Alright folks.  I have to admit something; something that nearly all our listeners know.  I get passionate.  I get heated.  And now I must admit I went too far.

Should I have created the episode “David Willis is an idiot”?  No.  Not in the form that I did.  Do I think Willis’s math argument is flawed? No doubt.  Whenever one person hears “2 million POSSIBLE fans pissed off”, that’s a poweful number.  However, when I first saw it, I knew from my history of looking at comic book sales that 2 million viewers never translate to even a meaningful percentage of readers.  No, not even 100,000 readers.

DC’s Batman Adventures comic was always on the verge of cancellation every year it ran.  It was a tie-in to the heavily successful Batman: The Animated Series.  It also ran the same time as the cartoon aired.  The Gargoyles comic, which had a huge fan following had…. okay-ish numbers.  The only cartoon franchise that had a comic book revival years later that had any sort of huge comic success was Transformers.  And even then, it had an on-going comic series, and passed several hands before arriving at Dreamwave.

The big thing Willis ignored was the Teen Titans cartoon had a tie-in comic, Teen Titans Go.  Even with 2 million viewers, they reached only 10 thousand readers.  That’s a less than half a percent pass-through rate.  If the cartoon was considered marketing for the comic, it failed.  But it wasn’t.  The cartoon was marketing for… the cartoon.  DVD sales and toy sales made up it’s bread and butter, and it made it’s money back plus a tidy sum, easily.

My tone in the recording was wrong, and off-putting.  I hope I haven’t alienated any new listeners with it.  I have enjoyed some of David Willis’s work in the past, however at times, his tone is off-putting.  As off-putting as my own tone was, I imagine.  I’m sorry, listeners, and I’m sorry David Willis, for calling you an idiot.  But your math is still wrong.