I Know Nothing No 7; "Dr Who: The Only Good Dalek" (Part 1 of 2)

1.

There's a considerable redactie of editors credited in the first two pages of the BBC's new, and so far, only original Dr Who graphic novel, "The Only Good Dalek". There's one Clayton Hickman, for example, whose name is twinned with the title of "script editor" underneath the introductory splash of a worse-for-wear Dalek, and, over the page, there's Albert DePetrillo, the "commissioning editor", and Nicholas Payne, the "editorial manager", and Justin Richard, who's the "series consultant" as well as the author, and, finally, there's Steve Tribe, the "project editor".

That's an awful lot of editors for the one project, I'm sure you'll agree, but then, in so many ways, this is a very important project.


2.

This week's decision by DC and Marvel to substantially lower the price of their comic books is the single best piece of news that I have ever heard from the comic book industry, and far too many of those who share my predilection for pontificating on the net have either largely ignored the matter, or dismissed it with something close a sneer and a declaration of "about time too". But to play sniffy with such a brave reversal of policy is to display a colossal ignorance of both individual and social psychology, for, to put it simply, human beings aren't in the habit of reversing key decisions about matters as important and public as this without a considerable amount of soul-searching and politicking. After all, the very folks who've been so suicidally ratcheting up the prices of comics for year-upon-year are now those who at least in part are admitting to their own failings through the very existence of these drastic price cuts.


Some commentators have in passing pointed to the continuing contraction in the market for superheroes and suggested, with what on occasion reads as being a degree of smugness, that these price cuts were inevitable, that they were in effect imposed by the market rather than by company fiat. But only a fool would say, or indeed imply, any such thing. After all, paying close attention to the market and responding to its transparently-obvious demands is actually a remarkably rare event in the entertainment business, as can be seen from the wearyingly common procession of collapsing institutions, from Hollywood studios to record companies and, quite obviously, to comic book publishers. For the truth is that the human beings in charge of huge swathes of our economy aren't often in the habit of even safeguarding their own long-term financial well-being, let alone that of the organisations they supposedly represent. In fact, in the most general of terms, as we've learned again to our cost in the past few years and as we're already starting to forget, again, folks learn to live on the side of Vesuvius and to build mansions on the San Andreas Fault, and as long as they feel they're somehow benefiting from being wherever they are, they'll keep living there as if the Big One will never arrive.

Or, if it does, as if somehow it'll carry off everyone else except they themselves.

For folks will run companies, and indeed entire industries, into the ground and never notice they're doing so, let alone the fact that they might do something more productive with what they control, in their own long-term interest as much as in everyone else's.


Power, status, wealth, stubbornness, stupidity and incompetence; these are among the qualities which determine the operation of large businesses in the marketplace far more than the standard orthodoxies of economics would still, even after 2007 and all that, have us believe. And for two large corporation such as DC and Marvel to effectively admit that they've been wrong for whatever reason and to whatever end, that they've in essence been destroying the very market they profit from, and that drastic action is necessary immediately in a bold attempt to rectify the desperate situation, speaks well of at least a few influential individuals within those organisations.

Because, make no bones about it, a comparatively small elite within both companies was making an exceptionally fine living out of their companies even as the market for their product collapsed and collapsed again, and even recent economic history tells us that such privileged individuals are unlikely to respond to the dire realities of their situation even when it becomes obvious to everyone else that the game is up, that the business is relatively threadbare, and the time for radical preventative surgery long gone.

So, well done, DC, and well done, Marvel.

Or, if corporate ego is still an issue, and I bet it is, because people are people and shouldn't be expected to be anything else;

Well done, Marvel, well done, DC.

For whoever came first, and whoever was brave enough to follow regardless of face, bloody well done.

3.

Yet trying to shore up, and even expand, the existing market for comic books in the USA, and of course elsewhere, is still only dealing with the symptom of decline rather than the cause of it. For the very simple truth is that comic books are no longer socially ubiquitous, and until they once again are, the whole industry will be caught trying to carve out and maintain niche markets rather than being a unquestioned part of everyday existence. Decades ago, comics were so much a part of the typical that they barely registered as existing in the public mind at all unless somebody over the age of around 12 committed the social violation of reading them in public. For they were so much a given of the metal landscape of society that few people even stopped to realise that they existed in their millions upon millions, just as it takes an effort of will to realise today that, for example, packets of crisps exist when they might not, or that stories have been bound between cheap paperback covers for the less affluent to enjoy.

After all, nobody needs Coca Cola or eye-liner, but many consider both such a part of their lives that they rarely bother to summon up the act of the will to notice, let alone question, that we consume such unnecessary products at all. And it's a rare individual that might notice a neighbour turning on a television and think "Oh, so they're a TV watcher, are they?", as if something rather strange and unnecessary, indulgent and ridiculous is going on.


But for a very very long time now, comic books have been the preoccupations of a string of minority audiences, despite that fact that in one form or another the language of comics is one which a huge number of people choose to experience in a wide variety of forms. But presenting survey data that argues, for example, that graphic novels are more commonly read than either Chick-Lit or Western novels ignores the fact the whole business of reading comics in any public form is still regarded in itself by most as a deviant endeavour worthy of note. (*1) And if comic books are ever truly going to become a product secure in the mass market, comics have got to become socially ubiquitous again. They have to be everywhere, and to be everywhere to such a degree that nobody notices that comic books, or graphic novels, or whatever, are being read in buses and boardrooms, barbers and bars, and this time, they have to be an everyday pursuit for adults as well as children, rather than, let's be honest, being a hobby that neither one nor the other follows to any significant degree.

The long-term ambition of this industry mustn't be to stimulate a small hardcore of readers into investing even more of their food and drink money in another few Batman and/or Wolverine comics. That's a stabilising gesture, an emergency procedure to carve out some brief breathing space while the real business gets engaged upon.

*1:-http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2010/10/more-americans-read-graphic-novels-than-chick-lit-and-westerns-apparently/

4.

If the ultimate aim of the comic book industry ought to be, for the sake of argument and because I believe it so passionately that I fear my head might explode, to make their products ubiquitous, then the first step has to be to teach their potential consumers the language of actually reading comic books, for the working assumption of so many commentators is that everybody can read a comic, and would, with the proper encouragement and product, choose to do so, and of course that's nonsense. The sheer unfamiliarity of comic books as a product to a typical adult means that the effort of engaging with the unfamiliar by its very nature slashes the audience available to even the best product aimed at a mass market. (And, of course, I'm assuming that Marvel and DC, and indeed all comic book publishers, ultimately want to dominate the mass market rather than the peripheral ones they currently largely and perhaps Pyrrhicly control.) But beyond the alienating peculiarity of comics to most people, the language of them is so often difficult to read and enjoy for those not in the habit of doing so. In fact, even many of those who regularly read comics can find it hard to clearly follow and engage with the intent, if intent they can be said to have, of a great number of modern-day creators. In truth, even those of us who're in love with the medium and intimate with its traditions can become utterly lost within a few pages of this comic or that. Which means, of course, that to the strangeness of the habit of reading comics is added the challenges of trying to learn how to do so, all of which places a great deal of the adult readers of America and the UK outside of the capacities of companies and creators to reach them.

In short, the product is unfamiliar and the skills required to engage and enjoy it largely absent, and unusual habits which are difficult to master are never going to be an easy prospect for the entrepreneurial mind. And yet the current, and indeed near-permanent, state of crisis where establishing a mass market for comic books is concerned, points to the fact that the industry has to convince the majority that comics are so normal that they're invisible in their taken-for-grantedness, and that the consuming of comics is no more demanding than the playing of a computer game or, indeed, the reading of a book.


Given these facts and problems, therefore, I think it might be taken as a given that the only long-term solution will involve the targeting of children in a far more deliberate and intense fashion than the industry has proven willing to do so far. In essence, comic books need a Marshall Plan, a Manhatten Project, an eye-wateringly huge investment of money and talent turned to creating a substantial population of comic book reading, comic book consuming adults. The school curriculum, and the pre-school curriculum too, has to be invaded with products which inspire such a familiarity with the skills of consuming sequential story-telling that nobody knows they're doing so anymore because it's a natural to them as an MP3 or DVD. And such an educational initiative wouldn't be a token matter of picture books for the under-five or the production for a few English students of the odd and often poorly-designed comic book version of a Shakespeare play drawn by a creator who couldn't survive for a month in the modern-day comic day marketplace. Instead, we need a massive industry-wide endeavour to produce literally billions of text-books across the curriculum for all ages which engage school children in the business of comics, while, yes, serving the socially laudable aim of making education more effective and entertaining and making, in the longterm, shedloads of cash.

Why not? It's vital to keep the Superman and Spider-Man franchises going, but that shouldn't exclude the possibility of creating a socially ubiquitous product that is indeed part of most everyone's life. And, just in case this seems a rather venal proposition, let's remember that it's not as if comic books aren't a fantastic tool to deliver learning through, whether as real-world products or resources on the net, and that it's not as if the demand isn't there in eduation already for the industry to attend to, stimulate and profit from.

5.

But until the industry grasps the fact that the schools are the pimping ground for their product's long-term survival, and until we all attend to the creating of several generations of comic book readers rather than struggling to maintain small niches of hardcore customers, we must recognise and applaud any comic which carries the chance of penetrating the wider market and establishing the business of reading comic books among non-comic book readers.

And such a product is surely "Dr Who: The Only Good Dalek", a graphic novel featuring the UK's most popular television drama show, or at least the most popular beyond the mass ghettos of soap opera. Backed by the financial and marketing heft of BBC Books, this is an incredibly important product for our medium, and especially where the UK is concerned. It's 128 full-colour hardbacked pages in a new size-format released just in time for the tidal wave of X-Mas spending, and its success could encourage the creation of a whole new line of licensed BBC graphic novels, and hopefully copycat product too, which might carve out new demographics of consumers and establish a greater habit of, yes, simply reading comics.


It's a huge deal, "The Only Good Dalek", and I can see why it would require such a redactie of editors to shepherd it into the real world. For though this book will undoubtedly be a commercial success in itself, given the brand and the time of year, it's also an all-too rare opportunity to establish more than a small line of graphic novels. It's in reality something of a beachhead for a far more considerable and necessary operation, namely the carving out of that, yes, ubiquitous market for comic books in a world where they're still seen as, yes, odd, and stupid, and unnecessary.

Because so much of the chatter on the net, amongst professionals as well as fans, concerns certain genres of comics, or particular characters, and ambitions often seem limited to making sure that that which the hardcore adores stays alive for as long as the hardcore does. But without the language of comic books being a common one, and without the habit of buying them and experiencing them as objects, the very business of comics will continue to catastrophically decline.

And in such a situation, it could hardly hurt to have thousands upon thousands of Dr Who graphic novels, developed from scratch for the contemporary market, stacked in the book sections of Britain's supermarkets for the months leading up to Christmas, could it?

To be continued;



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