Despite the title, this isn’t totally an article about how Mainstream comics are fighting the Independent comics because honestly there isn’t a fight. The mainstream have nothing to worry about from Independents. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Recently Marvel has started another promotion/stunt to promote a comic. The gist of the promotion is that if you send them torn covers from a selection of books, then they will send you a variant comic in trade. The big thing about this is, that Marvel is asking for the covers of DC Books in trade for a Marvel book. Further, it’s a inference that retailers were forced to buy DC Books that they can’t sell in order to get plastic rings. Never has a publisher offered to take another publisher’s books in return for anything. Hell, the direct market doesn’t allow returns of anything. A retailer buys a book, they’re stuck with it. So of course Marvel says this is done to help retailers, but there are several issues about this. First, it can be viewed that Marvel is openly saying that certain DC Comics are bad because they did not sell and that Marvel comics will sell better by offering a trade. Second, it’s ignoring the fact that retailers have a lot of Marvel comics that didn’t sell because they were weak spin-offs from “big event” books.
All in all, this goes back to the competition between the big comic publishers fighting for comic reader’s attention and money. Back in the days when Bill Jemas was Publisher of Marvel, he would sling so many verbal barbs at DC, that corporate had to come in and tell him to reign it in a tad. But at the end of the day that hype seemed to sell books. And Marvel’s Editor-In-Chief at the time who took part in the antics is Joe Quesada, who is currently the EIC at Marvel.
Now I’m not saying either side is right or wrong in this fight. What I’m getting to is that the people who do suffer in the end of this is the reader. Currently the market is filled with event comics and spin offs from both DC and Marvel, and not all of them sell. Both publishers will point out the sales spikes show that readers are interested and that the stories are quality, but I think that’s a limited view. If you look, typically only the main event miniseries has any sort of solid sales, and any temporary sales increase in a title that ties into the event will quickly correct to pre-event numbers. They’re not retaining readers.
So what is my point to all this? My thought is that there are too many mainstream titles cluttering comic store shelves and maybe it’s time for Indy Comics to offer a trade for Dark Reign List Countdown Noir Final Blackest Siege event comics. Those Marvel and DC comics are just sitting there, not generating sales, so why not switch them out with an Indy title and see if they can generate some money for the store. It’s not like the store can get rid of them.
But not everyone agrees with that plan. If you recall, I was a part of Indy Comic Book Week. It was were indy comics shipped out to stores during a week when Diamond didn’t send out any comics. But their plan was not a protest or anything against Diamond, they were merely taking advantage of an opportunity that arose. And their problem with my idea is that they feel that negative response Marvel has gotten on their comic swap idea would not generate good will for Indy Comics if they did something similar. So my current thought is to not take stripped covers, but take the whole books and then donate them to some sort of charity. http://www.heroes4heroes.org/ is a good example.
And a big problem is, that’s it enough hard work to just get the books made and get out. Now I’m talking about organizing indy creators to join together for a potentially major promotion. That’s more work on top of more work. But it’s also the nature of the beast. People come into the comic store because they want to read about Batman or Wolverine. They’re not going into the store looking for my book Dusk because they don’t know about it. And they won’t know about it if I don’t do things to catch their eye and gain their awareness. But then doing comics isn’t for the faint of heart
David Doub was a IT professional in the Dallas-Forth Worth area for the past decade, but after several turns in his life he’s going back to his first love, comics. Come read David’s journey has he tries to make it as a writer and creator in the comic industry. The only companion with him on this journey is his cat Jordon, who happens to like the taste of paper. 
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