CBR's "Thin Wallets, Fat Bookshelves" column

[Grant Goggans]

This is the sort of thing that we never see Rebellion featured in, but should:

http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2010/02/thin-wallets-fat-bookshelves-yen-press-2010-line-up/

I mean, really, if Yen Press can get some column inches from CBR, then surely the Galaxy's Greatest can.  Somebody send these fellas a press release, and stat!!

[Emperor]

To be fair they are publishing the Twilight manga which is expected to be one of the big sellers of the year. Also no need to focus on Robot 6 - pitch to the main site

See also.

All it would take is a mailing list or two (CBR, IGN, Newsarama, Comics Bulletin, Broken Frontier), a regular press release (what is starting soon, what is coming up, new trades - nothing that isn't in the Nerve Centre), a PDF copy of the current prog for review purposes and an open offer to hook interested parties up with a droid for a chat about their 2000AD work.

[Mike Gloady]

Well, if our mission to bring thrills to the thrill-less until death is to succeed, we must try to bully Tharg into getting some of that going. 

[John Caliber]

Often it seems that if 2000AD books get reviewed, it's only because the reviewer puts the effort into seeking them out and buying them, rather than review copies being distributed to the major comics news portals. Or, has this been tried already and met with indifference?

Is a sufficient profit margin made on the reprints (costing nothing bar small royalty payments) to allow flagship editions (or all) to be (respectfully) coloured* and re-edited so they read as a continuous narrative and a compilation of five-to-six page instalments? It worked quite well for Dark Horse's adaptations of Al Williamson's Star Wars newspaper strip (albeit, the colouring job could have been better).

* I mention this not as a fan of 'modernising' excellent b/w comics, but worrying that modern readers refuse to look twice at b/w artwork, so creating a negative association with 2000AD books (some are in full colour, but the 'damage' might have been done by then--first impressions and all that).

[Emperor]

Often it seems that if 2000AD books get reviewed, it's only because the reviewer puts the effort into seeking them out and buying them, rather than review copies being distributed to the major comics news portals. Or, has this been tried already and met with indifference?

Its not clear who is reviewing their own copies or review copies but Broken Frontier have had a good run of trade reviews. Equally Comics Bulletin (which has to be one of the biggest sites to get comics reviews on - Newsarama don't for that many and CBR tend to focus on the larger US comic books) has had sporadic attempts to review the prog, but it takes quite an investment of time to do this week in and week out - they will review just about anything sent to them though (they have been reliable reviewers of Paragon and I have seen other British small press comics on their like Mike Battle and folks like C2D4).

From what has been said on here it seems the management have been spending the time they have spare from producing the comics, making sure the core sales are stabilised (because there is no point spreading the Word if there is no comic any more!!). The problem is to get the system up and running (two mailing lists, one for PR one for offering material for review) does require quite a bit of time: contacting sites, gauging interest, making sure you've got the right details for the correct people, and for some (possibly Newsarama and CBR you might have to put in extra time having a chat with the right people possibly face-to-face at conferences to convince them you are in it for the long haul - there is no point committing to spare a little corner for 2000AD if the press releases and review material slack off after a few months and requests for interviews isn't being sent on to droids). So that plus weekly "maintenance" is something they'd want to find the time for so they can commit to making it work on a long term basis. It is easy for us to say they should be doing it but it is a trickier thing to put in place and keep it rolling.

I would imagine with the first US-printed Dredd Case Files hitting the shelves in a few months, and the movie still in the pipeline and getting some modest press, that we'd start to see a PR offensive starting on the US. I'm sure if they want, the Hivemind can help in small ways - Comics Bulletin should be fairly easy, drop a note to Kelvin Green (who reviews most of the British comics) and he can either sort it out or pass it on to someone higher up the chain of command. We could easily come up with a decent list - as well as the sites there is comics coverage in the New York Times and some other papers, MTV's Splashpage would be worth a go and dropping a line to G4's Attack of the Show! could turn up useful things. I'm sure with a bit of brainstorming we could come up with a list of possibilities, when the time is right, of course.

[John Caliber]

Like the Marvel/DC situation then: they concentrate on the big money-making properties (movies, computer games, maybe animation) and the comic staff hope that some viewers get so excited that their enthusiasm trickles down and improves comic sales.

BUT, it didn't do much for 2000AD or the Megazine when the Stallone Dredd movie came out, however. Have the Marvel/DC comics seen impressive sale rises whenever movies like Spider-Man, X-Men and Batman were screened? Is there any chance that comics can emerge from the foggy fringes of the entertainment industry? Despite hopes to transfer them to electronic media, a comic is still a comic and people don't much like reading them. It genuinely upsets me.

[Emperor]

Like the Marvel/DC situation then: they concentrate on the big money-making properties (movies, computer games, maybe animation) and the comic staff hope that some viewers get so excited that their enthusiasm trickles down and improves comic sales.

Not really no. They have clearly been working on a big push into the States from before the Dredd film was announced, they have just had to postpone things for a bit because the economic downturn meant everyone has to shore up their key market.

While I'm sure they'll do a few things to tie into the launch of the film I don't think there is much idea when that'll be. Also given the problems going all out for the last one caused I imagine this will be a more sustainable approach - make sure there are plenty of collections to buy (which they've been working on for years now anyway) and just putting out good quality stories to make sure those who check out the comic stick around. So more of the same really The release of the film is just an added bonus.

[John Caliber]

I see what you mean: be patient and all will be revealed as the plan is played out. 

[Jim_Campbell]

Have the Marvel/DC comics seen impressive sale rises whenever movies like Spider-Man, X-Men and Batman were screened?

No, much to the bewilderment of the industry. I know the sales of Marvel's Spider-man titles moved not one jot despite the first Raimi movie being the biggest film of the year.

There is only one notable exception to this: Batman and particularly Detective at the time of the first Burton movie. ISTR Alan Grant saying that sales went from borderline cancellation to about 600K per month. The particularly remarkable thing was that they then stayed up.

What was different about Detective? It was a newsstand title (and so therefore didn't require people to find a specialist comic shop and then be made to feel like a moron by Comic Book Guy), and it was almost entirely continuity-free -- Grant and Breyfogle were turning out 1, 2 and 3 part standalone stories, so jumping on was never a problem.

I genuinely don't understand why this is so hard for the powers-that-be in the US industry to grasp!

Cheers

Jim

[John Caliber]

Might it be that Detective Comics had lots of lapsed readers who, their enthusiasm rekindled by the movie, came back to the fold, rather than lots of brand-new readers? Was Detective Comics so awful that it could have believably suffered a massive reader attrition in the months/years before the movie? Did Detective Comics' sales rise to the detriment of the other Bat-titles?

Maybe the Spider-Man readership was as large as it was ever going to get (likewise with 2000AD), so all the people interested in it were already customers before the movies (Spidey/Dredd) premiered? A rather depressing prospect for 2000AD.

[Jim_Campbell]

Maybe the Spider-Man readership was as large as it was ever going to get (likewise with 2000AD), so all the people interested in it were already customers before the movies (Spidey/Dredd) premiered? A rather depressing prospect for 2000AD.

Well you can't cite lapsed readers as a reason for an increase to Detective's sales and discount it for 2000AD. There are, at a conservative reckoning, 75-80,000 lapsed 2000AD readers and by far the most common reaction from people I meet who used to read the title is: "Good Lord! Is that still going?" so I would suggest that a bump in readership would be entirely possible if the title had both a higher profile and greater availability.

Cheers!

Jim

[Mike Gloady]

Sadly getting newagents to stock it (and have the sense to not rack it alongside tellytubbies or bob the builder) after they've already dropped it will be an uphill struggle.  And it's got to BE newsagents as that's where most of the former readers will be. 

[John Caliber]

How many of the lapsed 2000AD readers no longer read any magazines/comics at all? I noted from personal experience those who do still read (or occasionally dip in) have to be 'in the loop' in the first place. The art of reading now appears to be a 'fringe lifestyle choice', not a necessity.

There's the cultural stigma (previously a jealousy of intelligensia, that it causes inequality; presently, a fashion for anything electronic) against reading any literature other than sound-bites on web-pages. The massive drop in comic book circulation also seems to parallel the loss of pride in reading and writing standards in Western societies.