A Distant Soil Featured at Newsarama
on March 7th, 2009Here’s a hefty interview with me over at Newsarama. Conducted by Michael Lorah, who has had some lovely things to say about A Distant Soil over the years. Thanks for the nod, Michael!
I have very telling photos from one of the small press expos from the early 1990s. A mainstream creator who had tried self-publishing went with a bunch of the core self publishers to the show, thinking they were going to clean up sales-wise because they were this hot mainstream name. And there I was with James Owen and hanging with Jeff Smith and the self publishing gang. And people wanted Jeff Smith and Los Bros Hernandez and the like. They had no interest in the mainstream creator, who threw a tantrum, complained about being snubbed and began refusing to pose for photos. They kept turning their back to the camera every time someone tried to take a shot.
They just could not understand how their self-published effort wasn’t selling as well as their mainstream effort. And the answer is, Spider-Man’s sales aren’t your sales. That’s not your market, that’s Spider-Man’s market. Only a small percentage of the fans of Spider-Man are going to carry over to your personal projects. Bottom line: know your market.
“Know your market.”
Never assume something in one genre will carry over to a different genre or property. It might (for instance, it does for my friend Chuck Dixon – but he also works it), but don’t assume so.
Don’t alienate the readers on purpose – ever – by your behavior at cons. Word-of-mouth on behavior carries far and lives long.
You are not Entitled to a reading audience. You have to entice them.
(Rules I have learned by observation.
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Great interview, Colleen! One would think what you said would be common knowledge, but it is surprising how many fans and pros alike don’t know about the market.
Though it is true that those who follow a writer or artist on a superhero book may not always pick up a creator-owned series by that same writer/artist, it’s not always a matter of outside a demographic. It can also stem from that some are good at working on pre-existing characters but have a hard time coming up with something novel and not completely derivative of their earlier work.
Though I enjoy some superhero books, variety is the spice of life. Unfortunately retailers and fandom aren’t as receptive to having a variety of genres like a prose bookstore.
I agree, Jeremy.
The synergy between a creator on a popular mainstream title may simply not translate to the next project, no matter how popular or accomplished the pro is. I can see why fans of Spider-Man would enjoy Spawn.
If Todd McFarlane’s next project had been Strawberry Shortcake comics…not so much.
Scribbler, I love the point you make about being good to fans at shows. I agree absolutely.
Alas, even the most polite, considerate pro has detractors. There are some fans who will shove a comic into a pro’s face in the toilet and demand they sign it. If the pro is not thrilled to be followed to their hotel room, approached while having dinner, or does not respond with joy to whomever chooses to announce “Your new book sucks”, the fan has the advantage in that they can go online and say anything they like about the pro. And there will be little questioning of the fan’s account or motives.
There are some pros whose work I’m not particularly fond of, so if I’m at a convention, I just steer clear of them, nor do I buy their work. It’s really something how people will buy comics they don’t like just so they can complain about them.
Then those that want free sketches and act inconsiderate if a pro says no or wants to *gasp* charge for them!
I’ll try to steer back on topic. How do you feel about some pros being referred to as “creators” when they are working on pre-existing characters? I can see if they develop a new character, then sure, they created that one. But when I read about a Marvel or DC “creator”, I can’t help but think “didn’t someone else create that character 20 years ago?”
This is especially true for doing webcomics. I know of at least one well established popular artist that had bit of a blow to their ego when they started doing a webcomic. He discovered his crossover audience was almost nil and he had to start from the ground up in terms of building a new audience for his work. He took it in stride though.
Mind you, he really didn’t put much of a word out about it. It appeared on some of the more industry centric newsblogs but I suspect the crossover would have been greater if they ran an ad in some big 2 books.
I was told by lots of friends that working on books like Spider-man was going to give me a huge audience. Even then I thought was kind of dopey advice, since I had a very short history with Mr. Peter Parker and his secret identity.
Convention appearances made it clear to me that the crossover audience was very limited. I really didn’t expect much from it all, so was not disappointed.
Even when I was doing regular work for DC on Legion of Superheroes projects and self publishing A Distant Soil at the same time, there was always a segment of my audience at shows who simply had no interest in anything I was doing that wasn’t Legion related. To this day, I have Legion fans who still love my work and want commissions, they just don’t follow me on other books.
That said, I do have a good percentage of Legion fans who read A Distant Soil, but considering the circulation of Valor back then (would you believe it was selling over 50,000 copies?), I’d say that crossover had to be no more than 5% of the Legion readership.
Fans may love the job you do on licensed books, but not enough to follow you to new work, no matter how good that work is. I don’t know why it’s such a tough lesson for pros to learn. We see actors who are super-popular on tv shows who can’t get arrested three years after the show goes off the air. It’s no different for comics artists.
The artist may go on to do fantastic work on other projects, but there is some kind of magic that attached to THAT artist on THAT OTHER book, and it just doesn’t follow them to other projects. The synergy/energy just isn’t there.
The creator I mentioned in the interview was extremely angry and surly about it all. Their self published book sold about 3000 copies of the first issue, while their mainstream book was moving about 150,000. They were in a rage, and were very nasty to the self publishing gang about it all, sure there was some kind of sabotage going on.
They gave up self publishing soon after, and their mainstream career pretty much died within a short time. I have not seen any significant work from them in this industry since the early 1990′s.
I’m more likely to follow a writer across genres than an artist.
That said, there are some artists I will at least check out in something different, even if I’m not keen on the writer.
Yes some readers are fans of a character or certain characters within a universe. They like the pro because they make entertaining stories with that character, but if you’re not working on that character/in that universe then they don’t have any use for you.
Just the way it is.
Scribbler: “I’m more likely to follow a writer across genres than an artist. “
I’m the opposite: I will follow an artist anywhere, but never a writer. So even if I love, say, Gail Simone on Wonder Woman, it’s unlikely that I’d follow her to, say, Sandman. As far as writers are concerned I need to have in interest in the character, or subject, before I’ll give it a go. But artists? No, if I like their work, I’ll buy anything with their name on it.
I’m also more likely to follow an artist. I used to keep my comics in boxes filed under the name of the artist, not the title of the book.
Ms. Doran, I will definitely look at anything you draw. Even something outside your normal style, like “Facade”. (The artist who strives to improve her or his technique is one I respect, even if the style doesn’t change (Don Rosa, for example).) Same goes for writers. (Fred Van Lente is successful with independent and superhero comics.)
However, there is just so much good stuff out there that, unfortunately, I haven’t read it all. (I rationalize by using the Rainy Day excuse… it’s good, and I’ll read it later…)