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angelophile
The second panel of the day (for me, at least), was the Image panel, although it was focused, not on Image's mainstream output, but purely on their creator-owned projects.
Creator-Owned Comics the Image Way
Richard Starkings (Elephantmen) leads a discussion on Image and creator-owned projects. Panelists include Charlie Adlard (The Walking Dead), Ian Churchill (Marineman), David Hine (Strange Embrace, The Bulletproof Coffin), Kieron Gillen (Phonogram), and Paul Grist (Jack Staff).
Richard Starkings led the discussion, which announced Ian Churchill's upcoming Marineman creator owned project and touched on David Hine and Shaky Kane's upcoming Bulletproof Coffin series. The panel was genial and interesting, with plenty of good-natured digs at Charlie Adlard, who, with his work on The Walking Dead, regularly managed sales that exceeded most of the rest of the panel.
It was an interesting debate about the benefits and drawbacks of publishing creator-owned projects over doing work-for-hire, touching on a large number of subjects beyond this, including delays to books, comic store layouts, promotion and more. I think I definitely made the right decision to attend this wide-ranging panel, over the DC panel which apparently mostly focused simply on upcoming projects.
One thing that was emphasized was the Image structure, which explains why Image are an attractive imprint for a lot of creator-owned titles. Image take a flat fee for producing creator-owned projects. Issues need to sell a certain amount of issues to make money for the creators, but once beyond that point, the creators get all the profits. That's an attractive deal for creators, rather than other publisher's models, which take a percentage, so the more successful a book, the more money they make. Paul Grist talked about how the Image structure allowed him to do what he was doing anyway - publish Jack Staff - but without needed to take on all the debt and expenses of printing costs etc up front.
There was a length discussion about how hard it was to get sales on creator owned projects which didn't have a "name" behind them. Image don't have a marketing team and all marketing is done, effectively, by the creators on a project. This can come in the shape of stuff like house ads - which are placed in other creator-owned titles by agreement with other creators, rather than Image taking control. Kieron Gillen talked about drawing on his games journalism background to aid his methods for promoting Phonogram - contacting as many people in the industry as he knew and offering interviews and literally calling up comic stores and asking them to stock the book. This caused some discussion with David Hine who said he'd tried to do the same thing and email every comic store listed in America and wasn't sure if it got results. Kieron spoke about a list that was more specific, including names and numbers of around 200 comics retailers, which covered the majority of stores which would pick up on creator-owned projects with a large number of others only interested in the Marvel/DC demographic. He'd had some response in the past from contacting people on the list directly.
This led into a general discussion about stores and how there's lots of people who'd never step into a specialist comic store and how Diamond's new distribution policies make it even harder to get independent comics into stores. There was some discussion about comic stores in general being more welcoming or accessible Starkings talked about a friend of his in San Diego who has based the design of his store around the rules that are (apparently) applied to clothing boutiques and hairdressers, which call for 12 foot clear space behind the entrance. He talked about how he'd seen it work effectively, with more women drawn into the store by the layout and then another rule in action where "if you get one pretty girl walking in, you get 20 guys following."
Someone asked a question, commenting that didn't it make the panel unhappy when their work was unsuccessful. Kieron Gillen picked up on that straight away, asking in what way was it unsuccessful? The panel all talked about how there's a balance. Obviously, all the creators wanted to make money, many of them having families to support, but there was also an element of wanting to enjoy the work, create books that they would want to read and also satisfy them as creators. It was mentioned that many creators work exclusively on projects for other people and treat it simply as a job, without the satisfaction of having created something they themselves love. Richard Starkings mentioned Marineman and how the sheer love for what he's doing came through in Ian Churchill's completed pages. Churchill agreed that he was the happiest he'd been working on his own creator owned book and that there was general agreement in the panel that creating something you could be proud of and enjoy yourselves is as much a part of success as making money.
There was also that sense of trepidation, however. Ian Churchill is working on Marineman currently, which means taking time out from paid work to complete issues and effectively months without any income until issues start hitting stores and (hopefully) make money. After Charlie Adlard had been poked earlier in the panel for his being able to talk about creator-owned work from his "ivory tower", he agreed that tackling creator owned projects was not always immediately attractive. He spoke about how, when he was brought onto The Walking Dead, he was also offered a Warlock relaunch at Marvel. Unable to balance both long-term and with a family to support, he had to chose between them and chose to drop The Walking Dead. He was persuaded to hang on in with The Walking Dead, despite his reservations, for a few more issues and then Warlock was suddenly cancelled. He's grateful he was persuaded not to quit, as he could have been in the situation where he'd given up on The Walking Dead and then have Warlock cancelled too, leaving him without work at all. That balance is hard to strike, but now he's able to work on The Walking Dead and have that security, with some time to work on other creator-owned projects on the side.
Kieron Gillen also spoke about the problems of creator owned projects - something he's said before with regards to Phonogram. That, for a writer, it's sometimes easier and that some writers can produce two or three titles a month without problems, whereas artists usually have a slower work rate. Effectively that means that artists can be working on a project for months without any income - there's no up-front fee for creator owned projects. High sales of a trade collection can help, but it means there can be a year+ between starting a project and seeing any return from it. That can literally mean the difference between being able to eat and not.
The discussion worked back to Marineman, with Churchill talking about it being an "all-ages" work in the true sense of the word - that could be enjoyed by children and adults alike, whereas Marvel and DC used the term to describe works they considered aimed at children. The Invincibles was cited as an example of a true all-ages work and Churchill made a remark about disliking the obsession with making all comics dark and gritty (leading to Charlie Adlard to comment "Yeah, I hate that too", to laughter). This led to a mini discussion about how creator owned titles allow creators to be far more focused on what demographic they're aiming at. There's not an Image demographic, but individual books have a clear audience in mind - The Walking Dead is an adult horror book for example. Starkings said, to general agreement, that this worked a lot more effectively than taking a character who is considered child friendly and aiming them at the adult comic collector market. David Hine mentioned an example of someone buying the Bolland Joker graphic novel for their child in his local comic store, totally unaware of the content and returning it later, completely shocked. Whereas when a reader picks up a creator-owned title, they're not trying to be all things to all people and people know what they're getting.
When the floor was opened to questions, asked by an audience member who was a writer whether he'd be able to pitch an idea to Image, Kieron Gillen and Richard Starkings quickly nixed that idea, stating that Image buy into the project, not creators and it was a matter of submitting a pitch with a complete writer/artist/creative team in place.
I managed to slip in my question, going back to the earlier discussions about the character of comics stores, whether there was a difference between the way creator-owned projects are supported in the UK and the US. I mentioned that stores in the UK, in my experience, tended to have a different character from US stores. However, the panel disagreed and most people said there wasn't a national character and more individual stores being interested in indie work or focused entirely on Marvel/DC and the big guns. (I'd wondered about this, because of something that came up in the Marvel panel the next day - that Brits don't really have a history of superhero comics as there is in the US and British comics have tended to be more diverse - something that creator-owned projects would fit into.)
The subject came up of whether delays can hurt books. There seemed to be agreement that they undoubtedly do, with the panel explaining that a reputation for being late can affect retailers. Hine said it didn't personally bother him, but it was explained that it's not just an annoyance to readers but to the stores that order books. All stores will have a certain budget for purchases and if a book's solicited as coming out a certain week, and doesn't, effectively they're left with money they could have spent on getting in other titles. So, they may have only ordered ten copies of a certain title instead of fifteen and those could be lost sales. And if a creator-owned title or creative team gets a reputation for being late, it can lead to long term damage to orders.
The panel wound up, rather abruptly, when time simply ran out. But it was an illuminating glimpse into the benefits and drawbacks that face creators who do go the creator-owned route.
