Originally published January 27, 1995, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1106

Long ago, in an industry far, far away…

COMIC WARS

Chapter 4:

“A New Wrinkle”

…It was

a dark time

for the Distributor

Alliance. One of their own

had been seduced by The Dark

Side and sold his business to The Comic

Empire, giving them a new and devastating

weapon: The Death World. Once a small, unthreat-

ening distributor, The Death World had been transformed

overnight into a weapon of potentially unstoppable power, capable

of destroying an entire status quo with a few well-placed shots .    .    .    .

In a time already rife with uncertainty, The Distributor Alliance—in its

hidden base in Norleens—found itself gearing up for what could be the great,

final conflict…                                                                                                                                                      .

Everyone was shouting at once, and it was all that Admiral Capgem could to do make himself heard over the ruckus. “People!” he shouted. “Everyone: Settle!”

Capgem looked over his battalion of generals, all recruited from the subset of The Distributor Alliance, namely, the daring Rebel Retailers. They were feisty, angry, and, admittedly, frightened. For years they had been bad-mouthing The Comic Empire, feeling that they were doing so with impunity. Yet now The Comic Empire had taken a deadly and unexpected step closer to them. The increased proximity was disconcerting.

“We need to have a coherent plan—a consistent front. Now is not the time for petty bickering.” Admiral Capgem eyed each of them sternly. “I want reports from all concerned, starting with—you,” he said, pointing to the far left: “General Panic.”

“We’re dead!” shrieked General Panic. “This is the end of the direct market as we know it! We’re doomed!—The Comic Empire will—”

Capgem winced slightly. “General, turn down the volume just a touch, all right?”

“The Comic Empire,” Panic began again, desperately trying to rein in his sense of dread, “has finally shown its true colors. For years now we’ve been seeing the Empire slowly making its moves, plotting, planning—pretending that it was on our side, but all along it’s been planning to screw us to the wall and feast on our living hearts.”

With a sigh, Capgem said, “How about we get back to you later?”

“I’ve had a bad feeling about this for some time now.”

“Yes, I’m sure you have, General Malaise.”

“I mean, you don’t have to be a genius to see the pattern: the market flooding, the multiple editions, the bogus ‘test’ with two different versions of the same title, the Empire Mart disaster, the shrinking market share.

“The market has lost faith in The Comic Empire. So it was only a matter of time before The Comic Empire lost faith in us. Clearly, this is just the first step toward the final goal of dispensing with the retailers completely.”

“Just wait a minute,” General Calm spoke up. “Couldn’t we be jumping the gun just a little here? All The Empire has said is that The Death World has been created as an experiment, to—”

“And that’s all we were! And now they’re washing off the microscope slide and stamping, ‘Game over, man!’ on our file folder!”

“Someone muzzle General Panic, please,” said Capgem tiredly. “General Calm, you were saying?”

“—to try various marketing strategies,” Calm continued. “The Death World has never been a galactic distributor. It can’t just be made into one overnight. Furthermore, the notion that they’re trying to cut us out of the loop seems alarmist.”

“Who said anything about being alarmist?”

“Shut up, Panic,” said General Knowledge. “The fact is that The Comic Empire having a distribution arm owned by the same parent company is hardly new.”

“He’s right,” said General Irony. “You know, we’re running around and getting upset and predicting the end of everything—but years ago, when the newsstand distributors were making the same angry noises about the creation of the direct market, we just snickered. We didn’t care. That’s because the benefit fell to us. Now it seems to be going against us. Maybe this is just karma.”

“No, I refuse to accept that comparison,” said Admiral Capgem firmly. “The direct market arose because the independent distributors and newsstands weren’t getting the job done. We have been getting the job done.”

“But obviously not to The Comic Empire’s satisfaction,” remarked General Malaise. “Their market share has been slipping, their public image is shot, and it would seem they blame us for it.”

“If they want to look for scapegoats, they just need to look in the nearest mirror,” said General Irony’s twin brother, General Sarcasm.

Admiral Capgem clapped his hands firmly to regain attention. “Look, we have to call for some sort of general consensus. We’ve been paging him, but, unfortunately, General Consensus hasn’t been answering his beeper. Let’s try to work out some best- and worst-case scenarios here.”

“There’s a best case?” asked General Sarcasm.

“If we look for one, perhaps. General Speculation?”

“Well,” said General Speculation, “worst case scenario: The Comic Empire decides to make The Death World the exclusive distributor of their product. They pull their product from Capgem. That’s a huge bite out of Capgem’s income.

“The Comic Empire’s competitors start buying out, or creating, their own distributors. It becomes every Empire for itself, a sort of feudal system that splits the marketplace in many directions rather than uniting it. Small publishers are squeezed out or have to be subdistributed by larger publishers.

“Furthermore, The Comic Empire decides to improve its bottom line by cutting back on the discounts. It sells to retailers at, for instance, 50%, or even 40%, off, rather than the 60% presently offered distributors. Retailers have no choice but to knuckle under, because there’s nowhere else to get the product. Their profits go down, and smaller retailers drop out or become absorbed by larger retailer chains.”

“Like I said! We’re doomed!”

They tried to ignore General Panic, but it wasn’t easy. “And the upside?” asked Admiral Capgem nervously, already seeing his carefully built business crumbling beneath his feet.

“For us? Not much. Our only prayer is that the status quo remains as it is—but I don’t see how that’s possible. For The Empire, though, there’s nothing but up sides. They have any number of directions they can go—and we can only hang on and see what happens.”

“I don’t understand something,” piped up a new voice.

“And what would that be, General Confusion?”

“Well,” said General Confusion, “are any of The Empire’s competitors going to trust The Empire to distribute their product? Even if the status remains quo, won’t people automatically assume that The Empire will give top priority to its own comics?

“Furthermore, it means that every strategy, every new program, every announcement—everything that the competition comes up with and would ordinarily announce to retailers and distributors—would have to be fed directly to The Comic Empire as a matter of course.

“There’s an old saying: ‘Does Macy’s tell Gimbels?’ In this case, they’d have to. That can’t possibly sit well with them. What competitor is going to want to become a customer of his arch-rival?”

There was muttering going on in the back of the room which Admiral Capgem was no longer able to ignore. He cleared his throat and said, “Excuse me. General Rumor? Is there something you’d like to share with the rest of us?”

“Well,” said General Rumor, clearing his throat nervously. “General Speculation and I were just chatting and, well, we were just thinking, if we were The Comic Empire, what our next move would be.”

“That being?”

“You know that, about a month before they purchased The Death World, they bought out a small publisher, Pismo Comics.”

“Yes. We all know that.”

“Well, the Pismo comics line is doing adequately, but it’s not burning up the sales charts. And its percentage of the market share is fairly small. And I think we also all agree that The Empire’s experience and public relations are such that they couldn’t possibly have The Death World become the exclusive distributor of Empire’s product overnight.”

“Where are you going with this, General Rumor?”

“What if The Comic Empire decided to make Pismo Comics available exclusively through The Death World?”

There was a long moment of silence. “That’s an interesting notion,” said Admiral Capgem, scratching his chins thoughtfully. “But would the retailers fall for that? Since Pismo is such a small percentage of the market, what’s to stop retailers from simply ordering nothing?”

And now General Speculation piped up. “Maybe The Empire would try to make it worth their while. It might offer Pismo at 70% off. An act of good faith that would endeavor to defuse retailer fears, goose interest in Pismo Comics, and make Pismo Comics more profitable on a per-unit basis. At the same time, it would enable The Comic Empire to get its feet wet and its systems in place for taking all its comic books exclusive at a later date.”

“It’s a no-lose proposition for them,” pointed out General Knowledge. “If it works out, great. If it doesn’t work out, they can simply ease out Pismo Comics entirely. But they’d still have the production facilities, which they can use to springboard the new line of Debris Comics that they announced a couple of months back.”

More voices started to rise in debate, when suddenly there was the ear-splitting howl of the proximity alarm.

“What the hëll is that?” demanded the Admiral.

From the monitor station, General Concern turned to admiral with distress on his face.

“General!” snapped Capgem. “Get Major Distress off your face and report immediately!”

“Later,” said Concern to Distress. She smiled and flounced away. Concern turned back to Admiral Capgem, all business. “We’re being invaded, sir. Outposts report that the newcomer has broken through our shields and is coming this way.”

“Is it…?”

Concern nodded gloomily. “I’m afraid so, yes. It’s The Comic Empire’s representative.”

“Not—”

“Yes. It’s Marv Vader. He’ll be in our midst any second—and there’s nothing we can do to stop him.”

And from a corner of the room, General Panic shrieked, “Help us, Obi Wan Seuling! You’re our only hope!”

This time, no one told him to shut up.

Next week:

Chapter 5:

The Empire Strikes Back Issues

(Peter David, writer of stuff, has been asked in the past if he’s going to write any Star Wars novels. This is probably about as close as he’s going to come.)