UPFRONT: Industrial Dogma
Second Sight. By Joe Szilagyi.

Politicians really are people to be admired.

OK now, the few of you still with me after that opening statement, think about it. Most successful politicians, regardless of political ideology, are considered successful because they manage to stay in office for repeated terms. There’s a variety of ways they pull this off, some of which are fine and proper things to be doing. Some of them fall a few yards short of being wholesome. Either way, they do it; the point is that they stay in office for as long as they’re allowed to, if they’re especially good at their games. One of the biggest things that good politicians do, however, which allows them to stay in office, has nothing to do with right or wrong. It’s knowing or figuring out what their consumers (essentially, their constituents) want ahead of time. I’m obviously no politician, but I think I can safely say that anticipating what large groups of people will want from you ahead of time is never an easy thing to do. It’s hard enough to do on a one-to-one basis, let alone on a mass scale. And that’s what I admire about them, regardless of whether I agree with their views or not.

The thing is, if they can do it, why can’t other intelligent people always do likewise? Some do. Bill Gates and Microsoft would be a classic example. They tried to anticipate what would appeal the most to their consumers, and attempted to stay consistently on top of that. By the time Windows 95 was rolling out onto store shelves, they were undoubtedly already well into production of Win 98, and most likely already doing work on the 2000 edition. They anticipated what people could want (and obviously made a good guess...) in a PC-based 1995 remake of the Macintosh 1985 operating system. Then they took it a step further, and created more market for themselves with the 1998 version, and again with the 2000 edition. If you look at other industries, it’s the same thing over and over again: someone intuits what the people will want (or just tells them what they want to buy, which can work as well), offers the product, and then creates the need for more products. Simple business, really.

Microsoft did it, the tobacco companies did it, and politicians do it with pork and "popular" causes, based on whatever particular group’s interests that can do the most to keep the particular politician in office. As I said, it’s a simple, effective thing. Any business major or retailer could probably expound on the subject much better than I could. But it’s a fairly simple concept, as far as our purposes today are concerned. Innovation/foresight begets product begets desire for more product begets more product, and so on. Of course, you all can see where this is heading (especially if you’ve gone and read anything else I’ve ever written for PopImage before)... The comics industry already has an incredibly devoted core group of fans, which keep it afloat.

Obviously, we’re smaller in scale than Microsoft, but there is a distinctive similarity. Both customer bases simple accept what is given to them, and hand over their money. Speaking from personal experience, I gnash my teeth, piss and moan, and generally complain a lot about the State of Things with both my computer and my comics. I’d love to see things be better on both sides. Comics also have a thing in common with the tobacco industry, in that I really do think there’s a psychological need for people to continue buying comics, once they really get down to reading them. Consider this: how many of you know someone (including yourself) who was a committed smoker and/or comics reader at one point?

You quit one of them. At some point you picked up another, and it began all over again. I personally (myself included) know many people who’ve attempted to or accidentally quit both, only to come back in the end. As far as political comparisons go, the comics industry could be well served to take a lesson from politicos everywhere: give your consumers what they want, or think they want. Simple as that. Of course, it’s not really that simple for comics. I mean, it’d be good for a laugh if we could make comic books physiologically addictive. See little Johnny get the shakes and that hollow, glassy-eyed stare because the new issue of AVENGERS isn’t out yet! Will he make it four weeks before he knocks off a liquor store for money to buy back issues? Will we see him pistol whip Mom and Dad because he can't get that new copy of PREACHER in time?

The point is, we need to do more things to anticipate customer tastes'. It's not happening, as far as I can see. The BLADE movie came out a year or two ago, and was a pretty good success. The first two BATMAN and SUPERMAN movies were big hits. The new X-MEN movie stands poised (or it seems that way to me, but I've been told that I can be almost annoyingly optimistic) to be just as big. This would, according to all common sense, cause an upswing in demand for X-Men books. Not particularly the current Uncanny X-Men or X-Men, as deeply rooted as they are in their own longstanding continuity. The average moviegoer, coming out of the film, would take one look at either book and say, "What the hell is this mess?" Which is why it's a good thing, really, that Marvel is coming out with their ULTIMATE line of books. This is as much a preemptive strike by the industry in this direction that we've ever seen. If Marvel plays it's cards right (which really is always the problem, isn't it?) they could turn this into a major marketing coup.

When the other comics adaptations came out that I mentioned there was nothing really done to capitalize on their mass popularity. DC could have permanently stamped the Dark Knight into the minds of many people with the Tim Burton films, but didn't. Ditto for Superman, who already had the advantage of being an American icon. With the magnitude of hype we're already seeing for the X-Men film, with still a month to go until it's release, it's a given that Marvel will have brand name awareness on it's side. What they should be doing is treating this movie as a massive publicity campaign for their comics. In fact, that's what all the companies should be doing. But they aren't thinking far ahead, they way that politicians do, and how Microsoft and tobacco did.

Their needs to almost be a chessmaster mentality to the way in which things are conducted in any really successful, stable business. Shortsightedness hasn’t done comics any good in the past. What they need is to practically have a second sight, to see two--or more--things happening at once. Every last opportunity for promotion, such as this, cannot be ignored. They all have to seized, and beaten into the ground, if that’s what it takes. All three prior examples I mentioned are ruthless in their exploitation of whatever can get them ahead. Forcing businesses in various ways to accept your operating system. Targeting children with your advertising to keep consecutive generations paying you. Glad-handing anyone who’s willing to do the same for you.

There have been so many wasted opportunities that it really is appalling. All the times that comics manage to sneak into the mainstream, literally the worst examples of the medium goes out for the public to view. If companies want to accept the production of low-quality books, simply because it sells a certain number of books to a preestablished customer base, fine. More power to you, and sell your 20,000 copies of the book in question. When it comes time for putting out a book that will have opportunities or potential for views by the populace-at-large, outside of the niche environment of the direct comics market, you had damn well better be putting out the best there is to offer. Every opportunity to make a positive impression on non-readers is just as much of an opportunity to reinforce all the worst stereotypes of what comics are. From the top levels of the industry down to the individual retailers and the fans themselves, their needs to be a bloody, ruthless assault on every chance to advocate and promote comics in the best possible light. Like a said, a second sight that looks ten, twenty, or a hundred steps ahead of where you are right now.

Other people have said that it isn’t the role or the responsibility of the fans to be "advocates" of comics. No offense, but bullshit. It’s everyone’s job. If you care about something, you should be doing everything in your ability to advocate it. I go out of my way to tell people how good comics are, and how much better they are now than they had been in the past. I don’t mince words, I tell people, read this, read that, and then read this other title. I try to draw new readers in, and I’m certainly doing my little part to advance things. It’s not much, in the grand scheme of things. But it’s a start. If a quarter of the people who read comics did as much, then easily a quarter of them could draw in more readers. Think about this: there are easily 500,000 current comics readers in the United States. That would mean another 30,000 or more readers could be brought in each year, and that would be simply through word of mouth. Now what would happen if the powers-that-be pushed with their large advertising and even an ounce of conviction?

The sales boom we would see would make the early 1990’s look like the present quiet period. All it would take is for people to try and look ahead, and then to have the conviction to follow through with what could expand the market. Will it be guaranteed to work in every instance? No. Will it be expensive? Most likely. Will it work in the long run? Absolutely. Is it going to happen in an intelligent, well thought-out way anytime soon?

I’d be more likely to admire politicians for reasons other than what I already said before it does.

Joe Szilagyi, Milford, June 2000.

Joe Szilagyi is the editor of the Upfront section of PopImage, and he hates to receive angry emails. What he does like is bank account numbers being sent to him in email. Just don't forget to include security and routing numbers when you mail.

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