Hopes For the New Year

This is what I had initially planned to write about yesterday before my focus was stolen.What follows is nothing more than a short list of things I'd like to see happen for next year.There's no basis in reality for my hopes, that's just what they are.I'll also be staying away from the obvious demands that I make here, so don't expect to see a certain manga series mentioned (well, not really) or any other familiar talking points.I'm not sure if I've ever mentioned any of this stuff before here.Anyway, enough with the preamble and on with the list. More intelligent pricing in comics:Comic book prices and Global Warming are alike only in the sense that by the time someone decides to do something about them, it'll be too late for anyone.So rather than whine about how I'd like to see things return to a world where a six-issue paperback collection of, say, "New Avengers" will set you back $15, I'll settle for seeing the major publishers be smarter in how they price things.There are a few titles from Image which do this well, such as "Saga" where the first volume gets you six issues for $10.You don't see that kind of flexibility with Marvel or DC where price per volume is pretty much fixed exclusively to page/issue count for recent collections.(That said, at least DC is a lot more flexible when it comes to pricing out older titles from their catalogue.)Lowering the barrier for entry can only help any title, and it doesn't have to apply strictly for trade paperbacks.How about lower priced #1 issues as well?Or even lower the price for the first arc?You'd think getting as many warm bodies to read your product when it starts would be a higher priority for these companies.Also along those linesLet's see some actual salesmanship for some of these titles:Every year, particularly with the Big Two, we get word of several well-liked titles that will be ending because they couldn't find an audience.There's also the standard slow attrition that we see for nearly every title out there, though a few of them ("Hawkeye," "The Walking Dead" before it went variant-crazy, and "Saga") have managed to fight off that trend through the buzz they generate and their overall quality.Unfortunately "buzz" rarely works for a title unless it's generated in sufficient quantity, such as when we get the big crossover event of the season going.Still, we shouldn't need to break the bank to give a good secondary title the boost it needs.Doing targeted marketing to the audience it's meant to attract or finding new markets to appeal to for a start.Yes, I'm speaking in buzzwords now and that's the reason we need people more clever than me to find out how to sell this stuff because the old ways don't work as well as they should. Digital content that actually gets me to read it online:We're slowly moving towards a digital industry, and the time where I do all of my comics reading on an electronic device.When that happens, I'll have to accept it; though, I have yet to see any kind of a device that offers the same feel as reading a book in your hand does.Also:Books.Decorate.A.Room.If I ever decide to post pictures of my own, you'll have visual proof of that.Then there's the fact that I've yet to see any digital product that makes me go, "I have to go and read that NOW!"I've had Mark Waid and Peter Krause's "Insufferable" recommended to me, and there's also Brian K. Vaughan and Marcos Martin's "The Private Eye" out there as well.Yet I haven't been sufficiently motivated to stop reading the comics I have in physical form (or playing videogames for that matter) to check them out.I don't know why that is, but that's just the way my mind is working. What would get me to start reading more digital titles?I don't think "star power" in terms of creative teams is the issue here, particularly with those titles that I've mentioned.However, offering up continuations of things I've been reading in print would likely do it.If Dark Horse ever decided to start publishing "Eden," "Reiko the Zombie Shop," or "Ghost Talker's Daydream" digitally in lieu of finishing off their print runs then I would drop everything to find out how those titles ended by reading them on my laptop.Then again, maybe the "magic digital bullet" could arrive in a form I'm not expecting sometime next year.We shall see. Randy Milholland teams up with Dark Horse to bring us the first "Something Positive" book:So while I just talked about digital content that's compelling enough to get me to read it online, I didn't count the webcomics that I've been reading for years and have pre-dated this very argument.I used to read around a dozen, but now it has come down to "Penny Arcade," "The Order of the Stick," and "Something Positive."Of those three, only "Something Positive" doesn't have a presence in print even though Milholland has talked about it and is constantly asked about it at every con that he visits.I figured he'd get to it in his own time, but since he's taken to actively trolling his audience about it, I'm going to offer my thoughts now. Dark Horse actually does have plenty of experience in bringing webcomics into print.However, they don't really have a signature title to show for it.The titles that they've brought into a physical format have either been so popular that they've been snapped up by other companies ("Penny Arcade" by Del Rey and now Oni, "Megatokyo" by DC), one-volume works (Jeff Parker and Erika Moen's "Bucko"), or very low-profile (Mitch Clem's "Nothing Nice to Say").With "Something Positive," you've got a series with a long online serialization -- twelve years and counting -- that still reads like it's in its prime, but has never enjoyed the wild popularity of the best-known webcomics.The way I see it, Milholland will be able to enjoy the revenue from the print editions of his works while Dark Horse enjoys a title that won't (or at least won't likely) be poached from them in the future.It seems like the perfect match -- now who wants to make it happen? Jason Glick
Full Post