Waid's got more over at
CA, including this rather important bit:
I’m not positing that print should just die or go away. I am saying, as I have been for over a year, that unless you’re, say, Brian Vaughan or Bendis or someone else who’s already proven to comics shops that you can move non-superhero fare, print-first creator-owned floppies and graphic novels are a huge risk. Printing prices are a gargantuan bite of your budget at typical direct-market print-runs, even for big name creators. Even to print through Image, as a creator, you have to be willing to work for back-end money or to fund STAGGERING initial costs. There’s no WAY for me — or anyone with less of a track record than I have — to launch two or three new creator-owned books into the marketplace as it is right now, especially non-cape material, and not go bankrupt by issue three.
So that's the other thing: I don't live in Florida. I've never been to Coliseum Of Comics. So maybe it IS a great, indy-friendly place. Maybe Phil Boyle stuffs books like Orc Stain and Optic Nerve and Prophet into his customers' hands and says "Trust me, you need to read this."
But if he doesn't, he's part of the problem, part of the reason that indy creators face a huge uphill battle with print comics.
But only a small part. Because it's not his fault that the Internet is cheaper than printing and distributing thousands of comics.
Tangentially, I saw an article back in '010 called
Zombie mania fuels Tempe comic shop's success; it is, as you might surmise, about how The Walking Dead TV show is creating new business for comic shops. Specifically, my local comic shop.
It was neat seeing the article, and it was neat seeing my LCS's owner namedropped on Comic Book Resources when they linked it. But they missed something, in the symbiotic relationship between a product and a salesman: Drew may be benefiting from the success of The Walking Dead, but the success of The Walking Dead is because of guys like Drew.
In 2005, I'd just finished school and was planning a trip back east. I was stocking up on reading material for the coming plane and bus rides. Some of the comics I bought were known quantities I'd been meaning to pick up -- V for Vendetta and Luba -- but I also asked Drew for a recommendation, something I'd never heard of. He told me I needed to check out The Walking Dead. The first trade hooked me, I caught up on the rest of the trades and then started following it monthly; I've personally plunked down hundreds of dollars on the thing over the past 7 years.
I'm a drop in the bucket, and the book was already somewhat successful by the time I started reading it. But the point is, while a book like that ultimately catches fire on Amazon and at Barnes and Noble, in those crucial first few months it's guys like Drew recommending it to customers that ensure it survives and even GETS as far as a second trade.
And it bears adding that Kirkman was already a known quantity at this point; he wasn't the rockstar he's become, but he'd had some success with Invincible. And that even then, the success of the series was a HUGELY unlikely occurrence; even granting the quality of the series (and again, I do quite like it) he was incredibly lucky that it became not merely a runaway hit but the bestselling comic for years running.
So yeah, Waid's right: stuff like Walking Dead, where a creator steps out of relative obscurity and becomes a millionaire, is effectively a once-in-a-decade phenomenon. It's like winning the lottery (and again, I'm not knocking Walking Dead; I think it's great -- but a lot of great books fail). And it's much more attractive for creators to pursue digital distribution precisely because it's so much lower-risk.
