Penny-Wise and Pound-Foolish

Originally published May 5, 2000, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1381

Penny-wise and pound-foolish.

It’s a term I learned many years ago. What it means is that one is so busy minding every nickel and dime, that one forgets to see the big picture (if one was ever aware that it was there in the first place.)

Once upon a time, Marvel Comics was called “the House of Ideas.” Then everyone started calling it the “Condo of Concepts” (well… I know I did.) Somewhere along the way, the Powers That Be, the Executives, Those Who Watch the Dimes, turned it into a studio, and I don’t mean in the movie sense. A studio as in a studio apartment or an efficiency. The popular slogan of “Make Mine Marvel” has been replaced by “Make Mine Cheaply.”

And it has cost them. Good God, how it has cost them.

Oldest adage of business is, “You have to spend money to make money.” But ever since Ron Perlman first loomed in Marvel’s path, not unlike the iceberg waving “hi” to the Titanic, the ship of state that was once the highest-selling publisher (now neck-and-neck, and sometimes surpassed, by DC) has sailed into and out of bankruptcy. Ron the iceberg has been left behind, but the damage he did remains.

Ever meet someone who was a child during the Great Depression? They have a tendency to hoard. To save everything, from money to bits of string, because you never know where or when you’re going to need it, and you don’t want to let anything slip away. That’s what Marvel’s been doing—at least in the humble opinion of this outsider, who has not been present at any financial meetings or gone over the last several years worth of P&L statements.

I’m not even talking about catastrophically bad business moves like self-distribution, a decision that every single person in the industry knew was a bad one. And I mean everyone. There was no dispute, there was no gray area. Everyone from retailers to distributors to publishers knew that it was a horrendous move. When was the last time you saw anything come up that that many people in this splintered little industry of ours agree upon? The only ones who thought it was a nifty idea were the ones who were actually doing it… and everyone paid the price.

No, I’m talking about the small stuff. The penny ante stuff. The stuff that could have been avoided, or the stuff that should have been undertaken, and wasn’t, and isn’t. From a publicity point of view, Marvel has yet to see a foot that it can’t shoot itself in, and like as not, the reasons are entirely financial.

I’ve already touched on the stupendously bad bottom-lining that has caused Marvel to cancel title after title because the immediate sales weren’t above a certain number. The X-Men, when it was revived, was handled carefully, published bi-monthly and given time to build an audience. If X-Men was first introduced now, it’d be cancelled by issue 8. By adhering to a do-or-die search for immediate profits, the formula-for-disaster that currently rules cancellations has foregone long-term profits. And not just on those titles that they’re dumping which, given time, might have taken off. Instead it’s generated a skepticism on the part of retailers over any new title that Marvel introduces, dissuading them from having any interest in taking ordering chances because they figure they’ll be stuck with back issues of yet-another canceled title.

But now Marvel’s penny-pinching itself in other areas as well.

Back in the old days, for instance, Carol Kalish and I (as sales manager and trusty assistant, respectively) would go from convention to convention, schlepping a Marvel display. It was done on the cheap, but Carol firmly believed in the importance of keeping the Marvel name out there, in front of the fans, retailers, and even the creators who attended the conventions. Not anymore. Fans coming away from the recent Wonder Con were struck by Marvel’s absence. They’ll be struck at other conventions this summer as well, I’ll bet. Marvel should be present at every major con this summer, shouting, “We’re still here, dammit!” The one-time cost of a display (presuming they don’t have one already in place) is amortized over all the cons. The production of artwork to hang is done in-house. Boxes of comics for give-away can easily be acquired from printer overages for next-to-nothing. Airline tickets? For crying out loud, use Priceline.com if you have to. Marvel has got to get in people’s faces. Not only get out there for as many cons as manpower will allow, but publicize its convention schedule. If nothing else, creators who are interested in keeping themselves and their work in the public eye are going to be disinclined to work for a publisher who can’t be bothered to do everything possible to be out in that selfsame public. To say nothing of up-and-coming artists who go around showing their portfolios at conventions, hoping to be the Next Big Thing.

And speaking of Big Things—how about that Jim Steranko thing, huh? Steranko made his ire quite publicly known when Marvel announced a trade edition of his SHIELD stuff, published on a foreign basis so that they wouldn’t have to pay royalties or reprint fees. Within two weeks of Steranko’s letting fans know just how he felt about being stiffed by the House of Ideas (and stiffing Steranko was not one of the better ideas) Marvel announced he’d be paid for his work. Steranko is a legend, and one screws with legends at one’s extreme peril. That’s a lesson that Marvel learned with the Jack Kirby debacle…

And then promptly forgot when it came to Stan Lee.

What were they thinking? What the hell were they thinking? By deciding to save a few bucks in dumping Stan from his exclusive, lifetime contract, they likely patted themselves on the back for ridding themselves of excess baggage and called it a day’s work of penny-pinching well done. As is always the case with the dumper, they failed to note the intrinsic worth of the dumpee. The announcement of Stan Lee working for DC is—no two ways about it—a major black eye for Marvel. If retailers have two nickels’ worth of common sense to rub together, they’ll order big on these, because it’s already getting major media attention based solely on the deal itself and an illustration of the “new” Superman.

The Associated Press said, “It’s the comic book equivalent of Coke executives joining the Pepsi Generation.” Except it’s not. I don’t think Coke executives are generally regarded as men of vision. Whoever it was who first said, “Let’s produce a concoction that could clean rust off a carburetor, make it addictive, and get people to drink it” is long gone. It’s more the comic equivalent of… I dunno… Walt Disney, if he was still alive, being forced out of the company and signing on with Warner Animation. We’re being told that we will see what DC heroes would have been like had Stan worked on them, i.e., if they’d been Marvel characters. In point of fact, we know that already. It was called Green Lantern/Green Arrow, it was written by Denny O’Neill, and it was an angle that continued throughout the 1970s as DC heroes were transformed from stoic archetypes into problem-laden Marvel clones. In modern terms, basically DC is recycling the Tangent Universe concept with Stan’s name attached.

Nevertheless, the announcement of Stan’s alliance with DC was a brilliant move on the parts of all concerned. This is as big, if not bigger, than when Jack Kirby defected to DC. The current undertaking is, of course, not up there with the scope of Kirby’s Fourth World ambitions, but then again, this could be only the beginning of—as Bogey said—a beautiful friendship. If—if? When—this is a success, there may—may? Will—be more Stan/DC projects.

Furthermore, although there’s no denying that Kirby shaped Marvel… Stan was Marvel. The characters and stories that Stan will develop for DC is almost secondary to the personal dynamics of his hooking up with what used to be uncharitably referred to, by the Man himself, as “Brand Echh.” If a comic book company’s intrinsic coolness is defined by whether the Man is associated with it or not, we are left wondering if Marvel itself is now Brand Echh… or, if you will, in deference to the mutant books, Brand X-chh. Marvel must be thanking all the gods there are for the X-Men movie, because as of now that film is its major claim to coolness (and I have to admit the trailers are looking pretty darned sharp.)

Still, the movie was the work of movie executives, not the Marvel braintrust who penny-pinched Marvel’s founding father over to the opposition. Marvel’s business isn’t movies; it’s comics. And if that is not attended to, well…

Marvel has been watching the bottom line, which is fine up to a point. The problem is that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points… and Marvel has forgotten what the point is. The point is not simply, like the damaged Titanic, to stay afloat. It’s to build for a future. If you build the Field of Dreams, they will come. If you don’t build it, they won’t. If one is too obsessed with the present to plan for a future… there won’t be one.

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