Multiversity’s history column is back with a spate of events from Octobers gone by. Without further ado…
After years of being on top of the comic industry, DC’s market share was surpassed by Marvel in 1971 through a combination of quality and price competition. Some of the younger staff at DC had seen this coming, but management had been blindsided and kept waiting for things to return to normal when readers to realize how awful Marvel comics were. By 1976, they had accepted their need to change and hired Jeanette Kahn, a successful 28 year old creator of children’s magazines, as publisher. One of her earliest actions was to improve DC’s outreach to comics shops and fans.
Thus, in October 1976, Mike Gold became DC’s first in-house PR and Marketing Department manager. Coming from Chicago with a background in radio, he wasn’t an obvious pick for the role. However, he was a comic fan who had developed connections to professionals at conventions and he had met Kahn when he placed ads in her children’s magazines. She called to offer him the job at just the moment he needed one. He moved to New York and joined the 35 other staffers in DC’s office. His first assistant was Paul Kupperberg.
His major contribution to DC was “Coming Attractions,” a newsletter of press releases. It was sent to the editors of comic magazines and fanzines, and I suspect to some retailers as well. This was a win-win scenario for everyone, as ‘zines received timely, accurate information and DC no longer had to get in front of rumors or other disinformation. This newsletter worked in tandem with the Direct Currents page that ran in the monthly comics and was intended for consumption by readers. The need for this kind of communication is obvious in hindsight and was probably inevitable, but you can thank Gold for the getting it started.
Sticking with the theme of company communication, direct market distributor Capital City upgraded their newsletter to retailers in October 1984. They (and other distributors) were already providing sales rankings to retailers so they could see what the top sellers were regionally/nationally, but there was no hint as to how much of a gap there was between rankings. The distributors had that information, at least for the retailer accounts they serviced, but neither the distributors nor the publishers wanted the raw numbers public because they considered it proprietary. Retailers, on the other hand, thought the numbers would be a useful way to gauge their orders.
Seeking a middle ground between keeping their customers informed and revealing too much, Capital City hit on the idea of an order index. When the 10/1984 issue of “Internal Correspondence” went out with the week’s shipment of comics, a new column in the sales chart showed the fraction an issue sold compared to the index issue. That is, if the month’s issue of “Captain Foo” had an index number of 25, it sold 25% as much as the index title. The index title would of course have a number of 100. These ratios gave retailers a basis for comparison and might indicate they were under ordering certain titles.
The tricky part was picking the right index title. On its first attempt, Capital went with “Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars” #10 because it was the #1 seller for the month. Whether through feedback or through some introspection, they revised this for subsequent sales charts. The ideal index would be ongoing with a reliable monthly schedule, stable sales, and usable by every store. Reviewing their records, Capital found that “Uncanny X-Men” pushed all the right buttons. Diamond followed Capital’s lead not long after, except they used Batman as their index.
If you want more detail on how exactly these numbers got used, John Mayo has you covered.
The formation and launch of Image Comics in 1992 was rocky, with critics often focusing on unprofessional behavior from the company and its founders. One of the most vocal was writer Peter David, who had a weekly opinion column in the comic newspaper “Comic Buyer’s Guide.” It started innocently enough, with David expressing disappointment that the founders left Marvel to make their own mainstream superheroes, rather than explore less commercial genres or push the superhero envelope. It got hairy when Image co-founder Jim Valentino joked in an interview that David would not be welcome at Image, but the toneless text of the transcript left a lot of readers thinking it was a serious comment. It was downhill from there, with both sides reading into the motives of the others and taking things personally.Continued below
The disagreements came to a head on October 8, 1993 at the Philadelphia ComicFest. There, David and Image co-founder Todd McFarlane had a (scheduled) public debate over the way Image had been treated by the media and the public. The event was moderated by artist George Perez and staged quite formally. David had prepared remarks and note cards. McFarlane… he stood at his podium in boxing shorts and adlibbed. Not only did he fail to form articulate responses, he also came prepared to have David talk circles around him, complete with costume changes.
Two of the three judges declared David the winner, but the crowd largely sided with McFarlane. That was born out of Todd’s crowd pleasing antics, and also out of pity for the verbal beat down David gave him. David felt he was coming across as harsh, but he was afraid to let up lest McFarlane be waiting to spring a trap on him. David later regretted participating, and later still applauded McFarlane for not taking the bait when Joe Quesada tried a similar stunt with him.
Those interested can watch a video of the debate here
I’m considering a format change for this column in 2023. If there’s a topic you’d like to see covered, please let me know by email. If you’re viewing this after 1/1/2023, I’ll still accept suggestions. Thanks for reading!