The internet is split in half, which side are you on, yadda yadda. You know the drill by now, but it’s time for the more considered views from internet pundits. Well, a view from an internet pundit, and a considered view from a retailer, but you know what I mean.

On one hand, Alan David Doane lets loose with his a rant that takes the subject matter and… well, kind of talks about something else instead:

This “tragedy” is mainly impacting superhero convenience stores, who should know by now that Marvel’s Slurpees are an unreliable factor when planning out their long-term financial health. Over the next three or four months, the three-out-of-four people in my household who read comics every week will be affected exactly not at all by Civil War being late — two of them (my kids, on the very cusp of becoming independent, comics-buying adults) read graphic novels and non-Marvel periodicals, and the other, the fat old nerd that hooked them on comics, is waiting quite patiently and happily for the trade, which will have a consistent writer and artist all the way through, and which may not be Watchmen, but will still be of interest to sooperhero fans ten years from now, unlike the timely-as-hell 52.

Diamond is no longer comics. Marvel is no longer comics. Look around, in libraries, in real bookstores. Comics is bigger than one distributor or one publisher, especially a distributor and publisher who historically cover their own asses to the detriment of those they do business with. Diamond and Marvel essentially supply Slurpees to sooperhero convenience stores, and they’re all managed by guys who, if they are professional businessmen — you know, have READ HIBBS’S BOOK ON BEING A PROFESSIONAL COMIC BOOK RETAILER — know they need to study the history of their industry and of their own store, and make sound business decisions based on the information they have. The information about Marvel has been clear forever, to anyone not suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. Every smart retailer I know has spent the past few years diversifying their product line, opening up alternative lines of distribution so that their future and their financial well-being is not entirely, fatally tied to Marvel and Diamond.

I can imagine quite a few sooperhero convenience shops going under because of this. And you know, I felt bad for the people who had 100 percent of their stock in Enron, too. But they should have known better. I know nothing about investing, but I know you have to diversify your portfolio if you want to be solvent and prosperous in the long-term.

That’s right, direct market retailers! You’re not being screwed by Marvel’s scheduling mess! You’re being screwed by being direct market retailers and selling people what they want! If you’d been more in tune with an entirely different market than the one you serve - or, you know, dentists or butchers or something - then you wouldn’t be in the trouble that you’re in! Idiots!

Meanwhile, Brian Hibbs is actually looking at things from a practical standpoint over at the mothership:

See, for all intents and purposes, Civil War is the Marvel universe right now. There’s something like eighty tie-in issues, and this storyline seems to directly affect each and every character in the Marvel universe. And that’s where the problem lies – not in that a single book (however big) is shipping late. That sucks, yes, but it also happens.

No, where the problem is that the cascade impact that this has on the entire Marvel line. Amazing Spider-Man and Fantastic Four appear to be skipping their October and December issues, Avengers is skipping a month (or more?). Delayed releases of Punisher War Journal, Thor, Mighty Avengers, other titles they haven’t announced yet. This is all money we’re not going to get back.

How much? Just as a thumbnail, ASM, FF, and Avengers appear to be currently selling something in the range of 300k copies, combined. That’s nearly a million dollars in lost revenue for the DM just for a one month “hiatus” – not even counting the loss of Civil War itself, or Frontline…

There’s another more subtle, and more pernicious affect this can have, as well: because Marvel has their FOC system, where quantities received can be adjusted three weeks before shipping, Marvel calculates retailer discounts based upon a rolling average of total sales. What this means is that it is likely that a statistically significant percentage of retailers may find their discount on all Marvel products (not just the delayed ones!) drops by a percentage point or more. This could result tens of thousands of dollars of capitalization being removed from the market, in addition to the cash-flow losses from the delayed titles.

John Jakala proves his evil genius ways, mind you, with an inventive solution to the whole thing:

As soon as it was evident that McNiven wouldn’t be able to complete Civil War #4 on time, I would have begun working on putting together a fill-in issue. But not just any fill-in issue — a super-special, jam-packed, all-star artist issue!! Rather than bringing in one unlucky sap to rush out the book, I would have divvied out the pages to multiple artists (all popular ones, natch). By spreading out the workload to multiple artists, you should be able to get the book out on time still, even allowing for issues of coordination and bringing the new artists up to speed. Then Marvel could bill the fill-in as a “jam” issue with all of the fans’ favorite artists and even work in some bullshit spin like: “Civil War has been so hot that all of these artists wanted a piece of the action, and who were we to disappoint the likes of John Cassaday, Frank Cho, and Leinil Yu? Plus, nearly a dozen more top talents lend their artistic abilities to the most popular series of the century!! Truly, this is the Mighty Marvel age of Sharing The Wealth! Excelsior!!” Suddenly the change in artist becomes a positive, not a negative.

But just in case there were fans who would prefer a common creative team throughout the whole series, I’d also announce that Marvel would be putting out a special “Original Artist” alternate version of Civil War #4 illustrated by Steve McNiven after the whole series was completed. (Hey, Marvel already does alternate covers, so why not entire alternate comics? Plus, they could still have alternate covers on the alternate version of #4, so they could squeeze even more money out of their fanbase.)

This entry was posted on Friday, August 18th, 2006 at 3:43 pm and is filed under Comic Books, Internet, Marvel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.