If you can’t be the guest of honor, be the one who doesn’t belong there

In my opinion, there are two reasons to be someplace: be the guest of honor or be the one who doesn’t belong there.

Example: I was lucky enough to be included in the Horror Comics Into Film panel Peter Katz organized at Comic Con last month. At risk of hurting my fellow panelists’ feelings, I imagine Marv Wolfman was the guest of honor. Maybe not, surely there were a lot of important, influential, successful panelists up there… and then there was me and Jeff Katz. I mean, who the fuck am I to sit next to Tim Seeley and Whitley Strieber talking about horror? The only horror film I’ve directed was Slumber Party Slaughterhouse and that was a joke (literally: it was supposed to be a Halloween prank but it accidentally became a real DVD… oops). In any case, I’m pretty sure I had no business being on that panel. Which is why it was awesome for me, because I got to reach a new audience.

I like to take Halo-8 and our various titles to all sorts of places where we don’t belong. It didn’t make a lot of sense for us to set up a table at comic book conventions last year, but it seemed like a cool place to spread the word about our films and we were starting to publish comics at the time. Before we headed to the first con, we wondered if we should bother bringing the Fitness For Indie Rockers DVDs with us. We decided to bring them along and the results were this: we didn’t sell any comics, we sold a ton of fitness videos. Why? Because everyone else there was selling comics, and the kind of art school girls who go to comic cons love our fitness videos. Yoga For Indie Rockers had no business being at the comic con, and thus it stood out.

In the past few months, Godkiller has had panels and signings at Wondercon, Comic Con, and Fangoria Weekend of Horrors in LA. Because Godkiller utilizes a brand new filmmaking format that integrates comic books with cinema, you might think it would be a homerun at Comic Con. Nope. The people who dug it at Comic Con were awesome, but the turnout for the signings was light. The Wondercon panel went okay because the art school crowd was into it, but the best response was at Fangoria. Why? Why does Godkiller get chatter in the film trades and horror press but not in the comics blogs? My guess is that when viewed through a horror prism Godkiller is weird enough to be unique, whereas through a comic book prism it just doesn’t stand out as much… either due to comic art overload or because the luddites think we’re bastardizing their artform (which we are, thank you very much). The best thing we can do with Godkiller is present it in a context where the audience isn’t already desentisized to its unique attributes.

Threat was carried by tons of retailers, but I find two particular retailers define my argument here well: Best Buy and Hot Topic. When Threat was in Best Buy, everyone thought it was awesome for it to be there because that’s where most people buy DVDs (at least, DVDs that aren’t in WalMart). Threat sat on a shelf next to thousands of other DVDs including the biggest hits from the top studios. When Threat was in Hot Topic, a lot of people thought it was weird for it to be there… after all, Hot Topic isn’t really a seller of DVDs. In fact, Threat sat on a tiny little shelf in the back next to a handful of other punk-themed DVDs like Sid & Nancy, Repo Man, etc. Guess where Threat sold better?

Seth Godin makes a point about the importance of being “the best” at a specific niche. He points out that the top performer generally outsells all its competitors combined. If you can be in Best Buy and be the top-selling supplier there, good for you. If not, move to a different context… it’s not hard to be the best-selling line of fitness videos at a comic book convention–and it can be quite profitable.