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I love Skroce, but his art on this did nothing to me. It seems a lot of artists who had a very rough and loose style in the ’90s dialed a lot of their excess back in the past couple decades, and now it just looks tame and sterile.

“Don’t Don’t Don’t Restart”

They Might Be Giants reference? Well played, sir. Well played.

Whoever thought that SEX could be boring? (but it is, in the comic book)…

I wish more people were buying so many of the excellent books by Image (I stopped buying overpriced Marvels nowadays, and fewer DCs).

Astronauts in Trouble, Thief of Thieves, They’re Not Like Us, Birthright, Savior, and Nailbiter are amongst the best adult offerings in comics! If you aren’t trying them, then look at them again PLEASE!

…which reminds me why I don’t read sales number columns: They’re too depressing. Things I’m learning, though:

$9.99 trades don’t always work. Someone posted recently about why his collection wasn’t going to be $10 and why others should consider a more profitable number for their first volume. I can see why now.

Some of my favorite books sell in painfully low numbers. (“Thief of Thieves” is that low? ::sigh:: “Shutter”? “Rumble”?) If I ever launched an Image book I’d name it “Secret Wars: Something or Other” just to stay over the 10,000 number. Marvel’s lawyers won’t notice, right?

And something Robert Kirkman has been preaching for years: A regular schedule is a big help in selling an on-going series. All those misses months and sporadic issues will kill you.

Great column!
I just don’t understand your remark on the no post-collectino bump for the 9.99$ trade. This price of 9.99$ is only for the first trades of almost all the Image titles. after that, the price is normal for all the others trades.
So if, in fact, the first 5-6 issues of the Image titles should sell less (because it’s way les expensive to buy the first arc in trade), there shoul dbe more people switching to the single format after that, because only the first collection is at a lower price. So pricing those first collections at 9.99$ should, on the contrary, help the single sales past the first issue arc.
I know that’s what I’m doing right now: waiting for the first trade and then, if I like it, switching to the singles. It’s especially easy with Image, as there is often a small gap beetween arcs in single issues.

What Image is probably lacking right now is labels. It seems like they are just launching as much series as they can, but it’s difficult to differentiate one from the other.
There should be some lines under the Image imprint. Probably not easy to do, but it would help. I gave their chance to randomly chosen first trade series, and some of them really lower my enthousiasm for the whole Image revival boost. The quality of the series published really goes from one extreme to the other, and there is almost nothing helping the reader to choose which titles are the most likely to please him.
And yes, the Skybound label, even with some glinches here and there (Invincible a little, Thief of Thieves a little more) has gained a standart for quality. I know, personnaly, that I can trust them almost with blind eyes. Thatmakes a difference.
Image needs something else like that, perhaps putting different series under an “editor”, who would only be the man chosing which serie he wants to see published under his small imprint.

Velvet, Fade Out, Lazarus, Saga, Drifter, They’re Not Like Us, Manifest Destiny, Outcast, etc. All amazing books. I mean, has anyone cracked open a copy of Drifter and looked at the art alone? It’s freakin’ gorgeous. Like, European comics gorgeous.

It’s nice to see that the fantasy about european comics being gorgeous is still quite vivid. Trust me, t’s only a fantasy. We have lots and lots of garbage also. :)

Jim Valentino has also a nice label, Shadowline, at Image. But I don’t remember if it’s written on the cover of books.
And I’m also surprised by the 9.99 comment for the same reasons as Xavier. I would like to add that first issues of Image series are most of the time are to find: speculation for one reason, limited printing for another. So when issue 6 is published, it’s very difficult to get issues 1, 2 and 3. Or really overpriced. A 9.99 price enables all readers to get the beginning of a series (without getting digital versions – which at the end is near 10$).

A couple of the post-trade jumps (and some first-issue-to-second-issue drops) you’re seeing are down to a program Image had (and technically still has) with retailers, wherein they would get a bunch of copies on consignment for a period of time.

And no, the $9.99 trade doesn’t always help the singles market – but a HUGE factor in that is retailers not utilizing the sales opportunity. I see a huge difference in attempting to sell a person on a volume one at $9.99 than I do for a book sitting at $14.99 – though a caveat: it’s been quite a while since the $9.99 scheme began, and I firmly believe that Image or whoever could adjust that to $11.99 with little change. Or more to wit, take a look at what places like Scholastic are publishing their serialized all ages books at for price points. They have the resources to have market tested the hell out of their price points, and have threshold-priced those books at a point where parents pick it up and don’t give the price a second thought. That’d be my advice.

Brandon, I can’t think of a returnable Image title that didn’t do the first THREE issues (so not a drop from #1 to #2)

One problem with the $9.99 trade is that there are SO MANY of them, and not all books are served by the “hand sell” equally. And, without that hand-sell, all the $9.99 trade does is reduce EVERYone’s income.

Ales Kot announced that MATERIAL was ending (early), and I would assume that at least some of that was due to the first trade being $9.99…. and only selling 1600 copies in month #1

-B