An open letter to DC comics.
Jul. 28th, 2011 04:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexandraerinHi!
I'm not going to start this by saying that I'm a loyal customer and you owe me anything because in fact I am not a customer of yours, loyal or otherwise, and you thus owe me nothing. Here's a fact: most of the DC comic titles I have read in the past several years I read in the cafe at Borders (mea culpa, guys... in my defense I spent an awful lot of money on smoothies!). I can't remember the last time I bought a DC trade paperback that wasn't Birds of Prey or something Vertigo-y.
This hasn't always been the case. I've bought quite a few trades from the time of like The Death of Superman and Zero Hour and all that stuff in the 90s on through the early 00s. What drove me away was mainly when it became more and more about the hot Crisis-On-Crisis action. I didn't stop reading, but I stopped finding as much that I read that I knew I wanted to own and re-read at will and support with my money.
The reasons I always favored trades is because I don't like buying comics monthly. I have mobility issues for one thing, and I am not one of nature's collectors. The monthly comic magazine is not the sturdiest of formats, and won't stand up to the kind of repeated re-readings that I favor. You have to be careful with a comic book if you want it to last long enough to be enjoyed in the future, and I don't read that way.
This is also why I've recently switched most of my prose reading to electronic formats... they're harder to lose track of or wear out. Really, electronic is better than a sturdy collected edition. It addresses all of my needs perfectly. I don't have to arrange to be taken anywhere to get it. I don't have to do anything to take care of my copy. I'll never lose it. It's great.
So when you announced your digital content initiative thingy, I was very excited about it. While a lot of people were outraged over the idea that you were torpedoing the Friendly Local Comic Shop, I thought you were reaching out to me... the lapsed comic buyer, the person who doesn't have a pull file, who isn't part of comic book shop culture but who enjoys reading a nice bit of sequential art and might like to do so more regularly if it were possible to do so conveniently.
This seemed like a good direction for you. I mean, you've already got the money of the people who go to the comic shops every week or every month. Growth is about reaching new markets.
So here's where you've lost me... and that's a phrase that is just loaded with meaning, DC Comics: you are making it so super convenient for me to send you money on a regular basis again for the first time since you canceled Anima*... steady, predictable, recurring income (that's the good kind, folks!)... and now what I'm hearing out of you is that you don't actually want my money.
You are reformulating your universe to appeal more strongly to what you perceive to be the core audience... i.e., the same people whose current pull files and subscriptions aren't apparently doing enough for you to rock your parent company's world. You are firing female creators, you are benching female characters or retconning away their existence or their moments of triumph, you are hiding or diminishing a lot of what diversity their was in your universe...
And your answers when this is pointed out or questioned range from dismissive to disingenuous.
Do you remember that story you guys put out where the white collar fraud guy has his lawyer try two desperation tactics, a request for change of venue and an insanity plea, and it backfires when he ends up in Arkham Asylum? One or the other might have gotten him a cushier outcome than he could have otherwise reasonably hoped for, but by going for both at once he ended up leaving himself open to a truly cruel and unusual punishment.
(Sidenote: I actually did buy that one. Twice, because I gave one copy away. I'm really not trying to emphasize the "loyal customer" thing, though. I don't think I've contributed to your bottom line at all this year, for example.)
That's what you folks... or let's be honest... you guys... are doing right now. You're trying two different tactics: recommitting to your perceived core, and reaching out to new markets.
How much more core base do you think there is to capture? All your base is belong to you and Marvel, if you'll forgive the somewhat dated internet idiom. If you keep squabbling over the same few little acres of contested dirt, you're never going to have any gains to show for it that are all that impressive or all that permanent. It's like the big telcoms fighting for a big piece of the same city, while the companies that are doing things like bringing broadband to underserved rural markets are showing huge growth. Why are they showing huge growth? Because they're going where there's room to grow.
Maybe you're falling prey to the idea that anything computer-related is a "guy" thing. Maybe that's why you are "guy"-ing up your universe even further on the eve of your bold digital whatever.
This attitude is lamentably understandable given the world we live in, but believe me when I say that as someone who wants to see digital distribution succeed I think you're making a terrible mistake. The idea that the internet is all guys hasn't been true for... well, ever. But it's an increasingly ludicrous and outdated meme to propagate.
Look at the comic communities that have popped up on Dreamwidth and Livejournal and other Livejournal spin-offs. (Just... don't look at the ones on Livejournal right now, they're having some issues. And maybe have your lawyers leave the room first.) Do you know what the male/female ratio on Livejournal is? Do you know how many women blog and read blogs?
And here's something else you should look at - My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. Google "Brony". Do it.
Don't worry, it's safe for work.
Oh, and you can have the lawyers come back in.
See? Not only is the internet not "for boys", but a thing being "for girls" doesn't mean guys can't or won't appreciate it. Also? Notice how many bosoms that show doesn't have. Count 'em: no bosoms.
I'm going to be honest here, completely honest. Not only do I freely admit that you haven't seen a dime from me since I watched The Dark Knight in the backseat monitor of an airplane last December, I will also freely admit that I will *probably* check a few titles out in your new universe. But where I would have done so enthusiastically and with a lot of room in my heart to forgive bumpy starts and stick with it to see where things going, I will be doing so hesitantly and with a critical eye.
I don't expect you to learn anything from this one random internet post, much less decide to do anything about it in time to change any of the details of the already completely arranged launch. But if you get a good number of sales in the opening months of the initiative and then a swift decline, please learn the correct lesson from it: it's not that your distribution plan was flawed or that new audiences outside your core aren't interested, it's that you have failed to use your new distribution method to deliver content that anyone who isn't part of your perceived core wants.
Thank you.
I'm not going to start this by saying that I'm a loyal customer and you owe me anything because in fact I am not a customer of yours, loyal or otherwise, and you thus owe me nothing. Here's a fact: most of the DC comic titles I have read in the past several years I read in the cafe at Borders (mea culpa, guys... in my defense I spent an awful lot of money on smoothies!). I can't remember the last time I bought a DC trade paperback that wasn't Birds of Prey or something Vertigo-y.
This hasn't always been the case. I've bought quite a few trades from the time of like The Death of Superman and Zero Hour and all that stuff in the 90s on through the early 00s. What drove me away was mainly when it became more and more about the hot Crisis-On-Crisis action. I didn't stop reading, but I stopped finding as much that I read that I knew I wanted to own and re-read at will and support with my money.
The reasons I always favored trades is because I don't like buying comics monthly. I have mobility issues for one thing, and I am not one of nature's collectors. The monthly comic magazine is not the sturdiest of formats, and won't stand up to the kind of repeated re-readings that I favor. You have to be careful with a comic book if you want it to last long enough to be enjoyed in the future, and I don't read that way.
This is also why I've recently switched most of my prose reading to electronic formats... they're harder to lose track of or wear out. Really, electronic is better than a sturdy collected edition. It addresses all of my needs perfectly. I don't have to arrange to be taken anywhere to get it. I don't have to do anything to take care of my copy. I'll never lose it. It's great.
So when you announced your digital content initiative thingy, I was very excited about it. While a lot of people were outraged over the idea that you were torpedoing the Friendly Local Comic Shop, I thought you were reaching out to me... the lapsed comic buyer, the person who doesn't have a pull file, who isn't part of comic book shop culture but who enjoys reading a nice bit of sequential art and might like to do so more regularly if it were possible to do so conveniently.
This seemed like a good direction for you. I mean, you've already got the money of the people who go to the comic shops every week or every month. Growth is about reaching new markets.
So here's where you've lost me... and that's a phrase that is just loaded with meaning, DC Comics: you are making it so super convenient for me to send you money on a regular basis again for the first time since you canceled Anima*... steady, predictable, recurring income (that's the good kind, folks!)... and now what I'm hearing out of you is that you don't actually want my money.
You are reformulating your universe to appeal more strongly to what you perceive to be the core audience... i.e., the same people whose current pull files and subscriptions aren't apparently doing enough for you to rock your parent company's world. You are firing female creators, you are benching female characters or retconning away their existence or their moments of triumph, you are hiding or diminishing a lot of what diversity their was in your universe...
And your answers when this is pointed out or questioned range from dismissive to disingenuous.
Do you remember that story you guys put out where the white collar fraud guy has his lawyer try two desperation tactics, a request for change of venue and an insanity plea, and it backfires when he ends up in Arkham Asylum? One or the other might have gotten him a cushier outcome than he could have otherwise reasonably hoped for, but by going for both at once he ended up leaving himself open to a truly cruel and unusual punishment.
(Sidenote: I actually did buy that one. Twice, because I gave one copy away. I'm really not trying to emphasize the "loyal customer" thing, though. I don't think I've contributed to your bottom line at all this year, for example.)
That's what you folks... or let's be honest... you guys... are doing right now. You're trying two different tactics: recommitting to your perceived core, and reaching out to new markets.
How much more core base do you think there is to capture? All your base is belong to you and Marvel, if you'll forgive the somewhat dated internet idiom. If you keep squabbling over the same few little acres of contested dirt, you're never going to have any gains to show for it that are all that impressive or all that permanent. It's like the big telcoms fighting for a big piece of the same city, while the companies that are doing things like bringing broadband to underserved rural markets are showing huge growth. Why are they showing huge growth? Because they're going where there's room to grow.
Maybe you're falling prey to the idea that anything computer-related is a "guy" thing. Maybe that's why you are "guy"-ing up your universe even further on the eve of your bold digital whatever.
This attitude is lamentably understandable given the world we live in, but believe me when I say that as someone who wants to see digital distribution succeed I think you're making a terrible mistake. The idea that the internet is all guys hasn't been true for... well, ever. But it's an increasingly ludicrous and outdated meme to propagate.
Look at the comic communities that have popped up on Dreamwidth and Livejournal and other Livejournal spin-offs. (Just... don't look at the ones on Livejournal right now, they're having some issues. And maybe have your lawyers leave the room first.) Do you know what the male/female ratio on Livejournal is? Do you know how many women blog and read blogs?
And here's something else you should look at - My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. Google "Brony". Do it.
Don't worry, it's safe for work.
Oh, and you can have the lawyers come back in.
See? Not only is the internet not "for boys", but a thing being "for girls" doesn't mean guys can't or won't appreciate it. Also? Notice how many bosoms that show doesn't have. Count 'em: no bosoms.
I'm going to be honest here, completely honest. Not only do I freely admit that you haven't seen a dime from me since I watched The Dark Knight in the backseat monitor of an airplane last December, I will also freely admit that I will *probably* check a few titles out in your new universe. But where I would have done so enthusiastically and with a lot of room in my heart to forgive bumpy starts and stick with it to see where things going, I will be doing so hesitantly and with a critical eye.
I don't expect you to learn anything from this one random internet post, much less decide to do anything about it in time to change any of the details of the already completely arranged launch. But if you get a good number of sales in the opening months of the initiative and then a swift decline, please learn the correct lesson from it: it's not that your distribution plan was flawed or that new audiences outside your core aren't interested, it's that you have failed to use your new distribution method to deliver content that anyone who isn't part of your perceived core wants.
Thank you.