Graffic Traffic

by Ryk McIntyre
illustration by Greg Prindeville

Ryk loses his war with the Marvel Empire

So, with a fat, docile market-place to cruise and play carnivore with, Marvel made and executed a plan of exploration and trial. Let’s see how many straws a camel’s back can hold. First, Marvel tested the comic collectors and the general market with books that came out in a plethora of variant covers/versions such as McFarlane’s SpiderMan (6 or 7 variants) and Rob Lifeld’s X-Force (7 variant cards sealed, one per comic, in plastic bags). Second, they swamped the market with product to test brand loyalty. The rampant deforestation this caused aside, in some stores there simply wasn’t enough display room. Lesser selling material was shunted aside to make room. This got up to some 300-350 titles per month! I don’t think “Solo – While He Lives Terror Dies!!!” really needed to be published, so sue me.

Also around this time, Marvel offered the stores “a favor, a little gift if you will, for helping make McSpiderMan #1 the greatest seller ever.” Stores could send in a business card to redeem a PLATINUM SPIDER-MAN #1!!! So over-hyped that some stores pre-sold their copies for up to $500! All they had to do was give Marvel, in one fell info-gathering swoop, their store location (Marvel now knows about how many stores exist and where), and which distributor they used. Therefore, by checking their own records, Marvel knows approximately how many copies were ordered/sold, which gives them an idea of each store’s over-all sales. We handed Marvel all our vitals, we stores did. So they thanked us, a year or so later, with the Marvel Direct Mart.

This gem was an insert in comics that ended up sold in Direct Market stores that gave readers the mistaken idea that comic stores were dark, weird places inhabited by thieves, and that they didn’t even have the Good Stuff. Not like Marvel Direct Mart, which had t-shirts, skateboards, comics long-sold-out, and at good prices, too! This was the same stuff Marvel had either never offered the Direct Market or had told us was sold-out. Unavailable. Here, have a dagger instead. Turn around, here it comes.

In 1995, Marvel did it to us all, the whole comic company/distributor/retailer web. It fucked us raw and left us bleeding. People lost their jobs and their dreams of self-employment. It went down like this… in late 1994, Marvel bought the 3rd largest distributor, Hero’s World. In 1995, they announced that, as of July, that Marvel would sell only through Hero’s World and Hero’s World would only sell Marvel. That was it. Deal done. Did your distributing company have a contract with Marvel? Tough. Did your publishing company have an agreement with Hero’s World? Goodbye. It was an illegal move but due to Marvel’s Legal Air Force, no one had the ability to contest it in court. But we could’ve taken Marvel on. And we could have won. At least we could’ve stood together, in solidarity. DC Comics, Diamond and Capital City distributors, and all the stores, little and big – we could’ve stuck together, but as much as we all hated Marvel, as they jumped so we jumped. How high? Yes sir. DC made exclusive arrangements with Diamond. Soon, everybody else made exclusives with somebody. Small stores, having to split orders between several distributors, lost over-all discount points. Stores went out of business. People lost jobs. The market’s freedom and artistic vitality moved several decades backward in one step.

And that’s where it is. Super Hero Universe closed on July 31. Big deal, right? Just another case of business Darwinism? Maybe. Maybe I was never that good a manager and I deserved to go out of business, I don’t know. Is it like the joke “How many Darwinists does it take to change a light bulb? Oh just one, but you need to put a bunch of them in the same room so can they fight it out and only the strongest gets to change the bulb!”

That was the rant I needed to get out, get off my chest, and just breathe again. Thank you. Thank you to the reader who, not knowing me from Eve, listened to my story; sorry to those customers who relied on me too be their comic-guy; sorry to the employees who had to find other jobs – John, Peter, Liz, Jose, John, Raymond, and most of all, Louis Jordan. You, I could never have done without. And all the good customers, for all those years… thank you.

I don’t have any comic reviews this month. I’m tired, sad about my store, and my six-month-old is teething, so I don’t sleep much. Just go out and buy ANYTHING that Warren Ellis writes. Or James Robinson. Or whoever you like. And while you’re buying that comic at say, Comicopia or Million Year Picnic, stop to thank whoever sold it to you for just being there. For just still being there.

(NOTE: Due to a typo in last month’s column, a mistake was made. It was TMNT #1 that sky-rocketed in value in 2-3 months, not Amazing Fantasy #15. Big deal.)