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The Journey, Man 02 – Make Mine Marvel
Guest columnist Wayne Rée shares his discovery of comic books, from his start as a super-hero fan to his evolution into a believer of the power of the art form of comics.
Tattoo of Spider-Man based on artwork by Steve Ditko
It’s pretty safe to say by now that everyone, their grandmothers, and their grandmothers’ cats (all of whom, I assure you, are named Mr. Muffins) have watched and love The Avengers. Personally, I find that so cool. As a lifelong Marvel guy, it’s nice that more people are starting to see why I adore this universe of characters so much.
And, really, if we’re going to go through my journey as a comic fan, there’s no better place to start than with my love for this pantheon of colorfully garbed heroes. Well, two of these colorfully garbed heroes in particular actually, for two pretty distinct reasons.
Get by with a little help from my webs
I was introduced to Marvel — and as I mentioned before, to the comic medium itself — through one Peter Benjamin Parker, better known as The Amazing Spider-Man. Since picking up that aforementioned hardcover, I’ve followed the webhead’s adventures—sporadically at first, but with increasing regularity—for the past 24 years. (First one of you to make a crack about my age gets decked, I swear.)
A lot of people say that the appeal of Spider-Man is that, under that mask, he’s a regular guy with regular problems. I agree—but I’d take it a step further. Pete loves the Beastie Boys (respect to Adam Yauch). Dollars to doughnuts, he’s also a sci-fi, Monty Python, and Looney Tunes nerd. And, yeah, sometimes he’d rather be alone, but at the end of the day, he’s still someone you can count on.
I’m a Spidey fan, not because he faces the same crap as me, but because, when all that crap’s done, there’s no one I’d love to hang out with more than ol’ Peter Parker. I can’t tell you how often I’ve felt utterly miserable after a terrible day’s work, only to be cheered up by the latest issue of The Amazing Spider-Man.
Pete’s been through a lot over those 24 years, but the one thing that’s never changed is that he’s not just a fictional character to me; as corny as this sounds, he’s a friend. (First one of you to crack wise gets decked too.)
The real men without fear
The other guy who reaffirmed me as a Marvel fan was a blind lawyer named Matt Murdock, who spends his night jumping around Hell’s Kitchen’s rooftops as the costumed crusader Daredevil.
Well, OK… that’s not entirely accurate. It was more than just the character of Daredevil, you see. Unlike Spider-Man, I wasn’t initially drawn into the charming Mr. Murdock’s world because he felt like a friend. I actually started picking up the series when writer-director Kevin Smith took over the creative reigns with artists Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti.
Now, this was pretty new to me at the time. I’d been reading comics for about ten years and I’d never thought of this as a medium driven not just by these iconic heroes, but by the people behind them as well.
Since then, almost all of the different creative teams who’ve worked on Daredevil — from Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev to Mark Waid and his rotating roster of artistic cohorts — have reinforced and nurtured that subtle shift in my thinking: that the creators are just as powerful as these creations.
Face front, true believer!
A lot of snooty types tend to scoff at Marvel and mainstream superhero fare in general. They say that the genre doesn’t stack up against other, supposed literary comic works. I, however, respectfully disagree. (Actually, I’d be slightly less respectful, but Corey asked me not to be such a potty mouth. Count yourselves lucky, snooty types.)
Marvel Comics have given me characters that continue to remain very dear to my heart and have also inadvertently imparted upon me a more enlightened mentality about creators that’s led me to an even greater world beyond the capes-and-tights set.
Wayne Rée’s been writing professionally for about ten years. He’s worked in everything from advertising to publishing, and was even part of the team that created Singapore’s very first tattoo magazine. He dabbles in screenwriting and photography, and travels way too much. And, yes, that is a Steve Ditko-illustrated Spider-Man cover tattooed on his right forearm.
Digital Comics Update: Doing Great in Some Non-Specific Way
Justice League #1 - Record-setting sales for DC's digital comics
While still a fraction of print sales, digital comics continue to grow. (Digital comics being comic books you read on the web and mobile devices like the iPad and Android phones.) Great news, right? I’m a big believer in digital comics. But it’s not so easy to know exactly how much they’re growing or whether everyone’s just really excited about a lot of unsubstantiated press release hype.
Within a week of each other, the largest comic book publishers in North America both claimed that sales of one of their digital comics surpassed their own records for digital sales. In both instances, the record-setting digital comic was released on the same day as its print counterpart was released in comic book stores. DC Comics announced in this interview with Salon the good sales news for Justice League #1 by Geoff Johns and Jim Lee, the launch title for their ambitious and highly publicized New 52 initiative.
Jim Lee: [B]ased on recent numbers, certainly Justice League No. 1 has surpassed the recent highs in comics sales. [...] It’s also setting records digitally. I can’t give numbers, but on the first day it set a record for us.
Salon: Once you compared the volume of DC’s digital comics sales to dental floss. Is it up to dental tape now?
Jim Lee: It’s too early to say.
Marvel Comics later issued a press release for their announcement regarding Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #1 by Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli, where the webbed adventures begin for the half-black/half-Latino Miles Morales.
The trick? Neither publisher actually revealed any concrete sales data.
This has caused a bit of consternation among comics industry watchers, who are trying to understand the actual strength of digital comics and sales of comics in general. As The Comics Reporter‘s Tom Spurgeon wonderfully puts it, sales figures are usually only hinted at or used for hype by publishers like DC and Marvel, resulting in the “I have a girlfriend in Canada” of sales analysis.
Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #1 - recording-setting sales for Marvel's digital comics
Looking outside of comics, most entertainment companies don’t share honest sales numbers because they consider that proprietary information, but those other industries have something comics doesn’t have – a third party tracking sales through reasonably objective means. Put bluntly, comics needs a Nielsen. The best we have are the sales estimates put together by ICv2, John Jackson Miller’s The Comics Chronicles, and a few others. These are best guess estimates based off charts provided by the largest distributor of comic books, Diamond Comics. But they’re only counting comic book stores in North America. There’s little to no coverage of book stores, no coverage of subscriptions, no sales to libraries and schools, nothing from the UK and other countries, no newsstand sales (meager but still out there), no sales from other outlets like grocery stores. To be sure, North American comic book stores are the dominant sales channel for print comic books. But it’s not the entire picture. What’s more, the sales estimates are determined by using Diamond’s odd index numbering system constructed around everything’s relative sales to that month’s issue of Batman. So if you figure out the sales of Batman in any given month, you can figure out the sales of everything else in that same month. Why Batman of all things? It’s mostly arbitrary but its sales have been historically pretty stable due to the character’s popularity and longevity of the series. On top of all that, the numbers only reflect what comic book stores are ordering. We have almost no idea about sell-through to actual paying customers beyond anecdotal reporting and the assumption that most stores are ordering month-to-month close to what they think they can sell. Needless to say, the accuracy of these estimates has been disputed and called into question. Some say it gives a fairly reasonable picture and is better than nothing, which is true. But numerous comic book creators have gone on record to say that the estimates are wrong when compared to their royalty vouchers and other internal accounting statements.
So we’ve got an entire industry more or less groping in the dark trying to feel out the shape and size of their own business. But it’s the best we’ve got, so numbers are put under the microscope. At least there’s something for print comics. Digital comics have vague statements of modest to booming success. ICv2 estimated earlier this summer that digital comics sales are generating between $6 to $18 million a year, with sales doubling from 2009 to 2010. Archie Comics boasted nearly 2 million downloads back in January. ComiXology, the undisputed largest digital comics provider, trumpeted surpassing 1 million downloads at the end of 2010, and their main Comics app was recently the second grossing iPad app, outselling the popular app for the Angry Birds game. IDW Publishing announced over 1 million downloads of their various digital comics apps back in April. Plenty of similar announcements have been made. It’s great news because it confirms that there are a lot of people interested in comic books. But how many of those downloads generated money. It’s free to download almost all digital comics apps, and there are plenty of free comic books available to download within each app. How many of those millions are paying?
What we do know is that digital comics is one of the biggest growth sectors for comics. The independent comics publisher SLG Publishing recently announced they were switching to digital first distribution. The transition will see the end of print comic books from the publisher. Issues will instead be released only as digital comic books that will eventually be collected and released for the first time in the physical world as print graphic novels. While several publishers have abandoned the single issue comic book format to strictly graphic novels, this is the first significant comics publisher to transition their serialized stories to the digital space. SLG was among the first publishers to embrace digital. They are one of the few that allow full ownership of their digital comics through their Eyemelt store, which sells .pdf, .ePub and .cbz that can be used anywhere. (ComiXology and other digital comics providers are technically leasing you the right to view images of comics files, which can be and have been taken away or locked.) SLG comics are also available on iBooks, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, ComiXology, iVerse’s Comics+, Graphicly, and Panelfly.
According to SLG publisher Dan Vado, much of the company’s marketing has not been focused on digital, so their sales there have been promising but not exceptional. In fact, in a surprising break from the above trend, Vado was willing to make public some of the company’s digital comics sales figures.
The best selling downloadable comic we have had is The Griffin #2 at around 200. This is like a 20 year old comic I did for DC Comics.
Most of the other books have struggled to get to triple digits.
How does that one digital comic stack up against the digital sales of Justice League #1 and Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #1? I’d like to believe there’s a significant difference but who can tell? For whatever it’s worth, Justice League #1 has 318 reviews on ComiXology, while Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #1 only has 58, at the time I’m writing this. Not everyone that buys and reads a digital comic will submit a review of whether it was a 5-star comic but that seems like a bare minimum at least. Except that anyone can leave a review whether they’ve read the comic or not, as long as they’ve logged in.
As The Beat’s Heidi MacDonald points out in the above link, SLG’s most popular and well known property is probably Johnny the Homicidal Maniac by Jhonen Vasquez and that will be released digitally next year. Vado expects that to be their top digital seller very quickly, especially since they will have ramped up their marketing efforts focused on new readers instead of readers that already own the print version. If Vado continues to be as transparent, SLG could be a very interesting case study of a publisher transitioning to digital. And in the process, he could give us a better idea of the actual strength and success of digital.
Marvel Comics and the Elusive Minority Demographic
Miles Morales is Spider-Man (art by Sara Pichelli)
While DC Comics is working through a gender controversy, Marvel Comics has taken a step forward in representing racial minorities in their super-hero comic books. On Tuesday it was announced in USA Today that Spider-Man would now be a half-black, half-Hispanic teen named Miles Morales (right).
The story is not being told in Marvel’s flagship Amazing Spider-Man (where Peter Parker is still swinging through New York City, white as ever), but instead in Ultimate Comics Spider-Man, which starts with a new issue #1 by writer Brian Michael Bendis and artist Sara Pichelli (yes DC, a woman!) in September. The Ultimate Comics imprint is set in a younger alternate universe, apart from the bulk of Marvel’s comics. Since the licensability of Marvel’s big characters, which date back to the 1960s and ’70s (and some to 1939), is dutifully protected in Marvel’s main line of comics, the Ultimate Universe allows creators just a bit more leeway. This is easily the best example of that leeway, and could be a refreshing signal of things to come for that imprint.
The first appearance of Miles Morales as Spider-Man is in the just-released Ultimate Comics Fallout #4, which itself spun out of the recent “Death of Spider-Man” story.
Bendis told USA Today, “Even though there’s some amazing African-American and minority characters bouncing around in all the superhero universes, it’s still crazy lopsided.”
He’s right, but this helps. Of course there have been plenty of foolish reactions, from anonymous internet posters trying not to sound too racist to Glenn Beck‘s weird conspiracy theory. Fortunately, cooler heads prevail, and have been celebrating what was unthinkable even five years ago. Why unthinkable? Because comic books with black leads have historically been a tough sell. The Black Panther, comics’ first headlining black hero, has had intermittent series since his debut in 1966. Todd McFarlane’s Spawn is the only comic book series to star a black or African-American in the starring role to last so long (although Al Simmons was replaced with the white Jim Downing last year). Heidi MacDonald at The Beat explores this issue and more in this well-written piece.
