RE: Comics! #43 [Breaking News]

It's rare that the landscape of the comic industry has the potential to change so much in the course of just one week. Every time Gregg and I thought we'd nailed down our topic some new news would break and we'd have to segue into the next topic! Whatever the fall-out ends up being, maybe you heard it here first!

Stephen Mayer: It's all conjecture at this point, but as someone that has gotten their new comics on Wednesday during their entire reading career, going so far as to schedule college classes around getting to the store on new release day, the idea of new comics coming on Tuesday just blows me away!

Gregg Schigiel: And as someone who goes to the store on Sunday typically to avoid the rush and crowds, I’m unaffected.

I suppose on the plus side, you no longer have to schedule college classes, so you’re clear there.

Wisecracks aside, I appreciate the comic shop ritual. I did it in high school, stopping at the shop on my way home from school to pick up that week’s haul. And in college we’d go as a group, buy our comics, and then head to Heavenly Ham for an awesome lunch after which point we’d go our separate ways to read. And I have nice memories of all of that.

But I think it was some time after I left my position at Marvel that I opted to avoid the crowds, especially at the store I was going to in Times Square, and I’d go on Thursdays instead, during lunch or after work. And then once I went freelance it became a Sunday ritual…take a nice walk to the store and a nice walk back.

So when you think about it, despite my not participating in the New Comics Wednesday ritual, I’m still pretty ritualistic about it.

On the one hand we can ask what makes us comics folks so hung up on rituals and traditions? On the other hand I can ask you specifically, what is so shocking about changing the shipping/delivery date of books? There is something to the logic that music and home movies are released on Tuesdays…

Though I think weekly magazines come out on Thursdays? Is that right? I could look it up, sure, but I’m that lazy right now.

So especially now, when your schedule doesn’t need to change so dramatically, what’s the REAL effect?

Stephen: Personally I'm very much a creature of habit to a frightening extent. For the last three years, Tuesdays have always been the same for me: enter inventory, move trades, move comics, post blogs, put together the e-mail. And since I'm off on Mondays, that's how I start my working week. Right off the bat I'd have to change my work and home schedule to accommodate that. The other idea they're floating out there is that if they moved to Tuesday releases they would also ship the books to the store on Monday. So instead of unpacking boxes on Wednesday mornings and having new releases on the shelf on Wednesday after, we would unpack and sort everything Monday night so they would be ready when the doors open on Tuesday.

From a retail standpoint it would kind of mean extending the business week. Mondays and Tuesdays are down time for us now, but moving the day up would mean heavier retail. More sales? Not necessarily. More likely just our usual customer base coming in over the course of five days instead of four.

Gregg: I’ve said it before (I think) and I’ll say it again (or in the case that I’ve never said it, for the first time), I find the retail side of things and the schedules and processes very interesting. It’s an area of the business I’ve really not been privy to.

And you know what, from your perspective I can see how the shift can change things, more so the Monday shipping than the Tuesday on-sale date, but still, I get it.

I suppose on the flip side, whereas Mondays and Tuesdays were the slower days, maybe now Thursdays and Fridays will be the quieter days? Like, if all the creatures of habit, all in one fell swoop readjust their habits, then the landscape changes overnight…a paradigm shift, if you will. And like daylight savings time or the changing of the year, after about a month it’d be “remember when new comics day was on Wednesdays?!”

I wonder if I’ll stick to Sundays though, knowing it’ll be a whole extra day during which other people might be buying up all the comics I want.

Stephen: Another news item this week was the announcement that Marvel will be attempting same-day print and digital release of a title for the first time later this month with INVINCIBLE IRON MAN ANNUAL #1. The suckers gonna be 80 pages long and focus on a new, definitive re-telling of the Mandarin's origin.

The print version will be $4.99, a price point that we've already seen adopted for annuals on books like DARK and NEW AVENGERS and X-MEN FOREVER.

The digital version will be available in the Marvel app on the iPad and iPhone/iPod Touch. Here's the kicker: the 80 pages will be broken down into 3 installments that cost $1.99 each. So it comes out to $5.97 or 98 cents more for the download.

Gregg: I was wondering if we were gonna touch on this, as it’s “breaking news” and you’re at Heroes Con while we’re writing this, etc.

I like the idea of a same-day release for print and digital. I think it’s a worthwhile move and a good way to really get into the digital distribution mix. And I realize the whole thing about digital comics and digital distribution is dangerous waters for the comics retailers and distributors, but in thinking ahead and facing forward, it’s an exciting development (and one, quite frankly, I’m surprised has taken so long).

But this pricing structure they’re using…that is mental.

If the idea of this is to float it as a test, it’s a failed experiment before it even starts. If a proper experiment, scientifically speaking, needs a control by which to measure variances and such, this instance has none of that.

For one, as a single issue, it’s 80-pages, which is not the norm in length or cover price. But more, to charge different amounts, particularly to charge more for something with no physical component…

Add to that that you can only really buy/read the digital version if you have the hardware (iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch), and now it’s a whole other discrepancy that makes the “experiment/test” essentially invalid in any real way.

I don’t understand it.

Why not test it on a few standard titles one month and see what happens (because there are only so many people reading Iron Man, another glitch in this market test, if that’s what it is).

Admittedly, I’m not on the inside; I don’t know the mechanics of their business model and I’m not tech-savvy enough to reverse engineer an iPad comic file to see how it’s built to know how much work goes into such a thing…but when you take out the cost of printing and shipping…you gotta imagine it’s at least moderately cheaper, right?!

If record companies tried to sell mp3 albums for $20 a pop (as opposed to $15, say, which was/is the general average for a CD)…where you get no physical CD or liner notes, etc…are you kidding me? But that’s what looks like is happening here.

As someone who’s pro-digital in a lot of ways and is willing/interested in reading comics that way, each new reveal, from the prices of the hardware/iPad to the prices of the comics themselves, seems less like an invitation and more like a dare. And when an app that can provide hours of game play or provides a service over multiple uses for prices less than the price of a digital comic...I don’t see a lot of, let’s call us analog readers, making the switch…and I don’t see a lot of non-comics-reading digital content users taking a shot and getting on board.

I feel weird feeling disappointed about it. Does that make sense?

Why do you think this is the route they’re taking? My only guess is either (a) it’s to support retailers in some way or (b), and this I’d argue might be more possible, it’s so as to not upset Diamond, maybe, who are the exclusive distributor for Marvel’s comics. But I’m thinking maybe this was a much-buzzed about thing at Heroes so maybe you have a take or perspective I’ve not considered?

Stephen: I actually didn't hear a lot about it at the show, but I didn't go to any panels about Marvel  or even comics specifically. I read the news on my phone sometime on Saturday so chances are a lot of people may not have heard about. Raph and I discussed it lt night and his opinion was that the higher digital price point was just to appease retailers, which as you pointed out will really shake up the results.

I would say that the same could be said about Marvel's motion comic venture with Spider-woman, where it was released digitally as a motion comic weeks before the hard copy hit. I was saying with that one that I was put off that I was asked to pay $1.99 for each motion comic and then the whole thing was released on Hulu for free. I don't understand those kind of moves.

Segueing the price point talks over to the other side of the street, DC recently announced that some of their standard 32 page books (really 22 story pages) will start at $3.99 without any extra content. The change is even being applied to some books that have already been solicited at $2.99 like GREEN LANTERN: EMERALD WARRIORS. It will also affect some of the books published by their imprints, with AMERICAN VAMPIRE holding to it's present $3.99 even after Stephen King is no longer  writing back-ups following the first arc. 

Gregg: I don’t like single issues at $3.99. I generally (95% of the time) won’t buy a comic for $3.99 (even with a discount, I still, on principle, can’t do it). And I was not shy about how unhappy I was that X-BABIES was priced at $3.99 each. In the rare instances I do buy a $3.99 book I’m almost angry at myself for doing so…and find it affects my ability to enjoy said comic. And when I think that digital comics might actually change that and make them cheaper and easier to read and enjoy…and possibly finally grow the audience of readers out there, shenanigans like those we talked about with this Iron Man comic come along and just take me out at the metaphorical knees.

It’s only a matter of time where the existing finite audience cannot support the release load and higher price points and the audience will shrink further, circulations will drop, whatever ad revenue that exists will get smaller still, and what I consider a downward spiral will just keep on that course.

This is the kind of stuff that bums me out about this business and the characters and material and format I really do love. And more frustrating is knowing how powerless I am as one dude to affect or change any of it (and I say that as not some egocentric sort who thinks he could or should be the one to “fix” things, but as the guy who’s levying the complaints but not necessarily offering any real solution, because, again: powerless).

And that’s another episode of “Gregg Brings the Negative!”. Help me, Stephen Mayer…help me!

Stephen: I can give you the hope that I talked to multiple people this weekend with the attitude of "we can do this", which I took as a variation on the Acme mantra of "we didn't know we couldn't do that." With ideas like Tony Harris's vision for a comic creator advocacy guild gaining steam, maybe you (/we) aren't as powerless in all of this as you might feel. The digital revolution might not be that at all, but something every bit as transformative for the medium as the dawn of the Silver Age or the indie underground or whatever else. There could very well be a place for digital comics and brick and mortar stores and cons and pens and Wacom tablets and everything else. We can have it all.

 

Gregg Schigiel is a cartoonist, illustrator, and writer. He's worked as a penciller, writer and editor for Marvel Comics and an illustrator and cartoonist at Nickelodeon. In addition, he’s in various stages of cooking up new comics-related works…unless he’s too preoccupied actually cooking. Check out his website at Hatter Entertainment.com. 

Stephen Mayer makes his mama proud by going on a walk after walking miles over the weekend at the convention and getting 21 hours of rest in 2 days.