Re: Is Wal-Mart DC's Salvation?
- From: Kurt Busiek <kurtbusiek@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 22:17:31 -0800
On 2005-11-21 21:10:41 -0800, "KalElFan" <KalElFan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> said:
"Kurt Busiek" <kurtbusiek@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:2005111920201564440%kurtbusiek@xxxxxxxxxxxx
On 2005-11-19 18:58:53 -0800, "KalElFan" <KalElFan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> said:
[some snippage]
The idea here is a NEW line of comics, the Classic series, that would have relatively self-contained stories and be suitable for kids. Write them and draw them in the Silver Age style, sell them in volume to Wal-Mart and on through to a genuinely new market.
That would be a fairly expensive proposition, especially as compared with what they do now, which is to allow Wal-Mart to carry whatever part of their line Wal-Mart wants to.
Stipulating that Wal-Mart does carry whatever they want now, it isn't much.
It may be rather more than you think. Through their website, you can get stuff published by publishers as small as About Comics.
A selection of a few Superman and Batman perhaps, not easy to find (I have seen the Archie and Disney type stuff in the checkout as Jason Michael mentioned). The proposal here was for the new Classic line, 12 comics a month, so 3 a week and maybe priced at $2 US each. Each week, 2 of those would be Superman or Batman related and one a second hero (Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern or the DC Showcase featuring Aquaman initially).
I understand what the proposal is. I suspect that your primary interest in it is that you'd like to see comics like that coming out, not that it's an economically well-founded plan.
Were I trying to reach out with comics for kids, the last thing I'd do is put them in a periodical format designed for a fading outlet network (newsstands) which competes unfavorably with other magazines, and whose sales have been declining for decades outside the collector market.
I'd do self-contained packages more like Little Golden Books, in very sturdy covers but with comics content. I wouldn't launch anything at 12 books a month, monthly -- that's a huge money sink. I wouldn't try to build it on Wal-Mart, either, not without knowing a heck of a lot more about book and magazine buying patterns among their customers.
Back in 1996 Wal-Mart hadn't even entered Canada yet, and I don't think they were anywhere near as dominant a retail presence as they are now. IF a proposal was made to them by DC for this new line, it would be qualitatively much different than saying "buy whatever you want from our current line". There'd be a partnership like arrangement with advertising and a big launch, right around the time of the movie, of 12 #1s, all of which would also be available through comic shops and DC direct.
The advertising and big launch are going to add to the costs, of course. It's also too late to get anything that big going in time to launch by June, and there's still no evidence that they'd get the kind of sales (or even sampling) you envision.
Wal-Mart likes profit. A huge promotion around a small-margin item isn't going to make them see dollar signs.
What it does is bake a bigger pie. The parents of 6-12 year-olds pick up two or three books a week, cheap compared to Nintendo cartridges, and their kids read.
Why? What suggests that parents of 6-12 year olds want to buy superhero comic books for their children?
Expensive? Well, yes in the sense that planning, producing and printing up perhaps an average of 200,000 copies apiece of the 12 #1s is expensive.
No, it's much more than that, since if you don't have the #2s and #3s ready to go, you'll stumble out of the gate. You're going to need overhead -- editors and such for those dozen books -- scripts probably for at least six months in, pencils for four or five months, and on down the line. All multiplied by 12, of course.
But the idea is those are sold obviously, and maybe there are reprints and the #1s end up selling double or triple that.
Why are they obviously sold? Wal-Mart's going to want them returnable -- they're not just going to commit to 600,000 comics a week without a safety net.
Maybe it can't be done, but Wal-Mart has 5,000 stores in 10 countries according to their web site, which I just quickly checked. 20 of each title per store and you've got a top seller. Does anyone doubt that the well-publicized launch would get way more than that?
Yes. I strongly doubt it.
20 of each title per store is only 50% sell-through, as well, so Wal-Mart would slash orders, even if you got that kind of sales. And that "well-publicized launch" costs money, which brings profits down.
After that it depends on the product being good enough to sustain of course, but with all that time saved not plotting out 12-month arcs, and tying in with the Annual Events, and worrying what happened to character A in title C issue 29, any hotshot comic writer interested ought to be able to knock off these stories no problem. One new story per issue, and maybe one classic reprint.
Any plan that depends of people just "knocking out" the material, like what Edmond Hamilton and Otto Binder did was easy, is wishful thinking -- 12-month arcs are actually easier than new story concepts every issue. And it's further wishful thinking to simply assume print runs and marketing and interest level without data to support them.
I think there are ways to reach out to young readers with comics material designed for them, but trying to recreate a decades-old package and expecting it to have the kind of sales success comics had 35 years ago -- and non-returnably, at that -- is just castles in the air.
It's not enough to think it'd be neat and that maybe it could work -- there's got to be some indication that it would. From what I've seen, Wal-Mart's not that interested in flimsy packages that become unsalably damaged easily during browsing, and have to move through quickly in huge numbers, because there's another huge quantity in the pipeline behind them. Wal-Mart has to distribute to those 5,000 stores, after all, and that doesn't happen overnight either. Shipping schedules are flexible when cases of pickles are being replaced with identical cases of pickles, but periodicals are a different game -- they can't sit around and turn every few weeks, they have to sell instantly, because there's two more Superman and Batman projects oming in in quantity in the next seven days.
The end picture, of families buying wholesome comics, is a lovely one, but you've papered over massive economic difficulties to paint it.
And if Wal-Mart thought they could sell large numbers of kid-aimed comics, they'd test it out with TEEN TITANS GO and SCOOBY-DOO and other already-existing books that don't require millions in specialty work and promotion, and which are supported by already-popular TV shows. If they can't sell 20 a week of those in all their stores, why would they be able to support 40 a week of titles that don't have their own TV shows at present?
kdb -- Read an ASTRO CITY story for FREE, at: http://www.dccomics.com/features/astro/ ;
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