Thinking about the children

In what looks to be a weekly column at Newsarama, Buzzboy creator -- and all-around nice guy -- John Gallagher writes about the trials and tribulations of marketing an all-ages comic:

"I finally accepted the fact that kids don't go into comics shops very much. But they do go to libraries, and book stores -- so I collected the first four issues of Buzzboy in a squarebound trade, hooked up with Diamond books, and the next thing you know, kids were reading my comics -- finally -- through Amazon.com, and Barnes and Noble, and in the library. And comics shops took notice too, mostly because trade paperbacks were really starting to catch on for all those comics readers sick of waiting months and months between issues of their favorite miniseries, finally proclaiming, 'I'll wait for the trade.' (Thank you, Kevin Smith!)

"Now, Buzzboy sits between Bone, and Leave it To Chance collections, and that's a good place to be. And guess what, I sell a bunch of Buzzboys to big and little kids at big comics shows, like San Diego, and the Baltimore Comic-Con, and smaller shows like SPX. As soon as I stopped trying to apologize for what Buzzboy was not, and sell it for what it was -- a kids comic -- people started to take notice."