PAD Answers Questions; Comicon Boards Go Apeshit
Of course, when the
questions
involve the "Waiting For The Trade" phenomenon, it's a pretty safe bet
that things are going to get ugly in short order.
The thread is four pages long as of this writing, but there's some good
stuff in there, particularly the comments from PAD, Johanna, Nat
Gertler, and Kurt Busiek. (For the record, I think Busiek's post
on the
third
page sums up my feelings on the matter rather nicely.)
UPDATE: PAD has returned to the thread,
offering
an apology (of sorts):
In reading over my postings with a cooler eye, although I
stand by my original assertion--that the "wait for the trade"
philosophy impedes the ability to get a mid-list or "non-aligned"
series off the ground and/or maintain it--I now feel I put forward my
argument in an unnecessarily high-handed and combative manner. For
that, I apologize to any I may have offended.
While PAD's point may be true as matters stand today (I'm sure it
is
harder to sustain mid-list or "non-aligned" series if many fans who
would be interested in such series are holding out for hope of a
trade), it really does nothing to address the underlying issue:
If fans don't want to buy certain comics in the monthly format, they
won't. So if publishers want to sell those stories to consumers,
they'd better figure out how to deliver those books in a format the
audience desires. Sure, that might put more pressure on the
publisher to gauge which mid-list series might do better in another
format and/or market, but, hey, the publisher is also the one who will
see the rewards if the risk pays off, so forgive me if I seem a little
callous on this point. And "impeding" isn't the same as "ruling
out," so it's possible that lower-selling monthly titles (such as
Sleeper
or
Gotham Central) might enjoy more success as trades.
