I started laying out all of these ideas – new ways to market books, new ways to distribute them; anything that came to mind, despite how lame it may have seemed at first, went down on a piece of paper. I looked through all of them and tried to figure out where to start when I realized none of these ideas would work unless we first built a better comic book.

So, let’s spend a couple of weeks doing just that. Building a better comic book.

Here’s the thing – we’re trying to bring in new readers, right? A lot of new readers don’t get comics, though. I’m not just talking conceptually, either; I’m talking mechanically. Robin, my girlfriend, she doesn’t know how to read comics. And just when she thinks she’s got it, she gets hit up with some obscure layout and has to re-read a page because she read it wrong the first time.

Or, she could just put the comic down and read a novel instead, which is what she normally does.

A couple of months ago, I had an opening to pitch to a manga publisher and realized I should probably read some manga first. I got three books that were similar in theme to my pitch and started out by reading Ramna ½. I opened it only to find the inside cover had an explanation that said I was reading the book wrong. It explained that manga comics are read from the back and showed me the correct order in which I should be reading the panels. Honestly, if that page wasn't there, I would have read close to ten pages thinking this was the most ridiculously confusing piece of crap ever written. If I then realized I was reading it wrong, I would have felt pretty stupid and, already having a bias against manga, put the book down and gone back to my Western comics (provided I wasn’t pitching to a manga publisher – money trumps all biases).

Essentially, it schooled me on how to read that particular comic, knowing full well the first thing I would do was turn the pages left to right and look at that inside cover. I loved it – it made me feel like I wasn’t the only idiot that didn’t know how to read manga, and it made me give it a second chance.

Why can’t we have a “welcome to the club” type of page to open up our Western comics?

Here’s what I’m thinking – you open a comic book and the first thing you see is, essentially, a page that says, “This is a comic book. This is how a comic book works.” You can make it aesthetically pleasing; you can do it in cartoon form if you want. Elk’s Run could have a cartoon where John, Sr. is essentially playing the role of an extremely evil Scott McCloud. Make it entertaining so the people who know how to read a comic can get something out of it as well. But it should be there and it should be informative – I like the cartoon idea because it serves as a precursor to actual comic reading – sort of a warm-up for those who don’t know how to read a comic before they dive into the actual story. Numbered panels and word balloons, maybe, acclimating the reader, letting him or her know that they’re not the only ones who may be unfamiliar with or intimidated by the comic book experience.

Look – new readers, right? New readers are kids and teenagers and fathers and boyfriends and girlfriends, and celebrities wanting to look cutting edge. New readers aren’t people like us who pick up a comic because a) we always have, or b) our friends gave us one to read.

New readers won’t necessarily know how to read a comic, just like I didn’t know how to read manga. Just like Robin was thrown off by a double-page spread.

Let’s take it one step further. Without discussing distribution yet, we can have a closing page that tells the reader where they can go to get more of this comic if they want it, in the same sequential format as the intro page. Whether that’s a web site or some brick and mortar joint isn’t important at the moment, but the thing is, for most of us indie guys, if the person wants more they need to go to some comic shop, tell the teenager behind the counter they want one copy of NOV052342, come back two months later and HOPE that the teenager ordered it.

That’s not the kind of process you just guess your way through.

Of course, we’ll be working on new distribution ideas in the future that are hopefully less confusing – but even if we use these new distribution techniques, how would we school our new readers on their options?

So that’s the idea for discussion today. Building a better comic book with an instructional page that schools the new reader on what he or she is about to read, and an outro page that tells them what they can do if they want some more.

Should it be a cartoon, or is that too distracting from your product’s message?

Should the outro page even mention comic shops (bearing in mind a lot of current comic readers don’t know the first thing about pre-ordering)?

Should the outro page go on the inside back cover, or should it be sooner?

I’m sure there are plenty of other points of discussion here. Remember – this is about dialog and discussion, making this idea work, not how much better your idea is. If you have a better idea to build a better comic that has nothing to do with this one, email it to me. Otherwise, when you comment, highlight what you like about this particular idea, point out what you don’t like, and offer a suggestion to fix it.