This week I was discussing the success of The Walking Dead TV series with friends and inevitably the conversation turned to the obligatory, "Boy, I hope this helps more people discover the comic book." Certainly as a lifelong comic book reader, and an advocate of the medium, I welcome such a position. But then I cringed when my friend followed that up with, "If just 1% of the Walking Dead audience starts buying the comic sales will go through the roof!"
The Fallacy
I get the intent of his statement. Heck, I've made a similar overture a time or too myself. But it's a fallacy, and not a very constructive one at that. From a pure mathematical standpoint, what he's saying is accurate. If 1% of The Walking Dead's 8.1 million total viewers started purchasing the comic book monthly, sales would skyrocket.
- 1% of 8.1 million = 81,000
- Current sales of The Walking Dead monthly comic book (#77, shipped in September) = 27,448
So if 81,000 more people started buying the comic book, sales would theoretically exceed 108,000 copies. That would make The Walking Dead the top-selling comic book series in most months.
But here's where the fallacy falls into place, we have too much empirical evidence to suggest it's not going to happen. Again, I would LOVE to be proven wrong here and see sales skyrocket. And maybe Kirkman's series will defy the industry norms in this manner just as his works have done in so many other ways. But I doubt it, and most importantly, I don't see the value of we fans fretting over the "slice of the pie" argument.
Prior Arguments
When Iron Man hit big, a lot of fellow comics fans salivated over the idea it might lead to increased sales of Iron Man comics (or comics in general).
- 4.2 million copies of the Iron Man DVD were sold in stores the first week of its release. Did Iron Man comic sales skyrocket?
- 9.7 million copies of said DVD have been sold to date, are Iron Man comic sales up significantly from 2008 to 2010?
Sales of Iron Man (via ICV2 and The Beat)
- 08/05 Iron Man #4 – 48,403
- 08/06 Iron Man #11 – 37,279
- 08/07 Iron Man #21 – 49,548
- 08/08 Invincible Iron Man #4 – 58,154
- 08/09 Invincible Iron Man #16 – 53,782
- 08/10 Invincible Iron Man #29 – 49,012
See any discernible and sustained increase in sales?
Similarly,
- Did sales of Batman comics boom because of Chris Nolan's remarkable re-imagining of the films?
- How about Spider-man sales when Sam Raimi started the film juggernaut?
If you think about it, even comic book film adaptations deemed by some as commercially disappointing, like Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, illustrate the fallacy. Many pundits were disappointed in Scott Pilgrim's $31.5 million domestic gross. Yet that means millions of people paid money to see that movie. Yet the comic book series — cult hit that it may be — doesn't sell anywhere close to those numbers.
You can play the same math games with just about anything comic book related into other mediums.
- How many millions of kids have bought superhero action figures in the last decade? How many of them are clamoring to read comic books?
- How many hundreds of millions of dollars do superhero themed video games make each year?
- How many billions have comic book related film properties earned in the last decade?
Let's be realistic. There are secular shifts that take place in society. We are proponents/consumers/evangelists for an amazing industry that, whether we like it or not, has shifted into a niche market. The combination of — digitalization, a broader array of alternative forms of entertainment, the self-imposed restrictions of a direct retail system, and an aging reader base that wants to have our cake and eat it too — have led us to where we are. That said, for at least a handful of publishers (particularly Marvel & DC), publishing comic books is still a big enough business (we're talking about several hundred million dollars in sales each year), with very healthy profit margins, to keep the train rolling along. But it pales in comparison to what these characters are worth in other mediums. THAT'S NOT GOOD OR BAD, RIGHT OR WRONG…IT JUST IS. The sooner we stop beating ourselves and the industry up over it the better. If we can accept what the comic book publishing market actually IS, and the great things that come of it, rather than what we wish it could be, maybe we'll all have a little more time to enjoy reading the books that line our long boxes.
Jason is a mutant with the ability to squeeze 36 hours into every 24-hour day, which is why he was able to convince his wife he had time to join the iFanboy team on top of running his business, raising his three sons, and most importantly, co-hosting the 11 O'Clock Comics podcast with his buddies Vince B, Chris Neseman and David Price. If you are one of the twelve people on Earth who want to read about comics, the stock market and football in rapid fire succession, you can follow him on Twitter.
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This is probably a moot point, but I’m assuming those sales numbers are for issues only? What about trade collections? If anyone is going to be "sucked in" to reading comics based on a film, then they are gonna start with trades rather than issues. Like I said, I’m sure the numbers are probably just as negligible, but I thought it was worth pointing out.
I still agree that it matters not, and people tend to overestimate the importance of comic-film relationships.
As I talked about in the Kirkman article two weeks ago, Walking Dead trades sell gangbusters already. So I will be difficult for the TV show to really help drive those higher. But in the case of the other comic related films/clothes/toys…no noticeable impact on the trades/book market of note.
i’ve mentioned it before, but i have a pair of nephews in elementary school. Both are OBSESSED with spiderman. Toys, games, cartoons, clothes…they talk about Peter Parker like he’s the best friend thats coming over for dinner. They don’t like comics…they think they are kinda boring. That may change with time, but when i was their age i liked comics and read comic strips…but then again i didn’t have the internet.
We should accept the fact that the next generation may embrace the characters but not necessarily the comic book medium.
@Wood: Except for WATCHMEN.
@Conor … Watchmen is an interesting example, although I don’t view it as representative in this case because I was talking more about other mediums abilities to bring people into the direct market as consumers of monthly comic books. Watchmen was a fully formed, complete and non-recurring work for decades that someone could go out and buy and consume. As we see from the current trade sales, the sales of Watchmen, and the millions of people exposed to the book through the book market, have had no discernible follow through in getting those people to buy other trades/collected editions.
@Wood: It’s definitely not normal. A total outlier.
As others have mentioned–do you think their might be a jump of trade sales because of the show?
I think the biggest obstacle in comics today is the "where do I start?" question. Monthly floppies make it damn near impossible few a newbie to break in without a running start. This industry needs to gear itself more towards trades of individual stories rather than 5 or six floppies that happen to be in sequential order.
@DarkKnightJared…we’ll see. Walking Dead is already massively successful in trades, much more so than is typical of superhero fare (e.g., Batman or Spider-man or Iron Man).
I’d be interested in seeing overall numbers for DC/Marvel after movies. I was lured into reading comics by Iron Man and Batman movies, but now after becoming more of an experienced reader have branched off to other titles and buy tons comics.
For a long time I’ve wanted to run a regression to determine what influences sales. To properly analyze the effects of these films/tv shows on sales a difference-in-difference approach is really needed to manufacture a counterfactual.
I’d need data on sales, prices, creative teams, publishers, advertising, non-comics events (like books/movies/tv), and any external influences (median income, etc). I’d need that over a relatively large number of years. I think much of that data exists, but I don’t have the time to go collect it and utilize it (there also isn’t a very large reward for all that work).
If I were able to gather that data, I could then run the appropriate regression (diff-in-diff empirical model) and the coefficient on movie/tv would tell us how much (or if) those things affect sales.
That would also be useful for telling us which creative teams actually improve sales, all else equal.
Regardless, I think the most important statement in this article is "It pales in comparison to what these characters are worth in other mediums." I agree wholeheartedly. Superman as IP is exceptionally valuable.
Wow. I went a little overboard there. Sorry about that. I just want a way to test the causal relationship between movies/tv shows and sales. Didn’t mean to go Full Economist on you.
I think it’s a failure in marketing more than anything else. How easy would it be to have a 15 second spot after each episode of Walking Dead saying "read the comic that inspired the show" or whatever with the comic shop locator phone #/ website and images of the trades/ issues/ hardcovers/ omnibuses/ compendiums and some of Adlard’s art. It seems like a no-brainer.
This article is completely redundant.
You are suggesting that your friend made the statement as some last warning towards the comics industry – when in fact it is just that … a statement of fact. If 1% of viewers bought the comics the sales WOULD skyrocket, that is fact. He didn’t then go on to say that if that 1% don’t buy the book then it will get cancelled and everyone will loose their jobs, you are making a really specific dig at people for wanting their favourite books to be read and have that passion shared with other people.
As for, "The sooner we stop beating ourselves and the industry up over it the better. If we can accept what the comic book publishing market actually IS, and the great things that come of it, rather than what we wish it could be".
Not really, as your stats showed the industry is currently in a bad way compared to last year. In fact as of August the sales were VERY down if I remember correctly, so there is more then enough reasons for us to worry about our favourite books. Not so much from IMAGE as they are funded by the creators to a certain extent, but new and exciting books from the big three (vertigo) will fade away as the companies have to try and battle a tide of dropping sales.
Kirkman should spend some of his new found millions to buy an ad spot on AMC advertising to buy the book and find out what happens in season 2 and beyond.
So Iron Man comics jump up by 20% in 2008 and Jason Woods does NOT see that as a success? Spider-Man sales were lower before the movie as well. And when they picked up, it wasn’t due to JMS’s excellent writing, but to the movie. When sales move up by about 20%, even though that number may be small, in relative terms, the movies chould be given credit. The same goes for Dark Knight and Batman’s sales afterward.
@KickAss Except Iron Man is right back where it was before the new team/new book bump wore off.
@KickAss…sales went up because they relaunched the book at a new #1, not because of the movie. Take a look at what happens every time there’s a new #1 on an ongoing series. It’s a trick the publishers use to restart the ongoing process and handle the monthly attrition. Also, we’re talking about a paradigm shift here. Helping sales for a month is no more helpful than a variant cover or a new creative team or a crossover event. The argument, and lamentation, is more about why don’t successes in other mediums translate into SUSTAINED increases in sales of comics. And like it or not, they haven’t.
Oh, and it’s Jason WOOD, not Woods.
@stuclach Could be a decent project for a master’s thesis if someone were so inclined.
@Where’s Prax when you need him?
Sorry that was at zomboxx.
Let’s skip the fact that non-comic book people are not going to go out of their way to locate a comic store. I think they would be more prone to buy comics in say Borders, however in a small section of beaten up trades and hardcovers, it’s hard to know what they should be looking for. It’s very surprising to me that the big box stores don’t expand the comic shelf to not only superheroes but really good independent books, too. Borders has tried with Ink, but from what I see, it’s much of the same.
As Jason is well aware, a 1% increase in any sort of sales is good for business. I think the only hope is not only more mainstream exposure but it must be good – like Walking Dead and unlike Jonah Hex. Josh did cover that just the other day in his http://ifanboy.com/content/articles/The_Whole__Nerd_Pride__Thing post.
Is that the sort of popularity and 1% increase we want? I hope not.
@ChrisCCL: Back when I worked in sales, a 1% increase was not met with congratulations.
Still though, that was issue #4 where sales were up 20%, not issue #1. And as for why sales are down 2 years later? Well isn’t it alot to ask that 24 months later, fans of the movie still dedicate themselves to buying the Iron Man comic in store? When they watched the movie in 1 afternoon, comics sales ask that you dedicate your purchases on a monthly basis. A spike for 6 months interest in Iron Man is a great thing to have in publishing, as I’m sure prose novels see that spike and drop off as well. To call that a failure is not the right way to look at things.
I’ve read articles that say average fans read comics for 2-3 years then stop. So seeing a spike of 20% over a year is something to be proud of. It worked. Sorry for misspelling your name sir.
Chris Neseman and the gang brought a similar point up in last week’s surprise "Around Comics," and I love that you’ve taken the argument through these permutations. I love your work, Wood, and look forward to your recurring output.
"This article is completely redundant."
Well you’re a nice fella there ain’t ya?
I was just thinking of what you said in thet last paragraph, two days ago. You really put that thought nicely on paper, or at least on the internet, err..post, well, I’m sure you get what I mean. Great article!
Nice article Jason Wooooood (thats to listening to 11oclock comics I cant say it any other way)
Any chance on doing an article on what the success of Superman: Earth One might mean for the medium?
For most people, it’s the medium that is important more than the "property". How many people who’ve watched True Blood have run out and read the novels it’s based on? Not many, I’d imagine.
While broadening the comic readership base is a worthy goal (and one I wish comic companies took more seriously), we should’t lament comics as being the bastard-child of the media. It’s just a different form, like prose.
I think there’s a significant difference between readership and sales. In the past few years I have known quite a few people who have started reading comics. The thing is they don’t buy them. They read free web comics, borrow from the increasing selection offered by libraries and most frequently, go to Borders or Barnes and Noble on their lunch break or after work, read for awhile then put the book back and pick up where they left off the next day. Whether other mediums are responsible for this increased popularity I don’t know. But I have seen this habit firsthand too many times for it to be totally random. It just seems that much of this new readership deals with comics like they deal with music. They really like it. They just aren’t going to pay for it. Of course there’s no way to measure how large a phenomenon this is. It may be quite small. But I think about the fact that newspaper readership in the Middle East for example (I know random but this is what I do) is 4-5 times higher than circulation and it makes me wonder.
Numbers…. fun.
Interesting. The numbers show pretty compellingly that the big super hero movies don’t create sustained increases in the number of monthly comic books are sold. But I think most non-comics-readers who get curious about comics from these films are a lot more likely to buy a trade from the shelf at Borders than seek out their nearest LCS. This article doesn’t really account for that, and I would say that the popularity of super hero movies over the last decade and the growing prevalance of substantial graphic novel/tpb sections in major book stores are no cooincidence. Of course that’s just my observation. I don’t have any numbers.
@Conor I was just reiterating Jason’s point. If the 1% of the movie goers would buy comics it would a great success. But I agree it’s a fallacy.
I know that personal experience is not often/never indicative of overall trends, but I was really into comics in the late ’80s and early ’90s and then stopped following or buying them for a decade. I decided to stop by an LCS about ten years ago because I’d just seen the X-Men movie and wanted to know what the characters were up to (Colossus was my favorite character, so I was a little sad to see that he was dead at the time). So the movie did have an effect on drawing me back in to comics and I wonder if there were other people with a similar experience, leaving comics and then coming back because of a movie. It seems like it would be easier to have a movie draw in a former reader than to start someone off from scratch.