Classroom Heroes, For School Kids

Posted in: Comics, Comics Publishers, Current News, Marvel Comics, Spider-Man | Tagged: Classroom Heroes, dan buckley, spidey

Marvel to launch Young Spider-Man: Classroom Heroes comic book bundles to comic book stores, aimed at school kids.

It has been Bleeding Cool’s thesis for several years that the bookstore boom in the sale of graphic novels for kids, with books like Investi-Gators, Dog Man, Cat Kid, Best Friends and the work of Raina Telgemeir getting seven-figure print runs, is the equivalent of the newsstand for comics in the thirties and forties. And it is intriguing to see that the President of Marvel, Dan Buckley, feels similar, albeit from a different perspective.

Dan Buckley talked to comic book store retailers, giving a keynote address at ComicsPRO, saying, “My optimism has been burnished by the recent explosion in sales in Manga and Original Graphic Novels for early, middle-grade, and young adult readers. And while these products are not predominantly sold in your shops, this is a booming new audience of young readers of graphic fiction. And just like the newsstands did for many of us, this youth-driven OGN and Manga market is training new readers for us to acquire. Your distributors and publishers are here to work with you to develop programs to bring these readers into your shops or make it easier to give your best customers comic products that they can use to hook their daughters, sons, nieces or nephews.

“In recognition of this initiative, we will be providing a program this summer that will provide low-cost access to Spidey and his Amazing Friends comics.  That should be happening in July or August. We want to recreate that feeling of discovering your first comic and get readers genuinely excited for what’s hitting the stands each month. We want to reinvigorate the sense of community and belonging that comic shops offer and the feeling that keeps customers coming back time after time.”

Talking to ICV2, he added, “As I mentioned in my keynote, there is also a great deal of growth and opportunity coming from the middle-grade OGN business, where there’s a lot of new readers to be found, which is good. If you asked me 10 years ago what was the thing I was most fearful of, I was most fearful of the fact that the newsstand business collapsed, and we no longer had a place for people to try out comics or learn how to read graphic fiction.  Now we actually have a world of people who really want to read it.  It’s our job to go find them now and convert them into our business, but I feel very good about that.”

As to selling Marvel into bookstores, “I’m excited about it, I feel good about it.  As you well know, Marvel’s been a little less aggressive in that space than, let’s say, our distinguished competition and some other folks over the years.  We’ve gotten better at it over the last 15, 20 years, but let’s face it, we weren’t even in it in the 90s or early 00s.”

This was a time when former Chair Ike Perlmutter instructed Marvel not to keep a backlist of graphic novels and trade paperbacks, because of warehousing fees. Buckley continued “We are getting more sophisticated in approach for our products in that ecosystem, and I feel like we’re making a lot of headway; our numbers have been solid.  We, as Marvel, have to do some things in how we present our product and market it to get even more growth out of that space.  I feel pretty good with where we’re going.”

Marvel has also been licensing rights to their characters to other publishers for the bookstore, namely Scholastic Graphics with the likes of Miles Morales rather than doing it themselves. “I will admit we tried for a couple years, but there’s a couple different things that really played into it.  One, I’ve got a great editorial staff, I’ve got a great sales team, they’ve done great work over the years.  They’re great at telling stories in our core ecosystem of the direct market.  Asking them to do stories that work a little bit differently, and target different demographics was a bit unfair to them, and I think was confusing the system within my own group. The other thing is that I thought it was important to work with partners that have the best distribution channels to get to those readers.  I could have made perfect product, but then I would have to figure out how to get those readers to show up in the stores.  What I need to do first is figure out how to make that product intelligently, getting kids connected to our characters of that age group, and get product in their hands.  Hopefully we’ll work with our partners to make that product available in our hobby shops. It’s not my decision completely, but we are going to work on that. What I thought was more important was to learn stuff from other publishers who have great success selling this type of product to that age group, and we’ve been really happy with the results, and we’re learning a lot. Licensing isn’t just a business revenue approach, it’s a strategy to figure out the best way to do things that you’re not an expert at.”

As far as superheroes having less of that growing graphic novel space, Dan Buckley said, “As you know, it was not that long ago where if a kid got caught reading a comic book or graphic fiction at school, they’d get in trouble.  The fact that it’s so accepted by libraries and schools, that’s a huge win. The question you asked me previously has a lot to do with why superhero graphic fiction wasn’t growing as rapidly, or holding as much market share in those age groups.  It’s because people came into that space that weren’t superhero publishers like ourselves, and really designed product that spoke directly to those kids, and it resonated.”

“Now we have to be challenged, and I’m happy that we’re stepping up to the challenge of making product that resonates with those kids and also complements the media that we’re putting out there in the world. The superhero (let’s say, for lack of a better term) degradation in share in those specific areas has probably more to do with the fact that we, as superhero publishers, weren’t presenting the right product when that business was booming.  I’m very proud of the Scholastic and Abrams books that we put out.  The product has resonated, it’s moving well, and it’s a great partnership. We’re getting kids reading; they’re being introduced to our characters as reading entertainment much earlier than they were three, four, five years ago.”

As for Marvel Comics’ own plans, he stated “I’m excited that in August, we will be shipping out that low-price-to-the-retailers all ages Spidey and his Amazing Friends comic. We’ll be rotating that with a middle-grade Spider-Man offering that will be coming in September.  To be clear, this is content that was generated for other markets, and we’re repackaging it and putting it out, but it isn’t stuff that’s been in Free Comic Book Day or anything like that. We’re going to be testing that out for four or five months, rotating, and we see that as retailers being able to promote it and say, “Hey, we have this product, get stuff for your kids or bring some kids in.” We want to have comics for both the young grades and middle grades, because I know there’s a difference: kids 9 and 10 might not be as into reading and writing as making friends.  We wanted to mix it up a little bit so the retailers would have a broad offering.  We think that will be a huge opportunity, especially with the core demographics that go into hobby shops. We’re trying to make sure we have a lot of product in there.  We’re doing quite a bit of promotion: we’re working pretty closely right now with the social media team, and with other folks on the digital media side to keep that excitement quite high.” And emphasising another mid-friendly promotional point for Marvel Comics saying “There will be a skip month in October to allow for our usual Halloween giveaways.”

Marvel Comics also clarified that offering

“The retailer program will begin in August, alternating each month between Spidey and His Amazing Friends comic bundles and Spider-Man: Classroom Heroes comic bundles. Spidey and His Amazing Friends are perfect for younger readers, including short story SAHAF reprints and activity pages Spider-Man: Classroom Heroes are more for middle-grade readers, featuring short story reprints about Spider-Man saving NYC from his classic rogues’ gallery, while balancing his life as a high-schooler”

We’d already seen Spidey And His Amazing Friends for Free Comic Book Day. Spider-Man: Classroom Heroes is next it seems.

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