Cataract Resin 4

Jason R. Rand
Just the other day, a smart puppy posted a topic on the Other Wildstorm Universe Topics message board that got me thinking. He was talking about ways to revitalize the comic industry and improve its prospects. He said to us, we hear people talking about the "slump" the industry’s in all the time and we hear them speculating on far out, never-gonna-happen ways to improve things. He said he’s sick and tired of that kind of crap. He said we need to be thinking of real ways to fix things, ways that have a real prospect of happening.
He has a point.
His suggestion was to bring back the "spinner racks", racks of comics that you can find in convenience stores, supermarkets, newsagents, anywhere. Specialty comic stores just don’t reach the vast majority of the population, nor do they reach the kids, those messy little people who are the future of the comic industry as well as the world in general.
Right again.
Then another smart puppy came along and pointed out that those are still out there in some places – he sees them in his local grocery stores – but they don’t work. Why not? Because the comics are too expensive! Kids don’t have the money to shell out $2-$4 per comic on a regular basis, and their parents aren’t going to part with that kind of money for comics either. And that’s in US dollars, mind. I live in Australia. I pay $5.75 for a comic you lucky scumbags pay $2.50 for. At best. That $4 comic? Try $10. You think some Australian kid or parent is going to pay that kind of money, when for $90 they can get a brand-spanking new PS2 or PC game that’ll last them for weeks or even months? And don’t even ask what our South African brethren are being asked to pay.
So I started thinking about the problem. My first idea was to create a line of cheap comics, specially directed at the "browsing kiddie" market. Without something like that, I don’t see comics capturing the kids again, because, as Smart Puppy No. 2 said, they’re just too damned expensive.
Then my thoughts started getting a little more grand.
See, I see the best venue for new growth with the current batch and format of product as the adult population. They can afford comics, where the kids can’t. Still, Smart Puppy No. 1’s point still stands – the specialty stores aren’t doing it for us. What we need to do is get comics into bookstores and similar places more, where the non-comic-reading population will see them. Trades, especially, but not just. Trades are good, because there’s less social stigma attached to the "graphic novel" than the pamphlet, but you’ve gotta have both. It’s harder to suck people in with a trade, when you’ve got to wait six months or more for the next one to be produced. The next fix. And face facts, people – comic readers are addicts for the most part, and we need to create more of them if we want the industry to expand again.
So why bookstores? Because people who frequent them already read, and believe it or not, that’s damned important. They’re not the "MTV generation", they’re not lost to computer games and they have money to spend. My dream – well, one of them – is owning a chain of "everything" stores – computer games, role-playing games, CCGs, trading cards, videos, DVDs, books and comics, all side-by-side. The people who buy those other items are the best bet we have in the short term for pulling in new readers. Long term, it’s the kids, and what are they into these days? Computer games, CCGs, trading cards, videos, DVDs, etc. etc. See where I’m going?
But there’s a problem with this grand scheme. It’s called a sickeningly pathetic lack of exposure. What am I talking about? Well, let’s look at my situation as an example.
I live in Sydney, Australia. This is the largest (and best, don’t let those freakin’ Melbournites tell you different) city in the entire country. We get a lot of tourists coming through to see such famous sights as the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House – all the cool stuff that got all blown to heck in "Independence Day". Hell, we had the Olympics here last year. For an entire month, every eye of every person with a TV set in the entire freakin’ world was fixed on us. So you’d think we’d be well represented when it comes to shops where the money-grubbing masses can buy all the meaningless possessions they need to dull their miserable lives, right? Right?

Well, let’s see now. The closest thing in my neck of the woods to the kind of store I’m envisioning is a Borders. Yeah, we have those over here. We also, as of a few weeks ago, have a Starbucks. The infection is spreading. Run.
Right, back to the Borders. This huge book (amongst other things) store has one rack of comics; four rows high, and about a metre wide, with trades, but no pamphlets, scattered over it, buried deep in the "sci-fi" section. It takes up maybe 5% of the section. Maybe less. What they have on it are old trades of superhero comics, Buffy and Angel and movie adaptations, and the occasional issue of The Authority, or Preacher. I think I saw a Sandman once. Most of them are beat up from people reading them and putting them back. Sounds okay, right?
Wrong.
Magazines, which are located right by the cafe, I might add, where the eyes of bored patrons may roam across them at will and be sucked into their glittering, silicon-breasted façade, take up about four or five double sided racks, each with five or six rows, each better than four metres long! I think there might be even more along the walls (sorry, I don’t head that way very often – I’m a sci-fi boy at heart). Sci-fi, on the other hand, is one of the smallest fiction sections and it’s tucked up way in the back, behind all the other fiction. The only thing it has going for it is that it’s right beside an information desk, so if you’re waiting for service there, you might – might – just decide to have a browse through it, rather than killing brain cells by listening to the muzak.
Dymocks, one of the largest booksellers in Australia, has their largest store about five minute’s walk from where I work, right in the middle of the city. They have half an entire floor (it’s a basement floor, but it looks pretty at least) devoted solely to their sci-fi section, including videos and DVDs, which amongst other things include western cartoons and anime. The other side of the floor? Not computer stuff (that’s two floors above, oddly enough), but kiddie and music books. Comics represented here? Maybe ten different Star Wars trades that are kept stocked on a semi-regular basis.
I have never seen any other bookstore (and I visit a lot) with comics in them, except the occasional rare (and probably mis-ordered) trade.
THIS IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH.
And we wonder why the comic industry has been in a slump for years.
Overmarketing is stupid, sure, and is one of the large causes of the current decline. Overmarketing, the collectible craze and a focus on style over substance nearly killed the industry in the 90’s. But going the other way and undermarketing is just as bad.
If I could tell these stores what comics to buy and where to put them, I could double the sales of comics in this city inside six months, if not sooner.
Could you imagine what would happen to the comic industry if people could just walk into a regular bookstore and pick up Watchmen, Powers, 100 Bullets, Transmet and other stories like that? Could you imagine what would happen if these bookstores actually promoted titles like these, instead of just books (usually crappy, boring-ass biographies, too)?
Wizards of the Coast have just started a new ad campaign on primetime – primetime, mind you – television over here in Australia, promoting their new edition of "Magic the Gathering". CCGs and trading cards do big time business, even now after the early mania has died away. Many computer games are advertised on television. I don’t hear about any slumps in the computer gaming industry – do you? Movies are advertised on the box all the time. Same with music. Do you have any idea how much the movie and music industries rake in each year? (No, neither do I really, but I saw a figure quoted in one of our more illustrious magazines today stating that the music industry is a $40 billion a year earner in the US alone.)
When was the last time you saw comics being advertised on the TV, on the radio, in newspapers, or magazines, or other mainstream arenas?
Which entertainment industry is still slowly bleeding to death?
Why the FUCK don’t people from Marvel and DC and all the other companies, big or small, start thinking about that, huh?
So now you’ve heard my little rant. You’ve perused it, absorbed it, agreed with it, maybe laughed at it (knowing more about the comic industry and marketing than I, a poor, ignorant, little comic writer, do). 	What’s next?
Spread the word.
Disseminate this rant. If you have thoughts of your own, add them and send them on. Make people hear this message. Important people. You and me and all the other fans. Oh, and the people who make the comics, too. I truly believe that if we get these people thinking and working together to promote the industry, instead of hunkering down in their muddy, hellish trenches of competition and taking pot shots at each other, there’ll be no need to lament the sad slump of the comic industry, or contemplate its possible demise.
Do it. Spread the word. Spread the truth.
Damn, but I feel like Spider fucking Jerusalem . . .
Silence. I am reading comics.