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Showing posts with label essays. Show all posts
Showing posts with label essays. Show all posts

2019 CBC Trailblazer Award



2019 CBC Trailblazer Award for Von Allan aka Eric Julien
It’s always a bit weird to be writing this, but here goes. I’m one of the winners of a 2019 CBC Trailblazer Award. With a trophy and everything! I have to admit to having mixed feelings about awards*, but it’s still pretty neat to have won one. And since this is the second award I’ve won for my art-related activities, it is another “arrow in the quiver,” especially given how hard it’s been to get to this point.


Hard?


Hell, yeah.


Art, as a career, is not the easiest thing in the world to make a “go” of, especially given the austerity-fueled times we live in. And it has taken me a long time, longer than I would have liked, to reach the point that my art is, for lack of a better word, “professional.” ‘Course, one of the interesting things about art is what one means by “professional” can take on all kinds of different meanings. It really depends on who you are and what you like.


In my specific case, I knew I was pretty rough, but we really do learn by doing.


“Doing” also meant falling on my face. A lot. I’ve covered that in a piece I wrote called “On Getting Stronger” so I won’t cover that again here.


I think one of the interesting things about the Trailblazer Award is it really is recognition for the work I continue to do around my first graphic novel, the road to god knows... Who knew, when I first self-published it almost ten years ago, it would still be finding a life now? That’s in large part thanks to the documentary film I Am Still Your Child, written and directed by Megan Durnford, produced by Katarina Soukup and the fine folks at Catbird Productions, and supported by all the creative folks behind it (including “behind the scenes” people like Alex Margineanu, Howard Goldberg, Kathy Sperberg, Stéphanie Couillard, and Sara Morley, as well as folks like Jessy Bokser, Sarah Leavens, and Marie Leavens who I shared screen time with). The film gave a “second life,” so to speak, to the graphic novel and has led to speaking engagements, panel discussions, Skype conversations, and on and on.


Judith Lee Julien and me
And, more concretely, it’s given me an opportunity to talk about my mom. Not just her battle with schizophrenia, but also the poverty we battled combined with the lack of social programs to help her. To talk about the immense courage she showed (courage I’ve really only became truly aware of as an adult) while she fought a lonely and often terrifying battle to navigate a truly unforgiving health care and social aid system. And what it was like to grow up with her, for both good and ill.


It’s funny; my mom died pretty young, at 48. And I’m slowly but surely approaching that age myself. In fact, I’ve now lived longer without her in my life than I did with her (she died when I was 20, and I’m now well-past 40 myself). But the memory of her stays with me still. That’s partially because I loved her, of course, but also because I still find, to this day, how unfair her situation was. And the fact that it never had to be that way. Despite all of the “by your own bootstraps” nonsense we live in (you know, that idea that any failure, let alone any health issue, is a sign of personal rather than societal failure), what happened to my mom was grossly unfair. What is heartbreaking to me is that the unfairness she experienced is experienced by so many other people right to this very day.


Yeah, yeah, awareness about mental health and mental illness is better. There’s more open and frank discussion around it. Sure. But poverty has not gone away. The lack of social support really hasn’t changed. Welfare rates for anyone (let alone single moms) have, if anything, gotten much worse. We can talk about “resilience” and “perseverance” as much as we’d like. We can even point to individuals who’ve managed to do just that, but what about those who can’t? There’s still a chronic lack of systemic support. There’s still a culture that desperately needs healing (don’t believe me? Look at the suicides that are still occurring in the wake of the Parkland shooting).


I’m pleased to do what I can to help. And I’m proud, damn proud, to talk about my mom. To help put a face on what otherwise might be simple dry statistics. To use my art, as best I can, to show what some of this is like. But it’s hard not to escape the idea that in a very real way, the 2019 Trailblazer Award should not have gone to me.


It really should have gone to my mom.


She died in 1994, alone and isolated. I had moved out some months before because I had to, for my own sanity and self-esteem.


What I try to stress to people, though, is that she had hopes and dreams. Things she still wanted to accomplish. Who knows what she might have done if she had managed to beat a truly vile disease and get healthier? She’d be 73 right now, probably feisty as all get out, and probably telling her own story to people, trailblazing change.


I don’t doubt that for a second. But it was not to be.

Judith Lee Julien, age 14
I placed, a long time ago, the grief along with the disappointment of what could have been. It is what it is and it happened a long time ago. But other people, right now, are going through similar things. And even if mental illness is not a part of it, there is still crushing poverty, a cold and often hostile health and social services system, kids going hungry, massive personal debts, and horrible unhappiness. All the celebratory economic statistics in the world doesn’t change that. There is a lack of solidarity with each other, not just with our fellow citizens but a lack of solidarity and fellowship with people around the globe (don’t believe me? Look at all the hate against immigrants and refugees we’re seeing now).


We have to overcome this.


And what about me? Well, I continue to grow and get stronger, especially with my art (both visual art and my writing, too). And with my art I try to not just focus on the past (though always to honour it), but to move forward with new stories and new adventures. One of the things about falling in love with art, with comics, and with visual storytelling, is that the growing and learning never stops.


Using comics to tell stories has been, I think, the most rewarding thing I’ve done as an adult. And I can still remember where I was when the journey started to where I am now. Harder than hell, yeah, but rewarding all the same.


I can’t wait to see what happens next.


* The late Harlan Ellison, back on the “Awards” episode of the TVOntario program PRISONERS OF GRAVITY said it best: “I think awards are bullshit. I think awards are detrimental to the writers…You win a Hugo, you win a Nebula, you win a Horror Writer’s Award, you win an Edgar, I’ve won all of them in multiples for god’s sake. What you’re getting are popularity awards. If you were a good boy that year. If you were published in the right place. If the right people read it. If stories that were five times better than yours were published in places no one saw them. Then you get an award. They’re meaningless.


They had value, years ago, as being, you know, you could put them on a cover of a paperback. “Hugo Award Winner.” Well, every book you pick up now is a Hugo Award Winner or Hugo Award Nominee. Or someone thought this should have won a Hugo. They don’t mean squat.


The minute you start thinking that you’ve won an award because you’re a terrific writer, you’re dead.”


Always good to keep in mind, right?


Postscript


Here's the CBC Video Interview with me about the Trailblazer Award:


Mental illness, gender, poverty, and the Salvation Army


The following statement was sent to the City of Ottawa's Councillors in regards to the proposed Salvation Army's new shelter to be built here in the Vanier community.

To whom it may concern,

My mother was diagnosed with schizophrenia when I was a pre-teen. She was a single mom and we often found ourselves in pretty tough situations. We were also on welfare, facing both financial difficulties as well as my mom’s struggle with mental illness.

I was born in Arnprior but my mom and I relocated to Ottawa when I was 8 years old. I’ve grown up in this city and I’ve been a resident of the downtown core most of my life. I should add that my wife and I bought a home in Vanier in 2010. So I’m not just a resident of Ottawa and I’m not just a taxpayer; I’m also a home owner not that far away from where the Salvation Army proposes to build their new shelter on Montreal Road.

Relevant to this email is the fact that I’m also in a documentary film that focuses on the children of mentally ill parents. Titled “I Am Still Your Child,” the film just started streaming on CBC and will air nationally across CBC Television in January. If you’d like, you can watch the film at the following link: http://watch.cbc.ca/absolutely-canadian/-/i-am-still-your-child/38e815a-00cec9fd824. In conjunction with the film, a number of video shorts were recently released. One of them deals with the financial impact of mental illness. It’s on the film’s Youtube page at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwaYwp3MbqQ.

When I reflect on my childhood, the reality of my mom’s health and financial situation, and the proposed Salvation Army shelter, I’m struck by the fact that my mom, being a woman, would have found no help there. And she, being a mom, would not have been able to get help for her family, either. Yes, I’m well aware that there are other shelters in the city that can and do help. At the end of the day, however, a new shelter will be constructed that will discriminate based on gender. That is unconscionable in 2017. And it is a sad, sad statement that if I was a child today, living in the same circumstances that I grew up in, my mom would not be able to turn to a brand new state of the art facility for help when she would have needed it most.

I should add that my mom did not win her struggles with either schizophrenia or poverty. She died in 1994, at the age of 48.

I would strongly urge you to pause and reflect on what a new shelter could and should be. A shelter featuring gender equality and one free of religious dogma. If it was both of those things, even if the location and the size were the same, I would support it. Because my mom might have needed it. And we know that other girls and women of all-ages and sexual orientations will need it. Desperately.

The proposed shelter by the Salvation Army is not the solution. It’s no solution at all. I urge you to vote against it.

Addendum


What I didn't add, though I was tempted, was the lyrics to Joe Hill's 1911 song The Preacher and the Slave:

Long-haired preachers come out every night

Try to tell you what's wrong and what's right

But when asked how 'bout something to eat

They will answer in voices so sweet


You will eat, bye and bye

In that glorious land above the sky

Work and pray, live on hay

You'll get pie in the sky when you die


And the Starvation Army, they play

And they sing and they clap and they pray

Till they get all your coin on the drum

Then they tell you when you're on the bum


You will eat, bye and bye

In that glorious land above the sky

Work and pray, live on hay

You'll get pie in the sky when you die


Holy Rollers and Jumpers come out

And they holler, they jump and they shout

Give your money to Jesus, they say

He will cure all diseases today


You will eat, bye and bye

In that glorious land above the sky

Work and pray, live on hay

You'll get pie in the sky when you die


If you fight hard for children and wife

Try to get something good in this life

You're a sinner and bad man, they tell

When you die you will sure go to hell.


You will eat, bye and bye

In that glorious land above the sky

Work and pray, live on hay

You'll get pie in the sky when you die


Workingmen of all countries, unite

Side by side we for freedom will fight

When the world and its wealth we have gained

To the grafters we'll sing this refrain


You will eat, bye and bye

When you've learned how to cook and how to fry

Chop some wood, 'twill do you good

Then you'll eat in the sweet bye and bye

Update


And Ottawa city council passed the Salvation Army proposal over the protests of just about everyone.

On Getting Stronger


Redrawn Page 89 from the road to god knows... by Von Allan
I wrote and drew a graphic novel titled the road to god knows..., which was published in 2009 after about four years of development. The story dealt with a young teenager's struggle to cope with her mom's schizophrenia. It's pretty autobiographical; to tell the story, I drew on a lot of my own experiences with my own mom's schizophrenia. It's fictional for all kinds of reasons, but the main one was that I wanted some distance from the story.

That said, the graphic novel was self-published and, art-wise, it's rough. I think there was a lot of heart to it, but my visual art was pretty weak. Figure-drawing problems, perspective problems, composition problems, value problems...you name a problem and road had it. In spades. I came to art very late and learning to draw is not the easiest thing in the world to do. Comics require a great deal of knowledge to do well. Those problems I mentioned? Well, you need everything to work together extremely well to create a comic. If that harmony isn't there...well, you get a pretty rough comic. And that certainly was an issue with road. But we learn by doing and I'm still proud, to this day, that I managed to do it. Rough spots and all.

So I published it and it did as well as could be expected, especially given my art skills at the time. And though it still sold a bit every year, I stopped thinking about it. I moved on with my life, continued to make art and comics, continued to get stronger, but putting that rough first graphic novel behind me.

Flash forward to April 2015 and I received an email out of the blue from a writer/director named Megan Durnford. She's working on a documentary film about the impact of parental mental illness and wanted to talk with me about road. To make a long story short, the film (titled I Am Still Your Child) was made (amazing!) and I was a part of it (shocking!). And it was made with empathy and sensitivity and deals with an issue that really isn't discussed much in public at all. I was (and am) very pleased to be included in the film.

The making of the documentary led to an interesting situation. Megan wanted to use artwork from the road to god knows... in the documentary. And...that was not good. I hadn't looked at the art in a number of years and, when I revisited it, I was dismayed (maybe horrified would be a better word). The art was rough. Really, really rough. And it put me in a bind; I didn't want to have road represent where I am now. That may sound weird; I think it did with the folks involved in the film, but because the graphic novel was such a personal project for me and because my art had certainly improved quite a bit from back then, the idea of seeing that art in a documentary left me cold.

So we worked out an interesting solution. I would revisit road and redraw selected pages and panels from the graphic novel that Megan wanted to include in the film. As it turns out, that was one helluva big job.

Some of the work was emotional; I was revisiting themes that in some ways I didn't want to revisit. For example, I was revisiting the death of my mom; the graphic novel is pretty autobiographical and while my mom died long before it was ever published, her presence is a big part of of the story for me.

Some of the work was practical; in order to keep the pages similar, I had to stay pretty close to how I did things almost a decade ago, even though I would not necessarily write or draw the same way now. That wasn't easy; how I approach composition is different now. My thoughts on how a comic book page is put together is different now. How I write is different now. And on and on. Plus there was that pesky fact that the original art was pretty rough. I could use it as a guideline, really a very loose thumbnail, but that's it. I would have to draw most of it from scratch, as if it was a brand new story.

The actual redrawn art presented another problem. By redrawing the art, I could accidentally give the impression that the new art is what the graphic novel actually looks like. I felt a little sick when that dawned on me, so the solution was to avoid it completely by making the graphic novel out of print. I realize that there still a few copies “out there,” but it's fortunately not so easy to find and hopefully anyone who sees the documentary (along with the caveat about the art in the film credits) will understand. It's one of those weird situations that is almost counter-intuitive; in a way, the documentary will bring more attention to the road to god knows... then it ever had before. But to redraw the entire graphic novel (to “fix it” if you will) would be a monumental undertaking. Even with the redraws I did for the documentary, I only wound up touching something like 10% of the book. To redraw the rest would require...well, certainly a very keen and excited publisher. For me to do that other 90%? Nope. Tempting, but nope. I would rather move forward then go backward.

Given all that, the redraws represent an interesting and fairly poignant “what if.” What if I hadn't published the graphic novel when I did? What if the entire graphic novel looked the way the redraws do? Would it have found a broader audience? Would it have found a publisher? What if?

Ultimately, who knows? We learning by doing. I did the best work I could on the road to god knows... back in 2005-2009. That the work wasn't the best is unfortunate, but that's life. If I hadn't done it, would I have given up on art by now? Who knows? Do I regret doing it? No, but I'd be lying if I didn't say that I wish the art in the original version was stronger. It was hard to revisit on that point alone.

You may note, by the by, that I don't say that I've gotten better. Better, in art and in life, is a judgment call that's difficult to make. Who's to say? What is better? But I know that I have gotten stronger. And that's enough.

It is pretty amazing to find that road still touches people, enough to be included in a documentary almost eight years after it was published. Enough that the book is still talked about today. I occasionally get emails, like the one I received from Megan back in the spring of 2015. And, despite my misgivings, I'm happy the book keeps touching people, even in its rough form.

And road, despite its flaws, taught me one thing. I love to draw. I wish I had found that out earlier, but I know it now. And that's not nothing.

The Redraws

What follows are a series of images from the original published version of the road to god knows... and the re-draw versions. These are presented side by side, without further comment from me.

Comparison between page 32 from the 2009 published version of the road to god knows... and the 2017 redrawn version by Von Allan

Comparison between page 41 from the 2009 published version of the road to god knows... and the 2017 redrawn version by Von Allan

Comparison between page 50 from the 2009 published version of the road to god knows... and the 2017 redrawn version by Von Allan

Comparison between page 53 from the 2009 published version of the road to god knows... and the 2017 redrawn version by Von Allan

Comparison between page 55 from the 2009 published version of the road to god knows... and the 2017 redrawn version by Von Allan

Comparison between page 65 from the 2009 published version of the road to god knows... and the 2017 redrawn version by Von Allan

Comparison between page 84 from the 2009 published version of the road to god knows... and the 2017 redrawn version by Von Allan

Comparison between page 85 from the 2009 published version of the road to god knows... and the 2017 redrawn version by Von Allan

Comparison between page 89 from the 2009 published version of the road to god knows... and the 2017 redrawn version by Von Allan

Comparison between page 101 from the 2009 published version of the road to god knows... and the 2017 redrawn version by Von Allan

Comparison between page 111 from the 2009 published version of the road to god knows... and the 2017 redrawn version by Von Allan

Comparison between page 113 from the 2009 published version of the road to god knows... and the 2017 redrawn version by Von Allan

Comparison between page 117 from the 2009 published version of the road to god knows... and the 2017 redrawn version by Von Allan

Comparison between page 18 from the 2009 published version of the road to god knows... and the 2017 redrawn version by Von Allan

Minimum Wage and the Prices of Comics


“The truth is people are leaving anyway, they’re just doing it quietly, and we have been papering it over with increased prices...We didn’t want to wake up one day and find we had a bunch of $20 books that 10,000 people are buying.”

Dan Didio, co-publisher of DC Comics, Los Angeles Times, August 22nd, 2011.

By Von Allan

A number of comments have been written about DC's upcoming relaunch of their superhero universe. There have been articles on gender inequality (notably DC Women Kicking Ass and Laura Hudson's editorial on Comics Alliance) , Brian Hibbs has touched on the sales challenge Direct Market retailers face, and Corinna Lawson has spoken passionately about the marketing (or the lack thereof) over on Wired's Geekdad blog. I wanted to take a broader look and examine the role of pricing in the current comic book climate and why I think that pricing, more than anything else, will restrict DC's ability to grow their audience during the relaunch. In examining this, I'll be looking at the entire Direct Market and not simply DC's current plan and hopefully come to some conclusions that may surprise you. They certainly surprised the hell out of me.

Prices of comics in context

My thesis here is pretty simple. Many people have written and spoken about the high price of comics over the years. This can range from the "I remember when..." type comments to more contemporary concerns about the health of the entire Direct Market. The problem with a lot of these statments is that there's no context to the arguments. Are comics more expensive than they used to be? Sure, but then so is bread, rent, cars, movies and many other things. The issue isn't whether things have become more expensive (everything has), but to try and see the price increases in the context of something else. Whatever that is, it has to be consistent for it to be relevant. When we look at the history of comic book pricing, it turns out there is something we can compare it to. And that's the history of the Federal Minimum Wage in the United States.

Actually, it's an ideal metric. The Federal Minimum Wage was signed into law in early 1938 as part of the Fair Labor Standards Act. At almost the same time, Action Comics #1 hit newsstands featuring, of course, the first appearance of Superman. In other words, comic books and the US Federal Minimum Wage have existed at the same time since the birth of the Golden Age. Due to this, it's a perfect way to examine comic book pricing. Context is everything and this gives an excellent context to what has happened with both prices and minimum wage over the past 70 years.

Minimum Wage and the Pricing of Comics

Let's get right into it. In 2010, the US Federal Minimum Wage was $7.25 per hour. Figuring a 36 hour work week (factoring in unpaid lunches), it meant that someone working a minimum wage job was earning $261.00 per week before paying any taxes. In 2010, the average cover price for a typical 32 page superhero comic was $2.99 (1). In other words, to purchase ONE comic would cost 1.15% of someone's weekly income. That doesn't sound like a lot, but it represents one of the highest price points in the history of comics. I'll show this more concretely as we go forward, but for now I wanted to compare that to another key benchmark in the history of comics: the publishing of Fantastic Four #1 in 1961. This is especially timely since the Fantastic Four just celebrated their 50th anniversary. FF #1 was cover priced at 10 cents US. The US Federal Minimum Wage in 1961 was $1.15 per hour and, figuring the same 36 hour work week, a person would have earned $41.40 per week. To purchase the first issue of Fanastic Four, a person working minimum wage would have spent only 0.24% of their pay cheque. That is a stunning difference in price. To put this even more plainly: it represents a 379.2% increase in the price in relation to minimum wage from 1961 to 2010.

Note carefully that I'm not talking about inflation. Rather, I'm talking about the nominal price not adjusted for inflation. This is critically important to understand. Real wages and real prices (i.e.: wages and prices adjusted for inflation) is a separate argument to the one I'm making here. If I do a sequel to this piece, I will explore it because it's very clear that things are worse when you factor these in.

One more example before we get to the meat of things. Action Comics #1 was published in 1938 and also had a cover price of 10 cents. The US Federal Minimum Wage for 1938 was 25 cents per hour (PDF) or $9.00 for a 36 hour work week. That means purchasing Action Comics #1 would have cost someone 1.11% of their weekly income. That's quite a lot and you'd be right to say so. BUT...Action Comics #1 (and most comics published during this period) had a much higher page count then current comics. Action Comics #1 was 64 pages long, double the current standard of 32 pages. In other words, to compare it to today means we would need to make an adjustment to reflect the higher page count. When we do that, we see that Action Comics #1 would have cost approximately 5 cents if had been 32 pages long. That would have put it at 0.59% of someone's weekly pay cheque, still quite a bit higher than when Fantastic Four #1 debuted some 25 years later but not nearly as high as where things are now. Did the sales reflect that? They sure did. As John Jackson Miller pointed out on his Comichron blog, the print run for Action Comics #1 was only about 200,000 copies. Another key point: 0.59% of weekly US Federal Minimum Wage was the highest comics would cost until 1986. 48 years. Amazing.

1938 to 2010

The two charts below illustrate this visually. The first chart shows the unadjusted page counts. It wasn't until approximately 1955 (2) that comic books had shrunk to the page counts we now know so well. Both charts are identical from 1955 through 2010, but from 1938 to 1954 I adjusted the second one to reflect a typical 32 page count comic.

Minimum Wage and the Prices of Comics Chart One


Minimum Wage and the Prices of Comics Chart Two


1938 through to 1969 saw a remarkable change occur in pricing in relation to the weekly US Federal Minimum Wage and you can see this in the chart below. Throughout this period there was a continued downward pressure on prices. Comics became cheaper in relation to the minimum weekly wage. A teenager getting his or her first job at, say, a fast food restaurant in the 1960s could easily afford a few comics per week. In fact, in 1968 and 1969 comics were only 0.21% of the weekly US Federal Minimum Wage. Is it any wonder that a comic book was considered disposable?

Minimum Wage and the Prices of Comics Chart Three


From the 1970s to today

The Direct Market rose to prominence in the late 1970s and the entire decade was marked by price fluctuations and stagflation that differentiated it from previous recessions. Comics were not immune to this and they would never return to the low price ratio that we saw in 1968 and 1969. Comics were cover priced at approximately 12 cents in 1968 but by 1974 were up to 25 cents. While that is a significant increase in cover price (108.3%), minimum wage was also increasing and that helped keep the ratio of cover prices to weekly minimum wage relatively low. By 1979 a single comic book still cost only 0.38% of the average weekly US Federal Minimum Wage. In context of where prices are today, it's pretty remarkable. That said, it's important to remember what was happening during this period. Tom Spurgeon and John Jackson Miller had a good discussion about it a few years ago and Miller correctly points out that the 1970s were a period of constant change. He noted, "Retail was changing in the 1970s -- comics, which had been a loss leader for convenience stores, drugstores and the like, needed to become more profitable as the mom-and-pop store gave way to the big chains (7-Eleven, Walgreens, later Wal-Mart, etc.). The print-three to sell-one model pinched comics all the more in a period of high inflation and paper and transport price increases -- and so the structure of comics sales at the time made us more exposed to external forces."

Comics continued to increase in price throughout the 1980s, crossing their most expensive point regardless of page count in 1986. The Direct Market was firmly established and some amazing comics were made during this period. Spiegelman's Maus. Love and Rockets by Los Bros Hernandez. Moore and Gibbons' Watchmen. Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns. Simonson's Thor. Sim's Cerebus was in its prime. This was also a time where the speculator bubble really started in earnest. Prices rose to reflect the craze, reaching cover prices of 75 cents in 1986, $1.00 by 1990 and $1.50 by 1994. Much has been written about how the bursting of the speculator bubble destroyed much of the comic book industry and I won't recap that here. The numbers are staggering, however, and The Amazing Spider-Man is a typical example. John Jackson Miller's website has detailed postal records on it going back to 1966. This is considered to be "Average Total Paid Circulation." 1991 saw total paid circulation of 544,900 and 1992 rose to 592,442. As the bubble burst, sales decline dramatically. 353,025 in 1994, 234,290 in 1995, 216,779 in 1996 and 159,950 in 1997. The numbers have never recovered. The most recent data is from 2008 and total paid circulation was 105,948.

What's interesting to me, though, isn't so much the collapse of the speculator market but what happened to prices during the aftermath. I started this essay with a quote from Dan Didio that I think is highly relevant here. Didio said, "The truth is people are leaving anyway, they’re just doing it quietly, and we have been papering it over with increased prices." At no point from the sales collapse in 1994 to the present have prices ever been reduced. Ever. The cover price has continued to increase in an attempt, as Didio mentioned, to deal with the decline in sales. The math is pretty simple. If a comic priced at $1.00 was selling 350,000 copies, then that's $350,000 in gross revenue. If, 10 years later, you're seeing sales of only 125,000 copies, then you're in trouble. The supposed solution is to raise the price to try to regain the lost revenue. But that creates a self-fulfilling prophecy: the higher prices drive people away, especially since the US Federal Minimum Wage has not risen by the same percentages. The chart below shows this clearly.

Minimum Wage and the Prices of Comics Chart Three


Movies and Comics

I can hear you, though. Everything has become expensive, right? Movie tickets are a typical example. I wanted to drill into that a bit and compare film ticket prices and comic book prices in relation to minimum wage. Movie ticket prices are a little harder to come by, mainly because there are regional differences that can really affect pricing. Fortunately, Box Office Mojo keeps a history of average movie ticket prices that goes back to 1980. The National Association of Theatre Owners has data going back a bit further. We can examine and make direct comparisons from the time period covering 1974 to the present. The results are eye-opening. Film prices have always been between 2.63% and 3.53% of the US Federal Minimum Wage throughout this period. While the price ratio has gone up, the trend line is not as sharp. The chart below shows it visually:

Minimum Wage and Movie Ticket Prices


Let's me put this in even more context. It's May 1977 and Star Wars has just arrived in theatres. You work full-time at a minimum wage job. You'd have been earning $2.30 per hour or $82.80 for a 36 hour work week. You're willing to spend about 6% of your pay on comics and movies. A ticket to see Star Wars was, on average, $2.23 or 2.69% of your pay. That's quite a bit but you still had 3.31% left over. Comics were, on average, 30 cents. You could have bought nine of them and it would have only cost you $2.70. Or 3.26% of your pay cheque. You can see Star Wars and still buy all those comics and you're just under budget.

Fast forward to May 2010. Same situation. This time you want to go see Iron Man 2. That would cost you $7.89, but you're now earning $7.25 per hour or $261.00 per week. Iron Man 2 will set you back 3.02% of your weekly pay. Not bad, not bad, especially in comparison to 1977. You also want to buy some comics. A comic now costs $2.99 or 1.15% of your pay. Two comics will cost you 2.29% of your pay. You might be able to squeeze a third one in, but you're going to go over budget to do it. Ouch.

This may go a long way in explaining something else. Namely, why haven't fans of superhero movies crossed over into becoming new comic book readers? Price may be an issue. In 1978, the first Superman movie arrived in theatres. Average film price was $2.34 and the weekly US Federal Minimum Wage was $95.40. A ticket cost you 2.45% of your weekly pay. A comic was 35 cents or 0.37% of your pay cheque. When the Tim Burton Batman film came out in 1989, movie tickets were priced pretty high ($3.99 or 3.31% of a weekly US Federal Minimum Wage of $120.60). A comic was still around 0.76% of your weekly pay. By the time Sam Raimi's first Spider-Man film arrived in theatres, things had changed. Ticket prices were $5.80 and the weekly US Federal Minimum Wage was at $185.40. Or 3.13%. Comics? They were now $2.25 or 1.21%. It was becoming harder and harder for people earning minimum wage to make the transition from movies to comics. Even if they wanted to, they can't afford to.

People wonder why comics aren't selling the way they used to? Come on. I'm not arguing that convulted storylines, "waiting for the trade" mentalities, crossovers, and the like haven't hurt comics. I'm also not saying that movies, video games, and the like haven't hurt comics, either. I think all of these things and probably more have taken their toll. But...the simplest explanation regarding what has happened to the popularity of comics is what's happened to their prices in relationship with minimum wage. They were cheap and now they're not. That's done an incredible amount of damage. It's not just that the same readership base is simply purchasing less comics, though that may be part of it. As the population in the United States has grown over the past 25 years, the readership has declined. New readers aren't being created, at least not for periodical comics.(3) Why? The answer is price in relationship to an ordinary person's pay. Price in relation to the weekly US Federal Minimum Wage.

DC's 52 Relaunch

So, here we are, at the crux of the issue. As Didio noted, DC recognizes that sales have fallen. The reboot/relaunch is an attempt to correct that. I'm pretty confident that they'll see a sales spike for at least a few months. In fact, there are already reports that the new Justice League #1 has had pre-orders of over 200,000 copies. The big question, though, is where will things be, say, 24 months after the relaunch? How about 48? I think we can now make an educated guess. 48 of the 52 titles are priced at $2.99. The other four are all $3.99. If you're working a minimum wage job and want to buy 'em all in a given month, this is what you're facing:

The 48 cheaper titles will cost you $143.52 while the other four will add $15.96 for a grand total of $159.48 before any taxes. If you're earning $261.00 per week that means you're earning $1,044.00 per month. To buy all 52 titles will cost you 15.28% of your pay. Back in 1977, to buy 52 comics during the course of a month would have cost you $15.60 (at 30 cents each). You would have been earning $82.80 per week or $331.20 per month, but all 52 comics would have cost you only 4.71% of your income. That's it. Game over. Lower wage earners will find it impossible to purchase all of these comics. They'll find it impossible to purchase half of them. It's not financially doable.

What would have worked? Here's a thought: a price drop combined with the relaunch, backed by an aggressive attempt to put comics into more venues and an advertising campaign that would have spread the good news. What would the news have been? Fresh and affordable comics that anyone can read. What did we get? A DC gamble that the new "issue number ones" combined with a simplified universe will be the draw. Perhaps they're right, but based on what I've outlined here I think the odds are really stacked against them. What should the price have been? I don't know. I think there's room for experimentation, though, and I'm disappointed that DC didn't seize the opportunity to try. Take Wednesday Comics as an example. Instead of launching a 14" x 20" broadsheet at $3.99 US that was in an entirely different format that a typical comic, why didn't they try launching a couple of monthly titles on the same newsprint but priced much lower? Say $1.50? A "done in one" type story so that everything stands alone? Something like All-Star Superman might have exploded in popularity at a price point like this. It was not to be and I, for one, find the lack of any experimentation with the 52 relaunch deeply disappointing.

Digital

Pricing is also why I don't think digital is a threat to brick and mortar retailers. At least if the prices remain comparable to print comics. The Wall Street Journal published an article back in the spring that detailed who exactly is purchasing Apple's iPad. At the time, 7.8 million people owned iPads but only 6.4% of them earned purchased an iPad while earning less than $25,000 per year. Only 11.9% purchased an iPad while earning between $25,000 and $49,999 per year. Meanwhile, 49.4% of iPad owners earned more than $100,000 per year. Simply put, those earning minimum wage (and please remember that if you're earning $261.00 per week your annual salary is $13,572.00) will not be purchasing digital comics for the iPad. They can't afford to. As Chris at the ComicShop.net recently wrote, "If you really think comic shops are slowly dying off because of the demand for digital, your privilege is showing. Comic shops are dealing with a tough economy because comic books are a luxury—the first thing that gets cut when people are trying to save money. Food or comics? There’s no app for that." He is exactly right.

The Future?

This is a tough one. Prices have never fallen. In fact, both companies are now flirting with $3.99 price points and, based on the history I outlined here, there's no doubt in my mind that will become the new benchmark in the nearish future. That would be 1.53% of a $261.00 weekly pay cheque. For one comic. Man. It's certainly no way to grow a readership. Is there a way forward? Well, it's tough. If the answer is to keep battling declining revenue by raising prices, then the answer is no. Well, unless they can figure out a way to raise the Federal Minimum Wage at the same time! Seriously, though, comics are a tricky beast. Perhaps Marvel and DC feel that the answer is to turn it to a hobby that only affluent people can afford and keep upscaling things in accordance with that. Maybe. In the meantime, people will still continue to see superhero films and publishers, retailers, and media will wonder why the millions of tickets being purchased somehow doesn't translate into more comics being sold. Well, we know why and that's something. Not much, but something. And then DC and Marvel will reboot/relaunch once again, as they've done so often in their histories.

Shameless Self-Promotion

I have a new graphic novel coming out in October 2011 called Stargazer Volume Two. There's a preview up on my main Stargazer website. Go check it out, ok? Stargazer Volume Two has Diamond Item Code of AUG111259 and an ISBN of 978-09-781237-4-1. You can find reviews, ordering information, and the like at http://stargazer.vonallan.com

Footnotes

1. Average Cover Prices of Comics: Figuring out average cover prices is a bit of a chore. What I did was use "typical" comics in a given month and average the price from there. I mostly focused on Marvel mainly because DC went through a phase, especially in the 1970s and 1980s, where they experimented quite a bit with page counts. I'll try to get this up on Google Docs so that you can better see what I was doing.

2. Page Counts: I used Action Comics to show the historical changes in page counts. A good overview can be found on Comics.org. Note that they include the front cover, the back cover, the inside front cover and the inside back cover to the total page count. This is why they note that Action Comics #1 was, for instance, 68 pages long rather than 64 pages.

3. Readership: I stress periodical comics here, because the one key thing that has grown the industry is the graphic novel. Getting firm numbers is tricky, but the growth of "book form" comics has developed new markets in both bookstores and libraries. That has helped a lot.

Robert Kirkman, Image Comics, and Invincible


What you’re about to read is an analysis I did of Robert Kirkman’s Invincible in 2005, covering the first 24 issues of the comic. The decision to try and figure out what was happening with it’s sales was actually sparked by a discussion on the Comic Book Industry Alliance. At that time, the sales patterns (as you’ll see in a moment) had dropped to fairly low levels (ICV2.com reported that issue 10 only sold approximately 5500 copies) but had started to rise shortly thereafter. This paper tried to analyze why the sales started to rise and what events may have contributed to that rise.

So why put this out now? Well, Robert Kirkman was named as a partner in Image Comics in late July, 2008. Shortly thereafter, Kirkman published a video encouraging top creators to do more creator-owned work. That sparked a lot of discussion and eventually led to Kirkman and fellow writer Brian Michael Bendis having a debate at the 2008 Baltimore Comic-Con. The two went back and forth in a point/counter-point fashion and I’m not sure anyone was really the clear winner. Then, as the debate fallout wound down, Kirkman announced that his books would have guaranteed ship dates beginning in 2009. Lastly, Todd Allen recently contributed a piece exploring various models, including the Image Comics model, that both Kirkman and Bendis addressed.

In the light of all this, I thought it would be interesting to revisit this piece and put it “out there” on the ‘net. The conclusions, of course, are mine and mine alone. You may disagree with them. I also want to add that none of this will really dispel any of the thoughts of writing and illustrating corporate-owned work versus creator-owned. Personally, I think doing work that one believes in and is passionate about is fundamentally what’s important (well, that and understanding exactly what you’re getting into with work for hire agreements).

With that out of the way, here we go!


By Von Allan

The Direct Market has long been known as a difficult market to crack for new and unknown creators. It’s very difficult for anyone to “break through” and gain prominence – harder still to actually make a living at it. Robert Kirkman, however, is one creator who seems to have accomplished this. Kirkman, the writer on both Invincible and The Walking Dead, has managed to gain a strong following and increased sales despite the difficulties that doing creator-owned work entails. Since Invincible launched before The Walking Dead, this paper will primarily examine the former (though the role of the latter will be explored to some extent). The irony with Invincible, of course, is that it wasn’t a success initially. As I hope to show, the sales on the first 13 issues indicate that the book was actually in trouble. How and why it rebounded from this downward trend is our focus – why were Invincible’s sales weak? And more importantly, what event (or events) occurred to lead to its rebound?

What’s important to remember, right off the bat, is that in examining these issues we can only evaluate sell-in; we do not have any firm numbers on sell-through. The latter evaluates final sales by retailers to actual customers (i.e.: “bums in seats”) while the former “only” indicates sales to retailers by Diamond Distribution. The unfortunate fact of the Direct Market is that there’s still no firm way of evaluating sell-through in a broader, macro-sense.

The second problem, of course, is the actual accuracy of these numbers. All are taken from ICV2.com’s website, but there are a variety of problems with these figures and they often are not as accurate as we’d like them to be. While many others (notably Brian Hibbs’ Tilting at Windmills column) have explored the limits of these numbers, it’s always important to remember that we are examining guesstimates only. Only the publishers (along with Diamond Distribution) know what the actual final numbers are.

That said, the Direct Market numbers as reported by ICV2.com are important for two reasons. The first is that if the numbers are incorrect, they are incorrect right across the board. In other words, any errors that occur in their tabulation are applied equally to all the titles that are included in any one month’s calculation. Secondly, these numbers reveal quite a bit about retailer confidence in a particular title. We may not know final sell-through, but we can evaluate how retailers are fairing with a particular title by how they order subsequent issues. If the title is doing poorly (in a broad sense), they will slash orders to avoid being left with unsold stock; we’ll see that reduction play out in the sales figures. If it’s doing well (retailers are selling out or close to it) then we’ll see the sales figures rise. Just keep in mind that this may not be true for an individual retailer – or even a group of retailers in a particular geographic area. It’s just a measurement of the overall performance of the title.

Another problem that should be addressed here, however, is the inexact science of ordering. Science is the wrong word – it really is an art. Retailers ideally would like to sell a copy of a particular issue to every single customer who wants one. They don’t want to be left with unsold stock that they can’t move. And they don’t want to “leave dollars on the table” but not having enough stock to meet customer demand. The major problem is that retailers have an almost impossible task of gauging demand when they generate their orders. Retailers are left making educated guesses on how many to order, especially with a new title. This is even more of a truism on a new title with unproven creators, a title that’s shipped erratically or has been chronically late, and titles that see changes to their creative teams.

The Direct Market ordering system forces retailers to calculate their orders on a given title based on a variety of variables. Some of these are:

* Pre-sale information to subscribers
* Sales history and patterns of similar types of stories/series
* Sales history and patterns for the creators involved
* Ashcan and online previews
* Marketing
* The discount they receive from Diamond

All of these can create a confidence (or lack thereof) for initial orders. What can then further skew the ordering data is the availability of timely re-orders. If a retailer does underestimate demand and sells out, then s/he must have the ability to re-order the issue and have it then ship in a timely basis. If stock is available but ships slowly (perhaps weeks later), customer demand may fall off and the potential sales window will have closed. As a result, retailers have lost a key opportunity. Worse still, if that extra stock does eventually show up, retailers are left “holding the bag” – they have stock but no customer demand. If, on the other hand, there’s no extra stock for whatever reason (the publisher has sold out, the distributor will not order more for whatever reason, or there aren’t enough re-orders to warrant a new print run), then the retailer is left languishing with no ability to meet that unmet demand. At least until the appearance of a trade paperback or other reprint versions appear months later.

The “Early” Days

Invincible Table OneThat’s brings us to Invincible. Launched in January 2003 from Image Comics, Invincible has recently become a very hot book (sales breaking 10000 copies in both June and July 2005) and that “buzz” has spread outside of the comics industry, as well. Film rights were sold to Paramount (March 2005) with Robert Kirkman tapped to write the screenplay. Not too shabby for a title that’s only been out for 2 ½ years. We can see from ICV2.com’s sales charts (see Appendix) that the title has performed very well over all. This is corroborated by the overall trend line for the entire monthly series. Take a look at Table 1 above (the sales history of the first 24 issues of Invincible, not including issue #0).

As you can see, the linear trend line shows a very strong upwards climb on sales in the 2 ½ year run of the title. Overall, things look good for Invincible – strong healthy sales, retailer confidence, and positive reviews all seem to indicate that Invincible not only has done well but was always performing well. Certainly Image’s press releases seem to back up this contention – in both March and June 2003 Image sent out press releases indicating that issues #1 and #2 (March 2003) and later issues #3 and #4 (June 2003) had sold out. Since sold out titles indicate “hot” titles, all this means that Invincible was performing extremely well right out of the gate, right?

Well, not so fast. When you look at the sales performance of the first 13 issues, a very different trend emerges (see Table 2, below). And when you compare these two performances, you realize one thing: Invincible did find an audience - but what’s fascinating here is to see how long it took for that to happen. The title was actually at one of it’s lowest points in the late spring of 2004 – about 16 months after the Invincible made it’s debut in January 2003.

Invincible Table Two


From it’s initial high-watermark with issue #1 (sales of 9975), the book had a steady downward trend. To put that into hard numbers, May 2004’s sales figures (issue #11) had plummeted to only 5613 copies sold, a loss of 44% from issue #1.

There is always an expectation of lower sales on issues #2-4 (and oftentimes #2-5 or even #2-6) due to a variety of factors. Issue #1’s generally do better overall (a combination of the collectible mentality and the natural jumping on point for readers), but for monthly shipping issues retailers often won’t have hard sales data until issue #4. And due to this, they’ll generally order cautiously on the first few issues, counting on the fact that re-orders will be available to meet unmet demand. What’s interesting here, however, is how poorly Invincible continued to do even after retailers began getting hard numbers.

What needs to be determined is why – why were Invincible’s sales so poor for so long and what led to the upsurge in demand?

To answer that, we will look at four key factors and three smaller ones:

Four Key Factors

* The Impact of the Trade Paperbacks on the Monthly Issues
* Special Guest Cover Artists
* The impact of Robert Kirman’s “other” series, The Walking Dead
* Regular monthly shipping

Three Small Factors

* The shortlisting of Invincible as Best New Series for the 2004 Eisner Awards (April 2004)
* The prominent appearance of Invincible in Image’s 2004 Free Comic Book Day title (July 2004)
* The overshipping of issues #1 and #2 to retailers participating in Diamond’s Overship Program

To Trade or not to Trade

The first factor to deal with, then, is the impact of the Trade Paperback releases on sales patterns. Invincible has four volumes now collected (the most recent in April 2005). The first two trades were released right in the middle of this low sales period – Volume 1 hit shelves in August 2003 (issue #5 on stands) and Volume 2 arrived in April 2004 (issue #10 on stands). We also know (from Image press releases) that Image announced (in March 2003) that issues #1 and #2 were completely sold out. That was followed up with an announcement from Image that issues #3 and #4 were sold out (June 2003). Critically, this means that unless a retailer ordered extremely deeply, any customer coming in late but wanting to start at the beginning of the story would have to purchase the first volume of the trade paperback in August 2003. No early issues were available from the publisher and therefore none of those first issues were available for retailer re-ordering.

So the key question becomes – did the release of the first trade (priced at $12.95 US) increase sales? And related to that, did the first trade do well when it was initially ordered? Ironically enough, the answer is a resounding no to both questions.

We’ll take a look at the 2nd point first – did the first trade do well? At this point, Diamond Comics was only releasing sales data of their Top 50 Graphic Novels (they would later increase this to the Top 100 in February 2004). Sales on the first volume do not appear on this list – meaning that Invincible Volume 1 could not have sold more than 1412 copies to the Direct Market. Why is this? 1412 is the lowest selling trade paperback to appear on the sales charts (at slot 50). Since Invincible Volume 1 isn’t on the list, it could have sold no better than 1412. And most likely somewhat lower (though how much lower is unknown). Regardless, this is not very good for such a “hot” first time collection. Keep in mind, however, that there is no data for it's sales outside of the Direct Market. Nothing in the bookstore market and nothing through retailers like Amazon. We're purely examing the Direct Market, through ICV2.com's numbers, here.

That notwithstanding, what’s odder is that the release of this first trade didn’t help the sales on the individual issues, either. As mentioned, issue #5 was on stands when the first trade came out. Issue #5 sold 6802 (a drop from 800 copies from issue #4). The trade hit stands in August 2003 and then issue #6 came out for November 2003. It’s sales were only 6475 – another drop. What’s critical (and we’ll be coming back to this point later on) to understand here is that issue #6 came out three months after the first trade hit stores. Retailers at this point would have had plenty of time to evaluate the sales of the trade and increase orders if they felt demand warranted it. What we see instead of any rise is that orders remained steady, actually losing a few more issues (approx. 300) between issues #5 and #6. Not good.

The second Invincible trade came out in April 2004. At this point, Diamond was releasing the Top 100 sales data for trade paperbacks. Due to this, we do see the 2nd volume of Invincible make the list – but it only sold 1382! That not only confirms the initial performance of Volume 1, at least in the Direct Market, but it shows that despite 8 months between the two trades (and 6 months of sales data for retailers), Volume 2 had no appreciable increase in initial orders.

So did Volume 2’s release effect the sales of the monthly issues? Issue #10 shipped with it (April 2004) and only had sales of 5598. At this point, it’s the lowest ordered title of any of Invincible’s run. Issue #9 (March 2004) had sales of 6086 while the first issues after Volume 2’s release, issues #11 and #12 (both May 2004) had sales of 5613 and 6551. While issue #12 did rise in sales, it certainly didn’t “spike” by any great amount. More critically, issue #13 (June 2004) didn’t “spike,” either – and this would have been the first issue ordered with firm sales data on Volume 2 of the trades.

Volume 3 of the trade paperback hit shelves in November 2004. At this point, sales had already risen to over 8000 copies and Volume 3 was “rewarded” with sales of 2506 copies, a 55% increase over Volume 2. But this trade paperback did not cause the extra sales in the monthlies – they had already started to rise in August 2004. If anything, the trade benefited from what was happening with the monthly title and not the other way around.

At this point, it’s pretty conclusive – the release of the first three volumes of the trade paperback had zero impact (none, nadda, zip) on the sales of the monthly issues.

The Three Minor Factors

At about the same time as the first trade hit shelves, the three minor factors come into play. Invincible was short-listed in April 2004 (the same month as Volume 2 hit stands) for an Eisner Award for best new series. Invincible featured prominently on Image’s Free Comic Book Day title in July 2004. Lastly, Image overshipped extra copies of the first two issues (as Image stated in the same press release that announced they had sold-out of issues #1 and #2 (March 2003)).

That last event we’ll look at first – Image’s overshipment of the first two issues. This factor certainly had no effect on Invincible’s sales growth. Sales on issues #3 and #4 stayed over 7000, but starting with issue #5 issues never again reached that point. They actually wouldn’t cross 7000 until issue #14, approximately 18 months later. It’s very clear here that while the overshiping may have helped initially promote Invincible and create extra attention for the title, it did not cause a “spike” in later retailer orders.

The next event (Eisner short-list) occurred in April 2004, at the same time that Invincible #10 and #11 were on the stands. If Invincible’s Best New Series shortlist had garnered increased sales for retailers, then we should have seen a major increase in sales by issue #13, since it was solicited in April 2004. Now, the sales on issue #13 did go up (to 6539) but in the increase is only by approximately 900 copies over issues #10 and #11. While it’s quite possible that the Eisner helped increase sales, the jump is not large. What’s more difficult is that the sales of issue #12 were also elevated. Since this was another May 2004 release (Invincible had two issues ship in May 2004), this increase in orders took place before the Eisner shortlist. Viewing it this way, it’s extremely difficult to conclusively say that this event helped Invincible’s sales. Call it a "push."

Free Comic Book Day 2004 is actually easier to evaluate. While it traditionally occurs in May of each year, the 2004 event took place on July 3rd. This completely eliminates it from having an effect on the orders for issue #14 – the event occurred after issue #14 had been solicited. But did it have an effect on later sales? This is very difficult to evaluate; after issue #14, sales remained high (over 8000) on subsequent issues. What role Image’s Free Comic Book Day issue played in that is extremely difficult to determine. We can state conclusively that this event did not hurt Invincible, but it seems unlikely that it had any role in increasing later orders.

At this point, we’ve eliminated one large factor (the impact of the trade paperback) and three minor factors and we still haven’t come to any conclusions. As it stands, if you evaluated Invincible on the sales of the first 13 issues (as well as the first two trade paperback collections) you would assume that this is a title in serious trouble (see Table 2 again). If sales had dropped below 5000 copies and then perhaps even 4000, it’s possible that the series would have eventually faced cancellation.

Covering the Covers

As we know, though, Invincible’s sales did the exact opposite beginning with issue #14. That issue hit stores in August 2004 (with a Frank Cho cover) and orders jumped 1700 copies (to 8219). That’s pretty remarkable, especially since it’s the first issue of Invincible to break 8000 copies since the first issue hit the stands. What’s more remarkable is that no issue since #14 has fallen below 8000 copies sold.

How do we explain it? Well, the only X factor that appears here is the Cho cover. Could Cho’s presence been enough to punch up sales by 1700? There isn’t a simple way of answering this save for looking at what happened on the subsequent issue (#15). Cory Walker returned as the regular cover artist and if Cho did cause the sales to spike, we’d expect them to fall back to where they were. This didn’t happen. Not only did #15 not drop in sales, it actually rose by 400 copies to reach 8612. This isn’t conclusive evidence that Cho’s work didn’t help the title; but it is curious that his absence didn’t hurt sales. Issue #16 featured another guest artist doing cover duties (Mike Wieringo) and his presence might have given us a better clue. But instead sales continued as they previously had, chiming in to the tune of 8427. A drop from issue #15, sure, but a very small one.

Three issues, three different cover artists, and all with approximately the same sales. This is made somewhat more complex by that two month pre-order window. Retailers would have ordered issue #14 (Cho Cover) in June 2004. They would have been ordering issue #16 in August 2004, around the time that issue #14 hit stands. A better evaluation would actually give the Cho issue firm sales by the time issue #17 was solicited. When we look at those numbers, we do see an increase. Issue #17 had sales of 9055, a definite rise over issues #15 and #16 but only of around 400-500 copies. It does mark the first time that Invincible crossed 9000 copies sold since issue #1 first hit stands, but again it’s difficult to single out Cho. If this was the case, we should have seen subsequent drops, especially on orders for issue #15 (the Walker cover). To further clear the waters, no guest cover artist was used since Mike Wieringo and issue #16 – all subsequent issues were split between Cory Walker and Ryan Ottley. Despite the “lack” of high profile cover artists, the sales on Invincible continued to grow.

I don’t doubt for a second that a hot guest cover artist can help spur sales. But in the case of Invincible, there is nothing conclusive to hang our hat on. There is no clear relation between the presence of the cover artist and the increased sales as a result.

The Dead Effect

But we still have that jump to 8219 (issue #14) to explain. By the spring of 2004 Kirkman was getting lauded in various circles (especially with the shortlist of the Eisner award for best new series) and his other series, The Walking Dead, had been doing very well. Invincible had started earlier (January 2003) while The Walking Dead didn’t start until later that year (October 2003). Is it possible that Kirkman’s other work, especially on The Walking Dead, led to increased sales of Invincible?

To answer that, we have to take a closer look at the sales figures of The Walking Dead's first nine issues:

Invincible Table ThreeWhile The Walking Dead does have a spike in sales (at issue #7) what’s more critical to our look at Invincible is when the spike happened. By May 2004, The Walking Dead had crossed 10,000 copies sold and the very next month would cross 11,000. We’d assume, then, that these additional sales might translate into increased sales on Invincible. The problem is that we already know that this didn’t happen.

While The Walking Dead was hitting new plateaus by May 2004, Invincible was at it’s lowest sales period in April and May 2004 (5598 and 5613 respectively). And while June 2004’s sales of The Walking Dead hit 11689, Invincible June 2004’s sales had only gone up to 6539. If Kirkman’s work on The Walking Dead was adding sales to Invincible, it was only doing it to the tune of about 900 copies.

What makes this extremely unlikely are two factors – the first being that pesky two month pre-ordering window for retailers (they would have reacted to the “hotness” of The Walking Dead in March 2004. It was those pre-orders that resulted in the sales of 10495 in May 2004) and the lack of any impact on Invincible by the release of Volume 1 of the first The Walking Dead trade paperback. This second factor is interesting. The first volume of The Walking Dead trade hit store shelves in May 2004, one month after the release of Volume 1 of Invincible in trade paperback. While it’s orders were considerably higher (5374 vs. no more than 1412), the customers who bought The Walking Dead didn’t suddenly jump on the band wagon and start buying Invincible. It continued it’s poor sales, both in trade and monthly formats despite all of the increased attention that Kirkman was earning.

Now there is a possibility that the retailers reacted late to Invincible. They may not have felt that the customers buying The Walking Dead would cross over to Invincible (they are, of course, very different titles). But retailers are a smart, cagey bunch. They had seen what was happening with The Walking Dead as early as January 2004 (since the March 2004 sales on The Walking Dead #5 had jumped 1800 copies and would continue to rise as the months continue) and certainly by March 2004 knew and understood what was happening. But by that same time period they were cutting orders on Invincible. If The Walking Dead (and Kirkman’s increasing market presence) did help Invincible, it certainly didn’t happen overnight.

The Road to 10,000

We have only one factor left to explore. And this factor, often discussed but not respected, is timely, regular shipping.

Invincible Table FourI had mentioned earlier that retailers, when re-ordering, need both stock availability and quick shipping (this combination is often termed “just in time” ordering) to meet unexpected demand on a title. For ongoing titles (i.e.: monthly comics) they need one other thing – monthly comics must ship “monthly.” When Invincible first launched in January 2003, it made it’s first 3 shipping months. In other words, Issues 1, 2 and 3 all shipped in consecutive months (January, February and March 2003). But the next 4 issues took a combined 9 months to ship (see chart at right).

These missed months can be devastating to a title that is supposed to be shipping monthly. To determine the damage, take another look at the release of the first trade paperback. It shipped in August 2004, timed to take advantage of the sold-out nature of the regular series (recall that Image announced that the first 4 issues were sold out in June 2003). While issue #5 was on the stands a month before Volume 1 hit, issue #6 did not ship until November 2003 – a full 3 months after the release of the first trade. Those who did buy that first volume had only issue #5 to buy. They would have to wait to purchase (and then remember to look for) issue #6 when it finally shipped. What’s worse, of course, is how easy it would be for that to be missed. If a customer missed “new comic day” at his/her local shop, the issue could easily be lost among everything else that’s shipped recently.

Invincible Table FiveBoth the Invincible creators and Image Central seemed to realize the damage that was being caused. Issue #7 became the first issue since issue #3 to ship in a consecutive month. And starting in February 2004, the book became far more timely (see chart at left).

Issue #14 (our “spike” issue) shipped in August 2004 but was ordered in June 2004. June 2004 would have given retailers 5 issues worth of data (actually 6, since issues #11 and #12 both shipped in May 2004). While sales on these issues were not strong (backed up by the low sales on the first two volumes of the trade paperback collections), Invincible had “suddenly” gone from an erratic shipping title to one that was shipping on a regular, consistent basis. How consistent? Between February 2004 and July 2005 (18 months), 17 issues shipped! In other words, the book was hitting it’s monthly shipping window 94% of the time. It really is an amazing accomplishment. Or to put it another way, sales on issues #14-24 of Invincible have increased 42% over the sales of issues 1-13.

Look at Table 3 below and see how well Invincible started doing:

Invincible Table Six


This is perhaps the most critical aspect of all the factors we’ve seen so far. Why? All other factors become directly tied to regular, monthly shipping. All the “buzz” in the world (positive reviews, the trade paperback releases, the Free Comic Book Day appearance, the Eisner short-list, etc…) do not matter if customers cannot find the book on the shelves. It is incredibly unrealistic to expect customers to actively search out a title, potentially months after the most recent issue hit stands, and then purchase it in enough numbers that retailers will feel confident increasing their order on subsequent issues. It is also unrealistic to expect retailers to continue ordering a title that they cannot depend on. In a non-returnable market, most retailers will not take gambles on titles that “might” ship regularly. It’s an unreasonable risk to their bottom line to do anything else. I cannot stress these points enough and Invincible’s sales patterns, I believe, clearly show this.

Invincible Table SevenIt is only speculation at this point, but one wonders what might have occurred if Invincible had made it’s shipping windows in 2003. Take a look at the chart (at right).

What’s obvious right from the get go is that Invincible would have 7 more issues (31 vs. 24) on the stands if the series had been able to hit it’s monthly shipping targets. What’s more, most of this gain would have occurred in 2003. It’s pure speculation, but it’s interesting to project what might have happened if the hypothetical shipping windows had been met. Volume 1 of the trade paperback would have hit shelves in August 2003 with issue #8 on the stands. In all likelihood, this trade would have actually made an earlier appearance (possibly hitting shelves in June 2003 instead of it’s actual August 2003 ship-date). What’s more critical is that the regular series would have been continuing monthly; those buying that first trade would have had regular issues to purchase.

Even more critical is that retailers would have been able to track their sales on a monthly basis with no “holes” (i.e.: missing issues) in their data. The three month delay between issues #5 and #6 would not have occurred, giving retailers more confidence in ordering the title – especially if their later sell-through occurred earlier. Is it possible that our actual issue #14 spike could have occurred earlier? Perhaps as early as issue #10? That’s conjecture, of course, but it’s an intriguing thought. It really would depend on how retailers order – some would view their entire sales history and continue making adjustments to their orders. Others, however, when faced with the gap between issues #5 and #6, would eliminate early sales as a factor altogether, using only recent sales data. If this latter point is the case, then Invincible’s orders would suffer greatly from late shipping. It would take time for retailers to regain confidence in Invincible, despite all the accolades that Kirkman was earning. We’ll most likely never know, but it’s unrealistic to think that late shipping didn’t hurt Invincible.

We haven’t answered conclusively that timely, regular shipping caused the rise in sales (beginning with issue #14’s “spike”) but out of all the factors we’ve looked at, it’s the most reasonable. Increasing retailer confidence (caused by both regular shipping and the issues selling well) led to increased ordering. This synergy can spread like a virus; as the increasing amounts of Invincible shipped on time, retailers continued to sell well, leading to higher orders on subsequent issues. Those issues, especially #14, continued to ship on time. And continued to sell. As long as these two events (on-time shipping and healthy sales) continue to occur, retailers will continue to order well.

Conclusions

We’ve looked at a number of different factors in trying to explain why Invincible, starting at issue #14, increased in sales so strongly. Three minor factors (the Eisner shortlist, Image’s overshipping of issues #1 and #2, and the profile in Image’s 2004 Free Comic Book Day release) had little to no impact at all. Two of the larger factors (the trade paperback releases and the guest cover artists) have almost completely been disproven as playing a role in issue #14’s rise.

The third factor, Kirkman’s work on The Walking Dead, might have had a fallout effect on Invincible. But if it did, the effect was not felt immediately by retailers – nor acted on immediately by them. There just isn’t enough hard data to make a decisive conclusion here. The popularity of The Walking Dead may have played a role in Invincible’s increased sales, but if so it didn’t occur right away. There’s simply no way to answer this conclusively.

The final factor, regular shipping, may be our winner. While it’s impossible to prove with complete certainty, monthly shipping seems to correlate best with what we see happening in the sales charts. More likely a number of these factors worked in harmony to impact Invincible. 2004/2005’s regular shipping would be the key factor with Kirkman’s rising profile in the Direct Market as a whole (clearly seen with the increasing sales on The Walking Dead) playing a somewhat lesser role. Events like the Eisner shortlist certainly didn’t hurt Invincible’s profile, either.

The key factor, I think, is regular shipping. Not only is it a title’s best advertising (constantly being seen on the shelves) it also gives retailers regular, concrete sales information. It minimizes guesswork and creates confidence that a title will ship when it’s supposed to. Creators (and publishers) underestimate this at their peril.

One other thought: never forget that Invincible was published by Image Comics. Image is one of the four brokered publishers (along with Marvel, DC and Dark Horse) that are distributed by Diamond. This means that retailers earn the most on titles from these publishers (though the discounts do vary to some extent between each of the four). The key point to remember is that retailers earn their best discounts from these four publishers. That may have given Invincible better odds at making a comeback then a title published by any other company.

One quick update: in October 2010, Image publisher Eric Stephenson chatted with Rich Johnson over on Bleeding Cool. They two discussed late shipping books and I thought this comment by Stephenson was very pertinent to this essay:

"Both Age of Bronze and Phonogram — and you know, they’re not alone in this, they’re not the only examples — have come out fairly erratically. Age of Bronze comes out a few times a year, when we solicit it, because that’s how often Eric Shanower can complete the work — he puts so much research and physical work into the book and it’s a grueling process — it’s in no way monthly. Phonogram was beset with scheduling problems almost from the beginning and didn’t ship monthly. Now, regardless of what factors go into the shipping schedule for either book, I can say without a doubt that sales on both books suffer from that kind of erratic shipping. Whether it’s late shipping or bi-monthly shipping or quarterly shipping — whatever — it will hurt sales and no matter how well-received something is in the beginning or how many awards a book receives, there’s going to be a loss of momentum.

Looking at a book like Chew — it wasn’t ordered spectacularly to begin with, but it came out on time and it came out regularly and people liked it and sales shot up. The most important thing for a book, whether it’s critically acclaimed or simply well-liked, is that it actually comes out." (my emphasis added).

Appendix

Invincible Table Eight

1. ICV2.com has this to say about their numbers, “These estimates are based on ICv2 estimates of comic sales by Diamond North America…We are estimating actual sales by Diamond U.S. (primarily to North American comic stores), using Diamond's published sales indexes and publisher sales data to estimate a sales number for Batman (the anchor title Diamond uses in its calculations), and using that number and the indexes to estimate Diamond's sales on the remaining titles. We can check the accuracy of our numbers by comparing the Batman number that we calculate using multiple data points; our numbers for Batman are within 1/10 of 1% of each other, ensuring a high degree of accuracy.” ICV2.com also points out that these number do not include sales made by Diamond UK, orders on titles placed after month end, or copies purchased by Diamond but held in inventory at the end of a particular month.

2. This last point is not spoken of enough. Comic Book retailers order their product non-returnably from Diamond. The discount they receive from the brokered publishers (Marvel, DC, Image and Dark Horse) is higher than all other publishers. So if a Title (priced at $2.95) debuts from Image comics and the retailer receives a 55% discount off that title, they are far more likely to order it then if the same title was offered from a smaller publisher with a smaller discount. Say 45%. With Image, the retailer earns $1.62 per copy sold (their cost is $1.33). But at a 45% discount, the retailer only earns $1.33 per title (their cost is $1.62)!

3. Issue #0 had a cover price of only 50 cents. To use it, especially since it shipped out of order (shipping in April 2005, a week after issue #22 hit stands) would skew data.

4. Remember that retailers order approximately two months in advance. With issue #1 hitting store shelves in January 2003, Retailers would have ordered it in November 2002. Issue #2 would have been ordered in December 2002 and Issue #3 ordered in January 2003. Those three issues would all have been ordered before issue #1 ever arrived in stores, giving the retailer zero data to work with. Issue #4, ordered in February 2004, would be the first to have some hard sales figures to look at. But that would only be one issue’s sales history!

5. Though there is one small blip on the sales of The Walking Dead. Issue #6 lost the growth that issue #5 had, dropping back to 7726 before breaking 10,000 on issue #7.

6. To verify this, you only have to divide the total ordered by retailers on Issue 6 (6475) by the estimated number of Direct Market retailers (2500). The number of retailers is often contentious, but it’s often quoted by Comics and Games Retailer in print. Online, Diamond Distribution actually confirms this number (under e-mail queries, they state, “your message will be sent as a stand-alone email to over 2,600 retailers”). Also, Mel Thompson, a key retail consultant, states the number as 2500. I also direct any readers interested in learning more about the Direct Market to peruse Mr. Thompson’s site – it’s fantastic.

All that said, issue #6 would have shipped only an average of 3 copies (actually 2.59) to every retailer. While this isn’t good math (it assumes every retailer ordered equally and it ignored the impact of larger retailer ordering patterns) it illustrates how easily this issue could have been ‘missed’ by an individual customer browsing in a store.

7. Issues #1-#13 had total sales of 88194 while issues #14-#24 had total sales of 106078

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