Scheduled to kick-off next week’s New York Comic Con, this year’s ICv2 Conference will examine the “The New Comics Customer.” The half-day conference, to be held on October 8 at the Javits Convention Center, will examine the forces behind a resurgent comics marketplace that is attracting new readers with an array of new content, new formats, and new convention venues and retail channels.
Organized by pop culture trade news site ICv2.com, and co-sponsored by Publishers Weekly, the conference will feature ICv2 CEO Milton Griepp’s annual White Paper on the comics marketplace, now estimated to be $870 million. The conference program offers a series of panels featuring publishing executives such as IDW CEO Ted Adams, Archie Comics CEO Jon Goldwater, ReedPop global v-p and New York Comic Con showrunner Lance Fensterman, Comixology CEO David Steinberger and many others.
This year the White Paper will focus on examining data on a new wave of comics fans looking for different kinds of comics—especially an increasing numbers of girls and women fans, often overlooked by the traditional comics periodical industry in the past. The conference will feature panels on the growing number of new comics conventions and festivals and the role of digital distribution and the bookstore channel in attracting a new breed of fan. The program will also examine new titles and an expanded range of genres in the comics market beyond superhero comics.
“I’ve been in this business for 40 years,” said Griepp during a phone interview, “but this is a unique time. We’re seeing a broadening of the comics audience, a broadening of the kinds of people and the kinds of comics they want to read. We’re going to look at the data, talk with the people in the business and look at the buying patterns publishers and retailers are seeing.”
Griepp pointed to several important trends. “A boom in new cons and festivals, the segmentation of the market into superhero, manga, indie, and euro comics.” Griepp said, “We’ll have panelists from new retailers like Bergen Street Comics in Brooklyn, new festival venues like the Brooklyn Book Festival. We’ll look closely at the growth of the graphic novel—the book format—how it’s expanding the market for nonsuperhero comics and especially the exploding numbers of comics for kids.”
The White Paper, usually focused on the size of the comics market over the last year, will be a bit different. “We’re going to look at new business models, try to identify the size of the kids’ comics market and look at nonsales data that identifies customer demographics and what they buy,” Griepp said.
The program will also offer a report from Rob Salkowitz, author of Comic-Con and the Business of Pop Culture, and a consultant for the online ticket service Eventbrite. Salkowitz will deliver a report commissioned by Eventbrite on pop culture conventions and the fans that attend.
The program will also look at mass market retailers like Walmat and Target, long viewed as retailing promised lands by many comics publishers. “Comics are getting to be a bigger phenomenon at mass market,” Griepp explained, noting IDW’s Micro Comic Fun Packs, bundles sold at Walmart that include multiple standalone issues of comics like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle or My Little Pony in addition to stickers, posters and collectibles.
“They’re impulse items placed at the front of the store,” Griepp said. “They’re getting comics into the hands of kids and IDW is reaching consumers they’ve never reached before.”
