February 20, 2024 • 41 mins
The big American comics are having problems and need some advice to get back on their feet. By looking at their distribution models, how they fail to use cross-platform promotion, and the businesses they ignore to their disadvantage, how they could be doing better is considered. Why spinner racks won't help is discussed as well as why some adopting some aspects of the manga business model would work while other aspects wouldn't. The success of indy comics is looked at and why not all of their tactics would work for the bigger companies.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
The Webcomics reviewsing Interview Today, we'reall about saving the American print comics.
So sit back relaxing that the geeksFest begins. Something that's mystifying everybody right
now is, well, how badAmerican print comics are doing. It's just
straight up you think they'd be doinga whole lot better considering everything they have
going for them. They've got allthe money, so if they want to
(00:24):
basically in mess around distribution models,they'd be able to. They have movies,
and we know they can cross withthem in arend comics, but they
can't cross promote media. There's somethingseriously wrong with that. You think they
have that figured out by now too. I mean, we've had Marvel cartoons
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alone since the eighties, and there'sjust a lot of other silliness going on.
It just doesn't make sense from astrict business perspective. On top of
that, they're having a deal withcompetition from manga comics, which I guess
makes a certain degree of sense becausewell, both of them are trying out
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new models as far as distribution goes. And yeah, we've covered the webcomic
business model a lot on this podcast, so you know you can go out
where to figure that one out.Manga, of course, Well, we're
gonna be talking about manga a lot, both why it's succeeding and why it
shouldn't be replicated here in the US. We're also gonna be bringing up spinner
(01:32):
racks and why they shouldn't be triedagain, which is sort of a shame
because well, yeah, I likespinner racks and I try to get people
using the conventions all the time,but doesn't mean I think that they're gonna
be a successful business age. Solet's clarify a few terms before we head
(01:53):
into this, shall we. Firstoff, I'm not looking at all American
print comics because quite frankly, mostof your independence are actually doing fairly decently.
They're, like you said, they'regoing to be taking advantage of some
distribution molls. Obviously the big onescan't. But at the same time,
(02:15):
well, yeah, they're doing they'rethey're just doing fine. We're gonna leave
them alone. What I'm basically lookingat our Marvel and DC obviously the big
two, because those are having themost problems, but we're also going to
be including I GW, dark Horseand Image in that mess as well.
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And of the five between you andme, I don't understand the image right
now, I mean straight up,but like I said, we're getting all
that mess, and yeah, it'sa mess. But when it comes down
to it, when I'm looking atAmerican print comics, I'm only looking at
those five. Yeah, I know, the last three year pretty much bordering
(03:00):
indies, but they still tend toshow up a lot when it comes to
top one hundred best comics for theyear. On top of that, some
of the comics are actually doing betterthan Marvel and DC's, so I'm going
to include them. And yeah,I know that this is sort of arbitrary
on myhalf, but hey, it'smy podcast. I want to be arbitrary.
(03:24):
I'm going to be arbitrary. It'smy podcast and I can do what
I want. Besides, I thinkit would get really boring if I only
have two targets. Having five makesit a little bit more interesting. So
what's basically going on? Well,first off, like you pointed out,
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Marvel and DC are basically not takingadvantage of the cross promotion opportunities to have
access to I mean, I understandwhat DC probably wants to keep the comics
as far away from the movies asthey possibly can, given they're having to
reboot. James Gunn I love you. I cannot wait to see what you're
going to do, especially after guardinginto the Galaxy. That and a few
(04:10):
other little things here and there.But boy, if you got your work
cut out for you. And whyMarvel isn't taking better advantage of the situation
doesn't make any sense because they've gottheir stuff on all the big streaming networks.
They've movies usually come into the topten, and I do mean usually.
Trust me, we're going to getinto Superhero Burnout put a pin in
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that one. And it's just itdoesn't make sense why they're not taking advantage
of the situation the cross promote intoother media. There's just something seriously wrong
here. And in this one,I'm also going to include IDW because well,
IDW is starting to do their energyon Universe, which means they've got
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access to Cido and Transformers, andthat's an entirely different area that they should
be taking advantages of. You know, they should be doing some sort of
promotion with the respective companies that youadvertise your market, help market our comics,
will help market your cartoons, andbetween the two of us, we
can do some really great energy ofour own, which, by the way,
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we can include a dark Horse inthere as well, because dark Horse
does occasionally do some really great ipsas well, especially with the Aliens franchise,
and well when they were doing StarWars. Like you said, you've
got all these things for across promotionthat just simply aren't happening, And yeah,
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I have no idea what's going onwith the image in this regard.
You'd think they'd basically be doing somesort of movie or cartoons. They've had
cartoons before and they've done pretty wellwell, Okay, I mean Wildcats is
pretty much forgettable, but spawn Hatwas a lot of Plus, you think
they'd basically being trying to do somesort of movie situation, because let's get
(06:05):
real, their comics are pretty muchhigh octane. You think they'd been naturally
going for Hollywood, but it justseems like it never seems to happen for
for some reason. But the basicallyjust is one of the big problems you've
got when it comes to the majorcomic food companies is they're not taking full
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advantage across promotion and it just doesn'tmake any sense. The second problem you've
got is well distribution. It justfeels like you're trying to rely too much
on old school distribution methods and thatjust doesn't apply as well as it used
to. You know, you haveDiamond Distribution first off, which is pretty
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much always going to be doing somesort of bottleneck situation. On top of
that, Marvel and do you seethat both tried their own distribution and just
didn't work out as well as theythought it would, so they had to
go back to Diamond at least tosome degree. And none of the major
companies are really taking full advantage ofplatforms like Amazon. There's just something not
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making sense. You've got this worldwidedistribution network and they're not taking full advantage
of it. I mean, theirbooks show out there every so often,
especially with their trades and their omnibuses, but it's just you're not really seeing,
you know, go to this particulararea on Amazon for our stuff,
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and you can do that kind ofthing. Trust me, I've got my
little influencer shop. It can happen. Then, of course, you've got
the fact that they aren't using theirown platforms, their own websites to basically
distribute electronic versions of their books,and yeah, I know there's always going
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to be a favoritism towards paper,but let's get real. I've got a
kind At one point I had somelike two three hundred comic books on that's
saying a lot, you know,a lot of it was the cheapy stuff,
don't get me wrong. But ifyou can get a sell a comic
books that's going for five, ten, fifteen bucks in the stores and do
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an electronic version that because it's paperless, the distribution is virtually free. And
I emphasize virtually. It's still itcosts money to run the servers for example,
as well as the Internet costs,which would be ridiculous if you actually
ran it. But the key hereis you can basically do comics for like
one or two bucks for a straightPDF version and there's no material costs for
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this. It just doesn't make itwell once they're published. Obviously prior to
you're gonna have lots of material.But the bottom line here is you can
do the digital version for one ortwo bucks and you're gonna make You're basically
gonna be printing money, you know, but they're not taking advantage of the
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fact that you've got all these peoplethat have kindles that have i'veads tech.
I can even go and even readon my TV if I really really wanted
to. And they're not taking advantageof this to any major degree. The
fact that too, Marvel and DC'swebsites tend to be more problematic when it
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comes to dealing with them than anythingelse. And you don't really hear that
much about you know, the darkhorse I GW or image sites past a
certain degree. You know, it'sgreat, it's they've got our URL listened
in their comics. But and yeah, you can order print versions of the
comics as well as the electronic butagain there's too much of an emphasis on
(09:50):
the paper version. And yeah,I get the whole paper version. It's
better for collectibility and the smell andthe field. Don't get me wrong on
this, just pointing out that alot of people aren't so much interested in
the material prospect of it and justwant to read the comics. And they
could do that for like I said, you know, one or two bucks
(10:11):
per comic, or if you reallywant to get fancy, do a subscription
model. Trust me, a lotof people love the subscription model. You
know, you pay five to tenbucks a month, read as many comics
as you want. Hey, you'dhave a lot of fans who really really
happy. That way, they'd beable to get the paper versions that they
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really want, while at the sametime not really having to worry about having
it well a paper version of theones they don't want. Of course,
the other flip site is that it'dbe interesting you see them go make You
Great or Pourrais into the web comicd He already has to a certain degree
if they've had a couple of stripsthey've actually been reasonably successful on webcams.
(10:58):
It'd be sort of fun, though, to see them do a little bit
more. You know, you've gotthe stuff that you've got some really cool
ideas as far as the comics go, that would work really really well as
a web comic that may not workso well as a print version. A
really good example of this is whenMarvel was doing their Franklin comics. You
know, they were basically doing Franklinas a pseudo Colvin Hobbs situation, and
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it was really popular, really happened, you know, I was really satisfying
to a lot of people, butbecause there was so little audience for it,
it just almost asted a couple ofissues. On the other hand,
something like that, especially given howmany parents are looking for all ages comics
online would do really, really wellas a web comic versus a digital or
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even a print version. Oh yeah, let's look at the other side of
cross promotion really quick, because ashorrible as they do with their movies and
the TV show that they should bedoing a lot more, because let's get
real, Marvel has a lot ofreally good cartoons out there. DC the
animated movies are totally awesome, butmost people haven't really heard of them except
(12:13):
we're on podcasts out and the trackthis stuff down, and there's something wrong
with that. They're not being advertisedin the comics. Conversely, they're also
not flipping around the advertising the comicson the movie, and that just doesn't
make a whole lot of sense becauseyou've got these things that are getting everywhere
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that are doing usually hundreds of thousandsof dollars or sorry, hundreds of millions
of dollars, and they're not beingused to help sell the comics. It's
just that doesn't make any sense,you know. It's basically, Hey,
you're going to go into a comicbook store, and because the continuity is
(12:56):
so different between Saving and NCU andEarth one six one six, and it's
just going to blows them away.I'm not saying you have to be completely
in line with each other, butif you could even do like a tagline
in your movies that was prominently displayed, especially you put it on your movie
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posters, this would go a longways towards actually helping your comic book sales
as well. And yet you don'tsee that level of cross promotion going.
Unfortunately, you do see a lotof cross promotion in the comics for other
comics, and it's starting to getbloody a million because straight up, as
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Blurred without Fear has pointed out,you could basically go the entire year with
nothing but crossovers, and there's justyou've got a lot of really massive crossovers
happening right now. You've got thegame War as well as while whatever's going
on with the X Men. TheFall of X is the current version.
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Plus you already know that the XMen are going to get rebooted because well,
the obvious signs are killing everybody off. In fact, the last time
I checked it, they've got downto Professor X a double handful of mutants
and they're all going after Moira.But the key here is that you've got
all these crossovers in the comics themselves, and fans are getting bloody annoyed with
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it. It's just you can't doa simple two or three parter anymore.
You've got to do these big twentyfive issue, fifty issue, seventy five
issue crossovers, and you have tocollect every single issue in order to make
sense. And we're talking this isa what almost two hundred, four hundred,
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five hundred dollars investment, And let'sget real, most of the comics
you're just not going to be interestedin, or they're going to bore the
heck out of you. You know, Game Work is a mediocre series at
best, but they've had a coupleof really cool issues. But in order
to understand what's going on in thiscouple of really cool issues, you have
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to get all the ones you don'twant, which is most of them.
Spider Man has had a really badrun, but in order to understand what's
going on with Mary Jane, youneed every big piece of the Paul saga.
For lacking a better term, andI don't really care what the official
is. And all this led upto is the temporary death of Miss Marvel.
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So when it comes down to it, I would really love to see
fewer crossovers, you know, putevery character in like no more than like
two maybe three crossovers a year,and it's only for a couple of issues
the rest of the time. Letthem do their own things. Yeah,
(16:00):
do you see, I'm looking atyou too. We won't talk about the
whole nightmare thing you recently did whereone or two issues of all your comics
got dedicated to the crossover. Seriously, you people are second. You need
to stop it. So in essence, you need to get better across promotion
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across media, your movies, yourcartoons, and your comics. You need
to stop the cross promotion within thecomics that's just getting ridiculous. You've also
got to work on distribution models,and you gotta have a little bit more
fun with the way you're doing stuff. Straight up, it's not rocket science.
(16:48):
It just seems that way sometimes.But as far as the two,
before we start getting into stuff thatcould actually be a little bit more interesting,
let's talk to the two that basicallyI don't think you're going you work.
First off, the among of thebusiness model, it just isn't going
to work in America. I'm goingto be straight up on that part of
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it. Would I like the ideaof that Yo Jinci. That is,
you basically have fan based comics thatthe fans have some serious fun with.
They replicate the characters and the basicallystyle of drawing, make your own comics,
publish them, and you actually haveentire conventions like Comic Head that are
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set up specifically for these situations wherenot only are the people selling their comics
there, but people from the industryitself can go in and scout out new
talent that I think would be sortof fun, even though there's some obvious
copyright issues that would need to beaddressed otherwise. However, me well,
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taking the comics factory, that's goingback to black and white and going to
newsprint, Yeah, that ain't gonnawork. It's just we're the only Japan.
It works in Japan because how massproduced the comics are. It's just
everybody has manga and it just worksreally, really well. It however,
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you also tend to north it,well, it's just simply black. We've
gotten way too used to color aswell as a solidly almost archival print.
We like our archival paper because itallows us to collect them, it allows
us to be a little bit rougher, and quite frankly, it actually helps
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protect the comics. Putting back tonewsprint with the cards dock cover, yeah,
that's it's gonna be cheaper, don'tget me wrong. But at the
same time, it's basically going tocreate a top of throwation to and we
already have that in Japan. Thatcreates a lot of problems for them.
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Going back to black and white.Yeah, that's not going to happen either,
because we like color. It's justtoo much coolness when it comes to
reading a color comic versus a blackand white one. This is to degree
that even mom and Pops comics,you know, the types that are run
by you know, the artists,the writer, the marketer and everything else,
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is the exact same person as opposedto having an entire company for this
worse, this is all relevant onlyworks because you have the manga ka the
creators having to put a ridiculous numberof hours for almost little to no pay.
So yeah, you basically have blackand white comics on newsprint put out
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by people who are basically underpaid.And given that we like our archival paper,
we like our color, and weactually like being able to afford luxuries
like food and rent, Yeah that'snot going to happen when it comes to
the US. We just we likedour things a little too much, especially
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you know, having a roof overour head. And if we went to
what makes it work in Japan,that cheap labor source is part of that.
Unfortunately, even though we point outthat's the one thing they're doing tremendously
better than American comics is they havesome serious cross promotion between media. If
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I'm talking the comic, the TV, the movies, in the video games.
Yeah, video games are all interrelatedwith the same pretty much the same
artists at least to some degree,and everybody trying to make sure that they
can't maintain the same continuity and stylebetween all of that. So that's sort
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of cool at least to some degree. Obviously, if you go from manga
anime, you're's going to be somesort of signal loss. But the bottom
line here is that cross promotion betweenmedia is something I'd really, really really
like to see American comics do geton that. The other thing I really
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like about manga and I'd like tokeep replicated open in American comics is the
breadth of genres. It's just straightup You've got all these different genres that
are out there, even subgenres,and then you've got all these genre mixing.
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Not only that, but you havespecific genre set for different age groups.
You know you think, I meanYalley's pretty much my personal surprise because
it's gay manga that keeping up byyou know, housewives who would have guessed
right. But the key here isif they have an infinite number of genres
and it's just not being replicated inthe American comic industry. There's just too
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much of a reliance on well,superheroes. It'd be great to see more
stuff like David Gallagher's High Noon orHigh Moon. Sorry, you know Western
Horror with were was He Just there'dbe some really cool stuff going on there.
I like to see more slice oflife type stuff. I like flights
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to life comics, and you justdon't see them all that much in American
comics. Like you said, youpretty much see superheroes, and that's an
infinite variety of superheroes. Don't getme wrong, but it's just pretty much
all superheroes with a few other comicsthrown in for a little variety. And
I'd love to see the Japanese infinitenumber of genres pop up. But when
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it comes down to it, theway manga are done in Japan just wouldn't
work here in the US. Sothat sort of needs to stop in terms
of the actual production genre production.However, please get the American companies looking
into that. Spinner acts are anotherproblem you think you actually work because they're
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basically right there at the door,so people are going to see the comics
as they're entering and leaving in youknow, basically be a real quick,
you know, impulse by. However, the problem is is that the way
the comics are sold in terms ofthe spinner rack is entirely different from how
they're sold at the local comic bookstore. And this basically means that the
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comic books are put in there byone person who has to go in every
so often and he has to basicallydecide, you know, create them out
every so often. The problem isthat because you have a lot of people
reading them, these comic books getdamaged really quick, and they're just not.
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People will read them at the spinnerrack, but they won't actually purchase
them. And at the same time, if they're not sold off, they
have to basically be junked somehow.Yeah, the way they used to be
sold was that you actually had eithercoverless books being sold you know really you
know, basically ten to the dollar, or they'd be sold to well ships
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were cheat ballast, which is reallycool in a weird way, because I
would mean wherever they went ended upas a ballast. Those comics would then
be sold to the local population andspread the comics that way. But as
far as the profit model goes,well, the problem is that based on
the retail side of you know,the actual keeping tracks of the numbers comic
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books, Spinteraction ended up being lostleaders. It was really cool to have
them out there, but they endedup being either build borderline. As far
as profit, we're actually not makingprofit at all, because, like I
said, nobody was really buying thecomics. They're reading them, they were
looking at them, they were pickingthem up, but they didn't make it
more than a couple of feet feetusually past the spinner act. So as
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much as all those spinner acts,let's just say, when you look at
the business model and the numbers,it just ain't happening. All right,
Let's take a quick step back.You'll notice that I excluded the independence from
this is for a reason. That'sbecause the independence can do a lot of
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things that your big comics can't.First off, they're able to work with
the local comic book shops a loteasier. You know, every city has
a huge number of comic book artists. They're basically making their own comics and
then they can basically go into thelocal comic book shop and talk. You
also have people that can take betteradvantage of libraries, and yeah, this
(25:59):
is when big companies can take careof take advantage of as well, especially
considering it a better set up withit. But it's something you see more
of the independence doing. The otherobviously, is crowds funding. This is
just a lot better for a smallcomic because we do see it as something
in an independent should be doing.That inclues up to a small movie.
(26:22):
You know, once you start hittingyou know, more than say five ten
thousand copies for your comic, itjust at that point starts questioning what exactly
you're doing in a crowdspunder. Youknow, if you can't basically make it
on your own, you need acrowdfunder to take advantage of. When it
comes to your comics, there's justfeels like there's something you're just haven't really
(26:48):
made it. You're still you know, bush leagues basically not saying there aren't
a lot of really great crowds fundingcomics out there, because trust me if
there are, but it's just crowdfundingright now is great if you only have,
like I said, five, ten, maybe fifteen, twenty thousand copies
and you want to basically say thegood percentage of those for other purposes like
(27:11):
conventions, giveaways, libraries, soon and so forth. So crowdfunding works
for small comics, small indies.It does not work for your big comics.
It just scens really weird. Soon top of that, your indie
comics are more likely to take advantageof electronic platforms, not only by creating
(27:33):
their PDFs and not making the PDFsavailable for sale, but also taking more
advantage of print on demand sites.Again, that's something your big site,
your big comics just just doesn't workfor your big comics because there's a scale
issue that is once you start hittingbig comic book arounds, you know,
(27:55):
five ten thousand, five ten thousandissues, it comes more too expensive to
produce them from via print on demand. At that point you have to basically
have your own press set up forit. And like I said, they
take advantage of the webcomic business modelto a much greater degree, and it
(28:17):
basically works really really well for anindependent comic versus one of the big five.
Because of this, your independent comicsare actually doing fairly well. And
like I said, because the webmodel webcomic business model is set up along
these lines well to a certain degree, so are the web comics that basically
(28:38):
actually do some serious marketing. Ijust thought it was necessary to go through
why the independent I'm not counting yourindependent comics here, and I'm looking at
those five. I was looking atthe issue here is that those five do
a lot more business as well ashave a lot more resources than your average
independent comic. Therefore, it whichis sort of weird that they're not taking
(29:03):
advantage of those resources. And thend's are so go figure, right,
So let's go back to our problemsand how to solve them with the big
companies. First off, like youpointing out you've got to work on the
cross promotion between media because you've gota lot of different situations going on,
(29:26):
and yeah, to a surgery,we're going to bring back image just to
be fun. Basically, I'm lookingat not just the movies and the TV
shows. Obviously Marvel's got that aswell as DC and to a certain degree,
IDW and dark Horse, but cheapin mind that you should be able
(29:47):
to combine all of your stuff intosome sort of actual major cross promotion.
And I'm looking at the toys,the stickers, the folders, all the
tra little merchandising things. You know, you want to do t shirts cool,
you want to do pants, fine, but figure out a way to
(30:08):
wrap it back into your comics.The big problem you've got is that way
too many of the clothing you've gotbasically features focus back at the movies.
You need to focus that back atthe comics. Can you pull that trick
off, that is, get everythingyou've got going on focus into your comics.
(30:29):
All of a sudden you've got avery powerful marketing tool for your movies
and your TV and then obviously you'llbe able to reflect the movies back to
the comics. Creating a really niceyou know, synergy going on. The
problem is is that, like youkeep pointing out, your big houses don't
really do all that. If youput out a toy line, it's usually
(30:52):
focusing on, you know, aparticular cartoon or doing some really weird stuff.
They it's absolutely no just simply asbeing seen in the comics. We're
talking all the way back to saythe Secret Wars great comic, honest,
I mean basically, if you wantedto see you know, a Battle Royale
(31:12):
done comic book style or done sorry, superhero style, it was an awesome
concept, but it didn't do toowell when it came to actually selling toys.
And that's a major missed opportunity because, like I said, not only
can you sell the toys through thecomic, but you can then turn around
(31:33):
and sell comics through the toys.You know, you've got the big companies,
you've got to get better at lookingat marketing synergy. It's just it's
got to happen. I mean,this is something the independent comics do very
very well. They basically have theircomics, they have their web comics,
they have the social media and allof this ties into win the circle.
(31:59):
You know, and because of this, because they're able to, even with
the merchandise, sell off the comic, either through the website or through comic
specifically, that works really really butinterestingly enough, you don't see big guys
doing this all that often, andthat's something's got to happen. The same
(32:22):
course applies to social media again.This is something the indies are doing really
really well that the big guys reallyaren't. You know. You think if
you had a huge website that basicallyyou could sell your books off of that
you could basically give character bios aswell as basically reasonably detailed character data.
(32:44):
I want to know how much Holpcan actually lift for example, or you
know, and then only get backinto your social media, you know,
not just like really quick, cutelittle we've got this comment coming out,
you need to go check it out. I mean, have some fun with
(33:05):
it. You know, you've gotcouples, hey, you know, Tay,
you manage of Valentine's Day families,Thanksgiving, Christmas. One of the
cool things about the X Men comicwas that it would basically occasionally do football
games and these big, huge meals. For a time there you had the
West Coast Avengers and the East CoastAvengers facing off on baseball. Now,
(33:31):
if you could apply that to socialmedia, you know, create use social
media to create the different baseball teamsand then have a little bit of fun
in terms of going toe to tow, that would be awesome, you know,
something a little bit more than justusing it for marketing, because let's
get real, most of the adviceyou told as an independent is to not
(33:54):
just market the goods, You've alsogot to market yourself. And then the
big companies just aren't marketing their characters. They're marketing the comics. You know,
They're not doing stuff like Cable andBishop have a beef against each other
(34:15):
and then have the two of themget into a flame war on each other.
That would be awesome. It wouldalso be very confusing because of all
the time travel, but let's ignorethat. You know, he basically he
needs some more. Jubilee would bea natural influencer. It'd be fun to
see Jubilee. This is the oneof a few times I'd love to see
(34:35):
Jubilee. So it's just it's gotto start taking a little bit more advantage
of the social media and not justFacebook or Twitter or even TikTok, but
also like some YouTube stuff going on. You know, we wanted to do
some deep dives into the history ofthe characters or events. That would be
awesome. Just so you have bighow successful you've got stuff like common historian,
(35:00):
comic tropes, casually comics and waytoo many things that don't start with
to start received, but not necessarilycomics. But the gist here is that
you've got all these little well notlittle geez if you've got all these YouTube
channels that are basically focusing in oncomics and exploring some of the weird stuff.
(35:22):
If the awesome if the big companiescould do that as well, and
of course we also be great isthey could also help reviewers, and I
mean just sending out you know,advanced review copies to the appropriate situations.
You know, CVR with actual reviewsdoes pretty well. On top of that,
(35:44):
if you get the influence that's doingthe same thing again, blurring without
fear, casually comics, comic storian, you know, so on and so
forth, viewing actually review having somethingto review ahead of schedule rather than having
to wait for it to come outlike everybody else. Just because the buzz
you can get going for your particularcomics, which is exactly what an ARC
(36:08):
is to be used for. Butagain, this is something you don't really
see the big companies doing. Yeah, they're seeing out copies, but they're
usually just a couple of days aheadof the comics, or maybe a week
or two ahead. They're not beingshut out with enough time to really drum
up some serious buzz about what's goingon. I think this also helps to
(36:30):
do a little bit of quality assuranceas well, because at that point you'd
have the reviewers going over the comicsand having some well, nitpicking like reviewers
do, which is not necessarily abad thing if you're trying to basically make
the comics as good as you can. If you're trying to make bad comics,
hey, don't give your comments toreviewers. Do you want good comics?
(36:51):
Give them the reviewers and actually listen. But that's me the reviewers like
go figure right, So that isyou can basically get all these big comic
book companies to figure out stop crosspromoting. Within the comics themselves have a
lot more independent just comics, they'rejust independent of each other a lot more
(37:14):
often you know, one or twobig crossovers a year. Fine with maybe
two or three smaller ones again,no problem. But seriously, when your
company is doing crossover from January toDecember with no breaking between what the heck
right on the web side, yougot to get cross better, cross plenty
(37:37):
between media. If you can getyour movies, your cartoons, your toys,
your comics all on the same pageand basically working to promote each other,
you know, just imagine a synergythat would happen. And again,
if you can get the influencers inon this as well, hey, you
(37:58):
basically are going to be doing alot better. I think. Also start
taking advantage of electronic distribution. AndI'm not surely talking about converting you to
a PDF and selling it for likeone or two dollars. That would be
awesome in and of itself, butalso start thuring yourself up on Amazon a
little bit more. There's fifty sevendifferent platforms for selling books. It would
(38:22):
be sort of cool to see youguys be there along with everybody else,
you know. And I'm not talkingjust and we're not just talking with local
comic book shops here, we're alsotalking with big chains. Sorry, let
me clarify that one. Just aweek bit if you got into a comic
book section out of a big chainlike Barnton Doubles, You're not going to
(38:44):
see a whole lot of comics.You're going to see like one or two
shelves and maybe at best forty orfifty different titles, which is sort of
weird considering how well the stack inthe small area. You know, So
start working with the chains out aswell. I top of that, have
(39:07):
a little bit more film with webcomicsif you have an idea, it's really
really cool, Like Franklin, youwant to know some comics that are just
seeing way too much explosure. Ithink we've seen way too much Batman and
Deadpool for a lifetime, and wewon't even talk about Wolverine. Geez.
(39:27):
The guy's powers are regeneration in handsmell and the ability being twenty steven different
comics at the same time. You'vegot to stop that. But if addition,
you take all your ideas that youdon't share, aren't one hundred percent
sure about Like look at the Alligatorthat the ofteness he is with his own
web comics, because we've seen himwith his own comic. Just the Shark
(39:52):
again, really cute little character ismaking a great little plushy and it would
just make a really great little webcomic, you know, just the weird stuff,
and you don't have to keep toall ages because, let's get real,
web comics are all over the place, so take advantage of that.
(40:13):
So this has pretty much been myrant. I'd love to see comics takeoff.
I really want to see the Americanprint comics take off, because there's
some really cool stuff going on,you know, with the rebirth of the
Unlimited stuff, that's arguably one ofthe best versions of Peter Parker we've ever
seen Peter Parker with an actual family. How cool is that, you know,
(40:37):
black Panther growing up against mythic beingsinstead of the usual street level stuff.
You know, you guys even crackout. It's really cool concepts because
you've actually seen, for the firsttime one of the major comic book companies
actually explore the concept of what wouldhappen if you have all these really tell
(41:00):
your people actually trying to basically changethe world for the better. You know,
you've got some really cool concepts becausethey're doing so poorly everything else in
terms of getting the comments out thereto end in people's hands. Or on
their machines, or just simply wherethey can get available to them. They're
(41:21):
just not doing as well as theycan and that needs to stop, or
more accurately, they need to getbetter at it. So that's me.
I hope this has been enjoyable.If it has been, please check me
out. You can find me onAmazon. I've got my own influencer shop.
(41:43):
Uh huh. I'm a patroon dotcom, slash two Sparrows two and
see me on Facebook two Sparrows Productions. Thanks to having good day
The Webcomics reviewsing Interview Today, we'reall about saving the American print comics.
So sit back relaxing that the geeksFest begins. Something that's mystifying everybody right
now is, well, how badAmerican print comics are doing. It's just
straight up you think they'd be doinga whole lot better considering everything they have
going for them. They've got allthe money, so if they want to
(00:24):
basically in mess around distribution models,they'd be able to. They have movies,
and we know they can cross withthem in arend comics, but they
can't cross promote media. There's somethingseriously wrong with that. You think they
have that figured out by now too. I mean, we've had Marvel cartoons
(00:45):
alone since the eighties, and there'sjust a lot of other silliness going on.
It just doesn't make sense from astrict business perspective. On top of
that, they're having a deal withcompetition from manga comics, which I guess
makes a certain degree of sense becausewell, both of them are trying out
(01:07):
new models as far as distribution goes. And yeah, we've covered the webcomic
business model a lot on this podcast, so you know you can go out
where to figure that one out.Manga, of course, Well, we're
gonna be talking about manga a lot, both why it's succeeding and why it
shouldn't be replicated here in the US. We're also gonna be bringing up spinner
(01:32):
racks and why they shouldn't be triedagain, which is sort of a shame
because well, yeah, I likespinner racks and I try to get people
using the conventions all the time,but doesn't mean I think that they're gonna
be a successful business age. Solet's clarify a few terms before we head
(01:53):
into this, shall we. Firstoff, I'm not looking at all American
print comics because quite frankly, mostof your independence are actually doing fairly decently.
They're, like you said, they'regoing to be taking advantage of some
distribution molls. Obviously the big onescan't. But at the same time,
(02:15):
well, yeah, they're doing they'rethey're just doing fine. We're gonna leave
them alone. What I'm basically lookingat our Marvel and DC obviously the big
two, because those are having themost problems, but we're also going to
be including I GW, dark Horseand Image in that mess as well.
(02:35):
And of the five between you andme, I don't understand the image right
now, I mean straight up,but like I said, we're getting all
that mess, and yeah, it'sa mess. But when it comes down
to it, when I'm looking atAmerican print comics, I'm only looking at
those five. Yeah, I know, the last three year pretty much bordering
(03:00):
indies, but they still tend toshow up a lot when it comes to
top one hundred best comics for theyear. On top of that, some
of the comics are actually doing betterthan Marvel and DC's, so I'm going
to include them. And yeah,I know that this is sort of arbitrary
on myhalf, but hey, it'smy podcast. I want to be arbitrary.
(03:24):
I'm going to be arbitrary. It'smy podcast and I can do what
I want. Besides, I thinkit would get really boring if I only
have two targets. Having five makesit a little bit more interesting. So
what's basically going on? Well,first off, like you pointed out,
(03:44):
Marvel and DC are basically not takingadvantage of the cross promotion opportunities to have
access to I mean, I understandwhat DC probably wants to keep the comics
as far away from the movies asthey possibly can, given they're having to
reboot. James Gunn I love you. I cannot wait to see what you're
going to do, especially after guardinginto the Galaxy. That and a few
(04:10):
other little things here and there.But boy, if you got your work
cut out for you. And whyMarvel isn't taking better advantage of the situation
doesn't make any sense because they've gottheir stuff on all the big streaming networks.
They've movies usually come into the topten, and I do mean usually.
Trust me, we're going to getinto Superhero Burnout put a pin in
(04:33):
that one. And it's just itdoesn't make sense why they're not taking advantage
of the situation the cross promote intoother media. There's just something seriously wrong
here. And in this one,I'm also going to include IDW because well,
IDW is starting to do their energyon Universe, which means they've got
(04:56):
access to Cido and Transformers, andthat's an entirely different area that they should
be taking advantages of. You know, they should be doing some sort of
promotion with the respective companies that youadvertise your market, help market our comics,
will help market your cartoons, andbetween the two of us, we
can do some really great energy ofour own, which, by the way,
(05:20):
we can include a dark Horse inthere as well, because dark Horse
does occasionally do some really great ipsas well, especially with the Aliens franchise,
and well when they were doing StarWars. Like you said, you've
got all these things for across promotionthat just simply aren't happening, And yeah,
(05:40):
I have no idea what's going onwith the image in this regard.
You'd think they'd basically be doing somesort of movie or cartoons. They've had
cartoons before and they've done pretty wellwell, Okay, I mean Wildcats is
pretty much forgettable, but spawn Hatwas a lot of Plus, you think
they'd basically being trying to do somesort of movie situation, because let's get
(06:05):
real, their comics are pretty muchhigh octane. You think they'd been naturally
going for Hollywood, but it justseems like it never seems to happen for
for some reason. But the basicallyjust is one of the big problems you've
got when it comes to the majorcomic food companies is they're not taking full
(06:25):
advantage across promotion and it just doesn'tmake any sense. The second problem you've
got is well distribution. It justfeels like you're trying to rely too much
on old school distribution methods and thatjust doesn't apply as well as it used
to. You know, you haveDiamond Distribution first off, which is pretty
(06:48):
much always going to be doing somesort of bottleneck situation. On top of
that, Marvel and do you seethat both tried their own distribution and just
didn't work out as well as theythought it would, so they had to
go back to Diamond at least tosome degree. And none of the major
companies are really taking full advantage ofplatforms like Amazon. There's just something not
(07:15):
making sense. You've got this worldwidedistribution network and they're not taking full advantage
of it. I mean, theirbooks show out there every so often,
especially with their trades and their omnibuses, but it's just you're not really seeing,
you know, go to this particulararea on Amazon for our stuff,
(07:35):
and you can do that kind ofthing. Trust me, I've got my
little influencer shop. It can happen. Then, of course, you've got
the fact that they aren't using theirown platforms, their own websites to basically
distribute electronic versions of their books,and yeah, I know there's always going
(07:56):
to be a favoritism towards paper,but let's get real. I've got a
kind At one point I had somelike two three hundred comic books on that's
saying a lot, you know,a lot of it was the cheapy stuff,
don't get me wrong. But ifyou can get a sell a comic
books that's going for five, ten, fifteen bucks in the stores and do
(08:20):
an electronic version that because it's paperless, the distribution is virtually free. And
I emphasize virtually. It's still itcosts money to run the servers for example,
as well as the Internet costs,which would be ridiculous if you actually
ran it. But the key hereis you can basically do comics for like
one or two bucks for a straightPDF version and there's no material costs for
(08:46):
this. It just doesn't make itwell once they're published. Obviously prior to
you're gonna have lots of material.But the bottom line here is you can
do the digital version for one ortwo bucks and you're gonna make You're basically
gonna be printing money, you know, but they're not taking advantage of the
(09:07):
fact that you've got all these peoplethat have kindles that have i'veads tech.
I can even go and even readon my TV if I really really wanted
to. And they're not taking advantageof this to any major degree. The
fact that too, Marvel and DC'swebsites tend to be more problematic when it
(09:28):
comes to dealing with them than anythingelse. And you don't really hear that
much about you know, the darkhorse I GW or image sites past a
certain degree. You know, it'sgreat, it's they've got our URL listened
in their comics. But and yeah, you can order print versions of the
comics as well as the electronic butagain there's too much of an emphasis on
(09:50):
the paper version. And yeah,I get the whole paper version. It's
better for collectibility and the smell andthe field. Don't get me wrong on
this, just pointing out that alot of people aren't so much interested in
the material prospect of it and justwant to read the comics. And they
could do that for like I said, you know, one or two bucks
(10:11):
per comic, or if you reallywant to get fancy, do a subscription
model. Trust me, a lotof people love the subscription model. You
know, you pay five to tenbucks a month, read as many comics
as you want. Hey, you'dhave a lot of fans who really really
happy. That way, they'd beable to get the paper versions that they
(10:33):
really want, while at the sametime not really having to worry about having
it well a paper version of theones they don't want. Of course,
the other flip site is that it'dbe interesting you see them go make You
Great or Pourrais into the web comicd He already has to a certain degree
if they've had a couple of stripsthey've actually been reasonably successful on webcams.
(10:58):
It'd be sort of fun, though, to see them do a little bit
more. You know, you've gotthe stuff that you've got some really cool
ideas as far as the comics go, that would work really really well as
a web comic that may not workso well as a print version. A
really good example of this is whenMarvel was doing their Franklin comics. You
know, they were basically doing Franklinas a pseudo Colvin Hobbs situation, and
(11:24):
it was really popular, really happened, you know, I was really satisfying
to a lot of people, butbecause there was so little audience for it,
it just almost asted a couple ofissues. On the other hand,
something like that, especially given howmany parents are looking for all ages comics
online would do really, really wellas a web comic versus a digital or
(11:48):
even a print version. Oh yeah, let's look at the other side of
cross promotion really quick, because ashorrible as they do with their movies and
the TV show that they should bedoing a lot more, because let's get
real, Marvel has a lot ofreally good cartoons out there. DC the
animated movies are totally awesome, butmost people haven't really heard of them except
(12:13):
we're on podcasts out and the trackthis stuff down, and there's something wrong
with that. They're not being advertisedin the comics. Conversely, they're also
not flipping around the advertising the comicson the movie, and that just doesn't
make a whole lot of sense becauseyou've got these things that are getting everywhere
(12:35):
that are doing usually hundreds of thousandsof dollars or sorry, hundreds of millions
of dollars, and they're not beingused to help sell the comics. It's
just that doesn't make any sense,you know. It's basically, Hey,
you're going to go into a comicbook store, and because the continuity is
(12:56):
so different between Saving and NCU andEarth one six one six, and it's
just going to blows them away.I'm not saying you have to be completely
in line with each other, butif you could even do like a tagline
in your movies that was prominently displayed, especially you put it on your movie
(13:18):
posters, this would go a longways towards actually helping your comic book sales
as well. And yet you don'tsee that level of cross promotion going.
Unfortunately, you do see a lotof cross promotion in the comics for other
comics, and it's starting to getbloody a million because straight up, as
(13:39):
Blurred without Fear has pointed out,you could basically go the entire year with
nothing but crossovers, and there's justyou've got a lot of really massive crossovers
happening right now. You've got thegame War as well as while whatever's going
on with the X Men. TheFall of X is the current version.
(14:01):
Plus you already know that the XMen are going to get rebooted because well,
the obvious signs are killing everybody off. In fact, the last time
I checked it, they've got downto Professor X a double handful of mutants
and they're all going after Moira.But the key here is that you've got
all these crossovers in the comics themselves, and fans are getting bloody annoyed with
(14:24):
it. It's just you can't doa simple two or three parter anymore.
You've got to do these big twentyfive issue, fifty issue, seventy five
issue crossovers, and you have tocollect every single issue in order to make
sense. And we're talking this isa what almost two hundred, four hundred,
(14:50):
five hundred dollars investment, And let'sget real, most of the comics
you're just not going to be interestedin, or they're going to bore the
heck out of you. You know, Game Work is a mediocre series at
best, but they've had a coupleof really cool issues. But in order
to understand what's going on in thiscouple of really cool issues, you have
(15:11):
to get all the ones you don'twant, which is most of them.
Spider Man has had a really badrun, but in order to understand what's
going on with Mary Jane, youneed every big piece of the Paul saga.
For lacking a better term, andI don't really care what the official
is. And all this led upto is the temporary death of Miss Marvel.
(15:39):
So when it comes down to it, I would really love to see
fewer crossovers, you know, putevery character in like no more than like
two maybe three crossovers a year,and it's only for a couple of issues
the rest of the time. Letthem do their own things. Yeah,
(16:00):
do you see, I'm looking atyou too. We won't talk about the
whole nightmare thing you recently did whereone or two issues of all your comics
got dedicated to the crossover. Seriously, you people are second. You need
to stop it. So in essence, you need to get better across promotion
(16:26):
across media, your movies, yourcartoons, and your comics. You need
to stop the cross promotion within thecomics that's just getting ridiculous. You've also
got to work on distribution models,and you gotta have a little bit more
fun with the way you're doing stuff. Straight up, it's not rocket science.
(16:48):
It just seems that way sometimes.But as far as the two,
before we start getting into stuff thatcould actually be a little bit more interesting,
let's talk to the two that basicallyI don't think you're going you work.
First off, the among of thebusiness model, it just isn't going
to work in America. I'm goingto be straight up on that part of
(17:10):
it. Would I like the ideaof that Yo Jinci. That is,
you basically have fan based comics thatthe fans have some serious fun with.
They replicate the characters and the basicallystyle of drawing, make your own comics,
publish them, and you actually haveentire conventions like Comic Head that are
(17:33):
set up specifically for these situations wherenot only are the people selling their comics
there, but people from the industryitself can go in and scout out new
talent that I think would be sortof fun, even though there's some obvious
copyright issues that would need to beaddressed otherwise. However, me well,
(17:56):
taking the comics factory, that's goingback to black and white and going to
newsprint, Yeah, that ain't gonnawork. It's just we're the only Japan.
It works in Japan because how massproduced the comics are. It's just
everybody has manga and it just worksreally, really well. It however,
(18:19):
you also tend to north it,well, it's just simply black. We've
gotten way too used to color aswell as a solidly almost archival print.
We like our archival paper because itallows us to collect them, it allows
us to be a little bit rougher, and quite frankly, it actually helps
(18:41):
protect the comics. Putting back tonewsprint with the cards dock cover, yeah,
that's it's gonna be cheaper, don'tget me wrong. But at the
same time, it's basically going tocreate a top of throwation to and we
already have that in Japan. Thatcreates a lot of problems for them.
(19:04):
Going back to black and white.Yeah, that's not going to happen either,
because we like color. It's justtoo much coolness when it comes to
reading a color comic versus a blackand white one. This is to degree
that even mom and Pops comics,you know, the types that are run
by you know, the artists,the writer, the marketer and everything else,
(19:27):
is the exact same person as opposedto having an entire company for this
worse, this is all relevant onlyworks because you have the manga ka the
creators having to put a ridiculous numberof hours for almost little to no pay.
So yeah, you basically have blackand white comics on newsprint put out
(19:48):
by people who are basically underpaid.And given that we like our archival paper,
we like our color, and weactually like being able to afford luxuries
like food and rent, Yeah that'snot going to happen when it comes to
the US. We just we likedour things a little too much, especially
(20:11):
you know, having a roof overour head. And if we went to
what makes it work in Japan,that cheap labor source is part of that.
Unfortunately, even though we point outthat's the one thing they're doing tremendously
better than American comics is they havesome serious cross promotion between media. If
(20:32):
I'm talking the comic, the TV, the movies, in the video games.
Yeah, video games are all interrelatedwith the same pretty much the same
artists at least to some degree,and everybody trying to make sure that they
can't maintain the same continuity and stylebetween all of that. So that's sort
(20:52):
of cool at least to some degree. Obviously, if you go from manga
anime, you're's going to be somesort of signal loss. But the bottom
line here is that cross promotion betweenmedia is something I'd really, really really
like to see American comics do geton that. The other thing I really
(21:12):
like about manga and I'd like tokeep replicated open in American comics is the
breadth of genres. It's just straightup You've got all these different genres that
are out there, even subgenres,and then you've got all these genre mixing.
(21:32):
Not only that, but you havespecific genre set for different age groups.
You know you think, I meanYalley's pretty much my personal surprise because
it's gay manga that keeping up byyou know, housewives who would have guessed
right. But the key here isif they have an infinite number of genres
and it's just not being replicated inthe American comic industry. There's just too
(21:56):
much of a reliance on well,superheroes. It'd be great to see more
stuff like David Gallagher's High Noon orHigh Moon. Sorry, you know Western
Horror with were was He Just there'dbe some really cool stuff going on there.
I like to see more slice oflife type stuff. I like flights
(22:17):
to life comics, and you justdon't see them all that much in American
comics. Like you said, youpretty much see superheroes, and that's an
infinite variety of superheroes. Don't getme wrong, but it's just pretty much
all superheroes with a few other comicsthrown in for a little variety. And
I'd love to see the Japanese infinitenumber of genres pop up. But when
(22:45):
it comes down to it, theway manga are done in Japan just wouldn't
work here in the US. Sothat sort of needs to stop in terms
of the actual production genre production.However, please get the American companies looking
into that. Spinner acts are anotherproblem you think you actually work because they're
(23:11):
basically right there at the door,so people are going to see the comics
as they're entering and leaving in youknow, basically be a real quick,
you know, impulse by. However, the problem is is that the way
the comics are sold in terms ofthe spinner rack is entirely different from how
they're sold at the local comic bookstore. And this basically means that the
(23:37):
comic books are put in there byone person who has to go in every
so often and he has to basicallydecide, you know, create them out
every so often. The problem isthat because you have a lot of people
reading them, these comic books getdamaged really quick, and they're just not.
(23:59):
People will read them at the spinnerrack, but they won't actually purchase
them. And at the same time, if they're not sold off, they
have to basically be junked somehow.Yeah, the way they used to be
sold was that you actually had eithercoverless books being sold you know really you
know, basically ten to the dollar, or they'd be sold to well ships
(24:26):
were cheat ballast, which is reallycool in a weird way, because I
would mean wherever they went ended upas a ballast. Those comics would then
be sold to the local population andspread the comics that way. But as
far as the profit model goes,well, the problem is that based on
the retail side of you know,the actual keeping tracks of the numbers comic
(24:52):
books, Spinteraction ended up being lostleaders. It was really cool to have
them out there, but they endedup being either build borderline. As far
as profit, we're actually not makingprofit at all, because, like I
said, nobody was really buying thecomics. They're reading them, they were
looking at them, they were pickingthem up, but they didn't make it
more than a couple of feet feetusually past the spinner act. So as
(25:15):
much as all those spinner acts,let's just say, when you look at
the business model and the numbers,it just ain't happening. All right,
Let's take a quick step back.You'll notice that I excluded the independence from
this is for a reason. That'sbecause the independence can do a lot of
(25:36):
things that your big comics can't.First off, they're able to work with
the local comic book shops a loteasier. You know, every city has
a huge number of comic book artists. They're basically making their own comics and
then they can basically go into thelocal comic book shop and talk. You
also have people that can take betteradvantage of libraries, and yeah, this
(25:59):
is when big companies can take careof take advantage of as well, especially
considering it a better set up withit. But it's something you see more
of the independence doing. The otherobviously, is crowds funding. This is
just a lot better for a smallcomic because we do see it as something
in an independent should be doing.That inclues up to a small movie.
(26:22):
You know, once you start hittingyou know, more than say five ten
thousand copies for your comic, itjust at that point starts questioning what exactly
you're doing in a crowdspunder. Youknow, if you can't basically make it
on your own, you need acrowdfunder to take advantage of. When it
comes to your comics, there's justfeels like there's something you're just haven't really
(26:48):
made it. You're still you know, bush leagues basically not saying there aren't
a lot of really great crowds fundingcomics out there, because trust me if
there are, but it's just crowdfundingright now is great if you only have,
like I said, five, ten, maybe fifteen, twenty thousand copies
and you want to basically say thegood percentage of those for other purposes like
(27:11):
conventions, giveaways, libraries, soon and so forth. So crowdfunding works
for small comics, small indies.It does not work for your big comics.
It just scens really weird. Soon top of that, your indie
comics are more likely to take advantageof electronic platforms, not only by creating
(27:33):
their PDFs and not making the PDFsavailable for sale, but also taking more
advantage of print on demand sites.Again, that's something your big site,
your big comics just just doesn't workfor your big comics because there's a scale
issue that is once you start hittingbig comic book arounds, you know,
(27:55):
five ten thousand, five ten thousandissues, it comes more too expensive to
produce them from via print on demand. At that point you have to basically
have your own press set up forit. And like I said, they
take advantage of the webcomic business modelto a much greater degree, and it
(28:17):
basically works really really well for anindependent comic versus one of the big five.
Because of this, your independent comicsare actually doing fairly well. And
like I said, because the webmodel webcomic business model is set up along
these lines well to a certain degree, so are the web comics that basically
(28:38):
actually do some serious marketing. Ijust thought it was necessary to go through
why the independent I'm not counting yourindependent comics here, and I'm looking at
those five. I was looking atthe issue here is that those five do
a lot more business as well ashave a lot more resources than your average
independent comic. Therefore, it whichis sort of weird that they're not taking
(29:03):
advantage of those resources. And thend's are so go figure, right,
So let's go back to our problemsand how to solve them with the big
companies. First off, like youpointing out you've got to work on the
cross promotion between media because you've gota lot of different situations going on,
(29:26):
and yeah, to a surgery,we're going to bring back image just to
be fun. Basically, I'm lookingat not just the movies and the TV
shows. Obviously Marvel's got that aswell as DC and to a certain degree,
IDW and dark Horse, but cheapin mind that you should be able
(29:47):
to combine all of your stuff intosome sort of actual major cross promotion.
And I'm looking at the toys,the stickers, the folders, all the
tra little merchandising things. You know, you want to do t shirts cool,
you want to do pants, fine, but figure out a way to
(30:08):
wrap it back into your comics.The big problem you've got is that way
too many of the clothing you've gotbasically features focus back at the movies.
You need to focus that back atthe comics. Can you pull that trick
off, that is, get everythingyou've got going on focus into your comics.
(30:29):
All of a sudden you've got avery powerful marketing tool for your movies
and your TV and then obviously you'llbe able to reflect the movies back to
the comics. Creating a really niceyou know, synergy going on. The
problem is is that, like youkeep pointing out, your big houses don't
really do all that. If youput out a toy line, it's usually
(30:52):
focusing on, you know, aparticular cartoon or doing some really weird stuff.
They it's absolutely no just simply asbeing seen in the comics. We're
talking all the way back to saythe Secret Wars great comic, honest,
I mean basically, if you wantedto see you know, a Battle Royale
(31:12):
done comic book style or done sorry, superhero style, it was an awesome
concept, but it didn't do toowell when it came to actually selling toys.
And that's a major missed opportunity because, like I said, not only
can you sell the toys through thecomic, but you can then turn around
(31:33):
and sell comics through the toys.You know, you've got the big companies,
you've got to get better at lookingat marketing synergy. It's just it's
got to happen. I mean,this is something the independent comics do very
very well. They basically have theircomics, they have their web comics,
they have the social media and allof this ties into win the circle.
(31:59):
You know, and because of this, because they're able to, even with
the merchandise, sell off the comic, either through the website or through comic
specifically, that works really really butinterestingly enough, you don't see big guys
doing this all that often, andthat's something's got to happen. The same
(32:22):
course applies to social media again.This is something the indies are doing really
really well that the big guys reallyaren't. You know. You think if
you had a huge website that basicallyyou could sell your books off of that
you could basically give character bios aswell as basically reasonably detailed character data.
(32:44):
I want to know how much Holpcan actually lift for example, or you
know, and then only get backinto your social media, you know,
not just like really quick, cutelittle we've got this comment coming out,
you need to go check it out. I mean, have some fun with
(33:05):
it. You know, you've gotcouples, hey, you know, Tay,
you manage of Valentine's Day families,Thanksgiving, Christmas. One of the
cool things about the X Men comicwas that it would basically occasionally do football
games and these big, huge meals. For a time there you had the
West Coast Avengers and the East CoastAvengers facing off on baseball. Now,
(33:31):
if you could apply that to socialmedia, you know, create use social
media to create the different baseball teamsand then have a little bit of fun
in terms of going toe to tow, that would be awesome, you know,
something a little bit more than justusing it for marketing, because let's
get real, most of the adviceyou told as an independent is to not
(33:54):
just market the goods, You've alsogot to market yourself. And then the
big companies just aren't marketing their characters. They're marketing the comics. You know,
They're not doing stuff like Cable andBishop have a beef against each other
(34:15):
and then have the two of themget into a flame war on each other.
That would be awesome. It wouldalso be very confusing because of all
the time travel, but let's ignorethat. You know, he basically he
needs some more. Jubilee would bea natural influencer. It'd be fun to
see Jubilee. This is the oneof a few times I'd love to see
(34:35):
Jubilee. So it's just it's gotto start taking a little bit more advantage
of the social media and not justFacebook or Twitter or even TikTok, but
also like some YouTube stuff going on. You know, we wanted to do
some deep dives into the history ofthe characters or events. That would be
awesome. Just so you have bighow successful you've got stuff like common historian,
(35:00):
comic tropes, casually comics and waytoo many things that don't start with
to start received, but not necessarilycomics. But the gist here is that
you've got all these little well notlittle geez if you've got all these YouTube
channels that are basically focusing in oncomics and exploring some of the weird stuff.
(35:22):
If the awesome if the big companiescould do that as well, and
of course we also be great isthey could also help reviewers, and I
mean just sending out you know,advanced review copies to the appropriate situations.
You know, CVR with actual reviewsdoes pretty well. On top of that,
(35:44):
if you get the influence that's doingthe same thing again, blurring without
fear, casually comics, comic storian, you know, so on and so
forth, viewing actually review having somethingto review ahead of schedule rather than having
to wait for it to come outlike everybody else. Just because the buzz
you can get going for your particularcomics, which is exactly what an ARC
(36:08):
is to be used for. Butagain, this is something you don't really
see the big companies doing. Yeah, they're seeing out copies, but they're
usually just a couple of days aheadof the comics, or maybe a week
or two ahead. They're not beingshut out with enough time to really drum
up some serious buzz about what's goingon. I think this also helps to
(36:30):
do a little bit of quality assuranceas well, because at that point you'd
have the reviewers going over the comicsand having some well, nitpicking like reviewers
do, which is not necessarily abad thing if you're trying to basically make
the comics as good as you can. If you're trying to make bad comics,
hey, don't give your comments toreviewers. Do you want good comics?
(36:51):
Give them the reviewers and actually listen. But that's me the reviewers like
go figure right, So that isyou can basically get all these big comic
book companies to figure out stop crosspromoting. Within the comics themselves have a
lot more independent just comics, they'rejust independent of each other a lot more
(37:14):
often you know, one or twobig crossovers a year. Fine with maybe
two or three smaller ones again,no problem. But seriously, when your
company is doing crossover from January toDecember with no breaking between what the heck
right on the web side, yougot to get cross better, cross plenty
(37:37):
between media. If you can getyour movies, your cartoons, your toys,
your comics all on the same pageand basically working to promote each other,
you know, just imagine a synergythat would happen. And again,
if you can get the influencers inon this as well, hey, you
(37:58):
basically are going to be doing alot better. I think. Also start
taking advantage of electronic distribution. AndI'm not surely talking about converting you to
a PDF and selling it for likeone or two dollars. That would be
awesome in and of itself, butalso start thuring yourself up on Amazon a
little bit more. There's fifty sevendifferent platforms for selling books. It would
(38:22):
be sort of cool to see youguys be there along with everybody else,
you know. And I'm not talkingjust and we're not just talking with local
comic book shops here, we're alsotalking with big chains. Sorry, let
me clarify that one. Just aweek bit if you got into a comic
book section out of a big chainlike Barnton Doubles, You're not going to
(38:44):
see a whole lot of comics.You're going to see like one or two
shelves and maybe at best forty orfifty different titles, which is sort of
weird considering how well the stack inthe small area. You know, So
start working with the chains out aswell. I top of that, have
(39:07):
a little bit more film with webcomicsif you have an idea, it's really
really cool, Like Franklin, youwant to know some comics that are just
seeing way too much explosure. Ithink we've seen way too much Batman and
Deadpool for a lifetime, and wewon't even talk about Wolverine. Geez.
(39:27):
The guy's powers are regeneration in handsmell and the ability being twenty steven different
comics at the same time. You'vegot to stop that. But if addition,
you take all your ideas that youdon't share, aren't one hundred percent
sure about Like look at the Alligatorthat the ofteness he is with his own
web comics, because we've seen himwith his own comic. Just the Shark
(39:52):
again, really cute little character ismaking a great little plushy and it would
just make a really great little webcomic, you know, just the weird stuff,
and you don't have to keep toall ages because, let's get real,
web comics are all over the place, so take advantage of that.
(40:13):
So this has pretty much been myrant. I'd love to see comics takeoff.
I really want to see the Americanprint comics take off, because there's
some really cool stuff going on,you know, with the rebirth of the
Unlimited stuff, that's arguably one ofthe best versions of Peter Parker we've ever
seen Peter Parker with an actual family. How cool is that, you know,
(40:37):
black Panther growing up against mythic beingsinstead of the usual street level stuff.
You know, you guys even crackout. It's really cool concepts because
you've actually seen, for the firsttime one of the major comic book companies
actually explore the concept of what wouldhappen if you have all these really tell
(41:00):
your people actually trying to basically changethe world for the better. You know,
you've got some really cool concepts becausethey're doing so poorly everything else in
terms of getting the comments out thereto end in people's hands. Or on
their machines, or just simply wherethey can get available to them. They're
(41:21):
just not doing as well as theycan and that needs to stop, or
more accurately, they need to getbetter at it. So that's me.
I hope this has been enjoyable.If it has been, please check me
out. You can find me onAmazon. I've got my own influencer shop.
(41:43):
Uh huh. I'm a patroon dotcom, slash two Sparrows two and
see me on Facebook two Sparrows Productions. Thanks to having good day
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