Multiversity’s history column returns with a potpourri of events marking an anniversary this month. We’re going to start with two minor things from 1965 and 1978 before hitting two major shakeups from the 1990s, then we’ll cap it all off with a high note from 2020. Enjoy!
September 1965
Gold Key was still a young publisher in 1965. Sure, they had almost 30 years of experience through a partnership with Dell, but that had evaporated in 1962 when fans rejected a poorly-handled price increase. Thus, when Gold Key went to publish special giant-size one-shots, they were very cautious about how much they charged. In order to cut costs and keep the sticker price at $0.25, they decided to forego the standard glossy paper stock for their covers. Instead, they utilized the self-cover format, where the cover is printed on the same stock as the interior pages, reducing the size of the giant from 100 to 96 pages. From a production standpoint, this made a lot of sense because the glossy cover represented at least 20% of the total printing cost.
Fans hated this change. The covers were less attractive, losing both color brightness and clarity. They also lacked durability. It was near impossible to find undamaged copies off the newsstand, and they’re even harder to find today. The September 1965 special, “Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle,” has only 40 CGC copies graded 9.0 or higher (as of September 2023).
September 1978
1978 was a rough year for DC. Just as the company was launching a well-advertised “explosion” of new titles, decisions by DC’s owner forced it to change plans in what was dubbed the “DC Implosion.” Among other things, 40% of their titles were canceled, many of them new launches that didn’t have sales figures yet. Five staff members were laid off and numerous freelancers suddenly found themselves with no work. The ultimate goal was to redesign DC’s line and make it more attractive to supermarkets and other wholesalers as newsstands declined.
In September, the company made two big changes. One was to change their cover price to $0.40, which was still above the $0.35 industry average but lower than their $0.50 (for 40 pages) trial earlier in the year. At forty cents, DC was offering retailers 14.5% more profit per unit than other publishers. The other change was to alter their distribution schedule. Instead of shipping new comics weekly, they moved to a twice-monthly schedule. They hoped that with new books arriving only in the second and fourth weeks of the month, they might extend the sales period for their titles by one week. The theory assumed retailers rotated stock when new shipments came in, and that they only pulled old issues of the new books.
Was DC right? I think they gave the retailers too much credit, considering they didn’t place direct orders and probably didn’t understand the difference between a DC and a Marvel. I don’t know precisely how long they worked off this distribution model, but it was definitely out of fashion by 1980.
The picture above says it plainly. In the September 27, 1991 issue of the weekly newspaper “Comics Buyer’s Guide,” an artist wrote an op-ed letter responding to a comic writer’s earlier missive, which complained about unequal pay and suggested writers should receive a share of the original artwork that was being split between the penciller and inker. It makes some good points, specifically how much more time it takes to draw a page than to script it, but goes on to say that artists don’t want, or need, writers who feel that way. He calls them “obsolete” and makes the point that readers prefer a badly written comic that looks good to a well-written comic that has bad art.
This is all well and good, one man’s informed opinion, except for two things. The first is that it meanders from “that writer” to “writers like him” to “most writers,” then back again. The main thrust is “many of you are bad writers, and artists can write just as badly while retaining more freedom.” It makes sense in context, but people in 1991 were just as likely to accept hyperbolic summaries as they are today. “CGB,” then the biggest forum in comic fandom, made things worse with their nuance-free headline that primed readers for an emotional response. The second thing that caused the September letter to bring an out-sized response was how it was signed – “Name Withheld.”
Continued belowThere was an immediate response from all sides, with some agreeing, some disagreeing, and some focusing exclusively on the anonymous element. People who never read the letter shared their opinion about what they heard it said, and before long it was treated as the inciting incident to the debate, which devolved into “are writers needed?” Things got hotter a few months later when the Image founders (all artists) left Marvel and announced they’d be writing their own books. It built to a panel at SDCC 1993 tackling the subject with featured commentary coming from Todd McFarlane, Steve Gerber, Mark Bagley, and Bill Willingham. The debate eventually and inevitably fizzled out without much of a conclusion.
The letter writer was rumored to be, among others, Image co-founder Eric Larson. Then it was just widely suspected to be Larson. Then it was generally agreed upon that it was Larson. Now it is treated as historical fact, although I haven’t seen a direct admission from him.
On June 6, 1996, Marc Silvestri separated his Top Cow studio from Image. At the time, he said it was because they had grown enough to assert more independence as a brand. Silvestri said he needed some new challenges, and operating as its own entity would give Top Cow better visibility as it looked to license rights to its characters. He also said Image had strayed from its ideals and foundations. Privately, the decision was attributed to friction with a fellow co-founder. Image publisher Larry Marder did his best to squash that, claiming there were “no creative differences with anyone at Image,” and Silvestri remained as a partner and member of Image’s board.
In an interview published in August, fellow co-founder Rob Liefeld admitted Image was “very dysfunctional.” He went on to say the company may be reduced to as few as three partners “months from now,” but that he was fully “committed to keeping [the company] together” because Image was more important to him than his studio.
On September 4, Rob Liefeld resigned as a partner at Image and moved his Extreme studio out from under its umbrella. He tried to pass this off as being similar to Silvestri’s situation, saying he left on good terms and wished Image the best. The truth came out quickly: his resignation was faxed into the office because the other partners had scheduled a meeting for later that day to vote him out. An informal vote had already taken place more than a week earlier. Silvestri finally confirmed he had left Image solely because of issues he was having with Liefeld, specifically that Liefeld was trying to poach talent and/or resources from his studio. (So Marder wasn’t technically lying when he said there were no creative differences among the founders. The differences just fell under a different category…)
In late September, Image sent Liefeld an invoice for outstanding bills, and it got ugly from there. On October 2, Liefeld sued Image for breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, payments due, libel, slander, and interference with contract. He asked for a million dollars in damages. McFarlane learned about the suit through a press release Liefeld put out on October 7. That didn’t go over well, and McFarlane told “Wizard” that he’d sooner quit comic books “before I let that kid back in Image.” Image countersued for outstanding debts and alleged that Liefeld illegally used Image assets to benefit his own studio. They settled out of court in February 1997.
News of Liefeld’s departure coincided with Silvestri and Top Cow’s immediate announcement of his return to Image, effective with comics shipping in January 1997. The temporary move did prove beneficial: during the six months that Top Cow was not exclusively distributed by Diamond, sales of “Witchblade” rose by 30,000 units.
For what its worth, Liefeld was able to mend some bridges over the years. He participated in the still-unfinished “Image United” crossover in 2009, and his Extreme titles returned to Image in 2012. “Prophet” and “Glory” got some good reviews, and “Supreme” was even written and drawn by fellow founder Eric Larson.
The week Dav Pilkey’s ninth volume of “Dog Man” was released, it sold 239,000 copies and was the best-selling book of any kind. Since that information comes from BookScan, that’s 239k of actual sales to customers, not the orders from retailers that comic fans are used to seeing. And by “any kind,” that means it outsold every other book, prose or graphic. That’s not a surprise to me – my kids love them.
