Posted in: Comics | Tagged: bad idea

Let's Talk Through Some Bad Ideas

"The one thing that will wash away all sins is if the books are really, really, really, really good." –Dinesh Shamdasani, from a Multiversity interview

Dinesh Shamdasani and the pre-DMG New Valiant crew (Warren Simons, Hunter Gorinson, and Josh Johns) made a splash last Thursday by announcing the scope of their new project called Bad Idea.

Bad Idea appears to be a physical single issue only company that will self ship to only 20 stores at launch, with a total of 50 stores planned for the end of 2020.

Looking at Bad Idea quickly, it's a bonanza for eBay and speculators. ("Why not ship directly to eBay?" one retailer told me.)

Distribution to 20 stores (I presume US only) means that if you don't live in California or the tri-state area around New York City, they're probably not shipping to anywhere within 500 miles of you if you live in the US, god help you if you don't live in the US.

What I intuit of their strategy: Artificial scarcity to secure buzz, with an eye towards impressing Hollywood with their buzz.

Say you are a comics retailer in the US: Are you going to be okay not carrying Bad Idea comics? Probably not, if history is any judge. Mark Waid will talk to anyone who will listen about how retailers dogged him for Thrillbent. Can you imagine the salt that's spilling in the retailer-only Facebook group right now?

Provided you can find a Bad Idea issue, it should look great. One of the strengths of pre-DMG New Valiant was art quality, and for Bad Idea they promise prestige format issues exclusively with a lot of the same pre-DMG New Valiant talent.

Alex De Campi subtweeted that Bad Idea sounds like an IP farm, and it's hard to argue with her without seeing the contracts. Then again, if you're looking to do the absolute minimum before shopping around a story, why bother getting Doug Braithwaite to draw it?

My question: Will Bad Idea reprint anything? Given that Shamdasani and Co. have their hands in Hollywood (The Witcher, Final Fantasy XIV), you'd think if a Bad Idea comic got Hollywood energy, they'd rush it back to print.

If Bad Idea doesn't reprint anything, why bother getting excited? Speculators and eBay buyers will get to those early issues before you can. No digital and no collections means that the only vector for reading the comic is the most expensive in terms of time (sifting through longboxes on the off chance a retailer put some eBay gold in there) or money (eBay).

(Before someone rushes in to say "but what about scans", homie, what're the odds that a scanner works at one of the 20 stores that Bad Idea will ship to? Also: I'm old enough that if I can find it, I feel bad not paying for it. Before another person, perhaps Simons, rushes in to say "dude, just call up one of the 20 comic spots and ask them to send you the comic", I'm not sure I want to give a random comic shop employee my credit card information. I imagine this is how it feels to like comics outside of the US.)

On the other hand, making anything exclusive will run into this problem, whether its comics or sneakers or haute couture. If you make anything limited, people will complain that they can't get it. There's tradeoffs, and I'm sitting pretty clearly negative. If you're interested in the positive, Bad Idea will give me something to sift through longboxes for that if I find, it'll make my week. Bad Idea says they want to be SST Records, which, given that SST was historically terrible at paying their artists, perhaps not the comparison they want to make.

Can Bad Idea's team make the company sustainable is a more interesting question to me rather than "Is Bad Idea a good one?" Maybe? Does enough profit exist on a $4, 22+ page single issue that Bad Idea can run single issues only without a Hollywood co-sign?

What do you think?

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