Art, Commerce, and the Future of Single Issues
We're back with a messy banger.
You Read These With Your Eyes! (April 12, 2023)
A quick feature about selling stories, featuring the week’s newest reads.
Welcome back to The Indirect Market - your regular source for comic retail nonsense.
We’re coming back weird, with a mess of a post. Over the break, I tried to get ahead, and I did. To kick things off, I was going to talk about W0rldTr33, a title from James Tynion and Fernando Blanco that was supposed to come out today. I read the preview PDF that was sent to retailers, dug through the old brain to get some words down, and scheduled the post for today.
Then on Friday, we got a message from Tynion and Image:
“Due to circumstances outside of our control, the first issue [of W0rldTr33] didn't print at the quality we expected, so we're delaying the first issue to make sure retailers have copies they feel confident about putting in the hands of readers. The entire team could not be more grateful for the tremendous support the fans and comic retailer community have put behind this title, making it one of my highest selling creator-owned launches. I promise, we're doing what we can to get you a title you'll be able to sell for years to come.”
We later discovered that the entire run of the book’s main cover, as well as the Bill Sienkiewicz incentive cover printed far too dark to be reasonably sold. With the book currently in hand, I can confirm the flaws.
As retailers, we were asked to hold the product until April 26th, when we would get replacements. The misprinted comics were to never reach the hands of customers.
So of course, we’ve had some requests. Random folks, normal men, just innocent men, asking if we might have copies of W0rldTr33 for sale this week. We know some retailers will sell the book. We absolutely will not.
A retailer’s reaction to something like this says a lot about what they think about comics.
The medium and the various mechanisms that are apart of it exist in the depths of late stage capitalism. Folks make comics, publish comics, distribute comics, sell comics, and consume comics. Money is required at every step in one form or another for the survival of all parts. The industry, is art commodified.
So is a retailer wrong to sell the book, when they’re met with some demand? Honestly don’t think so. The same mechanics are at play when certain covers are built with deliberate scarcity, which W0rldTr33’s launch has elements of. The industry has accepted that limiting a product can be beneficial, even if the practice serves the commerce end more than it does the artistic end. It stands to reason that the misprint could be used in a similar manner.
That said, that’s not the kind of store that we run. My partner Danica and I have built Variant Edition from a place of heart and gumption. We use it to shine a light on remarkable works that we share with others. That, always, has been our goal, first and foremost.
For us, this is a decision between art, and commerce. A creator has asked us to hold onto a product they deem to be inferior to what will arrive soon. We could absolutely make some money today if we shrugged and sold those books to hungry speculators who will be out hunting. That said, anyone selling that book today will be making a simple statement: they believe that comics, first and foremost, are a commodity. The people looking to buy it will be saying the same thing. I don’t think that’s wrong, but it certainly isn’t who we are.
We believe in comics. We believe in this format, and it’s ability to build and destroy worlds. These are magical things, and I want to be putting the very best of it out there, no matter what.
So folks, join us in a couple weeks when we’ll talk about that book and have it available for sale. It’s a book that has a lot to say, and I’m quite interested in how the world is going to react to it.
Now, in the meantime, let’s talk about a book that’s actually coming out this week:
MINI-SERIES | The Great British Bump-Off (Dark Horse)
by John Allison, Max Sarin, Sammy Borras & Jim Campbell w/ editorial support by Chuck Howitt-Lease, Misha Gehr & Daniel Chabon
A few weeks ago, I talked about John Allison’s most recent appearance on David Harper’s Off Panel podcast, where he spoke about the state of print single issue comics today. He wasn’t terribly optimistic, and honestly? He doesn’t have much reason to be. Once again, I recommend listening to the whole interview for context, because Allison is generally a pretty upbeat guy. He just happens to be fairly pragmatic as well.
Take something he said about the current state of Marvel Comics:
“…I've been asked to write Marvel books. And it's a huge, it's hugely flattering, because again, I'm a Marvel kid growing up. But at the same time, I don't really want to write a modern Marvel comic, because I don't think they are... they're not serving any future audience. They're just kind of holding on to the existing audience. They don't really speak to new readers, and I don't want to be the guy who tries to bang his head against the wall of what I think a Marvel comic should be for some poor editor who's just trying to get his book out. Because again, the editors I spoke with at Marvel have brilliant, brilliant people, but I do not want to be the... the asshole basically, the jerk who goes like, "your comics are all wrong. This is what I think a Marvel comic should be. And I think they should all be like this," you know?
So I'm just kind of trying to feel out a way like what it... what does a monthly comic look like?
Allison is a person who has identified a flaw with the current churn at The Big Two. While many online would claim the books are alienating the pre-existing fans, the reality of the situation is quite different. As much as I love much of the current titles happening at Marvel and DC, the single issue books and their structures are constantly looking inwards to an already captive audience. Very few of them are constructed in such a way that new readers are coming in. That is a big problem - one that I’ll be talking about more in depth in the next couple of weeks.
For now, I want to focus on the last part of Allison’s quote, where he asks what a monthly comic looks like right now. It would stand to reason, that it would look a great deal like The Great British Bump-Off
THE PITCH | Set in the midst of a Great British Bake-Off style program, Bump-Off doesn’t waste time laying down the concept. 12 people are part of this contest. 1 has been killed. We’ve got ourselves an Agatha Christie style mystery with a lot of new characters.
For many, laying down the concept and introducing something like 16 named characters seems like a lot, but the creative team does it with ease. Allison has their voices and personalities mapped out, and Sarin builds alongside with incredible body language for each. The premise itself also lands and moves forward, giving the reader everything they might want to know in the first issue.
What’s more, Allison proves some “shared universe writing chops” with the presence of main character Shauna Wickle, who has been a part of many off Allison’s tales in the past. You wouldn’t know that though, as the character arrives and functions without baggage, exactly who she’s been elsewhere, but completely in place within this story.
What remains is proof of concept. An intriguing murder mystery, set somewhat unwittingly in a larger world that requires none of the weight of the past to provide its meaning. It is funny, and intriguing, and does so much with so little space. It’s definitely a book to check out this week.
That’s going to do it for today. Join me on Friday when we dig into Brian Hibbs’ yearly BookScan column, where we’ll find more proof that Marvel and DC are struggling in their own market.
Talk soon.