Comics to the People: Right On? - Page 3

This is why it's disturbing to hear Barrucci talk about Free Comic Book Day, an annual giveaway in comics stores, in terms of making sure that only stuff involving the biggest characters is distributed. Everybody already knows that they can find a Batman or Spider-Man comic if they want--the question is, what else is out there? An issue of Acme Novelty Library, or even of Alias (the comic, not the TV show) might go a long way to getting the word out that there's more to comics than what you're already aware of.

Now we're getting to the biggest problem with Barrucci's plan--increasing, through pseudounionization, the power of comics retailers. Folks, I don't know if you've ever been in a comic book shop, but the odds are you haven't. There's a reason for that: THEY SUCK. You know the Simpsons Comic Shop Guy? That is not satire. That is real life. There are exceptions--glorious, ecumenical, clean, bright, well-staffed, orderly exceptions like New York City's Jim Hanley's Universe, with its alphabetized rows of every comic known to man, or Midtown Comics, with its user-friendly website that allows you to preorder every comic from the most popular to the most obscure--but for the most part these stores are staffed by and cater to the worst type of fanboy, who hate any shake-ups in the "lives" of their favorite characters, hate artsy comics with a passion, resent any efforts to shake things up, and demand the kind of convoluted, backstory-mired stories (we call them "continuity-based") that the "Direct Market" (as the comic shops are called) thrives on. They need people to keep coming back month after month to support the increasingly cost-ineffective pamphlet format, and the indecipherable storylines make that happen, as opposed to self-contained, generally more interesting storylines that lend themselves to collection and therefore to sale in big chains like Borders, Barnes & Noble and Amazon. The industry is starting to realize that the bookstore market is where the future of the medium is, something comic-shop retailers, understandably, will fight tooth and nail. If we allow them to exert more influence over the kinds of comics writers and artists produce, we won't be shooting ourselves in the foot--we'll be shooting ourselves in the face.

My own recipe for increasing sales and audience size for comics is a pretty simple one, and given what's becoming conventional wisdom amongst comics pundits, fairly uncontroversial.

Article Author: Sean T. Collins

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