The July Mailbag Q&A is Here!

By David Harper

July 13, 2019

It’s a little late, but the July Mailbag Q&A is here! Let’s get to it, and thanks to everyone for all of the excellent questions. You did not disappoint, as per usual. It’s a laundry list of questions about everything from digital strategies in comics to hoops thoughts, and you all are the best as per usual.

Oh, and if you every have any questions you want to add before I post about beginning work on the next edition, feel free to email me them any time at david@SKTCHD.com or to add them in the SKTCHD forum. I’m always accepting new questions for the Mailbag!

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Notable Replies

levi says:

July 13, 2019

Love the dust jackets question. Remember the jacketless Marvel Now hardcovers? I wish all Marvel collections were released like that still today.
chrisburton says:

July 13, 2019

Great mailbag, and I found the digital strategies ideas particularly interesting, especially the idea of “more surprises.” I was thinking about that, and wondering if a digital-only (initially) Beyonce drop of a new high profile #1 would be financially successful. I’m thinking something like Wolverine #1 by Tom Taylor and John Cassaday (we can dream). Would the existing digital audience plus a significant portion of the “Wednesday Warriors” types all buy this digitally? I’m sure retailers would go nuts over something like this, but maybe that could be “soothed” if they could place their orders on short notice for physical copies that would be released 4 weeks after the digital drop and have a “variant” cover by someone high profile like Artgerm or whoever.
SKTCHD says:

July 15, 2019

chrisburton:

Would the existing digital audience plus a significant portion of the “Wednesday Warriors” types all buy this digitally? I’m sure retailers would go nuts over something like this, but maybe that could be “soothed” if they could place their orders on short notice for physical copies that would be released 4 weeks after the digital drop and have a “variant” cover by someone high profile like Artgerm or whoever.

I’m not sure if either of these would work, but honestly, I’m of a belief that it’s worth trying new things because at a certain point, doing things the way we’ve always done them stops working as well as it once did. And I think that was 1990.

And we’ve seen digital only Beyonce drops before. The Private Eye is the most notable one, but Jim Zub and Max Dunbar did Stone Star fairly recently. I’d say only The Private Eye really counts as high profile, though, but it proved to be a monster success by all accounts.
Rolacka says:

July 17, 2019

Thanks for answering my question on cover treatment

@SKTCHD Your answer is the same as mine. You don’t explicitly say it in the answer, but your examples are a different cover artist to interior. Is that intentional?

On covers standing out, I’m reading Marvel Knights via Marvel Unlimited and found out yesterday I missed the release of issues #4 and #5.

Screenshot_20190717-1856401536×2048 985 KB

On scanning through the lack of logo (for admittedly good reason) made me miss the book, and obviously the rest of cover didn’t signal what it was to me.

To be fair to Marvel and Geoff Shaw it is a consistent cover artist and style. However, they are quite generic character pieces rather than hinting story*. To be fair to me Black Panther hadn’t been a character as of issue #3 and is introduced #4, so definitely not a good cover not to have a logo, and to be fair to Geoff Shaw, but not Marvel, from the gap at top was designed to have said logo.

*Except issue #1 which is GREAT. As well as 1. looking good it 2. conveys the tone of the story perfectly and 3. the red pops against the muted crowd to make cover stand out. How is issue #1 not the trade cover?!?

However, do you think I could miss an issue of Southern Bastards if the logo was missing?

Screenshot_20190717-1948381536×2048 732 KB

On other points:

@Prince3PO 's question on digital strategies question and your answer on creating connections.

Comixology still has that in the android app, and it can be very effective when I’m trying a series. Seeing that price and knowing with one click I buy can make me get that next issue right away (Assassin Nation, American Carnage) or decide to drop a series (Black Hammer: Age of Doom), as I have that immediete gut response on whether the £0.69/£1.49/£2.49 is worth it for me to continue reading.

(Also @Prince3PO - I see you’re David’s favourite getting the longest answer).

@chrisburton 's Walking Dead #193 question

I believe you are a Contest of Challengers listener Chris. Did you find Pat and Dal’s response interesting? They talked about the topic for half the episode and didn’t really address whether Image should/shouldn’t have. They just talked about speculators calls etc.

I wonder how many issues of Walking Dead were sold to readers not in pull lists by the end. Challengers were only selling 1-2. If most stores were minimal and boosted based on #192 and the returnability offered for issue #193, then hopefully most stores serviced their regular readers.
chrisburton says:

July 17, 2019

Yes, I did listen to that Challengers episode, and their perspective was really interesting since it was pretty much just from the business perspective. The gist of it for me was that they were putting in a lot of work for something that was not going to grow their business and was not going to make them any real extra money. After hearing that I am definitely more sensitive to the retailers’ position on the situation. The whole thing comes across even more as fan service by Kirkman (which isn’t a bad thing in a vacuum) and feeds into the speculator nonsense that doesn’t seem to lead to any sustainable gains for the industry, from what Patrick and Dal said. Also, I was not aware that there was some returnability on #193 until hearing about it on the Challengers pod since they did up their order a little, but it would seem that was not taken advantage of by retailers all that much. Ordering for the rack just seems like such a massive crap shoot for retailers.

Continue the discussion at community.sktchd.com

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