The Four Color Media Monitor

I'm talking about Brian Hibbs, of course. The owner of Comix Experience in San Francisco and blogmaster of the Savage Critic blog on his website was interviewed by the city's main newspaper just two days ago. And it gives a pretty good perspective of how business runs in comicdom with sales. Here's some excerpts:

The case centered on returns of unsold comics. Typically, a comic-book retailer buys his inventory at a wholesale price of as much as 55 percent off the roughly $3 cover price.

In return for that discount, the retailer agrees to swallow any unsold copies. But Marvel, as with other leading comic publishers, previously made allowances for returns under certain circumstances (the contract has since been changed).

One such circumstance, according to the company's former agreement with sellers, was to take back all unsold copies if a particular issue arrived late in stores.

Another was if different writers or artists ended up working on a specific comic instead of the ones promoted in advance to readers -- a key point for collectors.

Hibbs said he started noticing in 2000 that some lesser-known Marvel titles were arriving late to his store on a fairly routine basis. Then the tardiness expanded to the company's biggest names, including Spider-Man and the X-Men.

"This started becoming a big issue," Hibbs said. "When a comic doesn't ship when someone's expecting it, people will spend their money on another title. We were starting to see unsold books really mounting up."

Yup, I remember back when Marvel was simply slumping behind like molasses on their deliveries, and weren't being very honest about it then.

To a lesser extent, he said, comics went unbought around the same time because a writer or artist had been switched. Hibbs recalled a handful of Spider-Man issues that came with unexpected names attached.

The way it's supposed to work, he said, is that the distributor of the comics will enclose a return form with the next shipment for any unsold issues resulting from a late delivery or editorial changes. But Hibbs said no return forms were ever included for Marvel titles.

He said he contacted Marvel to ask what the holdup was. "They did everything they could to stall us and give us the runaround," Hibbs said.

"I think the management at Marvel saw us as a captive audience and that we had no power," he said. "They thought they could get away with ignoring their own contract."

They were wrong.

Well, in the case of the fans and readership, yes, they certainly did seem to think that, and sadly, still do. But maybe Hibbs' victory in the lawsuit against them, which now provides retailers everywhere with 2-3 weeks of free deliveries, will pave the way for their understanding that fans do deserve to be heard. Example: the overload of crossovers which nobody needs, including Avengers: Disassembled, House of M, and even one more following whose exact title I've forgotten, but which is probably just as well.

Until that sort of thing can be dealt with, I'm certainly pleased to know that Hibbs scored a victory over them, that's for sure. They were asking for it quite awhile now, certainly their EIC.

Labels: marvel comics