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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 134813
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| Posted: 19 June 2009 at 4:11am | IP Logged | 1
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How dare retailers come into this thread, slam Eric Larsen, and then turn around and make money off the sales of his (and Image's) books.ERIC LARSEN --- you should make sure that whatever comic shop is associated with www.comicsunlimited.biz is banned from purchasing any IMAGE related products, since the owner clearly just wants to slander you in a public/global forum. •• Image already has a history of not delivering the books the retailers ordered.
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Robert Walsh
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 24 July 2008
Posts: 456
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| Posted: 19 June 2009 at 4:30am | IP Logged | 2
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There's no shared money. Never has been. The only money I see if from
the books I work on. Which is why I always found it baffling when people
would say, "I don't want to work for Image because I don't want to make
Todd (or whoever) money." Since there's no shared money and comic
books all pitch in a flat fee, which supports the office and pays its
employees, none of us see a dime from the books we publish. That way
there's nothing to fight over.
* * * * *
Sounds sort of like a comic co-op or confederacy. Just enough of a central office to facilitate the shared interests of the company, while individual companies are left to their own devices (for good or ill).
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Eric White
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 17 October 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 1072
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| Posted: 19 June 2009 at 4:56am | IP Logged | 3
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Image already has a history of not delivering the books the retailers ordered.
++++++++++++
Wasn't it all those Image late books that caused so many comic shops to go under in the 90's?
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 134813
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| Posted: 19 June 2009 at 5:09am | IP Logged | 4
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Don't know about that, but I was told by several smaller publishers that their bottom line was being severely impacted by the retailers tying up all their money in Image books that didn't show up when promised. One even suggested there might be a case for a lawsuit, based on prior restraint of trade. Nothing ever came of this that I was aware of.Things got especially bad, I was told, when the Image boys discovered they could pay extra to the printers to get their books slotted into the production line ahead of others. So publishers who were on schedule were finding their books shipping late because the printers had been busy with Image books. Let's hear it for those champion of the little guy, huh?
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Knut Robert Knutsen
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 22 September 2006
Posts: 7374
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| Posted: 19 June 2009 at 5:27am | IP Logged | 5
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I think to me some of the confusion comes fromthe fact Image's "creator rights" claim came on the heels of the whole Creator's Bill of Rights push (which seemed to go too far in places) and Image (especially McFarlane) trying to identify with Dave Sim and other creators with "street cred" on the creator's rights issue.
But it turns out most of these guys just wanted to go into business for themselves, not help fund the creativity of others (which is something Kevin Eastman probably regretted doing in many of the Tundra-related cases where people just seemed to pick his pocket.)
I can understand the decisions of Image. I just wish they had been handled better. I think, when the Seven jumped ship, instead of focusing on trying to bring along as many hot creators as they could, they should have brought along at least one production manager and an editor.
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John Mietus
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 9697
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| Posted: 19 June 2009 at 6:28am | IP Logged | 6
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Image not delivering was part of the problem.
The other part (and I contest the more important and significant part) was
Marvel trying to corner the direct distribution market by opening Marvel
stores and being the only distribution source for Marvel titles, causing DC
to sign an exclusive contract with Diamond, which prompted the other
companies to either also promptly sign with Diamond or go under. This
forced all the other distributors to go out of business since the only titles
they could carry were those who refused to sign exclusive contracts with
Diamond.
Diamond becomes this ridiculous, bloated juggernaut that can now
afford to screw over the smaller dealers because they're the only game in
town, Marvel's experiment crashes and burns and contributes to their
bankruptcy, titles are no longer distributed through the traditional
newsstand distributors, and thousands of direct sales stores go under.
Add in the ridiculous speculator boom and subsequent crash, and you
can easily see why the industry was in dire straits in the '90s from a
publishing and sales standpoint.
And note that this is all without discussing the content of the books
themselves.
Marvel doing that whole "We're going to be like Disney by only selling
our comics at Marvel Stores!" bullshit was a terrible, terrible decision that
irreparably harmed the industry as a whole.
Edited by John Mietus on 19 June 2009 at 6:39am
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Eric White
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 17 October 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 1072
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| Posted: 19 June 2009 at 6:36am | IP Logged | 7
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Right. I shouldn't have said it was all Image's fault....... but they didn't help the situation much.
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Trevor Giberson
Byrne Robotics Chronology
Joined: 16 April 2004
Posts: 1888
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| Posted: 19 June 2009 at 6:52am | IP Logged | 8
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There were a lot of problems as I understand it. One thing that drove me nuts was the lack of commitment by publishers and creators to the projects. I can't count the number of books I started reading that were canceled barely a handful of issues in. It didn't take long before there was no point in giving the benefit of the doubt to new efforts.
If the company went under, that'd be one thing. But much of the time the publisher still existed, and they continued to launch new books. I mean, Caliber Press canceled The Crow for farg's sake (at least that got eventually finished elsewhere).
Most of these abandoned books were done by lesser knows, true. However professionals were doing it too. Steve Bissette, Alan Moore, even our host John Byrne abandoned a couple in mid-stream.
In my case, the lack of committment by publishers and creators to at the very least bring whatever stories they were telling satisfactory endings had more to do with me essentially giving up on comics in the early 90s than all the gimmick covers or late books in the world.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 134813
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| Posted: 19 June 2009 at 7:31am | IP Logged | 9
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Marvel doing that whole "We're going to be like Disney by only selling our comics at Marvel Stores!" bullshit was a terrible, terrible decision that irreparably harmed the industry as a whole.•• So… something that didn't happen -- Marvel Stores -- was a bigger problem than something that did -- Image Comics--?
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 134813
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| Posted: 19 June 2009 at 7:32am | IP Logged | 10
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…even our host John Byrne abandoned a couple in mid-stream.
••
Such as?
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Jesus Garcia
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 10 April 2007
Location: Canada
Posts: 2414
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| Posted: 19 June 2009 at 7:47am | IP Logged | 11
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At the very least the early history (as opposed to the
recent history) of Image demonstrated the merits of
necessary evil known as the bureaucracy of comics.
Left to themselves, few creators were capable of
operating within a 9-5 mon-fri workweek to deliver on the
projects they committed to. They would have needed
benevolent tyrants such as editors and publishers to boot
them in the ass, away from their playstations and such.
And, really, we shouldn't forget that the term creator
means "creator". There is no implication of dedication,
reliability, devotion, quality, persistence, or
consistency in the term "creator".
That's probably the biggest mistake that the Image
founders made: to assume that creators alone could get
book outs on time, without the bureaucracy.
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John Mietus
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 9697
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| Posted: 19 June 2009 at 7:57am | IP Logged | 12
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John Byrne wrote:
So… something that didn't happen -- Marvel
Stores -- was a bigger problem than something that did -- Image
Comics--? |
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No, something that did happen -- Marvel pulling their distribution
from the regular channels and becoming their own direct sales distributors,
prompting DC and thereby forcing all the other companies (and eventually
Marvel themselves when their experiment failed) to sign exclusive
distribution contracts with Diamond -- was a bigger problem than
something else that happened -- Image's lack of deadline discipline.
Edited by John Mietus on 19 June 2009 at 7:58am
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Topic Closed)
