Friday, November 2, 2007

Entertaining crap > boring crap

-Well, I tried reading Phonogram, and had to stop midway through and put on a Team Dresch album as some sort of cleansing ritual. Then I went back to reading the card collecting video game story in Hunter x Hunter. Really, as much shit as I give to DC and Marvel, I'd rather read something like Nightwing or whatever the Marvel equivalent is in terms of quality (Ultimate Fantastic Four?) than try to read another tepid alternative mainstream thing. I'm not talking about this, which I like, or this, which looks pretty cool, or this, which I've never actually gotten around to reading, but which looks good enough that I wish I had, or even this, which I'm woefully behind on but thought was pretty entertaining when I wasn't behind on it. Maybe what I'm saying is that I can't believe how many independent comics take the dullest, most stultifying conventions from superhero comics, dress it up with a few cusses and dudes with piercings, and then expect anyone to give a shit. That might not be fair to Phonogram, which reads like a collaboration between Tom Tomorrow and some weirdo on Usenet whose main influences are Transmetropolitan and NME, c. 1995. Okay, I've said enough.

-Hey, speaking of tepid pseudo-alternative comics, Chris Butcher has some thoughts on the ongoing Vertigo discussion (and I can't tell if he's referring to "Village Green Preservation Society" in the title of his post). The comments are particularly interesting: Abhay Khosla shows up to ask a question similar to the one which immediately sprang to my mind. Butcher claims that, when you look at sales in terms of dollars rather than units sold, the OGN Sentences did as well as Vertigo's selling-too-well-to-be-canceled titles, such as DMZ and 100 Bullets. Khosla suggests that perhaps we should consider that Sentences, had it been serialized, would have been 5-6 issues, which translates into pretty poor per issue sales. Butcher restates that he's talking about dollar figures, but I still think there's a bit of an error in his way of thinking.

Sentences sold 1700 copies at $20 a pop, which comes out to $34,000 net. Based on Khosla's figures, I think it's safe to assume that it would have been about 6 issues in serialized form. For the sake of this exercise, let's assume that Sentences would have ended up averaging about 4000 copies sold per issue--not all that unreasonable given the typical disparity between GN sales and individual issue sales at Vertigo. That's 24,000 total copies. At $3 per issue, that's $72,000 in total sales--more than twice what Sentences did as an OGN. You could make the counter-argument that since the OGN only sold 1700 copies, that should be the average we work with for single issue sales. I think that's kind of nuts--1700 is probably closer to the baseline for what the final issue or two of the series would have sold, with 1st issue sales more in the 8000 range (with major dropoffs after, of course). But even if we work with 1700 as the average sales per issue, we come up with $30,600. Not that far off from the actual OGN figures.

Now there are all kinds of other variables to consider, like the cost of production per issue vs. the cost for an OGN, the trouble in racking a bunch of single issues vs. racking an OGN, the discount on OGNs vs. the discount on single issues, etc. I was actually going to try to make this kind of comparison in one of my recent Vertigo-centric posts, but my ignorance of Diamond/DC's discount rates persuaded me to avoid dollar sales and stick to unit sales. I actually tried to do this with The Other Side, had calculated the total dollar sales for single issues and compared it to the upper level of Vertigo's OGN sales, and found that the serialized version was a far, far safer bet for Vertigo. But then I deleted all that, and I don't really want to add it all up again, so you can trust me, run the numbers yourself, or just ignore this point. Oh, okay, here it is again: total unit sales for issues 1-5 was 45,628, adding up to $136,884. Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall (Vertigo's best selling OGN) sold 15,289 copies at $20 for a total of $305,780. That's over twice what The Other Side did in pamphlet form, but who in the hell thinks that The Other Side would have even approached those numbers? 5000 sold is a much more reasonable expectation, and at $100,000 that would still be less than aggregate single issue sales. Especially if you add in The Other Side's admittedly modest GN sales, worth another $30,000 (for a grand total around $170,000--and that's net, not gross). All things considered, it seems like an obvious choice to me. In fact, I wonder why Vertigo bothers with OGNs at all.

This is where Butcher's dialogue with Stuart Moore becomes relevant. Moore pops in to remind everyone that Vertigo's page rates limit what the imprint can do (a point he made at this very blog re: the potential for anthologies). Butcher suggests that Vertigo might want to abandon up front page rates, presumably in favor of the independent model of giving creators a percentage of the total sales (which, if you add in an advance, is also the mainstream publishing model). I have no idea how feasible this recommendation is; I suspect it's more complicated than Butcher is suggesting. I can't imagine that Vertigo's freelancers would be happy about it, especially with sales going the way they are. I mean, if one really does want to see more comics creators making a living wage, then one should probably support Vertigo's current model.

I, however, might be interested in seeing Vertigo move more towards the model Butcher suggested, just because I think it might increase the odds of Vertigo actually publishing something I want to read. Vertigo has had success with four basic types of comics. Everyone knows about the magical/mythological stuff (Sandman, Fables), and everyone also knows about the adaptations of existing DC properties (Doom Patrol, Shade the Changing Man). I would add two more categories: shonen and philosophy. I'm using "shonen" as a synecdoche for quest-oriented manga where a single male protagonist works his way towards some ultimate goal with the help of his friends. This more or less describes Preacher and Y the Last Man, right? As for philosophy, I'm talking about comics where the narrative serves to inculcate the writer's world view--stuff like Invisibles, Transmetropolitan, or Testament.*

I don't much care for the philosophy category, but I'm open to all the others--in theory. Still, I'd much rather see some comics which don't easily fall into any of these categories. Hell, what I'd really like to see are a few projects driven by art as much as writing. Or projects in which the art is not some derivation of British/American adventure comic art. In other words, less Mike Carey/Jim Fern, more Jhonen Vasquez. Not that I especially like Vasquez' comics**, but surely Vertigo can make money selling things he writes and draws, right? Or maybe even Ted Rall or Lloyd Dangle. Rick Veitch is a step in the right direction, but it seems like Vertigo could have found someone with a more obvious constituency (like teenage goths or angry liberals).

Regardless, I don't think Vertigo is prepared to go into the OGN business anytime soon, simply because it doesn't make any sense for them to do so financially. Furthermore, lost in this discussion (but present in Hibbs' original post) is the idea of serialization providing a sort of advertising, a way to keep up the buzz about a book so that people don't forget about it. You could say that's a failure of marketing, and that it's a resolvable problem, but I think we're still a few years from DC/Vertigo cracking that nut (which they will surely do by smashing it with a large computer). In the meantime, Vertigo's upcoming slate of revamped DC properties suggest that the imprint is going through a conservative period. I start to wonder if the Vertigo label is really more of a hindrance than people realize (I actually expected the American Splendor miniseries to be a compromised version, for no real, legitimate reason), but that's really just idle speculation. Maybe the answer is to give Neil Gaiman several large bags of money so he can "show run" a weekly series exploring the Vertigo universe?

*Yes, Vertigo has published many other titles which don't fit into these categories, but these are the most successful archetypes in the Vertigo library.

**I did like Invader Zim.

-Trader Joe's Reviews:

Soy and Flax Clusters cereal: I bought this by accident; my wife and I usually refer to this kind of cereal as "hemp flakes" (possibly because my father seems to like the stuff). The box proudly informs the consumer of its high protein and fiber content. As a vegetarian, I'm always worried that I don't get enough of the former, but I'm exceedingly confident that I get plenty of the latter. There's also Omega 3 acids or whatever, but I'll worry about that once I start to have visible gray hair. (Actually, maybe that's not such a great idea--my hemp flakes-loving father is about to turn 60, and he has fewer gray hairs than Dr. Strange.)

Anyway, this cereal was mildly sweet and nutty, just as the box promised. It was also crunchy. Severely crunchy. Kind of traversing the border from "crunchy" to "hard," truth be told. The flakes are coated in flax seeds, which are alarmingly dark in color. There are also a lot of soy nuts just kind of hanging out in this cereal, not attached to any flake or cluster. I wouldn't say that eating it was a challenge, but I was more actively aware of the process of eating than I might normally be. And I'm a little worried about how well those additional six grams of fiber are going to play with the large quantity of beans and corn meal still lingering in my system. I did kind of feel like all the liquid had been removed from my body after eating a bowl of this stuff, but that might have more to do with (a) the cup of coffee I drank with it, and (b) the fact that it's about 85 degrees in here, owing to the comically outdated heating system in my building. I do know this--the next time I'm shopping for cereal at Trader Joe's, I'm going to make sure that I actually read the boxes rather than rely on my memory of the box's color scheme.

UPDATE: I think that the hemp flakes might not get along with other food. I had quite the stomach ache last night after a pretty typical lunch (see below). Will update after more data is acquired.

UPDATE TWO: I had another bowl this morning, and it seems to be behaving itself in my stomach. I haven't eaten lunch yet, though.

Balsamic Vinegar: This is supposedly nicer than the cheap stuff, which everyone says is basically grape juice. Mixed it with olive oil and tried it brushed on a grilled cheese sandwich, but couldn't tell the difference. Tried dipping my finger in it and tasting it, and it is does have a much mellower taste than the cheap stuff. Also a bit more syrupy. Don't know if that's worth paying quadruple the cost of the cheap stuff. I've never bought a bottle of the legitimately good stuff (that's money that could go towards comics), but I'm pretty sure no one's going to confuse this for that. I'll be making a salad dressing out of it soon, so I'll update if anything notable comes to light.

6 comments:

Johnny Bacardi said...

Good call on Phonogram; I bought a set off eBay a few months ago after reading about it here and there on the internet. Never did get around to writing about it. I thought it was at its base level a good idea, but I find McKelvie's art dull, stiffly posed and sterile and I suppose, 70's relic that I am, that it didn't help that I had little or no interest on many of the bands that were constantly namechecked. Manic Street Preachers? One album back in the early 90's. Not impressed. Belle and Sebastian? Downloaded a bunch of tracks from a bunch of their albums, listened for a week, and I'll be damned if I could tell you what any of them sounded like.

Hey, sounds like I'm reviewing comics again, don't it?

Anonymous said...

Comparing first month sales of an OGN in the DM to pamphlet sales, especially for a Vertigo book, is only going to give you an inflated perspective of the importance of pamphlets.
C'mon, Vertigo pamphlets sell exclusively in the DM, whereas the book trade is huge for them (relative to it's importance to DCU and Marvel titles). Vertigo titles make up more than half the DC stuff at my local big box book store.
Further, an OGN is going to have a shelf life measured in years, not a month or two, so total reorders on a critically successful book are eventually going to exceed initial orders. I wish someone at the publisher would weigh in, but alas, everything is super-secret for some reason.
Unless a pamphlet sells out at diamond. Then it is big, big news.

On the other side of the coin, what reason is there for NOT serializing? Unless the talent gets paid more via that route, or the material can't be conveniently parsed into 22 page chunks, it would seem to me that at worst serialization provides low cost publicity for the eventual collection.

Dick Hyacinth's Ghost said...

I think the movement toward GNs over pamphlets is pretty strong, and I don't want to dismiss this larger trend. But there are two things to keep in mind:

1. Vertigo seems to have the most success with series featuring recurring characters.

2. From what I've heard, the general consensus is that serialized OGNs are a riskier prospect than serialized pamphlets, since it gives the publisher a bit less flexibility (what with lead times for creators). I still think there's money to made in the format, and some of my favorite comics of 2006/7 are serialized OGNs (Scott Pilgrim, Pwr Mastrs, Dungeon, more or less). But the jury's still out, apparently.

3. Given (1) and (2), if Vertigo wants to get in the OGN business, it's going to have to change its strategy, either making books that appeal more to the people who buy single, stand alone OGNs (like me), or take some risks on commissioning new volumes of OGN serials before the numbers are completely in.

Either path is risky, so you can't really blame them for holding on to the pamphlet format as long as its feasible. Frankly, I think it's more likely that Zuda takes off than Vertigo reverses its losses. Vertigo is increasingly reliant the existing book market, which isn't exactly thriving itself.

Justin Fox said...

Sorry in advance for such a long comment:

Your breakdown of the Vertigo formula was interesting, but I was thinking about the same thing recently, and came up with just one type of comic Vertigo has been successful with.

Personality-driven roatrip horror with host (preferably one where the host is make the sort of journey college-aged kids are going on.

It's the thing that distinguishes the Vertigo 'brand' (all the way back to its precursor, Swamp Thing) and the thing that makes the serialazed stories more Vertigo than the OGNs, miniseries and one-shots. The books that have been their most succesful have been the ones that stay as close to that formula as possible. And the books become less succesful the further away from it they get.

Basically, the roadtrip is a journey in which a character or characters have to make stops at various locales and solve the problem of a particular locale before moving on to the next, as part of a larger story of reaching a final destination.

In a sense, it's the anthology-as-larger-story where Rod Serling, the Crypt Keeper, Cain, etc. act as the primary protagonist while still relating their smaller stories.

Swamp Thing (the host) is on a roadtrip to find himself (hello, college)after he learns that he wasn't who he thought he was (the horror). He travels through the bayou, around the country, through space and Hell, each time solving the problem of place before moving on to the next step.

Sandman's roadtrip is through the imaginations (the horror) of people in different locations in his journey to become more well-rounded.

Yorrick is on a roadtrip to reconnect with his long-distance girlfriend in a world where all the mens have died.

Preacher is on a roadtrip to find God.

Fables seems to focus on a different 'host' for each story arc (as best as I can tell from the Wiki), but the roadtrip seems to be about learning that things aren't what the appear to be. I imagine that if I read it, it would be a little clearer.

100 Bullets has a host in Agent Graves, a roadtrip to different places as he assembles his team (or whatever) and a horror: a gun that let's the user kill one time without repercussions (killing as freedom from rules).

Transmetropolitan is Spider Jerusalem on a tour of a city where today's problems are magnified, searching for the truth.

Essentially, I think this is what people are reacting to when they think that something feels like a Vertigo book, and the reason 100 Bullets is more Vertigo than it is, say, Wildstorm.

And it's the reason why a manga like Monster might feel more like a Vertigo book than The Other Side. The Other Side was not an ongoing, it had no real roadtrip flavor and the host was absent. It only had the horror. Monster, on the other hand has all of these things.

And then there's the personality-driven aspect. Swamp Thing became a dirty magic hippy - just like Alan Moore. Sandman was an over-literate goth like Neil Gaiman. Spider Jerusalem is a neologistic blowhard like Warren Ellis.

Hellblazer is the only book that worked with various writers, but it remains personality-driven because each writer portrays Constantine as his own asshole. And it's still very much a roadtrip horror, although the end game happens at the conclussion of each writer's run.

None of which is to say that the above books/writers are bad or anything like that. But a Vertigo book pretty much has to stick to that formula and that formula has to be evident from the start, or else it's going to fall down the sale-chart well. Of course, following it isn't a guarantee, but it's as close as a book can get.

Does Crossing Midnight follow the formula? I'm looking at the Wiki, and I'm not sure I can even follow it. But I'm not seeing the roadtrip, the host or the authorial voice (From what I've read of his, Carey tends to subsume his voice to the story and Jim Fern isn't about to pick up that slack).

Scalped is in my 'to read' pile, but I wonder if the underlying horror, the authorial voice and the over-arching roadtrip are there.

I read the first two issues of American Virgin but I couldn't figure out what it was about. What exactly is the journey that guy was going on supposed to be? Is he supposed to be learning the joy of sex? Is that a journey a lot of Vertigo readers need to go on? "Oh! It never occurred to me that sex might be fun!" Although, I can sort of see it as an exploration for what sex is fun for you, now that I think about it...

Loveless was even worse. Aside from some really questionable racial issues, the questions: What is the horror? What is the main character's identifiable journey? and What are the shorter arcs even about? aren't answered in the first collection.

The Invisibles was my absolute favorite Vertigo title, but it missed the formula a bit - and subsequetly, the sales. The problems were that Grant Morrison became the host, pushing the personality-driven aspect into the stratosphere; the roadtrip became more about moving through Morrison's inspirations and made each stop a chance to focus on a different protagonist. And the horror was never made explicit (Jack effectively defeats the horror of conformity in the first issue).

Really, the Vertigo editors just need to have a chart on the wall with the neccesary factors and then read the first issue synopsis of proposals and see how well the pegs fit the holes. That might be seen as an awful way to think creatively, but it can give you books as different as Sandman and 100 Bullets.

Serialized OGNs could work for Vertigo, but it would mean changing a few things (things that might not be changeable in their corporate structure). The first problem is lag time between volumes. A serious backlog would have to be created for the books to come out more than once a year. Doing so, freezes cashflow. Not doing so will freeze cashflow between books. The second, then, is commitment. You need to have the corporate commitment to stick with a series for a couple of years, despite likely moderate initial success AND the commitment of the creative team to not seek more immediate financial reward working on X-Men or Green Arrow. This means either substantially higher page rates for unproven titles or a willingness of creators to work in relative poverty for extended periods of time. I doubt either is likely. Third is education. You need to educate the readers that this is how the books will be read and there needs to be internal education: making sure that OGNs are still story beat-heavy and figuring out how to properly market such a thing and how to release them (even if Vertigo could come up with 12 strong OGN serials – which is a huge if, and released a different one each month, retailer cashflow would still be altered dramatically from the weekly structure they currently work from).

Vertigo can save itself by doing what it does best, not by changing their publishing strategies. It just needs to do more of what it does best.

Louis Vuitton Outlet said...

This topic was really educational and nicely written.

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