Chapter 72: Mail Initiative

Thus, Alexander convened with the awaiting Milla and rode home as soon as Miss Galina got her car ready in place. The progressive day came to a close and made way for the new ones to come.

In any case, time did progress and so did Creed Comics and Alexander.

A standardized paper survey system was set up and made ready for its future send-offs and returns.

As for the early mailers, they did get their taste of the illustrious comic book publishing company's attention as a select few were given replies to their queries and admiration.

Even though all they got was standard wordings of thanks and gratitude from the mailers, it was enough to keep them occupied with Creed Comics penpal-ism pride.

Alexander could only consider them as suckers as they are yet to realize the corporate strategy that such 'reply to sender' interaction was implying.

As someone who gets routine blast emails from the companies he interacted with during the internet era, there was no stopping him from using the same strategy in the mail era where interconnectedness is yet to be synchronized.

As for the extremists, the anonymous ones got off scot-free but the stupid ones did get their routine threats of lawsuits and law enforcement visits.

This could probably lead to the furthering of their hate towards Creed Comics but Alexander had to give them the consequences of dishing out haphazard threats.

For the general complaint mails, it was for the mailing team and market research team to gain inspiration from. The genuine complaints even proved more useful than the plenty of suggestion mails when it came to the creation of the standardized Creed survey system.

Alexander also had the mail correspondents correlate what they got from the complaints, suggestions, and commendations piles.

As soon as they got some of the more critical and insightful content, they should have them sent to the second-floor comic-making department to give them a better gauge on what to do and what not to do in their stories.

It isn't only him as their little boss that would be making most of the content after all and this mail reading would also serve to help train their editorial decision making.

Unlike the snobby attitude that Big Two comic artists have developed themselves into, Alexander wanted to groom his 50 correspondents to be attentive to the fans and followers.

Kelly Sue DeConnick says 'if you don't like my politics, don't buy my book'. She is the most representative of what he doesn't want to devolve his company dynamic into. A personification of the ego trip that American comic book artists would fantasize themselves into, alienating whatever potential that the established fan base could support.

As Alexander emulated Japanese manga's voting and survey system, he would also like for his team to emulate the manga artist's motivation in doing things.

It wasn't to treat their readers like unwanted trash but to listen to their voice and input it into the works they are making.

Even a stoic and detached recluse like him noticed the overwhelming advantage of fan service, so it would be instrumental if the rest of his company would follow through with the new accommodation mentality.

The 'Inclusivity through Mail' initiative went on with full force as he used his little boss privilege to make things happen.

Either way, what they have recently been doing has been good so far as the preliminary textbook mail replies have garnered a notable upward trend in sales.

As for why that happened even though they only replied to 20 people, it was up for the trend of that certain week's market to truly know what was happening.

Maybe even the lawsuit letters to the extremists lead them to panic buy Creed Comics titles and influence sales somewhat.

Whatever the case may be, the company was moving forward and so was he.

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Along with the busyness brought by the inclusivity solutions and mail sorting, Alexander didn't stop with his pivotal company responsibilities.

He wasn't just the main decision-maker of Creed Comics after all as he was also its top creator. As the top creator, he had to whip up his pen, paper, story-making, and paneling skills for all the new titles and their specialized issues.

He did have to put RoboCop and Predator on hold though as a certain Cybertronian Chronicle comic books needs much detailed attention and also pertain to an issue of time.

Hasbro may still be eyeing Creed Comics' toy authorizations for now but it won't be long before they returned their attention to certain transforming robot toys from Takara.

Hence, Alexander is very well on his way to paneling and making the first issue of The Cybertronian Chronicles.

A universal-wide worldview is incredibly hard to cover within one issue, so it was best to find the best option to begin the narrative and grow it from there.

The 2018 Bumblebee film has it covered and Alexander simply made use of that. Drawing a mechanical world war and separating it through pages and panels can be tough to do though.

He also had to take the toy design viability into consideration with every character he drew.

Toy engineering was not something to be scoffed at especially when you have no prior involvement in that field.

However, it did help that he had encountered a lot of Transformers toys and he just worked out the mechanics on where they bend and how they could fold from there.

It delayed him a bit but he at least had a lot of possible blueprints that the future Creed Toys could work on.

With that out of the way, he ended his first issue with the introduction of Megatron and Optimus, signifying their importance to the story moving forward.

The leader-figures would have to take a backseat in the next issues though as Bumblebee would serve as the first bridge to the Cybertronian world and the human narrative.

He is the cute and lovable one that would appeal to many as he escaped the war and took refuge on Earth.

Human-like robot aliens against human-like robot aliens were an interesting premise. However, it needs true human addition to pull a lot of readers into the narrative.

Alexander did debate on whether it was a boy or girl who was lucky enough to pick up the stray Bumblebee.

Since little Milica was excited about the robot-filled story though, it shouldn't be that bad if he made Charlie into a girl.

He could at least practice accommodation, give thanks to Milla's many experimental dummy surveys, and earn good socializing points from his grandfather.

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"Are you serious, Alex?" Without doubt, Milla was quite excited at his decision. "A high school girl who looks like me would be Bee's Earth friend?"

"Yes." Alexander gave her the affirmative while not forgetting his ulterior motive in the decision. "Just tell grandpa Sullivan that I've been the bestest friend."

"Deal." Milla would not refuse and was looking forward to herself, albeit an older version, being featured in the new Creed Comics.

Anyways, the duo of them had long been used to this back-and-forth where they'd trick their seniors with overwhelming friendship.

Their friendship, however, wasn't fake in anyway as they did have a bond even though Alexander was mostly busy with stuff.