• by David Ward , January 27, 2003

A late-summer event in Southern California last month had all the markings of an A-list film studio event. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ben Affleck, and Jason Lee were there, as were influential directors such as James Cameron of Titanic fame. But this wasn’t Hollywood, it was San Diego. And the event wasn’t a film premiere held at some exclusive club, but rather the annual Comic-Con International comic book festival, held in the city’s glass and steel convention center.

There the Hollywood elite spent four days earnestly promoting their upcoming projects to a somewhat anonymous but surprisingly influential demographic — comic book readers. "You’re the biggest fans we have," Schwarzenegger told the thousands of adoring fans on hand to see him generate some early buzz for Terminator 3, due out in summer 2003.

Arnold may be onto something. Comic books — at least as an advertising and licensing vehicle — are running on a hot streak. Three of the summer’s top films, Spider-Man, Men in Black II, and Road to Perdition, originated as either comic books and/or graphic novels. That trend will likely be repeated next year with the releases of Daredevil, X-Men 2, and The Hulk, all action movies aimed squarely at a young audience. The success is not limited to just films. On TV there’s the TNT cult favorite Witchblade and the Superman spin-off Smallville, while Activision’s Spider-Man topped the video game sales charts for three straight months.

All this has helped the comic book industry recover from one of the most tumultuous decades in its 70-year history. The 1990s began with a boom, but then saw sales plummet, sending leading publisher Marvel Entertainment into a high-profile bankruptcy and causing the number of comic book specialty stores in the U.S. to drop by more than half.

The North American comic book industry still remains fairly small, with estimated total sales of around $300 million out of a $3 billion global market. But the buzz about the business is finally back.

"Fifteen years ago comic books were simply seen as men in tights," says Michael Fischer, marketing director for video game publisher Sega of America and a huge comic book fan. "Now comic books and graphic novels are being seen as a legitimate form of media and are getting more respect than they ever have before. A few years ago the comic book Maus won a Pulitzer Prize. Entertainment Weekly now covers graphic novels along with other books."

With the help of this Hollywood-style makeover, comic books are in the process of repositioning themselves as an advertising medium. For those who haven’t read one in the last two decades, comic books are no longer filled with cheesy black-and-white ads for novelty products like X-Ray Specs and Sea Monkeys. Instead there are full-page four-color pitches for everything from games to DVDs and even stereo systems.

The next step will be to reach even further into teen brands and convince the overall advertising community that comic books should be an integral part of every campaign aimed at a younger demographic. And the key to that lies in changing any misconceptions about who the actual comic book reader is. They may look like nerdy guys who spend far too much time engaging in flights of fantasy, but comic fans, like the heroes they read about, actually have a secret identity — "Super Early Adopter."

"Everyone still thinks the comic book reader is an eight-year-old kid with a quarter and a bicycle," says Bill Jemas, president of the now-revived Marvel Enterprises. "In reality they are what people refer to as ‘bell cows’ — opinion leaders. Comic book readers may not be socialites, but they're certainly affluent and influential and ... they’re enthusiastic about the things that they love."

What comic book readers tend to be most enthusiastic about are other entertainment media, especially music, movies, TV, and video games, and as a consequence companies in those fields are currently among the leading comic book advertisers. Judging by the ad mix, comic readers also have a healthy appetite for packaged snack foods, candy, and cereals.

But almost through sheer will and some surprisingly gutsy experimentation, comic books are trying to expand their reach into major national brands like soft drinks and clothing. Indeed, next year, Jemas predicts, Marvel will begin adding leading fashion clients both as licensees of Marvel characters and as advertisers in their titles.

What’s attracting this new attention from the advertising community is comic books’ ability to cost-effectively focus on a fairly hard-to-reach demographic, 12-to-24-year-old males. "I'm getting a lot more calls out of the blue from ad agencies who are working on campaigns," says Mark Bernardi, ad sales manager with Dark Horse Comics. "In the past year somebody, somewhere, has taken notice of comics and their ability to reach that demographic."

Comic books do offer some fairly unique selling points as an ad vehicle. Unlike magazines or newspapers, the comic audience tends to read each issue cover to cover, often several times, which ensures that every ad, no matter where it’s placed in the book, will be seen.

They’re also fanatically devoted to their favorite characters. "I don’t think our fans are quite as loyal as NASCAR fans, but when we stand behind a product, our fans tend to sample it," brags Jemas. "A year ago we decided our characters wouldn’t smoke anymore. We figured we’d be praised for being Mom, Pop, and apple pie. But instead we got a tremendous amount of complaints from old-time fans who’d been watching Wolverine smoke a cigar for 40 years."

Comic books are also far cheaper on a CPM basis than other media. The average cost to buy the back cover for half of Marvel’s monthly 60-title lineup, which would work out to about 30 comics with a circulation of more than 1 million, runs about $30,000, a fraction of the cost of being in a Maxim, Playboy or Sports Illustrated.

But the comic book industry’s courtship of advertisers hasn’t always been that smooth. For one thing, the rights to some comic book series are actually owned by their artists, who are uncomfortable with the mix of art and commerce and resistant to having ads breaking up the narrative flow of their work. There’s also some debate over whether comic book superheroes should become pitchmen themselves, saving the world on one page and flogging cupcakes on another. But comic books have at least figured out a way to better position themselves as an advertising alternative to magazines. Instead of pushing individual titles or characters, virtually every organization sells its entire line by the month. "If you say this is Star Wars issue number 22, advertisers’ eyes glaze over because it’s almost too much information," explains Bernardi. "So I just say Dark Horse June. Most advertisers are used to working with a magazine that comes out once a month, so it's very clear-cut."

Ironically, a few years ago that strategy meant the larger comic book houses had circulations that were too large for some advertisers. "We had a monthly circulation of 5 million, and so with any kind or reasonable CPM, buying an ad was prohibitively expensive," says Jemas. "It was a circulation twice that of Sports Illustrated, so people would only buy half pages and maybe one person a month would buy a full page." Eventually Marvel split its lineup in half, giving advertisers the chance to choose whether they wanted to reach the more adult comic reader or a slightly younger audience.

The result of this is a simplified purchasing decision for a media buyer. Anthony Arena of the Bozell Advertising Agency, which does the Got Milk? milk mustache campaign for the dairy industry, notes that he doesn’t have to decide between, say, Spider-Man and Green Lantern. "I just tell them I’m looking to buy 12-to-17-year-old males," he says.

Sega’s Fischer has been an advocate of comic book advertising since he first began making marketing decisions nearly a decade ago. "In the case of comic books it’s a great value in terms of out-of-pocket and CPM, but it’s also a very targeted buy. When you find a medium that focuses on a demographic and psychographic the way comic books do for us, it justifies it. For someone in video games, it’s kind of a dream come true."

The two largest comic book companies, Marvel and DC Comics, owners of Batman and Superman, have naturally had the most success in luring advertisers. But even the next tier of publishers, which includes Dark Horse, CrossGen Comics, and Image Comics’ studio Top Cow, is also reporting success. These books feature highly stylized graphics that appeal to an older audience, and as Top Cow president/COO Matthew Hawkins points out, "As comic books readers grow older, they tend to have more money."

There are also dozens and dozens of even smaller houses, but most of them have thus far found it impossible to get ads. "A lot of the individual publishers are one- or two-book shops, and for them the film costs alone make it not worth it," explains Hawkins.

As they look to raise their profile, comic book companies have been willing to break a few rules, including some long-held tenets of advertising. CrossGen Comics two years ago began taking the audacious step of including free advertisements for Coke, Pepsi, and Mountain Dew — without the permission of the brands themselves — in order to prove their potential as an advertising vehicle. "We make it clear with the copyright notice that this is not a paid ad," explains Tony Panaccio, CrossGen’s vice president of product development. "We figured the worst that would happen was that Coke would issue a cease and desist order. We figured the best that would happen is that it would open eyes at the corporate level at Coca-Cola that there was something viable here."

Currently the jury is still out as to whether the gamble will pay off. While these major soft drink companies haven't stopped CrossGen, they haven't committed to paid advertising yet either. But Panaccio figures it was worth the risk. "If we had just pitched Coke and Pepsi on this two years ago, they would have looked at us like we were lucky to get the pitch meeting," he says.

If there is a limitation to comic book advertising, it’s that their appeal tends to be gender specific. But there are a few publishers, most notably CrossGen and Top Cow, with its Witchblade and Tomb Raider lines, that are growing the market for teen girls and women. And somewhat forgotten in the mix are old-time industry stalwarts such as Archie Comics, which reaches a young girl audience.

"The thing is trying to educate a lot of these advertisers that Archie is still around," says Victor Gorelick, managing editor of Archie. "And that Archie’s demographic goes to ‘tweens,’ which is a very big audience. Our books are wholesome, without violence, and aimed right at 7-to-12-year-olds."

Gorelick says Archie, which still maintains a healthy monthly circulation of around 1 million, has been able to capture many of the same ads as other comics, including snacks, home videos, and the Fox Family Channel, as well as some additional demographically targeted buys for products such as Bonnie Bell cosmetics for young girls.

Gorelick says he does have to occasionally remind advertisers that comics are a different medium than traditional magazines and that ad creatives may need to be tweaked. "They have to be a little simpler in some cases, especially the inside ad pages that are printed on 30-lb. newsprint," he says. "We also issue digest-size versions, which are a little smaller, so we encourage them not to have too much small print. Beyond that it’s just convincing them that we have an audience that’s worth reaching."

While comics are certainly poised for tremendous growth as a licensing source for other media, there are some valid questions as to whether that will lead to a new and broader audience for the books themselves. One need only remember that the last huge surge in the industry was less than 15 years ago, when comic books like The Death of Superman suddenly became collectibles and people bought the same title by the caseload in hopes of cashing in for big money later. That fad quickly faded, leaving the industry with the same loyal but slowly aging audience.