Comics of March 1996

Bonus Topic: The Direct Market Defined!


Cover to The Adventures of Superman #534 © 1996 DC Comics.

I'd thought these posts on Comics of March would mostly consist of covers, along with some notes on whatever memories popped up after seeing them. They've been not only longer and less frequent than planned, but surprisingly emblematic of the distinct stages through which I've traveled on my nearly lifelong journey as a comics reader. Once again I'm jumping ahead 11 years, this time from 1985 to 1996, in hopes that we can get to this decade before March is over. And the bonus knowledge I'm dropping is more than you need to know about what's called the direct market. Covers throughout are from the diverse publications released to that market in March 1996.


Covers to The Land of Nod #1 and Stray Bullets #8 © 1996 Jay Stephens and David Lapham, respectively.

When comic strips first got packaged in the early 1930s as comic books — or comic magazines, as they were often called at the time, which frankly makes more sense — they were sold on the newsstand. It was soon discovered that new material, and more specifically new long-form adventure stories, would be their selling point, merging comic strips with the pulp magazines. Over the next few decades, availability of comic books spread to mom-&-pop general stores, convenient stores, and the like, but they were still distributed to those retailers with other periodicals. As the presence of comics in such locations dwindled, for reasons I'll address another time, dedicated comic-book stores opened up. Some began life within collectibles shops and independent booksellers, at first dealing primarily in back issues, but in the early 1970s the new frontiers of specialty shops and direct distribution to those shops joined in a symbiotic prosperity.


Cover to The Cowboy Wally Show © 1996 Kyle Baker.

If you ever bought comic books with the top half or third of the cover removed, you've kinda helped perpetrate fraud. Most periodicals and many mass-market paperbacks sold by newsstand distributors are returnable after their sales window has closed. Since the volume of such material is so great, retailers merely strip off part of the cover to claim credit instead of shipping back items that will simply get pulped on arrival. In theory the merchandise should get destroyed by the retailer, but in practice — at least back in the day — if it had a shelf life like old comic books did, it sometimes ended up sold to used-book stores and the like.

The direct market was built around the opposite of this practice. Phil Seuling, who ran comic-book conventions in New York and recognized the opportunities that came with a growing market of collectors, began talking to Marvel and DC circa 1972-73 about an alternative to the increasingly less profitable business as usual: The publishers would sell directly to retailers on a non-returnable basis. Whereas newsstand distribution had the wholesalers deciding on the mix a given retail outlet would receive within the volume ordered, in the direct-sales system retailers would get to specify exactly how much they wanted of a given title. And publishers would give retailers a deeper discount, since the middleman was eliminated, in exchange for non-returnability; knowing that all sales through the direct market were final meant that publishers could set print runs more precisely and thus more economically. Many retailers intentionally ordered more copies of a given issue than would sell right away in order to build up their stock of back issues.

That last part is one of many things that has changed since direct sales came into being, because there just isn't the demand for recent back issues that there once was. Another is that the so-called direct market didn't stay free of middlemen for long, with larger retailers purchasing both for themselves and for smaller retailers in their area. Seuling died in 1984, before the direct market became the near-exclusive system of comic-book distribution (and Diamond, an outgrowth of Baltimore retailer Steve Geppi's once-regional concern, became the near-exclusive pipeline for comic books to retailers nationwide), but the tide had begun to shift. DC and Marvel were developing certain projects specifically for the direct market in the 1980s, catering to their die-hard audience as well as experimenting with new formats, and as mentioned in my Comics of March 1985 post smaller publishers like First, Eclipse, and Pacific popped up courting the direct market's older, more upscale readership. Even so-called undergrounds and self-publishers now had access to a national distribution network.


Covers to Kabuki Color Special #1 and Skeleton Key #8 © 1996 David Mack and Andi Watson, respectively.

While the big difference between my comic-book buying in 1974 and 1985 was geographical, moving from spinner racks in Wildwood to comics shops and conventions in Philadelphia, the change that took place between 1985 and 1996 was more internal. After going to college in Ohio, I moved back home and got a job with the long-lived, well-respected Fat Jack's Comicrypt while trying to expand the freelance writing and cartooning I'd begun at school. I wasn't just a consumer any more, or even an aspiring creative professional; my days were spent on the sales floor and, increasingly, in the central office of a veteran retailer, and whether on or off the clock I was corresponding in print, by phone, and via the Internet with people from all corners of the comics community.

I followed more superhero stuff than ever in the mid-1990s out of professional necessity, so that I could talk knowledgeably to customers and produce the weekly store newsletter, Comicscrypt, but I also sampled more from the independent and alternative publishers. One of the perks that comes with working at a comic-book store is the ability to read material without buying it, but the truth is that you end up spending at least as much money as you would sans that benefit or your employee discount. You either find even more material you need to own, if you're a completist collector, or like me you keep up with the zeitgeist and old faithfuls but pass on purchasing them so that you can afford material of a higher caliber that you might not have taken the chance on sight unseen, material that begs to be owned, admired, re-read, and lent out to others.


Covers to Death: Time of Your Life #2 and Death by Chocolate © 1996 DC Comics and David Yurkovich, respectively.

For this and the next installment I'm switching from comic books cover-dated March, a concept explained in Comics of March 1974, to issues released in March. That's partly because this is, after all, actually March, but mostly because of another shift brought on by the direct market. Publishers who don't receive newsstand distribution tend not to use advance dating nor often any cover dates at all, putting the actual month of release in their indicia (that strip of tiny text providing copyright and other information). What's more, DC and Marvel had to ship issues exactly on schedule when their primary clients were newsstand distributors, publishing reprints or stockpiled inventory if a title's regular creative team was running late; these days, creative continuity is more important to the audience, and if publication of an issue is delayed its cover date won't necessarily correlate to the Big Two's now-standard gap of two months after release. I searched the archives of the Comiclist website for material scheduled to arrive in March 1996 and indeed found discrepancies in cover dating as well as material from independent publishers that I'd never have been able to pinpoint otherwise; however, the shipping lists cover what is scheduled for a given week, not what was actually received by stores, so it's possible that a cover adorning this post was delayed.


Cover to Concrete: Think Like a Mountain #1 © 1996 Paul Chadwick.

I think my subscription list at Fat Jack's had more small-press titles on it than DC and Marvel titles combined, especially when you factor in the formidable Dark Horse. The Oregon publisher was home to creator-owned brilliance like Paul Chadwick's Concrete, Frank Miller's Sin City, and Mike Mignola's Hellboy. Caliber offered the early work of Brian Michael Bendis on Jinx and David Mack on Kabuki; Slave Labor published a wide variety of unconventional material, from Andi Watson's Skeleton Key to Action Girl Comics, an all-women anthology curated by Sarah Dyer. Neil Gaiman's Death came back for another miniseries from DC's Vertigo imprint in March 1996 while Philadelphia's David Yurkovich introduced Death by Chocolate through Sleeping Giant. I was buying Image reprints of Jeff Smith's Bone to catch up and getting in on the ground floor of the almost impenetrable Stray Bullets from David Lapham. Marlowe & Company released a new edition of Kyle Baker's The Cowboy Wally Show and Fantagraphics issued Chris Ware's innovative Acme Novelty Library.


Covers to Bone #5 and Sin City: That Yellow Bastard #2 © 1996 Jeff Smith and Frank Miller, respectively.

A lot of the superhero fare coming out from Marvel and DC was disappointing, including former standard-bearers. The Justice League and Avengers titles were virtually unrecognizable. I'm continuing the tradition of putting a representative Superman cover atop these posts because it makes for an interesting comparison, but in 1996 Superman still had long hair and lackluster scripting three years after supposedly dying at the hands of Doomsday; later that year Clark Kent would marry Lois Lane, and in March 1997 yet another stunt would find him stuck with a new costume and completely different set of powers. Dwayne McDuffie's Icon, a variation on the Last Son of Krypton theme published by DC through its partnership with Milestone, was the better read. At least Stuart Immonen was continuing to hone his considerable artistic skills on The Adventures of Superman, while his future collaborator Kurt Busiek was turning out delightful stuff with penciler Pat Oliffe on Untold Tales of Spider-Man, the only Spidey title really worth reading then — although I'm among the distinct minority who rather enjoyed Ben Reilly's replacement of Peter Parker, if only because sometimes the status quo needs shaking up by any means necessary. I realize that I'm talking inside baseball now, but it's late and my consciousness is streaming.


Cover to DC Versus Marvel #4 © 1996 DC Comics & Marvel Comics.

The big crossover of the year was the DC Versus Marvel miniseries, one decade after the galactic and interdimensional intrigue, respectively, of Secret Wars and Crisis on Infinite Earths, and two decades after the one-shot tabloid edition in which DC's Superman met Marvel's Spider-Man for the first time. I'm not sure I even read all of the crossover, but many of the Amalgam one-shots that it led to, merging characters from the two companies into hybrids like the Spider-Man/Superboy mash-up Spider-Boy, were a hoot. My only mainstream Marvel purchase in March 1996 was the top-notch Mark Waid & Ron Garney run on Captain America, which would soon be rudely interrupted by the general fiasco that was Heroes Reborn. Next year, I'd add Waid's Ka-Zar, Busiek's Thunderbolts, and Garney's Silver Surfer to the mix, and briefly spring for the Spider-Man titles too, with their ace Mike Wieringo and John Romita Jr. artwork.

Covers to The Flash #113 and Captain America #451 © 1996 DC Comics and Marvel Comics, respectively.

Waid shot to fan-favorite status writing DC's Flash, which led to a stint on Marvel's X-Men, the creation of Flash's funny and touching superhero-sitcom spinoff Impulse, and much more. He'd moved to my area and become a friend — a development for which I'd be thankful even if it hadn't led to sneak peeks at Kingdom Come, his imminent project with Alex Ross that would actually change my life. The intergenerational premise of Waid's Flash, mixed with the story structure of Neil Gaiman's landmark Sandman and of course the creators' own particular talents, resulted in James Robinson & Tony Harris' Starman exceeding expectations. And you can't survey covers from that era, which is nominally the point here, without marveling at Jerry Ordway's paintings for Starman's crossover partner The Power of Shazam!.

Covers to Starman #18 and The Power of Shazam #14 © 1996 DC Comics.

Among the pleasant surprises of coincidence on the shipping lists for March 1996 was the long-delayed final issue of Sandman. It's easy to get jaded reading so many comic books as a retailer or journalist, but just as I distinctly remember reading the first issue of Kingdom Come in the hammock at my mom's house, I recall flopping down on my bed, stomach to the mattress and propped up on my elbows like I was a kid again, to devour Sandman #75. One of the great but most overlooked dividends of that series — compared to how many people it brought to comics and what it did for Gaiman's career, certainly — was Sandman Mystery Theatre. Gaiman's Sandman was very tenuously connected to the Golden Age DC superhero of the same name. The 1939 Sandman, Wesley Dodds, was a cloaked crimefighter armed with sleeping gas based on the dime-novel and radio vigilantes of the day; not long after he joined the Justice Society, he turned in his fedora and gas mask for the traditional long underwear. The 1989 Sandman created by Gaiman with Mike Dringenberg revolved around Dream personified, usually called Morpheus, and owed more to Alan Moore's Swamp Thing than its superhero namesakes. But it proved so successful that Dodds was brought back in fedora and gas mask for Sandman Mystery Theatre, where he was given to uncontrollable prophetic dreams in pulpy stories written by Matt Wagner and then Steven T. Seagle, most often illustrated by Guy Davis. Where Sandman had award-winning impressionistic covers crafted by Dave McKean, Sandman Mystery Theatre had artfully designed photographic covers from the team of Gavin Wilson & Richard Bruning.


Covers to The Sandman #75 and Sandman Mystery Theatre #38 © 1996 DC Comics.

There's another post getting away from me, as whatever's conducting my train of thought discovers that memory lane has no tracks. While I'm able to confine the covers on display here to one month out of the past several hundred, it's impossible to do the same for the experiences that come rushing back to me, and that was a very eventful time both in my professional life and in the comic-book industry as a whole. Raise your hand if you lived through the distributor wars!

Most covers courtesy The Grand Comics Database. Research conducted via the GCD, Comiclist, The Marvel Database Project, The DC Database Project, Mike's Amazing World of DC Comics, and Google.