The 3rd step in taking over the comic book business is a natural and critical extension of step #2. While Step #1 involved the task of creating a superhero universe, and step#2 focused on developing a business strategy for your heroes, step #3 follows a similar but slightly different, trajectory.
Step #3: Study the business environment, do your homework, and target the competition
Let’s continue to use Giant Comix as our example since Giant Comix is the future of all comics. In doing extensive research into this particular industry, in developing Giant Comix, I specifically wanted to emulate the successes of past companies and avoid their mistakes and failures.
After exhaustive study basically I learned an invaluable lesson, which is simply this: all of Marvel and DC’s business decisions for the first 50 – 70 years of their respective existence were all awful. Just awful. In fact, if you want to learn what not to do when developing a comic book company, simply study the rich histories of both of those companies.
Some examples include: don’t sign stupid licensing deals for your superheroes in which your company stands to not profit. Don’t sign stupid TV deals that give away your royalty rights to the shows featuring your characters. Don’t sell your characters. Don’t sell the movie rights to your characters. Don’t outsource your merchandising. Don’t price kids out of buying your comic books. Don’t conspire with a single distributor to reduce the availability of comics to ensure pre-order sales and appease investors.
I would include “don’t sell yourself to Disney” but as long as you can churn out billion dollar movies I guess I’d be wrong.
Ironically just about every poor decision the major comic book companies made over the years ended up being better for the consumers. Signing those stupid deals generated an incentive for retailers to come up with a wide range of crap to make money off of. Kids loved that stuff; I remember I had a Spider-man bedsheet that was made out of some kind of plastic wire mesh. I guess it was supposed to be a bed sheet/ tarp/ car cover. Whatever it was wasn’t very comfortable but I thought it was cool because it had a big giant image of Spiderman swinging through the city at night.
Marvel probably had nothing to do with that bedsheet and they probably didn’t even make any money off the sale either. I got a bedsheet. They got zip.
But probably the worst business decision they ever made, aside from selling to Disney, was selling Spiderman and X-Men to SONY. This was an AWFULLY STUPID thing to do and it was the best thing that happened to the superhero business since the creation of Superman. If it weren’t for that bonehead move, we might not have seen the Marvel cinematic universe. Might not have seen The Avengers or Iron Man. Not having their most popular (Spiderman) and hottest (X-men) characters forced Marvel to look in another direction when it was finally ready to make movies.
So they had to focus on Iron Man et al at that point because they really had nothing else. The logic of creating a whole cinematic universe under those conditions was pretty clear. After all, the heroes they had left weren’t nearly as compelling as stand alone characters as they were when paired and contrasted with other superheroes of the universe. So what was a bad business decision for them eventually led to movies like Ant-man & the Wasp, and Captain America, and Doctor Strange. And Thor. These are movies I never thought I’d ever get the chance to see.
The past 15 years has been for me a childhood dream come true.
And I’ve only had one minor problem with all these amazingly successful films from Marvel/Disney, and DC/Warner Bros.: they all bored me so much I stopped watching them. Maybe one day, if I want to seem like a nice guy, a fair guy, I’ll sit down and watch every Marvel/ DC movie before I continue being critical of them. I did see Black Panther, after all. So it can be done.
But then I’d have to watch the last IronMan movie. And the Guardians of the Galaxy movies. And the last Thor movie. And the last 2 Avengers movies. And Ant-man. And Ant-man and Wasp. And Doctor Strange. And then I’d have to watch Wonder Woman, just to be fair to DC. I’d have to watch Batman v Superman also. And Justice League. I’m not watching Suicide Squad, but I’d probably have to watch Aquaman when it comes out.
I have no interest. None. Zip. I’ll not reveal all my reasons in this post but some of them are fairly obvious. First, the Marvel movies should really be called Disney movies because they all follow the Disney formula. I learned in college that you can’t have a good action story without a good villain but Disney believes scary villains scare kids so all of Marvel/Disney villains are pretty weak.
Just ask yourself who was your favorite Marvel villain? Does it take you a second to remember any villain that comes before the last Marvel movie you saw? There have been some great actors playing Marvel villains but when your villains aren’t truly threatening, your action movie isn’t at all dramatic or suspenseful. It’s just a popcorn movie.
Secondly none of these movies are aspirational or, dare I say, romantic. From what I’ve heard of Wonder Woman, and from what I saw in Black Panther, the studios have learned to copy what JJ Abrams did in the Star Trek reboot; Abrams told a mini story before the actual movie, that was dramatic and exciting, and that set the stage for everything that followed. More importantly as a primer, that opening sequence gave more heft to the overall story. It worked in Lord of the Rings, and was brilliant when used to introduce us to the character of James Kirk. It’s been done to great effect before, mind you. Just go watch Superman (1978)
But while this technique gives the movie a sense of import, it is a poor substitute for real aspirational or emotional depth. For most of Hollywood’s long history, movie making seemed to center around morals. Movies were trying to make statements, in some form or fashion. Because today’s Disney movies typically don’t aspire to that, they all tend to lose resonance. These are successful movies but forgettable movies. They are fantastic depictions of some of the coolest ideas ever put on paper, yet they all blend together in memory, and oddly each movie seems to take you to a great many places without going anywhere at all.
Giant Comix is going to make way better movies than that. Every movie we make will be made with an eye toward making a better superhero movie than the best superhero movie ever made: Superman (1978). Making a billion dollars opening weekend won’t be our priority. When you come see our movies, you’re going to forget all your troubles and all your problems and you’re going to feel like you’re traveling to another world. And when you walk out of one of our movies, you’re going to want to go out and change somebody’s life.
You’re going to want to go out and do something heroic. Be somebody heroic.
You’re going to want to be a Giant.
But I’ll get to more about that later…
