Marvel’s David Gabriel On Variant Covers, Star Wars, Deadpool & More!

Over the last few years, the comics industry has undergone some tremendous change. It’s seen the big two publishers radically change their lines. From relaunches to reboots and everything in between, the industry is seeing growth in areas it hasn’t seen before. We’re seeing more diverse offerings from publishers, a continued focus on variant covers and further growth of the retail market, but what does it all mean?

In part two of our chat with Marvel’s SVP of Sales & Marketing, David Gabriel (part one can be found here), he demystifies the criticism on variant covers, what Star Wars means to Marvel, and so much more.

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There are parts of the industry, including at other publishers who think variant covers are the doom and gloom of comics. Given the new project Marvel has started with Diamond, I’d imagine, we’re nowhere near the catastrophic collapse of the 90s. What’s your stance on the variant cover issue and where do you see it going?

David Gabriel: No, I think they are only doom and gloom if the people putting them out are not either A. have the understanding of the industry to know what they are doing. Or B. taking the responsibility of measuring the program carefully. I know that we do, and I know that other publishers do as well. As long as no one is just taking advantage of customers and retailers. I think it is going to continue to grow for a while. It is also funny that the same individuals on the publishing side, that wanted to cry the use of variants do that within minutes of announcing the use of their own variants. Or they’ll decry variants and then a few days later make announcements about variants.

I think it is just a matter of watching what you are doing and being careful that you are putting the best product out there, and that it makes sense to do it.

You mentioned that Marvel over the past two years has really seen great steady growth. When looking at those numbers, it looks like the Comics Industry as a whole is doing alright. From what you can see, can you elaborate on what you think the current health of comics is right now? Is the heart of the industry beating as hard as it’s ever been?

Gabriel: Yeah, I think so. I think that Diamond puts generic numbers out every month, and I think everyone is seeing the same amount of growth in the industry. We are all seeing the same numbers. I know that just from looking at the store counts every week that over the past 12 months they have gone up. Which is always great to see there are fewer and fewer retailers that are having financial problems. On the publisher side, you’re seeing them putting out more and more product which has a huge level of diversity to their lines. Different things are selling, nobody two years ago would have thought that there would be such an influx of female characters, female readership, diverse characters, diverse readership. It is all helping everything to grow.

For example, when we made the Star Wars announcement, it was a huge shift for us. You would have thought that was the death blow of the industry. The amount of negativity towards us taking on Star Wars was widespread. I think we proved everybody wrong on that. I think it also brought in another new surge of customers. I kind of think that it is up to every publisher to do their best. I think they do. I think it varies across all publishers.

Well since you brought up Star Wars. Let’s talk about the Star Wars sized elephant in the room. Depending on where you go or who you read – if Marvel did not have Star Wars you would not be in the prosperous position that you’re currently enjoying. Obviously if you sort of look at things like title count it is safe to assume that you would have just replace those books with something else that could theoretically do just as well.

If you took Star Wars out of the equation how well is Marvel doing?

Gabriel: Well you pointed out the main point right there is that we did not add Star Wars on top of what we were publishing. We took away from a regular title count, we took many of our top creators, away from that they could be doing that were specifically Marvel superhero titles and put them into the Star Wars universe. You have to look at the fact that we would be significantly down in title count if we just cut out those books. I think we cut something like 7 or 8 books a month out of our line to put Star Wars in. It is no different than saying DC shouldn’t count Batman in their sales. Look how far down they would be, which would be a different story or that Image shouldn’t have Walking Dead in their sales.

It’s a little disingenuous for anyone to say without Star Wars Marvel would be falling. We would have all those other top books and we would have been devoting all of that creative time, energy, resources into the rest of our line.

On the topic of the other new books you have released over the last few months, I wanted to ask if there areany that are unexpected successes in the office as far as books that took off even greater then you may have expected?

Gabriel: Doctor Strange has been a huge success for us. Everything about that from the story, the artwork, the sales, it’s been lovely. It’s great to have Doctor Strange up in the top of the charts, it’s been a while. I would say what is interesting is seeing where Deadpool keeps climbing and climbing and climbing with no signs yet of any stoppage. Naturally, the film certainly has only fueled that even more.

Were you surprised with how well the Deadpool movie did in relation to folks potentially picking up more Deadpool related books? Or is that something you guys expected, and hoped for?

Gabriel: I try never to hope for that stuff. I attempted to try to just watch and see what happens. There have been probably two other films that have really elevated sales to crazy levels. The first was Guardians of the Galaxy. The second one would be the first Avengers film. I think that helped elevate the Avengers comic brand as a whole. Guardians did a super amount of that. Just look at the huge back list now and it is the continuing sales of the mini line of books we were able to build. Now Deadpool has been crazy. I will say that I did not expect it to go as crazy as it ended up. I mean, every era from [Rob] Liefeld to [Daniel] Way to the current stuff that Gerry Duggan is doing.

The Daniel Way Ultimate Collection, shot to the top of the book market charts along with being on the New York Times bestseller list for 3 weeks in a row. That’s sort of beyond crazy. Deadpool also helps elevate our adult coloring books to a new status of crazy. The orders on that book put it at the top of Amazon’s charts and Barnes & Noble’s.

I have to ask where that idea came from. Obviously the adult coloring craze has been growing at an insane rate. At what point do you guys made the decision to say “We could do that.”

Gabriel: The real story is it came from our distributors. Our book distributors said, somebody over there was quietly telling us how well they were doing with adult coloring books. That just put the idea into my head. We had the Essential line for many years and that the Essential line was nothing more big coloring books. So we worked with them very closely to create the format that we came up with for the first Avengers: Age Of Ultron book. It was no coincidence that it came out around the time of the blu-ray release. Then it was just one of those things that smacked us in the head and had us saying “Oh a Deadpool book would probably make a one,” and that was it. Civil War is on it’s way, and its crushing in pre-orders. Now you are seeing a slew of comic publishers following along, like they did with the Omnibus and other formats like Essentials.

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So what do you think ComicBook.com readers? Let us know in the comments below! The final part of our conversation with David will run tomorrow so be sure to check back for it!