Chapter 80: Volumetric Preparations

Alexander more or less had an idea on how Creed Comics is being eyed by people in the industry and certain toy-making groups.

DC's failed trend following is probably the most aggressive attack of the competition. Then, Hasbro's phone lobbying was the most annoying while Marvel Comics' inaction was probably just a calm before the storm.

Whatever those cases are and how they affected his comic book company, Alexander had mostly prepared himself for most of them while he could still do adaptations to unexpected attack strategies.

He even had made a lot of defenses in extremely annoying scenarios such as the Comics Code Authority and the protest of 'Karen' parents.

A disclaimer had always been printed out along the credits just as how the 'work of fiction' disclaimer had always been ever-present in film credits.

Meanwhile, the Comic Age Rating System or CARS had always been plastered in the back covers of every Creed issue and the officializing of it was underway ever since Mr. Legalities was hired.

Unlike the CCA, CARS was inspired by Hollywood's MPAA rating system.

CCA was always bending the contents of comic books to its restrictive will while the CARS would set and separate the contents of comic books apart by age appropriateness.

If the CCA made every comic book under its reign as cheesy and childish, CARS would still allow things to be childishly cheesy while also opening up the avenue for serious, mature, and even grittier content creation.

Although the CCA means well, Alexander simply didn't want that restriction and wanted to free himself and his all-age readers to many possibilities.

CARS would effectively expand the age demographic of comics in the 1980s and make things feel like the new century era where the CCA was obsolete.

The protests of 'Karen' justice warriors would also be rendered moot by CARS as its legal officialness has been approved and would become a norm.

One would always wonder why comic books and even cartoons would bend to the will of restrictive guidelines. Whenever comics and cartoons did bend their will, the bias and the ideology that such things are only for children would be set.

Alexander didn't want that for his comics and his future animation venture, so the staple of theater viewing would become the staple of his published comic books and greenlit animation.

If Hollywood movies and TV shows are for all ages as long as they abide by age restrictions, then so can Creed Comics and Creed Animation.

As for the matter of Creed Toys and the incessant request of toy companies, there was never a chance to consider authorizing others when the Creeds could just do it themselves.

Poor Hasbro should just probably let go of the Transformers trademark and make it the toy brand of The Cybertronian Chronicles.

In the matter of Marvel's fair game of improving their quality and reaching Creed level, Alexander would probably just welcome it as quality improvement is a just and fair game.

At the end of all this pandering, Creed Comics has also made its contingencies for all the contingencies that the competitors could potentially come up with.

Although it wasn't anything perfect, Alexander was already satisfied with the fact that it made things stable as the company moves forward for more innovations.

They could attack all they want and he defend against them as he can. That was the entire gist of being in a competitive business.

Of course, Alexander wouldn't entangle himself for too long with all the many possible back and forth between Creed Comics and its identified competitions.

He had other matters to attend to and it pertains to the fact that Dragonball #10 and TMNT #10 had finally been achieved.

Reaching the tenth issue of any comic title was an amazing milestone that took time and effort. Of course, celebrating such an achievement was a necessity.

However, instead of celebrating and partying in a literal sense, Alexander took it as a method to move the comic book business forward.

If the comic book industry thought that Creed Comics would be satisfied enough with industry-changing story methodologies and popularity surveys, then they might have to think again as 'trade paperback' is about to have new entrants in the form of Creed Volume Books.

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As far as Alexander could recall from his hypered memories, trade paperbacks or 'trade' is a collection of stories originally published in comic books.

Derived from the standard practice within the publishing trade as issuing a version of a hardback book in a less expensive form

It was essentially a reprinting of many issues in book format that usually presents a complete miniseries, a story arc from a single title, or a series of stories with an arc or common theme.

For many years, trade paperbacks were mainly used to reprint older comic book stories that were no longer available to the average reader. Original copies of old comic stories were scarce, and often very expensive when found due to their rarity after all.

These collections of reprints were united by their title character or series but only accidentally had any commonality of story or theme, and their existence as books was clearly an afterthought.

In Japan, their version of the trade paperback is usually called the tankobon volume. Which is a collection of 8-10 manga chapters that have been previously been published as part of a collective magazine publication like Shonen Jump.

As someone whose published works are essentially a mix of inspiration from American comic books and Japanese manga, Alexander just had to collate ten of his published issues and reprint them in book form.

It would essentially be a trade paperback but with the tankobon volume cohesiveness.

Creed Volume Books would be the amalgamations of an American collection of messy comic book issues while keeping Japanese manga's penchant for collected manga chapters.

Every successive Creed Comics issues were connected and progressive after all, so he got the gist of the American way and the Japanese methodology.

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Of course, Alexander and the Creed print outsources had long worked out on the details of the Creed Volume Books.

He even already had Dragonball Volume 1 and TMNT Volume 1 copies.

It took quite a lot of trial and error to get the final iteration he was satisfied with. Flipping thin comic book issues were different from flipping thick books after all.

Fortunately, old Sullivan's printing contacts were quite accomodating at his nitpickiness to design quality and book flipping convenience.

Eventually, both parties got the printing specifications worked out in the end and book-level printing was done in masses.

Baxter printing, longevity, and book cover integrity were fine-tuned in all of them.

Cheap and thin comic book issues were supposedly disposable after all while Alexander's relatively pricey but volumetric 'books' are for the long run.

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All in all, the Creed Volume Books was on the last stretches of its debut and everyone in the Creed Comics HQ was looking forward to owning their copies.

They were also expecting what kind of stir it would make in the industry and how it would be tied back to Creed Comics once again.

It would probably be quite a big industry unrest though as their little boss' ominously rare but handsome smile could be seen from time to time.