Jason Peters is a man with a mission. He has the goal of promoting comics to a wider audience than it has right now. Unlike the rest of us who just sit around and whine about being portrayed as geeky fanboys like Wizard says we are, Jason and his organization C.O.M.I.C (Central Organization for Maximizing Interest in Comics) are posting messages on bulletin boards, chatting online, and creating a newsletter to get people interested in comics. Of course, we here at Redoubt wish him luck. Rick Johnson, our Interviews Editor conducted the interview, and your humble editor added in one or two questions.
Ramsey
Redoubt: What has hurt the industry the most in the last five years?
Jason Peters: Quite simply, our competition in entertainment. Television, video games, the Internet and even book books like Animorphs have put a huge dent in the industry. Even with tie-ins like Acclaim's Turok video game and the countless Star Wars tie-ins the main targets of our industry have become so accustomed to the instant, easy gratification of these media that having to work even so much as to read a comic book seems like a waste of their time. How books like Animorphs, a series so obviously comic inspired that the author has even made reference to the X-Men on more than one occasion, is baffling except when you take in the idea that, to non-comic readers, reading as simplistic and childish a book as Animorphs still looks more mature than reading a comic book. This barrier is going to be the hardest to break.
R: What has helped the comics industry the most and kept it going?
JP: I like to think that what has kept it going are books like Kingdom Come and masterpieces like it. Unfortunately, that isn't the case. What seems to keep the industry going, sadly, is all the huge, climactic events that publishers seem to never run out of. As interesting to a longtime reader as the recent events in X-Men may have been, and as gripping as they might have been to the industry as a whole, to a non-comic reader or someone who just hopped on board they don't make a lot of sense. So, while publishers keep the readers on their toes and reaching for their wallets, thereby keeping the industry afloat, they aren't bringing in new blood that will get the industry out of the water completely and back on course to it's potential destination whatever that may be.
R: What comics would you promote to the non-comics reader? Would none of them be superhero comics, or would you show them Watchmen, Dark Knight, Kingdom Come, or Superman for All Seasons?
JP: Well, I think that superheroes are too much a part of the industry to try to ignore them when telling others about comics but I do feel we need to try and shatter the image that all comics are like the X-Men. If non-comic readers wanted stuff like X-Men they would already be buying them. Instead I recommend atypical superhero stuff like the ones you named or along the lines of Frank Miller's Sin City books. Through books like these we can introduce non-comic readers to our mainstream while doing it in a way that they might not have known was available.
R: Do the lines like Vertigo help expand the readership base?
JP: Yes, Lines like Vertigo offer audiences a wider variety which is good for both the traditional comic reader and the non-comic reader. For the typical comic reader it offers a break from the norm. Variety is, after all, the spice of life. For the non-comic reader it, again, offers a way to get into comics in a way they probably never knew existed.
R: Do you tell people what you enjoy or do you try and pick out books that you think are best suited for their personality and tastes?
JP: I'm afraid that here I have to admit that I do it the easy way. I pick out books that I feel suit their tastes. After all, I'm a lifelong comic fan who loves comics just because they're comics so my taste would, no doubt, differ from someone who may have never picked up a comic in their life. Someone who's reading their first comic might not be able to appreciate the sophisticated story telling methods used by Frank Miller or Alan Moore, while those are the exact things that I look for in a comic.
R: What do you suggest comic stores do to promote their business and to attract new readers?
JP: Well, for starters, as much as I love a nice dark atmosphere in a comic shop, that's not the type of place a parent is going to want to send their kids to hang out. So, I think we need to start kinda limiting our window painting and postering and go for a more family oriented environment. As for promoting themselves, I think that if comic shops will follow that first bit of advice, they'll find it easier to attract a wider audience just through appearance. Also, and this is part of my plan for C.O.M.I.C., comic retailers and publishers should try promoting themselves in areas they might not have tried before. For instance, I am trying to contact the person in charge of a local women's convention and see if I can arrange for a prominent female comic supporter to speak and promote comics there. We might be surprised at just how many people might have been coming all along if they had only known we were out there.
R: What type of comic that is no longer the mainstream (such as westerns, sci-fi, etc.) is most missed, and what genre do you think would bring in the most readers?
JP: Well, I feel that Sci-fi is still thriving in our industry but one area that used to be very strong was romance. I feel that if we can regain a foothold in this area we'll see a dramatic increase in sales. In department stores such as K-mart and Walmart serial romance's make up over 80% of their over all book sales. By tapping into this valuable area of the publishing industry we could not only bring in more revenue than we've ever seen before, we would also attract a whole new audience that has, for the most part been overlooked in our industry recently, Women. Women make up as much if not more of our country's population as men yet our industry does almost nothing to attract them.
R: How do you decide what to promote?
JP: My decisions are determined solely by the audience I'm promoting to. If I'm promoting to the majority of comic readers I choose books like Kingdom Come, Watchmen, etc., or something that they may not have tried like Love and Rockets or Maus simply to help them to realize the full potential of our medium and to overall expand their comic reading horizons. To a non comic reader it would mainly depend on the individual. I usually start with something that ties into the mainstream entertainment arena so that they are familiar with the subject. For instance, when a coworker and I once started talking about the Spawn movie, I mentioned how the comics portrayed an even more heroic and defining picture of the characters so that he could try a comic that he already knew something about. After all, you don't send someone into the woods alone without at least showing them how to use a compass and start a fire. They'll follow you a lot easier if they have some idea of where they're going!
R: What resources do you use to promote comics?
JP: I, so far, have mainly been using the Internet, posting fliers, recruiting people who share in my goals and good old fashioned word of mouth. I have found that online bulletin boards and chat rooms are great for spreading the word. I also like to send friends along with buttons that promote C.O.M.I.C., comics in general or both attached to various articles of clothing and luggage. I am hoping that I will soon be able to publish our first issue of the C.O.M.I.C. 'Zine, our organization's official magazine which will be distributed across the country and, hopefully, if we can keep our costs down enough, we'll be able to give them away. By doing so we might pick up someone who might not have paid for it but will pick it up simply because they can't beat the price.
R: If you could pick one comic for every person in the world to read what would it be?
JP: Woah! That's a tough one. I would probably have to go with either Watchmen. Watchmen shows us the superhero idea in a way no other comic has ever done. It portrays them as real people with real problems in a real world where sometimes the bad guy wins, even if the bad guy does succeed in uniting the world under a common banner. The story has everything from action to romance to suspense to a Silence of the Lambs type of psychological horror in Rorschach. It's deep enough to make you think, but straight foreword enough that you don't have to. It also doesn't rely on the reader to already be familiar with the characters like the aforementioned Batman: DKR or Kingdom Come books. On top of all of that, Alan Moore's writing and Dave Gibbon's art blend seamlessly to form a piece of comic art that I am proud to call the greatest comic series ever created.
R: Where do you see C. O. M. I. C. in five years? Where do you see the industry?
JP: Well, C.O.M.I.C., hopefully, will be well on it's way to being a major force in the comic industry if not the over all entertainment industry which is exactly where I plan to take it. The more presence that comics have in the entertainment industry as a whole the more we can grow and develop in newer, better ways. The industry itself has been in a major slump lately o we're due for a major upswing that, hopefully, C.O.M.I.C. will be an integral part of.
R: What are your personal favorites?
JP: Anything by Frank Miller. I recently finished "Hell and Back" his latest addition to the Sin City saga and it was, of course, awesome. Beyond that I loved Watchmen (obviously), Kingdom Come, Marvels and, more recently, Kevin Smith's run on Daredevil. Outside of mainstream, I love Love and Rockets and Maus.
R: Do you see restarting ongoing as good or bad for the industry
JP: In a way, restarting is both good and bad. It's good because you can start from a clean slate and it offers a good jumping on point for new readers. It's bad because it tends to drive away longtime fans who liked things the way they were. I, personally, don't like the whole restarting thing because publishers tend to just say, "Hey, sales are down on this book. Let's change it up and start over and see what happens." Ongoing, likewise has it's ups and downs. It's harder for a new reader to jump into a story that's been going on for a few months, but, at the same time, it's through those ongoing trials and tribulations that we come to love the characters. We didn't accept Spider-man as a cultural icon until he'd been around a few decades.
R: If you could bring one writer and or artist over from another industry to the comic industry who would that be?
JP: Well, we've already nabbed Kevin Smith, who would have been my first choice for his well known status in movies and his love for comics. I suppose my next choice would be either Stephen King or Dean Koontz. Both seem to write stories that would translate excellently into comic form, Koontz even more so than King. King, however, is better recognized by the vast majority where Koontz is recognized almost exclusively in novel reading circles. Both, with their long time bestseller list reputations, bring a credibility with them along with the people that already love their work. Team King or Koontz up with a well known and appropriate artist and next thing you know the people who were picking up the comics just for the author start to say, "Hey! I wonder what other books this artist has done?" and wind up moving into more mainstream comics where they find new favorite writers who will link them to other artists and so-on and so-on.
R: What can we do to entice fresh blood, like Stephen King and others to start writing comics?
JP: I once read somewhere that imitation is the highest form of flattery. So, it only stands to reason that if one were to convert a novel by the likes of Stephen King into comic form, sell it, with their permission of course, and then show them how well a translation of their novel sells, they would be compelled to see how well an original piece done with a comic in mind would do. This means appeals to their wallets, their creative nature and their curiosity. Stephen King in particular would, no doubt, be flattered since his comic book influences are so prevalent in the movie Creepshow.
R: What is the hope of your organization?
JP: Our organization's goal is simple, bring the comic industry out of the state of stagnation that we seem to have reached and raise it to a new plateau unlike anything the industry has ever seen before. We want to see comics around the world not just accepted on the same level as they are in Japan, but to elevate them to a point where they are seen as equal to, if not better than, television and movies in entertainment and artistic value. We hope to break down the barriers that are keeping comics from becoming that ultimate art form.
R: How do you feel about independent comic companies? Is there to many? Is there not enough?
JP: That, to me, is like asking are there too many art galleries or movie theaters. As long as there is a comic creator with some sort of artistic vision of their ideal comic book I encourage them to publish it by any means necessary (within reason, of course). Comic books are a form of expression just like any other art form. So who am I, or anybody else for that matter, to tell someone that they cannot express themselves through comic books? The way I see it, the more independent publishers, the better.
R: Is Diamond the Devil :)?
JP: Well, I don't know about the Devil himself, but they do make it harder for independent publishers. I mean, an independent publisher has a hard enough time keeping their costs and cover prices down without big distributors charging them for their services as well. I say, cut out the middleman or at least come up with one that is willing to help out the little guys a little more.
Redoubt is Copyright © 1999-2000, Ramsey Rusef. All articles contained inside are Copyright by their original authors. All characters and comic books reviewed in Redoubt are Copyright and Trademarked by their respective owners.