Should/Will The Prog relaunch at the release of the new Dredd film?

[IndigoPrime]

Check out the top 300 comics for January

Wow, that's a depressing link. BPRD down at #111 with 12.8k.

[JOE SOAP]

Or taken another way, it's just another demographic that shows the imminent collapse of the US, we've reached PEAK COMICS.

[Steve Green]

Baffled by the saturation...

I don't mind the odd superhero, but the popularity of it is just perverse.

So depressing...

[Richmond Clements]

Check out the top 300 comics for January

Wow, that's a depressing link. BPRD down at #111 with 12.8k.

If I sold 12.8k issues of my book I'd shit myself with pleasure.

[GordonR]

I suspect BPRD is one of those books that does very well in the trade paperback collections, and its monthly floppy sales don't reflect its real popularity/profitability.

[Jim_Campbell]

Wow, that's a depressing link. BPRD down at #111 with 12.8k.

I was more surprised to see Hellblazer at less than 10,000.

Cheers

Jim

[satchmo]

That's just the direct market though isn't it, with all the problems and insularity that goes along with it that have been discussed a bazillion times on this board. People use this broken, crazy system to state that comics are dead etc when in the real world that isn't the case at all. It's not the medium that's the problem. If I had to order 3 months in advance a top ten album or DVD and then make a 50 mile round trip to go and get it, if it actually turned up at all thanks to an incompetent monopolistic distributor, I'm not sure I'd bother.  
There is an appetite for comics. I'm sure there always will be. How to get them into people's hands is the issue.

[Jim_Campbell]

People use this broken, crazy system to state that comics are dead etc when in the real world that isn't the case at all.

How is that not the case in the real world when the broken, crazy system is the only way to get comics into people's hands? It is the real world.

You seem to be saying: "Yeah, well, if the retail and distribution system for US wasn't completely fucked, things would be much better." To which, with all due respect, I can only say: Duh.

Cheers

Jim

[satchmo]

I wasn't saying that at all, I was simply saying forget about the comic shop route for a minute and look at the availability of trades in bookshops, and reprint titles in newsies, stuff that people can just walk into a shop and buy like they would a dvd or whatever. My local newsie and bookshop are full of this stuff. That's the way to go in my unclear opinion

EDIT that's not even mentioning the digital route, which I'm increasingly using myself.

[Grant Goggans]

You'll all forgive my enthusiasm ebbing after so many years of trying, as the ship that is the direct market is sinking...

But, you see, there still are potential fans and readers within the direct market.  LOTS of them.  The problem is at the retail level.  Gordon, Jim, I don't know whether you've been to very many American comic shops, but the problem is that very many American comic shops are horrible places, run by idiots.  It's kind of typified by this place I stopped in Chattanooga once, where the two owners(?) were sitting in the back half of the store, sharing a blanket, watching an Apple Dumpling Gang movie, and when I got through looking at the wall o' Marvel and DC to ask whether they might have any old British comics, one of them said "You mean like indie comics?  We've got some Dark Horse."

Don't we get reports every year of new fans having their minds blown at SDCC and Rebellion going home with a big sellout, to readers who had no idea these things existed?  There's a reason for that!

A big part of the problem is that Rebellion is completely buried within the gigantic pain in the ass that is the Previews catalog.  It's a ridiculously unwieldy thing, and the system really doesn't reward people who go to the effort of digging through it for anything not from the five companies with the steepest discount.  The system failed dozens of retailers when manga hit big and couldn't offer retailers returnability that the Barnes & Noble, which welcomed new, young readers, did.  Baker & Taylor told B&N to please allow young fans to sit in the aisles and read manga, and if it still didn't sell, please return dust-collecting titles for credit against titles that move.

In the days before Previews, there genuinely were dozens of titles for fans who got bored of Marvel and DC to grow into - L & R, Cerebus, Flaming Carrot, Judge Dredd, Beanworld, the original TMNT, and so on.  There was a system which, despite multiple distributors and catalogs, was simpler because it wasn't monopolized.  I work in a toy store these days; multiple catalogs from multiple vendors and distributors is a great thing.  If we had to get all our stuff from one distributor, it would fail... especially after Diamond has proven countless times that it is just not set up to distribute anything small.  So the question is, how do you grow it?

You're right, it didn't work when we tried to emphasize Mark Millar or Garth Ennis, but it wasn't because readers were not interested.  It was because retailers had no idea those books existed.  It's not like shops are, today, sitting on stacks of non-returnable copies of Ennis's Just a Pilgrim OR Judgement Day, saying "I guess people don't like Garth Ennis!"  The retailers NEVER ORDERED either book.

The only reason that The Boys sells what it does is that it STARTED as a discounted DC book to build an audience.  Readers didn't stop buying it when it moved to a different publisher; sales dropped because shops did not order it anymore.

What I've kept saying is that Rebellion has to SCREAM.  They have to target potential readers, and retailers.  Introduce themselves to retailers and stores.  Ask stores, "What can we give you, in terms of product or support, to make Judge Dredd a massive hit?"  You're going to get plenty of morons like those two in Chattanooga; they're not set up to sell anything but superheroes.  It's the better stores, and the ones that are surviving the downsizing and the collapse.  Some stores may say they'd like a display, or a signing, or something, and some may say "Sorry, we ordered one copy of Judgement Day from DC in 2004 and it's still sitting here somewhere."  Then you move on.

The customers of the shops that want promotion and they want something in the newspaper, and they want a guy dressed as Judge Dredd for an event, that shop's customers are your potential new readers.  Those are the guys, when they get bored of the latest crossover, they either grow up to better comics, or they stop buying comics.

And yeah, Simon & Schuster working the bookstore angle is a great idea... but did you guys know that Borders is closing one-third of all its North American stores, and that it owes publishers something like a billion dollars that a bankruptcy judge is going to wipe out?  OUCH.  The bookstore market is hurting, too.

So yeah, when the movie comes around, if Rebellion can line up some comic shops for one chunk of a signing tour at the same time as some conventions, and S & S can line up some B&Ns and indie bookstores in the same or nearby towns for more signings, and S & S can target some newspapers and alt-weeklies for stories, then this really does have the potential to grow, especially if Rebellion can put out a reasonably entry-level product at that time, something like what I suggested a couple of pages back, which spotlights lots of characters and can excite potential new readers, and they really want to get these books in fans' hands... it can work.

My enthusiasm may have ebbed, but I still believe it.  Each time I've done a panel and given away progs, I've seen it.

But if the progs aren't in the store, and I end up saying "You just have to ask your comic shop owner to order them for you," I know there's going to be a wall.

It's been a long time.  I'm ready to see the publisher take a sledgehammer to that wall.

[Dandontdare]

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