The Most Awards 1999, Part 2

Originally published January 21, 2000, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1366

Concluding this year’s presentation of the Most Awards, those dubious recognitions of acts of merit, or lack of merit, or whatever I happen to think of.

Most Hysterical Teaser Trailer: Rocky and Bullwinkle. Tell me you’ve seen it. The reactions of the amazed onlookers, pointing heavenward with the startled, classic exclamation, “Look… up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane!” Nope. It’s Rocket J. Squirrel, with long-time partner Bullwinkle Moose in tow, rendered as never before. The inexorable march of Jay Ward to the silver screen, which got off to an admittedly shaky start with Dave Thomas and Sally Kellerman as Boris and Natasha (what, you mean you didn’t see it? How bad was it? Even cable stations didn’t run it multiple times), regained its footing with George of the Jungle, skidded a bit with Dudley Do-Right, and is now firmly back on course. The sumptuous, three dimensional rendering of Rocky and Bullwinkle bears as much resemblance to the flat super-limited animation of the 1960s as the rocket models in Flash Gordon do to the ships in The Phantom Menace.

The trailer delves into movie history and cops not only Superman’s standard opening line from radio and television, but also the credit style from the movies. You know the one I mean: Where those gigantic 3-D block letters come hurtling through the sky at you. And the announcer intones the names of the film’s stars: “DeNiro! Russo! Alexander! Moose! And Squirrel!”

There is also a quick (and I mean quick) sequence with a bellowing Robert DeNiro as Fearless Leader, and if you look fast you can spot Jason Alexander as Boris Badenov and Rene Russo as Natasha.

“See you next summer!” a zooming Rocky calls to us. You know how, in the dead of winter, summer can seem a long way off? Well, right now it seems even longer.

Most Interesting Survey Result: Where are You Going to Be New Year’s Eve? Between seventy and seventy five percent of the population of America stated that it was going to be staying home New Year’s Eve. The remaining one quarter of the country’s citizens were probably crammed into Times Square. Since this will see print after that date has already passed, here’s hoping everyone had a happy and safe New Year’s, and no demented terrorist wacko blew up the ball in Times Square or something.

Most Depressing Sales Spin-Cycle: Marvel Comics. Okay, so here’s how it works. Retailers across the country “know” that Marvel Comics has an itchy trigger finger when it comes to cancelling titles. When they drop below a certain level, boom, swish, the axe comes down, out they go. The problem is, once a title is cancelled, interest in back issues go right out the door. What prompts readers to pick up back issues, after all, is their becoming interested in a title during its run. Once they’re hooked, they start scavenging about to find the missing issues so they can read the storyline or just plug the holes in their collections.

Once upon a time, retailers ordered a certain overage of titles for the purpose of having back issues just for that purpose. Granted, some retailers went overboard or missed the point of the concept, ordering entire additional boxes of books that they thought might become hot. But with the collapse of the speculator market, retailers have now gone in the opposite direction. They not only order down to the bone, they chop down to the marrow. The object is to sell out. Now in the old days, quick and easy reorders were obtainable because there were fewer titles from fewer publishers, and many local distributors and warehouses to accommodate restocking. Many retailers could literally run down to the warehouse and pick up more copies of books they needed. No more. All I hear from retailers now is that obtaining reorders—the lifeblood for serving the growth of new titles—has become such an impossible, inefficient and even expensive chore that they simply don’t bother anymore.

There is a disincentive to order additional copies. So if a retailer orders ten copies of a title one month, and the book sells out, then next month that same retailer will order… ten copies. Not eleven, in the hope of selling an additional copy. But ten with the knowledge that there was no overage. It is possible to get retailers to respond to changes in a title’s fortune, just as it is possible to sit atop an elephant and get it to shift direction. However in both cases you have to whack away repeatedly with a large stick just to get your subject’s attention, and that takes time.

Marvel, meantime, has not helped its own cause. Rightly or wrongly, fairly or unfairly, the release of a new Marvel book is perceived as a practice somewhat akin to skeet shooting. Marvel no longer is seen as releasing titles and allowing them to build up a readership. Instead they shout, “Pull!” The comic is sent hurtling through the air like a projectile. And then the Marvel brain trust blows it out of the sky.

Even the fans get into the act. I see discussions of new titles on message boards, and there’s always fans saying, “Why should I bother to buy the book and get attached to it, when Marvel will just cancel it?”

As a result of this deadly mix of perceptions and opinions, what happens is this: Marvel announces a new title. The retailers assume that Marvel will cancel it within half a year. Many fans take a wait-and-see attitude. So the retailers order the book on a minimal basis. Let’s say they order—oh, I dunno—forty thousand. A month later, it’s time to order issue #2. Issue #1’s debut is still a couple months away. Retailers whack their order by twenty percent. Now the title’s numbers are hovering just above thirty thousand. A month after that, it’s time to order issue #3. Retailers trim the orders another ten to twenty percent. Sales have now dropped below thirty thousand. Meantime, if the creative team is working on the proper shipping schedule for production of the book, they’re somewhere around issue 6 or 7 in writing and drawing it. No matter. Because now that sales have dropped below thirty thousand, even though the book hasn’t come out yet, the Marvel brain trust pulls the trigger.

So now the book comes out. Fans can love it. They can call it the best new series Marvel has ever done. They can tell all their friends. Given a year’s time, which would allow for word of mouth to spread and retailers to start adjusting their orders upward, the series could take off. But it doesn’t matter, because by this point the book’s already cancelled.

I tried to apply what I know of marketing and sales patterns in planning the launch of Captain Marvel. At my urging, Marvel did not launch it with a double-sized issue. I considered it an unfair drain on fans’ wallets, and I wanted people to be encouraged to pick up the first issue without being gouged. I also wanted to combat the second and third issue drop-off syndrome, and came up with a two-pronged attack. First, we would guest star the Hulk. With all the fan outcry over my departure from the series, I figured that my return to the character would be worth something. Second, I urged Marvel—and once again, they went along with it—to order a percentage of the subsequent issues on a partly returnable basis. That way retailers could indulge in upping their orders without having to worry about being stuck with overages. According to editor Tom Brevoort, Marvel did exactly that. Extra copies of Captain Marvel could be had at no risk.

The result of this grand experiment? Sales on the first issue were higher than they might have been, but were still low-balled. And the drop off on the subsequent issues was exactly the same percentage drop off as with a non-returnable title. Despite the Hulk, despite the offer of returns, retailers did not vary from their ordering patterns one iota.

On a Captain Marvel message board, one fan posted with great satisfaction that finding the second issue of Captain Marvel in Boston was virtually impossible. The book came into his local store at 2:30 in the afternoon and was gone before tea time. A second store was sold out, and he snagged the last copy in the third store he went to. He spoke of this as if it was good news. It’s not. It means that retailers didn’t order enough to meet the demand. I’m not saying the title’s in trouble; as mentioned, our initial numbers were higher than usual, so maybe we’ll be able to stay above the cut-off line in time for the great response the title has gotten to kick in and drive the sales up. But any number of other Marvel titles don’t get that leeway.

The sad thing is that the purpose and intent of the direct market has been totally corrupted. Thirty, forty years ago, books would come out onto the newsstand. The initial orders wouldn’t be sensational, and the publisher (DC, more often than not) would scrap the title in no time at all. Then the final sales figures would come in about nine months later, and lo and behold, the publisher would discover that they had, in fact, a hit on their hands because the book had a great sell through. But it was too late. The title was already gone. Books were cancelled because the distribution system was highly inefficient. So what’s happening now? Books are being cancelled because we have a new system that is too efficient. Direct sales was created to be a supplement to the newsstand where publishers could be guaranteed a certain number of copies sold and print accordingly. Now it’s mutated into a be-all, end-all of distribution where books are held to a rigorous standard by executives who were not there with the growth of the system and know jack-all about its potential.

Retailers and distributors used to low-ball Marvel titles from time to time. And when Carol Kalish was running the show, she’d target books that she felt retailers had missed the boat on, and she and I would call up distributors (this was back when there were eighteen of them) and get them to increase their orders. Or we would overship on a returnable basis so the books were out there for easy access. And we would make weekly reorder calls to distributors and see what they needed for reorders. The direct market system was never intended to be a bottom line, be-all, end-all of distribution. But now there’s only one game in town for publishers to work with (Diamond), and retailers and fans are so cynical that Marvel’s finding it hard to get anyone to believe in them.

Marvel would be well-advised to reconsider the way it is presently handling things. The Powers-That-Be may have to start taking risks… like having a heavily publicized returnable program. Or making public commitments that new titles will have at least a year to build an audience. Or perhaps they should release new titles on a bi-monthly basis, giving them a chance to build an audience slowly and surely rather than lose an audience quickly and steadily.

And fans are going to have to meet Marvel halfway. This business about refusing to buy a book because it’s going to be cancelled simply results in self-fulfilling prophecies. And of all the “Most Awards,” that qualifies as the Most Depressing of all.

(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705.)