What does the Crash of Culture Crash teach us?
During its time it was the most widely sold, locally created and
produced comic book digest. Yet today it is dead - starved for the
funds it needed to keep going. Another case in point to reinforce that
a comic book cannot live by sales alone. CC’s artists are working on
other better paying opportunities - most of their illustrators, if not
all of them, are likely to be found the employ of Seven Seas
entertainment.
Now that Culture Crash is apparently dead, it raises a few questions.
One of which is : How can such a briskly selling comic book find no
advertisers? Corollary to this is : what keeps comics like CAST
(of Nautilus Comics) and comics from Mango Comics from following a
similar fate?
First and foremost, from what I know about Mango Comics, Nautilus
Comics and Culture Crash, I rationalize that Nautilus & Mango have
access to and know how to deal with influential people. This is not to
diss James Palabay of Culture Crash - the fact that Mango and Nautilus
have some form of advertising in their books is very telling of the
ability of their proprietors and the material itself to connect with
advertisers.
Secondly is strategic marketing. Nautilus Comics has had a series of
lectures on comics and has had campus tours as well. In this way it
has managed to keep its product awareness up and winning some brand
loyalty as well. It already has Siglo and Cast retailing in the US.
Mango Comics has taken diversity and distribution very seriously in its
strategy. Darna, Mwahaha, Lastik Man, Mango JAM, and Moomoo Hunters
were all released perhaps a year & a half of each other shows
clearly that not all of Mango’s fruits are in one basket. Each comic
has its own launch and comics like Mwahaha and Mango JAM can be seen on
shelves not stocked with either Culture Crash or Cast. Culture Crash
did a superior job in the art department and was largely marketed by
word of mouth. They had the best possible chromanga (my term for
colored manga) for everyone to talk about, they had been interviewed by
television, and they even threw the big C3 Con… but I think in the
end it was them being first to ride the anime wave that was both their
success and demise. Success because the fans love it and ate it up.
Demise because advertisers may have reasoned that it was for kids,
frivolous and at best a fad. (Reinforced of course by the fact they
they didn’t come out on time.)
Third, work setup. Of course the artists who get the comic work done
for Mango, Nautilus, and Culture Crash are freelancers. But Culture
Crash has a studio where the artists are encouraged to work in. And
it’s a nice studio too and they put out pretty good stuff from that
studio. The cost is in travel allowances, food, electricity, and time.
But top factors that brought CC to an end would be the Philippine
economic setting they had to deal with and their own inexperience with
the business of selling comics. Nautilus and Mango came after CC, and
so they had a free guinea pig if they needed one.
The second question is one I ask for myself : How can I get my own
comic published & distributed and still take in a profit?
I’m presently exploring the answers for that.
