2002-12-13 - 11:50 a.m.

Slap Leather!

Oy. Oh boy. I have an interesting decision ahead of me now.

Tonight the Manager and I did the order forms for the new comics coming out in February. We usually do them on a Saturday night, but we moved it up a day because we are due to get walloped with snow again tomorrow.

Mostly filling out order forms is pretty routine, but every so often the publishers throw a monkey wrench at us. We got one of them tonight.

Marvel is putting out a new mini-series in its Marvel Max line of books aimed at adult readers. It's a western called Rawhide Kid: Slap Leather. My first reaction was: jeez, not another western? Marvel has been trying to revive western comics for a while, most recently with another Marvel Max book called Apache Skies. They're trying to "modernize" their western characters, but generally their attempts are pretty awful with sales to match.

However, this is a western series with a twist: it's a gay western! In this book the Rawhide Kid is going to come out of the closet.

The Rawhide Kid is one of Marvel's most established western characters, but he hasn't had a regular comic book since 1971. You can find some background on him here. While there are dozens of other gay characters in various comics, this is the first time that one of such long standing has come out. In fact, it's news! You can read about it here.

The question is, how is this going to translate into sales? Is this media hype going to be forgotten in two months when the book actually comes out, or is the book going to be a hit? This media buzz can make a huge difference in the sales of a book, but will it work?

Here's how we'd order various first issues:

Crappy western: 5
Pretty good western: 10
Decent mini-series: 17
Strong Marvel Max mini-series: 25
Mini-series with popular character: 33
Mini-series anchored by a major established character: 50
Top 10 selling book for the year: 100

Oops! That's proprietary business info! Don't tell anyone, okay?

Anyway, that's just to give you an idea of the wide range of possibilities. It would suck to order the book like it was going to be a solid hit (say, 35 copies) and have it sell five. It would also be bad for the comic buying public if the book was a hit and we only ordered ten. Of course if we needed to order more we couldn't get any because stupid, cheap-ass, snaky Marvel never overprints. Dumbasses!

I know that the book is not going to be a piece of crap like Apache Skies. The writer, Ron Zimmerman, has produced some interesting and well-written stories recently, while the artist, John Severin, is a comics vet with something like 50 years of experience. Regrettably, being a well-drawn and well-written comic is no assurance of it selling well.

One of our standard jokes with books like this is that there are only two possible orders: way too many or far too few. There's lots of black humor when we do order forms!

And here is something that really irked me: in our catalog there is no mention of the fact that Rawhide Kid is being outed. None! Marvel recently has been really terse in its advertising copy in order to not be responsible in case anything goes wrong. Here is the ad copy on the solicitation, word for word:

Get ready to slap leather! That loveable red-headed scamp is back! And no one handles a hot rod like the Rawhide Kid!

I guess you could infer what is going on from the copy, but Holy Crap! Can you get more juvenile? So much for the topic being handled with tact and subtlety! Still, it would be nice if we got a clear statement of what the book was about. I hadn't seen the news items myself so the Manager had to fill me in.

Not only that, but the cover of the book is slyly homoerotic in a similar giggling-schoolboy vein. You can see it yourself here.

Looking at it now, I'm just shaking my head. Is the whole thing going to be played for a joke? The Rawhide Kid being gay in a 21st century way would be an utter anachronism in the mid-to-late 1800s, but it looks like that's how they are going to play it.

Do you folks out there have any opinion about it? Do you think this is tasteless crap that I should be happy to sell out of, or is it worthy of support? Any gay comic fans out there have an opinion? Does this interest you, or just make you mad? I really don't have a clue here. Help!

We just wrote a tentative "20" down, but we'll probably change our minds before we mail the forms in week after next. Any input would be appreciated.