Go, Read: The ICv2.com Interview With Marvel Publisher Dan Buckley

The comics business news and analysis site ICv2.com has a two part interview with Marvel's publisher, Dan Buckley. It has the usual frustrating parts -- they won't release subscriber figures for their digital initiative, and the enthusiasm generated on behalf of forthcoming publishing initiative seems divorced from any of the proper nouns -- by which I mean you could swap in any title from the last dozen years and many of the same sentences would work.

The interesting part is how Buckley frames the company's on-line initiatives. He compares it to newsstand comics of 20 and 30 years ago, which is completely baffling -- newsstand was collapsing back then, and on-line initiatives are still in their early stages -- until he explains that the company sees the digital stuff as a way to drive readers to their core business, and that this is something that newsstands used to do. That's really interesting for a lot of reasons. You can second-guess the strategy, of course. You can see it as a vote of confidence in traditional retail partnerships. You can also cite Marvel for not doing more to improve the health and vitality and coverage of the traditional market to which they've now stated they hope to drive customers.

To put it another way: If Marvel's really comparing the two things, in 1983 a customer could stop buying comics from the spinner rack Ross Supermarket and start buying them from the Capital City-supplied shelves at Bright's Book Exchange and the latter was vastly superior to the former. In 2009 a customer could stop consuming comics on-line and start buying them at Comics Kingdom and... well, you tell me. I don't see vastly superior. And that's if they're lucky enough to have a Comics Kingdom nearby. Mine is two and a half hours away.
 
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