Posted in: Comics | Tagged: c2e2, c2e2breakfast, Comics, dark horse, diamond, entertainment, marvel, valiant

Diamond's Report To Retailers At C2E2 Breakfast With Marvel, Dark Horse And Valiant Overview

Published Fri, 24 Apr 2015 15:30:58 -0500

Last updated Sun, 26 Apr 2015 00:39:34 -0500

Peter G and others have been giving us reports from the C2E2 Diamond Retailer Breakfast, where publishers and distributors feed the retailers and give them swag, in exchange for presenting their goods, and answering concerns…. but we start with Diamond statistics for 2014 and the year so far…

Leading things off for C2E2 was the Diamond Retailer Breakfast. Does just what it says on the tin – as you much on an assortment of breakfast goodies, Diamond and reps for various publishers come out to tell you how good things are and how much better they will be.

Leading things off was Dan Manser from Diamond. He talked about Diamond's efforts to help retailers leverage the current cultural interest in comics into sales. And the biggest tool for that was Free Comic Book Day. The orders for FCBD have grown steadily for the past five years. This year, 5.6 million free comic books will be sent out through Diamond, a 21% increase over last year.

Most interesting, however, was how Diamond was partnering with Children's Book Week. Besides helping expand awareness with graphic novels and such, Children's Book Week has moved its dates. Now, Free Comic Book Day kicks off Children's Book Week. Diamond clearly sees getting kids interested in comics early as the future – they do have Retailer Best Practices Award specifically for the comic shop with the best kids' section.

Which leads us to the the actual Retailer Best Practices Awards. The spring ones were announced at the breakfast with a presentation video. Manser appeared to be rocking a Win machine of some kind, because it kicked him out to the password screen before he could launch the video (out of force of habit, I ducked my head and looked away as he entered it even though it didn't echo characters). The machine finally cooperated, and the video revealed four winners in various catagories:

Best Kid Section – Dragon's Lair Comics and Fantasy in Austin, TX

Most Creative Store Sale – Tate's Comics in Larhill FL

Best Halloween Comic Fest Event – Carol And John's Comics in Cleveland, OH

Best Retail Relocation Expansion – Curious Comics in Victoria, BC

Which then brought us to the publisher portion of the show. First up was Mighty Marvel, represented on stage by David Gabriel and Peter Charpentier (the promotions guy who came up with the eyeballs from last year). They appeared to be rocking a Mac Air.

One curious thing I noted during the presentation was some general…derision, I guess, among the attendees. I noticed a bit of eye rolling, some snorting in contempt, some shaking heads in disbelief, and one particular individual reaction that I will get to anon.

Things started with a clip of Daredevil (I was curious if that was his own machine and if we caught a glimpse of his Netflix line-up). A second series will be starting soon, and Marvel is making sure to keep the backlist of Daredevil books and trades in stock due to fan interest.

Spider Gwen is doing well. Gabriel addressed fan and retailer concerns that the series would be ending. He might have slipped a bit – he mentioned Gwen will have a place in "the new Marvel universe" then acted like he didn't say that. Whether that was a Freudian slip or if he was just messing with audience expectations, I leave for you to judge. Gwen will have a prominent role in Secret Wars and will continue afterwards, so those of you digging the series have good things to look forward to. He also showed some of the variants, which included my favorite of the entire presentation, Spider-Groot. There is also a Squadron Gwenster variant coming.

Gotta talk about Star Wars. The conventional wisdom is that the first issue of anything sells, followed by a 50% or more drop off to the second issue, then a protracted decline in readership. Turns out Star Wars has bucked that trend. Sales are increasing each month instead of falling, including 2nd through 4th prints. Among the things he trumpeted was a four issue mini called Shattered Empire, which would serve as a prequel to the new movie. He mentioned that the fans are nuts for the "action figure" variants, and he showed the C3PO action figure variant from Star Wars 5.

Next came a clip of Avengers: Age Of Ultron. It was about a minute of Hulk and Iron Man in the Hulkbuster armor fighting. It made me think of Scott McCloud's Destroy!!! This segued into a preview of the Rage Of Ultron miniseries. There would also be a 56 page preview of all Secret Wars issues. Gabriel also mentioned that retailers had been requesting a flowchart to show how the old Secret Wars ties into the new, and they had made one up and it would be going out just in time for the event.

Gabriel then mentioned more promo items and variants. The Secret Wars promotion will have three phases. The first is a Battleboard, showing the Battleworld map and various issues. The second is cardboard standees of the characters. The third is four "landscape" variants – the idea is people could take them and the cardboard standees and make their own diorama. While most people seemed content with the usual eye rolling and snorting, one guy was actually reduced to hysterics after Gabriel said the word "diorama." Gabriel also said Marvel was going to make Infinity Stones as promo items.

After Secret Wars? Well, that "new" Marvel Universe could just be extra "histories" incorporating into the 616, not the end of the 616 itself. Among the titles was Future Imperfect, Secret Wars 2099, and 1872. No mention of Ultimates. Other titles included A Force and Squadron Sinister, which they are positioning to be a key player in the MU akin to what they did with Guardians Of The Galaxy a few years ago. Also coming was Weirdworld, a sort of Midnight Sons 2.0 which would explore the darker and more monstrous elements of the Marvel Universe, written by Jason Aaron of Thor and Star Wars. There would also be a title called Howling Commandos that would feature the monsters of the MU.

Those of us who can't get enough of the wonderfully cartoony Skottie Young versions of the Marvel characters are being treated to a full "babies" version of Secret Wars and they might also get more than one shots get their own comic during Secret Wars and maybe appearing again. The Neil Gaiman run of Miracleman will be completed, only two issues left. From there, they go to the unpublished stories, and then the new stuff starts. They also mentioned that CM Punk would be announcing his own Marvel series at his own panel this weekend.

Then, the one part of the Marvel presentation that didn't get any snark, showing the release trailer for Ant Man. It drew enthusiastic applause. Gabriel mentioned that they are getting all sorts of Ant Man collections ready and have them in stock for retailers.

Next up was Valiant. They were represented by four people. Hunter Gorinson (director of marketing), Fred Pierce (publisher), Atom! Freeman (sales manager), and CEO/COO Dinesh Shamdasani. They bantered a bit as they set up. They had a MacBook Air.

Valiant touched on their 25th anniversary, but they were understandably trumpeting the success of Bloodshot. Valiant is doing everything it can to be as friendly to retailers as possible. #2 of Bloodshot is fully returnable. The series is plotted up to #25. And there would be more looking at Bloodsquirt and the "SquirtVerse." They pushed the characters and mythos, and have tripled the size of their sales team.

They talked about the Valiant event for this summer, Book Of Death. The team behind Armor Hunters team is handling it. Eternal Warrior is the focus as he discovers the Book Of Geomancer from 1,000 in the future. It details the ultimate fates of every character in the Valiant Universe, so, of course, everyone wants it, making Eternal Warrior a target. It will reveal events happening within the books in the next two years, three years, five years…they even said the next 20(!) years. It will show the death of Ninjak, the fates of Bloodshot, the Harbinger foundation, and the XO Armor.

Book Of Geomancer will only available as a 1:25 comic issue, no digital or reprints. The companion miniseries, 1:10. Actual story, not preview. The crowd seemed on board with this.

So, last Tuesday, Valiant and Sony announced a five film deal to kick off in 2017 with Matthew Vaughn involved. Each has a ballpark $100 mil tentpole budget, and they are all being worked on simultaneously. The first two movies will be Bloodshot and Harbinger, and sequels are already in the works, all leading to a Harbinger Wars movie based on comic. Valiant wants to make sure that comic retailers know about the Valiant Universe because the movies will increase interest and Valiant has a remarkable record of readership retention. To this end, they are sending a full set of first collections of all Valiant titles to retailers for them and their staff to read and become conversationally familiar with the Universe. Retailers could do whatever they wanted with the books, even selling them if they wished.

Last was Dark Horse. What, no DC? Dark Horse was represented by Scott Allie. He also seemed to have a MacBook Air. He mentioned the phenomenal success of Archie meets Predator (giving hope to those of us still waiting for MLP/Mars Attacks!). There would be a recolored Big Guy And Rusty, as well as Burning Threat, the original Shoalin Cowboy. They are almost finished adapting the third The Strain novel, and they have future plans for the property. There was also an emphasis on kids' comics, starting with a $10 hardcover Plants vs. Zombies book. Fight Club would get a FCBD edition, that would help reestablish the ending of the book to get people in the swing of the ongoing series. Most interesting is that Random House, which publishes the works of Chuck Palahniuk, is helping to cross promote the Fight Club comic, timed to come out about the same time as Palahniuk's new novel. Variants could be ordered as many as wanted once a minimum threshold for the regular issues was reached. He also addressed the end of the Mignola universe, but there is still plenty of stuff left.

With that, the presentation broke up. People were invited to take some of the freebie promo items as they left. Outside the hall, people were already gauging what they could flip them on eBay for. It's accountancy that makes the world go round round round….