News Flash! Atomic Robo Cult Success . . .
Last Updated on Monday, 4 January 2010 12:39 Written by Scott Wegna Monday, 4 January 2010 10:08
. . .Despite Diamond Distributors best efforts to crush it like Fox Television and every Joss Whedon project ever.
The past weeks and even months have been jam-packed with love for Atomic Robo as the Internets look back on the last year of the Twenty-Oughts and decide what was worth the effort and what was just a steaming pile.
io-9 surprised the hell out of me by listing an issue of Atomic Robo @ #11 in their 100 Amazing Covers From The Past Ten Years. Over at MTV proved once again that not everyone in Hollywood is utterly retarded and disconnected from reality, (just almost everyone), with their ADAPT THIS: Atomic Robo article. I was a little disappointed that Newsarama was a little surprised that the Inter-Tubes loves Robo. I mean, c’mon guy. It’s the Internet. It’s a robot. Mutual attraction was almost a foregone conclusion. Earlier in the year the extremely talented artist and craftsman know to me as Devin, but to the interwebs as the FeatherWeightCosplay Guy unleashed his Atomic Robo suit on the Canadian convention scene . Just about a week ago he continuedthe Good Work by fashioning a pair of Robo-approved Webly Mk.6′s. One for his costume, and one for me deliriously happy office wall. Living Between Wednesday’s, (Alt-F: Atomic Robo on this one), recent comments pretty much summed up what a few dozen other blogs have been saying, again and again, since this crazy-train set sail back in October of Ought Seven.
And I want to take a moment to say to everyone else who’s helped us get this far just how grateful all of us at Team Robo are for what you’ve done. We bitch and moan constantly, we hate comics almost as much as we love them, and we pull our hair out trying to make sense of an industry that we all knew from the get-go was going to frustrate the hell out of us. How can something that’s built on silly nostalgia, is backwards looking, and directed at the highest levels by Fanboys NOT drive sane men mad!?!
So to all you folks out there, with your blogs and your podcasts, big voices and small, Thank you. Thank you for taking the time to tell us that you like what we do, and for spreading the word.
Moving on to why I hate comics . . .
As I was collecting my thoughts last night for the blog I decided to check my email for the first time in days. Man, that was a mistake. I got Good News, and I got Bad News. The good news was that Diamond sold out of both Vol 1 and Vol 3 TPB’s, (which finally shipped after a redonkulous delay from Lebonfon who “ran out of paper” <<WTF?!>> and who, btw, printed quite a few Vol.3 TPBs WITHOUT the last 6 pages of the story. Fucking geniuses). The bad news was that their system is showing retailers that they’re out of stock and no more are coming in. This is untrue, and it sends a very confusing message to retailers who might be thinking about carrying Atomic Robo. The message it sends is that we are both erratic and unreliable, and thus more bother than it’s worth to sell in their store.
As we all know, there are two scenarios in which Diamond’s system will tell a retailer that a book is out of print and will never be available for purchase again. The first is when a book is out of print and will never be available again. The second, and probably more common, is when Diamond runs out of copies of that book, even though Red5 worked out a deal with them more than a year ago to keep x-number of comics in their warehouse so that they didn’t financially cripple us with their outdated and antiquated system.
As of this writing there’ is a little email from Red5 waiting for Diamond to get back from Christmas Break asking them nicely to please stop fucking us in our anus with that rusty pipe they call a “system”.
Brian has a theory that they keep screwing us over be cause we keep calling them on their bullshit. Considering how terrified most of the people I meet in the industry are to bad-mouth Diamond I’m thinking that he could possibly be right.
I often wondered if Diamond Books, who handles the TPBs, was equally awful to everyone who isn’t Marvel or DC, or if perhaps all book distribution companies were run by chimps wearing bow ties and propeller hats. But I recently made friends with a guy who used to work for Boarders and he happily reported that most distributors were quite pleasant to deal with, but that Diamond was a living fucking nightmare.
In the unlikely event that this is actually just a “hic-up” due to the holidays I promise I will report back to you and eat crow this time. But I think we all know the statistical likelihood of that turning out to be the case.
A couple of weeks ago I posted to Twitter about what a great deal Robo was on the iPhone. A local retailer got a little defensive and said something to the effect of, “What you should be doing is telling people to go to comic shops and buy the trades”. I didn’t bother pointing out that I am CONSTANTLY telling people to do that. I did note that it is my belief that Robo sales via the iPhone and Android result in better TPB sales. What I should have also noted was that Red5 and Team Robo make more money when Diamond isn’t involved, taking the lion’s share of any profits, and providing shitty service. By the way, a Vol.3 preview is now available via Comixology with a handy search function for finding a local brick and mortar shop to buy it at.
Okay, enough of this. We all know that Diamond does a crap job of supporting Indie books.
In happy comics land, Robot 6 asked me what I was excited about in 2010. I boldly resisted the urge to take an Evan Dorkin style verbal dump on the industry and surprised myself by actually thinking of something I was excited about. Read it here.
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Retailers worried about smartphone sales detracting from their own are being a little silly. The only way this industry will thrive is if comics are made more accessible, not merely in terms of content but in terms of distribution. The current model of direct market specialty shops just doesn't work in the 21st century marketplace. Online stores and digital distribution will not supplant brick and mortar shops, they will support them.
There are people out there, across a wide range of ages, right now who are surprised to learn that “they still make” Spider-Man comics. This is what you're up against, retailers. You have to find ways for those people to figure out there's a product there they'd like to buy, and the ever-dwindling stock of direct market retailers ain't cutting it. Putting comics online, on smartphones, and wherever else we can put them will only increase the visibility and marketability of comics as a whole. This, in turn, will bring more sales to retailers. It won't be a 1-for-1 conversion, but you'll get more new customers (many/most of whom you'd have never gotten alone) than you would without these alternatives, so you look a little silly wringing your hands about the devil technology of iPhone comics.
Spiderman made hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office. So if a ticket is $10 then tens of millions of people saw the movie. But how many of them are aware that there are comic books to buy? It seems comic books are only advertised to people who already know about comic books.
re: nobody knows about Spider-Man comics but the movies have made billions.
One of my working Crackpot Theories is that a character who has become truly iconic will transcend their source media, meaning that a new version of that character will have essentially no effect on sales of the original stuff. To pick one at random, Tarzan is no longer a literary character — he's an icon, so a new Tarzan movie isn't going to make a bunch of people run out and buy “Tarzan of the Apes,” even if the “Based on the novel by…” credit is gigantic and blared at the audience in the opening credits. A new Bond movie doesn't trigger a massive rise in sales of Fleming's novels. I suppose we'll see if Sherlock Holmes books rise in sales because of the new movie, but I'd bet a nickel that they won't.
Superman, Batman, and Spider-Man are such iconic characters in this Crackpot Theory, so I don't expect that a hit movie would trigger more interest in the comics any more than any of those other characters will. In contrast, something like Watchmen triggered a massive spike in interest in the graphic novel because that property is associated strongly with the source material, just as Sin City or 300 was.
That's an interesting point, Edward. I think it's more likely that Watchmen, 300, and Sin City comics experienced greater benefit from those films than more mainstream comics properties did from theirs simply because Watchmen etc. had very little penetration beyond comics audiences. Everyone already “knows” Superman and Batman, movies or no, whereas the movie versions of Watchmen etc. introduced millions of people to stories and characters they'd never heard of previously.
I have hated Diamond for decades. I despise all monopolies. The world will be a much better place in a post-Diamond era.
But I was there when Scott read the Good News/Bad News email. And while tragic, his reaction was quite funny.
Brian… I'd love for a Robo movie to send our sales into the stratosphere
Heck, just sending your sales above Cloud Nine would be nice too.
“whereas the movie versions of Watchmen etc. introduced millions of people to stories and characters they'd never heard of previously.”
Or in my case, the 300 and Watchmen made what I consider to be awful and boring comics into something slightly more palatable.
I never read “300″, and I'd be happy if I could get back the time I wasted watching the movie. Its pernicious influence seems to remain no matter what, based on the look of the new “Spartacus” and of the remake of “Clash of the Titans”. The latter at least gives us Liam Neeson as Zeus saying “Release the Kraken!”
what I consider to be awful and boring comics
Every time I forget what an uncultured dog you are… ;D
My theory on Diamond is that the bigshots don't have time to read any of your blogs, who are you kidding thinking you affect them that much! I bet they just read the titles, so just make them increasingly sarcastic about how awesome diamond is. They'll get off your backs (because we all know bigshots are ignorant to sarcasm), and let you produce your awesome comic without interference.
Unless they actually do read your blogs, in which case you'd get even more screwed over.
Scott, thanks for showing the Boston Comic Con some love.
Says the man who wore nothing but what his own girlfriend called “Floridian Hawaiian shirts” when I first met him.
Look, Frank Miller has one story that he tells over and over. It's not very deep and it's not even that entertaining. Sin City I liked just for the interesting art style. The story was typical of Miller. I'm reading Darwyn Cooke's adaptation of Richard Stark's, Parker: The Hunter and THAT is how you do a pulp comic, sir.
And I'm sorry, but Watchmen sucks. It's own creators will tell you that it's no big deal. Watchmen, Dark Knight, etc. -all those “important” books. Important to who? No one but the superhero fanboys. Fuck, in a weird and indirect way Watchmen is responsible for all the shit that we hate about comics. All that gritty anti-hero bullshit. But then again, it's also accidentally responsible for great books like The Boys, Powers, and Planetary. So it sort of evens out I guess.
Anything else you want to provoke me into insulting? =)
I was really disappointed when Red5 decided to use Diamond to distribute our TPBs when we had other options.
This may not be true now, but I had heard a year or so ago that Diamond was requiring new publishers to sign with them for TPB distribution as well, or they wouldn't carry their regular comics.
“…in a weird and indirect way Watchmen is responsible for all the shit that we hate about comics…”
By the 1990s, I had stopped reading most comics, then two things happened that rekindled my love: “Marvels” and “AstroCity”.
Miller is interesting as a parody of himself. Watchmen does not “suck.” You are objectively wrong. There is a difference between “I don't like it,” and “It's terrible.” I fully understand why you don't like it, and there's nothing wrong with disliking it, but the work itself was groundbreaking.
Sure, other, lazier creators and publishers learned all the wrong lessons from Watchmen, but we can't blame the work for the lack of vision or imagination of people who had nothing to do with it. And we shouldn't complain about them anyway. Without those guys fucking up for 25 years, Atomic Robo would not be poised to be the salvation of the industry ;D
Oh fine, Dr. Accurate.
Watchmen doesn't suck, and I regret my choice of words. I'm just saying that it's not that great. There is nothing about the way it is written or drawn that is amazing. I'm not even sure the subject matter is all that innovative. Moore and Gibbens didn't grow up in America with the ridiculous and overbearing censorship of comics that would have set Congress on fire if it had been any other industry.
So yeah, if all you've read are superhero comics they sure, wooo, Watchmen.
For the rest of us who read other things, both comics and other media, it's not that impressive.
You're basically saying that Citizen Kane isn't all that hot because there were avant garde European movies that employed similar techniques.
It's hard to gauge Watchmen by modern sensibilities because so much of modern comics' vocabulary comes directly or indirectly from Watchmen. And, like Citizen Kane, it can seem like it's “not that great” to a modern audience because we're so used to seeing its tricks everywhere by now. We're just spoiled by the overall higher standards of today.
I by no means think of Watchmen as this perfect, sacred piece of literature, but you're being pretty unfair.
So there.
I choose to be obtuse and just say that I loved Citizen Cane.
I'm not judging Watchmen with modern sensibilities. I'm just saying that it's not the massively important work the Fanboys wish it was. Neither was Miller's Dark Knight. Yes, they're interesting explorations of the genre, but due to the unconstitutional censorship of comics, even as recent;y as the 80's, what they were exploring, the boundaries they were pushing, were just sort of pathetic when viewed from outside the superhero world.
That's all I'm saying.