I was thinking about comics this morning, as I often do, mostly about the industry of comics and how there is just so much stuff out there. I don't really think that makes things better, I think it ends up diluting your product. I think, from a logical standpoint, it makes more sense to have fewer things across more mediums than a lot of things in one medium. The most important thing to remember is that comic books, and their related intellectual property, is an industry now and not a business. A business is a mom and pop stationary store. If stationary dries up, as long as they have the store front, they can change things up and sell something different or find another job is something retail related.
An industry needs to self perpetuating and being that means you can't eat your customers or yourself for the sake of profit. The idea of an industry is you take less profit initially so you make more money over time because if your industry collapses nobody has a job anymore. If your stationary store goes under you can still find a job in the 'retail industry'. If the retail industry goes away you can't suddenly get a job in healthcare. So you have to ensure the security of your people and even your competitors by not salting the earth for everybody. Since I know Marvel the best I'll be using Marvel in my examples but I'm not really criticizing Marvel or any particular brand. This is just how I would do it if someone gave me full control over a major brand in the industry.
Planning
In January of every year I would take two weeks and sit down with everyone to hash out a plan for the year. The plan isn't set in stone but it would act as a guide. This would be the time for all the departments to talk and plan. What are our movies doing? What should we do to support it? How should comics, TV and movies tie-in? How can we support that with merchandise? What are our titles coming out this year? Who's working on them? What are we building to? What are our character arcs?
