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Here's the second part of our annual creator survey, and this time out we have some exclusive peeks at some new projects for 2016, as well as what might be hit of something cool to happen...but you'll have to read everything figure out what that is. Thanks to all for taking the time to participate in this survey especially during the busy holiday time. You can find Part 1 here.

Image’s March solicitations are out, and in addition to the usual goodies like Saga, Injection, No Mercy and many many more a few news series and OGNs are debuting: • Circuit Breakers, a long in the making five issue series by Kevin McCarthy with art by Kyle Baker finally comes out. The series explores J-Pop […]

[Jimmie Robinson is the creator of The Empty, Five Weapons, Bomb Queen, Amanda and Gunn, Avigon and Evil & Malice, among many other comics. As the below will reveal, he’s a lifer for comics, as well as a creator who has stuck with creating his own vision — including kids comics, women of color as […]

By Bruce Lidl

The Sacramento Wizard World convention was an opportunity for comic fans in Northern California to gather and celebrate their passions with other fans and celebrities. It was also a chance for Jimmie Robinson, a veteran Bay Area comic book creator (and frequent commentator at The Beat) to meet his readers and spread the word about his on-going all-ages Image series, Five Weapons. I was curious to get a creator’s insight about this new convention, but we ended up chatting about a variety of topics, so I decided to make a separate article in its own right. As a long-time participant and observer in the comics industry, Jimmie has a great perspective on what is really happening right now, and he was very generous of his time to speak with me on the show floor.

Robinson was quite positive about the Wizard show, the staff, and the vibe around the convention center. Everybody was seemingly happy with the turnout and the enthusiasm of the attendees, especially the local downtown merchants. I was curious to hear how his convention schedule played into his work-time and income, and whether he was seeing the kinds of returns on paid sketches, commissions and appearance fees that some artist superstars like George Perez have experienced. According to Robinson, conventions, even well attended ones like Sacramento Wizard, are not “real money makers” for him, as he still has to pay his expenses, including travel and lodging. The worst thing about conventions for Robinson is not the expense, though, it is the time taken away from his work of actually making comics, something he much prefers to do if possible. In general, he limits himself these days to shows he and his team (wife Gail and dog Eli) can drive to, including the Reno Wizard show and possibly San Diego. For him, conventions remain all about “spreading the word” about his books, particularly Five Weapons, his current title from Image/Shadowline, an all-ages tale of the one pacifist student enrolled at a school for assassins (broken up into 5 weapon-themed houses, kind of a killers’ Hogwarts). He emphasized just how “tough” a sell an all-ages title can be. Currently at issue #7, in the second five issue story arc of the title, he has a commitment from Image to publish a third story arc, taking him through issue #15. Depending on how these story arc sell, he hopes to publish at least through #20, which would complete the initial narrative he conceived for the title.

Eli manning the booth

Robinson was “very appreciative of the huge support” he’s received from Jim Valentino and the Shadowline imprint at Image, particularly with a book that may not be the most marketable. And he “regretted” not being at the January ImageExpo, where the homogeneity of the creators on exhibit was negatively received online. Robinson had only complimentary things to say about his experiences with Image.

While Robinson appreciates the personal outreach opportunities conventions give comic creators, he is also “very enthusiastic” about the growth of digital comics, both from a sales perspective but also from a creative viewpoint. Digital sales of his older Bomb Queen title have been “very good” and he has seen bumps in sales of older issues when new ones come out and re-ignite interest. He is also an outspoken fan of comiXology’s Guided View reading enhancement, although he does struggle somewhat with making sure that his books look good when they are going to be converted to the new format. The process of conversion is quite “mysterious” to Robinson, and he does not have any insight at all into who actually does the work at comiXology, but he’s “very conscious” when he is drawing of what kind of panel layouts work best with the new technology.

His one major criticism of the current digital comics trend is the lack of transparency into the data generated by digital sales, as any data he does get from comiXology is basically limited to royalty statements and is usually “way old, usually from two quarters behind.” He is eager to see if he is able to get quicker and more detailed information from the shift at Image to selling directly and without DRM (Five Weapons #1 is available right now for free in either PDF, EPUB, CBR or CBZ formats). Robinson is “completely for” Image’s move to drop DRM and is generally really excited to see his work available in as many formats as possible. As someone who first heard Scott McCloud talking up online comics way back in the mid-90s, Robinson knows first hand how far the industry has come in expanding distribution avenues for new creators to attract readers. He echoed the message oft repeated today, that the challenge is no longer to “break into comics but to stay in comics!”

It was a pleasure chatting with Robinson and getting his expert viewpoint on a comics industry that  offers both unprecedented opportunities and daunting challenges for even well-established creators like himself. And check out Five Weapons and see how good all-age titles really are these days!

By Bruce Lidl

As the on-going explosion of interest in comics and pop culture conventions continues seemingly unabated, companies like Wizard World are rushing to meet the demand. The first ever Wizard World Sacramento took place this last weekend, making it the first big comic convention in California’s capital city, and likely the biggest show of its kind in Northern California since Wonder-Con moved to Anaheim in 2012. Clearly a success attendance-wise, the show was a sellout for 3-day passes and Saturday passes, and was very crowded when I stopped by on Sunday, with a line to enter that wrapped around two full sides of the Sacramento Convention center. According to Jerry Milani of Wizard, they were a bit cautious when planning this inaugural show, only renting out part of the convention center, but they are confident enough now to already book the entire convention center for their return in June 2015.

Obligatory Stormtroopers picture

To this only slightly jaded con-goer, the show was very consistent with the new culture of comic conventions, with both organizers and attendees clearly influenced by all the recent coverage of the San Diego Comic Con. At one point I overheard Wizard staffers have to explain that they were not in fact the same organization that ran the San Diego convention. The crowd was very diverse in age and demographic background, many families and couples, was heavily sprinkled with cosplayers, and seemed attracted to a wide range of media properties, with strong The Walking Dead, Marvel movie series and Game of Thrones presences. The key marker of this new era of conventions to me, however, was the very large and central role of big-name media celebrities there to explicitly make some money. Chris Hemsworth (Thor), Norman Reedus and Michael Rooker (The Walking Dead) and William Shatner were featured guests, and they offered all manner of paid opportunities for interaction. VIP fan meetings, paid autographs, paid photo ops, you name it, for a price you could seemingly have any kind of experience with the stars.

Comic books were present, though, with industry legends Stan Lee, Chris Claremont, Chris Golden and Neal Adams appearing. Local comic book vendors were a notable presence on the sales floor, although it must be said, the area set aside for autographs and photo ops with celebrities was probably bigger than the entire area for traditional commerce. There was a small artists alley, with a handful of Big 2 artists and a number of independent and/or specialty artists offering sketches and commissions. I had the opportunity to speak in-depth with Jimmie Robinson of Image (Bomb Queen, Five Weapons) and he thought it had been a “good” show, overall, although not a particularly big money maker for him. (I’ll have more from Robinson in a companion article coming later).

Crowds at Sacramento Wizard World

As The Beat has speculated previously, Wizard World is clearly pushing hard to take advantage of the growing interest in pop culture, comics and celebrities, with a number of first time shows this year in cities like Louisville, Richmond, Tulsa, San Antonio, Atlanta, Minneapolis and Reno, in addition to return shows in St. Louis, Nashville, New Orleans, Portland, Columbus, Austin, Columbus, Philadelphia and Chicago. According to Wizard’s Milani, the key attributes that determine their choice of a city include available venues, a market that makes sense for their offerings and their existing show calendar. He admitted that they do pay attention to avoiding conflicts with other comic book conventions (they don’t have any shows at all in July to avoid San Diego issues, and their new Atlanta show will be three months before the long-established Dragon-Con) but it was clear that they consider their shows to be different from more locally organized efforts.

The key element Milani cited was Wizard’s ability to bring a large number of celebrities of a certain level to regional cities. Matt Smith of Dr. Who fame will be a featured guest at their next show in Louisville, Kentucky, and fans can have a VIP experience with him for $349, a photo op with him for $99 ($195 for a dual photo with co-star Karen Gillan) or an autograph for $99. The seem like pretty high prices to me, but they are not too surprising when appearance fees for big stars like Smith and Hemsworth may be as much as $100,000. Milani told me that Sacramento had courted Wizard aggressively, with a great deal of enthusiasm from Mayor Kevin Johnson’s office, and numbers released by the city after the show claim an economic impact of $2 million dollars for the weekend.