College Comic Book Club

tsujj8789

Hello all,

I am a student in my final year at a small college in the suburbs of New York & I was elected as the new president for my schools comic book club for this coming school year. I have been interested in the position for over a year as in the past I did not think the club lived up to its potential. I am hoping to get some feedback and advice from the CGS community in order to make my term as president the very best that it could be. I appreciate all feedback.. seriously.

The Background

As far as I can tell the club is at least ten years old but it also has seen better days. At one point in the clubs history (before my time) the members would publish a magazine with comics from the students who attend the school but this apparently stopped because of a lack of submissions.
During my time as part of the club the meetings have mostly been member run lectures about various topics in comics like "Big Hero Six" or "Villains in comics". The problem with this format (for me at least) is that because one member of the club does all the talking, it just is not very fun for the rest of the club and sort of makes it seem like a class. The other issue is that even if the person running the meetings allows for discussions, the members vary in their awareness of the material. As an example if we are talking about something like Superman, there will be one or two members of the club who are up to date with superman comics, people who know nothing about superman other than what they have seen in other media, and then those who have seen random information on the internet (tumblr, memes, wikipedia) and speak on that. It is hard to have a discussion when everyone is on a different page and not everyone's information is exactly accurate.


My plan

The club has a $1,5050 budget for this coming year that I intend on spending as much of as I can on actual comic books for the club. I would like to buy single issues and trades of various books and have discussions on the material so that every member is on the same page and can equally participate.

I see the meetings being broken down into four types (names and ideas were largely inspired by the Comic Geek Speak Podcast)
At the start of every meeting type I would allocate ten minuets to discuss any comic book related news that may be noteworthy

Comic Talk

We would pick one or two issues to read during the week and then discuss at the meeting. The books would be chosen by members of the club based on what they are interested in reading and distributed during the last weeks meeting.

Book Of The Month

At the first meeting of the month a trade paperback would be distributed to the club and at the end of the month our meeting would be an in depth discussion of the trade. My fear with this idea is that a trade might be too much for most members to read during the month while school is in session.

Comics In Other Media
We would interact with other comic related media such as watching TV shows, movies, video games, and more. The club has gone on trips to the movies to see the various comic book movies that have come out in recent years and we watched the first episode of Daredevil on netlfix.

General discussions

These would be simple general meetings to discuss any comic related topic. These would be simple, easy, and require little effort on the members part.

Events

Costume Contest
Bagging and Boarding Party
Comic shop crawl
Movie/TV marathons
Trivia night

Aaaannnnnd That is mostly my plan. I would love any feedback! Thanks for taking the time to help me out with this! :D

RickM

I work at a university that is trying to develop a little comics culture, thanks mostly to one English prof who is a published comics scholar, and they've had success inviting comics pros and scholars to do lectures. For example, we had Mike Uslan give a talk about DC, especially DC's movies, and we've had comics creators and comics scholars do talks on things like The Influence of Kirby, and Women in Comics. Since you are close to NYC, you probably have a good shot of getting some interesting people. Maybe the English Department could split the cost of an honorarium so you don't blow your budget.

A movie marathon would be a great idea.

Other colleges around here have done one-day Cons centered around manga and/or comics. (It seems like manga actually has a larger audience than normal comics, but I could be wrong.)

tsujj8789

Hey, thanks for the feedback!

In terms of getting comic pros to speak I did send an e-mail to Archie comics since they are VERY close to my school in terms of location and they are launching that new high profile Archie series but received no response. Any tips on contacting companies?

MarcusQ

Great ideas! You could also have the book of the month planned out a year/ 6 months in the future, thus enabling other members to know what books are coming up and if they cant afford the books, they would have enough time to check them out from any local libaries. You could also focus on comics from outside the USA, for example some great comics come from France, Spain and the UK to name a few just to ensure that you have a diverse line of books to be read.

popestu

What about a club comixology account?

tsujj8789

MarcusQ, I don't know why I did not think of planning things out that far in advance to give people a bigger time frame to read it before! That is genius. I can even make an awesome calender with the books covers on the dates.

Popestu, my only fear with that is that it would involve a password and giving people a password can lead to a lot of problems from what I understand.

Thanks for the feedback guys! This helps a lot!

popestu

I was thinking about that, too. I'm sure there's are way to deal that. Maybe paying with a reloadable credit card in order to avoid any $ issues? The advisor could log people in at meetings? Yummy college kids are smart. You will think of something.

phansford

I wouldn't use much of the budget to buy comics for the members to read….. but rather use the money to bring speakers and spend it on food/drinks for the gatherings. Personally, I'd rather come to a gathering of like-minded souls than a meeting. ;-) So a lot of this is marketing.

If you do use "club" money to buy books, I would do to buy "book of the month" in bulk, but expect members to buy the books from the club. So you're actually using the club's funds as seed money and using it as leverage to get deals for your members.

Think outside your group…. or better stated, what can the group do to benefit others. How about collecting comics to give to the local children's hospital or library? How about advocating for the College Library to build a collection or add TPB's to their collection. Helping fund a lecture/film that would be for a campus-wide audience.

Write articles for the school paper on collecting…. movies…. books.

Use the club money to do something fun beyond reading comics…. maybe something that is unrelated to comics, but builds fellowship. Canoeing, Hiking, trip to Archie's Offices, whatever…..

Its college….. its about fellowship and friends.

tsujj8789

All great ideas! Thank you so much! I am going to try to look into getting speakers from Marvel and Archie since they are fairly close to my school.

phansford

If offer to pay travel expenses (typically just milage at the going IRS rate) and a small stipend, most people are happy to speak. You might not get big names as they command big dollars, but you should be able to get an editor or someone in production that can talk about the business side rather than the creative side.

compsolut

The best thing I can recommend is to talk to your lcs. I am sure they would be happy to run special pricing for groups, and that would make it convenient for members to pick up the goodies. DCBS is great, but depending on how much people are getting, and the frequency, that can be a prohibiting factor.

Also, don't be afraid to bring in non-creator guests. Example, maybe you are doing a book that the owner or manager at the lcs is a huge fan of, it might be fun to bring he/she in to talk as well. Usually no cost for that . . . and the ability for shameless plugs for the lcd. Seems like a winner ;)

These are just thoughts from the perspective of a manager of an lcs.

RickM

I think some of the best non-creator guests are authors of books about comics. And whoever you bring in, you should always contact the comic shops and bookstores in the area to see if you and the shops can split the costs if the person will do a book signing or lecture at their place. Synergy!

tsujj8789

Thanks again for the fantastic advice everyone!

In terms of speakers I know my LCS owner would be willing to speak and I can only see his employee (a college age girl) being willing to talk as well. Paul Levitz actually works at another school that is down the street from my school and once the school year starts I am going to try to get in contact with him. We could certainly offer all of these people money and help with the travel expenses but does anyone have advice on the proper channels to go through to talk to professionals? I sent an e-mail inviting the Invincible team to come and speak at my school since it is one of my favorite comics and I want to have a discussion on issue #118 but the only way I found that I could send any sort of correspondence was via the letter column e-mail listed in the back of the book.

Along with speakers I do still want to have discussions of individual issues because I want to be a resource for people to start actually reading comics. I was hoping that All New All Different Avengers would be out by September so that could be the first book we talk about as I think an Avengers book might make some people interested in comic books and attending the club but since that wont be able to happen I am now thinking that Archie #1 might be a nice choice since its an all star creative team, a #1, and since my school is very very close to wear Archie is actually published. I have never really read much Archie before and so I am not sure what to expect, anyone have any advice?

Chuck_Melville

tsujj8789 said:

I have never really read much Archie before and so I am not sure what to expect, anyone have any advice?

If you've never read Archie before, then you'll probably be okay with the new version, since you won't be bringing any preconceived expectations to it. For me, having read the books off and on for decades, I find the new version almost creepy looking -- that 'uncanny valley' effect and all; too 'realistic' looking for a cartoon fan as myself.

RickM

tsujj8789 said:

We could certainly offer all of these people money and help with the travel expenses but does anyone have advice on the proper channels to go through to talk to professionals?

I wonder if its as easy as using social media. I'm Facebook friends with several comics pros already, and they do engage in conversations that way. Even legends like Walt Simonson are easily accessible and will chat. Send a PM to start the conversation.

Other options include going through their publishers and seeing if you can obtain contact info that way.

David_D

RickM said:

tsujj8789 said:

We could certainly offer all of these people money and help with the travel expenses but does anyone have advice on the proper channels to go through to talk to professionals?

I wonder if its as easy as using social media. I'm Facebook friends with several comics pros already, and they do engage in conversations that way. Even legends like Walt Simonson are easily accessible and will chat. Send a PM to start the conversation.

Other options include going through their publishers and seeing if you can obtain contact info that way.

Whoever books speakers and entertainers at your college might have some insight on this as well. There are management companies that market speakers on a wide variety of topics to speak at schools, or to companies. A lot of authors do this, and I wouldn't be surprised if some comics creators- especially the ones working with agents already-- have been savvy enough to get listed with a company like that. Again, your proximity to NYC will be a big help, I would guess.

MarcusQ

Hey tsujj8789 any update on how things are going?

tsujj8789

Hey MarcusQ, first time I have logged in for a long time. My year as President went very well. I am pleased to say that we have started a tradition of discussing comics and trade paperbacks on a weekly basis.
I ended my term by having a banquet where we counted down our favorite teenage super heroes as voted by the campus. It was a great time.

mwhitt80

tsujj8789 said:

Hey MarcusQ, first time I have logged in for a long time. My year as President went very well. I am pleased to say that we have started a tradition of discussing comics and trade paperbacks on a weekly basis.
I ended my term by having a banquet where we counted down our favorite teenage super heroes as voted by the campus. It was a great time.

Awesome man. I'm glad you had a good year.

Hex

tsujj8789 said:

we counted down our favorite teenage super heroes as voted by the campus. It was a great time.

You should post that list!
(please)