In June 2013 we’ll see yet another in a long series of Superman related products with the release of Man of Steel.  Millions of dollars will be generated from ticket sales and merchandise and this got me to thinking about the Siegel and Shuster lawsuit which is still flailing around the legal community.  To accurately address this whole mess of litigation I’ll start at the beginning:

It’s interesting to note that the original concept for Superman was that of a bald genius villain (ring any bells?) for a fanzine called Science Fiction back in 1933.  This started a 6 year quest by Siegel and Shuster to find a publisher.  During this period Superman changed conceptually a few times…at one point he was a time travelling baby from the future.  It finally found a home as the lead story in Action Comics 1.  Now, it’s pretty clear that Superman was creator owned well before it ever saw publication.  But part of the deal for publishing this book was that DC bought the rights for 130 bucks.  That’s right…130 bucks…which even in 1938 money only came to about 2000 bucks.  I know, I know…here comes the public outcry of the big corporate machine taking advantage of a couple young creators.  But I want to address this in a couple of ways:

• No one else wanted this silly Superman character.  National Allied Publications (which became DC) was the only company willing to take a chance.
• Corporations take a chance whenever they buy the rights for anything.  DC purchased the rights for a ton of material that never saw daylight or profitability.  Lots of money gets wasted before something “sticks to the wall” and becomes a success to some degree.
• Something that very rarely gets addressed is that Siegel and Shuster also got a 10 year contract that paid $75,000 a year for 10 years.  In modern money that comes to a little over a million dollars a year.  Name me one artist or writer who gets paid anywhere close to that these days just for writing or drawing.

So, after the initial contract expires they raise a stink and try to get their rights back and it goes to trial and they lose in regards to Superman but they win and get the rights to Superboy.  DC then buys the rights for Superboy for $94,000 (about $900,000 in modern money).  Siegel and Shuster then acknowledge IN WRITING that DC owns the rights to Superman and “all other forms of reproduction and presentation, whether now in existence or that may hereafter be created.”

In 1973 Siegel and Shuster once again try to claim ownership of Superman and lost again in both district court and the court of appeals.  After all of this litigation it came out that they led a pauper-like existence so Warner Communications (the owners of DC) gave them a life time pension of 20 grand a year plus health care and stated that “there is no legal obligation, but [Warner Bros] feels there is moral obligation on our part.”

Not surprising is the fact that the Siegel family are again embroiled in litigation about the rights to Superman and Superboy.  Is this a blatant “money grab” or justified?  You be the judge.   As more and more comic book intellectual properties become blockbusters I really feel as though the lawsuits will come fast and furious because there’s a lot more money at stake.  Just Google Gary Friedrich and his ill advised lawsuit over Ghost Rider.  I have to think that when someone, in writing, sells the rights to one of their characters that they should probably just leave it alone and be content with the money they got up front.  But someone is prodding these people into filing lawsuit after lawsuit, many of which have no chance of success.  Hmmmm.   This leads me to one bit of certainty:  the only big winners are the lawyers who are involved in these cases.

p.s. Lawyers excluded from the Phantom Zone are Edward Thompson, Todd Page, Spencer Mckinness, and David Faughn.  All others may be tossed into the Phantom Zone.  To be eaten by space goats.  No salt.  Space goats hate salt. I’m just sayin’.

p.s.s. And that Ryan Utterback fella is a good guy.  We won’t banish him to the Phantom Zone either.

]]> http://collectiblesetconline.com/?feed=rss2&p=131 0 http://collectiblesetconline.com/?p=123 http://collectiblesetconline.com/?p=123#comments Sun, 25 Nov 2012 23:12:27 +0000 Tony Florence http://collectiblesetconline.com/?p=123

About two or three times every day I get a phone call from someone trying to sell their collection of comic books.  It almost always begins something like this:

“I have a really old collection of books, still in their plastics and I’m sure they’re worth a bunch of money,” states the eager seller.
Juett (my excellent general manager) responds, “Oh really?  Are they in pretty decent shape?  About how old are they?”
“Oh, we bought them in the 90′s.  We have Brigade issue 1′s and Cyberforce Scratch n Sniff Berry Flavored Die-Cut Gold number 4′s!”

At this point we have to politely let them know that most likely their collection isn’t worth that much and they hang up very disappointed.  So I figure it would make a good topic to discuss what makes an “old comic”.  Comics have been around since the 1800′s in one form or another but we’ll skip all of this because these books aren’t what most people would relate to as a comic book.  The Golden Age of comics started in the late 30′s and runs until the early 50′s.  During this period we see the first appearances of Batman, Superman, Captain America, along with quite a volume of children’s books, westerns, and pulp comics.  Quite frequently even the most dog eared, rat chewed, coffee stained issues are going to be worth something.  If you come across a collection of 80 year old comics that are complete (no missing pages or panels cut out) you are probably looking at money.  These can be legitimately called “old comics”.

So now we can roll right into the silver age with a little book called Showcase #4 which is the first appearance of the silver age Flash.  During this period of rather anemic superhero titles (there were really only Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman of note during this time) it was refreshing to see something new.  Sales were great so we saw a huge relaunch of DC superhero books.  It took Marvel a few years to eventually get up to speed with Fantastic Four, Spider-man, X-men, etc.  The silver age runs up until 1970 and there are a lot of valuable books from this era.  There are so many first appearances, origins, epic battles, etc during this time period that it’s very easy to have a collection with a number of big money issues.  Condition becomes much more significant because high grade issues are more common than in the golden age.  These can also be legitimately called “old comics”.

After the silver age we have the bronze age which runs from 1970 to 1985.  There are quite a few key issues that can be found during this period.  First  appearance of Wolverine and the Punisher…random awesome horror books like Supernatural Thrillers and Werewolf by Night.  BUT…in general there’s a whole lot of poop during this period that’s not worth much of anything.  You can pretty much roll everything from about 1980 to 2012 into one big pile of financial mediocrity with few exceptions.   The 90′s saw such a huge explosive growth in speculation that not only were there a lot of crap new titles…but the print runs on them were gigantic.  Spawn #1  from the early 1990′s had an estimated print run of over 1.7 million copies.  In today’s market it’s considered significant if a book sells over 100,000 copies.  Huge supply plus low demand equals no value.  These books are not considered “old comics”.  Matter o’fact I’d consider most books from this time frame as “kindling” or “toilet paper”.

In conclusion don’t be surprised if you can only get 10-20 bucks a long box (250 comics) for your “old” comics from the 1980′s and up.  There’s just too much volume that can never be absorbed by our current number of readers.  Even worse, I can’t even predict a time when they’ll ever go up in value.  It’s true that we’re in a huge upswing in the comic industry right now due to movie and television exposure…and we are seeing new people get into comic collecting…but most of these guys are getting into current stuff and they aren’t collecting dusty 20 year old runs of Avengers.  It’s very easy to tell someone, “Go grab a copy of Saga or Mind the Gap or Hickman’s New Avenger title.”  Marvel and DC are both doing an excellent job of maintaining great “jumping on points” for many of their titles.  It’s really difficult to convince someone to get involved in the Herculean task of putting together 200 issue runs of Fantastic Four or Action Comics by going through back issue bins in comic shops.

So bring me your comics.  I’ll buy pretty much anything that’s not water damaged or full of roaches.  Just please be aware of what your comics are most likely worth to avoid overwhelming waves of disappointment.  I love buying stuff…I just hate hurting people’s feelings.

For the last 3 years one of the major concerns in the comic book industry is digital media.  You folks all remember back in the day when there were music stores on every corner?  Or when Blockbusters was a household name?  Bookstores in all the malls?  And then along comes that devil….DUN DUN DUUUuUuUhhh (yeah, that’s about as good a sound effect as I can make):   DIGITAL MEDIAAAAA!!!  Music, video, and bookstores all packed up their wagons and headed into the sunset….some going quietly and some going kicking and screaming.  For a while now it has been a concern that both comics and video games will be going in that same direction.  Industry scuttlebutt is that the next generation of consoles won’t even have a drive.  I can hear all the Gamestops collectively pooping their pants.  So am I concerned?  Do I feel as though digital comics will proliferate to the point that the old brick and mortar store will all go down the tubes?  Well…I hope not.  Actually, I’ll go one step further and state that “nah, we’re safe…at least for a while”.

There are a certain number of comic fans who are evacuating the physical media format.  This isn’t really a quantifiable number because once people stop coming in to my store I have no idea if they are doing it because they had to cut back because of having a kid, buying a house, or having their leg fall off and are in need of expensive medical care.  I can say with a fair amount of certainty though that I haven’t seen a noticeable drop off in old clientele.  Old timey collectors love the feel of paper.  They love that stinky ink smell of a fresh-off-the-shelf comic.  Wood pulp is the Drakkar Noir of comic nerds. 

So if there isn’t a noticeable drop off of customers, then how are digital comics affecting the industry?  Well, from my store’s point of view, it’s been very positive.  The thing about digital media is that it’s all pervasive.  Whether it is on a smart phone or a pc or a tablet, digital content is everywhere and easily accessible.  Couple this with the fact that you have billions of dollars worth of new fans manifesting with each new movie/tv show and you’re getting a whoooole lot of exposure to the comic industry and that translates into brick and mortar sales.  Wha?  Huh?  You might be asking yourself, “how did Tony make that leap from vast digital exposure equating to increased brick and mortar sales?”  Well…here’s an example:

Consumer A bows down to the media hype and watches the Avengers and really enjoys it.  Now, whether it is from childhood nostalgia or just increased interest in the Avengers, that person hits up a few digital sites and starts enjoying comics.  I’m seeing this kind of exposure as the “gateway drug” of comics.  Consumer A then goes to www.comicshoplocator.com and finds the nearest store and “BAM!!” there’s potentially  a new customer.

Consumer B is just goofing around at work and while cruising Facebook for Boondock Saints fan fiction he sees one of the hundreds of advertisements for Digital Comics.  He tries a few…gets intrigued and then goes to his nearest comic shop and starts buying some trades.

Now I’m not saying that everyone who goes digital eventually goes physical…but let’s look at some numbers:

Avengers made 600 million domestically.  That’s approximately 60 million tickets sold.  Let’s say there are quite a few repeat viewers so this equates to, conservatively, 40 million unique viewers.  Let’s assume that just 1 percent buys a digital comic…that’s 400,000 digital comics.  If just 10% of those digital viewers walk into comic shops then Avengers alone created, potentially, 40,000 new comic customers.  From the exposure of just one movie.

I keep on using “potentially” because you can’t equate a person walking into your door as a customer.  But really about 90% of the battle is getting new blood into the store.  Once they’re in the store if you have a pleasant shop staffed with competent people you’ll generate sales.

So, in conclusion, the number of people who are dropping physical comics in favor of digital media is less than the number of new customers being generated from digital media.  The comic fan base is just so incredibly small compared to the fan base of avid generic readers that it just doesn’t take a very large percentage of non comic readers to get into comic books to drastically affect the industry.  I have no idea how long these trends will last…but I imagine that as tablets and e-readers get cheaper and the current youthful generation gets used to reading things predominantly in a digital format you’ll eventually see physical comics go into a decline…but I really feel as though this is probably a decade or two away.  Time has a way of changing all things.

So what have we learned so far?  Keep your store clean and organized and have non-creepy knowledgeable staff.  This is really about 90% of the battle but it’s amazing how many stores lose the war.  Here are some parting tips and thoughts as I wrap this three parter up:

I’d read an interesting statistic a few months ago and everyone knows how numbers on the internet are 100% true.  The article quoted a statistic that went something like this:  32% of comic related internet sales are made by women.  In comparison 12% of comic related brick and mortar sales are made by women.  What does this mean?  It means that there are a whole lot of women who would rather buy their comics and knick knacks from the safety of their own homes rather than in a store.  A part of this can be attributed to the ease of internet sales but a big chunk of this is because there are a lot of women who feel uncomfortable at the thought of entering a comic shop.  There’s a stigma attached to most stores…that they are dark and unclean hobbit holes full of leering socially awkward basement dwellers.  Don’t be a hobbit hole.  If you are a hobbit hole you are alienating a huge chunk of clientele.  Women don’t like hobbits.  Also, don’t stereotype women (except when you categorically state that all women dislike hobbits).  I always think it’s funny when a comic store employee shambles over to a woman and when they ask for recommendations it’s always Strangers In Paradise and Fables.  I mean…like every time.  As if no other comics exist in the world.   Assume every customer, regardless of gender, has the potential to enjoy any well written book. Women and children (we’ll get into kid’s books at a later date) are a largely untapped market that every good store should focus on.

There’s an old saying that you only get out of something what you put into it.  If you want the comic community to frequent your store you need to give back to the community.  My good friend Joe C. got me thinking about this a while ago.  Community building is an integral part of good business practices.  Here’s what I mean by community building:  Hosting art events, doing food and clothing drives for local shelters, going to schools and showing kids how awesome it is to read a comic, etc.  Donating a little time and money can go a long way towards fostering a sense of shared community and goodwill and also just general exposure.  If your only focus as a comic store owner is to make a buck to the exclusion of all else then you are a failure.  By giving to the community you are indelibly leaving your imprint on the people around you.

In conclusion to my conclusion I’ve had a lot of people ask me, “Tony, why are you writing an article that might help your competitors conduct their business better?”  I’ve actually got a great self serving answer.  Have you ever heard the old saying that if you give someone a positive experience he’ll probably only tell one person?  But if you give a person a bad experience he tells everyone.  Right now the comic industry has a somewhat negative dingy “man-cave only” feel to it.  Every time someone walks into a bad store and has a bad experience it perpetuates that view.  I was at a local pub a week ago and bumped into one of my customers and she told me, “My first experience with a comic shop was in Louisville and I almost never went back to another store because the place was so gross.”  I imagine she probably told her horrifying experience to a number of her friends and thus further promoted the “icky nerd-cave comic store” image which in turn leaves her friends less likely to visit a comic shop.  Bad stores hurt the industry as a whole.  Good stores counter the stereotype and foster a growth in the comic community.  Be a good store and everyone will prosper.

Knowledge of the product is incredibly important.  Would you buy a car from a salesman if he didn’t know the difference between a stick shift and an automatic?  Would you listen to a movie review from someone who rarely watches movies?  Why would you want to buy a comic from someone who didn’t know a thing about comics?  I mean, honestly, many people just wander into a store and grab the same comics they’ve been collecting for the last 5 years regardless of whether it’s a good read or not.  A bad store owner is like the checker at a grocery store ringing up those books month after month.  They just take your comics…ring you up…and shove you out the door.  If you ask a question about the produce they’ll eyeball you like you just grew an elbow out of your ear.  THIS IS BAD COMIC RETAILING.  Everyone in my store can tell you a handful of things that Ed Brubaker has done.  We all know who Joe Hill is and why Locke & Key is one of the most fantastic reads ever.  Blacksad, Return of the Dapper Men, Elephantmen, DMZ…yeah…we read them.  Snyder, Hickman, McCann, Azzarello…we know them.  Don’t be afraid to wander into my shop and ask questions because we most likely know the answer.

Some folk would call what we do with this knowledge “upselling”.  You know…when you go into a restaurant and have your meal and then the waiter talks you into buying that strawberry cheesecake?  That’s upselling…making you buy something you had no intention of getting in the first place.  “Upselling” has a somewhat negative connotation to it so I like to refer to what my guys do as “Creatively Recommending A Book As Possible/Potential Longterm Enjoyment”…or “crabapples” for short.  (I totally made that up on the fly…in all reality we still call it “upselling” in the store)  Let me give you an example of the Collectibles Upselling Phenomena:

Customer comes to the counter with his weekly stack of books which are mostly Marvel and DC.  We notice that the top book on the stack is the latest issue of X-Men.

Our amazing manager Juett asks, “Oh, have you really enjoyed X-Men lately?”

“Well, of course I have…it’s been great for several issues now….totally an awesome page turner,” states the customer.

“Yeah…it’s been great since Brian Wood took over around issue 30.  He’s a pretty prolific writer.  Did you know he’s doing Ultimate X-Men and Massive right now?  He also did an amazing comic series called DMZ and Northlanders….let me tell you alllll about them.”

So the customer ends up dropping a few titles that he’s no longer excited about…adds a few titles totally worth reading and most likely will grab a trade or three.  Sure…we make more money (good comic retailing) but more importantly we got someone out of the rut of reading bad comics and got him to branch out into some great comics (better retailing).  Hopefully he’ll enjoy his new comics and come back and ask us for more advice on other great books to read (best retailing).

Lastly, it’s important for your sales people to be proactive about properly engaging the customer.  Ever been to a store where you aren’t even greeted when you walk in?  How about the one where you walk into the store and some staff member follows you around like you’re about to steal something?  I particularly enjoy the encounters where the staff member who’s wearing an unwashed 30 year old Claremont-era X-Men t-shirt and smells of rotten bananas and sadness tries to have a conversation with you about his D&D campaign while standing in your personal space.  Having knowledgeable but socially awkward staff is like having the best bullets in the world and only owning a rubber band slingshot to propel them at people.  Know how to engage them in conversation and impart your knowledge upon them without coming across as a pompous comic elitist snob.  Make them feel comfortable and they will listen to what you have to say.

End Part 2

So here’s the rub about attending the Summit.   Each year I get to sit amongst my peers and listen to them complain about how the industry is failing on any number of levels.  Either the publishers aren’t putting out good books or the distribution network is flawed in X or Y ways or people are bored of comics.  “SOMETHING HAS TO BE DONE BECAUSE EVERYTHING ABOUT THE BUSINESS SUCKS AND I WANT ANSWERS!!!!1111!!oneone”  is typically the level of griping that I hear at many of the panels.  It’s very easy to blame the comic environment but I’ll let you in on a little secret:  the true fault of stores that are under-performing does not involve the environment or the product.  It involves the store owners.  But for a store owner to man up and place the blame where it truly belongs is like asking someone other than Thor to wield Mjolnir.  It just isn’t going to happen!  (unless you’re Odin, Bor, Captain America, Thunderstrike, Beta Ray Bill, Buri, Red Norvell, or Awesome Andy)

So here begins my multi part blog on:

“HOW TO RUN A STORE…NOT INTO THE GROUND…BUT REALLY TO JUST RUN IT WELL.  SO IT DOESN’T SUCK THAT MUCH Part 1″ or “I BET YOU DIDN’T INITIALLY THINK THIS WAS THE DIRECTION THIS BLOG WAS GOING TO GO IN Part 1″

Cleanliness and organization

Have you ever wandered into a store and it looks like, at any moment, a chicken and a pot belly pig with mud between its toes would walk out from behind the new comic rack?  Now I’ll be the first to admit that my store isn’t the most pristine.  You won’t be able to eat your lunch off the floor (unless you like picking dirt and hair out of your lunch).  But I will state that my store is regularly swept and occasionally mopped.  The aisles are straight and the lighting is good.  Nothing sours my shopping experience more than when I walk into a comic shop and the place is just filthy.  Old food containers, giant dust bunnies,  weird stains on the floor and vermin do not belong in a comic shop.  It’s all about first impressions and if someone walks into your shop and their first concern is if they’ve been vaccinated recently then they probably won’t come back.  Take pride in the appearance of your shop.  If you don’t, no one else will.

My second point is organization.  If I take the tour through your shop and can’t figure out where things are then you are going to miss sales.  Most people are, by their nature, non confrontational and non communicative.  If they don’t see what they want they probably aren’t going to ask for it.  They’ll wander around and then leave if they can’t find it.  You’d be amazed at the percentage of comic shops that look like a flea market got caught up in Dorothy’s tornado and then vomited its contents into a shopping center.  Boxes stacked on things stacked on books stacked on more boxes.  Somewhere at the bottom of the stack of disarray will either be fresh compost or a sentient evolved society of dust mites.  Both of these points lend themselves to the old “first impression” theory…people aren’t comfortable if they think they’re walking into a landfill and if they’re uncomfortable they probably aren’t going to spend money or even enjoy the experience.

End Part 1

And the owner will say, “No way man.  We don’t hold books period.  Good luck getting here in time while there are still issues on the shelf…suckaaaaaa!!!”  Well…maybe not in such a snarky tone but there are stores whose business model decrees that they never hold books.  After all, if you don’t hold a book then you can’t be stuck with a book.

So what do I mean by “stuck with a book”?  Here’s the nuts and bolts comic retail back story on how comic sales work.  Proceed with caution:

When a comic book comes out and hits the shelves it basically has a “shelf” life.  The shelf life can be determined by how long it takes for the book to stop selling and start just sitting there gathering dust, forlornly staring up at you pleading for someone to buy it.  For example, when a brand new comic comes out I can usually sell about 80% of it the first week, 10% of it the second week, 5% the third week, and 2% the fourth week.  After a month the book just gets dumped in the back issue bins or blown out to a flea market dealer.  These numbers vary of course…some books can sell for months and others are pretty much done after the first week.

So what happens when a file customer secretly decides to just stop getting his books?  A month will go by…maybe two…and after calling and e-mailing we finally blow out his file.  But what do we have?  A file full of books that are beyond the 4 week selling margin.  A bunch of “dead books” that I’m now stuck with.  Wasted useless inventory that I’ve got money invested in.

The Previews Magazine is a monthly catalog of everything that I can order each month. It’s provided by my wonderful distributor, Diamond Comics, who pretty much has a stranglehold on all the goods that every comic store in the world can get…not that I’m really complaining as they do a great job and, in general, are wonderful to deal with. When you open up one of these full colored phonebook-sized volumes you have to realize that the stuff you’re looking at won’t be out for a couple months.

Here’s how the industry works:
1. A publisher cranks out a comic
2. Diamond puts the comic in Previews
3. Juett, Jake, and Charlie try to convince people that this comic is super awesome
4. Tony and Juett order what we think is the right amount of that comic
5. Diamond gives that number to the publisher
6. Publisher prints that number plus some extras to cover damages and if they think it will sell well
7. Publisher has the finished mountain of books sent to Diamond
8. Diamond sends it to me
9. I sell it to you

That’s it…the whole retail end of the comic industry in a nutshell and it takes about 90 days to go from step 2 to step 8. An astute reader will notice that in this lengthy chain of events the only person who can really get burned is the sad sad comic store owner as Diamond and the publisher print to order and there’s very little, if any, waste on their end but I can talk about this later.

So yeah, this is the greatest book ever for comic shops. It has everything all laid out in full color with little blurbs about each item covering the creators, what it’s all about, and how much it’s going to cost all for about 4 bucks. Or heck, if you don’t want to buy it, just sit down in my nice comfy sitting area in the front of the store and pop our display copy open and jot down the things you want. I don’t mind because it’s important for me to have you guys look at this stuff each month.

Have you ever missed something that got hot and we sold out? Ever see something cool on Big Bang Theory and go, “Man, I wish I had that.” and then find out it sells for eleventy billion dollars on eBay? Go to a convention and see someone drinking coffee out of his limited edition Doctor Who mug while wearing an awesome Adventure Time shirt THAT YOU DON’T HAVE??!? Prevent this madness by browsing through a Previews each month and letting me know what you want. I need your input so I can more accurately order the good stuff. We need you!!!