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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/Naeveo on 2024-03-23 20:48:22.

After reading a handful of recent threads on other comic book drama I decided I would dip my toes in and tell a more recent story about a new comic book publisher, Bad Idea, and their quest to make everyone hate them (or love them) by being as gimmicky as possible.

It's a story of how collectors, speculators, and comic book stores burned themselves out of Bad Idea's comics because of Bad Idea's bad ideas.

So What Is Bad Idea?

Bad Idea Corp, or Bad Idea, is an American comic book publisher that launched in 2020. It was started by several former executives from Valiant Comics, who all left the company after it was bought out by a Chinese entertainment company, and a few executives from Hivemind Entertainment, a media production company that has been involved with shows like The Expanse and Netflix's The Witcher. Like Valiant Comics, Bad Idea was in the business of making schlocky, grindhouse comic books. The more 90's the idea, the better.

But what quickly set Bad Idea in the industry apart was their early promise to never publish trades, new printings, digital versions, or variants of any of their comics. And they wouldn't use Diamond, the biggest (arguably only) comic distributor in the business at the time. You had to order directly through them.

This was an extremely bold promise. What Bad Idea was promising was unprecedented.

It meant: Every comic would be sold in limited quantities. Comics will not be reprinted to meet demand. Every comic would only be sold in stores. And you have to order it only from them since they will be the only ones printing and shipping it.

What this meant for readers and stores was that to read any Bad Idea comics costumers would have to go to comic book stores every week and pray it was in-stock. If you missed out, you missed out. You wouldn't be able to get it anywhere else... ever

And to not use Diamond Distributors? They held the monopoly on comic book distribution since the 90's. The last comic book publisher that even attempted to self-distribute was Marvel it caused them to go bankrupt. (Sidenote: Both DC and Marvel have both abandon Diamond Distributors since 2021, but that's entirely different, dumber story.)

It went against every piece of wisdom in the comic book industry. It was a Bad Idea (tm).

Hollywood Here We Come

Despite these terrible decisions and promises, it immediately interested retailers. And to understand why you have to understand a cornerstone of modern comic book collecting: "speccing"

"Speccing", or speculating, is when a collector or investor attempts to predict which comic books are going to be used as a basis for a movie or a TV show. In the age of the Disney's Marvel Cinematic Universe, DC Universe, and massive shows like The Walking Dead, this has become massively popular and lucrative. For example, if you bought The Walking Dead #1 for $2.50 in 2003, and you held it in mint condition until now, you could sell it for a meaty $1000. Alternatively, you could attempt to predict which comic book characters are going to show up in a big, blockbuster superhero movie or show, such as popular Spider-man character Miles Morales' first appearance going for around $600 despite it being first released at $3.99 in 2011. If you specced right, you could make some absurd returns.

It's not the entire community, but it is a major part of the community.

Now, Bad Idea's executive branch created a lot confidence behind the company since the leadership's previously saved Valiant Comics with an extensive and successful relaunch in 2012. The connections to Hivemind Entertainment, a Hollywood company, created a clear pipeline for Bad Idea's comics to be adapted into movies or TV shows. Here was a company creating original content being headed by comic book veterans partnering with Hollywood playmakers-- if there was any company on the market that could make the next The Walking Dead, it was probably these guys.

And Bad Idea knew it.

We Paid Gilbert Gottfried To Annoy Comic Book Shops

After announcing their existence, Bad Idea also announced it would only be selecting 20 comic book stores to carry their books... if they met their strict conditions.

What were these conditions? To quote Bad Idea:

• Rule 1: Comics are limited to one person.
• Rule 2: Comics must be sold for no more than cover price for 30 days from street day
• Rule 3: Comics can be offered for pre-order but cannot be shipped to anyone before street day
• Rule 4: Comics must be displayed in the highest traffic section of your store
• Rule 5: Stores must prominently display each promotional material for a mandated time period

Failure to comply meant Bad Idea would immediately cut you off from ever selling their books ever again.

Normally, these types of conditions would be a death sentence for a new publisher. Bad Idea's conditions meant comic book stores couldn't mark up Bad Idea comics to meet demand, sell in bulk to speculators, and that their comics had to take up prime shelf space. Speculators, however, ate this up. It meant that Bad Idea was purposely making their comics hard to find and stock, and that each comic would have a small number of copies-- essentially a perfect storm to inflate values.

Comic book stores, despite their best interest, were intrigued.

The first chance anyone had to talk to Bad Idea was at ComicPRO 2020, a comic book retailer convention. Bad Idea announced their first two titles, Eniac by Matt Kindt and Doug Braithwaite, and Megalith by Lewis LaRosa (remember this one for later), and that they will be expanding the list of stores to 50. All announced by Gilber Gottfried and other celebrities on Cameo.

Oh, and if you wanted in you had to sign up right now. The first 50 stores to sign would immediately be accepted into Bad Idea if they followed guidelines. The rest were out of luck. Better luck next year.

....Actually, make that the first 100 stores.

It was pretty clear Bad Idea was creating an atmosphere of gimmicks, FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), and artificial scarcity by announcing "limited lists", have people fight over them, only to expand it later to meet demand.

But something was happening and retailers wanted to capitalize on it. 100 comic book stores was still a short list, and the two books that were announced had top-tier talent on it. Matt Kindt was already a massively popular writer for creating Mind MGMT and writing Keanue Reeves' BRZRKR, and Lewis LaRosa was a titan of an artist in the comic industry. It was the kind of talent that perked ears.

Then COVID hit.

COVID, The Button, and The Hero Trade

The first few months of COVID hit everyone hard but it hit comic book stores especially hard since their entire model is based on customers coming in literally every week to buy a stack of comics. In light of this, Bad Idea quietly postponed their May 2020 launch to a later date.

And in the meantime, Bad Idea's social media was hacked by a Big Red Button.

Bad Idea would only launch their comics if a button was pressed one billion times. Until then... zero announcements and zero comics. Everyone was left in the dark. But now the comic book buying public knew Bad Idea existed, and they were interested in hearing more, so they clicked that button. A lot.

It quickly reached that goal around August 2020. But still no news.

Then, in September, a comic called The Hero Trade showed up at the doorsteps of comic stores.

The Hero Trade is a one-shot short story, only 8 pages, about a back-alley scumbag selling body parts of superheroes to whoever could pay. This black-and-white book was randomly sent to 200 comic book stores unannounced and the comic had no credits in it. Most had no idea what this comic was and assumed it was worthless self-published comic from an unknown creator trying to get stores to buy more copies by handing out free samples.

However, two weeks later Bad Idea announced that they published The Hero Trade. Not only that, but they announced ...

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