Any suggestions from all you comic book gurus out there? Mutant, Magic free comic books I should read? Anyone?
You can't just throw out a title and expect someone to care. You have to hand-sell, and here's the secret:
Welcome to AiT/Planet Lar
The Secret of Hand-Selling Comic Books
Because more content is always good, here, on the insatiable Internet, I offer up some commentary and links with what writer Scott Ostler calls "cheap shots and bon mots" which is a pretty funny phrase no matter how you look at it.
First, I had occasion to send a couple of graphic novels to Richard Basey, a poster on Your Mom's Basement Señor Basey asked what AiT books he should start in on, and instead of just saying our equivalents to
Watchmen, Sandman, Strangers in Paradise, and
Sin City (
Astronauts in Trouble, Demo, True Story Swear to God, and
Smoke and Guns, for those interested), I asked the three questions I'd honed as Minister of Propaganda at the award-winning comics shop Comix Experience:
1. What'd you have for breakfast?
2. Where'd you last go on vacation?
and
3. What's your favorite movie?
Basey writes:
"Mr. Best Comic Publisher Young asked me three questions to get an idea of what AiT/Planet Lar book I'd probably get the biggest kick out of. My answers being:
1. Nachos with cheese
2. Canada
and
3. Big Lebowski
"So he sent me a book by Matt Fraction and Andy Kuhn about a kung-fu superspy gorilla who gets nominated for the Nobel Prize in the field of hard ****ing. Then kills the science community. It's like his three questions gave him insight into my very soul. This
was comics; enjoy World War Hulk and Countdown, *******.
Thanks, Lar!"
Now, I've been doing this kind of hand-selling for awhile; in an interview with CE proprietor Brian Hibbs and me with Sequential Tart way back in January of 1999, you can read me telling this tale:
ST: If a woman walked into your store, what title would you steer her towards?
LY: It depends. All of us have developed different ways of finding out what sort of book a customer might like. Personally, I engage folks in wacky conversation. I'll ask some seemingly unrelated-to-comics question ... it doesn't matter what ... as long as I listen to HOW they answer. For example, a woman came in about two weeks ago. She introduced herself as Alice and said she had attended a lecture given by Art Spiegleman and had read
Maus.
She had read comics as a child and was intrigued by what Spiegleman had said about the doings in comics.
Now, I could have just showed her some Crumb, some
Raw, Strangers in Paradise or
Bone and went back to what I was doing. But this is a rare thing, when someone is not only positively exposed to comics as an art form, but also is intrigued enough to search out a destination store and ask some pointed questions. So I said, "Bear with me here; I'm going to try to find out what kind of comic you might enjoy. What'd you have for breakfast?" Or something like that.
After some skepticism (where I had to explain I extrapolate what sort of person the customer is by the ANSWERS to my seemingly random questions), Alice admitted that she tried something different and at a different diner almost every morning. Well, she's shown herself to be unafraid to try new things, far afield from her experience. THAT right there is a common trait in OUR customers, so, after a few more questions, I pointed out
Optic Nerve, Milk and Cheese, Astro City (she was iffy on the superheroes, but I insisted; it was the Samaritan/Winged Victory date issue),
Transmet (of course), and
Sky Ape. She bought a big stack of stuff (except for the
Sky Ape ... admittedly an acquired taste) and has been back to shop some more ... so that worked out.
+++++
So, you see why this works? Let's take Basey, whose line "It's like his three questions gave him insight into my very soul." made my day, yesterday. "What'd you have for breakfast?" is, as I said up there about Alice, the way the reader starts the day. Coffee and a muffin tells me you want something portable, you're on the go, give-me-something-fast sort of person. That's a subset of books that will appeal, right there. "Where'd you last go on vacation?" tells me what you do for fun, which narrows it down further, and "What's your favorite movie?" checks genre, because, honestly, I could probably put a comic in your hand you'd enjoy after the first two and the last is just adding a couple more points on to my success average for style.
My thoughts of books for Basey were sort of easy, actually, since anyone who has nachos with cheese for breakfast is already one of our people. In this case, Canada doesn't really tell me anything, other than add in that he's not afraid of process, what with international travel being what it is, today.
The Big Lebowski was almost icing for me, since it shows he has an appreciation for skewed viewpoint. So, it was really a toss-up between
The Annotated Mantooth and the
Sky Ape series, and I went with the 'tooth because of Canada. Threw in a
The Homeless Channel too, as it was our latest and indicative of the spectrum of books we do: laugh yer ass off at the coarseness of life, or light a candle and put on the Tegan and Sara and show your comfortable side, you know? We've got you covered for whatever mood you're in.
Sometimes this isn't such the homerun as it was with Basey, although it works well enough that you never get worse a reaction than "Atta-boy" because people can tell you're trying to engage with them instead of just push a book into their hands and go back to your needlepoint or whatever. Lisa Fary, of the excellent site Pink Raygun, interviewed me on the floor of APE, and transcribed the process of the handsell. Besides being a much better writer than I am a speaker, at least you can see how I came up with
Smoke and Guns for her.
Here's Lisa's review "I liked the concept of
Smoke and Guns, but not this particular cigarette girl story. I'm almost disappointed that
Smoke and Guns was limited to a one shot graphic novel because I think the concept alone is strong enough for a series."
I suppose I should have put more weight into Lisa's
Wizard of Oz answer than her "girl's-night-out" vacation and offered up
Colonia instead... but see what I mean? Very solid "Atta-boy" if you click over and read the rest of her review.
+++++
So, Chuck, if you want to answer those three questions, I will put the perfect book in your hands. :lol
