For me at least, the biggest news out of C2E2 was the confirmation that Matt Fraction, Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon’s Casanova series was returning thanks to Marvel’s Icon line. I believe Fraction’s recent Wordballoon interview with John Suintres a couple of weeks ago was actually the first time this was announced but it’s great to see that this was a big announcement for Marvel out of C2E2. The Casanova news is also interesting because it tells so much about the comic book industry right now.
The first is that I think this can effectively put a nail in the slimline comic format created by Warren Ellis and Ben Templesmith’s Fell. Even from the beginning, Image’s experiment with the 16 page format was on life support as, anecdotally, retailer support was lacking on the $1.99 comics. It seemed like something people would have wanted; smaller but denser storytelling by some very creative comic book creators for a cheaper entry-level price. Add in some great “backmatter” material, comic history lessons by Ellis and some really personal almost-diary like essays from Fraction, and Fell and Casanova were two of the best values for the price.
And they failed.
The early word was that many comic shops just couldn’t give the shelf space to books that they weren’t going to make as much money on, which is almost perfectly understandable. Why put out on the shelf a book that they’re only selling for $1.99 where they could use the same space to put out a book for a dollar more and probably sell more copies? So thus begins the deadly cycle: shops won’t order the books so customer’s can’t buy the books. The books can never get an audience so they’re doomed to fail. An infamous hard drive crash a couple of years ago wiped out Ellis’ script for Fell #9 and he has yet to return to it. And why should he when he can turn out a few Marvel or Avatar books which probably sell better and help support the Ellis household more than Fell ever could? The slim-line format was a really good format, produced by some great creators and it ultimately fell flat.
So there may be your argument against lower price points and any $1.99 price point for digital comics. The price could be there and the content could be there but the audience just won’t care. They’ll go to the comic shop every Wednesday (or maybe to their iPads every day now) and will continue to buy what they know.
Let’s just point out again: the price a couple of years ago for a copy of Casanova was $1.99 and still hardly anyone bought it. Of course at the time, all Matt Fraction had to his name creatively was a few commentary websites, Rex Mantooth, Last of the Independents and The Five Fists of Science. Nothing there is anywhere as mainstreamingly impressive as Iron Man or Thor (both coming soon to a movie theater near you) but they all showed a strong developing voice for the writer. I would have to think that he developed some kind of audience with those books, enough who would want to take a change on a $1.99 book. The slimline format is probably officially dead; Fell is M.I.A. and Fraction has taken Casanova over to Marvel’s Icon line where he’ll be producing it as a color, 32 page comic book. It’s a good move for both Fraction and Marvel. Marvel gets to keep Fraction happy and he’s got the support that comes along with being in the Marvel catalog.
The other thing that’s kind of bugging me about this is that Casanova, an incredibly wild, independent and thought provoking series is moving over to Marvel’s Icon line, a line which rewards Marvel’s writers. It’s a smart move for Marvel and Fraction in that it gives Fraction even more reasons to stay with Marvel. There’s no way that you can’t argue that Marvel’s been very, very good to Fraction and he’s got a family to support. It would be silly of him not to stick with Marvel.
But what does it say that Fraction, along with Brubaker, Bendis and Millar (all Marvel exclusive writers when it comes to mainstream superhero work) need to stick with Marvel for their more independent stuff? Criminal, Powers and Kick-Ass are all works that could have easily fit in with Casanova‘s former publisher Image but the creators, for a variety of valid reasons, all stuck with Marvel, having the prestige of being solicited in Previews right along side New Avengers, Ultimate Avengers, Secret Avengers and Uncanny X-Men. These are some of the top writers in mainstream superhero comic fiction but that’s not enough to get an audience to look at the books that don’t feature Iron Man punching Captain America.
It’s already been a couple of years since Casanova has been out and the comic world has changed incredibly thanks to things like rising prices and the emergence of digital distribution. Fell and Casanova led the way with a $1.99 price point which didn’t work for a physical book but is hoped to be the sweet spot for a digital book. It costs more to make and to buy a comic; $3.99 is becoming more of the norm than the exception. The good news is that Fraction, Ba and Moon are back with more Casanova. Hopefully it will remain as wild, unexpected and unhinged as its initial run was. If it’s any different, I’d probably blame age more than Marvel for any perceived changes. But it is disappointing that Casanova couldn’t be more profitable for its creators at Image or at Dark Horse or at Boom. It’s disappointing that these strong, creative writers need to stick with Marvel because more people will buy their books simply because they say “Marvel” in some distributors catalog. A catalog? That’s what Marvel can give Fraction that Image couldn’t.
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Tags: Casanova, Matt Fraction
Great post. While I agree that this is a great move for Fraction & Ba/Moon, I just don’t know what it says about comics in general. I’ll fully admit, I didn’t get Casanova as it was coming out, but for $2 a month (or however often it came out) I could afford to give it a chance, especially since Fraction’s esssay’s in the back were worth it alone, especially the very powerful ones in volume 2. Would I have taken that chance on it if it were $4 a month? Probably not. I know there will be a larger audience for this book now that Fraction is a name, but it’s too bad that’s what it takes for people to branch out.
Also, selfishly, this means I’m going to have to wait at least another year or so for the collection of volume 2 that I’ve been waiting for for-freaking-ever.
Part of the resistance to the 1.99 price point was on the retailers side, who had to do just as much work, pay just as much postage (as an aggregate) and take up just as much shelfspace to get less return. And honestly, neither FELL nor CASANOVA were particularly non-habitual-comic-reader-friendly. I enjoyed the stories in both, skipped the backmatter and never felt like I was getting shortchanged. Of course, I decided that I’d read the second CASANOVA in collection since I was phasing out of regular comic shop trips around the time it was coming out (stupid me.) So that’s a double whammy, as both of those books would do better steering away from superhero fans in the first place but most retailers lean heavy on superhero books and most readers do too.
Frankly, I never thought the 1.99 experiment was given that much of a chance, but then when you’re talking about a market as constrained and fundamentally conservative as the DM, that’s not such a surprise.
Guess I’ll have to go track down the single issues of CASANOVA v.2. I always liked the B/W+spot color better.
Oh, I’ll note that if digital comics are selling for 1.99, they’re bypassing a lot of the resistance factor in the DM, that being retailers who are used to doing things one way and not being particularly adaptable, which might give it a better shot at survival.
The shops – and the publishers, too – are fools when it comes to pricing. The shops couldn’t put a book on the shelf because it was $1.99? What a lame excuse! I could walk into any shop on the planet and point out two dozen books at higher price points that *nobody* is buying, that *nobody* cares about that are only on the shelf because they’re published by DC and Marvel. That’s the real travesty here, the lack of support for smaller publishers and titles – not a shop’s ability to make a few cents more on the $1 cover price difference.
The publishers have gouged us long enough. $2.99 is overpriced and $3.99 is obscene. Comics have a per-page price higher than any other printed medium, and its got to stop before the industry destroys itself.