Brian Hibbs is a very active comic retailer who owns a comic
store called Comix Experience in San Francisco. Lately, he has been
responding to public comments by both Editor in Chief Joe
Quesada and President of Marvel Publishing Bill Jemas. Recently, Bill Jemas
had an interview with
in which he gave a number of surprising answers
to questions concerning how stores should display comics, the
price of Marvel vs. DC books, how quickly Marvel books sell and the
very controversial no-overprint policy. In this interview, Brian
responds to some of those statements by Bill Jemas and also talks about
other topics concerning the industry.
Coville:
Tell us about your experience in comics. How long have you
been a retailer, what's your store like and what else you do in the
industry?
Hibbs:
Comix Experience has been around for 12 years now. Opened
April Fools day in 1989, but Ive worked in comic retail for 16 years, something
like that. I worked in another store before I opened my own. I've
also done a little work in distribution, the only thing I haven't done is
publishing, actually. What's the store like? We're primarily a bookstore
oriented comic shop. Trade paperbacks and Graphic Novels are our
focus. Weve been nominated and won national and local awards for excellence,
that kind of thing.
Coville:
What's different from your store than typical comic stores, I
understand you are different in how you rack things?
Hibbs:
Yeah, we do genre racking and things like that, but I don't know
what a "typical" comic shop really is. Even among the stores that I
would consider my peers and who run excellent comic shops, I don't
think any of us do things the same ways or stock things the same ways. It's
one of the things I like about the comics business, actually.
Coville:
Variety eh?
Hibbs:
Yeah, exactly. We're really focused on reading. I guess the
biggest difference I can say between us and the "average" store, we
simply don't allow speculation of any kind. You're not allowed to buy
more than two copies of any comic from us unless you tell us in
advance that you want it. We're completely focused on reading. That's
why we're trade paperback and graphic novel oriented because I tend to
think that's a superior format for the reader, rather than a collector.
Coville:
I understand you also have a column?
Hibbs:
Yeah I write a... well, it's not a monthly column anymore. It was
monthly for many years there, about 8 years, in Comics and
Games Retailer Magazine published by Krause Publications (the people
that do Comics Buyers Guide). And yeah, I've written a hundred and six
of them so far, .
Coville:
That's at ComixExperience.com right?
Hibbs:
Right.
Coville:
Are you in touch with a lot of retailers around North America?
Hibbs:
Yeah I like to think so, at least (laughter). Most of them are my
friends and then there's also things like some , which is a message board just for comic retailers, every day.
Theres lots of threads going on back and forth there.
Coville:
Okay, were going to come up to Bill Jemas here. One of the
things he mentioned in that Grayhaven interview was that he never read
a comic book prior to becoming President of Marvel Publishing.
Do you think that is a good or a bad thing?
Hibbs:
I tend to think it's probably a bad thing. Comics is a very
idiosyncratic business. We're not like virtually any other business
you can name. The things that work well in the comics field
wouldn't work well in other fields. I talk to a lot of other retailers who
aren't comic retailers and I tell them some of the ways our
business works and they go "WhuuuHuh?" (laughter). They don't get it,
you know? But on the other side, I don't think there is anything necessarily
wrong with having an outsiders perspective as long as youre perceptive to
the way the business actually works. Jemas, I understand, comes from
Sports Cards and my perception has been that he is doing any number of steps
that are appropriate for the sports card business but I don't believe are
very appropriate at all for the comic book business.
Coville:
One other comment that Jemas made was, "The simple fact is
that the vast majority of retailers are doing very well with Marvel and are
pleased with our current policies." Do you agree with this?
Hibbs:
I would agree with the former part of the statement, I would very
strongly disagree with the latter part. Certainly the retailers I
speak to, I'd say only a third or less of them are "pleased" with
the policies. Yeah sure, we're selling more Marvel Comics but that's
a function of the fact that Marvel Comics are good and readable
right now, not lack of stock availability. There was a long, long, long
period...10 years...when they were just horrible tripe that nobody wanted
(laughter). And now theyve got really good creative teams on them, strong
editorial directions. Of course the sales are going to be up in that context,
but that doesn't mean the policies to sell those comics to the retailers
are necessarily wise or smart ones.
Coville:
Something else Jemas pointed out was that he thought the
industrys problems mainly stemmed from bad books. Do you think it was
just bad books that hurt the industry for all those years?
Hibbs:
No, not at all. There's bad books, bad stores, escalating price
points, late shipping, inconsistent creators -- all of these things
play into it equally, I think. I don't think you really can go, "Oh,
it's just bad comics." Certainly looking at the sales charts, quality
is not always a one-to-one relationship to sales. I'm sure you and I
can both name any number of books that are excellent, superb comic
books that just don't sell very well in the average comic shop. I think that a lot
of the problem is that most of the retailers do not appear to be
stocking the wide range of material that would appeal to a wide range of
people. They tend to focus primarily on the collectors and superhero
completists. Thats certainly how this business, the direct market, evolved. I
would tend to think bad stores are just as equal in the equation as bad
content.
The real problem with the comics industry, as it stands at this
moment, is there are simply not enough venues for you to buy
comics in. There's what? Three and a half thousand comic shops across
this whole country? That's really not very many at all, and more than
that, the majority of them are concentrated in the big cities. There's whole
stretches of the country where you can go a hundred miles and
there's not a comic shop anywhere. Certainly there would be people
interested in reading comics in those markets that aren't being properly
served. Even worse though, and this is going to sound a little arrogant and one
thing I don't like about interviews is you can't see that I'm smiling when
I say this, but about a year ago I did a tour of all the stores in San
Francisco and went around looking at each one. I was looking for ideas
mostly cause good retailers always learn from each other. But I realized that I
don't really have any "competition" in comic shops around San
Francisco. Most of the stores here sell DC, Marvel and Image and that's that, and
that's all they sell. They are much more focused on collectors only, and
the stores remain small I believe because of that. Nobody in San Francisco
has anywhere near the trade paperback selection that we do, except
for Virgin. They're the only ones that I would call my "competition" and
they're a media store or whatever. You don't think of them as a place to
go buy comic books, necessarily.
So I think the largest part of the problem is that there's not
enough good quality retailers out there. If someone does have an interest in
comics that's spurred by a movie or something else outside of comics,
they're probably not going to find what they want, in an environment
that they want to shop in, because the direct market simply doesn't have
enough stores to give that to them. Outside of the direct market, youre
getting more and more venues that are beginning to carry graphic novels
and trades, presented in a way that will appeal to people who aren't
interested in walking into a comic book shop every seven days
to see whats new that week. But again, I still think that it's difficult if
you're a potential new consumer to just find a place to buy
comics. When I was a kid growing up in New York, every little corner store had
a rack of comics. That's how I got into comics and everybody I know got
into comics. We've lost the feeder mechanism to bring people
into the marketplace, which is just a terrible shame.
Coville:
What sort of feeder mechanism should replace the one that we
lost?
Hibbs:
Well, I think one of the problems is there is not enough of an
incentive for new people to be opening comic shops. We also
need the newsstands, there's no doubt about it. In fact, I would be happy
if newsstands went back to being 80-90% of comic sales, I don't
think that's necessarily a bad thing at all. I don't know that's going to
happen because the amount of money a non-comics store can
make off comics, seems to be generally limited in terms of periodicals. In
terms of the perennial, the paperback, I mean obviously every
bookstore in America should be carrying comics, some have
done very, very well with them. In terms of the direct market, the main thing
is to provide more incentives and a better business climate to
which to show new entrepreneurs that it is possible to actually make
money, to be successful selling comic books. I easily think we could double
the number of comic book shops in this country and we wouldn't even come
close to meeting the demand that's out there. And I think unfortunately, a
lot of mechanisms in this business are really not geared towards
making retailers any money. I do pretty well running a comic book shop, I'm not
rich or anything. I don't think there is a rich comic book retailer in this
country (laughter). But certainly, if people are willing to work
hard and really have a passion and desire for the form, it's a business I
would absolutely encourage people to jump into.
Coville:
Bill Jemas thinks that the most successful comic shops are the
ones that carry the most Marvel Comics. Do you agree?
Hibbs:
Well, pretty clearly not (laughter).
Coville:
No?
Hibbs:
As far as I am aware, as of my last conversation with Diamond
on the subject, I am the largest single comic account in San Francisco.
San Francisco is one of the largest markets for comics in the country,
and Marvel is a fairly low proportion of my business. Marvel is
certainly an important publisher, is certainly a publisher that you shouldn't go,
"Agghh... I don't want this," but to say that you can not be
successful, which is certainly the implication there, without Marvel Comics,
is an utter fallacy.
Coville:
What do you think the most successful comic shops carry, then?
Hibbs:
The most successful comic shops carry a wide and diverse range
of material that appeals to both their regular ongoing customers,
and to civilians as well. Regardless of who publishes that material.
Coville:
Okay. Here is another quote from Bill Jemas from the same
interview. It says, "On average, Marvel Comics sell more than twice as fast
as a DC book and nearly 3 times as fast as an Image book and - are
you ready - Over 10 times faster than the average indy book." Has
this been true in your experience?
Hibbs:
No, and I don't even know where those numbers come from. I
saw that and tried to figure out exactly what he was talking about. I think
he was talking about average print runs. The problem is, when youre
looking at average print runs in the direct market, what is reported is
initial orders only. For example, he said "twice a DC book."
Yeah, that's probably true if you count all the newsstand-oriented comics DC
does. Like the children books, which sell you know, ten thousand or less
copies in the direct market because they're not really geared to the direct
market, they're geared outside the direct market. So youre really
comparing apples and oranges in that case. Certainly in my experience if
you believe in a book as a retailer and you are honest and straightforward
with your customers, the customers could not care less who publishes that
comic book. It makes no difference whatsoever, you know? Do they
say, "I want to see a movie tonight and I'm going to see a Warner Brothers movie?"
No, they go see a movie they want to see, with stars they want to see in it, by
directors they enjoy or possibly even the screen writer that they
think is a good one. That... it's just a silly statement on so many levels I
don't even know exactly how to address it (laughter). I can say that
yeah, it doesn't come out very often, but a book like Eightball we sell
probably 2:1, 3:1 on our average Marvel Comic sale. But again, that's not
really comparing apples to apples which is the problem of doing
comparative analysis in such a flippant manner.
Coville:
Regarding Marvels no-overprinting policy. They say it saves
them money and helps the comic industry in a number of ways. I take
it you disagree with this?
Hibbs:
Well, I don't know if I disagree with whether it saves them
money or not because I don't have access to their accounting, but I don't
think it serves the comic industry in any particular way at all, no. The
direct market was primarily based originally around back issues. The
average comic shop had a difficult time getting new comics and it was
primarily selling old back issue comics. Most retailers would stock
specifically for back issues. In the store I worked at before opening Comix
Experience, we would order another case for the warehouse on certain books.
Because we knew over time we'd sell them, that just made financial sense.
Now of course, comics were only 75 cents then so our unit costs were,
oh 35 cents, something like that. So you can stock a whole lot more in that
case when the unit costs were so low and the majority of your business is
based around the back stock. But that changed. The market
completely changed as prices went higher, people stopped buying back issues by-and-
large. Or at least they stopped casually buying back issues. It used to be that
someone would come into my store with 5 dollars and they spent 3 dollars
on new comics, getting a few new comics or whatever, then they'd have
2 bucks left and they'd spend that on back issues, just to fill out a run. As
prices escalated, that same 5 dollars only bought you one or two
new comic books and people could no longer afford to keep up on all the
new books that they wanted, let alone buying any back issues.
So, the tenor of ordering properly meant that the retailer had to
become much more conservative in their ordering because there
isn't an automatic pipeline anymore to sell those comics that come off
the stands. What I found over the last 6 or 7 years, lets say, if I do not sell
the average comic book in the first 30 to 90 days, it does not sell. If
I order 20 copies of something and I only sell 18 of them, I will
probably not sell the remaining two copies any time in the near future. It may
take 3 or 4 or 5 years. So when you look at the business from
that point of view, from a historical
here-is-where-we-came-from-and-why-are-circulation-
numbers-dropping-so-much POV it suddenly doesn't make any sense for a comic book
retailer buying non-returnably to over-stock their store. Certainly an awful lot
of stores went out of business in the 90's because they were drowning in
overstock. Some of the best stores in the country nearly went out of the
business during the 90's because their inventory went out of control.
Thankfully, these guys figured it out and have reduced their extreme
exposure. A no-overprint situation means all the burden is put on ordering
and selling that book up-front the first time, even if you don't have any
appropriate information to do so.
I'll give you an example. Prior to the relaunch with Grant
Morrison on X-Men we hadn't sold, um... lets say 70 copies, max, of any
issue of X-Men in like the 5 year period proceeding that. On a Grant Morrison
book, I'm pretty sure we never sold more than a 100 copies at any point.
Same thing with a Frank Quietly book. So I looked at that, thought, "This
book is going to be big and I'm going to order... what the hell, I'm going to
order 125 copies, let's do it." That, I think, is showing confidence in it. And
I sold out of those in two days. Now, I probably could have sold
200, I could have sold 250, I could have sold 300 copies. Who
knows? But because there weren't any re-orders available, I wasn't able to find out
and customers went without that comic book. Now I more than
doubled what the previous month of X-Men was and I sold out in two days. I
couldn't get any more. I don't see how that can be a good policy, by any means.
I suppose Jemas would argue the reason that I sold out so fast
was because people thought it would be short printed or something,
but I certainly don't think so. This is certainly not information that
we've been making a big push of in our store. I think it was just the
right book at the right time. But it under-performed to what it could do.
You look at something like Green Arrow where we again ordered very
strong, we sold out instantly, we called up and DC had some more for us. And
when they ran out of those they went and printed up some more...and they
printed some more...and they printed some more a fourth time. Green Arrow
is my best selling DC comic right now, at least superhero-wise. And that's
precisely because I could keep going back and getting more copies, and
more copies, and more copies each time. And of course I learned to increase
my order the next time. Going back to X-Men, I saw how fast the first
one sold out and I put in an advance re-order for the second one and took it
up to 200 copies. The book finally comes in, it's 5 weeks late, which
doesn't help anything and I sold 125 copies. I got 75 copies sitting there that
I'm not going to sell anytime soon. I just took a bath on that book. I just
lost money on the second issue of X-Men because I couldn't get any
more of the first one! When you look at it in those terms, I don't see how I'm
not doing everything exactly as I'm supposed to. I'm showing, in fact,
statistically more support for a publisher, Marvel Comics, than
the average quote, unquote comic shop. The average comic shop
went up by about 40% and I went up a 100%. I think that gives me a bit of
justification in saying that no, this is not a good policy. You cost yourself sales,
you cost me sales, you cost Grant Morrison, you cost the
distributors money, I don't see how anybody is going to be happy with that situation.
The thing is, overprinting isn't as expensive as Bill would like
people to believe.
Coville:
Or Joe Quesada?
Hibbs:
Well, with him too, I guess.
Coville:
I know you had a public back and forth with him on Newsarama
about this as well.
Hibbs:
Absolutely. The thing is, that when you do an analysis of what it
costs you to print a comic book, your initial costs are amortized against
your initial print run. So if it costs you X dollars to print, X dollars for
talent, and X dollars to ship it out, X dollars for the retailers, then
your profit or loss comes out of your initial orders. To flip the
switch and have the printers run off another 5,000 copies is costing
virtually nothing, it's costing them 10 or 15 cents a book. You don't
amortize the entire cost back against the increased print run, you see what I'm
saying? In other words, instead of costing me $3,000 to print 10,000
copies, if I print 11,000 it's costing me $3,100. There is a hundred dollar
difference there, for the "extra" 1000 copies. It costs you far less to print
the "extras" than it does to print the initial run.
So, from any point of view, running an overprint is a very
economical and profitable thing. The last statistic I saw from several different
publishers was that they only had to sell 1 out of 5 of those
overprinted copies to make a profit. As long as you sell 20% of it that's
okay, you can throw the other 80% of it away and you still made more
money than you would have made otherwise. So, I definitely don't think it's a
good plan at all.
Coville:
I noticed in the memo that Marvel sent to retailers regarding the
no-overprint policy, they mentioned that some of the books
found their way into the black market. Did you ever have a problem with that?
Hibbs:
No, I haven't. I seem to think that is much more of an east coast
thing because they print them up there, right in Montreal. Right
close to the border. And that's where copies are going through. I
know there is... I don't want to say which retailer it is... but there is one
retailer in Montreal who says it was and sometimes continues to
be, a massive problem for them. Boxes falling off the truck, or
whatever. But I don't see that as an issue with overprinting per se, certainly the
same thing can happen even if youre not overprinting.
Coville:
More of a security issue.
Hibbs:
Exactly.
Coville:
There are several other things they said in that memo that I know
you disagreed with in the past, I guess I'll get you to comment on
them publicly. They say they kept their prices at $2.25 while DC
raised them to $2.50.
Hibbs:
Well, that's demonstrably not so. At the time when they made
that statement, if you went in and compared Marvels list of comics
vs. DC's list of comics, most of DC's books were still $2.25. DC has any
number of $1.99 books to try and act as feeder books. I mean
mathematically, at the time, it was not so. But still Marvel prices a lot of books at
$2.99 and $2.50 constantly. So I don't know... I mean... statements like
that makes me wonder about the press sometimes, that they just run a
statement like that without even going and checking if it was true or not
(laughter). When someone makes a statement you should go and fact-
check it, before you print it as fact y'know? But that's just me, I suppose.
Coville:
Marvel says as a result of their no overprint policy, they've been
able to build an inventory of trade paper backs and keep them in
print. But I've heard Marvel has been having some troubles
keeping trade paper backs in print.
Hibbs:
Yes, Marvel has been pretty damn bad about keeping trade
paperbacks in print. But again, you have to look at the right way of doing the
business model on this. You don't just print for your initial orders and plus
an overage to cover for the next couple of months. It doesn't make
any sense to do that. It makes a lot more sense to print a 1 or 2 or 3 or 4
year supply of the books because your unit costs are going to be that
much lower. If you go back to press on another 3 to 5 thousand
copies or whatever those numbers they are printing on, it costs you so
much more than if you increase your print run to 10 to 15 thousand, if you
see what I mean. It doesn't make any mathematical sense. Now, if the
argument is by not overprinting single comics then we can afford to print more
trade paperbacks, that seems to me to be a fallacious argument on the
face of it. Look at the disparity of the cover prices on those. As I say,
when it costs oh.. lets say 15 cents to print off an extra copy of a
periodical comic book on a 15 dollar paperback youre looking more at a
2 to 3 dollar cost, lets say. My numbers may be a little off there but you
would have to be overprinting by a really, really, really enormous margin to
even come close to the math on that working out. Again, the problem is that
Marvel has been doing a pretty bad job of keeping trade paperbacks in
print, in stock and available. I mean, right now you can't buy
Marvels, the Kurt Busiek-Alex Ross book. That, if anything, is a perfect
thing to hand to someone that hasn't read comics in a long time, and to
get them excited about superheroes and Marvel superheroes, in
particular. It's the namesake book of the line and it hasn't been in print for
something like 4 or 5 months! That, to me, is just absurd (laughter).
Coville:
A number of people think the no-overprint policy is mainly
designed to enhance the collectability of a sold out comic. Does this help
you at all?
Hibbs:
I dont think it helps anyone, really. Look, comics are collectible
because of supply and demand. Placing an artificial ceiling on the
supply is... well, I think it is manipulative to the marketplace. I
was always taught that the market itself should decide what is
collectible and what is not.
Why would a publisher be in the business of trying to
manufacture collectibles? They dont see any money from that. Marvel
doesnt get a piece of E-Bay action. If the logic is, "This makes the initial
orders higher", well, I really challenge that. Morrisons first issue of X-
Men took a 40% leap (though the numbers went back down by the
third one to only 20% above pre-Morrison numbers). I see that more of a
function of the talent involved, rather than any false limitation of the print run.
Besides, if it really was working then why are the Ultimates all
down, across the board, from April to August? Spidey dropped 4%, X-
Men 6% and Team-Up a staggering 22%. That wouldnt be happening if they
were truly collectible.
One other thing to take into account, is that Marvels plan seems
to be to TPB their best-selling books as soon as humanly possible. Often
before 30 days has passed since the last single issue. Now historically, TPB
release of material deflates and softens the collectible value of the
original issues.
Coville:
They also mention posting sold out comics on their webpage as a
positive thing, do you think that's good?
Hibbs:
Sure, why not? I dont know that I believe that the experience of
reading a comic on the web, especially one with the kind of pop-
up pages the Marvels have, is even remotely the same as reading a
printed comic, but anything that exposes our material to potential new
customers is probably a good thing.
What Im curious about is whether or not it actually helps drive
sales. Like how many hits they get, and if they can point to any
information that it is actually moving more units. Reading the sales
charts, no, I dont think it does. At least in no measurable way.
Coville:
Marvel has also been focusing on movies, hoping that they'll
increase the sales of their comics. In your experience, does
comic movies help the sales of comic books?
Hibbs:
Virtually never, outside of a quick aberrational blip. What it can
possibly do is translate to a greater awareness of a character or a
concept in general... but it doesnt appear to sell any more comic
books. A quick look at the historical sales charts will confirm
that.
There are certain exceptions, of course: Ghost World has had a
significant impact on sales of that TPB. Our unit sales in that case
have increased tenfold over what they were before the film. But
thats a rare exception.
Coville:
Bill Jemas seems real big on promoting the Ultimate, especially
Ultimate Spider-Man as a good starting on point for new comic
readers.
Hibbs:
It is a reasonable one. The story is well crafted, clear and easy to
follow, and gives a good starting point for someone interested in
super-hero comics. The thing is, the average non-comics reader
isnt particularly interested in reading super-hero comics. Youre
much better off handing them a Ghost World, or a Maus, something
that more accurately speaks to real experiences in their lives. Having said
that, sure, I could think of far worse "entry points."
Coville:
Including female readers?
Hibbs:
People are people, regardless of their sex. All things considered
though, Id hand a new female reader Ghost World, I think, over
Spider-Man. The only real female roles in Spidey are "wife" and
"girlfriend."
Coville:
Jemas recommends Marvel-hating indy fans to read Elektra as a
date comic. Think that'll work?
Hibbs:
Im not sure that Elektra is even remotely "indy flavored"
(whatever
that might mean). It is a decent enough comic, but within the
Marvel
line, I think Id give an "indy fan" Morrisons X-Men, or maybe
X-Force by Milligan and Allred. Those seem to me, to be closer
to
that sensibility.
One thing though, and this is coming from a store where we sell
as
many "indy" comics as we do "mainstream"... the customers
arent
really that separate. It is very, very, very common for the cat who
buys JLA or X-Men to also pick up a copy of Peepshow or
Eightball or
whatever.
Coville:
What books would you recommend as beginner books for
males and
females?
Hibbs:
More things than I could cover in an interview! Id say it
depends on who
exactly that customer is. One of the tricks you learn in retail is
finding
out what a persons interests are, and then matching a book to
that.
Comics are wide and diverse enough that Im pretty confident I
have
something for anyone who walks in the door. Our massive and
continued
growth, strikingly above industry norms, should justify that
statement.
Coville:
Marvel has recently announced an incentive for their TPB line.
Saying, if retailers order 14 of their 16 TPB, you'll get an
additional discount going by the amount of books you order. An
example
being if you order two of each, you get an extra 2% discount. Is
this an
incentive that most retailers can actually use?
Hibbs:
Sure, I think so. The nice thing about this plan is theyve set their
quantities fairly low. That extra 2% comes with only 2 copies
bought, and
that is, I think, a good tool to use to get the average store to
actually
stock TPBs in the first place. The only problem with the plan is
that
theyre mixing in reprints of OP titles into that mix... a few of
which
had a low enough sales velocity in the first place to go Out of
Print.
But anything that encourages more retailers to get into the book
side of
things is, I think, a very fine idea. TPB sales are the engine that is
driving my business, and are a much better business model than
non-returnable periodical comics. The reason for this is Just-In-
Time
ordering. Rather than investing real heavily on untested "floppy"
comics,
you can stock and restock the periodical. Well, assuming the
publisher
actually has them available, that is.
When youre establishing yourself and sell two copies of
Watchmen
every month, when you sell one of those copies you can order
another
one. Youre only out of anything for a week, at maximum, at any
time
and your constantly turning over your cash flow in a real
respectful
way. This is a good business model.
Coville:
Now there were some things that Jemas said that seem to be
positive,
progressive things like he thinks comics stores should be racking
by
content rather than alphabetically.
Hibbs:
Oh absolutely. Weve done that for years. Now having said that,
some
of the smartest retailers in the business vehemently disagree with
that. I know Jim Hanley really strongly believes he gets much,
much,
much more great sales out of racking alphabetically. And I
believe
that's true for Jim. As I was saying earlier in the interview, no two
stores are really alike. I believe that genre racking is getting me
increased sales over what alphabetical racking would. Jim feels
differently, more power to him. But yeah, I'm definitely with
Jemas on
that one. I think that's a good and smart way to rack material.
[Note: Jim Hanley owns Jim Hanleys Universe at 4 West 33rd
Street, New York, NY]
Coville:
Bill mentioned Marvel is trying to get new readers by giving away
free online comics and giving away free samples. Examples given
are
the 500,000 Spider-Man comics within a game magazine, free
Wolverine
and X-Men Comics when the X-Men Movie came out, and in
the future the 1
million Spider-Man comics going out through the Buster Brown
Shoe Stores.
Hibbs:
Well, it's been in the future for over a year now, so I don't know
(laughter) how much I trust that last one there. I think giving out
comics is probably the smartest thing you could possibly do.
Having
said that, I have never, not once ever, seen anyone come into
my store
because of the giveaways that Marvel has done. I don't know
if... this is
entirely possible that it's just a regional thing. I do not believe that
they gave out any X-Men comics at any San Francisco showing
of the X-Men.
I mean, I was there opening day and I didn't see any comics
being given
away. I'm sure it's happening somewhere, and I think it's a great
plan,
again I think it's a really intelligent and smart thing to do. The best
way is, you know, "The first one's free, kid," particularly if the
content
of what youre giving away is good quality content. That's why I
think
giving away Ultimate Spider-Man would be a really smart thing
to do.
Giving away some bad X-Men comics could actually hurt you at
that point.
If someone comes out and says, "That was a great movie, what's
this free
comic? Ewww... it's not very good at all." I don't know if you
remember
the TV Guide X-Men insert?
Coville:
Yeah, I don't think I got it, but I heard about it.
Hibbs:
Yeah, it was really, really, really bad. It was everything that was
wrong with the Chris Claremont X-Men. Just page after page of
people
coming in and saying, "My name is this and here is my power!"
and you know it
wasn't interesting at all. I'm sure that turned more people off from
comics than it could ever have gotten them to come into a store
and say, "Hey,
this is interesting, lets check this out." So you have to be very
careful
when giving stuff away for free (laughter). To make sure it's
good, quality,
appropriate material.
Heres the thing though: if youre doing these sort of giveaways...
shouldnt you be informing the local retailers so they can
capitalize
upon it? If they did giveaway X-Men comics at the X-Men
movie, I sure
didnt know about it.
Coville:
Marvel says their goal over the next 5 years is to double their
sales. Do you think they can do that?
Hibbs:
Yeah, sure. Sure. I mean, I don't think they can do it as long as
they
have a policy in place that's says once we sell out that's it,
period. You
know? (laughter). I don't think that's going to happen until they
remove
the no overprint program. I don't think it can happen. But
otherwise? It's
completely doable, completely doable. It's just a matter of
putting out
good comics, supporting the stores, letting people know that the
comics
exist, getting people excited about the content of the material.
Yeah,
Marvel's got no where to go but up right now and I think that's a
good
thing. What's interesting particularly in my exchanges with Joe
Quesada,
we had a bunch of e-mails back and forth and I was really
struck with the
impression that they seem to think I'm like anti-Marvel or
something. And
nothing could be further than the truth, I want Marvel to
succeed, you
know? I want as many good quality publishers producing good,
quality
material out there doing as many strong things as they possibly
can, in my
store. But, I don't like being called an idiot. I don't like being
told I'm full of self-loathing. I don't like a policy that is very
demonstrably costing me sales. All those things are very negative
and
horrible things and when I stand up and go, "Hey this is wrong"
it's from
that point of view. Not because I hate Marvel or I'm anti-Marvel
or
something like that. That would be silly, I'm a comic book
retailer, it's
my job to sell comic books. When the publisher gets in my way
of selling
those comic books, then we're going to have a problem.
Coville:
Just out of curiosity, what's your IQ score?
Hibbs:
What's my IQ score?
Coville:
(laughter)
Hibbs:
I don't remember. When I took the IQ test I was like 13, or something like
that? But I qualified for Mensa, if that counts? But I don't know, I don't
care. IQ numbers?
Coville:
Sorry, that was just a question I had to ask (laughter).
Hibbs:
That was a very ill considered statement on Bill
s part. And I think he
made it much worse by issuing the second press release saying,
"Yeah, I'm
fooling around but oh, by the way, you
re still idiots.
" You know, that's
how I read it. I didn't want to read it that way but that's... you know,
here we are... comic shop retailers work really, really, really, really
hard and we don't make very much money. Not that we're poor or anything
like that, but then to have a some guy go, "Well if you don't agree with me,
than youre a dope." You know? Pfft. That doesn't help anything. That
doesn't help morale. And particularly coming out after getting through the
90's, morale is an issue that... if I were a publisher, morale would be an
issue I would be very, very concerned with. I wouldn't want you retailers
going, "I don't know if this guy is someone I want to do business with."
It's just dumb.
Coville:
I understand that Marvel recently had another retailer press
conference, one that you suggested to Joe Quesada at San Diego. Within
this, they openly admitted that they only invited retailers that had the
strongest growth of Marvel sales and they left you out of it. How does
that color your view of them?
Hibbs:
Well, I don't know the specifics of the statements that Bill or Joe or
whoever made at the conference call, so I don't know what their standard
was. I will say though, that their most vocal critics like me,
like Joe Field, like Matt Lehman, who were invited to the first retailer
conference, were not invited to this one. How does that color my
perception? I don't know, I think it makes them cowardly, is what I think
it does. I think that if you can't have an intelligent conversation about
a policy, particularly now that we've had some time behind us and we can
start to judge if that policy has or has not worked.
I would point out that the SCC filings that Marvel just made as of
last Tuesday (from when we are doing this interview) show that from
quarter to quarter, from 2000 to 2001 that Marvel Publishing sales have
gone down. They haven't gone up, they've gone down.
I would point to the very sales charts from April to August, that
every single one of those months, the vast majority of Marvel Comics have
dropped in sales from month to month. Nineteen of the twenty-five books
that are on all four month
s worth of sales charts have dropped. To me,
this says,
"Well, this policy isn't really working is it?" Yeah, absolutely,
X-Men has gone up 25%, or whatever and that is a great thing, that is a
wonderful thing for them. But Avengers has dropped by 6% and Daredevil
dropped by 15% and Tangled Web dropped by 32%. So, I think at this point
you should be willing, as a publisher, to look at what the actual impact
is. As opposed to what you believe, or what you want to have happen. I
think it's really important to look at those things critically. The smart
publishers and the smart distributors (well, which is pretty much Diamond
at this point but...) have come to realize that critical thought is a good
thing and something that should be embraced. That if we go to them, me and
any number of retailers go, "We don't think it's a good idea," they'll go,
"Okay. We're going to think about it again. We're going to actually look at
this carefully and ask ourselves,
does our plan make sense or does our plan not make
sense?
If we still think it makes sense as a publisher than let us go back
to the retailers and go
Here's really why we think it's making sense and
here's some tangible, provable things that we can point to." Marvel
doesn't have any of that right now as far as I can tell, besides just
blind rah-rah. "No-No, it's working. Look, X-Mens up!" (laughter)
To me that doesn't tell the whole story, that tells a very small part of
the story. How much would X-Men be up if we could keep going back to the
well and keep getting more copies? Frankly, I think X-Men could have done
200,000 copies rather than the 150,000 or so that it did. I really do, I
really believe strongly that it could have done 200,000 copies. But we'll
never know now. And if I were a creator, I'd be really upset about that.
you know? "Wait a minute, what do you mean? There's people who want my
comic and you won't sell it to them?" (laughter). That's silly. So, to
sorta back up there, I think it is extremely short sighted to only invite
people to a conference call that are there to, let us say, be "positive."
Unflinchingly so. I think it's always a good thing to have dissenting
voices and to listen to them carefully and pay attention to what they have
to say. I would love it, I would adore it in fact, if Joe or Bill came into
my store, walked around and went "Y'know, we think if you did this, your
store would be a better place." And I would listen to that. I listen every
time anybody comes into my store and says, "You know, I don't think this
is right, I think you should do this." I look at it, I evaluate it, I
think about it and most of the time I actually end up trying peoples
suggestions. You know, that's how you get better. You don't get better by
going "Oh, you can't come because youre a big meany."
Coville:
At the same conference call with a number of your peers, Bill
Jemas
referred to you as "Hairy Neck" and kept calling Joe Fields
Flying Colors store "Failing Colors." How do you respond to
something like
that?
Hibbs:
Im not sure, honestly. I think it is incredibly juvenile to resort to
name-calling, particularly in front of a group of peers. Several of
the
people involved as participants called me to tell me how
ashamed they felt
hearing that. I dont think it is good business to insult your
customers.
Coville:
Switching topics a bit here, I understand there is a weekly War
Machine Comic that's coming out, part of the experimentation
that
Marvel is doing. And because of it being weekly it's very hard for
retailers to order it in proper numbers. Can you explain to the
readers why that is?
Hibbs:
Okay, because we're basically ordering sight unseen and we'll probably end
up ordering all 12 issues before the first issue even ships. Now this is
assuming it ships on time. I'd like to believe that if they're doing
weekly comics they can do them on time. But Marvel has been very, very,
very bad on timely shipping recently. When you order a comic youre... if
youre a good retailer, you keep up to date on what you sell of your
comics. So, let's say for War Machine, I'm going to look at it and go this
is going to sell relatively in some sort of proportion, be it up or down
or in the middle of, lets say, Iron Man. That gives me a good benchmark to
work from. But War Machine is black and white. But it's weekly, it doesn't
have any of the same creators that Iron Man has, it is a character that
has failed in his own series in the past and that people didn't appear to
like very much. So, you look at that and youre going,
"Well, do I order 50% of Iron Man? Do I order 70%? or do I order 110%?"
There is no way to know. We're guessing. Every time a comic book retailer places an order
they are basically guessing. They're educated guesses to be sure, we have
data we can look back at. I can show you in cycle sheets where books just
take sudden shifts whether it's up or whether it's down for no reason.
It's the exact same creator team from month to month, there is nothing
that changed about the book, not a character has changed or anything like
that, and all of a sudden a third of the customers go, "I don't want this
anymore," all at once (laughter). And there is just no way to predict these
things. Ordering comics is not a science, it's an art. It's like trying to
see the future. What are my customers going to want 3 months from now? And
it's much, much worse in the case of a weekly book because there are so
many issues you have to order in advance. Now, a normal comic book, if
we're lucky, we only have to order maybe two, maybe three issues in
advance before the first one comes and we can actually see whether it sold
or not. In this case, we're basically going to have to order all of them.
If not, it's all but 3 and even then you can't really tell from issue #1
what a series is going to sell for issue #12. You can sorta tell, but not
really. I don't know, is that making sense? I never know how to answer
these questions, because for me, comics retailing is so ingrained that do
it without thinking.
Coville:
I think you explained it as best you could, I understand it.
Hibbs:
Okay. Well, if you understand it, hopefully your readers will.
Coville:
I know some retailers have been little squeamish on selling some of
Marvels non-code approved books to kids. An example being the eyeless
Wolverine issue. What are your feelings on that?
Hibbs:
I think in an awful lot of communities, retailers really, really,
really, really need to be squeamish about doing those kinds of things.
Because community standards are the important issue when it comes to the
acceptability of selling a book. I am blessed, well not blessed because
I've very specifically opened my store here, but I
m blessed by being in
San Francisco. Not only in San Francisco, but in an extremely liberal part
of San Francisco. So those are not particular concerns that I have. But
yeah, I would be very concerned if I was in a more conservative area with
having that comic or any number of things that have been announced or have
come out. Because if just one wrong person sees it, you can lose your
store. It's entirely possible. Just look at the and look at
all the retailers that have gone to jail, or who have lost their store or
lost thousands of dollars fighting conservative forces. In something that
is especially perceived as childrens entertainment by the vast majority
of America, IE. Superhero comics, I think that becomes an even bigger
issue to be aware of. I would not consciously sell that issue of X-Force
or that issue of Wolverine with the eyeball to a child. I wouldn't do it
and I'm in San Francisco. How much worse it must be if your in, I don't
know, Iowa or something like that? Something else of note is that I used
to be on the board of directors for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. And
at no point was Marvel ever interested in supporting the CBLDF or what it
stood for. At the time their reasoning was something very close to, "Well
you know, we just don't produce comics like that." And now they are
producing comics like that and I will be very curious to see if a store
does get arrested for selling some of this material, what Marvel will do.
I'll be very curious indeed.
Coville:
I wonder if some of this comes from our own ideas of what kids
should and shouldn't be seeing vs. what Network TV keeps showing. Some
think we should just follow their lead and just think if they're doing it,
we can do it too.
Hibbs:
Well, yeah, maybe. I don't know I really want to wade into the
censorship issue or the appropriateness issue because frankly, I think
that's a decision the parents have to make. The parents need to decide
what they are comfortable with their children viewing. In something like
that first issue of X-Force, which was an excellent comic by the way, I really
liked that comic a lot... but you know, it's got a character that's ripped
apart by a machine gun and his guts are leaking out of his body. I mean,
it's shown and it's very visual and I don't think you'd even see that on
Network Television. I think it was really irresponsible, particularly in a
comic which had been completely and utterly safe for children for 115, or
whatever, previous issues, to sudden have massive eviscerations
(laughter). But I really think it's... I don't really have a problem with
Marvel having their own rating system as long as it's consistently and
consciously applied. I don't know that it is and that's my big
concern. As far as I understand from reading their press release on it, if
I recall correctly the Ultimate Marvel line was supposed to be G rated
comics, as it were. And I think there are things in there that are
probably not G rated and aren't being thought about. Things like the
Kingpin crushing some guys head. Yeah okay, it happens off panel but if I
recall correctly there's a spurt of blood. You know, you feel it
and I personally wouldnt go, "Well, that's a G rated thing". Again I'm
in liberal San Francisco, so I don't have to worry about these kinds of
things, thank God (laughter).
