My initial thoughts on Action Lab Hero Cats of Stellar City business aspects

Mon Jan 15, 2018

i've read lots of comics, mostly by Marvel, some by DC, and then Dark Horses Star Wars comics.

familiar titles like X-men, Thor, hulk, Avengers, Spiderman. GI Joe transformers.

back in the day, in the early days comic books were sold at convenience stores like 7-11 where the comics were on a rotating rack.

years later, borders book store carried quite a few comics, but then they went out of business.
Barnes is like the sole survivor of book stores.

there are comic book store specific stores. several i knew of has went out of business.

in light of all these comic book stores going out of business.

it was only in late Dec 2017 that i heard of a comic book company called action lab.

there are many small comic book publishers from dark horse to action lab to IDW to image comics

the question on my mind is how do these companies make money?

borders has went out of business and small stores like 711 no longer carry comics, and a lot of comic book stores i've seen have gone out of business.

there are perhaps dozens of comic book companies with the largest marvel and dc bought by disney and time warner, and they have highly lucrative movie deals.

how do the smaller comic book publishers make money to pay writers, illustrators and distributors.

marvel and dc themselves have scores of titles, and the smaller players also have scores of comics so we're looking at scores and scores of titles. how to choose?

when i visit the sole survivor barnes and nobles i do see girls mostly girls reading japanese manga type comics, which is just black and white illustrations.

for example this girl Sawyer Corey 12 died Tuesday, January 9, 2018    Montecito mudslide (california) that devastated homes and separated families.



palm tiger is a manga, japanese comic. i wonder if she drew that herself if so she's quite talented. never heard of it before. i've seen girls invested in japanese comics. i don't know how they learn about it. presumably english translation.

other than that what % of public regularly reads comics? clearly nothing like % into sports, rock music, or NYT best sellars

i've never heard of Action lab.

but by sheer chance i saw their comic

Hero Cats of Stellar City by Kyle Puttkammer,

never heard of Hero Cats
never heard of Kyle Puttkammer either.



i'm trying to picture this in my head, one day Kyle Puttkammer woke up, and decided to along with Action lab to write a comic featuring cats exclusively. not even dogs. just cats. and not just adventures of say cats talking to other animals like hero dogs and villian snakes.

and Action lab decided to go along with it and assigned illustrator.

and somehow they decided they can make money off this.

now i've outgrown marvel comics. i no longer read wolverine or captain america.

but i do like cats and i do like comics so i decided to visit my local library to check out

Action Lab Hero Cats of Stellar City vol 1, which has comics 1-3 and vol 2, which has comics 4-6

when i picked it up the library, a 20-30 something librarian said she has never heard of hero cats and action lab.

neither have i. i never imagine such a thing would even exist, because we live in a capitalist economy and who buys this stuff?

she said she reads comics but the names she mention are names i've never heard of ever.

she said she likes cats and comics and i do to. so she asked me the name and i said hero cats of stellar city. she said she will also check it out.

as a kid i thought how cool it would be to be in the comic book industry. now i know it's probably not a big business. i wonder how Kyle decided instead of say going to law school or medical school, he decided he would write a cat oriented comic. and that i guess action lab does make money.

i'm definitely excited about hero cats. my expectation is something suitable for children.

i do enjoy kung fu panda and charlie brown so







its not an immediate deal breaker

dark horse star wars comics for example is more towards teens and adults.

reviews to come


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