* The great retailer and blogger Mike Sterling writes about how hard it is to sell Miracleman #1. How could Marvel have botched it this badly? It's like they raised the Titanic intact and no one gives a shit. Part of it is the missteps in the comic itself -- too little Moore material, too high a price, and way too much pre-Moore material in black and white after promoting the hell out of the remastered colouring. Marvel built it, but after all this time way too many potential readers either downloaded it from BitTorrent sites and felt that was good enough, so no one showed up on opening day at the ballpark. More likely, the arrogance and hubris of Quesada and company told them that everyone recognizes the value and importance of this work, and therefore it was unnecessary to market the book past "Okay, we're finally publishing Miracleman. Maybe you heard of it?"
* The biggest challenge for marketers and salespeople is to get outside their own heads and see things from the point of view of their target market. In the words of copywriting genius Dan O'Day, "Don't talk to me about your grass seed, talk to me about my lawn." Don't tell me how proud you are to carry a full line of vinyl and laminate flooring from dozens of manufacturers, tell me how happy our new kitchen floor will make my wife and how it will stand up to the destructive tendencies of my toddlers and pets. Get it?
* If this book had come out in 1995 or 2000, it would have sold out in comic shops on day one and multiple printings would have been called for and there would have been lines at the comic shop and they'd have limited you to one or two copies. But too much time has passed. This is Alan Moore's best work in comics after From Hell; it's better than Watchmen, it's better than V for Vendetta, it's fucking Miracleman for fuck's sake, Marvel. How much work did you do to be able to publish this work?
* So why didn't you do the work necessary for it to sell in the numbers it should be selling in, the week it comes out?
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