ESSAY // 11.07.02

"NO" TO MARVEL'S TWO-BIT COMICS
By Robert Scott

Recently I had a thought, which may have made sense only due to my sleep deprivation but enough people agreed with me so I'd like to give it an audience beyond the membership of the Comic Book Industry Alliance Forum, where I originally suggested it.

OK, a retailer picking on Marvel is hardly a new thing, but I'm going to pick on Marvel here because a) it's easy, b) it's cathartic and c) their 25 cent comic book idea was the straw that broke the camel's back.

A few weeks ago, Marvel announced their plans to expand on 2002 campaigns like DC's Batman 10 Cent Adventure and 13 cent Gen 13 issues as well as their own 9 cent Fantastic Four issue by offering regular issues of some of their most popular and recognizable characters at a promotional 25¢ cover price throughout 2003. What on the surface seemed like a decent idea soon revealed itself to be just another short sighted and ineffective idea.

My disappointment over Marvel's plan is due to my belief that it is unlikely to do a damn thing to increase overall readership as a 25¢ comic isn't going to magically get civilians to charge into our stores. It's much more likely any increase it yields will likely be at the expense of another title and/or publisher. Moving a customer off one title and onto another doesn't help retailers, or even the publishers for that matter.

Here's a new proposition for Marvel and other publishers can take this under advisement as well.

Even at the scale these promo books are produced, I can't imagine actual production cost being much less than a quarter, so it appears to me that not only is Marvel giving up the ~$1 a book that they typically earn when a retailer buys a $2.25 cover price issue from them, but they'll be paying ~25¢ an issue to produce a book to sell to us for ~10cents. So lets use their first 25¢ title, Daredevil #41, as an example and do some math...

Currently DD sells 55,000 copies/mo and at ~$1/ea brings in $55,000/mo for Marvel. But wait, with a 25¢ issue that income not only disappears but if sales for the promo issue rise to say, 250k, Marvel must now also subsidize print costs for the 200k additional copies at a cost of ~$37,500 for a total liability of $92,500 for this one issue.

If they were to run 6 such programs during 2003-they announced there would be several 25 cent titles next year-we're talking about a liability to Marvel of over half a million dollars! Tough to cry poor, when you can walk away from that much money.

But the cost is not the most important part of the equation here, so let's forget about that for a moment and look at the reality of the comic market. The number of people reading comics is not growing and comic publishers are still by and large only advertising to current comic readers (through house ads, Wizard, Comic Buyer's Guide, Comic Shop News, etc.). So at best maybe Publisher A can steal a reader from Publisher B and Publisher A gets a sales boost but the retailer selling the book sees no gain in sales.

There is also the chance that Publisher A may merely move a reader from one of his titles to another of his titles, which helps nobody.

Marvel's 25¢ promo just furthers this mentality. Who is going to know that Daredevil is available for 25¢ and how would non-comic readers know that this is a "value"? They won't. The only people who will know are the people already reading comics. This is precisely why it's not the best use of Marvel's (or any publishers) dollars to attract new readers. If Marvel is content to just reach current readers they should just offer the stories to Wizard, as they did with Avengers a few months ago or add the story to some/all marvel comics that month as a centerfold insert and raise the cover price 25¢. It would cost them less money than printing an actual book for 25¢ retail, current fans will still buy the actual issue and probably so will those who like the inserted story enough to start reading it regularly.

Alternatively, they could run a 48 page book for the regular $2.25 price so that it is still an exceptional value AND still generates some revenue instead of losing money. It also doesn't require Diamond and retailers to do work without compensation, since the 15¢ we'd earn on the promos probably won't even cover our handling costs. They could also include a "bounce-back" coupon(s) to entice the customer to return for another purchase.

But this still fails to address one item. Which is how to reach beyond the current readership to attract readers who for whatever reason don't currently read comics. The best way to do this is to utilize a co-op advertising campaign. With this type of advertising, the manufacturer (or in this case publisher) subsidizes the advertising costs of the retailer. Most of the advertising you see, where an ad is pointing the consumer to buy their product from specific retailers, is co-op advertising. Marvel discontinued their co-op program years ago, leaving DC with the only established program, and has continued to cry poor whenever this has been brought up post-bankruptcy.

Now however, knowingly or not, Marvel in announcing this plan has shown that they can afford to lose over half of a million dollars in support of their 25¢ comics! What kind of concentrated co-op advertising to non-comic readers could Marvel do, if they committed that kind of money to a national new reader campaign?

Why not create a National co-op campaign that exposes the millions of readers who are not reading comics and pointing them to bookstores and comic stores?

This, to me, is a win-win for everyone, especially Marvel and truly creates an opportunity to expand the marketplace instead of just shifting the current shrinking customer base from one title to another or worse trying to sell more product to fewer bodies. So while I will applaud Marvel for making the effort, I implore them to please, look at the big picture and do what is best for everyone in the industry. With great power comes great responsibility!

Discuss this column on the SAVANT forum.