Has the digital process of making comics meant that comics look better digitally than compared to print these days? Jim Rugg suggests that that may be the case, pointing to the first issue of Mike Mignola’s Hellboy in Hell as an example:

Compared to print, today’s digital displays are extremely subtle, capable of displaying millions of colors. I assume Dave Stewart colored Hellboy in Hell #1 digitally. Then digital proofs were shared with and ultimately approved by Scott Allie and Mike Mignola. These are probably the versions we see in the digital copies of Hellboy in Hell #1, and they are striking.

I think this might be where one problem occurs. It’s like riding a bike. When you learn to ride a bike, it is almost impossible to unlearn it. And after you’ve spent hours staring at an image (on screen, paper, or canvas – it doesn’t matter), like the cartoonist, colorist, and editor presumably have, it’s hard to approach it with fresh eyes. Heck, after I looked at the digital edition of Hellboy in Hell #1, I was able to appreciate some of the details I had missed in the print edition because I knew where to find them.

Furthermore, if you get a copy of the print book a few days or week before the book is hitting shops, would anyone besides Chris Ware destroy the print run because the contrast is a little less than perfect?

According to Crain’s New York Business, ComiXology is a start-up worth watching for investors:

If most tech startups are plumbing existing markets, comiXology has practically created a new one with its digital marketplace for comic books. Every major retailer and publisher sells comics through this Chelsea startup. In 2011, downloads from the site—100 million of them—accounted for 75% of all digital comics downloads that year, according to pop-culture site ICv2.com.

ComiXology turned profitable in 2011 on sales of $19 million, and while it hasn’t disclosed 2012 revenue, the company estimated that they would triple. Angel-backed, comiXology has yet to seek venture money, although it might in order to get more resources to grow, said co-founder and CEO David Steinberger.

Is this the first time that we’ve seen the $19 million/100 million downloads in 2011 figures? Considering the price point for digital releases, that’s a lot of free downloads in 2011… I wonder how that shifted last year, as DC and Marvel properly moved into day-and-date and the audience grew?

(EDIT: It’s been pointed out to me that the 100 million downloads number is all-time downloads, not 2011 alone. Sorry for my confusion.)

At Good Comics for Kids, Michael May leads a roundtable about how well Marvel and DC serve young readers (Spoiler: Not very well at all):

Scott: DC and Marvel have published a number of series geared towards young readers but frankly, none of them have been truly worthwhile because they don’t stay in print. As well, they don’t appeal purely to young readers because they’re often mired in nostalgia. DC, especially, doesn’t want to upset their core adult audience.

Michael: I really dug Marvel’s Marvel Adventures line from a few years ago. It was exactly what I want in an all-ages comic: imaginative, humorous, self-contained stories. And by “self-contained” I mean not only that they didn’t constantly refer to other stories I’d have to stop and explain to my son, but also that they were done in one issue and didn’t require a huge investment in time or money. Unfortunately, as you noted, Marvel editorial didn’t seem to know what to do with them. They kept tinkering with the format and branding until no one (not even them) was sure what the imprint was anymore.

Mike Pawuk makes a very good point in the piece: “Libraries are practically begging for younger reader superhero comics. Young kids come into the library to read Batman – and there’s not a lot out there collected and nothing in single issues anymore. DC Comics has access to 150 single issues alone from Batman: The Animated Series’ comic book counterpart. If Batman is timeless, shouldn’t these stories be too?” DC announced a push towards libraries and focusing on the library market last week. It’d be nice if this was one of the subjects that got addressed because of that.

We’re more than a year into a world where direct market retailers can have their own digital stores thanks to either iVerse/Diamond or ComiXology. How’s that working out for them? Brigid Alverson took a look at what’s out there:

Most comics shops are small businesses, and the person who runs them may not be particularly web-savvy. Still, there’s no excuse for not having a website in this day and age, and lack of digital comics storefronts would seem to be a missed opportunity as well. Brick-and-mortar retailers have expressed the fear that digital comics would cannibalize their sales, but so far that seems not to be the case; sales of both print and digital comics were up sharply in 2012.

Retailer Torsten Adair, over at the Beat, reinforced the “lost opportunity” idea, writing that “People are not afraid of digital comics…  Many readers either do not live near a comics shop, or do not want to be bothered with the clutter of back issues,” and adding:

There is no “iTunes” store for comics, at least in the mind of the general consumer.  Both the Kindle and Nook e-readers offer digital comics, as well as sell actual graphic novels and other merchandise.  Digital music sales were not commonplace until Apple opened their iTunes store.  Apple or Amazon could easily create a national comics shop selling paper and digital comics online.  (Amazon already dominates online retailing, and could subsidize the new store.  Comics by mail-order is nothing new, and Amazon is adept at shipping books with strict-on-sale dates so that they arrive on a specific date.) The Diamond Digital API allows stores to sell digital comics via their websites.  A store could easily do what Amazon does with their e-books, selling titles either at a loss, or at a minimal profit.

But how much of a loss leader would digital storefronts actually be? In the comments section of Alverson’s piece, San Francisco retailer Brian Hibbs put his store (Comix Experience)’s digital sales in perspective:

I make at least $130/hour in physical retail…. I haven’t made 20% of that in three QUARTERS with digital. Even if cMx could make me TWENTY TIMES what iVerse does (and I doubt it, since I’d then have to do FORTY times the volume), most of a year still wouldn’t generate what a single average MONDAY in the store does (and Monday is, by far, the slowest day of the week).

Is digital simply something that can’t be inclusive of direct market retailers? And if it can, then what needs to be done differently to make it so?

Did Superman’s red tights disappear because DC Entertainment was worried about losing the copyright to the character? Jeff Trexler considers the claim:

Is it possible that some lawyers might have tried to use the case to micro-manage Superman material? Sure, there are folks who go beyond the pale of what’s required in any number of organizations, and that’s not limited to lawyers. There was an argument to be made that stripping Superman of his shorts or changing the S-shield might have reduced the Siegels’ payout by a few dollars, but would the change have been worth it? At max the Siegels (before last week) would have had 50% of current Superman material, and most likely it would have been less. In that context it would have been much more business-savvy to make whatever choices maximized brand value as opposed to risking greater returns on minimal savings.

Normally, though, the fact that attorneys are trained to take this issue-and-argument-spotting approach to content does not mean that the lawyers are calling all the shots. Creatives change things; companies stay in business by keeping content fresh. This may have given DC’s lawyers some helpful arguments, but it doesn’t mean they were always pulling the strings.

There’s a lot more in the post, and as always with Trexler’s material, it’s well worth reading.

Now that we’re three months in to the Marvel NOW! reality, retailer Brian Hibbs takes a look at how the line is performing in his store (and beyond):

If current sales figures continue, it looks like Marvel will get a solid — perhaps 10-20%? — boost in sales in my store from the relaunch. I’m down with that, but, as I said, it has been a slow burn, and we have not seen any of the huge wave of “lapsed” fans coming back in the way we did with DC. With New 52, I had multiple titles selling into triple digits for the first issues, but no current NOW! titles has yet hit those levels. What’s relatively odd about this is that the number of “Lapsed” Marvel readers is a couple of multiples of the same for DC, which makes me wonder why NOW! hasn’t brought in massive crowds…

One other thing that I find a little distressing from the November and December Marvel estimates is that only that one single book shipped a second issue that managed to keep sales over 100K. What’s utterly unknown is if this is a result of retailer caution (two issues in a month often means that you’re ordering the second one entirely “blind”), or audience reaction. But either way, that’s not really a particularly healthy nationwide base to decline further from — it’s hard to see how the best-selling Marvel monthly ongoing will settle much above the 80k mark, with the best-selling DC book (“Batman”) being in the 130-150k range.

Todd Allen makes a similar point to Hibbs, over at The Beat:

These titles appear to be settling down/dropping a lot faster than the new 52.  It doesn’t appear from this data that anything is likely to compete with Batman and Justice League on the sales charts, past the debut issues (tricked out with many, many variants).  Deadpool looks like the early winner, in terms of sales bump.  I suspect Marvel was hoping for a regular 100K for All New X-Men, but the 80Ks aren’t bad if it holds.  The rest of it gives the impression of a return to sales levels of 2-4 years ago.  It’s healthier, but it’s just not New 52 numbers or the Civil War era sales Marvel has been chasing ever since.

Parsing this information is somewhat difficult; the gut reaction is “Well, if it doesn’t put Marvel back on top of the charts permanently, it’s failed,” but that’s ridiculously reductive and caught in the mindset of a permanent race between Marvel and DC instead of looking at the line as its own thing. After all, if the line gets a bump of 10-20% overall as a result of the relaunch, then that’s definitely some sort of win, right…? Except, of course, that kind of bump isn’t substantial enough to stop it from being wiped out within a couple of bad months given the traditional sales attrition we’ve gotten used to. Of course, let’s face it: If there’s one thing we’ve learned from Marvel’s publishing cycles over the last few years, we’re only a couple of years out from the next big relaunch anyway.

Maggie Thompson talks about her time with the Comic Buyer’s Guide:

I think we were part of the party.  People were having fun with it and we were part of the fun.  It was a delight to be in contact with so many people, and to really work at the outreach that we were all looking for at that point.  Because what is today such a popular art form that it makes the cover of Entertainment Weekly, at that point still was a very localized, almost a cult following of aficionados who understood the art form.

Now it’s kind of taken for granted and has almost gone the other way.  It has reached the point at which some people are concerned that comics require so much knowledge that the beginner would have a lot of trouble finding their way through this incredibly technical art form. As we all know, comics are fun.  I have lectured a couple of times with the title “Don’t be afraid of graphic novels, they’re just comic books,” which to me is very amusing.

Death sells, it seems:

Marvel sold over $1.6 million retail worth of Amazing Spider-Man #700 to comic stores in December, the top dollar comic in recent memory.  Sell-in of over 200,000 copies was supported by an extensive variant program, including numerous “exceed orders,” 1:200, and 1:700 variants, and at a $7.99 retail price, the dollars piled up fast.  Extensive publicity about the storyline helped make this a major event book.  The lead-in book, #699, appears to have unfilled demand; #698 sold more than #699 (both #698 and #699 have second printings already released).

Over at industry site ICv2, retailers are discussing the value of advance solicitations from a business standpoint. For David Luebke of Richmond, VA’s Dave’s Comics, they’re consistently not good enough:

As to the advance solicitations from Marvel and DC, even on the FCBD books, please grow up and stop playing games.  We are professionals and when we order products from you, we need maximum info so we can make an intelligent decision to PROPERLY quantify our order.

That’s something that the Pasadena Public Library’s Nick Smith agrees with:

We have no idea who these comics are written for!  Are they suitable for kids?  Are they complete stories, or are they just pitches for an upcoming comics event?  Are the covers problematic in some way?

For us, Free Comic Book Day is a family event, and we buy comics for kids and teens, and use the day to help educate parents about comics and graphic novels.  We sort them by suggested age range, and help families choose ones that are right for their family members.  Our ordering numbers are based on information, which in this case is mostly lacking.

Okay, so the DC one is in some way related to Superman, and the Marvel one is a crossover-ish book of some kind.  Is Superman undressing Wonder Woman on the cover?  Is Wolverine disemboweling a villain?  These things matter, and they are well within the range of things that either company might do… or have the rest of you forgotten Catwoman’s bra-tossing on the cover of her issue 1, or Pepper Potts’ thong underwear display in an “all ages” issue of Iron Man?  I can assure you, parents who come to our library haven’t forgotten…

Marc Bowker, of Alter Ego Comics in Lima, OH, gets to the crux of the problem:

The reason that publishers (primarily Marvel & DC) list items as “Classified” or “Top Secret” is because retailers are ordering out of an end consumer catalog.  A retailer-only Previews has been talked about for years, and would be a tremendous benefit to the industry, allowing retailers to be treated as partners and giving us the tools to do our jobs to the best of our abilities.

I get that publishers are concerned about spoilers and retailers ruining it for fans – and I know that there are those online who’ll get access to retailer-only information and run it as exclusives or whatever – but I have to admit, the fact that retailers have to work from the same solicit info and Previews catalog as readers and fans has always struck me as a little odd. Given that it’s their money and livelihood in play when they’re asked to make orders, shouldn’t they be privy to just a little bit more information than the rest of us…?

Bad news, fans that were waiting for the first collection of Mark Waid and Humberto Ramos’ Impulse, due in stores next month:

All orders for the IMPULSE VOL. 1: RUNS IN THE FAMILY TP are cancelled. This item will not be resolicited.

It’s more than likely that low orders are the culprit, but the idea that a collection of early work by current fan favorites Waid and Ramos, on a one-time fan favorite character, couldn’t earn enough pre-orders to be sustainable for DC seems almost unbelievable and just a little worrying; if something like this doesn’t earn enough orders to be worthwhile for DC, what are the chances that even more obscure titles could be collected? And if this isn’t viable in terms of order numbers, how much of that is down to the New 52 making the character obsolete, and therefore meaning that the stories contained within the collection “don’t matter” to the greater continuity? Did DC accidentally flatten its own backlist sales by rebooting the universe…?

The Powers TV adaptation is blessed by some higher power. Having already shot one pilot based on Brian Michael Bendis and Mike Oeming’s creator-owned series about police in a world filled with super-heroes that was passed on by the network, it seemed that getting budget to rework and reshoot that pilot was the show’s last chance, and one that also didn’t seem to hit the right notes with FX executives. But the show, it seems, isn’t dead yet. Here’s FX president John Landgraf:

After we made the pilot, we actually developed three more [episode] scripts. So then we had a pilot plus three scripts, and we decided between the pilot and the scripts that it wasn’t quite the series that we needed it to be. When I say we, by the way, Brian Bendis is involved in every phase of this conversation and discussion. But one of the scripts was written by this guy named Charlie Huston, and he was a novelist. Both I and Brian and others thought, “Wow, there is actually something in the tone of this.” So Charlie was approached, I think by Brian, and said, “Look, would you be interested in taking on Powers?” And Charlie said, “Well, I’ve never actually adapted anything before in my life. I have only written novels and stuff of my own, but Powers is my favorite graphic novel, and yes!”So what ended up happening was we reconstituted the whole thing around Charlie as the creator, with Brian. Charlie went up to Seattle, and they sat down and they talked, and read through all the books, and they came back with a new vision, basically. Essentially, a new pilot to begin with, which is a new, different story than the pilot that we shot. So that pilot is officially gone and dead, and the actors are all gone, but we’re developing a whole new pilot from scratch.

If this seems like an excruciatingly long process full of false starts to you, imagine what it feels like to Bendis and Oeming. At this point, I almost feel as if FX should just agree to put Powers on the air in the Huston-led incarnation just to make it up to all of the fans. This has been going on for almost four years already…!

SPURGEON: You didn’t have the reluctance problem, did you? Did you think anyone chose not to talk to you, or changed the way they talked to you, out of careerist or similar concerns?

HOWE: Oh, sure. Tons of people. Tons of people. It’s no secret that this book really accelerates in the last ten years, and it has a very sudden ending. There are multiple reasons for that, but one of them is that no-one in the comics industry now is really interested in talking about the comics industry.

SPURGEON: Right. Not like that, anyway. Or at least not on the record.

HOWE: Not to someone who is writing a book.

There is a lot to be interested in in Tom Spurgeon’s conversation with Marvel Comics: The Untold Story author Sean Howe, but this was the exchange that jumped out at me. There are, of course, many reasons why today’s comics professionals aren’t interested in “talking about the comics industry,” with the chief one likely being “They don’t want to say anything that could prevent them getting work in the future,” but still: One day, there will be people who are willing to talk, and I can’t wait to see what they have to say…

Over at The Beat, Todd Allen looks at how Marvel performs in Diamond’s end-of-year graphic novel chart and pulls out some interesting observations:

What are we not seeing?  The collections supporting the Events.  Where are Iron Man: Fear Itself and all those titles?  Where are all the Avengers and X-Men titles that are so integral to the “universe” part of all the cross-overs?  They’re not there.

It seems clear that readers will show up for the big events, but could care less about the supporting crossovers in book form.  Can you really blame them?  The supporting issues of Avengers, Spider-Man and so forth take place between the issues of the actual Event, so either you need to integrate them into the collected edition or the reading experience is going to be drastically different.  (Here’s how convoluted the Secret Invasion experience is when you try and read the expanded universe in book form, for an example.)

Marvel might be taking a break from the approach with Marvel Now.  We’ll have to see how that plays out the rest of the year.  If they keep the new book editions as independent story units, things may improve.

It’s worth pointing out that Age of Ultron will have reasonably few crossover issues at first glance. Perhaps we’re headed towards an era of smaller events after all…?

Congratulations, Robert Kirkman:

Image Comics’ The Walking Dead #100 was the bestselling comic book published in 2012 based on total unit sales to comic book specialty shops, according to Diamond Comic Distributors, the world’s largest distributor of comics, graphic novels, and pop-culture merchandise.

Diamond’s 2012 year-end rundown also reveals that Marvel was the top publisher of the year in both dollar and unit share, a fact that’s underlined by looking at the top 10 most-ordered books of 2012: Walking Dead #100 aside, it’s all Marvel titles (Including, in an unexpected moment, Avengers #1 making it in at the tenth spot. I didn’t expect that book to have done that well, but I find myself surprisingly glad that it did).

Heidi MacDonald is the latest subject of Tom Spurgeon’s Holiday Interviews, and it’s a doozy:

SPURGEON: Why isn’t there a comic book midlist anymore? Why is it 100K copies and then a steep fall to the 30K and 40K level? Does comics over-publish?

MacDONALD: Well, that goes back to what people want to read. Corporate comics just don’t have casual readers and haven’t for decades, and this is a sign of that. It’s either half the line or none of the line. It’s why every comics executive says they have event fatigue and want to slow down and never do. Maybe it is possible with the huge success of The Avengers and Batman and so on that some casual readers are being drawn in and some may like the Rocket Raccoon or Amethyst comic and just keep buying that, but Marvel and DC haven’t shown much ability to exploit the audiences for individual titles in a long time. I wouldn’t call 40K copies a steep fall, by the way. That’s a pretty decent number. It will be very interesting to see how the Constantine comic from the mainline DCU does. The Vertigo edition had wasted away to about 10K copies over the course of 300 issues. The DCU’s offbeat titles had middling to cancellation level sales, so this will be a real sign of whether you can rebuild a “midlist.”

Before we get started on COMICS 2013 properly, here are three look-backs for last year that are worth your time:

• ICv2 runs down the top ten comics business stories of 2012, ranked according to impact. I have to admit, I think the re-emergence of creators’ rights as a rallying call – particularly paired with both the return of Image Comics as a sales- and critical- force to be reckoned with and the debut of Monkeybrain (as well as Thrillbent and other digital initiatives from formerly print creators) – was the biggest story of the year, but I’ve been wrong before.
• Brian Hibbs of San Francisco’s Comix Experience lists his best-selling comic books and trades/graphic novels of 2012. Likely not representative of the rest of the Direct Market (How many other DM stores have books outselling single issues at 55% to 40%?), but well worth a look nonetheless. Man, look at Saga dominate that single issue list.
• Tom Spurgeon brought in the new year with a list of 50 Comics Positives for 2012. While I admit my tendency for being negative, Spurgeon reminds us all that things aren’t necessarily as bad as they seem with the wit and common sense you’d expect from him. “I don’t believe in positivity for positivity’s sake,” he explained. “We live in a world dominated by consumption impulses that feed on that kind of thing like sharks on chum, and I think there’s an additional danger of losing what exactly makes something positive or good beyond its desire to be seen that way if you don’t routinely face the challenge of engaging the negative and less than laudatory. But I do think it’s helpful every now and then to remind yourself of the good things that are going on, and comics has plenty of those.”

So, 2013, yes? Let’s see what happens in the next year.

As part of his wonderful Holiday Interview series, Comics Reporter Tom Spurgeon talks to Mark Siegel, the man behind the great – and constantly underrated – First Second Books:

I think part of the mission of First Second is to help win a place in both highbrow culture and popular culture for comics that is long overdue in America. We’re certainly not the only ones trying to do that. I do think we put special effort in terms of speaking different languages for different audiences and putting books out that are aimed to reach across many different kinds of audiences. I’m always interested in books that are really legit and have real cred for people who love and know comics, but can also speak to people that don’t know comics. We’re always looking for ways… I love it, like I’ve heard that Anya’s Ghost was one book that somebody told me what was great about it is that it doesn’t need a secret handshake. It lets you in right away. It’s not necessarily a measure for every book, but for that one I think that’s a real success.

Really good stuff. Go read.

Did you know that Detective Comics was banned in Australia in the late 1930s? Daniel Best has the somewhat unbelievable tale of state censorship from history:

The banning of Detective Comics really began with a statement from the Minister for Trade and Customs, in which the proposal for the prohibition on the importation of undesirable literature was put forward.  Although the proposal was titled ‘literature’, the text made it clear that the focus would be firmly placed upon pulp magazines and comic books which were deemed to be blasphemous, indecent and obscene.  The content of the statement also placed a strong emphasis on the undesirable content of the literature in question, in particular sex and crime and the harmful effect that any exposure to either would have on youth.  Damning evidence was provided in the form of a recent murder case in which the murderer had been found with a large collection of pulps, thus, for the powers that be, showing a direct line from pulps and comic books to outright murder.  It was all that was needed.

The whole forgotten story can be found here, and is well worth a read.

File under “Things That Might Have Been Missed In The Run-Up to Christmas”:

Disney’s purchase of Lucasfilm closed on Friday, with Disney paying $2.208,199,950 in cash and 37,076,679 Disney shares to Lucasfilm shareholders.

Roll on, 2015 and the new movies, apparently. The first official piece of Disney/Lucasfilm magic? Darth Vader and his Stormtroopers were featured prominently in the Disney Christmas Parade broadcast live Christmas morning, with the Imperial March playing as they patrolled Main Street in Magic Kingdom, Disney World. We’ll see if there’s any clarification about the future of the comics license anytime soon, as well.

After discussing future plans for Invincible at CBR, Robert Kirkman turns his attentions to the size of the digital comics audience:

I don’t really know the hard numbers off the top of my head, but I know when [The Walking Dead] started at comiXology, we were doing 5% and as we’ve continued to work with comiXology and branched out into other digital platforms, we’ve seen digital sales go from 5% of print sales to we’re getting close to 25 to 30% of print sales. The digital market is jumping and rising and growing exponentially while the print market continues to grow. I can say that I’ve seen that on all of my other books too, books like “Invincible.” The digital market continues to double over time, while the print market is completely unaffected. While I will say that there’s a lot of retailers out there and people who are hardcore fans of print comics that see digital as a threat, I can say that I’ve seen no end of evidence that that’s not the case at all, that we’re seeing a growing digital audience coinciding with a growing print audience and the two seem to be feeding off of each other in a way that seems to bring more sales to both, which is a really exciting and uplifting thing to see for the industry as a whole.

Are we possibly (finally?) at the point where we can all agree that – unlike almost every other medium – the digital comics audience seems to be additive to the analog market, and not a replacement? And, if so, does that mean that publishers can start experimenting with digital pricing without upsetting the delicate balance that is the Direct Market?