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The opinion of Chuck Austen is that there isn't enough diversity, but he also believes that a bigger problem is that the market itself isn't reaching out to the real world. "No. Not at all. But there never will be in the existing market. Not enough payday in it. Currently, with distribution the way it is, nothing can be done to alter the diversity of real world comics. In order to make people want to enter this industry and create more and better real-world comics, we need to pay them a living wage, or better yet, pay them like Rock Stars and Major League baseball players, and make it so people have heard of them. We need to make it exciting for them to be here. Otherwise, there are better places to go. Who would want to work in a field that's nothing but heartache and an uphill struggle? What are we, Sisyphus? Pushing that rock gets old, man. But hey, if I take that same energy and enthusiasm and apply it to animation or film, I get respect and money?! Baby, sign me up!
"If 'real world' creators in comics got the attention that strip cartoonists like Charles Shultz and Bill Watterson and Gary Larsen used to get, then you'd see no end to those kinds of people tripping over themselves to get into comics. Watch the talent flock in if that ever happens. But with the market the way it stands, they'll never earn even just a living wage. So incredibly talented people will go elsewhere, like movies and animation. Which is our loss and those other field's gain.
"Until this market is stronger, and reaches beyond fan adulation, and becomes accessible to people other than die-hard superhero fans, until we reach beyond people who already go into comics shops regularly, into comics shops that are hard to find and inaccessible, we will never grow large enough to make it worthwhile for 'real-world' creators. We will never become strong enough and profitable enough to draw in the talent pool we need to become big with real world people. It's a Catch-22. You need a stronger market to get real world people to work here, and you need real world insertion to sell real world comics. But until you get real world comics, you won't get the insertion, and without the insertion ...
"'Archie' comics at one time sold huge numbers. Bigger than Marvel and DC on newsstands and in the ID market. Girls bought them. Westerns were big. Horror comics. There are still girls out there who love to read. I have two of them. Why are they not reading comics? Because they can't get them without going to 'Creepy Sal's Comics and Tits' in the crappy part of town.
"Superheroes are now like the franchise 'Star Trek.' Anything Star Trek will sell a minimum amount to all the die-hard fans out there. But without good stories, interesting characters and compelling, "real-world" draw, real world people won't watch and don't care. Consequently you get 'Enterprise' stagnating in the ratings when once, 'Next Generation' was challenging the major networks. Why? Because the stories SUCK! The Enterprise stories are old retreads of crappy stories we've seen a million times. So die hard fans still watch it every week (even dwindling away themselves, eventually), complaining about how good the franchise used to be, and 'real-world'" people turn it off! They're watching 'West Wing!' They're watching something else that's good!
"The superhero market is like that. Fans buying and complaining about how good the old Kirby/Lee and Ditko days were, how great Jim Lee was, how much they miss Frank Miller's 'Daredevil,' but they're still buying the damn things! In the meantime, the 'real-world' has turned us off! People have gotten sick of the crappy superheroes and moved on to something better. 120,000 copies is a hit!? What does that tell you?
"We've been turned off by the real world, and it's going to take some doing to get them back. It won't be just 'that one golden project' everyone's always waiting for, either. It won't be 'that one superhero movie' everyone knows will make real world people into Marvel Zombies.
"The Call of Duty: The Brotherhood" #5
"I had tremendous air-play and press-time with the 'Call.' I was on CNN. Joe Quesada was on Good Morning America. Bill Jemas was on Fox News. Sales flew to the top 30. Those people came into the store, once. Now the 'Call' books are back down to 90 on the top 100. A few came back, but most forgot about us. Some of them may think once in a while, 'hey, I liked that fireman comic. Remember that? Where did we go to get that? What's for lunch?' And it's over. If it were in the impulse rack next to the cash register at Safeway, they might keep picking it up. But to have to go across town to some obscure comic shop that has naked stand-ups of Julie Strain in the corner, and some surly guy playing Heroclix behind the counter? Forget it.
"Without better distribution, real world comics will be the ugly stepchild of the industry. Forgive my rant."
It's also Austen's belief that most of the major comic book companies aren't receptive to "real world" comic book pitches, something he finds very discouraging and potentially disastrous for the industry. "They don't sell for all the reasons I just gave. They only want what they think is commercial, and all that's commercial is something the 'fans' want. Good retreads of old superhero concepts. 'Ultimates' sells because it's a new take on The Avengers. Not to take anything away from Bryan Hitch and Mark Millar, but, hey, come on. It's a new 'Avengers.' If they were doing another 'Authority,' do you think they'd have the number 1 spot? Hell no. If they were doing Blue Beetle's triumphant return, do you think they'd sell 120,000 copies every other month? Please.
"And to be honest, Marvel and DC can't afford to take chances on anything that isn't guaranteed to sell right now. It's bad business to try, and they're in a business, not a charity event for 'people who want to read real-world comics.' The market has shrunk so much that valuable resources are lost when time is wasted on a low-selling book. And anything real-world is going to be low-selling, no two ways around it.. Hell, anything that's not one of the top recognized names in the industry is going to sell terribly. 'Iron Man?' Where do I sign up? 'Jack Frost?' 'Prez?' 'Firestorm?' Are you taking bets?"
"No. They're not into the medium: they're into maintaining franchises, increasing market share, doing media deals, keeping share holders happy," says Watson of the major comic book companies in regards to listening to "real world" comic book pitches. "Ironically they're the ones who could help get appropriate material to a wider audience. With the backing of their parent companies they could invest in the long term future of the medium with trades and marketing within bookstores, instead of chasing an ever diminishing direct market. But, hey, it's an industry built on short-termism. The idea of investing in the future, but losing money in the short term doesn't make sense to them. Having said that, I have and will do work-for-hire for them if it funds my own work, there's no where else to go."
"Strangers in Paradise"
But it's Terry Moore whose opinion is quite different from the other two and who seems to be a bit more optimistic about the chances of seeing a broader palette of comics appearing at the big companies. "More so now than before, as editors who survived the 90's assume jobs with the big two publishers. Both DC and Marvel are integrating contemporary realism into their line these days, each in their own way."
All of this might make one wonder how one could possibly hope to market reality-based comic books to fans, when creators are seemingly facing an uphill battle marketing them to companies. Each of the three creators has different answers, but they agree on one thing: it isn't easy. "We're caught between a rock and a hard place," explains Andi Watson. "The direct market isn't interested and you face the prejudice of 'comics are for kids' when you're in bookshops. It doesn't make sense to rack Jimmy Corrigan next to the Dungeon Masters Guide."
For Moore, the best way to explain the difficulty of marketing "real world" comics, is to draw an analogy to his problems with marketing his famous creator-owned series "Strangers in Paradise." "The hardest part of marketing 'SIP' is answering the question 'What's it about?' I've never come up with a good answer for that. I'm open to suggestions. But that may be the reason it's survived (I keep using that word survival, don't I? It's the only way to describe the last 9 years)."
Austen says that non-fantasy comics are really only a problem to market for those who don't know how to market to the mainstream, which unfortunately tends to be a lot of the comic book stores. "They're only hard to market in comics shops," contends the writer/artist. "They're easy to market in bookstores, where they handle "real world" material all the time. If you can get to the trade, you're golden. Bookstores know how to handle trade paperbacks, and they get a good return on investment for the shelf-space invested. Of course, comic shops can market trades better than they can comics, too. The trade is the target. Trades sell to infrequent customers who are looking for a good read in one, long sitting. Often the people who buy and read trades are more open-minded about content."
When it comes to reality-based comics, explains Moore, you don't need to worry about a point of relation or bringing it to terms people understand- it's a universal genre. "Fantasy is harder to sell because any fantasy is a niche, only a limited number of people will be attracted to any one fantasy. Every fantasy has a limited market. Reality is something everybody on the planet understands."
But that doesn't always translate into high sales, contends Watson. "If you mean selling a lot of copies, it's tough going in the direct market because retailers order the books and retailers are mostly long term fans of superhero material. Also, their customers are mostly long-term superhero fans, so that's where the money is for retailers. It's chicken and egg. If indie publishers had the resources to market to a different, wider, new audience it would help. But smaller publishers are stretched enough with the economics. If you mean is it hard to create a good 'real world' comic then no. Any type of book can contain good work, it depends on the creator."
Austen has similar thoughts when asked about the chances of being financially successful as a creator of exclusively reality-based comics. "Absolutely it's hard. Id' say damn near impossible. Unless you get lucky, and then all everyone wants is for you to leave that little indie thing that made you famous and go write 'Iron Man,' because they want your work, but they want it at Marvel. With a better, fan-favorite artist.
"Look, I worked in independent press, off and on, for almost fifteen years. We tried everything. You name it. Posters, dumps, full-page ads in 'Previews.' Give-aways. Stunt artists, cover quotes, multiple covers, convention appearances, mail-order, internet, digital comics, and on and on, and on ... It's like trying to sell a naked man to Hugh Hefner, to revisit the Playboy analogy. He may be one hot looking naked man, but Playboy is about naked women. Get out of here!"
Having been involved with "real world" comics for such a long time, Austen has been able to observe the market closely and admits to having seen some growth in the market. "It's evolved, I think, better than I ever expected, but as little as I expected. There are some great people, but not enough of them. The market began with people like Robert Crumb, Undergrounds, Harvey Pekar and those that followed. That stuff sold to a specific market, and had a great form of distribution through the head shops. Then the heads shops were closed, and that avenue went, largely, away. Not that it sold that great to begin with, but it sold.
"But underground material was inaccessible to a mainstream market. In fact, I despise a lot of their work. Crumb is a creative genius, and I can appreciate that, but he's a wack-job and I don't enjoy his stuff at all. Harvey Pekar is not what I would call someone I aspire to being, and reading about his life is uncomfortable. Reading about the lives of most underground creators is not any more pleasant, or more interesting than watching a traffic accident on the freeway. You might be compelled for a while, but really, you just want to get around it and be on your way.
"I could never show that stuff to my wife and expect her to enjoy it. But Andi Watson, Los Bros Hernandez, and Terry do stuff that my wife would actually like, that I actually like and relate to. The problem is: comics attract, generally, fringe people who need to be creative or they'd commit suicide. They're doing stories that are true to their life, but man, who wants to read about someone who beats his girlfriend and can't understand why he can't get love? Not me! I used to be really into that stuff. Chester Brown was my God! But I came to the point where I said, 'this guy's brilliant, but I can't relate to him. It's 'real-world' but not my real-world.'"
"Slow News Day"
It's Watson's belief that any growth or evolution in the reality based comic book market has come as the result of the death of underground comics. "There's been something of a renaissance over the last couple of decades," he explains. "The punk thing, zines, the D.I.Y. ethic, small press all kick started things after the undergrounds had died. That's where I felt the energy came from anyway, not from the mainstream. There's great work out there, long may it continue."
However, Moore feels that "real world" comics aren't doing any better than their spandex clad counterparts- it's all heading down the same path. "The market hasn't evolved, it isn't getting better and more refined- just like all the other structures in America, business and social, it's slowly falling apart," says the acclaimed creator with conviction.
Also mirroring the superhero comic book world, Watson believes that some people don't take reality-based comics seriously unless the lead characters are dysfunctional or extremely dark personalities. "I think there is an audience for misanthropic books," contends Watson. "Which is fine, but I sometimes feel unless the characters are alcoholics or something then it's not considered a 'serious' story. You can deal with interesting themes without the characters being hateful."
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