Longtime Marvel exec Dan Buckley told the audience at the ICv2 Insider Talks at New York Comic Con that he is more optimistic than ever about the future of the comics medium. Buckley will leave the House of Ideas next year, but he’s not done yet: He took the stage to be interviewed by comics journalist Heidi MacDonald the day after the successful launch of the Midnight Universe, for which he was Executive Editor (see “Midnight Universe“).
Buckley said he is more optimistic than he was 10 or 15 years ago because the growth of the medium is bringing in new readers. “I always felt one of the biggest hurdles for us in expanding readership is, if you didn’t learn how to read comics growing up as a kid, and you’re an adult, and you pick up something that you think is a juvenile medium, and you can’t read it because you don’t understand how to follow panels, you just put the book down and say, ‘Oh, that art was really pretty,'” he said. “And then manga, Dog Man, middle-grade graphic fiction, YA graphic fiction, exploded onto the scene.”
One channel where he doesn’t see any future is the newsstand; that’s not coming back. “There were a bunch of inefficiencies involved in that, and then all those stores figured out [they’re] going to generate more revenue per square foot selling gum than are selling magazines,” he said.
That leaves a lot of other ways for people to find comics, including comic shops, bookstores, digital, and Kickstarter. “Which one do you think has the greatest potential for growth?” MacDonald asked.
Buckley thinks of them all as parts of a single ecosystem. He grouped comic shops, independent bookstores, and game stores, all of which overlap with each other, together, for a total of between 8,000 and 10,000 stores. “The retailers who run these stores know how to run the stores for the local communities,” he said. “I think they’re going to be incredibly healthy places because that’s where pop culture lives. That’s where you can go have a conversation, and I think people are seeking that out now.” Digital allows more casual engagement, particularly with vertical-scroll comics that are easy to read on smartphones, and Kickstarter gives creators a way to try new things, make a better living, and develop deeper contacts with readers, which in turn ties back into conventions.
The downside is a lack of data. “When Diamond had the numbers, we all knew the numbers,” Buckley said. “Now we’re all kind of reaching, like what are the actual numbers for each of these pieces, and how does it all add up? I know the sum of the parts is much greater than what the whole was before, but how do you get those things to talk to each other so you understand the scale of it? Because each opportunity offers different margin opportunities, but each of them has different strategic value to the, for lack of a better word, flywheel.”
Buckley realized the value of vertical-scroll digital comics early on. “I walked into the Marvel offices one day, and I go, ‘Each office has to do a vertical comic,’ and that’s when we started doing the Infinity comics on Marvel Unlimited, because I just wanted the team to learn how to do it,” he said. “Now the thing that was funny was our guys who make comics are used to making comics, so it was the world’s longest webtoons. Your thumbs would get tired initially because it’s about 2.5 webtoons to a comic on average.” Despite the learning curve, Buckley said, vertical-scroll comics are an important part of the mix because the format allows casual readers to flip through comics on their phones. “People can read it on a train,” he said. “They can read it standing someplace and put it away. You couldn’t do that with the traditional digital comics smart-panel formats.”
Like other formats, such as original graphic novels, vertical-scroll comics have ushered in different types of storytelling. “You’re not going to tell stories that are wide panel action scenes,” he said. “There’s going to be a lot of talking heads. You’re probably going to be more thoughtful about word balloon placement, because it’s not eating up 15 percent of your space, it’s eating up 50 percent of your space… When I said to the team, “You have to make these,’ each of the offices did them differently, because I didn’t tell them how to do it. I just said ‘Go do it,’ because I wanted to see what happened, and it very much reflected the talent that they were engaging with to do it. So [Jonathan] Hickman doing something with Declan [Shalvey] had a very different mix than Skottie Young doing what Skottie Young does.”
As for manga, Buckley said, “Yeah, I get I get jealous when I walk into Barnes & Noble and they have five towers and we have two, but they also offer a lot more genres. That speaks to many more demographics, but it also it draws a ton of people, and it increases your ability to get other people to try other products.” Manga has influenced the storytelling and art of superhero comics, from Absolute Batman to the work of Peach Momoko. “It’s not just increasing readership, it’s broadening the base for bringing different creative people into different places.”
Although he values young readers, Buckley said, it makes sense for Marvel to partner with Scholastic and Abrams to produce its children’s and YA graphic novels, because children’s comics have different distribution and creative demands. “We didn’t license Miles Morales Spider-Man to Scholastic because I want them to publish all Miles Morales comics going forward,” he said. “I want an eight- or nine-year-old to learn how to read comics, because when he comes to 12 or 13, if he still loves graphic fiction, the probability is he’s going to end up reading our stuff. The probability goes down a ton if I don’t get him engaged at six, seven, eight, nine years old with a character that he loves. So a lot of people say, ‘Well, I don’t know why Marvel goes into it themselves.’ It’s different. If you don’t have the distribution and you don’t have the skill set to do a very specific format, you’re wasting your time.”
Buckley’s career at Marvel included 22 years as President, and during that time he oversaw significant storylines such as Civil War and the just-launched Midnight Marvel universe, but he told MacDonald that the two things he was proudest of during his tenure with Marvel were improving the company’s relationship with the retail community (“While not perfect, I know it’s improved”) and with its creators, both current and past. “It makes it easier to engage with the creative community and easier to engage the retail community and sell your product and get people excited for you,” he said, “and if you don’t build on those pillars, it’s hard to convince people to do a lot of things for you that are really cool.”
With regard to the MCU, Buckley feels that comics should lead, not follow, the other media. “From a B-school IP management perspective, the beauty of comics is it’s a relatively low capital business,” he said. “It’s okay to fail. It’s not as fun to fail with a $300 million movie.”
He remembered being in the room when Marvel first was acquired by Disney, and Kevin Feige was explaining Guardians of the Galaxy to Bob Iger. “Kevin goes, ‘Well, we got a raccoon with a machine gun, and we have a tree that only says, “I’m Groot.”‘ And I remember Bob Iger looking at Kevin, and Kevin, not missing a beat, says ‘You’re Disney. There’s no problem with talking flora and fauna out here.'”
As for his long career at Marvel, Buckley summed it up this way: “Our job is we are being allowed to play with these toys. We don’t own these toys. Our job first, like any good little kid, is don’t break the toys. And if you can do a couple cool repaints, add a couple toys to the shelf, and put them back up there, and it’s better than it was when you started, that’s a W.”
Source: ICV2
