Comics Marketing: Don’t Advertise What’s Not Yours. Especially if it’s Batman.

6 Comments | Posted: September 8th, 2008 | Filed under: Thinking about Comics Marketing | Tags: , ,

Crystal Fractal Comics (which is located, counter-intuitively, at crystalfractals.com and not crystalfractalcomics.com) is a small publisher of superhero comics located in Toronto. They, like a couple-dozen other comics companies (cf Platinum Studios) that have cropped up in the last few years or so, are “seeking to diversify the industry through the dynamic storylines and characters of its titles.”

Apparently, they include Batman among those characters:


The graphic on that sidebar there doesn’t act like an ad on the web should: there’s no way to click through to get more information about The Dark Knight, so why’s it there? Here’s three theories.

  • They want people visiting the site to go “Oh, these people are involved in licensing comics properties! Properties like Batman! Maybe they can get me Aquaman!”
  • Similarly: “Batman endorses them! I trust Batman! I will do business with these people!”
  • Crystal Fractal Comics offers advertising space on their site and they slapped a graphic in that spot as a placeholder. However, instead of sticking in an ad for said space, they thought The Dark Knight would look nicer there.

I suspect the third, which is the most innocuous choice, but I’m of the attitude that smaller publishers benefit very little by having ads for other companies or products on their site: they likely don’t get the traffic that could command a high enough rate for it to make any real difference in their finances, and their brand impression becomes muddled right off the bat. Someone like me (and likely the sort of person who buys up superheroes and the like for the screen) thinks that if a publisher can’t afford the $12-20 a month that hosting a website like that would cost without throwing ads on their front page, then maybe they shouldn’t be in the game to begin with.

(A side note: If you’ve been to the Marvel Comics site, you might have seen what is an amusing phenomenon: DC animated projects advertised on the site’s homepage, likely through a mass media buy done through Warner Brothers. Right now, Heroes (a Universal property) is sponsoring episodes of X-Men: Evolution on the Marvel site, and the comics related to that series are published by Warner Brothers, so I suspect that at that point, the money becomes impressive enough to ignore pesky things like brand solidarity. This is probably doubly true since Marvel became its own production house and is looking for better distribution deals for the films.)

Marketing In The Nerd World: Game Trade Magazine – Something Something Insert THAC0 Joke Here

8 Comments | Posted: September 3rd, 2008 | Filed under: Thinking about Comics Marketing | Tags: ,


This is Game Trade Magazine, a publication that describes itself as follows:
The serious games magazine for serious gamers, Game Trade Magazine remains the most comprehensive and accessible monthly resource for the latest, up-to-the-minute product information in the world of games, anime, and hobby supplies going on 8 years and running! Packed with reviews, previews, product excerpts, exclusive scenarios, giveaways and collectible inserts from your favorite games and manufacturers, there’s no better source to feed your gaming needs!
The magazine is closely associated with Diamond Comics Distributors, which means it’s available in many comics shops and frequently handed out alongside Previews. I’d never seen a copy (as I tend to go to comics shops that just sell comics exclusively) before Pal Dave showed it to me. He then pointed out something interesting involving a contest they’re having in the latest issue (September, 2008.)





Readers can win all of these (apparently very desirable) Dungeons and Dragons 4th editions books if they fill out the form that’s attached and get lucky. They can also visit This is gametrademagazine.com to enter the contest. Or so they claim. When you visit the website, you see nothing about the giveaway or any new content since February 28th of this year.





Yeah, this is what I’d like to think of as a pretty definitive online marketing failure. This isn’t a website not being updated on a Thursday for next week’s comics; this isn’t a publisher forgetting to put easy-to-grab images on their website – this is a company serving a sector that’s hungry for content, that’s generally very computer savvy. From the content that’s present, it looks like there was once an organized effort to maintain and update the site with content from the magazine, but it appears that the organization dropped the ball completely and letting their website rot instead of treating it like a valuable resource.

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