Shanower Returns to Oz and Mulls the Web
This story originally appeared in PW Comics Week on March 21, 2006 Sign up now!
by Heidi MacDonald, PW Comics Week -- Publishers Weekly, 3/21/2006
Winning awards and unanimous critical praise sometimes just isn't enough to boost a comics periodical's sales. Ask Eric Shanower. The acclaimed cartoonist behind Age of Bronze is the latest independent cartoonist to start thinking about serializing his comic on the Web while concentrating on publishing the graphic novels. (Phil and Kaja Foglio, Batton Lash and Carla Speed McNeill are all experimenting with this publishing model.)
"Sale of the comic book keep dropping, dropping, dropping," Shanower tells PWCW. "But the collected editions sell very well. Everyone tells me they're waiting for the trade."
Age of Bronze, which is published by Image Comics, has been nominated for multiple Eisner Awards and tells an incredibly detailed version of the Trojan War uniting all sources, not just Homer, and using painstaking research into life in the Bronze Age. Shanower has published two collections and both have sold over 10,000 copies; the first volume is in its third printing. Age of Bronze is also published in France, Spain, Italy and Poland, where it sells well.
However, sales of the 32-page comic—which comes out quarterly —continue to drop with every issue; the last issue sold less than 2,800 copies through Diamond, below the break-even point.
"[The market for] comics that aren't superheroes is in a state of flux still, " says Shanower. "I'm just trying to ride out whatever changes are going on in the industry and figure out where I have to go. Since the book collections are secure, I want to make sure people know the books are still happening." Although the Web publishing model has intrigued many in the small press, Shanower is considering a variety of different formats, such as smaller, manga-sized volumes; he won't decide until the end of the year.
He's also looking forward to getting all of his Oz books back in print. From 1986 to 1992, Shanower produced five graphic novels set in the world of Oz, four from now-defunct First Comics and the last from Dark Horse. This summer, IDW will present Adventures in Oz, an omnibus edition of all five books: The Enchanted Apples of Oz, The Secret Island of Oz, The Ice King of Oz, The Forgotten Forest of Oz and The Blue Witch of Oz. All are being rescanned from the original art. "It's going to look better than the original printing," Shanower says. A limited edition will include 70 extra pages of character sketches, alternate endings and other supplementary material.
Shanower has long been in the forefront of contemporary Oz fandom, and his Hungry Tiger Press has released several new Oz books over the years. (Oz characters are in the public domain, and the literature is voluminous: there are 14 books by creator L. Frank Baum, and scores by followers have appeared over the years.) The book fills what Shanower calls a gap in graphic novels for middle-grade readers. "I don't feel there's enough for that audience in graphic novel form now," he says. "There's the Little Lulu and Carl Bark Disney reprints, but compared to graphic novels for YA and adults, there's not a lot for kids."
The artist also recently finished illustrations for the final volume of Harlan Ellison's Dream Corridor, a collection of comics adaptations of Ellison's work that last appeared in 1996. The concluding volume is due this summer.
