There are lots of well-intentioned, entertaining comics Web sites out there, so it’s doubtful many people would have pegged Comicfoundry.com as the online magazine that would break the mold for the print comics consumer magazine. But when Comic Foundry made the jump from online to print publication last year, it did just that. The new quarterly publication offers easy access to comics for a new generation of comic readers with great writing, a hip emphasis on lifestyle—from tips on “comic book fashion” to a list of “cute creator couples”—and an editorial embrace of comics of all kinds, from indie and superhero comics to manga and everything in between. It's even got an issue on politics coming up.
After initially being turned down for distribution by Diamond Distribution, the dominant distributor in the comics shop market, the savvy editors of Comic Foundry brought the rejection to the attention of the Internet comics community, and its support convinced Diamond to relent. Comic Foundry went to full color with its second issue and has seen orders increase with every issue. Next step: breaking into the bookstore and newsstand market. PW Comics Week spoke with Comic Foundry editor-in-chief Tim Leong (he’s also art director at Complex magazine) and CF senior editor Laura Hudson (who also contributes to PW Comics Week ) about how to publish a smart, funny and beautifully designed magazine about comics that anyone would like to read.
PW Comics Week: How would you explain the success you’ve had so far?
Tim Leong: I think it really speaks to us filling a niche in the marketplace, because the current magazines that are out there—Wizard, the Comics Journal—I think they service their readers very well with what they do and what they aim to do, but in doing that I feel they’ve left a very wide gap in the marketplace. I think a lot of readers were left out in the cold. I think we’ve helped fill that gap, and I think the readers are really appreciative of that.
PWCW: There’s a lot of enthusiasm for Comic Foundryonline, but that’s not always the best judge of how something is doing. How is the print magazine actually performing? Are the numbers going up?
TL:Absolutely. It’s a very steady growth. Each issue we have more ad pages, and each issue we have higher sales. It’s definitely going up. We haven’t dipped at all on any of them. This current issue has a print run higher than any we’ve had in the past.... I can’t see that as a bad sign.
PWCW: Can you talk about print run?
TL: We’re around 5,000 right now.
PWCW: And you self-publish?
TL : Yeah. But even though we’re a completely self-published magazine, we’re starting to consider the possibilities of going with a publisher. Between all of our full-time work and where I want the magazine to go, I’m open to consider collaborating with an outside publisher if it results in growth for the magazine.
PWCW : What about inroads into newsstands or outside of the direct market?
TL : We’re currently in talks with two national distributors to take the magazine to newsstands and Barnes & Noble. Hopefully, we’ll get something by the end of the year. That’s the newest thing we’re trying to tackle—to penetrate the distribution market a little better. I think our emphasis over the last couple issues has been to really nail the content and figure out the tone of the book. We’re a very small magazine—no one’s really on staff here; we just have a bunch of freelancers contributing. We’re just trying to edit it so it sounds like it has a cohesive voice. The hardest part of starting a magazine, especially with no real staff, is really honing the edit and the design. I think now that we’ve kind of got it to a place that we’re comfortable with, we’re trying to focus more on the sales and distribution end.
PWCW : Do you try to have a theme or a mood for each issue, or do stories migrate from issue to issue depending on deadlines and what’s ready for publication?
TL : For our fourth, we’re doing politics. With the upcoming elections, it seemed like the perfect time. And I’d rather not wait four years to do another one. Because we’re such a broad magazine—we cover indie comics, superhero comics and manga—the biggest challenge is planning content. There’s a lot of stuff to cover. It’s really tough trying to find page space for all these different genres. Depending on who is on the cover, who has a big story—a lot of stuff sometimes does shift. Sometimes we’re uneven on manga, or we don’t have enough superhero or indie. I think that’s the real challenge—you’re never going to get everything even, but just try to do a decent enough amount where you don’t feel like the reader is going to be shortchanged.
Laura Hudson : In any given genre, there’s a ton of stuff coming out every month—our goal is to filter out the very best of it. What’s the most interesting stuff going on in the superhero world, in the manga world, in the indie world. I think most of the time there’s going to be a lot of crossover between those. That’s the holistic idea behind it. We’re putting it all together; we have [the Web comic] Achewood on one page, [the DC superhero crossover] Final Crisis on the next page, [literary comics artist] Kevin Huizenga on the page after—I think that’s pretty cool. That’s a good way to approach sequential art, comics, because I think the industry is becoming more and more that way.
PWCW: I thought the article in the last issue about how a recession might impact comics was great just because it was so timely. That’s something you won’t see inWizard, and the Comics Journaldoesn’t seem to be able to act on things quickly. Are more articles like that going to be popping up?
TL : That’s what I call a curveball story, because it’s a little bit outside of the realm. But, yeah, I think you’ll see more of those curveball stories in the politics issue for sure.
LH : I think that’s the sort of piece that makes Comic Foundry reasonably accessible [to ordinary readers]. It’s something that my dad or my cousin or a lot of other people can read and not have to know anything about comics going in. It’s something that we strive for in general at Comic Foundry . We try to be a magazine that you can pick up and still be able to access the content without having read DC comics for the last 20 years.
TL: And a lot of that is how we approach the [editorial] tone of the magazine. To go back toWizardand the Comics Journal, they each have their own sort of [editorial] tone, which works with their particular audiences. But I think that can be a turnoff to some readers, and it can be condescending in some ways. We’re trying to make ours as smart and witty and as clever as we possibly can. Some people might not agree with how witty it is, but we’re trying to create a tone that’s fun but also able to tackle big topics and not make fun of the industry.
PWCW : One of the most challenging tasks for an editor—when you can’t slap Wolverine on the cover each issue—is coming up with a new cover story for each issue. Is that the case?
TL : The one thing we’re doing differently with our covers that no other comic magazine is doing is we will always have a photo cover. We’re not going to do an illustration. I think that can be a little tricky. You have to find the right people that work with that audience. Because it is such a wide audience, there are fewer [comics] people that resonate for everyone. Inside the book, we can have a bunch of stories that might not particularly go together. But the covers have to be something [attractive] to everyone.
LH : I also think the fact that we put people on the covers is kind of indicative of what we do. Our focus in terms of content is not what character died in issue #533. A lot of what we do is much more creator focused. A lot of comics people are superstars within the comics industry, and I don’t think there’s much other coverage out there that treats them in that way. That’s something we’re able to do. We did something in our last issue about creator couples—a lot of people commented on the story because that’s not really how people necessarily approach comics creators. But we approach things from an entertainment perspective.
PWCW : What about the lifestyle aspect of your coverage—that’s a semi-new approach for a comics publication, whether in print or online.
TL : That’s something that I’m very proud of.... Before Comic Foundry came along, if you asked what lifestyle content meant for a comics magazine, someone might say it would be the coverage when a [comic book] movie is coming out. I think that was the closest you got. But it really can be so much more. You couldn’t do a magazine like this 10 years ago or 15 years ago just because the culture wasn’t there. We’re at a point now—the movies certainly help and add to the mainstream exposure—that comics seem to be everywhere. Especially with licensing, there’s all kinds of products and clothes and fashion. In the current issue, we talk with [comics artist] Paul Pope about his DKNY fashion collaboration. People weren’t really covering stuff like this before—a lot of times because it wasn’t happening. I couldn’t really see Paul Pope doing a DKNY Jeans collaboration 10 years ago. We’re in a time now that this type of coverage is possible, and no one has really capitalized on it at all.
LH : To me, comics are cool, comics culture is cool and that’s a really organic thing—it’s not contrived. Comics are my life. And I think they’re genuinely a cool thing that can function in a lot of aspects of your life.
PWCW : What’s your take on comics and the bookstore market? Where do you think comics stand right now?
TL : I think the writing is on the wall in terms of how far comics are moving into bookstores. I would not want to be a retailer, in this day and age, that just sold singles [traditional periodical comics]. I think the trade paperback [collections] are really invaluable to the market. Just look at the Watchmen trade [paperback] and how many units they’ve moved over the last couple weeks. I would be very curious as to how many of those are going through the book market as opposed to mom-and-pop comic stores.
LH: I know there are certain [comics shop] retailers out there that are doing things right and don’t have as much to fear from the bookstores, but there’s a certain amount of inevitability to the growth of comics in bookstores. And I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. More people being exposed to comics is a good thing, period. I think the comic book industry could do a better job sometimes of promoting its content in bookstores. Take, for example, comic book movies. Stand-alone books like300orV for Vendettaare perfect because fans or new readers can go to a bookstore and ask forV for Vendetta, ask for 300and have it put in their hands.
TL: Or Watchmen.
LH: Or Watchmen. But usually it works really differently with superhero comics. And that’s where you can really get into trouble, because if you watch theSpider-Manmovie and you go into a comic book store or a bookstore, and there are 800Spider-Mantrade paperbacks collecting the series, readers don’t know where to start. It’s not just about the comics industry working with bookstores, but working with the broader population at large. The industry has got to make it easier for people to come into the comics community.
PWCW: Any plans to increase CF’s frequency anytime soon? Going from quarterly to monthly?
LH: Not unless we clone ourselves.
TL : Yeah, you got any winning lottery tickets lying around?
PWCW: Anything that I didn’t get around to?
LH : I’m really grateful to everybody that’s supported us since our inception, since the initial brouhaha when we launched. We’ve had a lot of creators, editors and readers who have been really great and been really supportive of us. I’ve absolutely appreciated that because it’s mostly just Tim and I doing this. We love it and it’s worth it, but it’s most satisfying to see that other people are enjoying it as much as we are.
TL: That’s probably the best part of going to conventions—meeting the people that read your book. I mean, we had this guy from Scotland who made this six-minute YouTube video that was pretty much a thank-you letter toComic Foundry.
LH: It was amazing.
TL : Completely random. Just found it out of the blue. It was just him saying thanks for making this magazine and how much he loves it and also [comics writer] Matt Fraction. But it’s just crazy. I think because we have a certain professional look to the magazine, people think it’s done by a professional corporation.
LH : People think we’re in some office or swimming around in a money bin or something like that, but it’s just us sitting in our apartments.
TL : People come over and work out of my junior one-bedroom. There are Post-It notes plastered all over the walls and photocopies of all kinds of things. So to have that kind of reception is pretty incredible.
