COMICS 101
                                                                 by John Robinson
                                                                                    Graham Crackers Comics 
   Graham Crackers Comics has been open for almost 29 years now and it never ceases to frustrate me to no end to see certain publishers make the same mistakes, over and over again - regardless of regime changes, and their supposed swearing these practices off.

    I get that I'm a retailer and they're the publishers.  They have the publishing experience, I don't.  But I've seen what fails over and over again and at the very least you'd think they'd look at their own history before repeating the same mistakes again.  But alas.  What you and I might consider common sense, seems to allude some comic book publishers. 
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    Here's the BEGINNERS CLASS these publishers should take before being put in charge:
                                     It's Graham Crackers Comics COMICS 101


    DON'T RELEASE your BOOKS ALL on the SAME WEEK!
   Wow, this has got to be the #1 complaint I get from customers -- just look at this week: HERE  Marvel's dumping 7 X-titles all on the same week, plus 3 of the main Avengers titles, and 3 Ultimate titles.  Let me stress this - ALL ON THE SAME WEEK.  The previous week had 0 Ultimate titles, 2 minor Avengers books and only 2 x-titles.  SPREAD THEM OUT.  It's pretty simple - if by chance every creator turned in their work on the same week?  Hold a few and spread 'em out.  You're just BEGGING for customers to quit collecting your books with practices like this. 
    Most people do not budget for these situations.  You're causing two major problems with this - both can easily lead to someone quitting collecting.  Not only do they go to the store, week after week and find NOTHING they collect, they've now wasted their time driving to the stores to pick up 1 book?  Suddenly it's not worth the effort any longer - THEN they come in and get hit with all of it at once and find they can't afford it.  I saw this in the 80's, 90's, 00's and still again in the 10's.  Doesn't matter who's in charge, they still release the crap the second the inks dry.  Hold some of it for a week if you have to, don't drown people in your product.

   REFERENCE your companies BACK ISSUES and your RICH HISTORY within current storylines. 

      Publishers used to actively encourage readers to try and track down a back issue to find out what Spidey's talking about in panel 17.  I get that the publishers don't make any money off little Johnny looking for Robert Kirkman's run of Marvel Team-Up so it's not in their short term interest to encourage Johnny to look for it - but what they're missing out on is a grand and wonderful experience exclusive to comic collecting that's been almost completely abandoned. 
        I've seen it over the past 30-40 years with not only myself and friends but countless customers coming into our stores looking for storylines that they USED TO BE pointed to inside their current comics.   It helped a publishers readers have a vested interest in the make up their Universe's history. Without that you're just measuring your comic dollars reading experience by the minutes - and with today's competition that's a tough act to compete with.



   KEEP THE NUMBERING GOING !  People can follow numbers that go in sequential order.  It's easy, they learned it in elementary school.  What they did NOT learn was this nonsense of re-starting numbering, then returning to old numbering systems. Who's really benefitng from this?  Certainly not the collector - you're just giving him an excuse to stop his run of 100+ issues bought.  Let's cancel ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN but then re-launch it the next month and call it ULTIMATE COMICS SPIDER-MAN, no wait, after 15 issues let's go back to the old title and the old numbering but include the numbering from this series into it.  What?   I see customer after customer over the past 20+ years using this as an excuse to quit their THOR run, X-FACTOR run, AMAZING SPIDER-MAN run - you name it.  Now good luck explaining it to the new kid that just started picking up the series.  Which THOR volume do you want kid? 
 
   Your very, very short term gains from publishing an anniversary issue #150 or another #1 are just that VERY short term and short sighted.  The sales numbers always drop back down and usually below 'regular' numbers before you pulled this stunt since we've lost a lot of dedicated, habitual readers because of this idiotic short sighted practice. 


  When you have a MAJOR MOTION PICTURE coming out - make sure you have your graphic novels in stock at your distributor.   
     Hello Marvel, I'm calling you out again.  Most of my customers assume I'm the dumb ass for not having all the Iron Man trades in stock when the movie came out.  Nope, Marvel had, I believe a total of 3, maybe 4 Iron Man trades available for order the week before the film came out.  And two of them were Essential Iron Man vol. 2 & 4 (I believe) - certainly no Volume 1 - why would they have that available?  Again, insanely common sense.   
    You've invested MILLIONS in this film - invest THOUSANDS in having your product available to cash in on all the promotion money your spending anyway.   



    Maybe feature the TITLE CHARACTER on the cover, it might make sense.  Both MARVEL & DC used to make artists redraw what you'd consider a perfectly good cover simply because the MAIN CHARACTERS back or face was turned a little too much away.  Now you can slap IRON MAN & SPIDER-MAN on the cover of a book called CARNAGE #1.  What the hell?  Like you really don't have a stock image of CARNAGE lying around?  Why not make this stupid cover the dumb INCENTIVE - and take the incentive cover (of CARNAGE) and put him on the cover of the book you're publishing. Seriously I have to spell this out?  You used to have art directors that would never ever let this fly.  



    Let us know WHEN it's a mini-series and when it's an on-going.  When the industry started experimenting with limited series in the 1980's each of the comics were CLEARLY labeled, not only that they were a mini-series, but also HOW MANY ISSUES you were committing yourself to buying.  Nowadays it's a complete guess, especially with MARVEL.  Sometimes even the solicitations don't tell you and MANY times the covers tell you nothing and you look like an idiot (again) to your customers.  Mini-Series? maybe it's a mini-series evidently it's a secret??  What the hell?
    You figured out how to do it correctly over 20 years ago - why have you forgotten?  Click on the images to see the examples - first one is a 6 issue-min series, clearly marked on the cover - second one is a 4 issue mini-series with absolutely no indication to be found anywhere on the cover or inside the book.

PLEASE DON'T CANCEL A TITLE JUST TO RESTART IT!
   Okay, this does tie-in to the renumbering nonsense complained about above.  But a publisher making a public cry of 'We realize we have too many X-TITLES, SPIDEY, whatever, so we're cancelling them and trimming our line down to 4 a month!' only to back peddle 6 months later as your re-introduce Web of Spider-Man, Sensational Spider-Man, a new X-Factor, NEW NEW X-Men, and 6 Wolverine 1 shots that the fans have been clearly demanding? 
     Comic buying is part habit, in some customers cases it's almost completely based on reflex memory - and when you take away that book from their list for 4 months only to bring it back - there's a good chance they won't re-try it.  You've cured them of their habit and they can see now that they weren't really enjoying that 7th Wolverine title anyway.  Most comic readers are willing to ride out the 'bad times' of a series just to keep a run going in the hopes that things will turn.  But ending it and restarting it is a whole 'nother matter, and constantly doing this is sure to guarantee losing just about every loyal reader you had with that character.