Another year, another platform, same old comics.
John
So, a very, how shall I describe it, UNUSUAL year is coming to an end. That’s being kind. I know for so many, it was very a hard year. However, in the world of comics and comics publishing…perhaps a major turning point? a LOT has changed in this industry since the advent of COVID and, for comic creators, maybe a lot of change for the better. Certainly there are opportunities for generating those creator owned dream projects that may not have existed before. On the publishing/PR/Marketing side, well, that’s Jeremy’s corner of the ring. I’ll let him share his thoughts on what’s old, what’s new, and, possibly, what is to come for an industry that is ever growing and changing faster than race cars going around the Indy 500.
Jeremy, the floor is yours…
Jeremy
Well folks, we have just about reached the end of another year in an industry that inches closer and closer to celebrating its centennial, and continues to grow, evolve and return to its three staple roots time and time again. After nearly two decades as a professional in this business myself, I thought I would reflect on my personal thoughts around what were the biggest changes of the past two years in today’s newsletter. This has certainly been an unprecedented time in the world at large, with effects reverberating across all of the creative arts, and comics again has found itself caught in the crosshairs of all of it: lockdowns, printing backlogs, port delays, and now a global paper shortage.
Despite all of the challenges listed above, numbers on periodicals are up across the industry. There are arguably more publishers in business now than the last time “the bubble bursted” in the mid 1990’s and brought the industry to its knees, and yet, they are all selling more books than they were in 2019.
There’s an old saying that comics are “recession proof,” as a form of cheap entertainment with the cost of admission far less than a matinee movie even at $3.99, which incidentally hasn’t even been an option up until very recently for quite some time. Now, theaters are reopening and comic shops can allow you back through their doors, as opposed to bringing your weekly fix out to the curb, and sales continue to soar for new number ones and maintain momentum over the course of a series.
However, what really excites me is how this industry, from publishers to creators themselves, continues to interact with technology. How platforms like this one become a destination for all sorts of creative ventures, but comics are almost always the medium that comes to define their innovation.
Let’s all think back to the year 2006, a time when social media was still in its infancy, with Facebook still requiring a college email address, and MySpace was not the abandoned strip mall of the internet that it is today, but an exciting platform that was attempting to find a balance between community and content, with unique partnerships and programming that only its users could access in different ways. My good friend Sam Humphries–who has since gone on to become a writer of multiple books in the DCU, as well as having had some creator-owned successes, including a book that was about a romantic relationship between a man and…well, a dog–was the director of marketing for MySpace and thus he and I were always scheming how to bring comics into the booming social media sphere. It was one day over lunch in New York that he and I came up with the idea of not only publishing original comics content through the site, to be funded and monetized by both parties, but to bring back a legacy title that heralded in a whole new era of creator-owned comics: Dark Horse Presents. We would announce and launch this venture at Comic Con in San Diego the following year to much attention from both those who embraced this idea of “corporate webcomics” and a few skeptics, but without Twitter, that criticism wasn’t hitting us in real time. The first issue featured work from Gerard Way, Joss Whedon, Mike Mignola, and HATE creator Peter Bagge, a genuine who’s who list of creatives in that moment. The program ran its course up to Sam’s departure, and of course, the subsequent collapse and rebrand of the platform.
Since that time we have continued to see comics at the forefront of any new platform that comes along as an alternative to traditional publishing, including some that continue to flourish today like ComiXology Originals, directly overseen with care by industry stalwart Chip Mosher and founder David Steinberger. So, that brings us to today and this very newsletter and the many like it. The top creators across today’s comic book community are finding new ways to introduce new characters and ideas and as well as create entirely new narratives for comic book storytelling, with folks like KLC Press establishing themselves on this platform, and established imprints like Best Jackett Press and Jinxworld bringing their audiences to a whole new ecosystem for comics publishing and education.
So, “what does it all mean?” you might ask. Well, that may be too early to say, BUT without a doubt it exemplifies why this industry is “recession proof.”
In the time since so many of the industry’s biggest names began finding their groove on this platform, we have already seen the announcement of another new online community for creator-owned comics publishing. Zestworld counts my good friend and fellow longtime publicity maven turned mystery writer Alex Segura among the creators launching new work there co-written by Michael Moreci, with Jimmy Palmiotti and others teasing new original work in the first wave of folks attaching their names to the platform’s impending launch.
There are actually a few more brands who are doing something which will clearly change the landscape of comic book publishing that happen to start with the 26th letter of the alphabet, which (excuse the shameless plug) includes my own employer, Z2 Comics, a company which exploded while the world was sleeping, and live events were not possible. Over the course of the last two years, what started as a dorm room project of its founder has grown into a proven crossroads for music and comics, with numbers that point to potential to bring more readers into the market since Watchmen first opened to the collective approval of booksellers and the disdain of Alan Moore. In tandem with Z2’s packaging of two collectible products together, by way of graphic novels and vinyl, DC Comics released its first ever comic book soundtrack on vinyl in comic shops with Dark Knights: Death Metal which sold out at both DC’s newly crowned distributor and shops around the country. Punk rock’s favorite comic book son Matthew Rosenberg and his longtime collaborator Tyler Boss announced a new series with an exclusive vinyl soundtrack for each issue, and launched this ambitious idea to the tune of over 100,000 copies between formats. It would seem I am not the only one who believes comics should have gotten its peanut butter in the music biz’s chocolate long before now.
Meanwhile, Zoop Comics has offered a comics-centric, creator-friendly alternative to Kickstarter which had already been finding champions, but now find themselves well positioned to increase their user base in the wake of the “other platform’s” announcement of a blockchain based sister site, thus driving the ever-polarizing topic of NFT’s back to the top of comic book Twitter, but I’ll save a whole other newsletter for that…
All in all, as we find ourselves on the eve of the winter solstice and nearly two years into a global health crisis, comics is arguably as healthy as ever, proving not only “recession proof,” but pandemic proof, and that one is new for all of us. Here’s to innovation, here’s opportunity, and most of all, friends. Here’s to comics.