Two separate announcements from the Big 2 today make life a little more difficult for Local Comic Shops (LCS). Publishers have to do what they can to survive, but do publishers have an obligation to support local comic shops?
DC Cuts Costs (Or Corners?)
If you’ve been keeping up with developments in the Comic Industry in 2020, you know that DC Comics cut ties with Diamond Distribution in the early stages of the COVID-19 lockdown due to Diamond’s decision to temporarily close shop. DC moved over to two competitor distributors: UCS owned by (MidTown Comics) and Lunar (owned by DCBS) which created its own stir at a time when pandemic panic created more uncertainty than most organizations new what to do with.
To me, monopolization of a service may be good for the vendor (Diamond) but never a net positive for the industry it serves so adding in more distributors could only be a healthy move… as long as the competitors were up for it. Unfortunately, on f the competitors was not. Today, DC announced it was cutting ties with UCS. Here’s the opening paragraph from the email sent to retailers:
In April, UCS Comic Distributors and Lunar Distribution partnered with DC to transition to a multi-distributor model for the Direct Market, at a time when comic book distribution was on pause and the supply chain disrupted as a result of the safer-at-home orders that were put in place. We are now in our next phase where, as of January 1, 2021, DC publications will continue to be distributed in the Direct Market by Lunar Distribution, Diamond UK, and Penguin Random House (for graphic novels and collected editions only). UCS Comic Distributors will no longer distribute DC publications, but retailers can continue to order from UCS through the end of November.
DC Comics, 10/19/2020
Part of the reason DC went with two distributors in the first place is because neither UCS nor Lunar could handle North American distribution on their own. LCS owners have already been complaining about having to place orders through multiple distributors to get their weekly stock, Shifting over to a single distributor that wasn’t built to handle all of North America for a single publisher (DC) makes getting Batman and Superman books on time difficult.
DC is already in a very tough spot with this past Summer’s layoffs and much more expected in the next month or so. It’s understandable that DC has to do everything they can to pinch every penny and only maintain relationships that are cost effective. The real, underlying reasons for DC cutting ties with UCS aren’t, and may never be, made public but it’s a sure bet if Lunar can’t take up the slack, delivery of DC comics on a weekly schedule will start to fall behind. And the entity that’s going to suffer from that lag is your friendly neighborhood LCS because the best-selling weekly comics commonly include the Batman titles among several others.
Well, that puts a bit of pressure on your LCS, but this second announcement turns up the heat a few more notches.
Marvel Releases First-Run To Digital Sooner
It sees like a very pro-consumer move. Right?
Take the typical 6-month embargo between retail release and availability on Marvel Unlimited (MU), and shrink it to 3 months.
Yes, it is very pro-consumer, but not pro-LCS.
The purpose of the 6-month embargo is to provide time for all the regular comics customers to buy the comics as near as possible to their initial release; either in print or digital through ComiXology. Since an LCS relies on physical sales and reprints, the more time they have to fulfill and place those orders from a customer, the better. When the comic is released on to MU, it’s with the expectation that every customer who intends to buy a particular issue has already done so and subscribers to MU are either only casual readers that wouldn’t have bought the first release or don’t care about that comic in the first place.
The 6-month embargo gives an LCS time to sell as many first prints and reprints they can before getting into back issue territory. If you think about how and why that works from a customer’s perspective, there’s reliance on instant gratification by the LCS. A customer wants to have the latest issue no. They want to know how happens to that character in that story now or as close to initial release as possible. It’s the same phenomenon that spurs on watercooler talk with friends that have similar interests. If an eager customer has to wait 6 months, the anticipation is too much, and so an LCS capitalizes on the desire not to wait.
An LCS now has less time to capitalize on the “newness” of an issue before the comic becomes free to the MU customers. It’s good for Marvel because customers now find a greater sense of value in the MU service, but it’s bad for an LCS because customers are more likely to wait 3 months for the comic to drop in MU when waiting 6 months might have been too long to wait.
Again, good for Marvel, but it turns up the heat a little more on an LCS.
Where Does That Leave The LCS?
As of this writing, in a much tougher spot since yesterday.
To answer the titular question – do the publishers have an obligation to support comic shops? – the answer is “only as long as the publishers are invested in physical print.” That sounds harsh, and maybe even callous, but we’re in a state of industry flux that’s less a result of pandemic lockdowns and more a result of an industry that chose to ignore innovation and growth for far too long. ‘Adapt or die’ is axiomatic in every industry, and it’s only because comics is such a niche industry that its been able to get away with stagnation this long.
It’s time.
Time for every LCS to adapt to finding new ways of generating revenue that have very little reliance on weekly comics.
Time for publishers to either go all in on bold new directions for weekly comics or adapt to models that have shown to be successful (aka Manga) or hang it up and put the old dog of weekly comics out of its misery.
What do you think of my opinion. Am I on to something or am I just another fanboy that doesn’t want to accept new ideas. Leave a comment downstairs with your thoughts on this topic, and please share this post on social media using the links below.
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