I’ve been devoting this column each week to showing you how you can make people take comics seriously. But do you know what’s NOT going to help us be taken seriously as a medium? Cheesy action movies. Movies where people have lines like “Dressed like a spider, he looks like a bug, we should all just give him one big hug...” Movies where main characters defeat muggers who dress brightly and operate under black light. Even the comic-based movies that are well done are still of the “biff! pow! zap!” variety.
These movies help to increase the world’s exposure to comics, but often it’s the wrong kind of exposure. When people go to see movies like Spider-man, they then think that the comics are all about that purely visceral experience action movies deliver. They think comics are all about the fight sequences, the epic battles between good and evil. They think that comics are pure entertainment, pure fluff, not something worthwhile. Heck, people continue to equate Batman with Adam West even today.
Now that’s not to say that the Adam West Batman was bad. It was fun stuff. And it’s not to say that comic-based movies don’t help the industry to a small extent (usually though that extent is very small indeed—despite what Marvel’s PR says, the spike in comics sales after Spider-man’s release has not been that significant). But it doesn’t help us be taken seriously. Even when a well-made serious comic-based film comes out (like Ghost World for example), it doesn’t add to our credibility, because the simple fact that we have to be adapted into films to be given merit implies that film is a better medium than comics, that it’s more meaningful.
Of course we in fandom know that this so-called “fact” is bunk. Comics can stand perfectly well on their own, thank you very much; we don’t need film to vouch for us, to prove our value to the general public. But it’s not enough that WE know it. We have to let THEM know it, the regular folks out there who don’t read comics, whose only exposure to comics is through Lois and Clark or Smallville. The companies seem to think the movies themselves are enough to woo them, but if we really want those people to read comics, we have to act.
And how do we act? We show people our comics, pure and simple. If we want people to read comics, we have to give them comics to read, not give them movies based on comics to watch. It goes back to what I said in my first column: we have to share the joy of the experience.
What I’m proposing is not that you lend friends your comics to read. I know you probably already do that with little measure of success. Maybe you loan them out and your friends keep them for months and then return them to you unread. Maybe you give them to your friend who reads them but demolishes them in the process. Most folks I know are a bit reluctant to loan out their comics like that. So I say, don’t. Loaning is not quite enough because people always feel forced to read something when you push it on them that way; sometimes you have to be sneaky about how you share.
What you should do instead is give them a comic for free. Buy an extra of a comic you like and let someone you know have it. I know that the money you use to buy that comic is hard-earned and hard to part with, but this option really works the best. You put the comic in their hands without any of the pressure on them to read it and none of the worry for you that it’ll be damaged. Plus, people much prefer being given something than loaned something and they might read it purely out of gratitude for having been given it. Really giving them a comic is the best thing you can do other than pry their eyes open and turn the pages for them.
Sooner or later they will read this thing out of sheer boredom. They’ll sit down, check this thing out on their own time, and then you’ll have hit them when they weren’t expecting. These freebies will work as your Trojan horse. You’ll be behind enemy lines, taking them by surprise.
I’ve done it myself quite often and from experience I can tell you these guerilla tactics work. For a while, I was trying to get people to support DC’s Doom Patrol, my favorite monthly, at all costs. I went out, bought large runs and sold them to friends for less than I paid for them, because I wanted the book to succeed (and because I wanted to see those lightbulbs go off for them too). I know for a fact that I brought at least ten new readers to the book, if not more.
But friends aren’t enough, because in order for this attack to really bring new people in to the comics fold, you have to cast your net wide. You have to give these books to strangers. Last year when the Batman 10-Cent Adventure came out, I gave away at least a hundred at my school to kids, students of all ages and even faculty members. It went so successfully that I took a ton of extra Free Comic Book Day books and gave them out at my school during finals week, stuff from Ultimate Spider-man to Hopeless Savages.
Too shy to approach strangers? Well you don’t have to even face people when you do it. The next time you go to the doctor’s office or the barber’s and are stuck in a waiting room, take along some comics. And when it’s your turn, leave them there. Drop them into the magazine rack at the local library or even put some with the newspapers the old folks read at the local fast food joint. Anywhere that people are, you should leave a comic or two. Again I’ve done this myself: I went to have my taxes done, left my comics in the lobby when I went in to talk to the accountant, and when I came out some kids were already reading them.
Worried about the cost? Don’t be. Make those comics you give away cheap ones, if you want. Find some good stuff in the back-issue bin, or take advantage of the recent trend from the big two publishers and buy a ten cent or quarter issue. I have a friend who cleans out the junk from his collection every year right before Halloween and then gives the comics away to the trick-and-treaters (along with the candy so you still avoid flaming brown bags on your doorstep).
The only real caveat is that the books have to be good. As I said in the beginning, cheese doesn’t make people take us seriously, so make sure what you’re giving away is quality work so it’ll really wow them. That’s the real goal, to share that experience. Your reasons for sharing that experience can be wholly altruistic, if such a thing is even possible, or they can be wholly not. Maybe you want to build a fanbase for your local comic shop or for the far-off future day that you’re working in the industry. Maybe you’re trying to pay back some karma from all the times when you were a kid and someone gave you some free comics. But your reasons for sharing don’t matter. The shared experience itself is all there really is in the end; if that experience is good, then those you share it with will see beyond the films and say to themselves, “Comics really ARE worthwhile.”
