A Couple of Notes On FCBD, Its Comics

Getting a stack of Free Comic Book Day efforts from Brian Hibbs at Comix Experience (thanks, Brian!) put me in the mind of the days when I used to come home every Friday with a pile of new funnybooks. The thing that jumped out at me about the books themselves is that I thought this watch contained more books with density and heft -- not just compared to other FCBD effort, but to comic book formatted comics in general. What I mean is that many of the offerings were stuffed with material that took a long time to read. This was particularly true of efforts like the Fantagraphics Unseen Peanuts and the wonderful Lynda Barry Activity Book from Drawn and Quarterly, but there were efforts like the Comics Festival book and the Eddie Campbell First Second effort that also seemed that way, and even the Spider-Man seemed like it took me longer to read than most superhero comics do today.

Sometimes I think all the second guessing about ease of format and making sure that comics aren't confusing to newcomers or extolling the virtues of clear, accessible types of stories above those that require the reader to work a bit draws comics folk away from a lot of traditional virtues of certain comics formats. Things like perceived value, or work that's exciting because it's heartfelt and communicates a desire to be told to the reader even when baffling on the surface, or even the notion of putting out enough books to better to reach that tipping point at which readers will start into recursive shopping behavior.

In related news, I found this essay on FCBD to be kind of odd and wrongheaded. For one, there are assumptions that don't match up with what I know about some of the folks involved. As an example, saying that publishers participate in order to get their material over with comics audiences is a gross oversimplification. It neglects those companies that are savvy as to their realistic chance of actually doing this, and companies that want to support the system rather than judge their participation on how much product gets moved as a result in the short-term. Free Comic Book Day offerings can also generate publicity, and serve as a giveaway at book expos if you're the kind of company that attends them.

In general, though, it's precisely because comics hasn't been a mass medium since 1947 and has as part of its overall distribution network a specialty market that an event drawing attention to that part of the market potentially has value. There are dysfunctional aspects in that there's national (at least on-line) advertising suggesting material that will likely not be available at a majority of the local events, which is slightly insane. Downplaying the national specifics to allow local stores much greater leeway in how they want to participate makes sense to me, for sure. Some stores are still going to be more like clubhouses and won't make a value of growing the business in a way that allows them to participate in a non-pathetic way. In general, however, systems that aren't part of mass media at their lowest common denominator-broadest need to do things to increase business incrementally, and FCBD still seems to me like an opportunity for many shops to do so.

Speaking of FCBD offerings, I have a couple extra copies of Activity Book I'd be happy to drop into the mail for anyone in the continental US that wanted .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) Thanks. (Updated: All gone now; thanks.)
 
posted 3:02 am PST | Permalink
 

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