Marvel’s Neener Factor

Originally published June 1, 2001, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1437

I have to admit that, in the old days in Marvel direct sales, our best friends were the fine folks at DC Comics. Why? Because the programs, the approaches to sales, all the stuff that Carol Kalish (then-head of direct sales) came up with, was not only great in and of itself, but it always made DC look anemic in comparison. Most of the retailer programs had their origins at Marvel. Carol made them relatively easy to use, made the terms understandable. There was co-op advertising, rack programs, cash register programs, book programs (making books on improving business available at heavily discounted prices). In short, she made it a policy to go out of her way to make the retailers and distributors understand that Marvel was, and would always be, their friend.

And sure, the distributors used to get antsy, certain that at some point Marvel would try to shove aside the middle man by self-distributing, but those concerns would always be brushed aside. We didn’t have the manpower, we didn’t have the national set-up, and what it ultimately came down to is that Marvel simply wouldn’t be that stupid. Why go out of our way to shoot ourselves in the foot, when instead we could go out of our way to make our customers happy… our customers being the distributors, and by extension, the retailers (making the readers happy was editorial’s job.) When distributors would be angry about something, we went out of our way to placate them. When they were annoyed by a Marvel policy, we went out of our way to explain—to as many people as necessary, in as many ways as possible—why this particular policy had been developed. What need it filled. They may not have always agreed, but usually they understood, and I think on some level they appreciated that we had taken the time to go (say it with me) out of our way to address their concerns.

Now, y’know, we were just dumb sales folks back then, working for a company that was making money hand over fist, increasing sales, expanding the venues in which comics could be found, spreading good will. We lacked the foresight, the commercial acumen, the sheer business savvy of those who would come after us, all of whom were so much better, brighter, and cognizant of what was required to take a decades-old, thriving force in the industry and plunge it into bankruptcy.

We didn’t realize that all one had to do was go out of one’s way—not to make people happy—but to hack them off.

What simpletons we were! Just imagine! If we’d had that sort of vision, we could have sent Marvel into the toilet years earlier! But no! We were dumb enough to care about the customers, to be interested in genuine give-and-takes of ideas. We were dumb enough not to insult them. What the hëll were we thinking?

Besides, we had DC to make the gaffes for us. It was great. From the dull-as-dishwater sales presentations to their playing catch-up in assorted retailer-benefiting programs, DC made us look good just from their sheer existence. It wasn’t that they were doing a bad job. It’s just that Carol was so far ahead of them that they occasionally had trouble keeping pace with her. No shame in that.

I’m not saying Marvel never made mistakes, God knows. The entire Kirby artwork return debacle alone was enough to make the company practically persona non grata at any number of conventions. There were missteps, miscues, miscommunications.

But even in our most majestic of screw ups, we never hit upon the remarkably clever approach currently being used by the Marvel Powers-That-Be, which I can only refer to as the Neener Factor.

DC execs must be groovin’ on this stuff, kids. Granted, yes, absolutely, Marvel books are selling well. But the current relations between DC and its retailers borders on a lovefest. DC Retailer Representative Program (in Dallas this year), DC’s co-op program, its reprint and reorder programs, etc., etc… all of that would be sufficient to garner much happiness between DC and the retailers. Added to that, however, the Marvel Neener Factor, and the DC Powers That Be must be eagerly awaiting every new Marvel public utterance in the exact same way that, a few years ago, Republicans anticipated each and every new Ken Starr subpoena.

To comprehend the Neener Factor, one need go no further than distilling—to their respective essences—the response that retailers received to running short of Green Arrow as opposed to running short of Ultimate Spider-Man, as follows:

Retailers to DC: We’re out of Green Arrow.

DC Response: Great! Here’s more.

Retailers to Marvel: We’re out of Ultimate Spider-Man.

Marvel Response: You should have ordered more; now you can’t have any. Neener neener neener.

Retailers to Marvel: But… what kind of publisher ignores demand, and doesn’t care if he comes up looking bad in comparison to his competition, which is handily filling our reorder needs?

Marvel Response: You’re dumb. Neener neener neener.

Marvel’s stated intention to “re-establish ourselves as an important mainstream publisher” glosses over the fact that the reason Marvel was able to establish itself as an important mainstream publisher in the first place was because the books were made available, and if Marvel hadn’t stopped making the books available, it might not have to re-establish anything. And here’s another news flash: Mainstream publishers, when they run out of something incredibly popular, reprint the dámņëd thing.

How did Marvel hit upon the Neener Factor? Well, perhaps it was out of desperation or necessity or necessity born of desperation. After all, any new initiative that Marvel announced, editorial or otherwise, was immediately jumped on from every quarter, ripped apart, analyzed, shredded, and—more often than not—found wanting. This was a pretty hostile environment Marvel was faced with… a hostility spurred in no small part from fear, because no one really wants Marvel to go belly-up. Because if it does, a ton of retailers will go, too, which sure won’t be good for Diamond, and if Diamond goes, we’re done. The problem with fear is that it leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to the Dark Side—or, as some retailers call it, 387 Park Avenue South.

Ah, if we’d only had the modern Marvel vision back in the old days! The vision to cheese off retailers by stating that the no-overprint policy was “sort of an IQ test for comics retailers.” Silly us: We overprinted. We overshipped. We overstocked. And we sold a lot more than Marvel’s selling now, dumb old us. And when we had overages, we bagged them and sold them to K-Mart, or sent them as giveaways to conventions, or bagged them for Halloween, or donated them to charities, and yes, sometimes we pulped them, but that was a necessary cost of doing business. Clueless were we not to realize that questioning the intelligence of our customers, getting them worked up, and making our competition look better than us was the true necessary cost of doing business. Not having the IQ’s of those would follow us—a succession of amazingly brilliant and rich men (always men. Hmmm…)—who excelled at doing interviews in important magazines, talking about how they knew best because, y’know, they were rich and successful and it was just comics, for crying out loud, how tough can it be… we didn’t have that kind of brain power, you see. All we had was high sales and a company not in receivership. Old low-IQ us, not knowing that the way of the future was going around and saying that those retailers who disagreed with us represented “the other end of the spectrum” (i.e., dumb people) “and they speak for themselves pretty constantly…”

Yes. Yes, they do. And the way they tend to speak is with their orders, and with their wallets, and with supporting those publishers whose books they can actually stock in their stores. DC’s management team has been in place for years, whereas Marvel’s steering committees in the past decade has left a pile of broken bodies in the dust that would rival the casualty count of the Flying Wallendas, which might imply that maybe, just maybe, the people at DC have some clue of what they’re doing. And what they’re doing is making the books available, and what they’re not doing is issuing IQ tests to retailers. Because they know that if they anger retailers sufficiently, IQ is going to stand for I Quit… as in, I Quit going out of my way to support Marvel Comics.

Neener neener neener.

(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705.)