BOOK PUBLISHERS

While it may be a very welcome fact that book publishers have discovered comic strips, I fear it owes more to the fact that general sales of books are declining and that twice as much can be charged for a graphic novel. As with so many other aspects of the comic strip it is aimed at the adult reader, completely bypassing the younger reader which forms the bedrock of comic strips as a mass medium (again keeping sight of our fundamental aim: re-establishing the comic strip as a mass medium).

The decline in book sales is an indicator of the general “dumbing down” in society, with visual media taking the place of the written word. Movies, television and video games now rule, requiring very little effort from their audience. The comic strip can benefit from this cultural trend, offering an experience which floats somewhere between the written word and visual media. We are entering a period of transition which seems tailor made for our medium.

If one adds the rise of the Asian markets, which are eager to learn the English language as a way of trading with the west, and for whom comics are an accessible way of helping their kids to learn English, it seems now is the time for the comic strip to come to the fore.

When I first went to school I could not speak or read English, and had to attend special classes to catch up with the rest of my predominantly English classmates. I made swift progress because I augmented the usual Janet and John books with comics which I could gradually decipher. I slowly began to understand what these characters were saying to each other having been attracted to them by the artwork (I only read speech balloons at first and didn’t bother with “boring” captions).

I entered a primary school being unable to read but in the first year of my secondary school I got the best grades in English for the entire year, not just my class (and I still mostly read comic books). So I can attest to the teaching power of comic books when it comes to learning English.

Unfortunately many book publishers hire editors with no experience in comic books, who in turn often hire creators whose first work in comic strips is a graphic novel. A graphic novel should be the destination for a creator, not the starting point. Creators, especially artists, grow with each job they complete and see in print. Therefore in the early stages of a career it is useful to work on short comic strips, which unfortunately there are all too few of now.

UK and US book publishers are also going straight to book form, and not publishing magazines. The medium has been established in other countries by publishing serialized comic strips in weekly or monthly magazines which are then collected into books. The subject matter for US and UK graphic novels is also not mainstream, but the type of  marginal books which are only published in other countries because they have a thriving mainstream market. Once again this shows a failure in understanding the basics.

The best selling graphic novels in France sell almost half a million copies, and have built up their readership over the years with various collections, and having started in magazines. The US and UK book markets will never achieve those figures until they accept that they are possible if they change the way they publish. Perhaps the book trade will learn the lessons that the comic book market has been unwilling to, after all one would hope that the book trade is run by business people who act in a more business like fashion.

My fear is that the book trade is merely looking for a quick fix to its own problems and has little stomach for the long term investment needed to nurture a new market. The sector’s interest in graphic novels may owe more to the number of movies based on them than any real interest in (or understanding of) the medium, but any glimmer of expansion of the medium is to be welcomed.

The interest in graphic novels, which is generated by their adaptation into big budget Hollywood movies, has attracted novelists and graphic artists to the field who have suddenly revealed a life long interest in the medium (even stand up comedians are hoping their graphic novel will be turned into a movie!). Unfortunately the medium in the UK and US is desperately trying to establish itself with a wider audience, and I’m afraid I would have to say that the last thing it needs is creators who have absolutely no experience in the creation of comic books.

Book publishers do already have relationships with many of these people and find it easier to deal with them. They also find it very easy to adapt books into graphic novels as they are on familiar ground, which has led to a plethora of classic comics. The market is awash with endless adaptations of Shakespeare, and flooded with Dickens etc. Perhaps the book market is more like the comic book market than I thought as it just does what is “easy”.

One problem which established comic book creators do present the book market with is the lack of many long term collaborations. The mainstream market does not follow the comic book fan press and keep up to date on all the creators’ activities. They expect books to look and read the same each time they pick them up, which gives writer/artists a distinct advantage over creative teams (unless they make long term partnerships).

This feeds in to the fundamental strength of the comic strip, the establishment of a character represented in a specific style (as I explained earlier). It is the specialist comic book market which has allowed characters to morph into mere shadows of themselves being changed every few months by migratory creators. Many newspaper strips have retained their distinctive visual style (and popularity) while being produced by a succession of creators, because they maintain a “house style”.

Book publishers also seem to fall into the trap of hiring a creator who has already been published by another book publisher. I would point out that if the first publisher has not gone back to that creator and commissioned a second book it is because the first book didn’t sell. Unfortunately there are a fair few creators who have produced single graphic novels for a variety of publishers. Inexperienced editors obviously feel they are on safe ground with these creators but if they delivered sales then they would still be working for the first publisher.

It is for this reason that weekly and monthly anthologies lead to successful book collections, the readers tell the editors which strips are their favourites. The graphic novel collections are then not a complete shot in the dark but a reaction to readers’ response. Editors are therefore not scrambling around gambling on creators and taking the safe route of someone who they know has at least been published before.

In Japan and Europe comic strip collections come in fairly standard sizes, which the general public are used to, while in the US and UK graphic novels come in all different shapes and sizes and are treated more like art books. If UK and US publishers want to sell their products to foreign markets then they would do well to package them in formats which the foreign markets are familiar with.

The high cost of graphic novels is something which cannot be ignored. If I read an average paperback on the way to and from work every day it might cost £6.99 and take me all week to read. In that time I could read about 10 graphic novels, most of which are priced over £10 (at a conservative estimate we’re probably over £150 for a week’s reading material)! On a purely economic level there is a huge disparity between the two media. This means that the graphic novel becomes a bit of a treat and something to look forward to (the publication of your favourite character’s latest collection), savoured in the comfort of your own home.

The attention drawn to the graphic novel thanks to movie adaptations has attracted many creators from outside the medium. Unfortunately the market is not established yet and there is a distinct lack of seasoned professionals who have switched from the direct sales market and made concerted efforts to reach a more mainstream market. It’s true that after a great many years of producing basically whatever they want (as many of the top names can) it is difficult to produce work to appeal to an audience that is unfamiliar with comic strips. The different pay system, a small advance against royalties instead of a guaranteed page rate, is also a bit of a culture shock for long standing comic professionals.

There is a huge talent pool made up of seasoned pros that have not been given carte blanche by comic book publishers but could easily adapt to the new mainstream type of work given the opportunity. This would be much better than graphic novels being produced by first timers and people who just fancy having a go at a graphic novel (including stand up comedians!).

The book trade is still trying to establish the graphic novel market in the UK and the US and has to be sure of the material it puts out and whether it is going to lead to more sales. If a customer decides to give graphic novels a chance and picks up a sub-standard piece of work which puts him off the medium then we’ve lost that reader, possibly forever. He can go see a couple of awful movies and not stop going to the movies because that medium is established (he knows not all movies are awful – just most of them). The graphic novel does not have that luxury, for most people it’s a new thing which they’ve never tried before, therefore quality control at this early stage is important.

DISTRIBUTION & DIRECT SALES

Something strange, and not all together healthy, has happened to magazine, and therefore comic book, distribution in the UK. I suspect, but admit I am no expert on the matter, that it has something to do with the supermarkets. These huge corporations attract suppliers with the vast numbers of customers who pass through their well-stocked aisles, but exact a heavy toll from those suppliers (a Faustian pact if you will). Unless a supplier has another form of distribution which it can rely on it is soon at the mercy of the supermarkets which exert their influence ruthlessly.

UK comic weeklies, and often US monthly imports, used to be available in any UK news agent. A fan of a UK comic could place a regular order with their news agent for that periodical, I had a weekly order for TV21 when I was young. Free gifts were limited to the first three issues of a comic book, or attempts to boost circulation. I have heard from some sources that IPC’s policy was to constantly cut the print run of their comic books, anticipating the drop in sales. This goes a long way to explaining why comics were so devilishly difficult to collect unless one placed the above mentioned standing order.

It does not take a genius to realize that constantly cutting your print run will not just anticipate a drop in readership, but cause a drop in readership. It was decisions such as these that I never dared to question as a youngster, believing that others were experts who knew far better than I. Such is not the case today, the costs of overprinting any nationally distributed magazine are minimal, and it is the most basic exercise in logic to compute that you cannot increase sales if there is no surplus product to sell.

Now in the UK hideous amounts of money seem to be paid over to distributors and supermarkets to carry, or “promote”, periodicals. Supermarkets seem to cherry pick the most profitable comic books, as they do with books, computer games and DVDs to stock, thus keeping their workload down and denying stores which deal primarily in such items valuable sales. Due to their massive buying power supermarkets can often offer these items at far lower prices. In the long run this will lead to books, DVDs and computer games etc only being available through supermarkets on the high street, and they will still only carry the most popular items, all other trade will inevitably be carried out on-line.

The UK comic book has unfortunately become part of this equation, with supermarkets accounting for a significant percentage of their sales. For my mind UK comic publishers no longer have a dialogue with their readers, instead they have a dialogue with supermarkets, who demand that there be a free gift and demand that they be in full colour, and demand that they have a promotion every six months, and if they don’t comply then they’ll be dropped and the supermarket won’t even notice because they carry 14,999 other goods in their stores and that one item is insignificant.

Of the six originated comics still distributed on UK news stands, Dandy, Beano, Commando, 2000AD, Judge Dredd Megazine & Viz, 50% are in black & white, so colour is no guarantee of longevity. The Italian and Japanese comic book markets are also primarily black & white and suffer no ill effects because of it. Black & white reduces costs and allows publishers a greater degree of experimentation, and as I have stated previously the UK market must work its way through a great many failures before it can find a success.

The entry level for new publishers seems to be prohibitively high on UK news stands. Alternatively in France I understand that if you can afford to print 30,000 copies of a periodical you are guaranteed distribution by law, which democratizes publishing to a great extent.

While we’re looking at Europe I’d just like to extol the virtues of the Italian system of edicolas, which are small kiosks on almost every other corner on Italian streets. They carry newspapers, magazines, comic books, puzzle books, part-works, DVDs, etc. One cannot walk for longer than 5 minutes without stumbling across one in any major Italian town. It is this ubiquitous system which has led to Tex and Dylan Dog clocking up a whopping 800,000 combined sales every month, a total reached with a new edition of each title plus a couple of re-prints and occasional specials, but impressive figures nevertheless for a country with a population below 60 million.

It is the publication of comic strips in periodicals, which are then collected into book formats which has underpinned the success of comics in both the European and Japanese markets, therefore it is essential for both the UK and US comic book industries to have effective distribution. I believe that neither the US or UK comic industries have that effective distribution, although, even with its problems, the UK industry is still on news stands.

The US comic book has retreated almost totally from news stand sales, although titles such as the Simpsons and Archie Comics are still released to both news stand and direct sales markets.

At one point, a few years into the direct sales revolution, the future evolution of the comic book market seemed set on a steady course. Marvel and DC released comics to both news stands and direct sales shops attracting new young readers, and an ever-growing number of them would stick with comic books as they saw older readers continuing to buy comics from direct sales shops. There would no longer be the stigma attached to buying comics from a news stand when you were a grown up, a feeling many of us older readers still remember.

The direct sales shops allowed much smaller companies (indies) to produce work aimed at a more comic savvy audience, that had grown up with and was committed to the medium. More adult material could be explored and niche product still be made available due to the firm sales policy of the direct sales market.

In many cases Marvel and DC would let the indies like Eclipse, Pacific and First establish markets and creators before launching their own attempts. The more lucrative deals offered to creators by the indies also led Marvel and DC to grant royalties and creator rights.

Regional direct sales distributors sprang up across the US and one was set up in the UK. A books’ print run was established after the publisher phoned all the distributors, which at one point was over a dozen, and got their firm orders. It is no surprise that during this period indie hits sprang up, titles such as Elfquest, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Cerebus. These were self-published black & white comics which made a tidy profit for their creators thanks to the formal distribution network established by the direct sales market.

When the market began to be flooded by cheap, low quality books, which were ordered on firm sale months in advance and sight unseen apart from a cover, the distributors were asked to carry out a limited form of quality control and ensure the book was actually finished.

It was a time of expansion, and informal rules being agreed by consensus, with distributors realizing that it was the comic shops that were at the sharp end, and the ones who would be left with unsold comics. This risk was diffused however, as most books were regular items and had a guaranteed following. New comics were treated cautiously and a “hit” comic could be re-ordered (TMNT#1 had several printings as what started as a joke title turned into a huge comic juggernaut).

Distributors began to merge until the US was left with just one distributor, Diamond. The entire US comic industry is now just a part of one company’s turn-over, which includes DVDs, tee-shirts, toys, role playing games, books, magazines, trading cards and novelties.

To a large extent Diamond decides the shape of the entire US comic book industry. Of course it doesn’t control Marvel, DC, Dark Horse or any of the established companies, but I think it is no surprise that the direct sales market has not had a bona fide self-publishing hit since Diamond became the sole distributor.

I believe that the long term well being of the entire industry depends on lots and lots of people all putting their idea of what a comic should be out there and letting the shops and readers make up their minds if they’re right. It is only this way that innovation will occur.

Marvel and DC both publish a huge number of titles which eats up most of the comic shops’ budgets. Any money left over is mostly spent on Dark Horse, Image and the other larger indies, which leaves very little money left for the self-published books, so no new Cerbus, TMNT or Elfquest.

This means that as Marvel and DC’s sales drop (ten years ago the top selling comic sold 300,000 today it sells 100,000) so do the sales of the comic shops. Over the years there have been a succession of new products which comic publishers and comic shops have used to bolster their sales; graphic novels, trading cards, role playing games, action figures, manga and statuettes. Many fall by the wayside, only lasting as long as it takes for a collector to try selling the first action figure or statuette they bought and realizing they’re not going to be able to retire on the proceeds. Comic shops should be proud of supplying reading material, as ordinary bookshops are disappearing from our high streets faster than you can say Amazon dot com!

It is the mixture of monthly comic books and graphic novels, and a core audience addicted to comics, that allow many of these shops to keep going. How long they’ll be able to do this without a massive injection of new customers is of critical importance. Now hardly seems to be the time to be putting up barriers to new product.

After thirty years of pontificating that “comics aren’t just for kids” the industry seems to nearly be waking up to the fact that it is producing little material which is child friendly. This brings few new readers into a market which has a dwindling customer base, most comic readers are 40 plus.

Despite the large number of comic books and graphic novels which comic shops complain they have to wade through I would struggle to put together a line up of books that would allow customers to seamlessly move from one type of book to the next. There are major gaps in the market, primarily at the younger age range of the market.

Readers are suddenly expected to get turned on to comics at the age of sixteen, having grown up on a steady diet of tv, internet, computer games, movies and CDs. With all their disposable income probably already allocated we feel that they’ll suddenly stop and pick up a comic and start reading it. Well I have no doubt that some of them do just that, but it’s obviously not as many as when kids grew up reading comics. Some of us stayed with comics even when there weren’t direct sales comic shops, and some of us remember feeling faint when they walked into a shop filled with nothing but comics.

The direct sales market, and primarily the distribution network, needs to find a way to allow the maximum number of new, indie comics on to the market without breaking under the pressure. Simply raising the bar for orders has led to an increase in graphic novel collections, and new readers are justifiably reluctant to pay £8/$12 for a book by a complete unknown. It seems another step towards a model which is replicated nowhere else in the world, one in which graphic novels replace comic book periodicals.

At one point I used to think that if comic shops simply dropped the lowest selling Marvel and DC comic and switched over to an indie comic that might gradually improve the situation. I now believe this idea to be wrong (there I admit I get things wrong). I believe that the lower selling Marvel and DC comics are ordered at just the right levels by comic shops, and offer a steady, reliable source of revenue, which is what every business needs.

I believe it is the “multi-part big event” comics which take up large amounts of a comic shop’s budget, and can often leave retailers with stacks of unsold copies. Marvel and DC know they just have to put out as much publicity about these books as possible and retailers will be worried about missing out on “the next big thing”. I have seen multiple copies of the first issue still on the shelves as the last issue comes out, and unless the publisher shipped out free extra copies of that first issue it’s the retailer who takes the financial hit, after all once the comic shop has placed a firm order on non-returnable books it’s their problem.

Comic publishers now have to sell to comic shop owners, not readers. If they can convince the retailer, who for their sins is completely immersed in the comic world, then they will sell large quantities of the comic book, and a couple of months later also sell a collected graphic novel version of the mini-series which the retailer still has unsold copies of!?

Most, if not all, comic shops are run by comic fans as opposed to hard-nosed business men, although they very soon have to develop some business acumen or go bust. For an sector which is mainly run by former fans surprisingly few comic shops do fold, whether this is down to good management or an insanely loyal customer base is open to discussion.

The comic shops are definitely at the sharp end of the business, and if they get their ordering wrong they are stuck with 3 months worth of stock which they cannot sell (as they order firm sales 3 months in advance). If they under order a book they can always re-order but too many copies of a book that isn’t selling are their problem.

Ultimately the comic shop owner who realizes it’s not about the comics he, or she likes but what their customers want that succeeds. Recently many owners have extolled the virtues of the graphic novel and proclaimed the death knell of the monthly comic book. It is only the regular sales of those monthly comic books that stops a comic shop becoming a niche independent book store, and independent book stores are unfortunately dropping like flies.

To help comic shops stay in, and hopefully grow their business, distributors must offer them as wide a range of material as possible, to supply the needs of long term comic fans and also new customers. With the hundreds of titles on offer it may seem that there is all the choice one could wish for, but when you actually break it down there are less choices than you might imagine. Also, quite logically almost all comics are aimed at the existing fan-boy market, as that is the profile of comic shop customers.

It seems very difficult to produce a comic for the direct sales market that appeals to the general market (the 99.99% of the population which doesn’t collect comic books) when the direct sales comic market is specifically geared over generations to cater to the 0.01% of the population which does collect comic books.

US MARKET

The US comic market is unique in that it has retreated almost totally from the news stands, making its periodical product available only through specialized comic shops. The US comic strip at one time ruled the world, reaching its peak during the Second World War, with comic books providing morale boosting propaganda and newspaper comic strips being fought over by magnates who used them to boost the circulations of their daily papers.

At that point the comic strip was a mass medium, reaching kids through comic books of all genres, and adults through newspapers. This material was also licensed all around the world alongside Hollywood movies, spearheading a brash, undemanding cultural imperialism.

Things started to go sour for the US market in the 50s when crime comics came under fire and EC’s horror comics were banned. EC was the most innovative, high quality company in the US, and its sales reflected that. EC published anthology crime, horror and science fiction titles, which had stable creative teams and hosts to introduce the stories. This goes a long way towards providing the reader with the familiar character, world and style which I have stated before is fundamental to the appeal of the comic strip.

Even when the hugely successful EC horror comics were banned the company launched a dazzling array of new titles in a bold attempt to find new genres which would appeal to their readers. Pirates, air aces, historical combat, journalism and medicine were all tried. It would be difficult to imagine a modern day comic company launching a comic dealing with, and attempting to explain, a new science (?), but EC did with a book on Psychoanalysis!

EC struck gold again with a comic book called MAD and quickly turned it into a magazine, thus leaving the comic book field far behind. This may have been done because comic books had somehow become tainted by the witch hunt carried out by Dr Frederick Wertham. In the minds of many comics were no longer a harmless form of entertainment, but instead they were carriers of hidden deviant messages capable of depraving and corrupting.

The EC example shows that comics in the US have gone through peaks and troughs, rather than a steady improvement in quality. Some of the best newspaper strip work was produced in the 40s and 50s, with a steady decline in quantity, quality and dimensions from the 60s onwards as newspapers cut back on their comic strips. Fawcett and EC both produced quality comic books before being forced out of business, Fawcett by a lawsuit from DC and EC by the Wertham witch hunt. At the same time Will Eisner was producing the wonderful Spirit comic section, which is an outstanding piece of work.

The next peak was the birth of Marvel comics, and a decade of innovation from Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, which only happened because the company was about to go bust and Stan Lee was encouraged to write the way he wanted to by his wife! It is on such last ditch efforts that industries change, as we can see from this example and the way the Harry Potter books have transformed the children’s book market. These are examples of publishers trying something new and it paying off ….big time.

Unfortunately the US comic book market has experienced a great many setbacks over the years, many of them self inflicted. The primary setback, which occurs with depressing regularity, is that of publishers taking the easy route, as we’ll see later.

The Marvel explosion and DC Comics’ response in the 70s produced some very good work and interesting attempts to expand the market such as DC’s Bigger & Better, 100 Page Giants and Warren’s anthology magazines. For various reasons, some highly contentious, these experiments failed, even though in my opinion they pointed the way forward.

The comic dealers were growing in numbers during the 70s and starting to set up shops which traded in comics, paperbacks and ephemera. It was Phil Sueling, in a stroke of sheer genius, who created the Direct Sales market, buying from Marvel and DC on a non-returnable basis and selling to comic dealers on the same non-returnable basis.

This helped to solve the problem of falling news stand sales by opening up another avenue of low-risk (make that no-risk) distribution. So the news stands made comic books available to the general public and the direct sales comic shops serviced the needs of the more serious collector, happy days! Until Marvel and DC decide that it was too much bother to keep putting comic books out onto the news stands and switched over to the direct sales comic shops exclusively.

This had many far reaching effects on the comic industry; it reduced the supply of new readers, and it fostered an incestuous product where comics were produced for people who read comics and not for the general public, to name but two. This has lead to successive generations in the US who are totally ignorant of comic books, only knowing the Hulk, Batman, Superman, Spider-Man and the X-Men from movies and tv. Also most Marvel and DC comic books are incomprehensible to potential new readers, being mired in decades of “continuity” and offering multiple variations of the same characters.

This leads me on to another failure of comic publishers. When I read comics as a child there was just one Spider-Man comic, while Superman and Batman appeared in maybe four or five titles each. Today Spider-Man and the X-Men at Marvel and Batman and Superman at DC appear in up to 10 titles each, with spin-off characters appearing in a further 10 books.

I trace this all the way back to the launch of Peter Parker Spectacular Spider-Man. Instead of saying what can we do to increase the sales of Spider-Man Marvel simply put out another comic featuring Spider-Man, and the first time that happened the book sold just as many issues as the original Spider-Man comic. The law of diminishing returns however saw subsequent additions to the Spider-Man line up generating lesser sales. This has now left Marvel and DC with a confusing line-up of books, presenting the same characters with wildly different approaches, but all mired in that “continuity” I mentioned before. This all came about because publishers thought it was easier to add another book to the line-up rather than try to increase actual sales. The easy option…

This also leaves a fan of the latest Spider-Man movie who wants to read the Spider-Man comic not knowing which of the multiple Spider-Man titles is the “real” Spider-Man, and if he did start reading one of the books he’d soon be mired in “continuity” he didn’t understand and coerced into buying other Marvel books which are part of a multi-part crossover!

As someone who grew up buying the new Stan Lee and Jack Kirby comics, and being an avid reader of monthly US comics for over 20 years, I know that once you get off the merry go round it’s hard to get back on, and if you’ve never been on…forget it!

So we start to see a familiar pattern forming, small decisions, made because it’s easier for the publisher, all adding to a situation which keeps getting worse with each passing year. When Marvel was faced with the problem of writers and artists missing deadlines and having to run re-prints of previous issues managing editor Jim Shooter commissioned Editors to write fill-in inventory stories. On the face of it a sensible move, but the outcome was to produce a bland, formulaic scripting process, which gradually eroded the art of comic book writing.

So instead of finding a way to accommodate writers like Don McGregor, Doug Moench and Steve Gerber, who had a growing fan base, they were replaced by scripters who could easily hit a deadline. This is a practice which quickly spread to DC and the rest of the industry. If comic book writing was something which had to rival the eloquence of Alan Moore or the invention of Pat Mills then we might see a higher standard of work produced on a regular basis.

This retreat to the use of formulaic scripting and the inability to increase the sales on particular books has basically led to comics being written by the same pool of creators, with editors merely hiring writers who have been hired by other editors, and are therefore “safe”. Once you’ve been writing comics for a couple of years you’ll continue to be offered work and be able to write comics for as long as you want, after all no one expects you to increase sales.

Referring back to my basic premise, that the strength of the comic strip lies in a familiar character presented in a familiar way, we see US comic books veering wildly from this central philosophy. To a large extent the direct sales market follows creators, primarily artists, who drift not just from one book to another but from one company to another. Unfortunately this has led to transitory creators putting their own mark on characters before leaving and letting the next creator alter the character again (to show he’s got just as much clout as the last guy). This fundamentally weakens the appeal of characters and acts as a further barrier to the general public, who have not grown up with the vagaries of the direct sales market. The general public expects a comic strip character to be presented in a consistent style, for them Batman, Spider-Man or the Hulk is the star of the show.

The final nail in the chances of monthly US comic books appealing to a wider audience is their length. At 22 pages a monthly comic book offers 10 to 15 minutes of a continued storyline every month. What other medium would expect normal people, who send instant text messages, e-mails and can watch tv on-demand, to wait a month for the next 15 minutes of a storyline?

Marvel has four iconic properties, which the US public can recognize and understand, primarily because they’ve been on the tv at least since the 1980s, they are Spider-Man, Hulk, Fantastic Four and X-Men. DC Comics has two iconic properties, Batman and Superman, with Wonder Woman in danger of slipping off the radar of public consciousness due to lack of exposure. These characters could be launched back on to news stands and be recognized by the general public, but Marvel and DC would have to change their whole publishing model. They would have to put out 90-100 page stories a month, and establish a distinctive style guide for each character. This would require a team of artists breaking the work down into layout & main figure pencils, background pencils, main figure inks and background inks.

This erodes the position of the artist on these core books, but actually might allow Marvel and DC to once more reach the general public with their comic books, which for me is what it’s all about. Dark Horse could actually do the same thing with their Star Wars comic even though it is licensed (Hellboy lacks the longevity to make it a viable proposition). Whilst this may seem pretty radical, it is partly a return to the comic books of the 40s, which were much thicker, and also to Carmine Infantino’s experiment in the 70s with the Bigger & Better and 100 page giant comics (that were eventually planned to contain all new material).

If such an extreme strategy were to succeed I have no doubts that Marvel and DC would then try it with all their other characters, which would be a colossal mistake, but fits in with their policy of always taking the easy option. Different strategies would need to be devised for the other characters, who are not as well known as their main characters, despite what fanboys, and even editors and creators, may think.

Both Marvel and DC endlessly re-launch the same characters time after time, sometimes achieving a fleeting success (or what passes for it in the direct sales market) if a new “hot” artist is attached to the project. If a character has flopped in their previous launches why will they succeed this time? They probably won’t but much of the modern day comic industry is fueled by nostalgia, and writers and artists want to work on their favourite childhood characters. This has led to a lack of creativity, with writers not really knowing what constitutes a “character”, and the various elements which are needed to ensure on-going story-lines.

Most new characters are now just a design, they do not possess distinctive characteristics and attributes which differentiate them from all other characters. A few years back I devised a test to see if a comic book character was actually a well-rounded, completely thought out “person”. With Spider-Man, the Hulk and the Fantastic Four (Stan Lee was a master at this) I could imagine what they’d say if they sat down next to me, even if it did partly take the form of catchphrases. With many of the more modern “characters” it is impossible to do this, often because they have been created by artists who have decided to provide themselves with scripts.

The task which faces the US comic industry is huge, for thirty years they have concentrated on squeezing more money out of the same people, and have built an impenetrable barrier against new readers. Entire generations of creators have come and gone never knowing any other way of producing comic books. But one only has to look abroad to see other nations, with far smaller populations, achieving comic book sales which dwarf those of the USA. The decisions which face Marvel and DC are very difficult ones, and just the type they have dodged for many decades.

Now that both companies are owned by much larger corporations, which merely see them as source material for movies, nothing may change. I cannot see it to be in anyone’s interest to allow potentially huge comic book sales of nationally recognized characters to remain unexploited. It is an act of cultural negligence, and flies in the face of American capitalism and innovation, which the nation prides itself on.

THE BASICS & THE UK MARKET

I believe that comics, and by that I mean comic strips and comic books, should be a mass medium. I hold this belief because the comic strip is one of the simplest forms of communication and/or entertainment, which makes it accessible to the maximum audience. It is also one of the simplest media to create, alongside writing.

So there you are, it’s simple to produce, it’s simple to consume, just get it out there and you’ll have an audience of millions – hey presto mass medium! In some countries comic strips are just that; Japan, Italy, France etc. That’s all okay for the Japanese, Italians and French but what about those of us in the UK and the US?

With movies based on comic strips infesting cinemas you might think that comic strips, and their creators, were doing great, and in some cases you’d be correct. There are some creators who do very nicely out of comics, and good luck to them. But if we look at comic sales we see a steady decline, both in the UK and US, even as movies based on comic strips top the UK and US box office charts.

As a comic strip creator for over 20 years, having been a publisher, a writer, an artist, an inker, a letterer and a comics journalist, I feel I have a unique perspective on the medium and industry. I intend to use this blog to systematically look at both the medium and the industry and pinpoint “WHAT’S WRONG WITH COMICS”. I will do this looking at the medium and industry from a UK and US perspective. Even though I am UK based I will look at both countries because roughly 50% of the UK comic creators produce work for the US. I feel that the UK comic industry is inextricably linked to the US comic industry.

Comic strips should be a mass medium in both countries, and I believe they both fall far short of that. In due course I’ll try to explain why that is, and how comic creators and sellers (and even readers) would all be in a far better position if we could become a mass medium.

Just to lay down a few “ground rules” first, so you’ll understand what I’m trying to do here. I’m not saying what kind of comic strips I like, and I’ll try not to be personal, but I will probably put a few people’s noses out of joint. I will try to identify as many key points which I believe have led creators, publishers, distributors and shop owners down the particular path they have chosen.

I’m afraid I won’t be able to quote chapter and verse as my observations are culled from decades of reading various interviews and features. Much of what you read here may be considered “anecdotal”, as I cannot furnish source material, so let’s just call it a personal view.

I’ll try and stick to basics and always link back to my original premise that the comic strip should be a mass medium, and how that would benefit everyone involved in the industry.

First things first; what is a comic strip, and what is its unique feature? Sounds like a very simple question which should have a very simple answer. A comic strip is a sequence of pictures either with or without words (Will Eisner called it “sequential art”). However some comic artists have tried to accentuate the cinematic qualities of comic strips, while some comic writers have believed that comic strips should be more like novels (hence graphic novels).

Personally I think it helps if again we go back to the very basics. A novel is a whole bunch of words which you turn into pictures in your mind. A novel can have someone contemplating the nature of the universe while they’re stirring a cup of coffee. It can take all the time it needs to elaborate just how a character feels with great subtlety, and at great length. Novels are about ideas and inner thoughts, time can stop as a person’s character is explained in infinite detail, or the history of a locale is laid before us. Some comic creators would say you “could” do all that in a comic strip.

A film shows people and things moving (that’s why they’re still called the movies), and looking pretty much as they do in real life, just maybe a bit more glamorous than real life. It also let’s you hear what they sound like (that’s a bit less important, which is why they’re not called talkies), so it basically creates a stylized reality. Movies have a kinetic energy which allied with sound presents the viewer with a feast for the senses.

So we can say (very simply) that the book feeds the brain and the movie feeds the eyes and ears. Where does that leave the comic strip once we accept that it should not even try to replicate the other two media.

The strength of a comic strip is that you have a distinctive, stylized world view created by a creator, or creative team. I believe that the comic strip is at its strongest when it presents a distinctive character that is portrayed in a style that is uniquely associated with that character. It is this bond between the character and his world which makes the comic strip unique, and it is the use of the cartoon as a means of expression which leads to this relationship. Animation and single panel cartoons come close because they use the same means of expression. The decoding of a sequence of pictures by the comic strip reader differentiates the comic strip from animation and the single cartoon and creates the comic strip experience.

The writer of a novel puts the words on the page and you create the picture, scenario or concept in your own unique mind. The movie maker captures reality and tweaks it slightly to make it more palatable and it plays out on a screen before you. The comic strip reader is presented with a stylized world populated by stylized characters. Unlike the novel reader he does not have to create the pictures in his mind, and unlike the movie viewer he has to imagine movement and sound.

I think it is not an accident that most comic strips are named for a central character, Batman, Spider-Man, Popeye, Judge Dredd, Dennis the Menace, Tintin, Dylan Dog, Astro Boy etc etc. The return of the comic reader to a familiar character in a familiar world is fundamental to the comic strip’s appeal. Therefore we can make a case that the comic strip appeals to the heart, providing us with a character and world which we have grown comfortable with over time.

Many creators have spoken about comic strips being more like novels, but personally I have always thought this was an attempt to gain a spurious profundity. It’s as if the comic strip is trying to sneak into a group photo where it doesn’t belong. When we think of the relative strengths of the different media it is easier to see the different territory they both occupy.

The comic strip conveys meaning through the use of words and pictures working in tandem. It would be difficult to achieve the density of a novel without overloading the comic strip with words to the point of breaking. Comic strips convey their meaning differently and due to the visual medium they use (the cartoon) there is a loss as well as a gain.

I’ll recount a story here which I read in a fanzine. A young comic strip artist produced a life drawing of a girl which was meticulously accurate. He then showed it to some comic fans who couldn’t tell if it was a boy or a girl – this does not mean that the comic fans were stupid, but it highlights the need for clarity. When a comic strip artist draws a woman there must be no doubt that it is a woman, hence full lips, big eyelashes and big boobs (a cartoon). We can’t afford to leave the reader in any doubt.

Therefore if you have to keep stopping the “action” in a comic strip to explain in words the profound psychological emotions of your character you should just write a damn novel. The use of cartoons in comic strips leaves us with a slightly limited emotional range visually. Happy, no problem, sad, that’s easy, angry, a breeze, but when we come to more complex emotions they become harder to portray visually.

I’m just using this as an example of the different arenas in which different media operate, and how content is often dictated by form. Or to put it another way – “Horses for courses”. An example of what I’m talking about is Peanuts, which is presented in a very simple fashion. Schultz’s range of facial expression is very limited, and he cannot resort to captions to add depth of meaning. Instead he uses the basic strength of the comic strip (big smiles, wailing mouths, tears erupting from heads) to convey a depth of meaning which is built up by repetition.

The comic strip has enough tools at its disposal to say anything it wants and should not be looking enviously at other media. We’re just as good as any other medium so long as we play to our strengths. Unfortunately over the decades, while we’ve been playing the “comics aren’t just for kids” card we’ve all got a bit too pretentious. I know talk of simplicity and clarity and a limited emotional range will dredge up unhappy memories of the comic strip in a kiddie ghetto, but that’s not what I’m advocating.

But I’m also not stupid enough to think that we could, or even should, fool ourselves that we’re just like a novel but with pictures. Don’t get carried away with the term graphic novel, it’s just a marketing tool to help bookshops deal with comic strips.

Producing one-off stories in 96 page books will keep comic strips in the “niche market” they’ve shrunk into. If we look at Japan, Italy and France their industries are built on weekly and monthly strips, featuring a strong central character, which are collected into volumes. Maybe not so much in Italy, but that’s because the monthly edition already resembles a slim paperback. I maintain that it is these serialized characters that have helped the medium in these territories.

Now let’s see where the UK and US have gone wrong. The UK used to publish a great many weekly anthology comics, many of which were relatively short lived. Unlike their French or Belgian counterparts however these strips were not collected into albums, but remained as disposable entertainment.

Even then, with a buoyant market, and editorial and creative teams well versed in the comic strip medium, many comics floundered and were short-lived. However publishers simply moved the most popular strip from a failed comic and strengthened the line up of their more popular weekly. With every comic carrying more than six strips at least one of them would be a hit with readers. It was a rare comic indeed that was full of duds. The Dandy for instance was boosted by the addition of Bananaman who began his existence in Nutty, and 2000AD welcomed Strontium Dog to its ranks from the pages of the short-lived Starlord.

By the 90s however the comic market had shrunk considerably. From my perspective the kind of comic the kids actually wanted was not the kind of reading matter parents wanted their kids to read. The fact that literacy levels were in steep decline, and parents should have been happy for their kids to read anything was beside the point. They’d rather their kids didn’t read Treasure Island than read Oink! for instance.

Unfortunately the changing set-up at IPC, with the comic dept being sold off to Robert Maxwell and then to Fleetway, left their line-up rudderless. Marvel UK’s success with licensed comics also offered an easy option for publishers unwilling to put in the money, time and effort needed to nurture new comic magazines. Although Steve McManus gave it a damn good try at IPC with Crisis and Revolver, which attempted to take a step beyond 2000AD.

With the benefit of hindsight it’s possible to see the 90s UK comic market as a battle between the weekly genre anthology, like 2000AD, and licensed comics, as championed by Marvel UK. Looking at our news stands today it is easy to see which model has won that particular battle. The licensed comic rules and over the last 20 years publishers have put less and less comic strip material into these “comics”. So now there is no reader loyalty, most kids are attracted to the free gift rather than the comic attached to the gift.

Licensed comics which do feature strip material mostly contain US reprint strips, as in the case of The Simpsons, Scooby Doo etc. The past 20 years has seen publishers putting less and less effort into the comics they publish and using more and more artwork from style guides to create activities.

Anthology comics have fared even worse, with 2000AD being sold to a computer game company, and sales continuing to fall. Beano and Dandy have also seen a decline in their numbers, and the Dandy is on its third or fourth re-launch. One has to admire DC Thomson’s tenacity, they’re trying as best they can to keep the UK’s oldest comic alive.

While publishers are perfectly willing, if not eager, to publish new licensed comics after previous failures, they are very reluctant to try originated comics. Despite the fact that a successful originated comic lasts far longer than a licensed comic. The UK’s six originated comics are Dandy, Beano, Commando, 2000AD, Judge Dredd Megazine and Viz. (Both Commando and Judge Dredd Megazine contain some reprint material) All of these titles have lasted longer than the longest running licensed comic, although it is hard to tell as licensed comics sometimes keep their numbering when they switch to different publishers.

If publishers were willing to try originated comics at the same rate that they try new licensed comics the UK would have a very different comic line-up. The return on originated comics is far more beneficial as well, having led to Judge Dredd and Fat Slags movies and Dennis the Menace, Bananaman and Sid the Sexist tv series to name but a few. Licensed material produced by comic companies generally belongs to the license holder.

The launch of an originated comic is very rare, therefore no momentum is established and no lessons learnt. Every time an originated comic is launched the publisher starts from scratch, often setting up a company to publish that one specific comic. When that comic fails, and we have established that the UK market has a high failure rate, the company folds along with the comic, never getting a chance to learn from its mistakes.

With so many movies based on comic strip characters one would have thought that comic publishers would be falling all over themselves to create new characters which might appeal to movie makers, who would have to license the characters from them. Strangely comic publishers, both UK and US, have been very slow to even explore cost effective deals with creators to launch new characters. Both markets still seemingly unwilling to abandon the “work for hire” model, even though fewer and fewer can actually afford it due to ever decreasing sales.

This is not to say that licensed comics have no part to play in helping comic strips to secure their position as a mass medium. The Disney comic plays a key role in many European nations as the first comic book read by boys and girls. In Italy it’s called Topolino and is a thick paperback size book reprinting classic Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck etc strips. France and many other countries have their own versions, and these act as an introduction to comics for young readers.

The Disney characters are considered safe by parents, along with the Warner Brothers cartoon characters and to a lesser extent the Simpsons, which may be considered slightly more adult. These are some of the few characters which are acceptable, and popular, with both young readers and their parents. They should act as the foundation of any country’s entire comic book industry.

Getting back to originated comics any publisher hoping to have any success in the field has to set themselves up with the intention of publishing a number of titles (because the chances of getting it “right” first time are slim), they have to find some way to effectively promote their titles, and they have to know how to translate feedback into improving their product.

Without a viable comic strip periodical market, either weekly or monthly, it is almost impossible for comics to break out of the niche market it currently occupies in the UK and the US. Both countries currently have a “top heavy” market, with lots of product aimed at adults but very little for younger readers, hence niche instead of mass market. While the respective book trades may be enamored with the “graphic novel” it’s probably because they can charge double the price for them and therefore get into profit far quicker.

Talk of graphic novels being the biggest growing sector is encouraging, but when you grow from let’s say 0.05% of the market to 0.1% of the market, thereby achieving a doubling of your market share it puts things into perspective. There are no short cuts, there are no magic bullets. UK and US publishers have to look at other nations and learn from them. They have to stop making excuses as to why the European or Japanese model couldn’t possibly work over here, and embrace change.

When things aren’t going well and you have to make changes three things could happen; things could get worse, things could stay the same, or things could get better. With odds like that I think it’s worth changing, especially when the alternative is a continuing decline.