by Brian Hibbs

(#146 – July 2006)

We’re in the middle of a pretty amazing time in comics right now. There are more excellent comics coming out today, in a wide variety of genres and styles, than pretty much any other time in the history of comics. Comics (and especially graphic novels) have never been more popular in wider culture, and we seem to have lost much, if not all of the social stigma that comics once bore – middle aged women are now reading comics on the subway, and I haven’t seen the shorthand of “rolled up comic in back pocket = retard” in a film in a really long time. It’s almost “easy” to find graphic novels in places that normal people regularly go, and, unlike the last time we had this kind of a chance, we actually seem to have a chance to keep and even increase our gains because there is enough good material available to keep a new reader busy for months.

But I worry we may be reaching a point of “too much of a good thing”, where there are too many graphic novels, and where the long-term sales possibilities of a series may become greatly eroded.

There may, in fact, be worse problems to have than a staggering cornucopia of riches, really; but as I do my weekly inventory and book reorders, I’m seeing the average turn drop through the midlist and bottom of the list, and this has some certain potential to hamstring our growth as inventory begins to pool and fatten. Let’s go with some explanations at this stage so the lay reader doesn’t read that last sentence and think “Whooby hobby jibber jabber, wha?”

By and large there’s two ways to think of the products in your local comic shop: there are periodicals, which sell most of the copies they will ever sell in very short period of time – a week, a month, maybe the first quarter at best – then you’ll basically never sell another copy again. There are also perennials, which will continue to sell, slowly and surely for months and years.

Typically, “periodicals” are comics, and “perennials” are GNs and trades. There’s exceptions, of course – there are always exceptions, like Johnny the Homicidal Maniac that continues to enjoy lively perennial sales even though it is a “floppy” comic – but that’s the general historical split.

You order the two “types” of items fairly differently. For a periodical, you want to saturate demand as heavy as possible during its initial demand curve. It isn’t very uncommon to have a title where you could have sold 80 copies in the first week, had you only had the book on hand; however, you only brought in 50 copies, and when you finally get your reorder two weeks later, you find that the “other” 30 sales have diminished to only 15 people still wanting it. A certain amount of periodical demand is based on instant gratification, and “heat”. If you don’t have the periodical at the moment the audience wants it, you’re probably going to lose that sale.

The perennial, on the other hand is measured a little differently. You have to strike a balance between how much you have invested in that piece of inventory, versus how long it takes you to sell it (the “turn”). If you’re selling 2 copies of Watchmen every week, having 3-4 copies in stock, so that you never actually run out of Watchmen (some weeks you’ll sell more than your “average” turn, some weeks less) is a pretty rational investment. If, on the other hand, it takes you an average of 18 months to sell that copy, you probably only want to have 1 copy on your shelf, and maybe not even that.

The rate of Turn on an item is a constantly changing thing, and has to constantly be monitored. What was once sluggish might show a sudden boom of interest, what once sold as regular as Old Faithful might suddenly peter out and stumble.

With perennial items, you want to have a good overall turn rate, so that you’re not carrying “too much” inventory. While every store’s economics are different, I think it’s probably safe to say that you want most of your inventory to turn at least 4 times a year. It’s OK to have some material that turns much slower than that, if it is material that increases your store’s perception with your customers (being “full service” for example), or leads to other sales, but the more slow-Turning material you stock, the more your inventory will bloat and your profit will shrink.

I used the word “pool” a few paragraphs back, and I think that’s a good way to think of it. If the floor is a little wet, you can still walk around OK. Even when it is ankle deep, you can get around. But if it gets up to your knees, every step becomes a chore.

A year or two ago I noticed that many manga GNs seemed to be behaving more like periodicals, than perennials. This actually makes a great deal of sense – many are produced periodically (bi-monthly, or quarterly schedules), they’re numbered. They maybe be 200 pages each, but it isn’t insane they’d follow the same general pattern of western comic book sales. Don’t misunderstand, there are absolutely many manga titles and series that sell consistently, month-after-month, but I do believe they are the minority.

One of the factors that created such behavior was, of course, that there was so darn much material coming through. It’s not uncommon to see weeks where 20 brand new manga books are being released. At $10 a throw, that’s a lot of money and comics for both the consumer and retailer to absorb, so people pick favorites, and follow them not unlike how they’d follow the latest issue of, say, Iron Man.

In the time since I first made this observation, we’re beginning to see the same kind of increase of production in all kinds of GNs and TPs. Hardly a week goes by when there isn’t some new initiative to publish GNs being announced, and the traditional comics publishers appear to be stepping up their lines as well. As more books get published, turn rates lean towards a slow decline, and inventory begins to pool up.

This may be currently the most immediately noticeable for me on the traditional superhero books. Let’s take an example of the JLA books: We still sell the Morrison run at a fairly steady clip, but movement on volumes 7-14 are basically non-existent for us at this point.

Part of the problem is the way the superhero TPs collect the work. The industry kind of arbitrarily decided that four to six issues was the “ideal” length, and creators started shaping their story lengths to the book, and publishers started including TP collections in their P&Ls as a given, rather than a bonus. TPs are also released to capitalize on short-term “heat” for a storyline, rather than any long-term planning for what the impact on the market of multi-SKU series might be.

That’s one of the reasons the first JLA TP only contains issues #1-5, while the second volume is #6-8 – a paltry three issues – it was “hot” and the DC wanted the trade out as soon as possible to capitalize on that. Fair enough, by the way. But a decade later, we’re now stuck with a three issue trade paperback. One that basically turns invisible on the rack because it is so thin.

The more volumes a series is, the harder it is to keep them all in stock – not just at the retailer level, but at the publisher level as well. I’m not sure if we’ve had 6 weeks this year that all three volumes of The Ultimates were in stock – and that’s one of Marvel’s best sellers!

So, on the one hand, the more titles are released, the harder it is to keep all of them in stock, and the slower the turn rate – not a lot of point in keeping that Contest of Champions II TP on the shelf if you aren’t going to sell it for two years; while on the other hand, the more titles that are released the more difficult it is for the publisher to keep them all in stock.

By example, J. Michael Straczynski’s Amazing Spider-Man has been collected in (so far) ten volumes – but as of this writing, Marvel only has stock for volumes 1, 2, and 6-10 – 3, 4, and 5 are currently unavailable. Having early books unavailable dramatically hurts the ability to sell later books – since I can’t currently stock 3-5, who is going to buy 6-10?

The third volume of Powers, from Image, went OP a long time ago. I used to have an excellent Turn on Powers – at least 12 turns a year – but with volume 3 OP, our Turn has dropped by 75%.

Starman and Geoff John’s Flash at DC, Groo and the Martha Washington books via Dark Horse – I could rattle off examples for another 3 paragraphs of titles that I should be able to sell, but whose sales have gone flat because early volumes have gone out of print. These “orphaned” titles languish on the racks, unsold, and so provide less impetus to bring them back into print in the first place.

I think that the American comics industry needs to have a rethink of the way and times we collect. I think we need to move more towards 12+ issue trades to at least slow down the flood. The first three Morrison JLA TPs, only reprint a total of 15 issues – its pretty insane that I have 3 different SKUs to track and rack, when that could handily be a single book – a single book that would be more attractive on the rack at that, because you might be able to finally read the spine.

I’d really love to not have the at-least-once-a-week headache of explaining to someone that “Ultimates 2” is actually the third Ultimates TP, because they split the first series into two volumes, y’know?

Waiting longer between serialization and collection also has the nice added bonus of making the serialization a more compelling purchase – I think it is important that we give people more reasons to buy periodical comics, rather than less.

Obviously, things that are short run stories can be short TPs – there’s only 4 issues of, say, Garth Ennis’ Pride & Joy, so that’s what the trade has to be (pairing different titles in a single book – like the Warren Ellis Red/Toyko Storm Warning and Reload/Mek trades don’t really work), but the longer view needs to be taken on the number of SKUs we’re adding every month. There’s really no good reason that Batman: Hush or the first series of The Ultimates are two-book collections. DC has announced that the first hardcover collection of Alex Ross’ Justice is going to contain just the first four issues. If that plan plays out into the trades, that implies there will be three books for a 12-issue story. A single story that should be in a single volume in the end.

The trend should be towards fewer strong-turning SKUs, and not more, slower-turning ones. For the ongoing monthlies, we should be reprinting a year’s worth of releases, not the 4 and 6 issue collections we’ve defaulted to. Otherwise the pool is going to rise a lot faster than it needs.

Stay dry!

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Brian Hibbs has owned and operated Comix Experience in San Francisco since 1989. Feel free to e-mail him with any comments. You can purchase a collection of the first one hundred Tilting at Windmills (originally serialized in Comics Retailer magazine) from IDW Publishing. An index of Tilting at Windmills on Newsarama can be found right here.

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