|
STEVEN GRANT and the INTERNET FACTOR
In his usual in-depth and thought provoking manner, Steven Grant has written a fascinating essay on the role which the internet plays in the sales of comic books. The article can be seen heading this week's Permanent Damage column at Comic Book Resources' web site.Steven points to the enormous number of visitors frequenting the web sites of comics professionals - such as his own column, Warren Ellis and Mark Millar. The article is in response to Warren Ellis' estrangement, in his e-newsletter Bad Signal, at the effect which the closing of his forum had on the sales of his comics: I've got this guy telling me that the loss of WEF has made a difference to his ability to easily sell my work, but warrenellis.com gets four times the daily users WEF did. This is something of a puzzle to me. Grant makes the point that what the cyber-world lacks is the permanent, personal and physical engagement that the comics audience once had in the days when letter columns and fanzine publications bound together comics fandom: As I've mentioned before, this also affects comics in general to some extent. Companies used to create, as best they could, a sense of community in their audiences. Julie Schwartz emphasized letter pages as an exchange of ideas and made them exciting via art and script giveaways (before we all became aware of what a raw deal that was for the talent) for the best letters published. Stan Lee was a master at creating a sense of community, of conspiracy in Marvel Comics, via every gimmick from letter columns to No Prizes to the Merry Marvel Marching Society. I'm convinced comics companies made a huge, huge mistake in abandoning letter columns, ostensibly because the capacity of the Internet for commentary rendered them redundant - but posting comments on the Internet, where maybe a couple hundred people might read them in most instances, can't begin to measure up to the sense of achievement you got from having a letter published in a comic you like, of knowing someone connected to the comic read your comments and you might possibly have influenced the course of the book, of seeing your name in physical print and knowing most of the however many thousands of readers who purchased the book would also see it. Comics fandom in the '60s wouldn't have even started without letters pages. That was how readers separated by geography became aware of each other's existence and how they got the information that made communication possible.
In other words, what may now be missing, from Warren's online efforts and from comics in general, is a sense, however false, of audience involvement. It's true that other media don't really worry about generating that - they put often misplaced effort into trying to anticipate and manipulate their audiences instead, then dump out product on a take-it-or-leave-it basis and are usually baffled when the audiences they think they've so carefully molded the product to leave it - but comics have a special advantage in that regard. Our audiences are relatively small. We can generate a sense of involvement. We just don't anymore, most of the time. There's much more, as Steven touches on the convoluted direct marketing and speculation systems governing comics sales today and how they've basically contributed to the sad state of affairs in the industry, the lack of comics distribution into the popular newsstand market and the role which the big publishers have played in the demise of the comic book form, content with their financial conquests in the licensing and marketing ventures spawned in Hollywood. Issues put forth with much rigor, here at Flaming Sword. Have a look, this is insightful comics commentary at its very best!
Permalink Posted: 11:13 AM EST
|
