The caveats would apply to the numbers. Reignbow Brute might probably underestimate the number of backers, but every other option would greatly overestimate the number of backers. There are no good numbers and no possibility of getting any reliable numbers anymore. But its also not a good idea to simply assume that he is massively gaining backers just because he says so.
I'm open to any better approach to calculating what he is actually doing in terms of business.
At its most basic, Frog's current customer pool could be calculated as:
(current number of customers = new customers + retained customers om previous campaigns)
I've gone ahead and totaled the performance of all of Frog's campaigns since the start of 2021:
Code:
Snowman 791
Reignbow Brute 1195
Rekt Planet 1544
Creed 1653
Frog Toys 2594
Creed launched in February and could be taken as the base minimum of active customers that will support anything under Frog's imprint. The greater success of the action figures indicates that, even at a far greater price entry point, there's additional interest for Cyberfrog-specific product beyond anything with the All Caps logo and I'd strongly argue this should be accounted for when trying to calculate customer demand for Cyberfrog-related products by Frog. The
Rekt Planet numbers are the most relevant statistic here; this total consisting of sales the comic gained after already campaigning for 9 months. That's not even accounting for ebay sales, which appear to be quite healthy for comics that backers in 2018-2019 have already purchased and received. All this paints a picture that new customers
are arriving, but whether they offset leaving customers is anyone's guess. And there being an exodus of customers is presumed due to wait times, but
far from proven. There was a lot of talk during the campaign from Comicsgate detractors that
Rekt Planet was going to be far smaller than
Bloodhoney because of the delays there, and that simply did not pan out in reality. The man is nothing if not a tireless self-promoter; maybe some of it actually pays off?
All that can be said with any degree of confidence is that
Rekt Planet showed that at least 2500 of Frog's customers are willing to back at the $200 level (the executive box tier) and the Cyberfrog Action Figure campaign (2500 backers at $191 per backer) has proven that is still the case; anything regarding the amount of customers only willing to back at lower levels is falling back on stats from May 2020, which we can all agree are obsolete.
Another issue is that whatever the results are for this individual a-logged creator, there is no real proof that this has any reflection on the nebulous "CG customer pool". To illustrate my point, we can compare this with Meyer's performance since 2021 started:
Code:
Jawbreakers: Grand Bizarre 19
Impossible Stars 0
Expendables Go To Hell 98
499 Graphic Novel 1474
Knife-hand: Blindspot 1296
Rock N Roll Ninja 1185
19 backers for the
Jawbreakers flagship over the course of 8 months ( from a standing number of 4326 ) gives the strong conclusion that anything Meyer sold in 2021 wasn't backed by new customers (because why wouldn't new fans want
Jawbreakers?) but by already existing customers who will back anything he puts out while waiting on multiple overdue projects.
You can also get every chapter for free every time that chapter comes out on the mangaplus app, which shows you they are not afraid of sales going down....
To use reflexivist theory: manga is popular because it's cheap and affordable, and it's cheap and affordable because it's popular.
The amount of consumers interested in manga is so great that they can just charge fractions of a penny per issue with ad revenue, or a one-time subscription fee, and there's enough profit that popular mangaka can still make a decent living. Manga publishers can simply upload their comics to an app where hundreds of millions of people are eager to consume it. Mainstream western comics by contrast are sold primary out of creepy, weird locally-owned boutique shops run by cantankerous incels who specialized in dealing in crudely drawn underground porn "comix" before improbably managing to secure an exclusive distribution deal in the late 1970s.
Non-children's/YA western comics aren't just fighting an uphill battle, it's fighting from the bottom of the Marianas trench. To follow this analogy through, Comicsgate - an independent crowdfunded, blacklisted subset of western comics - is buried six feet under the sea bed of the Marianas trench.
EDIT:
In a bit of synchronicity, today both Michael Bancroft and Tim Lim held a crowdfund launch stream for
Arc Athena by debuting industry pro
Eric Canete (Image, Marvel), the latest comic to be distributed under Lim's
Iconic Comics imprint. With Bancroft's co-host
Joe Fulton as editor and
Eric Weathers on letters, the book advertises 48 pages of sequential art, 16 pages of supplemental material and delivery within 4 month of launch, with Canete saying the next 4 issues have already been completed. This CG/Lim collaboration is, given the dogmatic forever wars that characterize Comicsgate, a very unexpected development.
“NEON GODS” - The heroes we worship are not the ones saving us. | Check out 'ARC ATHENA - One of Six' on Indiegogo.
www.indiegogo.com
