You’re out, Tom

A couple of days ago I questioned Franklin Harris’s assertion that the preponderance of superhero comics in the Direct Market does not force non-superhero comics out of that market. Today Franklin responds:

Sean assumes that if only comic-book shops stocked more non-superhero titles, those titles would sell. But the direct market hasn’t given me any indication that there is a sizeable, unmet demand for non-superhero comics.

Yes, but this is because the Direct Market is a classic example of the self-fulfilled prophecy. The DM was created by superhero companies (mainly Marvel), staffed by superhero fans, and geared almost exclusively toward superhero fans. OF COURSE superhero comics sell very well in the DM while other comics don’t–superhero fans have had several decades to learn that this is where they must go for there superhero comics, while fans of other types of comics have had several decades to learn that in any given state in the Union the stores that can fully service their needs number in the low single digits. That the indie and alternative companies have been able to find a niche in the DM at all is almost more luck than anything else.

The reason it appears as though non-superhero comics won’t sell is because, given the current set-up of the DM, they can’t. Decades of deliberately targeted anti-competitive publishing, advertising, and retailership have created a situation where, if on this very day every comics shop in America started ordering as many copies of Optic Nerve as they do of Batman, the things would just languish on the racks. Except, of course, at those mythical “good” comics shops, where things like Optic Nerve sell like hotcakes, because people know they can find them there. The point is, not only have superhero comics (or at least their blinders-wearing hardcore devotees) forced out non-superhero comics from the DM, they’ve pretty much destroyed any chance for non-superhero comics to ever come back. This is why publishers who specialize in other genres are so energetically exploring other venues.

Usually debates like these devolve into some pro/anti-art comics argument: “You’re just upset because some lame autobio comic isn’t selling as much as JSA” or whatever. So for the sake of avoiding this argument, let’s ignore Blankets, Persepolis, Jimmy Corrigan, Maus, Ghost World and any number of other acclaimed and successful alternative comics that nine comics shops out of ten don’t even carry. How about manga, for crying out loud? Japanese comics are a sales phenomenon in the bookstore market, as anyone can tell you–and the DM is ignoring it! Indeed, a vocal contingent of both retailers and consumers is actively advocating against pursuing it! If you can give me a reason why this easy-access source of buckets of revenue is being eschewed that isn’t “the DM, through the predilections of its retailers and consumers and through the machinations of the big American publishers and their monopolistic distributor, is willfully incapable of selling anything but superhero comics,” I’ll shake your hand.

And hell, since manga is almost as divisive a topic as altcomix at this point, how about comic-strip collections, perennial best-sellersr in the real world? When was the last time you saw The Complete Far Side or a Calvin & Hobbes book at your local Android’s Dungeon? Any guesses as to how many copies of The Complete Peanuts Vol. 1 the place has ordered? The bitch of this is, of course, that the reactionary retailers we hear from from time to time may in fact be right–maybe altcomix and even strip collections and manga won’t sell in the DM. But that, paradoxically, is because the DM has worked too well as a superheroes-only vendor. Retailers would have to break decades-old habits held to with devotional fervor by both themselves and their clientele in order to draw in consumers for these other genres, who’ve long come to associate DM shops with Superman and nothing else. Many, I’d guess, wouldn’t survive the transition. And yes, this is the fault of superhero comics.

Over at Tim O’Neil’s blog, Comics Journal editor emeritus Tom Spurgeon writes in to make many of these same points, drawing on information gleaned from his years at the Journal, and as an employee of indie comics stalwart Fantagraphics. Tom also points out something I hadn’t really thought of–the superhero companies have been so effective at creating an environment where only superhero comics sell that it’s next to impossible for them to publish anything but superhero comics. DC still tries some noble experiments, but the majority of even its most unorthodox ventures still center around the “extraordinary man”; Marvel, one-time publisher of the genuinely bizarre Epic line, has by now pretty much said that superheroes are and will be all they do, forever and ever amen.

Listen, I know that superheroes are popular enough and that these companies can make pretty decent bank from superhero fans; I know that the genre isn’t hated by the people of the real world as it is by the anti-genre partisans that claim to speak for said real world here within comics debating circles; I’ve heard all the arguments saying that there’s nothing wrong with these publishers being niche publishers and these stores being niche stores; but doesn’t it strike you as close to wantonly self-destructive for publishers and the market that keeps them afloat to have set themselves up in such a way as to fundamentally preclude diversification?

POSTSCRIPT: It’s worth noting that, as Dave Intermittent points out, there’s always some definitional hinkiness going on when comics is discussed, due to the fact that by comics one can mean

1) The art form/the medium

2) The industry/the business

3) 22-page floppy pamphlets

4) Trade paperback collections of same

5) Graphic novels

6) The publishers

7) The distributors

8) The consumers

9) The readers

10) The fans

11) The creators

12) The retailers

13) The direct market

14) The bookstore market

15) American comics

16) All comics worldwide

And on and on and on. For example, in his most recent post on the topic, Franklin says this:

To be clear, I’m talking just about 22-page comics, not graphic novels. Still, it is even more obvious that superheroes aren’t squeezing other genres out of the graphic-novel sector, because in bookstores manga is “squeezing out” superheroes.

So, among 22-page comics, the superhero genre is the last genre standing following an industry-wide decline that began in the late 1950s. And in bookstores, superhero graphic novels are losing the battle for shelf space to manga. Either way, I don’t see how superheroes are to blame for driving out other genres.

In a way, the definitional fuzziness works to his advantage: He’s able to argue that superhero comics aren’t stifling the sales of non-superhero comics, because non-superhero floppies don’t sell well anyway, and because non-superhero graphic novels sell better in the bookstores than do superhero graphic novels.

But if you focus the debate on the Direct Market itself, as I have tried to do, these supposed mitigators of superhero hegemony are revealed to be nothing more than the consequences of that hegemony. 22-page non-superhero comics don’t sell well because the Direct Market is built to sell only 22-page superhero comics, and it’s been this way for years–the people who shop in the Direct Market aren’t interested in non-superhero comics, and the people interested in non-superhero comics no longer shop in the Direct Market. Non-superhero graphic novels sell better than superhero graphic novels in the bookstores because they’ve been forced into the bookstores by the complete domination of the Direct Market by superhero comics–fans of non-superhero comics go to the bookstores because that’s where they can find what they want, while fans of superhero comics don’t go to the bookstores because they can already find what they want elsewhere, at shops designed around their needs in toto.

Unfortunately for all of us, non-superhero companies still do enough business in the DM–which despite its best efforts to limit the field to one genre is still the main place to get any kind of comic, not just superhero ones–that if the DM were to implode, it would take nearly the entire American comics industry with it. Indie publishers still mainly rely on those “good comic shops” to keep them afloat; good comic shops still mainly rely on superhero companies to keep them afloat; superhero companies still mainly rely on crappy comic shops to keep them afloat; crappy comic shops still rely on superheroes-only readers to keep them afloat; superheroes-only readers are a dying breed. Non-superhero comics readers, therefore, are unhealthily tied to their superheroes-only bretheren in terms of whether or not they’ll be able to read any comics at all.

It’s a problem for everyone, in other words.