Marketing at San Diego Comic-Con

Things have certainly changed over the years at Comic-Con. Marvel and DC used to save up everything for the show. News would go dry in the weeks leading up to the big show in San Diego. Everyone wanted their announcements to happen at the show.

As the show grew to insane proportions, comics publishers realized that they were getting swallowed up in the news cycle. Hollywood would always win, even in the comics press. There was no point in announcing things at San Diego anymore.

That led to a variety of publishers pre-announcing all their comics news in the days and weeks leading up to Comic-Con in various ways. As the game changes, so do the players. It's fascinating to watch.

AiT/PlanetLar did it first, by doing an interview ahead of the show and doing all of their announcements for the show in there.

These days, the same principle holds in a variety of ways. Boom! makes a calendar out of doing a number of daily announcements leading to the year's show. Others just "leak" news more casually leading up to the show. Big news from Marvel and DC is carefully parceled out to get multiple hits for one story, even though it leads to fans who think it's old news by the third time back to the well.

I wonder if it's not starting to cycle back around again. Hollywood is still a dominant presence at San Diego "Comic"-Con, but decent sized news is still breaking at the show from the comics companies. They know it'll get out and, hopefully, not be forgotten by Monday.

The big opportunity, I think, is on Sunday. Nobody announces anything on Sunday. They all play dead after Saturday. When the decks are cleanest, everyone shuts up. That makes no sense to me. Try to own the after-Hall H market, someone. Next year, make your big announcement Sunday at noon and own the final day of the convention's news cycle. Be the last thing on their minds for when the news cycle moves out of convention coverage the next day.

On the other hand, let me give the marketers reading this one quick bit of advice: Don't send out a press releases of any kind dealing with the comics convention you're involved with somewhere else in the months ahead. I got one of those in my inbox over the weekend and just shook my head. Nobody cared too much about your convention to begin with, and trying to promote it during the biggest convention of them all in North America is just a waste of time.

I can't wait to see what happens next year as this game continues to evolve.

Things Hollywood Actors Do at Comic Conventions

There are days I believe Hollywood actors actually don't get paid enough.

When I see the pictures and watch the videos of them answering questions from the audience at a convention panel, I think there's no way you could pay me enough to take part of that soul-killing cringe-inducing process.

Then I see them go through the reporters round tables, and I can just picture how hard their eyes roll to the backs of their heads every time they blink from having to answer the same silly question for the hundredth time. Worse, the "unique" questions are often the least interesting and most head-smacking.

Now, if someone wants to pay me a million dollars, I'll do it. It'd be good research for a future column. Yeah, that's it. Research

One other San Diego tradition that's been missing so far: I haven't seen any video yet of a famous celebrity wearing a mask and walking out onto the show floor this year. Surely, Entertainment Tonight set someone up again for that this year, right?

Watchmen Pop Quiz!

DC is doing a 12 issue event series finally bringing the Watchmen characters into the DC Universe.

Quick quiz: Why isn't the internet breaking in two on this one?

1. Alan Moore turned out to be so kooky that nobody wants to defend his honor anymore.
2. DC has been milking this cow for so long now that people are tired of blaming the farmer.
3. People actually think it's an interesting idea.

I'm leaning towards #2 being the actual answer. I'm horrified to think it might be #3 after all the desperate cries for those Watchmen mini-series a few years back. (Remember how we were supposed to forever boycott the work of the "morally bankrupt" participants like Darwyn Cooke and Amanda Conner? Yeah, people on the internet go nuts sometimes...)

DC Schedules Innovation!

I agree with Jim Lee when he says that the comics industry lacks new evergreen titles.

It's a good goal to aim for. Too bad the entire industry is set up to oppose such a thing.

Publishers don't trust their creators to do new things. Creators don't want to sit still in any one place for longer than 4 - 6 months. Publishers don't want to tie up money during the production. Retailers don't think they can sell anything, sight unseen, over $4, nor will they stock something that's not the same page size as a standard comic. And readers don't want to read books that "don't count."

Innovate away! I just hope your marketing department has a 12 month head start on this. They have a lot of objections to overcome here.

Some days, it's amazing the industry has survived for as long as it has....

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