“If you build it, they will come.” That might work for baseball fields, but it definitely doesn't for
comic books.
I've seen Marvel's The Avengers four
times now, each time with a different group of people who were all
seeing it for the first time (okay, I'll admit it, once by myself).
Of my four viewings, two of them were opening weekend, one was in the
film's second week, and the final time several weeks after. The one
thing that was consistent was that each time the theater was jam
packed. Each time the movie garnered laughs, cheers and applause, and
all along the way I watched the box office numbers climb. It topped $200
million dollars on opening weekend. Then a billion
dollars worldwide in less than 20 days. As a life long comic book
fan and reader this had me thinking, how many of the people that
loved The Avengers movie have actually read an Avengers comic?
So, I
did a little digging, crunched a few numbers, and discovered that
there is a vast chasm between the number of people who actually read
comic books and the number of people who could
be reading comic books.
First,
given that I've seen the movie several times myself, I realize that a
lot of those ticket sales went to repeat viewings. What I wanted to
know was how many people who saw The Avengers were unique
viewers.
This is almost impossible to do with the resources I have available.
So instead, I've done a little magic math-estimation. In 2011, the
average movie ticket price in the United States rose a few pennies to
about $8 (source). Taking increase prices for 3D into
consideration, I'm going to use an average of $10/ticket in my
calculation.
I will also only use the Avenger's
domestic opening box office figure because, A) the US is the primary
market for American comic books, and B) as the weeks go on the box
office numbers will more than likely reflect a higher percentage of
repeat viewers.
The Avengers domestic opening weekend
total at the box office was $207,438,708.
So with a $207,438,708 box office haul,
at $10 a ticket, that leaves approximately 20,743,870 tickets sold on
opening weekend. Now, there were most definitely repeat viewers on
opening weekend. To account for that, let's say only 50% of the
opening weekend sales were the unique viewers
that I'm looking for. That leaves us with a little over 10 million
individuals who plopped down in the theater to watch a group of comic
book superheroes unite to fight an alien invasion.
I'm also only concerned with people who
are potential comic book readers, and let's face it, some people are
predisposed to never pick up a comic book. So, maybe only five percent of those unique movie goers are the type of people that
already read comics or are potential comic readers. That's 500,000
people who should be reading the comics. But the true numbers are far from that.
Now, let's look at comic book sales figures from
April of 2012 (source). Because we're talking about an Avengers
movie, I'll use Avengers v. X-Men #2 (AvX) as my example of a “top
seller” comic. For April 2012, AvX #2 sold about 158,000 individual
copies. If we assume that each and every one of those copies were
purchased by a unique reader and not collectors purchasing multiple
cover variants, that leaves 342,000 potential comic book readers that
remain untapped for one reason or another. And this is a very
conservative estimate given that AvX is a “big event” series that
almost always garners increased sales when compared to the standard
monthly titles. For example: The Avengers #25 sold
65,000 copies. That's less than half of what AvX sold. Another popular title, Uncanny X-men
#11, sold approximately 69,000 copies.
Another interesting factor is that
these numbers don't necessarily represent actual readers. If you're
familiar with the direct sales market then you will understand why.
If you aren't, let me explain. Comic book shop owners purchase all
their books several months in advance based on the estimated demand
of their customers. To more accurately predict this demand most comic
shops will offer a subscription service or “pull list” for their
customers. Essentially, a customer agrees to purchase the new issues
of his her or favorite comics each month, and in doing so, the shop
owner relies on the amount of pull customers to gauge how many copies
of each issue to order. Comic shop owners will almost always over
order books like Batman, Avengers, X-Men, Justice League, Spider-Man,
etc, because these are “high profile” books that the shop owners
know they will have a better chance of selling to the uninitiated
walk-in customer.
But, I'm only concerned with actual
readers. So, while comic shops might have ordered 65,000 copies of
Avengers #25, only a percentage of that number walked out of the shop
with the comic in hand. The surplus copies, however many that may be,
are sitting on shelves in comic shops around the country waiting to
be either purchased or, eventually, banished to the dark corners of
the back issue long boxes.
See, there is that gaping chasm between
people who like what comics are about, but don't actually read
comics.
Comics do this on a monthly basis. |
For
the hundred or so thousand people who went to see Avengers and can't
wait for the sequel, they can find twice as much action in the comics
every month. One of
the best thing about comic books is that there is no budget
to adhere to. An editor at Marvel or DC is never going to tell their
creative team that they can't have another space battle because of a
funding issue. In comics, if it can be thought up, it can be drawn,
and when comics are done well, there isn't a better form of
entertainment out there for your money.
But,
this is all considering just the “big two” books and the household
names like Batman and The Avengers. What frustrates me even more are the
independent books that suffer in sales while their counterparts in
other storytelling mediums thrive. Take for example Scott Snyder and
Rafael Albuquerque's American Vampire,
published through DC's Vertigo imprint. While Stephanie Meyer sells
bazillions of copies of Twilight novels, and at least one Vampire
movie a year fills up theaters, American Vampire is selling less than
15,000 copies a month – And it's better than any
of those other vampire tales across the board. Consider that for
every book like American Vampire,
there are three or four books that are just as good but get canceled
because of low sales. This is a tragedy of the highest order.
There
is an audience. There
is an audience that likes stories about costume heroics, or dark and
lusty vampires, or military espionage, and many more. Unfortunately,
this audience is flocking to novels and movies while completely over
looking one of the best storytelling mediums out there.
There is no good
reason for this. Comics are simply another valid medium for telling
stories, and people love stories, they've been telling us that with
their hard earn dollars for decades. The seemingly unanswerable
question is how to get these people to the comics.
But
there is an answer, it's just not an easy one. It's going to take a
group effort, from publishers, comic shops and fans alike. Publishers
are trying. The emergence of digital comics has reached into a small
sliver of that untapped fan base. But that's not enough. Comic shop
owners need to realize that the pull list customers they have had for
20+ years will not be there forever. Comic shop owners should have
been standing in The Avengers line at the movie theaters handing out comics with
their business cards attached to them. It's time to pull the posters
off the comic shop windows and show people that you aren't really a front for a head
shop. And us fans, it's time to turn “read comic in public day”
(August 28th)
into every day. We can show people that it's okay to read comics. We
can show people that if you liked the Iron Man, Thor, Batman, Green
Lantern, Hulk, Captain America or Avengers movie, you can experience
that and much, much more every month in the comics. And if capes
and spandex aren't their thing, then we can show them that there is so
much more out there.
There is something
for everyone in comic books. I don't think comics are dying, they
will be around in one form or another for years to come. But if we,
the publishers, the shops, the fans, want comics to flourish and push
what they can be to the limits, then we can't sit back and think it
will happen on its own.
We have to make it
happen.
Adam Wollet
For the Love of
Comics.
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