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The DSM came to prominence because of its promise of virtually 100% profit to the publishers -- albeit on much reduced sales overall -- but that was not why it was developed. As noted, it began as a way for dealers -- not yet retailers -- to guarantee a steady supply of back issues for resale. The DSM was what would today be called an "aftermarket" -- one that we saw mutate into virtually the sole market. As if the custom body shops somehow became the only place to buy cars.

The math, such as it was, was pretty simple. On the newsstand (and equivalents) a publisher had to print 600,000 copies of a comicbook to get 400,000, or 300,000 sales. Awful lot of loss, waste, and, frankly, corruption in that system. Thus, the profit margin was very small.

In the DSM, the publisher takes orders and prints (with some allowance for spoilage) only as many as have been ordered. 100,000 books ordered equals roughly 100,000 books printed. Huge profit margin.

Inject the speculators, and suddenly the publishers are printing 1,000,000 books to meet a 1,000,000 order, and the profit margin becomes astronomical. So "logically" if ALL the books sold thru the DSM, ALL the sales would be almost pure profit.

The assumption being that (a) the Speculator Boom is going to last forever, and (b) even if it doesn't, the previous loyal readers will still be there. Except, (a) didn't and (b), tired of being wanked around by product pandering to (a), weren't.

Here is a question. If there had never been a direct market, would we still see comics on newstands?

I honestly don't think so.

Our grocery stores, and drug stores, and convenience stores have a very corporate mentality. Space is a premium and it is going to items with a large margin. Comic books don't have a margin compared to many other items. They aren't going to make a store that much. Print itself doesn't make as much as it did for those places and the entire magazine aisle of yesterday has shrunk. I remember when my own grocery store got rid of comics long before the direct market really took off.

On top of that, look at the environment of the convenience store and how it has changed. If you look at the rack, it is made of of mastabatory content such as Maxim, Easy Rider, and on shelves only chest high, Playboy and Penthouse and the like. Would you want children going into such an envirnment on their own in this day and age to buy comics.

Yes the direct market did have an impact, and we don't have the volume of people buying we once did, but I can't say we would have more readers today if the direct market hadn't developed.

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The DSM "saved" comics from almost certain extinction -- but the effect was much like giving a blood transfusion to someone with N stage cancer. The inevitable might be delayed, but a delay is all that can be expected.

In the case of comics, the delay was followed by an acceleration of the decline, leaving us, today, with nothing to look forward to. About where we were before the DSM came along.

Here is a question. If there had never been a direct market, would we still see comics on newstands?

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Oh, we'd definitely see comics on newsstands, but what we wouldn't be seeing is all the Batman, Superman, X-Men, et al, titles.

"The inevitable might be delayed, but a delay is all that can be expected."

But that delay added 25 years to a 50 year old institution. Ask any cancer patient if they want to add that much time to their life, or just roll over. And I would agrue there was a great deal of glory that came from that 25 year period that we couldn't have had without the direct market.

"The inevitable might be delayed, but a delay is all that can be expected."

John Byrne wrote: The DSM "saved" comics from almost certain extinction -- but the effect was much like giving a blood transfusion to someone with N stage cancer. The inevitable might be delayed, but a delay is all that can be expected. In the case of comics, the delay was followed by an acceleration of the decline, leaving us, today, with nothing to look forward to. About where we were before the DSM came along.

Then why is the DSM a bad thing?