Marketing Monday: A Simple Plan, Part I
Before I go any further with this, I want to establish the three basic principles that will represent the foundation for the Marketing Monday series of columns: 1) Publishing comics is a business, not a hobby; 2) Proftability within 3-5 years, if not sooner, is the goal. 3) The ultimate goal of marketing is to
Blogaround Challenge 2007 "Winners"
Well, damn! Who knew giving away FREE comics would be harder than selling gas-guzzling SUVs when gas prices are $2/gallon and rising?!?! I was corresponding with a fellow blogger recently, one who’s been around since the Usenet days, and she noted how the Comics Blog Boom of the past couple of years seems to have
Tidbits: Movies, Retail and Writing Aspirations
ITEM UPDATE: Wonder Woman Spec Script Review Latino Review’s El Mayimbe has a preview/review of the Wonder Woman spec script that seemingly helped get Joss Whedon axed from the movie. Overall, a very great read. The writers did their homework. As a comic book character origin movie – it is just as good as Batman
Graphic Poetry: The Poem as Comic Strip
Talk about when two worlds collide?!! (via The Comics Reporter) The Poem as Comic StripGraphic novelists let loose in our archive. Heightened language–one possible or partial definition of poetry–isn’t the first thing one associates with comics. Yet comic book artists take into account the way words appear on the page to a degree poets will
For Black History Month: Flashback
I have a love-hate relationship with Black History Month, simultaneously appreciating the thought behind it while despising its continued necessity. As such, I’m not planning to make a big deal about it ’round these parts; it’s a thing for less diverse sites and blogs to take note of, an opportunity to pay lip service to
Let’s Stop Blaming Retailers, and Start Blaming Publishers
This started out as a quick comment over at The Beat, in reference to someone blaming retailers for dim road ahead for the recently canceled The Boys series, post-DC, because retailers will order less copies from the eventual new publisher thanks to the likelihood of lower discounts than they receive from DC. It’s a knee-jerk
"Driving Bigger Wedges in to Society"
I was going to sit this one out but it really does fall right into my wheelhouse… The unflappable Loren Javier has been hosting a handful of interesting debates over the past couple of weeks at his One Diverse Comic Book Nation blog — which is showing promising signs of becoming exactly the kind of
On The Shelves: 1/31/07
Reading is fundamental. Don’t waste your time reading bad comics out of habit! My weekly look at select comic books being released Wednesday, 1/31/07. The full shipping list, as always, is available at ComicList. [NOTE: Not all of these titles will actually arrive in all stores. If your LCBS offers a pre-ordering service, be sure
Numbers Game: Shuffling Deck Chairs on the Titanic
Marc-Oliver Frisch’s always enlightening sales analysis is now posted at The Beat, looking at DC’s estimated numbers for December 2006, and buried towards the end is a very interesting breakdown of the Average Sales per Title of their three primary imprints. I’ve spotlighted the DCU as a point of interest: DC UNIVERSE 12/2003: 29,26312/2004: 36,92512/2005:
Marketing Monday: First Things First
Among the myriad challenges comics publishers of all sizes face, one of the biggest — and most frustrating, personally — is marketing. Way too many publishers believe that marketing is little more than sending out badly written press releases and snagging previews, reviews and interviews from Wizard, Newsarama, Comic Book Resources, et al. While some