I’d title this with “Tyrese Gibson versus the Direct Market” but I was trying to tone down the provocativeness level a bit. That and I don’t want to be inundated by Mr. Gibson’s tweet team.

Since I’ve been on and off “vacation” for the last two weeks and then some, I haven’t been following things as closely as I normally would. What I’ve been getting has been mostly over at The Beat. Here and here, for instance.

The weird thing is that there’s even a perception of animosity. I mean weirder than Carmine Infantino asking if he has a legacy in comics weird. Look at this on its face.  Tyrese Gibson, handsome, suave model turned rapper turned movie star.  Dude’s got a lot of fans (if I quantify in the hundreds of thousands, I’m probably off by an order of magnitude.)  Dude’s got a lot of motivated fans.  He’s visible.  He’s known.  Maybe not Jay-Z or Bono known, but still, known.

Why on earth is his presence in comics regarded with a bare minimum of suspicion if not overt hostility?  Why is there even a suggestion of animosity?  A lot of people have criticized it as looking like a 90s book out of time, guy with a costume and some guns.  Which makes it different from a lot of non-superhero books how?  No, it doesn’t seem like my kind of thing.  I’m usually after meatier (or stranger) fare, myself.  But still, people bought TOMB RAIDER, right?  It’s an action-adventure comic book with a celebrity throwing some marketing muscle behind it.  But how much muscle is that, really?  A quick Google search comes up with mentions split about 50% to comics sites, some gaming and related culture sites and maybe a third to MTV and music sites.

I’m gonna make some friends here, but I’d argue that those percentages are mixed up.  If anything, the majority of hits should be coming from outside comics.  Comics sites will pick up on this story already.  Seems like he’d be getting better returns out widening the pool of potential readers.  I know, he’s twittering, which doesn’t really show up on those Google searches (not that I saw anyways).  He’s in TRANSFORMERS 2 right now, so I guess he’s dropping MAYHEM into that interview cycle as well, but who knows how much of those snippets actually make it to the screen.  And I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit around cruising entertainment channels to get that particular scoop.

So there’s some outside of comics marketing going on there.  Why isn’t he being welcomed with open arms?  Some people have suggested that if he really wanted to make friends with retailers, he’d offer the books as returnable.  But that’d have to be negotiatated through Diamond, unless he had his own fulfilment house running all that.  It’s a lot more trouble and money than you’d think at first to actually pull that off (even if retailers actually sent unsold copies in, or if there were unsold copies even left.)

You’d think that pulling even 1000 new readers (assuming about half a percent of his twitter followers actually *doing* something instead of just following his tweets) into stores would have some retailers excited. More importantly, these would be people who would likely be the rare and unusual “new comics reader” who don’t know about all the other titles that comics could potentially offer.  No, it’s not a panacea, nor is it the hallelujah chorus descending from Heaven on clouds of pure love to lead us to the promised land.  It is, however, people that you could try to toss CRIMINAL at.

Though one might point out that if those readers are in there only to get MAYHEM and to ignore everything else, that it might not be such a big deal after all.  An analogy.  I’ve been to a couple comic shows with Really Big Names on the bill.  You’d think that the people there to see the Really Big Name at the show would be looking around at other comics and checking things out.  I’ve seen people beeline for the Really Big Name, then grab free swag from the swag table and then leave.  In that case, the Really Big Name didn’t get me any additional eyeballs.  So if those readers are only there to discharge their obligation to their idol, then yeah, they’re not going to end up moving the needle very much.

Of course the fact that he’s getting his fans to pre-order ANYTHING in this age of on-demand culture is pretty amazing.  Getting people to show up at midnight sales is one thing.  Getting them to put their money down and then sit on their hands for three months before they get their book/movie/comic/record is asking a lot.  Yes, some people talk quite seriously about pre-order-patronage now, and maybe that’ll work out, but it will be for a devoted clutch of followers, and not for the mainstream reader.  And yes, things sometimes can be made to change.  But it seems to me that a lot of what’s happening is a result of the conservatism of the Direct Market at play.  And perhaps rightfully so.  The retailers are the ones on the hook for the most money when you’re looking at a situation like this.  They don’t know if this book is going to be the next CHEW (and how weird is that little phenomena?) or if it’s going to sit on their shelves and end up holding the sides of the dollar bins.

But still, this could be a situation where a significant number of readers start poking around direct market stores, having never been in one before.  Can we sell them on DARK REIGN or BLACKEST NIGHT?  I wouldn’t bet on it.  But I bet if I asked a couple of proactive retailers who are good at hand-selling, they could come up with some alternatives.

Sincerely, I wish the MAYHEM team the best of luck.  And I wish that the fans who pre-order the book will use this opportunity to check out other books on the stands to try and find something else to get excited about in comics.  And if they don’t find it, then maybe they’ll be inspired to create something else they do love.  If an audience isn’t being served, then find a way to fix it.

Okay, back to research reading.