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the goodness of comics, well, the comic-book-buying audience could dou ble overnight.

Now, I’m not talking about buying your dad Fax from Sarajevo for his birth day. While he may like it… probably find it moving and compelling, even… you’re not creating a comics fan there. You’re just buying your dad a birth day present.

What the comic book industry needs right now are some focused zealots and here is their gospel:

It’s all about Faberge Organics Shampoo.

If you were a kid in the Seventies, I’m sure you remember that commercial with the woman extolling the virtues of Faberge Organics Shampoo. Remember the woman saying how great her hair looked and felt, and how happy and full of increased self-esteem and whatnot she was that she felt she had to share the news of her discovery of this amazing shampoo: "I told two friends, and they told two friends, and so on, and so on, and so on…" In addition to being an amazingly effective ad (I mean, not only do I remember the annoying repetition, but I actually remember what the ad was for nearly thirty years later , proving the ad agency who came up with that campaign sure earned their fee on that one), it also aptly illustrates the concept of viral marketing. Viral marketing is the same sort of thing that causes these sorts of seem ingly innocent insider trading scandals, but is also the kind of thing that an average comics fan can use to increase comic book readership. Instead of telling your comics reading pals about a comic they might like, I want you to get one of your NON-comics reading friends to start reading comics. Now, I’m not going to lie to you; this’ll probably be a bit of a project. And I’m not going to go into all the horrors and pitfalls and roadblocks that you’re likely to encounter, because frankly, I’m not that kind of guy.

No, I’m going to tell you how to do it.

First, get your friend talking about movies. Find out his favorite films of all time.

Next time you go to the comic shop to buy comics, take your friend along, and make him part of the process. What you’re doing now is trying to

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