Change Is A Sound

As I get older, I don’t find myself as outraged by corporations’ behavior as I once did. When I was young, all of the appalling behavior was new, or had been recently discovered (or recently discovered by me), and I couldn’t believe that the corporations engaged in such activity - and the people employed by them - weren’t broken up and thrown in jail in less time than it took a Walter Johnson fastball to cross home plate.

To this day, I still won’t buy gasoline from a Shell station. I’ve added BP to my list of companies that will never get another dime from me.

In the wake of the recent Gary Friedrich mess, I’m torn about comics.

Here’s the thing. I love comics. I think I love them more now than I did when I was a kid. I picked up a complete run of “Captain Carrot And The Amazing Zoo Crew” last year. I’m working on a complete run of “Nick Fury, Agent Of S.H.I.E.L.D.” Next on my list is starting to pick up old comics with the Creature Commandos in them.

It took me a while to understand it, but I love Alan Moore’s “Promethea” so much that I want to pick up the Absolute editions. And that’s where the trouble starts.

We all know about the utter mess “Watchmen” has been for DC and Moore. While DC may have behaved legally and fulfilled its contractual obligations, DC doesn’t seem to place any particular value on its relationship with a legendary creator who inarguably helped to transform the entire medium.

But that has ripples - Moore stopped working with DC and founded his own imprint, America’s Best Comics, under Wildstorm, which was in turn an imprint published by Image until Jim Lee sold Wildstorm to DC.

So where does that leave “Promethea,” a creator-owned series from a creator-owned imprint published by another creator-owned imprint which was subsequently sold to DC? Does Alan Moore receive payments for it? If he does, does he accept them? Does the revenue that “Absolute Promethea” generates (however much it may actually be) go to Moore and J.H. Williams III, or does it line DC’s wallet like newspaper in a birdcage?

I really could care less about “Before Watchmen.” Some of the creative teams look interesting, but overall, I’m simply not interested in it. I understand why DC is publishing those comics; they’re pretty much a license to print money and that’s what a corporation is in business to do - make money. In the same way that we aren’t surprised when wild animals kept in domestic situations maul people, we should not be surprised when corporations behave in ways that are exactly consistent with their primary goal, which is to make as much money as possible as fast as it can with the greatest profit possible. DC is behaving in keeping with a corporation’s nature - fairness is not part of that equation.

This is part of how we know that corporations are not, in fact, people. When people behave as corporations do, it’s not uncommon for them to get punched in the face, not be invited to social gatherings and so forth. Generally, people want to be treated fairly and with respect; people who do not behave in such ways are typically ostracized and find themselves associating with people who are, as the O’Jays put it, backstabbers.

And that’s just a recent, simple example.

The matter of Gary Friedrich is more troubling.

Again, we’re beginning with the idea that a corporation is more akin to an animal than a person; its nature does not lie in fairness, it lies in revenues and profits. Just as animals kill other animals for food, corporations eat ideas to sustain themselves. They depend entirely on ideas, on the work done by people working for the organization, and whose work belongs to that organization. Some companies take the matter farther - there are examples of corporations which claim ownership of all creative ideas generated during an individual’s employment, arguing the creative atmosphere is so pervasive that it effectively infects an individual like a virus, which means that the process so indoctrinates people that anything they create while exposed to that environment is a direct result of that process and therefore owned by the employer. For more commentary on that idea, there’s interesting discussion at OnStartups.com covering a number of these topics.

And that’s the best way to consider how Marvel is approaching Gary Friedrich in barring him from claiming that he created a character who, by most accounts, he at the very least had a hand in creating and earning any revenue from convention appearances which depend on that claim. If that were the extent of it, it would be bad but perhaps somewhat manageable.

But that isn’t the end.

Marvel wants Friedrich, a 68-year-old man who turns 69 in a few months, someone with stated medical issues, to pay them $17,000.

Again, considering corporations as we consider animals, this is understandable in the context of a corporation’s motivating factors - revenue and profit. Attempting to ruin an elderly man in poor health for a paltry sum of money (and $17,000 is a paltry sum for a corporation of Marvel’s size, particularly since Disney bought Marvel) is, sadly, entirely in keeping with a corporation’s drivers. This is how corporations act. This is what they do. Profit and revenue neither know nor understand mercy or compassion. They simply don’t translate to any language a corporation speaks.

And this? This is why corporations are not people. People may be jerks, but most of us operate with something resembling an understanding of mercy and compassion, of fairness and justice. If we were millionaires, most of us wouldn’t pursue a $17,000 judgment against someone who is clearly in no position to pay, especially if the pursuit of that judgment would leave them homeless.

But Marvel is a corporation, not a person, and that judgment has been entered. Instead of Marvel publicly stating that it will not pursue the matter further and that it will not attempt to collect on that judgment, Marvel has remained silent on the matter.

And just to add salt to the wounds, a new Ghost Rider movie comes out on Friday. Not that Gary Friedrich can afford to go see it.

And this is where I’m torn. Like many other comics readers who pay attention to the industry, I think the way corporations treat creators is unconscionable. It’s appalling. It’s unjust and unfair. It may be legal, but if corporations are people, then they also meet key components of the diagnostic criteria for sociopathy.

But I also like the stories. I like the characters. I like seeing how talented and skilled writers and artists play with the toys in the sandbox.

And therein lies the conflict.

For a long time, I’ve known that convictions are not convenient. Having an actual conviction, a belief, means accepting inconvenience to adhere to it and remain true to one’s core values and ethics. A conviction isn’t something that people only pay attention to when it doesn’t matter - such a paltry little idea is like a drowned worm, a wretched and soggy little thing swept away by a trivial amount of rain.

A conviction, on the other hand, would withstand a Category 5 hurricane or an F5 tornado or an earthquake which couldn’t be measured on the Richter scale. Convictions abide, regardless of the forces deployed against them.

I believe that the way Gary Friedrich is being treated is wrong. I believe the way Alan Moore was treated is wrong.

And while a significant majority of my pull list consists of indie comics and creator-owned titles (somewhere around 65-70%), I’m not quite at the point where that belief has become a conviction so strong that I’m willing to sacrifice the stories I love. I’m struggling with it.

I’m a work in progress. We all are.

Except for corporations. In the absence of evolution, corporations will remain exactly what they are - greedy, rapacious little things, gluttonous and ever-hungry, feeding on ideas that they’re too mentally impoverished to create and the creators who gave them those ideas. And Gary Friedrich is just their latest snack.

Ah, rainy Saturday morning, making my bones and connective tissue ache like a wistful glance in “The Notebook” …

So. Anything interesting happen recently? I wasn’t paying attention.

Oh, right. “Before Watchmen.” I thought I missed something.

So after boiling the entire kerfuffle down to core elements, my thoughts on it are pretty simple.

• I don’t particularly care to read more stories in the Watchmen universe, regardless of who is involved.
• That apathy is not derived from any particular allegiance or ideology; it’s a simple lack of interest.
• While the characters in Watchmen may have been derived from Charlton characters, they are clearly not those characters. Even if the Quantum Superman in Final Crisis looked a LOT like Dr. Manhattan.
• As the Gaiman / McFarlane legal brouhaha has shown us, derivative characters can be considered original creations.
• Alan Moore’s contract for “Watchmen” ensured the characters would be his after the work was out of print; the subsequent problems were the result of a phenomenal and entirely unprecedented success. Alan Moore created something so good that people kept buying it and DC kept printing collections, something that hadn’t happened before. Since the book never went out of print, Moore never had the rights revert to him.
• DC did nothing illegal, even if it seems remarkably unfair and incredibly shortsighted to piss off someone who gave DC what amounted to a license to print money.
• Claiming Alan Moore did the same thing that DC is doing with “Lost Girls” and “League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen” misses at least two key points.

1. Moore was using works in the public domain, which exists at least in part to allow and, in fact, encourage the sort of transformative (i.e. inspired by but different than the source material) stories he was telling. Bill Willingham is doing much the same thing with “Fables.”
2. The authors who created the characters Moore used owned the rights to their works and were compensated for it. Copyright exists to ensure that creators can profit from their ideas for a reasonable amount of time, then allow those ideas to be used by the public. Moore never received the rights to his creation.

A lot of excellent commentary about the issue has hit the Web lately. While this is by no means a comprehensive round-up, here are the pieces I found most compelling:

Eric Stephenson on contractual issues and creator rights

David Brothers on people cheering for “Before Watchmen” and mocking Alan Moore

CBR’s Chris Mautner on creators’ rights

And since both pieces appear to still be quite relevant …

Tom Spurgeon on creator’s rights

Adi Tantimedh interviews Alan Moore

According to DCWKA, DC is canceling Tiny Titans.

To elaborate, DC is canceling one of the only truly all-ages comics in the business and one that used its intellectual property broadly, introducing readers of all ages to characters taken from the entire DC universe, often represented in canonical forms but also making sure to include more recent characters like Cassandra Cain.

Without checking the pull list that I share with my little girl, I’m pretty sure it’s the only DC comic that she reads right now.

Assuming for the purposes of this post that DCWKA is correct and it is, in fact, DC canceling the book and not Art Baltazar deciding not to continue, that means that the last non-licensed property in the Johnny DC line is gone. The remaining comics are all based on cartoons which do not feature DC heroes.

Tiny Titans is one of the few comics which, as a parent, I knew I could rely on every month to offer fun, entertaining content which was also age-appropriate and awesome. Seriously - comics fans of any age who don’t like Tiny Titans likely hate fun and life, probably in that order.

More importantly for DC, it was a gateway book - a book that parents could buy their kids and hand to them without reading it or being concerned about whether Starfire is dressed like an especially immodest stripper or if it contains graphic violence (depicted in, for example, Green Lantern books). It introduced kids to DC characters across a broad spectrum of titles, helping them learn who the characters are so that when they began buying titles in the DCU proper, they knew who Cyborg and Starfire and Cassandra Cain are, as well as Robin and Batgirl and other, more widely-known characters.

While Tiny Titans was an awesome comic on its own, the larger business idea behind it was getting kids accustomed to the DCU and how it works and who’s who. It was, from a business perspective, a brand-building tool. With something like that, it doesn’t matter if it makes money as long as it doesn’t hemorrhage cash. It is, in the parlance of business, a loss leader - it is a product or sale or price strategy which exists to draw people in and get them to buy other stuff, or to build the business.

Back in college, one of the jobs I held was working at Office Depot making copies. Office Depot did cheap copies - 100 double-sided copies on 8 1/2 x 11 paper ran $3.50 plus tax at the time. We did church programs, flyers, whatever. If someone needed a copy or two, there were the self-serve machines. Anything bigger, we ran on the monster Xerox POS 9000s (note: not an actual Xerox model) that were forever breaking down and making us jerry-rig solutions that would hold until we could get the non-weekend service call rate on Monday morning.

On a slow day, we could turn around 100 copies for someone in about 5-10 minutes, assuming nothing went wrong. We encouraged them to browse for a bit while we ran their job, and let them know when it was done over the intercom. Generally, when they returned, they had a basket. Pens, Post-It notes, a notebook, etc. Simple things, small things, but things they remembered they needed to buy while their copies were being run - or that they picked up as an impulse purchase.

On busier days, that turnaround time could increase to 20 minutes or so - not long enough to go elsewhere, but too long to stand at the counter.

None of this was some calculated plot on our part as people making copies - that’s just how long it took to get a job done and throw the next one in. I think everyone who worked there eventually timed the machines to figure out how long each one took to make a copy, and most of us timed how long it took for single and double-sided copies at every paper size we offered so we could tell people how long it would take with a fair degree of accuracy, assuming nothing broke down and all we had to do was add paper.

But the fact of the matter was that making copies took time and it got people into the store for something that wouldn’t take too long, but would take enough time that picking it up later wasn’t sensible.

And they bought stuff.

Presto. Office Depot lost money on the copies, but was able to sell higher-margin items.

And that’s the point of a loss leader.

Even the regulars would buy stuff - people who came in every Saturday night to do their church programs would buy things. People who came in to get fliers done needed rubber bands or time cards or whatever.

And that is the same way you think of a comic like Tiny Titans from a business perspective. You don’t consider it as a revenue stream - any revenue it generates, any costs it offsets are incidental. You chalk it up as a business development expense because you aren’t selling a comic like Tiny Titans, you’re creating a customer. Anything else is gravy. It’s a good comic? That’s awesome. It pays for itself? Fantastic.

But at the end of the day, the point isn’t the comic, it’s the customer that the comic is developing.

In a sensible business analysis, everything else - costs included - comes second to that, particularly when it’s creating a customer at such a young age and the potential lifetime revenue from that customer is so significant.

And canceling a title like that? Cuts off every single one of the revenue streams it was creating.

Here’s what my little girl will take away from DC’s decision: BOOM! publishes kids’ comics and obviously wants her as a customer. Image, of all publishers, is making kids’ comics and obviously wants her as a customer. Indie publishers creating titles like “Scratch 9” and “Princeless” obviously want her as a customer.

But DC? DC is canceling one of her favorite books. Why should she care about the larger DCU? It’s too “mature” (read: violent and sexualized to pander to some men) for her to read right now.

I don’t know whether she’ll still read comics in five years, much less ten, but I do know that it’s unlikely that she’ll be reading a DC book at any point in the next few years because the content simply isn’t appropriate.

But I also know that she’ll be conditioned by the market, and that in those few years when she can’t read DC titles due to their “adult” nature, a number of other comics publishers will clearly say that they want her to read their books, and that they want her business and value her as a customer as she is.

They won’t ask her to overlook costumes or characterization or stereotyping. They’ll tell her good stories that she enjoys and that don’t rely on objectifying a gender. She’ll get used to publishers telling her that she is important to them because they will tell her stories that don’t depend on sex or violence to make a point.

And by the time she’s old enough to read a DC comic again? I don’t know if she’ll care about the stories that DC is telling, particularly if those stories are the ones we’re getting right now.

thebirdandthebat:

Another fantastic sentiment from Power Girl #26. “You have the power to confront apathy, to avoid cynicism and futility, to do your part to make the world a better place for everyone…be true to yourself, and have the courage to speak out and to confront evil in all of the many masks behind which it hides.” - Matthew Sturges

Me, The Nerdy Bird, Jill Pantozzi

I’ve been in a wait and see mode on the Oracle/Batgirl situation for a while now but still seeing people insist she should be cured simply because it’s fiction and anything can happen is bullshit.

(via thebirdandthebat)

On change, the DCnU and Star Wars Galaxies … Part 3

In Part 3 of this series, we looked at relative interest in the DCnU from current customers, briefly examined the short timeline DC had to build interest in the DCnU among potential readers, and the inherent challenges of doing so in diffused media (TV, Web, print, etc.), along with identifying DC’s target market and a brief discussion of how DC leadership is alienating existing customers with comments about increased gender inequity among creators and characters in books, whether perceived or real.

This time around, we’re going to examine some simple things DC could have done to attract new readers without alienating existing readers.

The first idea comes from Tom Spurgeon’s Comics Reporter and a list of things he would do to improve comics. Point 13 is brilliant in its simplicity: “Establish A Number Of ‘Safety Titles’ At The Mainstream Comics Publishers.”

Spurgeon writes, “I would force Marvel, DC and any other applicable company to guarantee that their most popular characters would always have a monthly or bi-monthly title that had their name on it and nothing else, and that these comics could be enjoyed without buying anything not with that name on it to supplement their enjoyment.”

Think about that. “Thor” would be “Thor.” You wouldn’t need to read “Fear Itself” to enjoy it. “Captain America” is “Captain America,” and “Iron Man” is “Iron Man” - no “Civil War” necessary. No continuity-heavy stories - you only have to know that Tony Stark is a billionaire playboy who is also Iron Man. Steve Rogers is a patriot who serves his country as Captain America. And any half-competent comics writer can write a quick blurb like comics used to have so that anyone could pick up any issue of any comic and know exactly what was going on. They don’t all have to be literary classics like the Avengers intro, but they do need to be there.

Considering this post is about DC and the DCnU, that should be true for Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Green Lantern and so on. Every single major character should have its own safety title. There doesn’t need to be a safety title for every character possible - just the most widely-read ones. The ones who have movies in the theater. The most well-known ones.

I’d go further. I’d make those safety titles suitable for all ages, genders, identities, etc. No sexism or homophobia. No prejudice. No jokes about someone’s religion or weight or gender preference. Just good stories with action and well-developed characters. If a kid wants to read about Superman or Batman, here’s “Superman.” Here’s “Batman.” Here are comics that any comic retailer, convenience store clerk, librarian, parent, relative or friend can hand to any kid without worrying about graphic violence (present in many current “Green Lantern” comics, just as one example, and entirely unsuitable for young children whose parents probably buy the books thinking that it’s a comic and it can’t be that bad because the movie isn’t rated R) or inappropriate amounts of sexual content. Here’s Batman punching The Joker. Here’s Superman bringing Lex Luthor - and his 40 cakes - to justice.

This would accomplish a number of things - it would allow and possibly encourage creators working on these titles to indulge their canonic fantasies about Silver Age heroes - instead of racially regressive politics affecting the main universe and preventing progress which should be occurring but isn’t due to creators spending time bringing characters like Hal Jordan and Barry Allen back, the safety titles could feature those iconic characters in stories since there’s limited continuity - Jay Garrick, Barry Allen and Wally West could run side by side in them. New Flashes could be created, as long as it’s The Flash.

And it’s possible to write titles in such a way that they can appeal to adults at the same time. Atomic Robo does this every month, and its creators have publicly pledged not to insult their readers’ intelligence (although I’m paraphrasing quite a bit - still, each bullet at that link is a great promise to readers). Creators like Roger Langridge, Colleen Coover and Lucy Knisley would be perfect for these safety comics, whether creating main stories or back-up stories or one-page stories, and would help develop talent and broaden both the audience for these books as well as the creator base DC has available.

The second idea is that these safety titles should also be available digitally for $.99. At one point, I was an early adopter of technology, until I realized that I wanted the market to settle a bit and was content buying products once the platform or medium had stabilized and industry leaders and best practices had been established. I no longer wanted to make snap decisions about VHS or Beta for ridiculous amounts of money - I wanted a product that would be around for a lengthy period of time. I was tired of gambling on technology and somewhat frequently betting on the losing horse, meaning I was stuck with a product made by a company that no longer existed which used a format that was no longer available. And honestly, being on the bleeding edge often meant getting what amounted to prototypes - I wanted to get products that actually worked.

I say this because, despite adoption rates, digital content - whether music, video or printed materials - still hasn’t settled down. Law, for example, has not caught up with industry practices and what law does exist (such as the DMCA) contravenes existing and long-held protections for consumers under Fair Use provisions acknowledged in traditional media.

As one example, people who circumvent DRM to ensure that their content is usable on whatever platform they desire are technically violating U.S. law. While other countries may have similar restrictions, harsher restrictions or none at all, I can only speak about U.S. law since that’s what I’m familiar with. While some early adopters rush to convert content catalogues to a new format, this is inherently dangerous, particularly when moving into digital content forms.

As one hypothetical example, if Comixology went out of business tomorrow, what would happen to people’s comic collections obtained through or from that service? Would they still be viewable and accessible? Would users be able to transfer them to other devices if the DRM servers were gone? Would users lose that content entirely? And what about existing and reported problems like publishers locking content or providers remotely removing content from devices (Yes, I’ve been told that Amazon took steps to make sure that never happened again … except it did, and Amazon again removed content that people purchased from their Kindles)?

This is why digital content is inherently risky until the law catches up with it and extends existing and long-held protections for print media to digital media. In the meantime, content providers want to make use of the platform and people want to buy that content, but the key is recognizing that inherent risk in pricing. In short, digital comics should be no more than $.99. Not $1, or $1.99, but $.99.

When we buy an actual comic, it can’t be easily taken away from us - not legally, at any rate. We have physical possession of it, which means that someone must physically remove it. A server error won’t keep us from reading it, nor will a network outage or some other technical glitch, nor does anyone else have control over how we read it or whether we can read it at all. As such, a physical comic deserves to be priced higher than a digital comic, but the market has already shown unwillingness to pay more than $2.99 (Marvel’s pricing aside). Since physical comics carry production costs in addition to paying creators, they need to recoup costs.

But converting them to digital? That’s gravy. The comic already exists. It’s already been scanned. Converting it to a file for use on devices is cake. And at $.99, people are far more inclined to try it because it is quite literally change. At $2.99? That’s a drink at a coffee shop.

Plus, lower price points support people who want to take a chance on something. DC has experimented with this idea by reprinting first issues for $1 as part of its initiative to create new comics readers after the “Watchmen” movie. A number of Vertigo titles launched with $1 first issues. Image is making a habit of launching some series, both minis and on-goings, with a $1 first issue, as well as $1 reprints of key first issues to encourage potential new readers to take a chance.

At $3, publishers ask someone to decide between coffee, a gallon of gas, a burrito or burger from a fast food restaurant, an energy drink or a comic, among other products. At $1? That’s less than the cost of a candy bar at many convenience stores, and there’s no overhead or production costs that weren’t covered by the initial print run, especially if it’s a digital comic. If people get hooked on it, that $.99 is money in the bank, over and over. It may turn into someone buying the actual physical issue. And buying the actual physical issue, as I can attest from personal experience, frequently turns into someone who starts buying comics.

It isn’t that hard, even if it is uncomfortably similar to how my parents used to warn me that drug dealers operated. In point of fact, Brandon Schatz wrote an interesting article about that very subject over at Comics! The Blog which is well worth reading. DC could learn a thing or two from it.

The third idea, stated as simply as I can, is that DC needs to make sure that the right people are talking. As I write this, some number of people are frustrated by the conduct and comments of DC leadership at Comic Con. And they are rightfully frustrated, if the accounts of how they were treated are true (and there are too many substantially similar reports from too many sources for these accounts to be false). DC is, in effect, insulting and offending existing customers while in the process of trying to gain new ones.

I’m going out on a limb here - pissing off existing customers while trying to create new ones is not a sound business strategy. In fact, it is all too easy to chase away existing business without any new customers materializing, leaving an organization in worse shape than it was before (which, bringing this back to the original idea, is effectively what happened with Star Wars Galaxies, which recently announced that its servers will be shutting down - the old customers left, the new ones didn’t show up and the business shot itself in the head in its marketing game of Russian Roulette). It is hard to think of an industry in which it is a sound business strategy to alienate existing customers in any way, for any reason.

And yet this is the effect of what DC is doing. Why would women want to consume media from a producer which not only doesn’t seem to hire women but doesn’t seem to understand why it should and why it’s wrong not to do so? Why should disabled people want to consume media from a producer when the producer effectively eliminates one of the two most visibly disabled characters in comics? Why would people of color want to consume media from a producer which seems to think diversity means adding a white woman to a team consisting largely of white men?

Furthermore, that’s just how DC has treated existing customers. The outreach to potential new customers largely consists of giving this story to that tabloid or this other newspaper. An article appearing in one place for one time does not build brand awareness. Again, conventional marketing wisdom is that a message must be seen at least seven times before people even remember it, much less have any interest.

DC needed to put a talented marketing and PR person on this task. Instead, DC allowed some dudes who don’t understand why they should hire women to travel around and talk to the same people who already sell their comics at the same comic shops that already sell them. As I mentioned in the previous post on this subject, there is no definition of new customers which can include existing customers. As a result, DC gets reports of Dan DiDio asking customers which women he should have hired, instead of a professional saying that DC is committed both to diversity in its content and its creative teams, and that talented female creators are working on titles which will be announced in coming months, even if DiDio’s response is more honest and accurate.

In allowing its executives to speak to customers without coaching or a skilled communications professional present for damage control, DC has created a perception problem in its new line - that it openly and willfully excludes women, that the company doesn’t really want women as customers, that DC comics are only for 18-to-34-year-old white men, and so forth.

That’s a bad message to have in the open, especially when social networks allow such things to rapidly build steam and gain attention, and especially when a company is trying to launch what amounts to a new product and market that product to potential customers in the next two months. When news sites like io9 post articles about DC’s fan outreach with titles like “How Batgirl Took On DC Comics: The Anatomy Of a PR Crisis,” that’s not good word of mouth. The old adage that any press is good press isn’t true if the press focuses on the behavior of executives and not on the product being sold.

While it’s too late to undo the damage that DC’s executives have done by speaking off the cuff, it is not too late to put a communications professional on damage control, spin, clarification and trying to tidy up the mess. And it is never too late to hire someone whose only job is communicating these changes so that highly-placed representatives don’t give people the wrong impression of DC … or, both more sadly and more accurately, the correct one.

Now, since I wrote those paragraphs a few days ago (and keep in mind that this series of posts has been in progress for a while), DC has issued a press release which effectively says that more women will be working on upcoming projects, as opposed to the overwhelmingly male composition of writers, pencillers and cover artists which have been announced. I sincerely hope that’s true, but I will be buying significantly fewer DC comics until that shakes out in the next few months.

With these notes about what DC could have done to get new readers without annoying existing fans completed, it’s time for what I suspect will be the last post on this subject, and is usually one of the most important parts of any project lifecycle - the lessons learned. Unlike most of the corporate lessons learned sessions I’ve been part of, this won’t be trying to identify lessons which try to make the project team look good, regardless of whether the project was successful or an unmitigated disaster which warranted releasing at least one Kraken.

If you follow this blog, you might be interested in reading the stuff I’ve been posting at nosexismatdc.tumblr.com. The reports from Comic Con were frustrating, and were the last straw for me. Posts here will likely be even more sporadic than they had been for a bit while I engage in a highly Quixotic effort to make comics a slightly better place for my little girl.

On change, the DCnU and Star Wars Galaxies … Part 2

In Part 2 of this yet-to-be-finished series, we briefly reviewed what change management is and how it works, and we looked at a few real world examples, namely the black berets that are being removed from the U.S. Army’s standard combat uniform, the NGE for Star Wars Galaxies and a brief comment or two on  New Coke.

With that overview out of the way, let’s get back to comics now.

CBR recently conducted a survey which, although not especially scientific, suggests that DC may have misread its market. The only comics that more than 50% of respondents said they would absolutely buy are “Justice League” and “Action Comics.” The remainder of the titles in the top 5 comics that respondents absolutely plan to buy are “Batman” with 47%, “Green Lantern” with 45.3% and “Aquaman” with 34.5%.

To put that in perspective, the comic ranking fifth out of the most anticipated comics from the reboot has barely more than 1/3 of respondents absolutely planning to buy it. Another 25% may buy it, while almost 40% of respondents say it’s unlikely that they’ll pick it up. That’s the fifth most-anticipated comic out of fifty-two. And “Detective Comics”? The title that gave DC its name? Only 25.4% of respondents definitely plan to buy it.

Now, there are all sorts of ways to spin these numbers - respondents are self-selected, it’s unscientific, it wasn’t conducted by an organization that is known for doing surveys, etc. The important part is that these numbers represent the people who cared enough about comics to actually answer the survey and sort through 52 separate comics and determine whether they plan to buy them. It wasn’t possible to submit a survey which did not have an answer for each of 52 separate comics. And while it may not have been scientific, more than 10,000 people responded.

But where the survey really gets ugly is in the Not At All column. As one example, nearly 70% of respondents said they are not at all likely to buy “I, Vampire.” “Omac” and “Voodoo” are in similarly dire straits with 66.9% and 64.2% expressing no interest, “Hawk & Dove” is at 63.8% uninterested and so on.

Of the 52 new books? More than 50% of respondents said they were not at all likely to buy 13 of them. That’s a full 25% of the new titles being launched. If we lower that threshold to 40%, which is still a greater percentage than the people who are absolutely planning to buy the fifth most-anticipated title? That number increases to thirty-three. And if we add Unlikely to Not At All Likely? We start seeing comics which over 80% of respondents express little to no interest in.

Now, spin the numbers all you want - 80% of self-selected respondents indicating limited interest, if any, still indicates that a large number of people could care less about the book. Based on that, it’s reasonable to ask whether DC did any sort of market research - any focus groups talking about possible new titles even without mentioning the possibility of a line-wide reboot, any surveys, etc.

CBR’s survey was accepting responses only for a few days and got these numbers; surely DC had a more vested interest in finding out their customers’ opinions about possible titles, settings, genres, etc., and yet we’re seeing comics that a large number of people show little to no interest in. And these comics haven’t even launched yet.

With 52 separate titles and about 2 months remaining before those titles start hitting stores, there simply isn’t enough time for DC to do the necessary advertising, marketing and other work associated with building interest in each of those books. Comics fans seem to have made their mind up about a large number of these comics, sight unseen, purely based on the covers, concepts, creative teams and, now, solicits. And since publishers release this information so readers and store owners have an idea of what’s going on and can get excited about it, they have no room to complain if people are unimpressed with their new direction.

DC took this risk in springing the revamp on fans and trying to build excitement by announcing who was working on the books. Comics fans, for the most part, seemed to offer a giant shrug of indifference so DC’s big announcement to entice fans seems to have had an undesired - and, in fact, the opposite - outcome. At this point, DC can advertise in Previews, but it seems that the core customers have already made their decision.

And that is completely ignoring the amount of work which needs to be done to reach people who aren’t already comics fans. DC has repeatedly indicated that at least some part of the reason behind this change is reaching new people, yet ancient marketing wisdom handed down on stone tablets suggests most people need to see an ad several times before they even remember it, much less have any interest in the subject.

How will DC manage to get those impressions, given how diffuse media has become? It’s no longer a matter of advertising on ABC, CBS and NBC during prime time - it’s magazine ads, banner ads, co-branding, product placement, cable ad buys and so on. Doing a blanket, one-size-fits-all ad announcing the reboot, new number ones and digital issues may result in a temporary cash flow increase due to speculators buying multiple copies of “Batman,” “Detective Comics,” “Action Comics,” etc., but those sales won’t last. And does DC really think that announcing Lois and Clark were never married on TMZ, of all outlets (which most people seem to think means they were divorced), will draw new readers in?

So how does DC then reach potential customers and convince them to try comics? Or to try digital distribution on release day? How does DC educate new customers about when to expect those books? And what happens the first time a creative team on one of the major titles ships late? Unless DC communicates outside the typical media channels that comics fans are familiar with, DC will be pitching these new comics to the same people who bought the old ones and are angry or frustrated about the changes. Furthermore, there is no definition of new in which existing customers can be considered new business because they continued buying your product.

So DC not only has to identify where to market these titles and who to market them to, they can’t effectively market “Frankenstein Agent Of SHADE” or “Justice League Dark” to people in a 30-second TV ad which will focus, rightly so, on “Justice League,” “Action Comics,” “Batman,” etc. DC also has to embark upon an educational program to help potential customers find local comic shops (because if DC tries sending all this business to digital downloads, local comic shops might just revolt), which means diplomatically educating customers about what they may find - sporadic hours, employees who may not be as helpful or courteous as new customers who are not familiar with comics stores might expect and so on.

On a final note in this post, DC is apparently trying to reach 18-to-34-year-old males who are, based on the titles being published, also predominantly white or Caucasian. These are the same people DC has been failing to reach for years. At the same time, reports from Comic Con suggest that Dan DiDio and Jim Lee are, if not actively mocking questions from concerned female readers, failing to take and address concerns from female readers seriously.

These are DC’s executives. If they respond to questions about gender inequity in creative teams with “Who should we have hired?” (completely ignoring female creators who worked for DC in the last couple of years on incredibly high-profile and top-selling books like “Y”) and questions about prominence and roles in group dynamics by asking if they want women “dead center or off-center,” there are larger, systemic, gender inequity problems at work (which was already evident to anyone who saw the percentage of female creators before and after the reboot).

In the next part of this series, I’ll address what DC could have done to smooth things over, to reach new readers effectively, to expand the market, to create comics accessible to readers of all ages and so on.

dcwomenkickingass:

Amazon is showing a Wonder Woman original graphic novel available for pre-order for a November release. The book, Wonder Woman:Hands of the Gods is written by Margaret Weiss and Lizz Baldwin. Art is by Justiniano and Walden Wong.

The book is also listed at the Anime Castle who has more…

While everyone must be presumed innocent, the entire reason I was going to law school was, as Andrew Vachss once put it, to get a hunting license so that I could pursue predators. In light of that, I can’t buy this OGN in any sort of good conscience due to Justiniano’s alleged possession of child pornography.

Josue Rivera, better known as Justiniano in illustration circles, has been charged with first-degree possession of child pornography. In this particular case, police found 153 files of suspected child pornography, including three videos, and the Child Recognition And Identification System identified 35 separate children, one of whom appeared to be Justiniano’s niece.

So … considering the allegations don’t seem to be a simple difference of opinion about an illustration of two, and that video is apparently included in the evidence against Justiniano, how can anyone buy this book in good conscience?

On change, the DCnU and Star Wars Galaxies … Part 1

Let’s start with a brief explanation of organizational change management (often abbreviated as OCM), which can go by a lot of different names - org. change, change management, organizational development (often abbreviated as OD), etc.

The practice of change management involves moving an organization (and for purposes of this discussion, we’ll define an organization as any group of people with a common interest, whether a business, charity or non-profit, players of a specific MMO, or readers of a particular publisher’s comics - organizations are not always companies or carefully structured groups of people) from a current state to a desired future state, and identifying how to get there with a minimum of disruption and chaos. Change practitioners examine what the change is, who is affected and how, who has a vested interest in a change’s success or failure and why, whether it’s necessary, why it’s necessary, whether another change might better serve the people affected, and how to get people to accept the change and adapt to it.

As a practical example, let’s consider the United States Army’s recent decision to remove the black beret as part of the standard combat uniform. For 10 years, soldiers dealt with headwear which didn’t keep the sun out of their eyes, was hot, did not absorb sweat and required two hands and a mirror to put it on. It frustrated members of Ranger, Special Forces and Airborne units who dedicated years of their lives to earning their berets of distinction which were a physical form of recognition for their skills, abilities, service and sacrifice. The Rangers even had to change their beret color because the new combat uniform used black berets, which had previously been reserved exclusively for Ranger units.

Any organizational change practitioner could have looked at the proposed change to headwear, considered the environments where troops operate (which are often hot and humid, with significant glare from sunlight), and talked informally to a handful of troops who wore berets as recognition for their service and figured out in a matter of a week or two that this was a bad idea. An organizational change practitioner might have even sought special dispensation to have some US Army troops stationed at Fort Benning in Georgia try wearing a beret for a few days in summer to gauge the effect on troop effectiveness and morale.

That’s what organizational change is - examining the change, identifying who it affects and how, and then figuring out how best to implement it … and in some cases, recommending that a change not be implemented at all.

As another example, let’s think of a new software package being installed in an office, like a company switching from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice. Change management would use a combination of communications and training to prepare people for the shift, including telling them what is happening and why, setting their expectations so they know exactly what is happening and when, making sure they’re trained on the new applications before they have to start using them and so on. You know, the stuff that people need to continue doing their jobs without losing any more productivity than necessary. This is fairly simplified, but it’s sufficient for our purposes in looking at the NGE and the DCnU.

In the case of the DCnU, it’s clear that DC looked at its revenues for comics featuring globally-known characters such as Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, and determined they were insufficient for both the product and the brand, much as Sony did with SWG and Star Wars. DC then determined that a radical change to the status quo was necessary to make the product more accessible and appealing to potential customers, much as Sony did with SWG. DC then planned, implemented and announced this change, apparently without consulting the people who buy its product, much as Sony did with SWG.

So far, we have parallel chains of events here (not to mention DC selecting Sony to develop DC Universe Online MMO, so there is also a direct connection between the publisher and game developer).

However, while we know what happened with SWG, we do not yet know what will happen with the DCnU. Based on history, which is really the only indicator we have of future performance, it’s clear that forcing change on customers who purchase a product as a luxury or hobby is typically bad. As marketers saw with New Coke, forcing change on people who have the ability to choose whether to continue using a product or service may not yield the desired result and may actually cause customer backlash and resentment.

In fact, let’s borrow and examine a line from the New Coke article on Wikipedia:

Coca-Cola’s director of corporate communications, Carlton Curtis, realized over time that they were more upset about the withdrawal of the old formula than the taste of the new one.

This is a crucial point to understand organizational change. Regardless of what the change is or how trivial it seems, people experience loss, stress, frustration and a range of negative emotions about the change. Even changes which are ultimately positive and welcomed initially yield these emotions, which are consistent with the Five Stages Of Grief that Elisabeth Kubler-Ross identified. In the above-mentioned New Coke entry on Wikipedia, there’s a note that:

A psychiatrist Coke hired to listen in on phone calls to the company hotline, 1-800-GET-COKE, told executives some people sounded as if they were discussing the death of a family member.

It may seem absurd, but people can experience even small changes to their routine and what they expect from the products they consume as a significant or even profound loss. While everyone would agree that a differently-formulated soda is nothing at all like the emotional trauma resulting from the death of a loved one, it doesn’t change how people feel about it, nor does it change the fact that people grieve over such things.

Failing to recognize, acknowledge and help people move through those stages will make an organizational change initiative significantly more difficult, if not impossible. In the case of a non-essential change like a soda formulation, people may just stop buying the product entirely.

And purely for the record? The Coca-Cola Company made that change to increase sales and acquire new customers. Picking up on a theme yet?

In the next post, we’ll begin looking at preliminary surveys done by comic sites to gauge relative interest in DC’s new titles, how much work DC has to do to reach the potential new readers, and also offer some ideas about what DC could have done to do all of this without angering existing readers and business partners.

On change, the DCnU and Star Wars Galaxies … Part 3