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Ring Psychology

by Ethan Nahte

Top 10 Things NOT TO DO As a Comic Book Creator From a Retailer's Point-Of-View *ed note: This is the first in a two part article by Ethan Nahte. The first five reasons are listed below and the final five will be continued in the second part of his article found here next week. As a new Comic Book Creator, you're ultimate goal is to get your comic book out to the public so they can read your cool story and check out the great art. To do this, you must have a product that looks good and can draw the attention of either convention attendees, web surfers, or comic book stores. This article will focus on what will hopefully increase your odds of getting into a store and then selling so the store will buy more of your comics. Hopefully the details won't be too lengthy, but I have learned that in describing something of this nature, it helps to give examples in full for the novice and sometimes even for the intermediate creator. Every store is different: Some stores are part of a chain and deal only with major publishers (e.g. Marvel, DC, Image, Dark Horse, etc.) or Diamond Comics, who basically have a monopoly on distributing comics. Smaller stores may have limited room to display anything but comics that are guaranteed titles that sell and may pass on giving indie comics a chance. Then some stores are large enough to give a comic a chance, even if you're new to the industry and no one's ever heard of you. In the case of the store where I work, here are some of the things we look for when deciding on buying a new independent comic and a description that follows: (The first five are listed below) 1) Landscape Layout 2) Long Titles 3) Illegible Titles & Fonts 4) Vanity Titles 5) Do-It-Yourself: Photocopies, Trimming & Staples 1) Here's the thought process - a comic laid out in a different format than the normal comic will grab a customer's attention. Although this may be true, smaller comics get lost on the shelf amongst all of the regular titles; oversized comics don't fit into comic boxes once the comics make it into the back issues; and the popular format that stores hate is landscape (where the comic is laid out basically sideways). Why? Because it doesn't sit on the shelf very well. Where we can place 8 or 10 new comics on the shelf at a time before restocking of a regularly formatted comic, we can only place 1 or 2 landscape formats on the shelf because they keep bowing, bending and falling off into the floor. This is annoying because we have to constantly be picking up a book that keeps getting more and more damaged, it's a pain having to restock as often and even if a store has a shelf that will hold the book up, it still bows. Don't landscape! 2) Some titles are extremely creative, funny or at least grab your attention because they are just weird. When comics go into the back issue bins, generally a well-organized store will make a special divider just for your comic and not just lump it into the alphabet. But in making a divider, there is only so much room on the tab - at least room that is visible to the casual peruser who is searching through the boxes. Imagine that someone is looking at the semi-thick section of "Marvel Team-Up" and the next big section is "Moon Knight”. In between these 2 titles is a small section called "Monkey in a Wagon vs. Lemur in a Big Wheel" (I'm not making up this title - it exists). To someone just glancing through the boxes, they may see "Monkey In A Wagon." If you, the creator are lucky, they'll actually notice it and take a moment to pull it out of the box and look at it. Odds are, it will get overlooked because it has a smaller font, takes up little room in the box and is relatively unknown. "Conan," "Batman," "Iron Man". Get the point? Your title doesn't have to be as generic as these iconic characters, but they are simple and the fonts for dividers can be made much larger and grab the attention of a potential buyer. 3) Sometimes creators try to be too creative and make their title illegible in the process. "Kamikaze" is a recent comic that did that. No one could read the title. It got placed back in the wrong section of the "New Week Shelf" alphabet anytime someone picked it up and tried to read the title. It normally wasn't even picked up because 9 times out of 10 people don't pick up something that's hard to read or unappealing. The same can be said for comics that try to use strange font inside the book. It's okay to use something besides Times New Roman or Arial, but don't pick fonts that are so difficult to read that it strains the eyes of the reader. There are many times in our store that customers will pick up a book, flip through it, see a hard-to-read panel, comment about it being hard-to-read and set it back down. The most recent issues of "Menthu" and I believe another one called "Wargod," or something similar, was that way. I don't remember for certain since the book didn't sell and we got rid of it so I can't double check to be sure. 4) Vanity Titles are just annoying and meaningless. When stores check in a comic that has a story title, the publisher and someone that no one has ever heard of (e.g. Joe Blow Presents), it's difficult to find on our invoice, searching the web or searching . "Previews." Half the time the book won't even have the title on the cover or the title is so small compared to the creator's name that it makes it difficult for the customer to find. Your goal isn't to hide from the public. It's to get noticed. Being a "rebel" in your design and layout is just dumb. Yes, there are exceptions. If your name is Michael Turner and the comic says "Michael Turner's Fathom" in nice, big, easy to read letters, the customer will find it. If it says "Brian Pulido's Lady Death" they find it by the artwork before even seeing his name. If it says "Eric Red's" whatever the name of his comics are, no one knows or cares about who Eric is or the comic. Save your cover for your title and the art instead of throwing meaningless words all over the page. 5) If you're trying to save a buck, don't have access to a printer or can't afford the more professional route, there is nothing wrong with that. Just make sure that if you photocopy or print the pages yourself, do the stapling and folding of the comics, etc. that you do it with care. Neatness counts. Most stores won't even consider a comic that the cover and pages are all off center and it looks like a kindergarten project. For a 5 year old, it would be a cool accomplishment. For someone over the age of 13, not so cool. I recently helped the guys at Stumblebum Studios put together their most recent book for Wizard World Texas. We had 7 of us collating, stapling, folding and boxing up the comics for the convention and it took us very little time. The books came out looking pretty good because even if it was done the night before the show, it was still done with care. You can read more of Ethan Nahte’s work at www.livenloud.net and www.herorealm.com. Be sure to check out next week’s issue of “Ring Psychology” for the conclusions of this article.