I can still remember someone having “ALL TROLLORDS” on their pull list.

Just answerin’ a couple more of your questions here:

Mike Loughlin markets himself with

“Some comic book writers promoting themselves as brands, and having sub-lines dedicated to their work. Notably, the ads in comics by James Tynion IV, Jeff Lemiere, and Kieran Gillen are for their other work. In sales and/or buzz, how effective do you think the “writer-as-brand” strategy has been working?”

I mean, to some extent, yes, it’s been working. Probably the most successful example of this right now is Robert Kirkman, who shot to fame due to Walking Dead, and has folksinterested in his other works under the “Skybound” banner. The other writers you mention also seem to get a slight “bump” on their books. Not huge, but in this marketplace anything that can put a thumb on the scale even in the slightest is probably a net positive. It hasn’t quite made it to the point where someone will walk in and ask “where are your Tiny Onion books?” but every little bit helps, as they say.

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LouReedRichards makes some unstable molecule music with

“From your experience what is the percentage of comics readers who are ‘agnostic’ about writers and or artists and just read comics to follow a character vs. those who are much more dedicated to following a creator regardless of the title.”

Slightly related to the previous question, I think! It’s difficult to pin down, aside from looking at patterns on my pull lists, where by and large those customers are more character/title-centric versus creator centric. And aside from some of the examples I pointed out above in the first question, it feels like that’s mostly guiding readership of most new titles. I have, for example, only buying certain X-Men titles because of their writers, and once they’re off the book, I imagine they’re gone, too.

In my personal reason, I tend towards following titles versus characters, with some exceptions. I’ll buy anything by the Hernandez Bros. or Sergio Aragones, for example. But largely I’ll, like, buy Hulk or Fantastic Four comics regardless of who’s doing them. And of late, I’ve been buying Daredevil since I picked up Mark Waid’s first issue, the first for me since Frank Miller was on the title, and have been reading it ever since as every following creative team I’ve enjoyed. Now, will this last when I hit a creator I’m indifferent on? Who knows? I’ve definitely hit some rough spots in my Hulk runs but kept going, but maybe that title was just grandfathered in to my ongoing collection.

Another example: I did buy the new Captain America series, a comic I don’t normally follow, because Chip Zdarsky is writing. Will I continue when he leaves the book? Seems unlikely, but who knows?

Perhaps the best metric is “what am I ordering for the shop?” I haven’t done much adjusting upward or downward on most titles, except for the occasional first issue bump…like, Matt Fraction’s Batman #1 sold great, but that may be more because it’s a Batman #1 than because of whoever’s writing it. (No shade on Mr. Fraction intended — he did a great job — but that’s just kinda how it is with Batman.) I expect numbers to settle back down to where they were in short order…still high, but not shockingly high like that new number one.

Anyway, whether that lack of order adjustment is due to people jumping off titles when the creative team changes, and about the same number jumping on for the same reason, I don’t know. Or if just stays constant because, say, Flash sells a certain number and will always sell a certain number to the same basic group of people, I also don’t know. At any rate, we’re a long time when half my pull lists for the (old) shop had “ALL ALAN MOORE” or “ALL JOHN BYRNE” notations.