ESSAY: THE ULTIMATE INSULT TO 'ULTIMATE MARVEL'
BY PAUL T. RIDDELL

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Update for the Unwary: Three weeks ago, this Essay started discussing the merits of comic magazines. The idea was that standard-sized magazines that just happen to contain sequential art already have a long-running tradition in both the US and the rest of the world (although more stunted in the US, thereby proving that the rest of the planet is more civilized), and the only thing keeping comics magazines from being a success lay with the subpar distribution system inherent in the magazine industry. We start the last part of the trilogy, already in progress.

Back in November, Marvel Enterprises (comprised of the wreckage that was the Ron Perelman kamikaze vehicle Marvel Entertainment Group) announced something different. Marvel had prior experience with standard format sequential art magazines: admittedly, its last, Epic, died in 1985, but this wasn't terra incognita. Ultimate Marvel, though, was different: in an effort to get more exposure for the new Ultimate Marvel line of comics, the Ultimate Marvel magazine was to contain segments of the comics, complete with explanations of what had happened in the previous issue. Instead of focusing on one comic, say Ultimate X-Men, the Ultimate Marvel magazine contained serials from several of them, all in one package. Best of all, Ultimate Marvel was intended to be sold through standard newsstand distribution systems, so potential customers didn't have to find a comic shop to read the new lineup.

This was intriguing, and not because I'm a huge fan of superhero comics. With the ongoing debate as to whether the current direct market for comic distribution is a dead end for the medium, anything that either tried a whole new direction or recycled a neglected concept was welcome news. The magazine format could have saved ensemble comics such as Dark Horse's incredible Instant Piano from 1995: comic shop denizens didn't like it because it didn't have superheroes (the first issue featured the first US appearance of Evan Dorkin's Eltingville Club, so that may have been an issue as well), and humor fans and others who would have appreciated the material weren't about to brave the local comic shop even if they had known about it, so it was dead coming and going. The magazine format also was something rarely used in the US, so the novelty value alone made it worth seeking out. Either way, it was a brave move from a company not generally known for initiative, so I spent weeks trying to find a copy.

That search took a little longer than I expected, seeing as how the first issue wasn't released until January. Even so, nobody seemed to have copies except for my local comic shop, and the crew at the shop sheepishly admitted that they only ordered copies for the people who specifically requested it. That made good business sense to the store, seeing as how the magazine was full of reprints of comics that its customers probably already had, but it didn't help my quest. I finally contacted Bender Helper Impact, the publicity company handling press relations on Ultimate Marvel, and asked about its availability, and they were kind enough to forward a press release and a copy of the third issue.

About the magazine. It's a beautiful piece of work. It combines good printing and good layout (which are not always found in the same comic), and it's a good hefty size, just perfect for a road trip or airplane flight. For those who appreciate or have any interest in Marvel superheroes, it's worth the money. Had this come out in 1993, it probably would remain one of the bestselling magazines of its type around, and it probably would have inspired efforts from DC, Dark Horse, and just about every other comic publisher wanting to get away from the comic shop ghetto. Unfortunately, since it premiered at the end of 2000, it's doomed.

Part of that logic lies with the distributor handling Ultimate Marvel. As mentioned in previous installments, most of the magazine business in the US is handled by Ingram Periodicals, and the little guys rarely get a chance to show their stuff these days. (This is part of the reason why nobody sees too many zines in the local Borders any more:

Fine Print Distribution, the largest zine distributor in the early Nineties, went bankrupt in 1997, and competitors such as Desert Moon are finding that Borders and Barnes & Noble just quit ordering zines when Fine Print died, rather than finding a new distributor.) This makes things really interesting for magazine buyers at times: when living in Oregon, I found myself frequenting a newsstand that did ninety percent of its business from hardcore porn (and I mean HARDCORE: stuff whose covers peeled the enamel off my teeth just by walking by) because it was the only place in town that carried Reptiles Monthly. Ultimate Marvel is distributed by Curtis Circulation Company, a company that I'd never heard of, but this shouldn't be held against them. Even so, if most of the stores I was frequenting were purely Ingram venues, then it helped explain why finding the magazine was such a pain.

(Dallas is already well-known for similar blacklists. Back in 1987, when Jolt Cola first came out, it was an incredibly popular soda that suddenly and without warning disappeared from store shelves all over the city. According to several sources, Jolt disappeared because Coca-Cola and PepsiCo had special deals with most of the soda distributors in town: "carry Jolt, and we'll make sure that you pay more for Coke Classic and Mountain Dew than your competitors" and the like. Buying Jolt in a typical convenience store in Dallas is impossible, but the shutout started up a very enthusiastic and profitable operation from teenagers and twentysomethings who drive up to Kansas City, load up on as many cases of Jolt in as many flavors as possible, and then drive back to Dallas and sell it at raves, parties, and science fiction conventions at a fair profit. I just love to see enterprising kids making money by smuggling stuff that's legal.)

Anyway, calling up Bender Helper Impact was very informative, and not just because BHI isn't stingy with its information. (Trust me on this: just try to pry information out of a movie publicity company unless that information is for an obvious bomb like Joe Dirt.) Ultimate Marvel has a current print run of 60,000, which isn't half-bad, and the rep I talked to said that it was out and freely available. I saw no reason to disbelieve him: he was going on sales reports that showed that it was selling well throughout the US, particularly in the Southeast. (This makes sense: when selling to teens, you have to remember "bang for the buck", and when a whole huge magazine like this costs about as much as two standard issues, they're getting lots of bang.) This made me redouble my efforts, and I started searching through newsstands and bookstores in the hopes that somebody had seen a recent copy. No dice.

The reason that Ultimate Marvel is doomed isn't just because the US magazine market has changed since 1992, when Borders and Barnes & Chernobyl took over. It's that even when the ordering is taken care of by the home office, the responsibility of actually setting out magazines usually falls on some 22-year-old pothead or Trekkie who, more often than not, will lie out his/her ass rather than take the time to see if a magazine is in. Just try this sometime: walk into one of these great emporia of literature and ask the person in charge of the magazines about a magazine that's either dead or nearly impossible to find in the States (my three big tests are Granta, Eidolon, and Mondo 2000), and only rarely will you get someone who (a) cares to know anything about the magazines being carried or (b) will expend any other effort than to say "It isn't in right now; it'll be in next week."

That "It'll be in next week", particularly with one magazine stand at the local Tower Records, was the mantra. (To give an idea of the sales skills of the people being hired by Tower, ostensibly the zinester's best friend in the States, I also asked the magazine guy if they had the newest copy of A Reader's Guide to the Underground Press, formerly Zine World. He mumbled the request to his boss, who told me "I'm sorry, but we don't carry Reader's Digest," and then gave me the phone number of "our magazine buyer" when I corrected him on the magazine's name and told me to talk to her after the weekend. Naturally, this person had quit some six months before. Double the amount of paraquat being sprayed on Maui's marijuana crop, and Tower might actually be a tolerable store again in six months once natural selection took effect.) If they even knew they were carrying Ultimate Marvel, they weren't telling, and even the magazine stores that carried Marvel and DC comics didn't have any idea of what I was talking about.

This situation can be fixed, but this'll cost money, and that's something Marvel can't afford to hemorrhage away right now. Getting top placement for a new title in a comic shop is pretty easy: most comic shop owners are routinely entertained by cardboard standups and posters, and handing out a few tschochkes will keep many owners giggling for weeks. (One shop I know in the Dallas area makes most of its money off freebies like this: why hang them up where they could get damaged when you can take those freebies and sell them at insane prices to some Cat Piss Man who just can't live without a Shi life-sized cutout?) The big bookstores and magazine stands, however, usually demand some kind of compensation for good placement, the same way supermarkets charge manufacturers for the eye-level spots in the Frozen Foods or Pasta aisle. Ever notice how most magazine and book chain stores have that big stack of Maxim or Rolling Stone right at the cash register? This isn't largesse from the store: either these are already big sellers that sell even better as impulse purchases (and impulse buys are critical for some magazines: care to name any other reason why anyone would pick up TV Guide or Entertainment Weekly if not held at gunpoint?), or, more frequently as of late, the publishers paid a pretty hefty chunk of chump change to get their magazines stacked by the register.

The other problem ties right back into that old bugaboo of comics: promotion. Outside of the comics community, nobody knows or cares that Ultimate Marvel exists, and the only promotion for the title has been internal. Even then, Marvel's been slacking: take a look at the official Marvel Website and try, the way I did, to find any information on Ultimate Marvel the magazine. The site has a big banner ad at the top screaming "HEY KIDS! Watch X-Men: Evolution, but the WB already does more promotion for that cartoon than Marvel could conceive of doing, and that space could be used to promote the magazine and the locales from where it could be purchased. And yes, Marvel's publicity team has done quite well in pitching new information to people in the comics community, and they should be commended for this. However, promoting Ultimate Marvel to the comics community kindasorta ignores that the purpose of the magazine was to introduce Marvel comic characters and situations to people outside of the comics community. The level of promotion for Ultimate Marvel blows the bejeezus out of promotion for most standard titles, but Ultimate Marvel is supposed to be trying to steal reader attention away from Talk and Newsweek (or at least MacAddict and Cinescape), not Powers or Green Lantern. We're talking about ads in Time or the occasional billboard: television advertising is way to much to hope for, but a couple of well-placed ads on the SCI FI Channel during Farscape or on ABC during The Drew Carey Show would do more in a minute than twenty years of product placements.

Now, if some farsighted person at Marvel back in 1991 had seen the possibilities of a standard magazine format and pushed it instead of action figures and Pogs and fast food restaurants, Ultimate Marvel would have been well-established by the time the comics speculation market fall down and go "Boom". Since it isn't dependent upon comic shops for its distribution, its sales may have dropped when the dolts who polybag Taco Bell Episode One wrappers stopped buying ten copies for their collections, but probably not much. A lot of the discussion on changing the form of the standard comic going on today never would happened, because participants in this debate could argue the success or failure of Ultimate Marvel on real data, not speculation. In the spirit of building dream castles and measuring for drapes, magazines like Ultimate Marvel might have helped buffer some of the real shocks of the speculation bust by giving a venue for new writers and artists who were just a little too unknown to be trusted with their own titles, as well as offer a comics venue for kids and adults who had no access to traditional comics shops. Shoulda, woulda, coulda.

The reality right now is that Ultimate Marvel is making all of the right moves, but will probably be held as a failure. This is a shame, and has nothing to do with the magazine's viability: it has to do with uncontrollable forces in the outside world that may kill it before it finds an audience. A lot of magazines right now are dying or limping along, and unless the powers at Marvel Enterprises can think of a good way to get magazines into the hands of potential customers and bypass the potheads and burnouts manning the magazine racks, Ultimate Marvel is going to be just another name on the casualty list. And that hurts the comics community at large as much as it hurts Marvel in particular.

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