Step #5: Marvel Goes Online

Marvel’s already issuing new content for their “Digital Comics Unlimited.”  They’re issuing a “motion comic” (read: limited animation cartoon) for the Spider-Woman comic, as well as Astonishing X-Men.  They’re selling digital downloads to cell phones in Europe.  Is there any doubt in your mind that Marvel will be rolling out some form of current comics online in the near future?  The question is whether this will be single issue downloads, ala iTunes, or as part of a subscription package like their DCU program and how current the digital comics would be.  Don’t get mad at Marvel.  Look at what’s happening to magazines and newspapers and realize this is part of a publisher’s survival plan.

If you’d asked me if this would affect retailers as recently as 4 months ago, I’d say that it should be a net effect wash: the number of people swapping to digital would likely be offset by new customers discovering the hobby online and a net increase in TPB sales.  That was before the recession started showing the size of its teeth and Marvel raised their price to $3.99.  Don’t get me wrong, there will still be new people entering the market and it should still bump up the TPB sales, but I’m not so sure the economics of the situation makes for a higher percentage of print customers making the jump to digital.  And, again with the “death of 1000 cuts” 5% or 10% would really start adding up at this point.

Step #6: Diamond and the Independents

This may or may not be a big factor.  If people are not liking DC’s content and mad at Marvel for raising the price on a portion of the line, what do you try and steer them towards?  Independents.  Image/Dark Horse/IDW/Dynamite/Avatar/etc.  The thing is, as there’s some circumstantial evidence that retailers might be well-served to start pushing alternate titles on customers soured on the Big 2, Diamond’s issued new higher sales minimums for their catalog is looking to decrease the selection available.  Would shops that didn’t normally offer a lot of independent fare look to start doing so?  That isn’t clear.  It can’t help matters, though.

Step #7: Direct Market Collapse

Let’s face it; while the direct market for comics may have stabilized in the last few years, it hasn’t recovered to anywhere near the store count it had prior to the mid-to-late 1990′s meltdown.  There are a lot of stores there, particularly the smaller stores, that aren’t scraping by on huge margins.  Right now a lot of these stores are still basking in the windfall profits from the Obama issue of Spider-Man (the number one selling comic for February was a reprint of January’s Obama issue — if that isn’t the definition of windfall, a don’t know what is, and it was propping up the February numbers), but if the mid-lists start shrinking and steps 1 through 6 occur, red ink could follow pretty fast.

You have to expect some shops would go under in a recession, in the first place.  A perfect storm is brewing here.  Could there be a 10% reduction in the number of shops?  20%?  30%?  When shops close, the amount of sales lost snowball, as the conventional wisdom states that when a shop closes 50% or more of the customers don’t seek out another shop.

The End Game

Let me repeat, these steps aren’t necessarily going to happen.  I’m not cheering on these possibilities (OK, I think everybody needs to get online, but not because I want the market to die).  I’m just saying, none of this is that far-fetched.

The end game sees a significant reduction in the number of direct market outlets, another chunk removed from the crumbling newsstand market and a shift to TPB’s and the Internet.  On second tier titles, at least for DC and Marvel, between shifting resources due to price hikes, switching to digital and general decreases in disposable income associated with a recession, you might see circulation decreases of 50%.

At what point does it just not make sense to produce monthly comics?  If you have the staff costs that DC and Marvel do and your entire second tier dips below the 20K mark, you may have some decisions to make.  Oh, wait!  Spider-Girl has already moved to online issues, forgoing the low-selling print monthly.  Remember the DC Implosion of 1978?  There were major sales dips there, too.  An ill-fated attempt to drastically raise prices and increase page count, too.  The question remains if the publishers are willing to sit through the longer production cycle and just continue the series as regular graphic novels or webcomics, which would be the logical change.

How would the different publishers be affected by this?

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