Unqualified Offerings

Dirk Deppey responds to the critics of his essay, “The Trouble with Marvel.” I want to stress that I have no quibble with this part:

The most thoughtful and on-target response to the article came from weblogger Jim Henley, who turns out to have had prior experience in the bookstore trade himself.

Hey, right on, Dirk! Say it with me, True Believers, MAKE MINE UNQUALIFIED OFFERINGS!

Anyway, here was my item.

Now where were we? Oh yeah - Dirk’s item is just part one, mostly covering Marvel’s bookstore market share. It’s actually hard to find any areas of genuine mutual disagreement in this part, though I think I have a minor math bone to pick with him on a side issue. To wit, I noted Marvel’s six-fold bookstore sales increase in one year and, in the course of calling that very good, averred that it was unlikely that “the more mature manga bookstore business increased sixfold between 2001-2002.” Dirk basically says it’s likely that it did. But I think, mathematically, we can demonstrate its impossibility.

Say you have a massive, $100 graphic novel market. In Year One, The Stodgy Superhero Company gets $3 of those hundred dollars, and Big Manga, by Dirk’s own estimate, gets $50.

In Year Two, The SSC’s sales increase six-fold, to $18.

If Big Manga’s sales increase six-fold, they are now at $300. That means the graphic novel market must now be at least $318. That’s a jump of 318% for the market as a whole in one year, minimum. For it to be only 318%, every other purveyor of graphic novels must disappear from every shelf in America. If we assume that Everybody Else has flat sales, then their $47 in Year One is $47 in Year Two. $318 + $47 = $365. So now the market has increased 365% (Aren’t round numbers wonderful?)

But we know from Dirk’s original article that the graphic novel market as a whole grew “only” 33% from Year One to Year Two. (And by the way, that is damned impressive growth. That is the kind of jump that makes book retailer eyes light up. It jumps right out at you when you’re paging through your sales-by-subject report, believe me.)

So it’s just plain impossible for Big Manga’s sales to have increased sixfold. Damned if I can remember what that does to my original point, though. I took my nighttime pill for my back trouble already. So let me just say that if you have any interest in the comics biz at all, and Marvel Comics in particular, that Dirk Deppey’s response item is well worth your time. If you don’t have any interest, you might develop some if you read it. The series will continue tomorrow, with a promised discussion of “the connection between creator-ownership and bookstore sales.”

By the way: I note that on the Amazon Top 25 Graphic Novel Bestseller list, that DC’s Kingdom Come ranks higher than two X-men books, Watchmen is at number 4 after all these years and one of the “graphic novels” ahead of it doesn’t count, and the only Daredevil book on the list is the legendary Miller-Mazzuchelli story arc, Born Again. It looks like Quality Will Out after all, maybe.

Also, 10 of the Top 25 are superhero-related. 3 are reallly collections of newspaper cartoons and one, by Alice McDermott, seems to be one of those novels with no graphics at all. (And - ahem - one of the titles is by Fantagraphics.)

That said, it’s striking that the top title is a (topical) memoir, and two of Slave Labor’s books are outperforming most of the superhero titles.