Broken Frontier

In the second part of our interview with Top Cow's Filip Sablik and Mel Caylo Broken Frontier finds out about the company's long-term publishing plans and their expansion into the video games market.

BF: Let’s talk long-term goals. Over the next few years, where is Top Cow going? What would you like to see happen?

Filip Sablik: I've mentioned it in some other interviews, but one of my top priorities for 2008 is getting our books to ship timely. Matt (Hawkins) made a very generous donation offer to the Hero Initiative if we shipped books late in 2008 and I want to make sure we hit our marks. Other than that I'll put in a renewed effort to strengthen our relationship with direct market retailers while continuing to look outward in what ways we can make our product available to more potential fans. And of course, put out the best damn books we're capable of.

More long term, I'd love to see more of our titles landing in the top 100 comic chart consistently. I'd put Witchblade or The Darkness or Madame Mirage up against anything Marvel and DC are putting out and I think our sales should reflect that. I'm eager to continue growing our book market business which has been fantastic this year. I'd love to get a new long term, ongoing series up and running.

Mel Caylo: My long-term goal is to turn Top Cow into a recognizable source of quality intellectual properties so that we can keep expanding into other media, which will in turn bring new readers to our comic books. It’s all a big circle. Two of our biggest success stories of last year were the Witchblade anime and The Darkness video game. Those two projects opened Top Cow up to a new set of fans who had never heard of us before, and many of them started picking up our comics. I think the possibilities are endless.

BF: Speaking of The Darkness video game, it holds the distinction of being one of the few in the genre to remain true to the source material while also delivering a reasonably good game experience. Was Top Cow pleased?

MC: Yes, very pleased!

FS: Hell, yes. Matt and Marc, who were more closely involved in the process, were particularly pleased. I thought it came out awesome and we definitely saw new fans coming in thanks to the game. And folks must have liked it because we sold over a million units worldwide. I have to admit, I still haven't gotten all the way through it. I'm pretty pathetically slow at beating games. I guess I work too much.

BF: I finished the game. But this article is late. I swear there is no correlation between the two…

MC: We were ecstatic the title resonated so much with gamers. They’re not an easy bunch to impress. A lot of the credit has to go to Starbreeze Studios and 2K Games for creating such a great game, and to Paul Jenkins for writing such a compelling story within the game.

BF: Are there plans to continue this kind of branching out?

FS: Yes, we're working with 2K Games on a sequel.

MC: I can’t tell you how yet but rest assured, the fans will be excited. Gears are turning, believe me.

BF: There’s always talk in the industry about the problem of getting new readership. What’s your take on this?

MC: That’s one of my hurdles as a marketer. How do I get people who don’t normally read comics pick up one of our books and try it out? Give away free copies and let them decide. I actually learned that from Matt Hawkins.

FS: It is a problem, but not one we can't overcome. The problem for a company like Top Cow is two fold. The first is the dominance of Marvel and DC in the direct market. These are the heroes that the fans who are in the comic shops and the retailers grew up reading so they have an understandable deep rooted attachment to them. And don't get me wrong, we get it. I grew up reading the same books and I'm as guilty of reading a book out of loyalty way past its prime as anyone.

So our first challenge for trying to bring in new readers are the existing fans. And it's an uphill fight, many of them have pre-conceived perceptions of Top Cow books (even if they've never read one), some are resistant to buying anything that isn't from Marvel and DC, and many others have a limited budget which limits how much they can branch out.

But if we continue to make it easy for them to try our books with free online previews and issues, low introductory pricing (like the $4.99 Witchblade Volume 1 trade), and innovative interactive promotions I think we'll convert a few.

The second problem is drawing in new fans from video games, movies, books, or any other interest point which has common themes or genres. With that we'll continue to push towards getting our properties out to fans in the media that they're most likely to see them. And we'll continue to go after new avenues to deliver the content, whether it's book stores or online or through video game marketplaces. You have to go where the potential fans are.

BF: What are you most excited about doing in your new job?

FS: Being part of deciding what the long term editorial direction of Top Cow is going to be. Who wouldn't want to have that creative outlet and an awesome sandbox like this to play in?!

MC: I’m looking forward to traveling to many of the conventions this year to meet the fans and hang out with friends in the industry. At the end of the day, we’re making comic books, right? There’s got to be some fun involved!

Mel and Filip had a few more exciting things to say, especially about the Pilot Season 2008 and the launch of Witchblade and Darkness-powered search engines this month. But the Internet can only contain so much of our collective glib and wit, so that will have to wait for Part 3. Hey, look at that… even comics journalism can be serialized!