First of all, let me explain you needn´t worry, for you will not find anything similar to “Let the comic book creators of the World, unite” in here. This title was only to catch your attention.
The key point is that it is difficult, even to us, to define precisely what Quarto Mundo is. It’s easier to delineate it by what it is not: Quarto Mundo (which translates as “Fourth World”) is not a publishing house, a cooperative, a comic book label or a distribution company. The purpose of this manifest is to define as accurately as possible what the idea behind Quarto Mundo is, both for readers and comic creators who are part of or will eventualy join this collective.
Quarto Mundo is a quite megalomaniac attempt to make the birth of a strong, stable and mainly continuous Brazilian comic book market possible. Our comic book production is basically made independently nowadays, so it was only natural for these independent producers to gather and make this dream market possible.
In any given comics market worldwide (as well as in any other cultural market) there is a synergy between so-called alternative-underground and mainstream markets. One feeds on the other. In general, experimentations – and therefore, evolutions in techinique and artistic language – occur in the alternative market. On the other hand, the mainstream market makes these innovations popular, renewing the market as a whole, taking it to a higher quality level, until it stabilizes and settles down, what allows a series of new experimentations in the alternative market. Thus, today’s alternative market tends to become tomorrow’s mainstream market, which will force the creation of a new alternative market. This cycle is extremely beneficial for the market as a whole, because it is exactly what keeps it strong and ongoing.
In Brazil, however, there is a sui generis case. We cannot say we indeed have a national comics market, for we do not have said cycle of development between manstream and alternative markets. Therefore, the few mainstream titles which were successful did not prevail, because there wasn´t a strong alternative market to feed it either with technical and artistic innovations or with new creators who would follow up on it. Thus, the cycle is broken. Every time a new attempt is made by someone in the mainstream market, one needs to reinvent the wheel once again, for what was done is now lost.
Before thinking about a strong and stable national mainstream comic market, we need to make an alternative market to maintain the first. Hence, Quarto Mundo is launched, intending to maintain this production so that, in the future, some titles (and its editors) may sustain a mainstream market themselves.
To achieve this goal, Quarto Mundo is supported by three theoretical and practical pillars.
First, the way cultural markets work nowadays, according to “The Long Tail” theory. It was created by Wired Magazine´s editor-in-chief Chris Anderson in 2004. In Chris´ popular book The Long Tail, he analyses the changes in the economic market, specially in cultural industry, where there is a phenomenon of migration from a masse culture to a niche culture due to digital convergence and the Internet, which causes a new behavior pattern among consumers.
Music was the first branch of cultural industry to feel the impact of the Long Tail, but the ‘Tail’ is also affecting other segments, like comics, to a major or minor degree. In the scope of this new economy, sales phenomena like Jim Lee’s X-Men or Brazilian cartoonist Angeli’s Chiclete com Banana will hardly happen again. These big Sales hits will gradually disappear. There will be a drop in circulation and, at the same time, a growth in the number of titles on shelves. In the Long Tail, the maintenance costs of a popular title are the same as those of a product which few consumers seek, therefore niches once ignored by publishing houses are now worth their while.
What matters the most to Quarto Mundo in the Long Tail theory is that the important thing in a niche market like independent comics is variety, not quantity. Thus, it is better to have 100 different publications with 1000 copies each than only one comic book with 100,000 copies. The profit from selling one copy from each of these one hundred titles is the same as from selling one hundred copies from one magazine, but it is easier to sell one copy of each than 100 of one single comic book, specially because you can sell different titles to one single person, but you cannot sell the same book to one person more than once (unless he or she has serious memory losses). Not to mention that with a wide range of titles, chances are higher that someone will be interested in at least one. In short, as our magazines have a low circulation, we cannot survive in an economy of scale, but through the collective, applying the Long Tail model, we can boost our income in an economy of scope.
This is the reason why Quarto Mundo members exchange magazines among themselves. Not only because these exchanges allow distribution of our magazines across different regions of Brazil, but also because one will have a wider selection of titles to offer to readers in one’s region. It´s as if each comic creator were a publisher with a vast catalogue. As exchanges are made by equal values, the money one obtains from selling someone else´s magazine goes to one´s pocket. Thus, everybody wins: The seller, who has a higher profit which can be reinvested in his or her own magazine. The comic creator, who had his or her magazine sold and will have a new reader who eventually may disseminate the comic book to other potential readers. And the reader, who has found one more option of reading besides those found in book stores and newsstands.
The second pillar sustaining Quarto Mundo is based on what is called Sturgeon´s Law. Theodore Sturgeon was a sci-fi writer who, responding to a literary critic who said most of sci-fi production was mediocre, said he was right, 90% of all sci-fi production is indeed mediocre, just like 90% of all literary production.
This ratio – 90% of the production being mediocre, 10% being brilliant, although is a hyperbolic way of thinking, can be applied to any cultural market, comics included. In general, only the cream of world production is released in Brazil, so we do not realize the number of mediocre titles there are in any given comics market: American, Japanese, European… It wouldn’t be any different in Brazil.
The problem is that Brazilian readers know only the cream of world production, so when they find Brazilian endeavors, they immediately expect the same genius-level quality they find in foreign productions. But these are only the productions which overcame 90% of the market. It is like darwinism applied to comics.
Thus, in order to there be a sound number of Brazilian titles within those 10%, first we’ll need an even higher amount of titles within the 90%. This is why the more comic creators venturing independent publishing, the better. The more people releasing material, the harder competition will be, forcing people to take their releases’ quality to a higher standard, lest they be left behind. Let us not be naive, many current publications will not endure (which does not impede their editors to try again, with different approaches), but the ones which survive will be such high quality that they’ll be able to tackle foreing titles, maybe even in their own market.
For this to happen, first of all the comic book needs to find its reader. Many comics die early not because they´re not technically or artistically good, but because they can´t manage to reach a minimum number of readers needed for their survival. One of Quarto Mundo´s actions is preventing an independent comic book´s premature death. It needs to find its minimum audience in order to have time to grow, reach maturity and thus become competitive and more able to come to its full potential audience.
It´s no use, for instance, trying to sell a junkie humor comic book to superheroes´ readers and vice versa. A comic book will only reach maturity if it gets feedback from its readers. In this case, Quarto Mundo helps to channel each comic book to its specific market, where they can find its right readers. If still a publication is not well accepted, we will know the book indeed lacks the technical and artistical qualities needed to survive inside the book´s genre, not because of a premature death.
At last, the third pillar sustaining Quarto Mundo is the collective´s organization, based in a model where there are no hierarchies or a central core, thus stimulating an open and free colaboration among its members. This mutually colaborative model is called peer production or simply peering. The first applications of peering were in technology, mainly in free-code softwares like the operational system Linux, but nowadays this kind of organization has spread out through other sectors of the economy. More and more the tendency is to abandon hyerarchical organizations for more horizontal organizations.
In this model of organization, every comic creator in Quarto Mundo is like a cell in a bigger organism, the collective. Just like a cell, everyone knows its function to keeping the organism alive. Some cells may have more attributions than others, but there is no relationship of superiority or inferiority between them.
Such an organization will only work when there is strong trust among its members. Every member of Quarto Mundo is in it because he or she was invited by someone who trusts him or her. Quarto Mundo only works because of this ring of trust, which cannot be broken or torn, otherwise all its organization may cave in.
The phalanx metaphore is perhaps the best way to explain the Quarto Mundo dynamics. In a phalanx, a soldier´s shield is used not to protect himself, but to cover the man fighting beside him, who will use his own shield to protect the next one, and so on. You can only protect the man beside you because you trust someone else will protect you as well. This confidence can never be broken if the phalanx is willing to keep standing and fighting. That´s how it must be in Quarto Mundo.
To sum up, due to said pillars Quarto Mundo intends to help independent cartoonists and comic creators to publish, distribute, promote and sell their books. So that maybe one day there will be a bona fide strong national comics market. Whether we´ll ever reach this goal, we can´t tell. But no one can accuse us of not trying.
For some time now, people have been noticing a different hype in the Brazilian comic book publishing market. It has always been there, always had its impact, but now it’s taking a shape of its own.
Hence, Quarto Mundo (which translates as “Fourth World”) is launched as new approach to organization: A group of Brazilian active comic creators which aims to help distributing, selling, promoting and exchanging experiences in the field of independent comic book production; thus seeking solutions for its current problems in Brazil.
Quarto Mundo is not a publishing company. There is no head office or owners, nor is it restricted to its current group. It is a brand, a manifest, perhaps the search for a brand new term, giving space to various artists who produce and distribute their material by themselves.
It is more than an independent label, it´s a collective commited to publishing top-quality comics. So don´t be surprised if you find the name Quarto Mundo on the cover of Brazilian masterpieces.
Discover a new way of making comics with Quarto Mundo.
