Over the years the business risk of making comics has shifted as has been outlined in the previous three installments of Making Comics is Risky Business.
As promised in this last article on the subject we will now take a closer look at the risky business of speculation and why crowd funding is the future for comics publishing.
When Phil Seuling developed the concept of the Direct Market in the late 1970′s he predicated it on the existence of comic book specialty shops that were springing up across the country, most of which depended on sales of collectible back-issues, the value of which were marked up considerably on many depending upon their rarity and conditions.
Though back-issues at the time were still generally affordable, they established a precedent for what would constitute speculative value. Premiere issues, popular creators, significant events and, of course, mint condition comics became sought after commodities by comic collectors who became the backbone customers of the Direct Market.
As the rising prices of collectible comics became a recognized investment, collectors began to buy multiple issues of their favorite comics, one to read and others to squirrel away in mylar bags, preserving their mint condition and hopefully driving up their potential value.
The customers became speculators and took over the position of financial risk takers in the comic market. Professional speculators bought specific issues in quantity, artificially driving up demand and inflating aftermarket retail figures.
Retailers and publishers took advantage of the speculator market and a secondary market of collectible supplies like bags, boards and boxes sprang up.
Independent publishers benefitted greatly from the speculative nature of the market during the 1980′s as collectors feared missing the next “Holy Grail” guaranteeing that at least premiere issues of almost any title could receive respectable sales figures.
As Independent publishers began to proliferate in the market presenting themselves as serious competition for Marvel and DC, the Big Two, in defense of their reign, launched an all-out assault of first issues featuring popular characters and creators. Focusing on the speculative nature of the market they employed novelty devises like mini-series, variant covers, crossovers and events to successfully flood the competition out of the market.
By the mid 1990′s the Direct Market was a bloated mess of over-inflated and over-hyped product that nobody wanted or could any longer afford, crashing the market and even forcing Mighty Marvel into bankruptcy. Diamond stood as the only surviving distributor to a market that was once serviced by over a dozen.
Through it all the emergence of the graphic novel and the success of imported Japanese Manga paved a road into traditional bookstores challenging the Direct Market’s role as sole provider of comics to changing readership. Digital media, however was lurking in the background, poised to change how comics could be delivered to a world wide audience.
Eric Millikin's Art
The development of the web comic, which began with Eric Millikin’s Witches and Stitches as early as 1985, grew through the 1990′s and has flourished in the 2000′s, has changed the rules for creating comics completely and for the first time put the risk fully on the shoulders of the creators as, in most cases, they are the sole publishers and maintain complete autonomy of their works.
Though it requires minimal expense to post comics online, the true cost in publishing web comics is in the time it takes to create the material and cultivate the audience. Monetization of the web comics remains the biggest challenge as web comikers struggle to find ways to profit from their works. Most creators that have managed to bridge that gap have done so by rolling their web content into print product or digital downloads for mobile devices to be sold for retail.
Minimizing their investment risk, these unique independent publishers have taken advantage of today’s technology to put that risk into the hands of the consumer. Using Print on Demand suppliers like Lulu, CreateSpace, Comixpress, Ka-Blam, and others, they no longer need to sit on large quantities of expensive unsold books waiting for sales. Books are printed to order and shipped directly to customers, avoiding the need for distributors and returning a much larger portion of the profit to the publisher who is most often the creator themselves.
Steve Gerber
Finally, creators have found a way to control their properties which have been historically robbed from them by comic publishers for the last seventy years as wonderfully described by the late Steve Gerber in this recently resurfaced article Truth, Justice, & The Corporate Conscience, which I beg you to read and share with every comic creator you know.
The modern comic publisher also has a new tool at their disposal to minimize their risk and further enlist the consumer to share the burden. Crowdfunding through services like Kickstarter , and Indiegogo , capitalize on the strength of social networking and perks offered by campaign developers to essentially pre-sell comic projects.
Comic creators set a goal that represents the investment they will need to produce their project and they request financial support through pledges on these crowdfunding platforms. For various levels of financial support, rewards are offered as incentives. Though these rewards often vary considerably they generally include a printed copy of the project being promoted establishing a new form of marketing and distribution. If the established goal is not met, pledged funds are not collected and rewards are nullified.
Because crowdfunding does such a wonderful job predetermining the success of a project, some observers are viewing the phenomenon as a new form of market research avoiding the need for agents and pitchmen to sell a concept.
So, yes, making comics is risky business as has been proven over the last seventy-five years but it doesn’t have to be as risky as it has been. Now is the time for creators to take advantage of the resources available to them and take control of the direction of the industry so that they, themselves, can enjoy the riches provided by their creations rather than some domineering corporation that views creators merely as cheap disposable labor from which to capitalize on.
Carpe diem!
This week I read a 
I can’t help but look at the Occupy Wall Street folks struggling to coordinate the power of their voice and draw a comparison to webcomikers taking a stand in the name of making comics. Both groups have a need to publicly express themselves and are doing so with limited structure and a lot of passion. Like the garbled message of the protestors not all webcomics meet with warm reception but, like the message or not, you have to be proud that we live in a country that gives us an opportunity for free expression and that it is being exercised.
So, buy a comic book or graphic novel, pay to download an app and a bunch of digital comics, enjoy your purchase and support a comic creator but please bookmark your favorite webcomic, surf the web frequently for new webcomics that you have yet to discover and support the growth of the comics medium.
The comic book industry rescued itself from oblivion in the fifties by adopting the 
Digital comics, whether they are posted on the web, offered as a downloadable files or banked on a cloud can be read on devices as small as the palm of your hand or as large as the biggest television monitor you can imagine.
I can’t see selling a digital comic for more than the price of a can of soda or a candy bar. I want to be ravenous about what I want to read regarding comics. I want to read as much as I can and I am not excited about storing the content the way I am excited about collecting a comic book. Sell me the comic for 99¢ or a subscription of 12 for $10 and I’ll be happy.
Be willing to wholesale your comics and you will find a greater audience. If you don’t believe me look at the Walmarts of the world. They find their success in selling large quantities at the lowest possible price and they are making dinosaurs out of their competition.
We also know that if you can get the work for free right here you are less likely to download from some torrent site where the creators have no control or benefit at all from the piracy of their works. Thank You!
The first “graphic novel” that I remember reading was Archie Goodwin and Walt Simonson’s adaption of the movie ALIEN published by Heavy Metal in 1979. Titled ALIEN: The Illustrated Story this 64 page, full-color, perfect bound package was a riveting masterpiece of comic art that sold for only $3.95!
