Fourth of July Fun

Josh agreed to come along with me on a short research trip to more fully explain this:

Okay, there was very little research done. But I was right that it was a good prompt for discussion. See for yourself:

I'm saying comics-adapted movies bring in money.

Josh is saying the two are innately separate.

Both true.

~ @JonGorga

UPDATE:
(thanks thenewbestthing)

You Shouldn't Need Super-Telescopic-Vision to See the Comics Industry

If I named an upcoming movie you were looking forward to, you would know the release date off the top of your head. I was looking forward to "Thor", so I knew it was coming out May 6th. I do not work in the film industry in any way.

If you named an upcoming comic I was looking forward to, I could not tell you when it was scheduled to be released. And I work in the comics industry in several capacities. Both Josh and I were looking forward to Norwegian comicsmith Jason's first collaboration with a writer: "Isle of 1000 Graves" but I had no idea it was set to release until it arrived in my store in a box from Diamond Distributors. Nor could I have told you when "Flashpoint" #2 or "Fear Itself" #3 (arguably the two most high-profile series coming out of the mainstream right now) were going to drop. The comics industry has a problem. I have recently named it. Lack of Visibility.

Now, some will be quick to point out that this information is absolutely available. And they are right. There are one or two websites with release schedules. You could ask your local comics shop's employees to take a look at their order forms and/or Diamond Distributors' website. But it's not in your face, it's not the ever-present, everyday, cultural bombardment it probably should be.

Small publisher Fantagraphics (@fantagraphics) is getting around this by posting 'book trailers' of their upcoming releases like this one on Flickr:

and there's many more on their YouTube channel at YouTube.com/Fantagraphics

You should check them out if you're at all curious about their soon-to-arrive comics.

That's an excellent idea, but it requires sitting at a computer, logging on to YouTube and searching for Fantagraphics to find it. As I wrote here, I eventually want comics huge and on Times Square billboards, but in the meantime I don't think it's too much to ask that Comics promotion be in your face at work, at school, and at home just as it is with all the other entertainment artforms.

When DC Comics' (@DC_NATION) big news broke two weeks back, the story was picked up by all manner of normal entertainment news sources as I reported here. The news is a part of our everyday lives. YES, that's a great start but journalism is not advertising (although the distinction can be blurry) and the one thing better than getting people to talk about your art is getting people to THINK about your art. That's why the logo for The Long and Shortbox Of It is a THOUGHT balloon and not a speech balloon. We want you to think about comics first and then talk about them.

There ARE simple and cheap ways to be visible on a small-scale:

[All the following photographs are my own.]

Take a look at how a student advertised her senior-thesis graphic novel gallery exhibition. Nicki France followed the precedent of other studio art majors at Bard College and designed a postcard to advertise her gallery opening.

The front was a two-page spread from the graphic novel itself:


While the back simply has the exhibition's information:


Literally, a little comics in my mailbox. Somewhere I look everyday. YES.

(The Scott Eder Gallery and the Museum of Comics and Cartoon Art [@MoCCAnyc] wisely do postcard mailings as well!)

Manhattan Comics & More (@MnhtnComicsMore) a NYC comics shop designed an awesome cross-promotion with Big Daddy's Diner, a restaurant just a few blocks away from the store.
[Manhattan Comics & More is an employer of Jon Gorga.]



Comics advertised at a place I eat. Somewhere I am likely to be. YES.

In the two years I have been going to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden's cherry blossom viewing festival, I have seen Abby Denson (@citysweettooth) sitting at a booth, putting her comics out there both times. I also discovered in the year between my two Japan-centric visits to those beautiful gardens, that some of her work is available at Tekserve, the 'Apple Store before the Apple Store' here in New York City.



Comics presented at an outdoor event celebrating nature and at a prime location of consumer technology. Two places everyday people of different stripes are likely to be. YES.

Part of the entirely normal and accepted model for making webcomics is printing tee-shirts with logos, panels, characters, and in-jokes from the work itself. Just google "webcomics tee-shirts" and you'll get a ton of examples!

Yes, comics are visible. Comic-strips appear in daily newspapers all over the country and many people read them. But many people don't THINK about them. We need to find ways both big and small and digital and analog to remind people that we are here, that we exist, and that we are doing quality work.

Think about the possibilities. You may surprise yourself.

~ @JonGorga

Everyone is in a Media Tizzy Over This?

I worry about the mental state of a world that puts at such importance the decisions of fictional characters in regards to their legal citizenship.

Yahoo.com's main page 'trending' searches as of two weeks ago, just after the release of "Action Comics" #900 on April 27th.
Maybe I'm just being cantankerous. I can see how, to the general public, the idea that Superman is now fighting for 'Truth, Justice, but NOT the American way' is shocking. But Superman's writers had long ago deduced that if Superman, as a character, was purely an American man the balance of power would be tipped unfairly and DC universe's American politicians would attempt to use him as a weapon, either literal or propagandistic. That was one of the many lessons of Alan Moore's and Frank Miller's respective late-Cold War epics of 1986: "Watchmen" and "The Dark Knight". "God exists, and he's American." ("Watchmen" #4) Nobody would take this naively anymore. The solution was to stress him as a world-wide protector of all human life. Renouncing his American citizenship was implied as a done deal a long time ago. That makes this recent move not tremendously newsworthy from an insider's perspective.

It is ONLY interesting as a nudge-in-the-ribs version of 'Hey look! These aren't your Papa's comic-books!' Something more dramatic is needed. We need to put interesting comics in front of people, not just tell them about one single incident of a single comic with some mild ramifications related to the public's retro-active understanding of certain mainstream characters. Last night after seeing the "Thor" movie adaptation in Times Square I stood on the street and watched the jumbotrons play the movie's trailer as well as the trailer for "X-Men: First Class" and lots and LOTS of other things: Martha Stewart. Good Morning America. Lady Gaga. Coca Cola. The Simpsons. Sit-com television.

The comics industry needs to concentrate less on 'stunts' and more on making comics themselves as visible as the things I saw on those huge screens.

And, well, if we're going to get technical? Clark Kent has a social security number. Superman doesn't. Superman is not a legal US citizen and therefore can't renounce his citizenship. Does that really need to be pointed out?

~ @JonGorga

Impressively Sized Billboards, Budgets, and Bludgeons

Last year, at around this same time, I wrote a somewhat harsh editorial about the comics industry and advertising after seeing a different ad for a fairly different Marvel comics-adaptation movie on this same Times Square billboard:

[If nothing else, it's pretty interesting to see how that specific corner of Times Square has changed in the year since, if you go back and look at my photograph from a year ago.]

Now, unlike "Kick-Ass", I am so freaking excited for this film. Not just because it's a superhero comic-book adaptation spear-headed by a man better known for his Shakespearean adaptations (Kenneth Branagh), and not just because the production seems to have picked up on the crazy design-style Jack Kirby originally brought to Stan Lee's interpretation of the god of Asgard, but because this film is the first to come out of Marvel Studios with Disney (@Disney) money behind it. Thus promising something even more spectacular than "Iron Man" in production, and hopefully, success. (According to rumors...) the production had run entirely out of money and would never have been made if not for Disney's purchase of Marvel Entertainment (@Marvel). The movie is scheduled to arrive in theaters May 6th.

Look at all the awesome on display here as well:

Classy! Let's hope the rest of the ad campaign follows suit...

Oh not so much, huh?

Not exactly classy. But still in the open, where the common man will see it, and that's good.

The film reportedly cost $150 million [via IMDb.com & Wikipedia.org] so I would assume no expense has been spared on advertising. And the billboards and posters seem to be in a wide range of locations here in New York City. The one I photographed is east of Times Square but there's another one just a block away from the 7-11 where I took the other photo in Queens.

I'm currently working at another comic-book shop in Manhattan and several shelves and long-boxes are organized into sections devoted to comics with upcoming film and television adaptations: Green Lantern, X-Men, Avengers, Captain America, and of course, Thor...

People who are going to say: Huh, this idea of the Norse gods like Thor being from a world where science and magic are the same thing is fascinating OR The idea of Thor being an agent of protection for human beings because he is forced out of Asgard for his arrogance is cool OR The sight of a huge dude with a hammer smashing frost giants is super fucking cool AND then deducing that just as a series of novels are more complex, fleshed-out, and original than a film adapted from them, all of these things are available in more complexity, more frequency, and more originality in the Thor comics that have been coming out since the Sixties... will then travel to a store like the one I'm working in to find a few of them.

Well, these are my hopes. It happened on some level with "Watchmen" and "Scott Pilgrim". Let's see if "Thor" brings another piece of the puzzle into place.

~ @JonGorga

UPDATE 7/8/11:

Just discovered this site that makes a much fuller analysis than mine of the marketing campaign(s) for "Thor".

Marvel Starts Counting From Point One in February?

Marvel has begun promotions for a new initiative first announced months ago in November:

MARVEL.1

Another new attempt to grab new readers, Marvel will be producing certain upcoming extra issues and labeling them as "a perfect starting point, kicking off Marvel's biggest and most impactful stories of 2011".

The issues listed by the marketing postcards and Marvel's press release as part of the Point One campaign are:

"Amazing Spider-Man" #654.1

"Invincible Iron Man" #500.1
"Wolverine" #5.1
in February

"Captain America #615.1
"Deadpool" #32.1
"Hulk" #30.1
"Thor" #620.1
"Uncanny X-Force" #5.1
in March

"Avengers" #12.1"

"Secret Avengers" #11.1
"Uncanny X-Men" #534.1
in April

Combined with a "huge marketing push" each full 22-page issue will be priced at $2.99 and followed by a second issue in the same series within the same month of the Point One issue release.

[via Marvel.com press release]

More importantly, each issue is designed with the goal of being both enjoyable by-itself and as the first part of a longer experience.

The issues are to be literally numbered with a .1 so the "Thor" issue will be "Thor" #620.1. I assumed most likely it would be purely a visual gimmick but ComicsAlliance.com reports here that there will be a regular issue (#620) and a Point One issue (#620.1) followed immediately by another regularly numbered issue (#621).

I'm not sure this campaign can actually succeed in bringing in new readers to Marvel's comics/characters/universe.  That said, more comic-book issues that tell self-contained stories but connect to larger ongoing concepts and story-elements is great, great, great and we need more of it so everybody gets a solid value and less unpleasant surprises when they purchase a comic-book expecting what Tom DeFalco once called "a complete unit of entertainment" (Marvel Podcast, "The Amazing Spider-Girl"; 4/28/2oo7). The months February, March, and April do lead us right to May, the month that has become the traditional one for Free Comic Book Day to fall in. So a line has been drawn making it easier for non-comics people to find simple great superhero comics stories. That's a great step forward. Almost as big a one as Marvel's statements that they will be utilizing their "PR firm" to reach a "mass audience". Here's hoping there's Disney money at that particular PR company.

Back in November, then Marvel Executive Editor (now Senior Vice President of Publishing) Tom Brevoort pointed out that by utilizing a decimal point the idea was far more flexible and repeatable than the Free Comic Book Day editions that arrive in our stores every May or the old #0 and #1/2 issues from the Nineties. Incidentally, the idea of numbering a comic with a decimal is an idea I'd had bouncing around in my noggin for an entirely different purpose and context. But that is a story for another day.

In the meantime, The Long and Shortbox Of It wishes Marvel well in advertising the campaign in as many media outlets as possible both in and outside of comics.

~@JonGorga

Building a Better Universe: On Marvel's Architects Intitiative

Yesterday, Marvel released the following press release, detailing their new Architects initiative:

The very fabric of the Marvel Universe is changing and the Architects are the ones leading the charge! Marvel’s Architects initiative spotlights the writers and artists telling the most exciting and impactful stories that rock the Marvel Universe to its very core every month.

But just who are the writers in Marvel’s Architects?

·Brian Michael Bendis, writer of AVENGERS, NEW AVENGERS, Death of Spider-Man, the upcoming MOON KNIGHT and an upcoming top secret project

·Matt Fraction, writer of THOR, INVINCIBLE IRON MAN, and a top secret upcoming event

·Ed Brubaker, writer of CAPTAIN AMERICA, SECRET AVENGERS and top secret upcoming new series

·Jonathan Hickman, writer of FANTASTIC FOUR, S.H.I.E.L.D. and a top secret upcoming new series

·Jason Aaron, writer of WOLVERINE, ASTONISHING SPIDER-MAN & WOLVERINE and a top secret upcoming new series

“These are five of the top writers in comics and they’re writing some of the best Marvel comics ever” said C.B. Cebulski, SVP Creator & Content Development. “Each of their projects lays the groundwork for the future of the Marvel Universe and in 2011, their plans—which are being seeded in their current work as we speak—will come to fruition. There’s never been a better time to be a Marvel fan.”

Stay tuned to Marvel.com for more news on Marvel’s Architects, including interviews and the unveiling of the artists redefining the Marvel Universe!

Jason Wood, over at iFanboy, believes that press releases like this send the wrong message (he, by the way, makes a couple of very good points), I'm more interested in a couple of the other hints that they seem to be dropping:

The absence of Uncanny X-Men under the titles that Fraction writes is curious, since he's been the lead on that since the summer of 2008- almost as long as he's been writing Invincible Iron Man. Does this mean that recently announced co-writer Kieron Gillen (whom, you will remember, is one of the few writers I adore as much as I adore Fraction and who's series S.W.O.R.D was canceled far too soon earlier this year) will be the new director of the X-Verse? Fraction's run on the title has been hit and miss, but I suspect that has more to do with the artists he's paired with more than anything else. Is he jumping ship? Or at least stepping back to focus on whatever this top secret event is?

Speaking of top secret, each of these writers is writing a "top secret" something or other. So, that's news, I guess. My one big hope is that Brubaker's unannounced project is a Steve Rogers: Super Soldier ongoing- that was some of the best comics all year, and it let Ed do some straight up espionage comics, which was fun to see.

Most interestingly, though, is the inclusion of Jason Aaron on this list- every other writer is involved with a major aspect of the Marvel universe, but Aaron's big title right now is Wolverine, which I've heard is very good but usually seems to exist in its own space: finding out what his big upcoming project is going to be is extremely exciting, if for no other reason than it suggests that its going to be huge. The little work of Aaron's that I've read (Scalped and a few issues of PunisherMax before I just couldn't handle the violence of that comic any more) was fantastic, and I'm having trouble containing my curiosity.

Jeph Loeb Has New Job as Marvel's Head of Television

"Executive Vice-President, Head of Marvel Television" to be exact!


Huh...

This is a subtle ramification of Disney's purchasing of Marvel last year. In this video, Loeb talks about "hour-long dramatic television series" (presumably he means live-action series) soon to be in development with "ABC and ABC Family", both Disney owned channels if you didn't know. It's exciting because although there has been a 'Marvel Animation' or a 'Marvel Studios', there has never been an over-all TELEVISION division at Marvel. That is why there have been so few Marvel properties in live-action television adaptations, and why they have generally been very cheesy when done. It is also why there has never been a push toward television advertising for Marvel's comics.

"The Amazing Spider-Man" 1977 live-action series:

is a prime example of Marvel on TV gone bad.

The 70s "Incredible Hulk" live-action series is the exception to this... although it's not exactly perfect either.

What will this mean moving forward? Well, I imagine that if nothing else it means we will have one centralized force working to get Marvel's characters back on television and hopefully in high quality narrative productions, but possibly limited to channels owned by Disney.

Regardless of the quality of the comics he has been producing of late, Jeph Loeb is a damn smart man who has had a varied career in varied media for decades: film, television, and comics. This isn't Marvel putting a comics writer with no experience in moving image media in charge of their Television division. This is a shrewd move on the part of Marvel/Disney and I'm sure we'll see some nice productions come out of it but...

I hope this leads to some avenues for direct comics advertising on channels owned by Disney. Because this blog is about comics, Disney bought Marvel and Marvel is in the business of making comics goddamnit. I know, 'Again he's harping on this?' but I really do believe that good adaptations may lead people back to the comics and bad ones may steer them away from the medium, but advertising for the comics themselves can only be good for the industry. No matter how bad an advertisement for a specific pizza brand is, it gets you thinking about pizza. This is even more important for comics in the US because we are in a country where thousands or even millions of people don't even know that comics HAVEN'T died out yet.

If this new "Marvel Television" diverts even more capital away from the sequential art division and isn't also going to incorporate some advertising for the comics or at least some planned financial kickback into the comics, I'm going to be pissed. The potential here, as always, is great. Whether Marvel remembers to keep the focus on their roots remains to be seen.

~ @JonGorga

Fables on the BBC

Via Rich Johnston comes this cool Fables ad, which I guess ran in the UK over the weekend during a Doctor Who marathon:



This is neat, because it is basically the kind of thing Jon was begging to see more of last week; people can put comics adverts on television and Vertigo is putting comics adverts on the telly (well, at least in Britain, anyway), which is a huge step in the right direction.

Now, before we get too excited, Rich suggests that Vertigo may have not bought the space so much as traded some with the BBC, so they may not have actually sought out the time for the 30 second spot so much as taken the BBC up on an offer of barter. With that said though, DC/Vertigo/Warner/Whoever did decide to give up a chunk of (very valuable) advertising revenue to run the ad and this is extremely important because it means that DC/Vertigo/Warner/Whoever thinks they can sell comics by advertising them on television. Cool, right?

Well, mostly. Rich has some complaints about the ad copy (which is fair enough- the man does do advertising for a living), but the major problem I have with the ad is that it sells Fables as a series of graphic novels, which it is not. It is a series of comic books. The distinction may seem fine and, to be honest, it is, but it is also extremely important. COMICS is a medium, much like literature or film. A "graphic novel" is (to borrow a term from improv) a long-form kind of comic, while a comic book is a short-form (again, an improv term) example of the medium. Therefore, Fables is a long running comic book which, as a general rule, runs 32 pages per issue while 1001 Nights of Snowfall is a graphic novel set in the Fables universe.* There are other things that separate comic books from graphic novels (for instance, comics are generally part of a series while graphic novels are generally stand-alone) but these are mostly generalizations (this week's Serenity: Float Out is a one-shot while Maus has two volumes, for example) and, therefore, to distill the differences to their essence is to discuss length.

Hence, the problem with the advert calling Fables a series of graphic novels; Fables is a series of comic books, which is occasionally collected into something resembling a graphic novel. This is the heart of something I call The Comics Consumption Problem: because collections resemble graphic novels we treat them as such and, therefore, we consume them as such. The problem is, collections of comic books are just that- collections of comic books! To treat them as graphic novels is to consume them differently than they were intended; it is to consume them as one story rather than as serial chapters of one story. This may not seem like an important distinction, but it is a very important distinction- telling a story serially over a period of months is different than telling a story in one big chunk (this is part of the reason that television differs from film, for example); it forces a creator to put the same sort of overall structure in an individual issue that he or she would put in the series as a whole, when taken together and it forces us, the reader, to read in a very different and specialized kind of way.

I'm not suggesting that people shouldn't buy collections- they do a lot of good, and there is a reason they exist. I am suggesting, however, that there needs to be a new standard, a new way of understanding them that differs from both comic books and graphic novels. We need to understand them in their own terms.

The Fables advert on the BBC is really cool and, like I said, I think it is a step in the right direction. I do, however, think that it represents a kind of thinking about comics that moves us backwards in other ways, ways we need to be very careful of.

*Whether or not 1001 Nights of Snowfall actually counts as a "graphic novel" is an interesting question- most of it is comics, but some of it is actually illustrated prose. A discussion on how to treat something like this will have to wait for another time.

A Call to Ads

Sometimes I wonder about things. Arty medium difference economical things...

I've mentioned finances and how they affect the Comics industry in a few of my recent posts, and I'd like to expand upon some of that while tackling a whole other industry: the Advertising industry. More importantly, I want to address the connection between the two industries and the wide potenial for the Comics world's deals with the ad men of Madison Ave as I see it.

So "Kick-Ass" (@kickasscomic) is one of the hottest comics on the stands right now (when it comes out). I haven't read every issue yet (the last issue of the first volume, #8, came out back in January). I happen to think it's pretty over-done violent junk, but who am I to judge the tastes of the people.

"Kick-Ass" also just received the silver-screen treatment (@kickassthemovie) and made a somewhat disappointing weekend release that, however, hasn't dropped off in huge numbers since. In the weeks leading up to the adaptation's arrival in theaters this giant billboard could be seen in Times Square here in Manhattan:

Pretty sweet, right? Well, I can't enjoy it because all I can think is why couldn't it be this:

Comics billboard advertising. Why not?

Well, I think to myself: Self, comics can't have billboard ads because the amount of money the rental agency charges the ad agency who charges the person who gets the advertising contract is too huge for the number of people who are expected to see it and then follow their nose into a comic-book store or into a box-chain bookstore and ask for the Comics & Graphic Novels section.

An unfortunate truth, I guess.

Films cost millions of dollars to make and make tens of millions of dollars in revenue, so the ad agency charging the production company can be paid tens of thousands of dollars and in turn spend thousands of dollars on a giant fucking billboard.

So the problem is one of scale or, perhaps more accurately, perceived scale.

But perceptions can be changed, can't they? We just had the annual Free Comic Book Day this month and although it wasn't a failure by any stretch of the imagination, it was pointed out to me by a comic shop manager friend of mine that his boss HATES Free Comic Book Day (@Freecomicbook). Why?

Well, because it's a day on which he is required to shell out money (although not a lot, something like ¢8 a comic-book) for product that he is then going to be expected to give away for free. If he doesn't give the comics away, he looks like a jerk. If he absconds from the whole event, he looks like a jerk who isn't current with the times. So far, financially, this has all worked out because so many people come into the store looking for something free and leave with a few things that aren't free that the store makes enough money to cover the expense and then some. But he still hates that he's giving the product away and there's something else. There's a bigger problem here:

Most of the people coming in are comics readers already because most of the promotion for the event appeared in places comics readers look.

I can understand his point of view even if I don't agree with it. (As I wrote the next day, I saw quite a variety of people.) Most specifically I can agree with the undeniable fact that comics still don't get promotion in the same way the other arts do.

Graphic novel ads on Times Square billboards. Why not?

Comic-book ads on television. Why not?

Magazines, newspapers, radio, subway cars. Why NOT?

Because less people read comics? No. That may be the truth, but that isn't why these ads don't exist. There are ads for all kinds of things that have no market whatsoever in reality. That's the American way. Sell 'em something they don't need! Advertising isn't based on reality it's based on expectations about reality:

Perceived economies of scale.

Whether changing the perception will magically change the reality or vice versa I have no idea, but I do know there are some softball ways to start this process. In fact, some of them are already underway.

Facebook user-designed ads which can be set up to direct a user to a Facebook page are so cheap and, as a result, are appearing for comics, webcomics, and comics-related events. That's really exciting because not only is that advertising in the face of people who theoretically want to see it, it's designed directly by the artistic creators/event planners for those people.

But these are probably called-up from text-search algorithms based on the user's habits. So they'll see these ads only if they already happen to be on Facebook pages with words like "webcomics", "comic-books", "artists", etc...

Marvel advertises for its Digital Comics Unlimited streaming subscription service on all kinds of websites. They have a bunch of them, they look like this:

Not exactly as professional looking as I'd like. It is a web banner ad; it doesn't really need to be too fancy but it only looks marginally better than the user-designed Facebook ads!

The "Scott Pilgrim" people at Oni Press (@OniPress) and Universal Pictures (@UniversalPics) really have a good thing going. They've printed up bookmarks that have an ad for the upcoming film adaptation on one side and an ad for the soon to be completed graphic novel series on the flip side.

See?

"SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD" (the movie adaptation)

"An epic of epic epicness."

in Theaters August 13 & @ www.scottpilgrimthemovie.com

*Turn it over...*

"SCOTT PILGRIM'S FINEST HOUR" (the sixth and last graphic novel)

plus! "Catch up on Scott Pilgrim at your local Comic Shop!"

in Stores July 20th & @ www.scottpilgrim.com or www.onipress.com

Now that's smart marketing. You see one side, it excites you and you learn about either the adaptation or the source material when you flip it over!! The film gets advertising, the comic gets advertising, the customer gets a free bookmark. Each side is the same size and in the same place and thus gets the same exposure. Both are true to their respective logos and designs/aesthetics. Nobody behind this marketing tool made an a priori assumption about the number of people potentially interested in a film or the number of people potentially interested in a graphic novel. It's trying to get as many people as possible interested in both and as a result probably has gotten a maximum number of people interested in the related product. Everybody wins!

I don't mean for this post to be a series of admonitions and accolades. All comics companies could be doing more to promote the Comics medium in mainstream avenues.

I saw a Las Vegas comic-book store make shockingly good use of advertising in a large theater in the weeks after the release of "The Dark Knight" two years back. They placed Grant Morrison's recent issues of "Batman" in a nice fan shape (with Alex Ross' gorgeous cape and cowel cover on top) with the deluxe Batman movie dolls Warner Bros. released in a small glass case next to the concession stand. Why couldn't DC Comics do something like that on a huge scale?

Why didn't "Kick-Ass" the movie have a teeny tiny bump play before it started in the theater for the Comic Shop Locator service? Did you even know such a public service existed? 1 888 COMIC BOOK. Really.

Why don't the mid-level to major-level companies create a multi-million dollar coalition (they've done that before on at least two occasions I can think of, off the top of my head) to buy ad space in People magazine or The New Yorker or time on WFMU (I'm told they love Dan Clowes over there. Fantagraphics, you're not taking advantage of a golden opportunity!) or during the goddamn Super-Bowl or ANY OF THE MILLIONS OF MAINSTREAM MEDIA SOURCES SELLING ADVERTISING TIME/SPACE?

I don't mean for this to be about what the Comics industry is doing wrong. This is not a badgering admonition. I mean for this to be about what more the Comics industry could be doing right. This is a call. A call to the weapons that lay waiting at the feet of the Comics industry.

I believe in marketing comics, because I believe in the power of the Comics medium. Sometimes, I wish the publishers and advertisers believed in marketing comics too. Maybe the recent acquiring of Marvel Entertainment by the Walt Disney Company will enliven things in this department a bit. I wrote a bit a few weeks ago about the first appearance of Marvel merch in Disney stores. Disney owns radio stations and television channels up the wazzoo, so are we going to see Disney/Marvel making use of those outlets for more than just cartoons of varying quality starring Marvel characters?

I hope so.

~ @JonGorga

Subway Socializing, Party Time, and Good Deeds for Free Comic Book Day!

Saturday was my first FCBD in NYC and it was surprisingly crazy!

There was a young fellow named Hemsley I struck up a conversation with in the morning on the A train because he was reading the Marvel "Civil War" paperback collection.

There was an older gray-haired man on the 5 train reading a "Simpsons" comic. I asked him if it was the FCBD "Simpsons" comic. I shot him the double thumbs up!

AND A PARTY!!

After attending the Brooklyn Botanical Garden's annual Cherry Blossom Festival with my friend Shane, I finally saw the inside of Bergen Street Comics in Brooklyn, a shop I've been hearing of for months now. Very cool place. Nice wood shelves, great customer service. Owned by a husband and wife team!

Here's a cool, shoddy, little video of the festivities Shane and I enjoyed there!!

[That colorful stuff visible at about 0:05 is the front counter covered with the Free Comic Book Day comics!]

Officially, Saturday's party on Bergen Street was also a release party for four new comics from First Second Books:
"Foiled" written by Jane Yolen and drawn by Mike Cavallaro
"City of Spies" written by Susan Kim and Laurence Klavan and drawn by Pascal Dizin
"Athena: Grey-Eyed Goddess" by George O'Connor
and
"Resistance" written by Carla Jablonski and drawn by Leland Purvis

Yolen, Cavallaro, Dizin, O'Connor, Jablonski, and Purvis were on hand to celebrate and sign their comics! And we got to meet some of them as well as a few other very talented people such as Becky Cloonan (artist of "DEMO") who both Shane and I embarrassingly gushed over.

But the really exciting festivities at Bergen Street were the ones we missed. I met one of the owners and apparently, in the afternoon, the place was packed with kids doing planned activities and picking up the free comics!

I also happen to know that at least one comic shop in New York made a hefty amount of money more than they do on a regular Saturday! (When you consider the fact that the comic shops do have to pay for the comics they are then required to give away for free that's really, really important.)

Comic shops around the country and world were on the ball as well!

Hub Comics in Somerville, MA brilliantly offered any of their usual selection $1 vintage comics for free to anyone with each piece of non-perishable food brought in. A combination Free Comic Book Day and Food Drive!

By gods even the Internet got in on the game! Look at this newsletter I received from Wowio.com:

Pretty smart!

Now if only we could get some serious mainstream advertising for Free Comic Book Day. Advertising in places not just comics people look. All the Marvel Studios ads should have a little FCBD bullet with the date. All the Warner Bros. ads that have anything to do with comics should mention it. The major mainstream magazines should be sent some conservative ads with the logo and the date. That should not be hard to pull off for next year. Give it even wider support and we'll get an even wider range of people next time!

But we got young people reading comics, we got little kids reading comics, we got older people reading comics, a whole bunch of people got some free comics, and retailers made some money!

Sounds like a check in the win column to me.

Adopt This Comic!

"it's not [round ears]'s fault" from DRAFTFCB

I had a wonderful experience walking the streets of Manhattan recently. On my way to St. Mark's Comics (can't remember if it was a new-comics-Wednesday or not) I saw this poster at a bus-stop on Third Avenue:

So I took a photo of it. Because it's a comic.

The poster is one of a series of three to promote TheShelterPetProject.org. They themselves are just part of a campaign, enitirely designed by multi-faceted cutting-edge ad agncy DRAFTFCB.

Here's the original images directly from the agency's website of this comic as well as the two that compliment it:

"it's not [round ears]'s fault"

"it's not [floppy ears]'s fault"

"it's not [sharp ears]'s fault"

I had actually seen this last one before, but found it so immediately funny that its nature as sequential art escaped me. I like the IDEA so much I didn't notice it was a comic! In retrospect, that's pretty crazy because as you can see there's quite a few self-conscious comic-strip elements such as the title of the comic followed by an author's name just like it would be in your local newspaper's comics section. The art-style actually has a very cartoonish Japanese look to it. Like "Crayon Shin-chan".

I love these posters because they're damn effective. They do what ads should do: They stop you and make you think. They send a clear message and they do it in the medium of comics!

Plus, in this case, they send such an important message! Millions of former pets across America deserve better. This ad campaign has almost single-handedly turned the perception of pet shelters around, for me at least. Clare and I are going to get a pet at some point (this is apparently non-negotiable) and I can't imagine not going to a shelter.

Comics are all around us, if we choose to look!