Considering all the reports we’ve seen in recent months about an uptick in comic book orders compared with previous years, it’s worth wondering how retailers feel about the industry these days. After all, they are the ones who get to see whether things are actually selling or not… Thankfully, ICv2 has asked them:

Comic retailers were cautiously ecstatic about sales at the end of Summer 2012, after 12 consecutive months of growth for periodical comics, according to a recently released report in ICv2’s Internal Correspondence #80.  The caution comes from having seen both high and low points across recent decades, but the “return to floppies,” as Things from Another World’s Andrew McIntire described it, has reassured comic retailers that their core business has a future despite the growth of graphic novels and the more recent surge in sales of digital comics.

The caution apparently comes from those with long memories who recall the busts that traditionally follow the booms, thankfully. Even though publishers seem to be pushing us back towards the 1990s with the amount of variant covers we’re seeing, it’s nice to see that retailers aren’t exactly chomping at the bit to follow suit.

Apparently, there’s one happenin’ hot spot in San Francisco, if you believe your comics. Don’t believe me? Here’s a panel from yesterday’s Avengers vs. X-Men #0:

326 Fell Street…? That’s just off Gough. Wait, Fell and Gough? Lemme take a look at yesterday’s preview for the new Andy Diggle/Jock series Snapshot again…

Again with the Fell Street at Gough! What, you may wonder, is actually at that address in the real world San Francisco?

Oh, that’s right:

Of course, we shouldn’t be surprised that James Sime’s funnybook utopia has made it into a couple of comic book cameos recently; after all, Sime himself has been a character in Robert Kirkman’s Invincible since 2004.

…well, if you can raise $679,000.

The long-running comic book store, located on Melrose and La Brea in Los Angeles, has put itself on sale — on eBay. It’s been a Hollywood fixture since 1979, and now you can select the celebrity-frequented shop with the “Add to cart” option. We live in interesting times.

According to a Bleeding Cool report, the sale isn’t an indication of any negative performance on the store’s part, but rather the inclination for the Liebowitz family to pursue other opportunities. Store founder Bill Liebowitz passed away in 2004 at the age of 63, leaving the business to his surviving family.

Our pick for a potential buyer? Nicolas Cage. A whole store for $679k seems like a bargain compared to $1.55 million for one comic, right?

Retailer Brian Hibbs considers the problems with publishers polybagging comics for sale:

Well, let’s take bags for the example: bags cut down on browsing, they don’t “sit right” on a rack (as they generally don’t have a true edge), and they look shabby. There’s some interesting questions on the secondary market as to whether or not a bagged comic without the bag is still “mint.” They add shipping weight (which we retailers pay for), and, based on recent experiences, they’re both prone to more distribution damages as well as taking up more room in shipping boxes, increasing costs.

What’s the upside for the retailer for any of this tradeoff?

I admit, the idea that polybagging could hurt sales by cutting down on browsing never occurred to me – in part because my local store bags everything before sale – but I do wonder how much the loss of browsing is offset by any “I have to know what’s inside! Maybe I should buy it!” impulse. It’ll be interesting to see what (if anything) happens to sales of the Ultimate books longterm as polybagging the issues becomes matter of course.

Brian Hibbs, owner of legendary San Francisco store Comix Experience, explains why he won’t be stocking Marvel’s Avenging Spider-Man #1 on his shelves:

Over time, Marvel Comics has unilaterally decided that the initial solicitation [for a comic] is fairly meaningless, and that books are not finalized until before the FOC date (typically 3 weeks before publication), and anything about the solicitation can change for any reason. I think this is a low down process because, as a working comic book store, a significant amount of our consumer education and outreach is done in the subscription model — I really do need 10-12 weeks to get the information out, and collect it back (not from my capability, mind, but from how fast the typical consumer reads and responds).

Marvel and all of its employees are well aware of solicitation and marketing deadlines — they fall in the same ways and means each and every month, there are no surprises anywhere in the process. I find it personally impossible that something as significant as full, free, digital codes in every copy wasn’t decided well in advance of catalog deadlines, just from a manufacturing standpoint, so for Marvel to not announce it until well after orders have started to be collected is thoroughly dirty pool.

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Update: Atomic Comics owner Mike Malve has released an official statement confirming the abrupt closure of the chain’s four stores.

In the letter, sent to members of the comic book industry as the final installment of his weekly newsletter report, Malve discloses that he has filed for bankruptcy and he and his family are also losing their home, though “I have always been and will forever be an extremely optimistic person and will look at this situation as an adventure.”

Malve compared his experience to the struggles that Starbucks has faced.

“When the economy went sour, low sales could not support the higher rent at these high visibility locations,” Malve said. “The leases at these particular stores which had originally provided the consumers with greater visibility and more foot traffic to our wonderful world of comic books, the higher overhead proved to be too much for Atomic as we faced declining sales.” All of Atomic’s four stores were larger than the average comic book shop, including a mall location at the Chandler Fashion Center.

The full text of the letter can be found on Robot 6, with Malve also noting the difficulty of recovering after an uninsured driver plowed through the window of their Mesa store (their biggest location) in October 2006. Local newspaper the East Valley Tribune noted that Atomic’s online sales and eBay store had been dormant in recent months.

Original story: Several reports on Twitter and Facebook state that Atomic Comics, a chain of four comic book stores in the Phoenix, AZ metropolitan area, has shut down as of Sunday, Aug. 21. The stores had been in business up until that date.

Word first surfaced in the late afternoon, with unconfirmed rumors quickly growing into conversation among several comic book professionals. John Layman, writer of Image’s Chew and a resident of the area, wrote “Hearing stories about Phoenix’s Atomic Comics stores closing shop. Absolutely heartbreaking, horrible news.” Rob Liefeld and Skottie Young, among others, also relayed the news.

As of the writing of this post, there has been no official confirmation on the store’s website, Facebook or Twitter account; nor from the personal Twitter account of Atomic Comics owner Mike Malve. Writer Ben McCool, of Image’s Choker and Pigs, stated on his Twitter account that he received a text message from Malve confirming the closure.

Atomic Comics has been one of the highest-profile retailers on the national scene for years, regularly attracting big-name creators for events, scoring nominations for the Eisner Spirit of Retailing Award and serving as the model for the shop in the 2010 film adaptation of Kick-Ass.

There are still many details left unknown about the situation, like the exact nature of what led to the closure (though it’s easy to speculate given the trying economic times and the struggling direct market), and what will happen to the chain’s four stores’ worth of inventory, as there appears to be no liquidation or going-out-of-business sales planned. Newsarama will have more on the situation as it develops. (Full disclosure: I was an employee at Atomic Comics from 2002 to 2004.)

The announcement of Marvel’s new retailer initiative – the New Stores initiative, to give it it’s proper title – is an interesting one, both in terms of timing (Coming, as it does, at a time when DC seems to be concentrating on opening up its digital space as much if not more than it is concentrating on print) and what it’s actually offering – or, more specifically, who it’s offering it to. (more…)

It isn’t the first time that I’ve said this, but this month’s “Tilting at Windmills” column by retailer Brian Hibbs is a must-read for everyone interested in the comics industry, as he looks at the ways in which product oversaturation is slowly killing the direct market:

It kills me, it literally kills me as I watch publisher after publisher, time and time again, walk up to their customers and say to their face, “Please stop buying my comics!”. Whether that’s feast-or-famine shipping, completely blowing the scheduling on new lines, not balancing a production schedule over the month, whatever. Behavior that we tolerate in the DM would never ever fly in any other medium. Can you imagine a TV show succeeding with the kind of stop-and-start, constant change-in-scheduling kind of production that we have in comics? No, the mass audience wouldn’t be interested in those kinds of shenanigans.

Again, it would be one thing if we were dealing with a market of big hits, in a healthy economy, where the losses from the dumb stuff could be ameliorated. But we’re not in a market of big hits any longer. We’ve lost most of our buffer.

So, so much more at the link. Seriously: This is something that everyone should read. Even if you don’t agree with what he’s saying – although, really, I’d be surprised if that was the case and curious to hear why – these are issues that need to be addressed, and sooner rather than later.

In a week that saw Supergirl as fantastic as it’s ever been (apologies to the Peter David enthusiasts out there), a curious piece was found by way of The Hollywood Reporter this week.

According to the press release…

[Warner Bros. Consumer Products] has partnered with five-time Olympic medalist Nastia Liukin to create Supergirl by Nastia, the first-ever lifestyle merchandise line of its kind for girls available at a major retailer. Supergirl by Nastia will feature trend-right, affordable apparel that encourages a message of empowerment, creativity, strength, intelligence and independence – the symbolic attributes of the iconic Supergirl S-Shield. The collection, created for today’s 8-12-year-old girls, will be available exclusively at JCPenney – in stores and on jcp.com – beginning July 20, just in time for the back-to-school season.

“The Supergirl S-Shield is embraced the world over as a symbol of girl power,” said Brad Globe, president, Warner Bros. Consumer Products. “From ‘fashionistas’ to ‘actionistas,’ a Supergirl is today’s girl and we are proud to be partnering with Nastia Liukin and JCPenney to bring the Supergirl by Nastia line, and its message of empowerment, to life at retail for all girls and their parents.

Prior to reading this, I was not aware that WB had been using Supergirl as a brand in this manner anywhere (or the “Supergirl Jam” mentioned further in the press release). Far be it for me to play fashionista, especially for young girls’ clothing, but while I like that there are some tasteful designs here (and we really only get a sampling), it seems more like the El family crest is merely getting incorporated into some graphic designs and not so much Kara Zor-El herself. Just another symbol like the peace sign. Maybe there are some items with Supergirl’s likeness on them in development, I can’t tell. But, hey, whatever works! Not a parent myself, and lord knows it’s been a kajillion years since I stepped inside a JCPenney.

Z is for Zeitgeist. It’s also for zombie. With AMC ordering a pilot for an adaptation of Robert Kirkman’s WALKING DEAD, fans of the series have to be wondering if WALKING DEAD‘s small-screen translation will retain the character driven, anyone-can-die ruthlessness that separates the series from the shambling horde of zombie comics, movies, and novels.

If this script review at Corona Coming Attractions is accurate, Walking Dead fans need not worry. As Zombies make the slow stagger form pop-cultural boogeyman of choice to the butt of post-mdern jokes like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies It seems that renowned screenwriter/director Frank Darabont certainly sees Walking Dead the same way Kirkman must, as a way to take our zombies back.

At the very least, maybe this will pave the way for a Mad Men/Walking Dead crossover. Instead of shilling products to mindless consumer zombies, you could have Don Draper orchestrating campaigns for real Zombies. Just think of how great Mad Men‘s beautiful period sets would look splattered in entrails.

Dear DC,

I can imagine Marvel’s “Blackest Night for The Siege variant cover exchange” press release didn’t sit too well with you folks at 1700 Broadway. All the same, I bet you’ve probably thought it over, sent out a few interoffice emails, and maybe called a meeting or two to discuss how you would respond to it, and in the end, decided to take the proverbial high road. That’s a commendable stance, and one you can’t be faulted for taking. But I for one would like to say a few words on behalf of taking the low road.

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Will 2010 be the year DC Comics surpasses Marvel as the top publisher in the industry? I ask this because in my secret identity as a mild-mannered comic shop employee, I have a front row seat to watch industry sales trends as they happen. Being around comic book fans forty-plus hours a week, seeing their buying habits and talking about comics with them, in addition to getting to learn about the retail side of the industry in one of the country’s top comic shops (insert shameless plug) gives you a unique perspective on the comics biz.

If you take a look a recent sales trends–ICv2 and The Beat are great resources for retail news–you can see the potential for a reversal in the familiar trend of Marvel kicking DC’s collective butts up and down the sales charts. Blackest Night has been a sales bonanza for DC, surpassing last year’s Final Crisis event in performance and reader excitement. It’s by far the hottest selling comic being published today, and it’s allowed DC to dominate the top of the bestseller charts for the past couple of months now. (The six bestselling comics in October, as well as seven of the top ten selling books for November, belonged to DC.)

If you look at what we know is upcoming in 2010, a reversal of fortunes between DC and Marvel seems very possible. Marvel’s next big event is Siege, ostensibly the wrap-up to several years worth of ongoing plotlines that the Marvel Universe proper has revolved itself around. You would think that years of build-up and major events (Civil War; Secret Invasion; Steve Rogers’s death; etc.) would translate into massive anticipation for what comes next, but there honestly doesn’t seem to be much of a buzz surrounding the story among the clientele where I work. Instead, I get the feeling that fans are growing indifferent towards the current direction of the Marvel Universe, and are less excited about Siege itself than they are what it represents as the potential end of a story that’s worn out it’s welcome. I guess we’ll find out on Wednesday, when the first issue of Siege hits the stands.

DC counters with The Return of Bruce Wayne mini-series by Grant Morrison, which begins in April, a month after Blackest Night ends. Captain America Reborn has been Marvel’s biggest success for the past few months, and given the similarities between the two projects, it seems safe to say The Return of Bruce Wayne will be a big hit, too. If DC can manage to carry their momentum through the end of Blackest Night and into TROBW and beyond, then Marvel may need to start getting used to watching DC’s tail lights for a change.

In the spirit of Newsarama’s own Readers’ Favorites of 2009 Tourney, I thought I’d get a view from my local comics shop and see what my friend in comics, Chris Ureta Casos, the long-time buyer for Comics Dungeon, here in Seattle, had to say about comics in 2009 and much more.

Blog@Newsarama: Chris, with Newsarama’s Readers’ Favorites of 2009 Tourney in mind, tell us your thoughts on what tops your lists of favorites in comics this year.

Chris Ureta Casos: I have a lot of trouble really picking out top favorites for any categories, simply because different creators and titles appeal to me at different times and for numerous reasons. If I had pick on the spot though, my breakdowns would be:

Ongoing Titles: The Boys, the Green Lantern titles

Mini-series: Beasts of Burden, Atomic Robo

Writers: Geoff Johns, Garth Ennis, Peter Tomasi, Gail SImone really shines for her work on Secret Six And Wonder Woman

Artists: Marcos Martin, Darwyn Cooke, Patrick Gleason, Amanda Conner

Covers: Pretty much all the covers Marcos Martin has been cranking out this year. The Cooke covers (regular & variant) for Jonah Hex #50 really stood out for me this month as well.

And just as a general thing I’ve been loving all the great work being put into reprints from Fantagraphics, IDW, and a few others. The newly colored Prince Valiant book was a thing of beauty, as well as the Complete Rocketeer that just came out this month.

Blog@: Moving right along, tell us any thoughts that come to mind regarding trends you’ve observed in 2009.

Chris: Well, the “event” trend along with the nostalgia crawl have been fairly strong for the year. Some events fell on there faces while others actually spiked sales very well and generated a lot of new interest. Then it felt like since we managed to work our way through the bulk of the 80′s nostalgia we for some reason had to immerse ourselves with the ’90′s again which is honestly more than a little bit painful.

Of the more positive trends I would have to go back to the healthy amount of reprinting we’ve seen. Marvel’s finally released the soft cover version of the Marvel Masterworks, which are great if not a few years too late. DC’s Kirby Omnibus collections as well as the Showcase editions and other special hard covers have been fantastic. Then you have Fantagraphics offering such things as Blazing Combat and the Strange Suspense to name a few. Top that off with Dark Horse and IDW really coming up to bat and putting out some impressive collections and it’s just been a dream year for nicely packaged reprint material.

There were plenty of trends I wish we could have avoided. The price bumps, the over saturation of variant covers, and the odd marketing and packaging choices we’ve been seeing from the larger publishers. As a whole, I would think the worse trend is the widening of the gap of communication between consumers, retailers, distributors, and publishers.

Blog@: What can you tell us about your favorite comics from this last decade?

Chris: This is where I really just freeze up because there are just too many things to go on about. I think one of the greatest new titles we’ve seen from the past decade was Atomic Robo, not only for just the actual content (which is amazing) for the actual work ethic of the creators. Joss Whedon’s work on X-Men and his launch of Buffy Season 8 were great in and of themselves but when you factor in the amount of new readership and interest they brought in then you can’t ignore their value.

Geoff Johns has helped to not only resurrect interest in Green Lantern but to push the entire mythology of the creator into being one of the most successful, easily accessible, and expansive properties in the industry.

Pretty much everything Dark Horse has been doing over the past few years has been making me happy, from their production values to their overall content, and they always strike me as one of the if not the most solid publishers.

I don’t think I’ve read a Garth Ennis story I’ve never liked. So, from him launching Battlefields, to returning to Hitman for a few issues, to pinpointing exactly what a Punisher story should be, and to launching The Boys I’ve been a pretty happy camper.

There’s the obvious stuff like All Star Superman, Wednesday Comics, and Scott Pilgrim, which all deserve plenty of praise and attention.

Gail Simone emerging as one of the best writers in mainstream comics has been pleasant to watch. I’m disappointed she doesn’t seem to be doing too strongly on the Newsarama polls.

I was actually one of the minority it seems that really enjoyed Final Crisis and Batman RIP, but hell I thought they were just a lot of fun as experiments.

I feel like I’m neglecting a ton of things….

Blog@: What would you like to share with us about an all-time favorite comic?

Chris: There are two all time favorite books I think need mentioning. First is Mother, Come Home by Paul Hornschemeir. If you want an example of how much emotion can be put into a comic with a very minimal yet expressive style then you need to check this out. This is the only comic I’ve ever written a letter to when it was being published as single issues, and I was incredibly grateful for the reply I got back from the creator. It’s an incredibly sad story, so if you’re a fan of Chris Ware or Craig Thompson you should love it.

The second is Blacksad by Juan Diaz Canales and Juanjo Guarndio. Pretty much every time I read I realize that this is pretty much the perfect example of the heights the medium can achieve in storytelling and that more people need to know this work so they can understand how high the bar has really been set. The good news is that Dark Horse will be releasing a new compete collection in 2010.

Blog@: How would you describe the experience of reading comics?

Chris: Reading comics for me can range from incredibly transcendent to horribly enraging. I was taught how to read with comics and fortunately (or unfortunately) they’ve stuck with me for the long run, so visual narratives have been engrained into me and I often can get a little too engrossed in what I’m reading.

Blog@: Any quick and easy comment for someone walking in and wanting to read something that will blow their mind?

Chris: I need to talk with the person first and see what type of taste they have. It’s not that easy for me to assume they will like what I think is cool. Considering how excited I get when Starro the Conqueror shows up or Atomic Robo beats up a giant mutant ant with a Buick I think it’s a safe bet not everyone likes the same thing. It’s a little bit more interesting to gauge what a person’s taste is and see if you can find just the right thing for them, which means actually taking the time to expose yourself to different material constantly.

Blog@: What do you see ahead in comics in the new year, or in the future in general?

Chris: This is a hard one, simply because the future of comics really depends on how the economy holds up and how the publishers react. If we continue to see the trend of prices rising and a harder push to online comics, then we may see some really negative and possibly cataclysmic changes to the industry. There are a few things that could really help such as dropping the cost of production and material, but the main concern is that it feels like consumers are being drained of their blood at times and we are in a recession. I have customers who would love to buy more comics, but they can’t even afford 5-10 comics a week.

I was talking with a customer not to long ago, and we were asking the same question about Hollywood and other mainstream outlets and what trends might pop up over the next year. We decided that unless the powers-that-be were complete idiots, they would realize the potential with the increasing amounts of female genre fans with the popularity of Twilight and Firefly. Comics saw substantial new interest from female fans when Buffy Season 8 came out, and there were so many great books coming out at the time to cross-sell such as Runaways, Fables, and Y The Last Man.

Beyond that, I’m personally hoping that the next trend will be a competition between publishers to see who can publish the best reprint material. We’ve already seen both IDW and Fantagraphics release Ditko books of fantastic quality. I see Marvel is finally reprinting the Geoff Johns Avengers run, which, seriously, what’s been the hold up with that? Ideally, DC will now reprint the entire Abnett/Lanning run of Legion as a rebuttal. There are tons and tons of books actually worth reprinting (and no, I’m not talking about the Spider-Clone Saga and X-Men 2099). Books like the Peyer/Morales Hourman, the Jurgens/Epting Aquaman, the Waid/Kubert Ka-Zar, the original Busiek/Bagley Thunderbolts, and much much more. But please please please don’t make them deluxe hard covers. Just make something reasonable so we can easily recommend them to people without forcing them to sell blood to afford them.

Be sure to check out the Comics Dungeon Web site and, for further thoughts from Chris Ureta Casos, read his reviews at the Trusty Henchmen Web site.

Talk about stepping up your game — based on an announcement issued yesterday, you can tell that BOOM! Studios is dead serious about getting their books out.

Why do I say that? The company announced yesterday that they would be teaming up with Haven Distributors, who would distribute all second printings of both the BOOM! Studios lineup and BOOM! Kids — which by the way houses their line of Disney licensed comics — to direct market stores.

The English translation here: first and foremost, having an alternate distributor is a fairly big deal. When BOOM! Studios sells out a first printing of a book, the company no longer has to wait for Diamond to send second printings out, as they work with specific monthly distribution points. Instead, if a store runs out of a book and orders a second print, Haven is free to send stuff out whenever they want.

“Retailers have been begging us to get our second prints into their stores at a faster pace for the past year,” said BOOM! Studios CEO Ross Richie in a press statement. “We’re happy to be able to offer retailers another choice in getting an important part of our product line to their stores and into the hands of their customers.”

This deal goes in conjunction with BOOM!’s deals with Simon and Schuster and HarperCollinsCanada, who distribute the company’s graphic novels to the mass market in the U.S. and Canada respectively.

May proved to be a Crisis that wasn’t limited to the pantheon of DC Comics, as comic book sales plummeted by double-digit percentage points.

ICv2 reports that comic book sales dropped 19 percent in May from the previous year, with graphic novel sales dropping 13 percent. The overall drop totals at 18 percent. Here’s some more details:

A lack of potent #1 issues as well as the absence of Dark Avengers certainly didn’t help comic sales this May, a month in which no single title even came close to breaking the 100K barrier.  In contrast in May of 2008, which boasted seven titles over 100,000, comic sales were boosted by Final Crisis #1, Avengers/Invaders #1, Invincible Iron Man #1, and Giant Size Astonishing X-Men #1, all of which made the top ten along with 4 Secret Invasion titles and two issues of Batman RIP.  The paucity of big event titles and strong #1s, the continuing deep recession, and the financial drag of higher cover prices all worked together to help produce the steep decline in comic numbers in May.

The top three comics of May 2009 were New Avengers #53 (94,367 copies sold), Battle for the Cowl #3 (89,170 copies sold), and Wolverine #72 (87,075 copies sold).

This drop is the largest ever reported by ICv2. In addition, April 2008 and 2009 both had five weeks of shipping, whereas May had the typical four.

All right, New York fans — if you dig Steve Dillon, here’s your chance to meet and greet!

The Hero Initiative has announced that on Wednesday, June 24th, the Preacher and Punisher penciller will be hitting Jim Hanley’s Universe in Manhattan from 6pm to 8pm.

All proceeds, both for the $5 raffle as well as the $15 sketches, will go to the Hero Intiative, which helps out creators in financial or medical need. If you’re in the area, check it out!

This is for all our Midwest readers, specifically those in the Windy City:

Challengers Comics in Chicago is having their one-year anniversary party this Saturday night! Starting at 5pm, the shop (located at 1845 N. Western Ave #2R) will have food, drink, and $1.00 back-issues.

“We didn’t want this to be our store and customers just shopped here,” said Challengers co-owner Patrick Brower in a press release.   “We wanted it to be the customers store and we just happen to work here.” W. Dal Bush, the other co-owner, added, “We wanted a store that brought a high level of professionalism to our retail industry.  Comic books are now in the mainstream. More Hollywood blockbusters than not are based off them. The New York Times now has a best selling graphic novel list.  We are proof that the family unfriendly, grimy disorganized stereotype of a comic shop is history.”

Comics and community always go well together, so if you’re in the area, I’d suggest you check it out!

If you haven’t checked out the book that Sarah called “The Definite Bush Era Fiction” Khepri.com is ready to help you out. Right now, they have the first five volumes (all that have been released to date) for 43 bucks and change. That’s less than ten bucks a volume, and a real steal to get you up-to-date on this awesome Vertigo series. If you’re caught up and waiting for Vol. 6, which comes out next month, they’ve got it available for pre-order at a hefty discount, as well. Check out the deals here, and don’t say we never gave you anything.

The New York Comiccon has announced a tentative lineup of its panel schedule!

Here are some of the highlights for this year’s programming:

The Do’s and Don’ts of Being a Comic Professional: Creating the work is one thing, but what should you keep in mind in order to present yourself well to an editor? Do personality and rapport play a part in how you’re perceived? What’s the difference between a pro’s attitude and a novice’s? How do you balance doing quality work with making the deadline? What’s the proper way to pitch? (Friday, 2-3pm)

BOOM! Studios: BIG! BOLD! BOOM! Join Mark Waid, Ross Richie, and Chip Mosher as they run down the most exciting new projects at BOOM! Including a special announcement by Mark Waid that is sure to make your head explode! (Friday, 2:15-3:15)

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By Bon Alimagno

New interns always ask me whether they should develop their own projects as monthlies or another format (graphic novels, digital, etc). It’s taken some trial and error but I now feel confident of the answer: Format is Destiny. If you publish as a monthly, you’re wedding yourself to a host of expectations and complications that may taint your project, regardless of the quality of your work.

Maybe nothing inhibits the growth of new comic publishers more than the expectation they publish monthly full color comic books. While the average comic book store goer expects new publishers to follow this routine, they do so usually without realizing why. Where is it written that a comic book should be serialized every four weeks without break? It’s not written anywhere but has become the accepted way of doing things.

Yet it’s a way of doing things that vastly favors Marvel and DC Comics and immediately handicaps new publishers. Marvel and DC have rich, intellectual properties with worldwide recognition. Their characters possess archetypical qualities that can sustain a monthly grind, year in and year out. Even better for them, some of the best talent in the industry, having grown up on these characters, are now eager to work on them, refreshing these characters with every new generation. New publishers, when pondering whether or not to go monthly, have to consider whether their own characters and stories have the same sustainable qualities.

If not here’s what they face:

A monthly comic series loses a small fraction of their audience from one issue to the next due to the natural attrition of serialized storytelling. No serialized story will keep 100% of its readers with each succeeding installment. On average the typical comic probably loses 10% of its readership per issue. That may not sound bad but stretch those losses over the course of twelve or twenty-four issues and suddenly a comic that sold 25,000 copies its first issue is no longer breaking even within a few years of its debut.  At that point a publisher has to decide whether to keep going or cancel.  Now imagine if instead of one monthly a publisher had decided to launch many simultaneously, believing that a larger set of offerings would make their company look more impressive.  Maybe a company could offset the losses making up for it with related trade paperback sales and other merchandise. But say they have a half dozen or a dozen titles bleeding that much. The losses start piling up exponentially. That scenario has played out many times over the last few years and why you’ve seen new publishers fall as quickly as they have risen.

Now, say a new publisher stems the bleeding quickly and cancels a monthly. Such a cancellation won’t be viewed as a business decision done for the sake of the continued health of the company. It’ll be viewed against the other monthlies from Marvel and DC that carry on. It’ll be viewed as a failure. Thus when the publisher re-launches the title, they’ll be in the unenviable position to explain why. The publisher then has to present something new, something fresh, and for better or worse something potentially at odds with their original vision that ended in cancellation.

Setting aside the business considerations, let’s consider the creative problems monthlies have. A typical monthly comic story is twenty-two pages. Can the story of every comic book character be told in such neat twenty-two pages increments? Of course not, yet far too many stories, possibly better served as longer graphic novels, have been sliced and diced to serve this serialized format, diluting their narrative power. Or, as many have complained, stories that once would have satisfactorily ended in a single issue are now stretched to fill a three- or six-issue arc.

This all isn’t to say that no new publishers should ever consider the monthly. But they’ve been warned: this is what they are facing. Non-Marvel and DC publishers, like us, that still manage to publish serialized comics in some form (whether as miniseries or quarterlies or the like) usually have other means of generating income apart from the actual comic books themselves. This is vital to the survival of the so-called independents. Look through Previews and you’ll see that publishers who have not only survived but grown over the past few years have done so by carefully monitoring their monthly output and publishing serialized comics with established or licensed characters and popular creators. They’re built for the long haul.

New publishers may not want to play the same tune that frankly many have already mastered, but instead march to the beat of their own drum.

Till next time…

Bon Alimagno is Director – Publishing & Editorial for Harris Comics, publishers of Vampirella.