A New Era in Comics Publishing: A Roundtable

Beginning in the late 1990s, a certain feeling of dread was felt by many smart comics folk. Comics sales had plummeted and the amount of quality material seemed at a new low. Marvel Comics was in bankruptcy; DC's bestselling comics titles sold barely 75,000 copies; and many people questioned whether there would still be a comic book business in the next few years.

What happened over the next few years was very different. Cartoonists and comic book writers like Chris Ware, Neil Gaiman and Marjane Satrapi provided new and imaginative work and benefited from heavy mainstream media coverage. It was no longer weird to see coverage of comics and graphic novels in the New York Times or the Los Angeles Times. A certain "mainstreaming"of comics came about as more diverse work was being published. With sales of and interest in comics riding high, PWCW decided to bring together a number of key professionals and executives in the comics field to talk about a this new era in comics publishing. The discussion was conducted by email.

The participants: Bob Wayne, v-p, sales for DC Comics; Chris Oarr, sales account manager of ADV, one of the top distributor/producers of anime and manga; Gerry Donaghy, graphic novels buyer at Powell's Books in Portland, Ore.; Chris Butcher, manager, The Beguiling, a respected comics shop in Toronto, Ont.; Mark Siegel, editorial director, First Second, Henry Holt/Roaring Brook's graphic novel imprint; and Eric Reynolds, director of publicity, Fantagraphics Books.

PW Comics Week: How has the media representation of comics—in book review sections and in articles reporting on the "new" sophistication of story lines—attracted new customers?

Bob Wayne: Coverage of comics reminds the uninitiated that comics exist. It intrigues potential new converts, attracts lapsed readers and reaffirms our enthusiasts.

Chris Oarr: Media attention to comics and graphic novels has helped broaden their readership, as has better merchandising at retail. Setting aside teens and the manga phenomenon, I've always suspected that more of our growth has come from recapturing lapsed comics readers than creating new ones. To the extent that magazine articles, book reviews and movie adaptations validate comic book reading, I think media attention has brought many back into the fold.

Gerry Donaghy: I think that people who wouldn't typically buy them are picking up the titles that are getting literary cachet from outlets like the New York Times (Persepolis, Maus, Blankets), but by the same token, it's not making comics fans out them. People aren't coming in to buy In the Shadow of No Towers by Spiegelman and grabbing Watchmen on their way out. At least not to my knowledge. There are exceptions to everything, I guess.

There was a story in the the New York Times ("Straight (and Not) Out of the Comics," May 28) the other day about how the major comics publishers are attempting to diversify their offerings by (among other devices) making gay characters and embracing ethnic diversity. Independent comics like Love and Rockets have been doing this for over 20 years. I don't think making Batwoman a lesbian is going to create new readers for the comic. People who don't normally read superhero comics, straight or gay, aren't going to suddenly gravitate to them.

I think what has created more customers for us is that foreign influences, manga and anime, have finally reached a tipping point. You have folks my age (I'm 38), who grew up watching everything from Ultraman to Speed Racer and playing video games, who now have kids of our own. These are the kids who are coming in and buying manga—influenced by the Cartoon Network, and the ability to rent/buy anime on a level that was only dreamed of 20 years ago, but also influenced by the experiences of their parents. My parents thought comics were silly and useless; these parents do not.

Chris Butcher: Here at The Beguiling, we've seen the effect of the increased profile and media coverage of manga first-hand. We've been very fortunate in Canada to have national and influential newspapers like the Globe and Mail and the National Post provide extremely positive coverage of graphic novels. We as a store have also received extremely positive coverage in these venues, creating a link in the minds of the readership. As such, any time a graphic novel is covered in the Globe's Sunday Review section (or in the Sunday New York Times, for that matter), people are in the store Sunday afternoon asking if we have it.

A particularly good example would be last summer, when the Globe and Mailran an extensive preview of Seth's Wimbledon Green; we did fantastically well with that graphic novel as a result.

Mark Siegel: Reviewers have mostly moved beyond the novelty of the format and are now talking about themes, about content, about authors and artists. Trade journals, mainstream media and, of course smart critical magazines like the Comics Journal and a zillion blogs focus on the substance of the books, just like any other medium.

Imagine if every time a movie was reviewed, the first two paragraphs were about the illusion of movement produced by the 24-frames-per-second optical process. It would make movies out to be just for photographic geeks. So as far as attracting new readers, I think the media is doing that by emphasizing the life of a girl growing up in Iran, or an American woman moving to Mexico, or a cat who wants to become Jewish, or a memoir in which the author goes missing in the first chapter, or a boy caught up in the Rwandan genocide. Isn't that far more compelling than talking about panels and bubbles, which speaks only to a few of us comics nuts?

Eric Reynolds: That's tough to quantify, but it's undoubtedly opened up the readership of graphic novels to a much wider audience in terms of age, gender, tastes, etc.

PWCW: Have creators gained more creative freedom and rewards because of this turn toward the book publishing world?

Wayne: The growth of the book format for comics is an important step in the evolution of comics both as a storytelling medium and as a business. The book format is another way for creators to reach potential readers. Creativity has always been part of comics. There's an explosion of interest from creators wanting to tell stories via the medium of comics. For many, comics used to be a way station for creators before moving on to other fields, many of them seen as more lucrative. Potential financial rewards have increased for creators, which means that instead of comics as a way station, we're now a creative destination.

Oarr: I don't think that comics creators have actually gained more freedom because the book trade has embraced graphic novels. On the contrary, I think that the book trade has come to embrace graphic novels because of their creative breadth. The so-called direct market of comic book shops was a great creative incubator during the '80s and '90s, in which many of today's leading lights honed their craft. It was a publishing environment that, for all its faults, featured relatively low barriers to entry and allows a multitude of voices. Comics got good when no one was looking. Eventually booksellers and librarians and journalists discovered them. Certainly that's enhanced the rewards available to comics creators.

Donaghy: I think that creators are gaining more freedom and creative rewards in general mainly because experience has taught them to be smarter. We're a long way from creators like Jack Kirby getting screwed out of their rights. It's impossible to think of a high-profile comics writer or artist allowing themselves to get into a situation like that with either a book publisher or a comics publisher. Now and again, people who were stuck with deals that made them unhappy are popping up (Alan Moore is a recurring example), but examples like this are getting fewer and farther between.

That being said, I think that with the book publishing world sniffing around the comics world looking for the next big thing to sell, this threatens to take quality product from the very outlets that helped to cultivate them in the first place—the independent comics publishers. If Pantheon is poaching Craig Thompson from Top Shelf, it makes it that much harder for Top Shelf to find the next Craig Thompson.

Also, as more product flows toward the retail book world, I sometimes worry about possible dilution of ideas and content as these publishers compete for shelf space in trade book stores and big-box retailers that happen to sell books (e.g., Wal-Mart & Costco). If book bestseller lists represent other non-literary trends (e.g., Rachael Ray has a popular cooking show on TV, and her cookbooks sell really well), how far away can comics be from emulating these success (say, a Rachael Ray comic book) if they're directed by New York publishers? I doubt Pantheon would do something like that, but I wouldn't be surprised if Judith Regan did.

This also engenders another issue: the New York book publishing world is never, ever going to take the chances that the indie presses are. If you look at where all the legal challenges are happening to comics, it's happening to independent publishers and independent retailers. If a publisher is worried about being able to sell to Wal-Mart or Target, they're going to bypass anything that even smacks of risk. I've just seen one of the most beautiful works of art that I've ever laid eyes on (Lost Girls by Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie) that Pantheon wouldn't touch with a 20-foot pole held by 20 lawyers. The people with the most to lose, in this case Top Shelf, are the ones taking the biggest risks.

Butcher: The creators I know have definitely gained a lot of freedom and the potential for greater rewards, but freedom cuts both ways. The book market and the comic market have historically operated very differently. Many creators I know have had to get agents and lawyers because of the stakes involved in the contracts they're being offered; their increased range of choices can end up costing them money (or rights!) on the bottom line. That said, the state of creator rights and contracts in general (even on ostensibly creator-owned graphic novels) is just abysmal in the comic industry. I cannot stress this enough: comics publishers' contracts tend to be absolutely disgusting, demanding film and other media rights, instituting earnings caps, and more, all for a shot at being published. Worse still, the advances are either effectively or actually non-existent, something you rarely see in the book publishing world.

Siegel: Some might say that [comics artists have] had creative freedom to make their own photocopied and stapled mini-comics. But for a career, the creative freedom was limited for a long time to narrow parameters, such as the super-hero model of storytelling. Today, with the advent of an author-driven market—as opposed to series-driven or merchandising-driven market—creators have a platform and potential to reach a great audience by developing their own personal vision, their unique voice. What will be rewarded is skill, merit, sincerity, insight, heart. Just like novelists or screenwriters. But seriously, there's a freedom I don't hear about often, but which I consider crucial in an author's development: that of finding your audience.

Reynolds: Yes, although really, artists gained much more creative freedom and rewards throughout the 1980s and 1990s. More recently, the biggest difference is probably financial more than a matter of creators' rights.

PWCW: How does the work of creators and cartoonists who have started since this new visibility for comics began, differ from creators who worked in previous decades?

Wayne: New creators benefit from the change in the availability of comics. For the first 50 years or more, comics were primarily disposable, periodical purchases. At best they were hoarded, traded and collected. (Thankfully, my mother didn't throw my comics out.) With the growth of the book format, new creators (and new readers) now have ready access to much of the best comics material ever published.

Oarr: I can't really comment on the cartoonists who have come into the business in this new era. With few exceptions (Satrapi), today's new cartoonists are standing rather squarely on the shoulders of their predecessors.

Donaghy: I think you have two schools of thought. You have one, where creators are utterly savvy about every possible ancillary revenue stream (film adaptations, TV shows, toys etc.) and they are working every angle they can. And you have a second, which is just as cognizant of these facts, but they are also thinking outside of the box and looking to own their creations or putting them online for free [to attract new readers]. They know, just like the comics syndicators, that people will read Peanuts everyday in their paper for free and still buy bound volumes of the strip. [They know that] they can lose money in the short term, but make up for it by selling the publication rights. The Web comic/print comic Megatokyo is an awesome example. The online comic is a perfect form of viral marketing for not only the books, but for all of the Megatokyo accoutrements sold on the site.

Butcher: I think the biggest difference between the industry of today and the industry of even 10 years ago is opportunity. Cartoonists (or graphic novelists if you prefer) have the opportunity to take advantage of the best deal, and in many cases to set their own terms, just like every other creator working in every other medium. Some cartoonists have been criticized for a lack of "loyalty" to the publishers that broke them in the industry. But where did "loyalty" get the last generation of cartoonists, particularly in those working in and around the corporate comics properties? I think that in many ways "loyalty" is a leash that certain publishers like to try and keep around the neck of creators. I've heard absolute horror stories about publisher behavior when better deals for creators have come along.

Siegel: In America, for a long time you were either part of the machine (some form of corporate creative control) or you were in the underground. And by underground I don't just mean R. Crumb, but also the 'softer' underground of the [broader] indie comics publishing scene, with outposts in Providence, Portland, San Francisco, for instance. Limited means, small audiences and some unavoidable neurosis from too little recognition for so much hard work all contributed to fashion the comics of previous decades. A small handful broke out to touch a wider public after a time, but now that has reached a critical mass.

Increasingly, readers and bookbuyers, librarians, reviewers will give the work a chance, and not dismiss it as juvenile or inferior by its nature. The medium itself has moved out from the long shadow of the 1950s censorship.

Reynolds: They probably have different expectations. The pool of publishers publishing art comics has expanded considerably in the last five years.

PWCW: How have titles published in the traditional serialized comic book form changed alongside the development of book format comics?

Wayne: To me, the biggest change is the awareness by creators that their serialized work may be collected into a book. A close second is the benefit that a serialized comic book series can receive from having a story collected into a book.

Oarr: The rise of the graphic novel collection as an endpoint for serialized comics did not create new forms of storytelling so much as encourage trends already in place. While it's true that many creators are conscious of the ultimate book collection even as they construct a comic series, the extended multi-issue story arcs that give a graphic novel its structure were already in fashion before graphic novels became ubiquitous. In fact this trend encouraged the rise of graphic novels in comic book shops—not the other way around.

Donaghy: I think the recent New York Times piece I mentioned earlier is a good example, but this metamorphosis has been going on for quite a while. It comes in cycles. [Comics writer] Dennis O'Neil turned the Green Lantern/Green Arrow comic and turned it into a vehicle to explore social issues in the '70s. And, later, this could be seen when DC decided to ditch the voluntary censorship of the Comic Books Code Authority in the 1980s with Alan Moore's Swamp Thing. They've continued the trend with their Vertigo line.

So, I guess they've always been keen to try new things. But I personally don't see any change in the monthly comics at large to reflect the development of comics as books. I think it's more that the book world has changed their own perception of comics and what they can say.

If comics publishers started to publish original graphic novels, rather then merely packaging issues of the monthlies, then you'd really see something. It's pretty well known that most comics publishers make their money not on the monthlies, but when they anthologize them. It's almost like the monthly comic is nothing more than marketing for the trade paperback anthology that is sure to follow. And if the monthly tanks, that gives good precedent to inform what to do with a trade paper edition. But if Marvel or DC ever found the balls to take a chance and publish a 100-300-page original publication, the way some indies do, that would be something to see.

Butcher: I think it's pretty obvious that corporate comics have begun to be paced for collection, rather than the previous paradigm of each! Issue! Is! Someone's! First! There are strengths and weaknesses there. You used to be able to sell any issue of any comic to more-or-less anyone, but they had to suffer through all of the characters talking in exposition for the first few pages of those issues. Most corporate comics have become tales intended for collection, rather than monthly reading. I can't think of a comic from Marvel or DC that is really intended to be read an issue at a time, save perhaps Infinite Crisis. Meanwhile, publishers like Adhouse Books and Fantagraphics (particularly through the international Ignatz line) seem to be reinventing the comic book. Stories that work in serialization as well as in eventual collection. There are very few people "waiting for the trade" of The Secret Voice or Tales Designed to Thrizzle, and for good reason: they're complete reading experiences.

Siegel: Serializing is an interesting problem today. How and where to do it? In the old comics format? Online? Grouped in magazines? The serial offers another kind of freedom, and the added value for authors of ongoing contact with their readers. Creators don't have to toil for a couple years on a project before it gets received. In the highly interactive age of the text message, the Weblog and Wikipedia, that seems a useful agency.

As for existing serial comics, they have exploded alongside everything else. The bar has been raised on the content written and drawn, and readers are more and more demanding. I just recently saw Sammy Harkham's Cricket from Drawn & Quarterly, and I can't wait to read the next chapter. Or Derek Kirk Kim's daily panels of Healing Hands on his www.lowbright.com Web site (complete book to come out from First Second, by the way!) and it's all highly inspiring. I think serializing is timelier and more in demand than ever—the question for me is how, when, with what?

Reynolds: We're definitely looking to do fewer serializations of graphic novels in the comic book format and aiming instead at just publishing solid reads in each format. Rather than serialize a graphic novel over four issues, I would much prefer to go straight to graphic novel. But we're also committed to doing comic books that make sense and function as great reads, issue to issue. I'm thinking of things like Tales Designed to Thrizzle, Angry Youth Comix, Runaway Comic and Love & Rockets.

PWCW: What have we lost, for good or for ill, as the comics business moves farther away from the magazine business and the direct market (aka comics shops) is no longer the only retail channel for comics?

Wayne: Comics have been moving away from a traditional magazine model in the U.S. for years, starting with the quick Golden Age [1930s to early 1950s] shift in dominance from multi-feature titles like Detective Comics and Action Comics to single-feature titles like Batman and Superman Comics have thrived by focusing primarily on single-feature titles, while some our closest relatives on the publishing family tree like the pulps have vanished or morphed into the remaining science fiction and mystery fiction digests. As we move away from our disposable roots, we move into additional formats and new methods of distribution.

Oarr: If I were to worry about anything, it's losing the creative incubator brought on by the direct market. The book trade has tent poles all across the creative spectrum—you'll have the occasional art comic hit, the superhero or movie tie-in—but on the whole it's a lot more homogeneous than the direct market. The book trade doesn't nurture new comic voices as a rule. It has much higher barriers to entry. It doesn't support comic books, a format that allows artists and publishers to experiment on the cheap.

Fortunately I don't have to worry about the comic shop's demise. They, too, are having their day in the sun, even while booksellers are reaping the rewards of embracing graphic novels.

Donaghy: I don't think the comics business has lost anything, at least not the publishers anyway. An increased playing field always makes things interesting. However, if there are losers to be found, it's the independent comic store. They've cultivated the audience for years, and now they risk losing it as all of the larger retailers want a piece. How can they compete if Barnes & Noble is getting exclusive paperback editions of Marvel Masterworks to sell for under $15, but the comic book store can only stock the hardcovers that retail for $35?

This also runs the risk of diluting content as publishers attempt to curry favor with the big box retailers (if Wal-Mart begins to account for more than half of DC's business, do you think they're going to continue with the lesbianization of Batwoman?).

But I think as the comics business mutates and embraces new technologies (imagine a CD-ROM with every issue of the X-Men in color, or being able to get panels delivered directly to your e-mail by subscription?), it will continue to thrive beyond its original archaic distribution.

Butcher: I think the biggest change that comics as a medium have to face now that more and more of them [are sold outside] outside of the confines of the direct market is that everyone has to be a little smarter. There's a deceptive ease to working with only one distributor on both the retail and production ends of the business, but that deception disappears as soon as anyone asks a question or, say, wants a book from say, Central Park Media [whose books are not carried by Diamond].

At The Beguiling we've never looked to Diamond to be our sole outlet for comics distribution; if we had the store probably wouldn't be around today. Any store that wants to stay a "Comics and Graphic Novels" retailer, rather than a "Corporate Superheroes Retailer" needs to be investigating every publisher and distributor out there. Likewise, publishers need to wake up and realize that putting all of your eggs into one basket is both foolhardy and actually limits access to your books on the whole. In short? There are hundreds of choices available to everyone participating in comics as a medium, and I think that the people who are going to succeed are the ones who will take advantage of those choices.

Siegel: A world gets lost every few years. Gone are the early days of Mad Magazine, or the heyday of classic comics. But nothing in nature stands still; it either regenerates or degenerates, withers or grows. Right now, the graphic novel has stepped up as a major vehicle for human expression, a valid literary form, a valid artform, as well as [producing] some of the most exciting, edgy entertainment. Food for the soul and great beach reading. How about that?

More than being just the next big publishing phenomenon to come along after Harry Potter—which it is—the graphic novel is also where the most exciting creative juice is right now.

The mainstream media is still a little behind on this one—it's not on the horizon anymore, it's here now and we're in it. There's a phenomenal inspiration sweeping into this form around the world. It makes sense that such a significant movement would summon new publishing models and new business strategies to keep up with its evolution. So, yes, some loss, but ahead, everything to gain.

Reynolds: Not much, as far as I'm concerned, although the nostalgic side of me definitely misses the comic book format, as it becomes more and more obsolete. Though there are perils to book distribution, periodical distribution is just as dicey if not more so (certainly as far as newsstand distribution goes, anyway). I like where we're at now.