TALKING TO PAUL LEVITZ, 2007: PART ONE

[MattBrady]

by Matt Brady

As the year winds down, it’s once again time to reflect and look ahead, and keep up with annual traditions. To these ends, we sat down with DC Comics’ President and Publisher, Paul Levitz, to talk about the year gone by, DC’s performance in the changing comics marketplace, online comics, competition with Marvel, and the various imprints under the DC umbrella.

Newsarama: Paul, let’s start with the general and move to specific – overall, how do you view the market and DC’s place in it at the end of 2007?

Paul Levitz: I think the market’s at a very healthy moment. You see such a tremendous variety of stuff being developed that will be coming our way in the next couple of years. The comic shops seem to be stable and healthy; the bookstores seem to be giving us progressively more space. The “share of mind” marketplace is putting more and more energy into comics and graphic novels, so I think that bodes well for the next round, too.

I think we’re at a good time.

NRAMA: So we’re still somewhat in that place where we were last year in a sense, so able to breathe a sigh of relief, in light of having lived through the ups and downs of the ‘90s – when the utter collapse of the comic book industry was perpetually just around the corner…

PL: [laughs] Don’t know if it was every that close…maybe it got as close as one week that I can remember. But with one notable exception, I don’t think things have gotten that bad.

NRAMA: And what was that?

PL: The mid’90s when Marvel decided to turn over the card table because they didn’t like the way the game was going, and chose to distribute themselves. One or two more wrong steps that week…if we had been appropriately stupid in response, I think we could have pretty well ended up without a comics business. I’m sure it would have regenerated in some form over time, but the one we have come to know and love was pretty fragile at that point.

NRAMA: Let’s talk about periodicals specifically – their health and place in the market. Not to be overly blunt about it, but DC has spent the better part of 2007 at #2 compared to Marvel. Here at Newsarama, we obviously see the fan response to the market shares and numbers month-to-month, but from your seat, how do you view it?

PL: I think Marvel has had a very good year in their periodical business. I think if you look at our periodical sales versus anybody else’s or even our own in most years, they’re at pretty healthy levels. The marketplace for regular monthly/weekly comics is in pretty decent shape at this point.

There’s no danger of that format going back to what it was in the 1940s or 1960s, but it’s in healthier shape than it’s been through most of my time in comics, particularly when the economics are able to stand on the second leg that most of it will be republished in a second format so that you really aren’t bearing all the cost on the one form.

NRAMA: In that vein, we’ve previously spoken about the sales picture of DC, and how it’s been changing in terms of percent between the Direct Market and the bookstore market. At that time, we talked the two numbers getting closer and closer…

PL: I don’t foresee in any near term that we’re going to be at 50/50 in overall sales. That would either require the comic shops to practically vanish from the face of the earth, or the bookstores to explode in their sales.

NRAMA: What about graphic novels specifically?

PL: That is likely to end up at 50/50 at some point, sure. Yeah, the bookstores are getting close. Comic shops are still measurably ahead, but another good year or two for the bookstores, and that gap might close. But that’s format specific, and not the dominant format that we publish in, mind you.

NRAMA: Do you see a day when that will change – the dominant format that you publish in, just by the demands of economics and demand, if nothing else? You’re already seeing instances where a very large audience wants the trade collections of Y: The Last Man for example…

PL: It depends upon the kind of stories that we tell. Stories that are told in serial form where the creative people make good use of the fact that the tale is coming either every week or every month continues to be a very successful business model for us. I think where people are creating more in a graphic novel format, and putting it out in random slice chapters…that’s getting harder to do.

I hope we have many healthy formats in the long run.

NRAMA: As you said, DC is seeing good penetration into the bookstore market, but obviously, there’s still room for growth, which you said in regards to the distribution deal DC has signed with Random House. So what’s the next outlet? What’s the next frontier to move into? Is it a big push for mass merchandise retail, or other ways to get them in front of more eyes?

PL: Let’s be serious about what we’ve accomplished and what we haven’t accomplished. Nobody knows exactly the size of the present audience for graphic novels as a category. My suspicion is that there are probably more people reading graphic novels today than there are reading periodical comics. I think that has probably crossed in the last year or two years. That still means that maybe we’re reaching, as an industry, half a percent or one percent of the American population. I think we’ve got a pretty good challenge just increasing that.

When you look at the demographics, behavioral information of the people that are reading comics on a regular basis, comic shops are a good place to sell them, bookstores are a good place to sell them, online is a good place to sell them. I’m not sure that we match that wonderfully to the mass merchandiser. I think you can create comics that can do very well in a mass merchant’s environment, but I’m not sure that the bulk of what we publish as an industry fits that definition.

NRAMA: What would be the comics that could be created to fit a mass merchant’s needs and the opportunity they present?

PL: I’m old enough to have worked in the business when we were at least under the impression that we were selling to the average American. In those days, you tried hard to make sure that every comic is good as an entertainment experience on its own. That you didn’t have to have read 572 other issues to understand it. You tried to tell stories that worked for the people of the age that you were trying to reach, and in those days, comics predominantly thought of themselves as a kids’ medium. I’m not sure that the average American kid is sitting there desperately wishing that he or she could get a comic book today. If we’re going to capture them as an audience, we’re going to have to find some stories that are important to them. And if we’re going to reach the average American adult, we’re going to have to find the kind of stories that they want to read.

I got an e-mail the other day from an old friend who’s a fan of the romance industry. We’ve never had successful romance comics in the time I’ve been working in the business – I came in at the last minute they died. Is there a way to do that, to do romance comics that reach out to non-comics readers? We’ve certainly done…interesting comics that touched on those themes – Love & Rockets, Terry Moore’s work, but as a genre, that hasn’t been a big part of our business. It’s a big part of mass merchant publishing. Very few things work as well in the Wal-Marts and Targets of the world as Harlequin. Can we find the right creative pool that does that? Don’t know. It’s not something that DC has on its agenda for the next couple of years, but if the industry is going to broaden out into those kinds of environments, I think we’re as likely to be able to do it by doing things in genres and styles that people already find interesting as we can by going out and saying, “Hey, we have this cool stuff, want to try it? It’s like nothing you ever ate.”

NRAMA: Moving into different formats, and talking about getting content to the reader in a form that they want it in – obviously Zuda was a big step in this direction in terms of content delivery. It’s still early in Zuda’s life, but is that moving in the direction that has been hoped?

PL: Folks showed up, and have been reading the material online, and seem to be enjoying it. They’re commenting, our servers haven’t been misbehaving, our programs haven’t been crashing, which is, in and of itself, something. That’s something where we need to hear from the readers – is it cool? Is it different from what we normally do? It’s very different in the process to know if it will accomplish our goals. We’ve attracted a couple of interesting advertisers, which is nice for the launch, we were able to get a lot of nice submissions that the guys were excited about for the first few contests. It’s pretty early, but things are looking good.

NRAMA: So far, is Zuda successful in reaching out to new people, or do you feel that you’re getting DC Comics readers who are there for you every month in print form, online?

PL: We haven’t really researched that yet. It feels likely that there are new readers in there, simply because of the materials that we’re putting out there is pretty different than what we put in the books, but I’ve got nothing to back that up factually yet.

NRAMA: While we’re talking about comics and comic book publishers moving online, we can’t ignore Marvel’s Digital Comics Unlimited program. Reactions to the initiative have raged the gamut, of course, but in terms of us talking now, let’s look at the one response from fans that went along the lines of, “Alright DC – what have you got?” Is this something that’s on the table for DC?

PL: Not this week [chuckles]. I wish Marvel well with it. I hope they’ve figured out something that a bunch of fans like at a price that the fans find appropriate, and that it’s a workable model for them. If it is, we’ll certainly look hard at it over time.

I think we have a few different views of the area than Marvel, one is if we’re going to do something where we’re distributing our material online, then we would certainly want to have figured out how the talent was going to participate in revenues that we were going to make. And that’s an extraordinarily complicated nightmare. If you set out to say…we’ve published probably 40,000 comic books in the course of our history…so if in one extreme you sat there and said, “I’m going to put 40,000 comic books online for people to read, the prospect of sorting the rights out for that, writing checks to the talent is pretty nightmarish.

NRAMA: So are you saying that’s something to be hammered out before an online comics program such as Marvel’s could get footing at DC?

PL: Well, I would hope that it wouldn’t be launched until it was hammered out. We’ve been pretty consistent in how we’ve done business over the last several decades, and we try to have those things figured out before we launch things.

The real elephant in the room of course, is that there’s a very, very robust amount of piracy going on and amount of pirated material out there. There’s no question that people are willing to read some comics online if they don’t have to pay for them. The question is: does anybody have a value proposition where a reasonable number of people are willing to pay for them? Will people ultimately want it all to be ad-supported, which seems how most online entertainment is being delivered these days? And is there an ad-supported methodology that makes sense for flat comic book pages?

I’m not sure if either of those things quite work today. We look forward to watching Marvel’s experiment. We watch every body else’s experiments in the area. We’ll undoubtedly have experiments in this area over the years. We’ll see how it all plays out.

NRAMA: Speaking of piracy, obviously you’re aware of the debate going on between fans that it helps bring new readers in via sampling vs. it hurts the industry overall because publishers and by extension, creators, aren’t being paid for their work. You are of course, going to take the “hurt” side of the debate as the Publisher of DC…

PL: The hell with being the Publisher of DC – I’m a comic book writer, and I like my royalties. When I look at the music industry, I think less music is being created and marketed today than there was 10 years ago. I think the effect of piracy has been to discourage creativity. You have a tremendous amount of ground level creativity – the group that would’ve only been a band in somebody’s basement, who now have access to the market by putting their stuff up on YouTube or in some other fashion, being able to have a shot at a moment of fame and some income, which is wonderful. The internet has been very positive and powerful that way.

But the amount of music that’s being created by any form of an established group has diminished enormously. I don’t care for that, as an occasional music shopper – to find that my choice is diminished. I find the amount of effort being made to introduce new music to a wider audience, the amount of money being spent on what I’ll describe as “introductory marketing” has diminished enormously. I don’t think it’s as vibrant a marketplace as it was years ago. I think that’s a bad thing.

When someone takes creative work that has been made at expense and with effort, time, energy, and says, “I don’t need to pay for this – I can find a way to enjoy it without rewarding the people who created it”…I think that tends to make that stuff go away over time. I think that’s a great challenge for the next generation of society in many media, not just comics. If people become convinced, as a society, that all forms of entertainment ought to be delivered to them free, they’re going to get a lot more advertising in their life. It’s not the worst thing in the world, but it’s probably not the best either, and they’re going to get a lot less investment in entertainment, and I think that will reduce choice over time. We’ll see.

NRAMA: Has DC done any kind of study or estimate in regards to how much money it feels it has lost due to online piracy?

PL: I haven’t a clue.

NRAMA: Just coming back around the different formats in which DC produces material, and moving back to traditional print periodicals, we’re a few months away from DC having two solid years of weekly series with 52 and Countdown. What lessons have been learned from your point of view from producing weekly comics?

PL: It’s tough. The editors age in dog years.

The clear challenge of the weekly comic is that it both requires a very different creative dynamic in story and pace, and an enormously different process to produce, and the process to produce is very fragile. When something starts going wrong, or starts being less wonderful than you’d hoped, you have about three and a half seconds to throw resources at it. It’s kind of like jumping on a car while it’s moving to do repairs on the engine. That’s certainly one of the lessons learned in the deal.

On the other hand, it’s proven that it can attract a meaningful audience, and when it works well, entertain that audience for a sustained period of time, and that’s pretty cool. All in all, it’s another trick that we can use in how we offer stories to readers.

NRAMA: We’ve talked before as to whether or not the weekly format could broaden within the DC Universe, or in any of the other imprints. Is that any clearer of an option, now, or are weekly comics something that work best as “standalone” projects such as 52 and Countdown?

PL: I’m sure you can do it with more than one thing, but it kinda all depends on how much life insurance you want to pay off on [chuckles]. There really is, I think, a limited number of creative people who can drive something at that velocity. But – if done right, it can certainly be an entertaining story.

Check back tomorrow for Part II, as we go through DC imprint by imprint with Levitz

[RichJohnston]

Looking forward to hearing about Wildstorm.

[LEMargolis]

I'm not a creator of comic book stories but as a long time fan/reader of all things DC, I certainly appreciate the top guy at DC looking out for his creators, making sure that they get paid for their work. I agree with his analogy with the music industry. If the 60s and early 70s music industry was like today's, most of the huge variety of music created then, would not have seen the light of day. I think if creators think that their work won't bring them their deserved income, you won't see their best work, especially if not self-owned (writing Superman versus Astro City, for instance). I don't think Marvel thought too much about that before launching.

[C_Striker]

Originally Posted by RichJohnston

Looking forward to hearing about Wildstorm.

same here, should be interesting

[HomerJimmy]

Originally Posted by RichJohnston

Looking forward to hearing about Wildstorm.

Especially since Wildstorm has turned into the imprint for some creator owned stuff and entertainment based comics like Supernatural and World of Warcraft.

[froinlaven]

Fire Didio.

[AbacusComics]

"Will people ultimately want it all to be ad-supported, which seems how most online entertainment is being delivered these days? And is there an ad-supported methodology that makes sense for flat comic book pages? "

OMG, hello? WOWIO.COM??? Almost a million downloads in the last 6 months... I would say the answer is... YES.

[Nightfly]

Paul seems to be a really smart & grounded guy, I enjoy and appreciate his perspectives.

Good interview Matt. Look forward to pt.2.

[Michael Heide]

Originally Posted by froinlaven

Fire Didio.

Wow. Classy.

[ElijahSnowFan]

Originally Posted by RichJohnston

Looking forward to hearing about Wildstorm.

i'm as big a fan of DC as there is, but i'm sure as hell hoping that if/when he addresses that, an "i'm sorry about The Authority and WildCATS, and really the relaunch didn't go down as it should have" is one of the sentiments delivered there.

again, i'll buy DC as long as they publish. but man, they flat-out abused people on the Worldstorm relaunch -- just thinking about it makes me frustrated.

but, also: GREAT INTERVIEW. always appreciate honesty, good questions.

[Kevin T. Brown]

Originally Posted by froinlaven

Keep Didio.

There. Fixed it for ya.

[ProudToSuck]

I agree with the music analogy, too. A recent article in Rolling Stone mentioned that the big box retail outloets (Best Buy, Wal mart, Target, etc) were devoting less floorspace to music in response to slow sales. Now, why would sales be slow? Could be possibly be due to people downloading all of this music they can no longer get at the big retailers?

I dunno if this is a sign of things to come for the comics industry, but the staggering amount of pirated comics online blows my mind.

[emerald archer]

Good lord, get over it. You don't like Dan or DC just read marvel, thery are SOOOOOOO much better in everything they do.

Originally Posted by froinlaven

Fire Didio.

[Ace]

Originally Posted by ProudToSuck

I agree with the music analogy, too. A recent article in Rolling Stone mentioned that the big box retail outloets (Best Buy, Wal mart, Target, etc) were devoting less floorspace to music in response to slow sales. Now, why would sales be slow? Could be possibly be due to people downloading all of this music they can no longer get at the big retailers?

I dunno if this is a sign of things to come for the comics industry, but the staggering amount of pirated comics online blows my mind.

Or could it be that people are buying the songs they want legally online? I know VERY few people who buy CDs these days.

That might not bode well for comic stores, but I'm sure it would bode well for DC and Marvel.

My main feeling on comic piracy is that 90% of the people who download comics are downloading things they wouldn't buy anyway, not in hard copy format and not for 3-4 dollars. That's just the feeling I get.

[Blackbeard]

Excellent interview, Matt. And best of luck to Mr. Levitz and DC in '08!

[Jomma]

Originally Posted by emerald archer

Good lord, get over it. You don't like Dan or DC just read marvel, thery are SOOOOOOO much better in everything they do.

Last time I read anything from Marvel it gave me the cramps.

(Ouch it burns!)

[Unicron78]

Originally Posted by ProudToSuck

I agree with the music analogy, too. A recent article in Rolling Stone mentioned that the big box retail outloets (Best Buy, Wal mart, Target, etc) were devoting less floorspace to music in response to slow sales. Now, why would sales be slow? Could be possibly be due to people downloading all of this music they can no longer get at the big retailers?

I dunno if this is a sign of things to come for the comics industry, but the staggering amount of pirated comics online blows my mind.

...but couldn't it also be attributed to the rise in viable, legal downloading from iTunes and such because more and more, people are purchasing SINGLES instead of albums which they tend to find to be replete with filler and watered-down songs?

I agree that piracy is problematic, but I also think that the industry has played a part in creating this problem; charging people 15-20 bucks for a 10-track CD that has about 4 enjoyable songs isn't/wasn't getting it done either.

It's sort of the reverse of what's going on in comics, where people are getting more and more frustrated with the (bi-, quasi-, thrice-) monthly format and instead getting the TPB's.

[Steve Magnum]

Originally Posted by RichJohnston

Looking forward to hearing about Wildstorm.

Rich,

Should we fans of Wildstorm be worried? Because the way you said that leads me to believe that something bad is about to go down.

[pogofan]

Originally Posted by MattBrady

NRAMA: So far, is Zuda successful in reaching out to new people, or do you feel that you’re getting DC Comics readers who are there for you every month in print form, online?

PL: We haven’t really researched that yet. It feels likely that there are new readers in there, simply because of the materials that we’re putting out there is pretty different than what we put in the books, but I’ve got nothing to back that up factually yet.

Man, I just LOVE it when anyone acknowledges the difference between what they think is true and what they know to be true. If only it weren't so rare!

[LEMargolis]

I'm always amazed when DC bashers (usually Marvel sycophants) show up on things DC-related to do their bashing. I guess they can't go to the Marvel boards (oh wait, what boards?).

I'm all for getting comics works from the web but I'm against doing so if the creators (writers, artists, musicians, you name it), who ordinarily would get royalties or paid for the work normally, don't get anything. These are public domain works yet.

[Simon DelMonte]

As always, Mr. Levitz actually answers the questions he was asked. And as always, he's honest about things. (And, to be fair, Didio and Joey Q are usually like this as well.)

Oh, what I wouldn't give to hear Bud Selig be this honest in his interviews.

[jedifish]

Hopefully you addressed the status of the Archive program, Matt.

[TellarHK]

.. because everyone I know has actually spent significantly more money on music and entertainment since pirate sources became more readily available. I think I owned about thirty CD's total between my first CD player and my first iPod. I hear this from everyone I know, too. Sure, I have music I never paid for, but in the past couple of years I've probably spent $200 or $300 on legal downloads of things that I never would have heard without either XM Radio or someone letting me listen to his or her favorite band by sending an MP3 in my email. I may have a lot of things in my collection, but at the same time I do believe I'm spending more than I would otherwise. What downloading seems to have killed in my opinion, is radio.

My problem with music piracy is that the artists don't get anything from it - but at the same time, they sure as hell don't seem to get much from the labels that sell things most of the time anyhow. I almost wish Radiohead hadn't been a sucky band, just so I could have supported what they did with "In Rainbows".

With comics though, I get a much different sense of where the problems lie. The problems Levitz mentioned are certainly true, but the real issue I have with digital comics sales is cannibalizing the comic shops. I doubt that comic piracy online, while large, is enough to cause that kind of statistical damage to the industry for a few reasons. One of which being that the only reason I spend $100-150 a month on comics (95% DC even) is because I was able to get into them again thanks to downloading.

I've admitted it before, and I'll admit it again - I download. But my local comic shop sees me every week, and last week I walked out with over $120 worth of graphic novels and weeklies for either myself or Christmas presents. Would I spend more if I didn't download anything? Maybe on weeks when I'm trying out a new series that I hadn't been reading before, but I think I'd feel a lot more uncomfortable when I looked at my receipts at the end of the day and realized "Wow, I just bought twelve books today and five of them just didn't grab me."

In the age of highly intertwined storylines and oft-delayed books, it's really easy to feel a bit burned out.

How could I be convinced to stop downloading anything illegally? Well, to be honest, in the past few months I've done very little downloading - my tastes have leveled off, and the 32 books a month I have on my current pull list are the result of three years of finding the writers, artists and characters I enjoy. At this point, I'm buying everything I have an interest in. But the best way to stop me from downloading would be to offer the same kind of files that the pirates offer, for perhaps $1.50 each.

P.S. Matt, I know my posts are often too long for most people, but it seems like every time I login to put up a post I have to relog and then resubmit if it takes me 20-30 minutes to put something together. Any chance of the persistence of login being a little longer?

[nightwingoracle]

[quote=Unicron78]...
I agree that piracy is problematic, but I also think that the industry has played a part in creating this problem; charging people 15-20 bucks for a 10-track CD that has about 4 enjoyable songs isn't/wasn't getting it done either.

QUOTE]


Don't know what artists you listen to, but I tend to listen to true artists who actually record a full CD's worth of great songs. Most of these artists aren't currently in the top-40, but when you listen to today's top-40 you don't really hear much to listen to anyway.

[CodeGuy]

Originally Posted by Simon DelMonte

As always, Mr. Levitz actually answers the questions he was asked. And as always, he's honest about things. (And, to be fair, Didio and Joey Q are usually like this as well.)

I also think that Didio and the Countdown crew have gotten much better about this in the Counting Down interviews. The last few have seemed much less jokey and much more on topic, which I have appreciated.