UVC out-takes: Kyle Baker (pt. 2)

Here’s more from my UVC interview with Kyle Baker that did not make the finished article. In this segment he talks about marketing and sales.

“…And these people that like the movies – you know, you’re talking to a friend of yours and he goes, ‘Oh yeah, I thought that Batman movie was really good. I don’t really like comics that much.’ Oh, you like Batman? Well, maybe you should pick up DC comics. And they pick ‘em up and it’s not the same product, y’know?

“And that’s the other thing – if I see Snoopy in the newspaper and I like Snoopy and I go to the Snoopy movie, it’s the same Snoopy. I buy the toys, it’s the same Snoopy toy… I don’t wanna sound like a crazy person, but the fact that we’re debating about whether Batwoman should be gay, how does that come up in a DC comic? I got no opinion on gay comics at all, but I don’t think it’s what I wanna see in Batman. In The Lone Ranger it never came up! It’s a kid thing!

“So you think, well, you’ve given it up because DC’s putting their marketing behind you and blah blah blah. I can now tell you from experience that DC is doing the bare minimum because I am doing the bare minimum. Just because I’m busy doing the books, I don’t have time to get out there and call up stores and hustle up sales and stuff. So just me sitting on my ass, I’m selling as many books as DC was selling, which means everyone there was sitting on their ass [laughs]. Like for example, this interview; I didn’t generate this. You generated it. I don’t have the time, y’know what I mean? I focus on making the product good.

“You got a good book called Nat Turner, someone will call you up. Libraries and stuff call me up: ‘I hear you got some kinda comic book about Nat Turner.’ They don’t know who I am. What everyone always told me in publishing [was], you gotta get out there and push your own thing. All the publishers that have gone and become successful, like that Chicken Soup for the Soul guy, [and] Toni Morrison, they were out there on the road, hustling their book. How did that guy sell a million books? How did Toni Morrison make it? She was out there with a car full of books on the road! Even somebody like Neil Gaiman, who’s very famous – Neil Gaiman’ll show up for anything! [laughs] I’ve seen him at awards ceremonies, I’ve seen him writing prefaces to books, he’s always pushing himself.

“I think if they’re smart, the retailers get behind what they think they can sell. Some of them are dumb. An example I always use – I hate to repeat myself, but it’s a great example – if you went to Tower Records or Virgin Megastore and you said, ‘You have the new Eminem album?’ and the owner says, ‘Y’know, I don’t like Eminem, so I didn’t buy it!’ [laughs] …You did see a little bit of that on the Captain America thing [Truth: Red, White and Black], which is really funny. You wouldn’t know it, but that book was actually popular, if that makes sense… [Marvel] said, ‘We’re trying to get the cool kids. The hip-hop crowd. You’re the Vibe magazine guy [Robert Morales]. You’re the guy who does KRS-One videos. That’s what we want.’ The people that they were trying to get, they look at it and go hey, that looks like a KRS-One video. That’s cool…

“Right on the cover, you look and it’s Captain America in silhouette and it’s got two colors. You can’t get simpler and more cartoony than that. You can’t open it up and go, oh, I thought from the detail on the cover, I was surprised that it looks like all of Kyle Baker’s other work! [laughs] I used to do Brian Bolland and then I started doing scribbling or something. I’m the scribble guy! Always have been. If you don’t like scribbles, there are guys that don’t do that. It’s always better to focus on the people that like ya. People that don’t like ya, they’re not gonna do anything for ya. [laughs]“