Dan Urazandi, a retailer, suggests that comics need to cut costs:
Lower production values. I remember when Baxter paper, cardstock covers and the like were brought in to justify higher cover prices. Let’s cut them now to help keep prices down.
Okay. Here’s another suggestion; stop printing in color. The computer coloring that’s industry standard sucks anyway. Manga has shown pretty clearly that Americans (or at least some Americans) will buy black and white comics.
I don’t know. Why not try a couple black and white titles at lower prices and see how they do? You could even print some big title issues (Batman, Wolverine, whatever) in both b&w and color, with the b&w a good bit cheaper, and see if there’s a market for it.
Maybe the savings on b&w aren’t big enough to justify such a step. Maybe super-hero fans just need that color. But, given the desperate situation the industry faces, it seems like it would be worth thinking about, at least.
I think there are a couple things working against B&W comics. Publishers like DC, Marvel, Dark Horse, etc. still depend on the Direct Market for most of their periodical sales, and DM consumers seem, at least to me, to have very narrow tastes. B&W comics would be a hard sell to the traditional Wednesday crowd.
Also, a lot of comic creators simply don't like B&W because that isn't what they grew up with, so it's a hard sell even to the people who stand to profit from their publication.
I think the slow, fitful movement towards digital distribution has more potential for success than B&W comics, though there's no reason why comic companies couldn't try both if they found the will.
Again, I wonder about the so-called desperate straits the medium is in. I think things are actually pretty good (economically, not artistically necessarily) for comics and comics companies compared to the economy en masse. Trade sales are good and going up, and these are financed en route by Wednesday floppy buyers. Black and White comics may be a decent idea (for some titles anyway, esp. with a noir feel like Batman), but if dire economic straits is supposed to be an impetus, then likely things will have to get a good deal worse….
Yeah, I worked retail for a while. Black and white doesn’t sell to the mainstream crowd. I’d love to see it, personally. I’d love it if we got bi-weekly or monthly magazine anthologies on newsprint with cheap gloss covers from each publisher, but it’s just not in the cards..
It’s weird, I’m fantasizing lately about the potential upsides of the economic collapse.Newsprint anthology mags are one of ’em.
I dunno Eric; you click on that link, the guy doesn’t sound positive about the future. Diamond’s cutting back on its page space, which is bad for small retailers. I don’t think the holiday season was good for anyone, comics companies included. I don’t think most comics professionals are bullish about the future.
Uland, I guess we might as well look for upsides. Not much else to do, really.
Great idea, Noah. Scott Pilgrim and Street Angel both convey tons of energy and life in gorgeous black and white. Good comics don’t need colour, although obviously some cartoonists (Hornschemeier, Ware) can enhance their work with its canny use.
Bad comics seem to try to hide under a lot of Photoshop tricks, and I would love to see that era come to a very sudden close.
Here’s an idea: slash colorists’ fees. Come up with a tasteful palette of flat color for each title, pay the colorists such a reduced rate that there’s no time for any kind of rendering, and print the thing on the cheapest paper available. Choose the colors well and it could even look nice.
I’m no expert, but I’ve heard color printing is not expensive these days. What has to drive up the price is the coated paper stock and the elaborate computer rendering that seems to be expected of every title. Mainstream comics have never looked worse in my opinion.
Now if only we faced similar prospects for a return to hand lettering, in which the most attractive choice was also the most economical. The next-best option would be to choose better fonts, possibly ones that looked like typefaces, but encourage artists to draw their own sound effects.
It’d be interesting to see what would happen if someone with taste got into publishing mainstream-style genre comics. Even the snootiest alternative comics figures seem to have appreciation for certain periods of that material.