

Obviously, despite me jokingly stating it in the title and intro, this is no perfect solution. The fact is, I don’t think there is one. We’ll have to try and some will work better than others.

But only by trying and failing can we succeed.

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Back to making comics now, because that’s what I do best.

See you next week,

André