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Post by tarkintino on May 24, 2019 10:55:18 GMT -5
Even when legacy characters are featured in anthologies, I think the same reasoning can apply: readers don't want to "waste" time on stories that are unlikely to "matter" (because any significant event, even if it's bound to be retconned away eventually, is unlikely to occur in an anthology book). True. Human nature in consideration of its creative interests tend to embrace continuity, and in literature, it has been proven time and again that readers enthusiastically desired the "continuing adventures" of characters. Long before the superhero comic book, Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and Burroughs' Tarzan were immensely popular characters readers wanted to follow, rather than being satisfied with a one-off. While some anthology material is interesting, or even great, human nature also loves the idea of "getting to know" a character--making him "their own" and sharing the journey, which is--to many--far more appealing that "one and done" form of storytelling. Its the reason the superhero team up book--from what the Brave and the Bold turned into, to Marvel-Team Up and Marvel Two-In One--all repurposed the idea of randomness into the continuing character anthology. Some of their stories shared continuity with parent titles, while others were single-purpose tales, but the constant was that a main character was the one who took readers on the journey, instead of the aforementioned "one and done" books, superhero-related or not. Tales to Astonish or Tales of Suspense were not going to keep readers interested for much longer in the 60s, but TTA splintering into The Incredible Hulk and the Sub-Mariner and ToS into Captain America and Iron Man proved that the continuing character was where audiences wanted to go, much like the once omnipresent TV anthology vanished in favor of the dominant continuing character dramas. |
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Post by beccabear67 on May 24, 2019 11:31:25 GMT -5
I think you've all covered the reasons very well, can't add much... short story magazines used to be the base and now it's series of novels of 400-600 pages. The only real advantage for an anthology would be to be cheap with a large print run and solid advertising support and the numbers just dipped down too far. Maybe the last major attempt was DC's Dollar Comics of the '70s?
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Post by Reptisaurus! on May 24, 2019 11:33:39 GMT -5
To vastly over-simplify the issue, it seems to me that anthologies sell on perceived value (look how many stories you get for the price of one!) whereas direct market books sell on hype (you'll never believe what happens to Batman this time around. Pre-order now!). We're in an age now where many folks won't even stick with a favorite character or series unless they know the creative team or have seen exciting solicitations about what's coming. So why offer all the content that goes into an anthology in such a market? It's a waste of quality content that could be sold more effectively if broken up. Huh. As someone who 100% buys based on perceived value I might be biased. |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on May 24, 2019 11:37:05 GMT -5
One thing to keep in mind is the state of writing and reading in general when anthologies ruled the comic book world. Through the end of the 40s the main competition for comics were The Pulps. While there were novel length pulps (Doc Savage, The Shadow) the vast majority were anthologies. The prestige writing venues were the slick periodicals; Colliers, Saturday Evening Post, etc. And the format was the short story. Yes there were novels. But hardcover novels were a prestige format and were largely the purview of libraries and the rich. Genre novels, to the extent they existed, were serialized in pulps. It wasn't until the advent of the paperback original in the very late 40s and into the 50s that the novel began to replace short fiction as the reading format of choice. And that growth continued until short fiction virtually disappeared by the late 80s and beyond except for a handful of specialized low-circulation magazines. With the advent of the internet there is now a venue for short fiction again. Between web-zines, Kindle Singles, etc. there is an opportunity for short fiction to find an audience. And it's still been a struggle with some great e-zines still failing to find a viable financially sustaining audience (Thuglit). There's also been a small resurgence of anthology television with the growth of streaming services. "Black Mirror" on Netflix has been very well received. "Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams" on Amazon. I'm sure there are more. So really it seemed that the decline of anthology comics in the U.S. tracked the decline of short fiction in prose and the rise of the novel. Even more so now, the goal is no longer the novel, but the series of novels for genre fiction. The trend, and it seems the audience preference, is for longer stories not shorter, more not less where the story itself is concerned. And another factor is that more and more the preferred method of consuming stories is the binge consumption-all at once over short period of time, not consuming episodes over time the way serialized anthologies would present it, so it needs to be bigger stories all at once, not smaller chunks over time to meet the audience demands. And the anthology is the antithesis of all the current rends where it comes to story consumption in both the mass market and the niche comic book market. -M Oh absolutely. I had meant to make this observation, but had to head to court so I cut myself short. So thanks for bringing this up. This ties back into something I mentioned in another post a few days back (in some thread). We've seen a corresponding change in the way comics and television (more recently and not as pervasively) is done with story arcs as opposed to one-and-dones. Comics went from one-and-done stories with little to no continuity to stories with subplots and loose continuity to long storylines to arc-driven stories and even titles. Television is starting to get there as well moving from one-and-done stories to season-long storylines to multiple season storylines. So, yeah...in complete agreement. I do think it's hopeful that something like Black Mirror on Netflix can at least get some interest. But overall I don't hold out a lot of hope for anthologies, short fiction, singular works in the current climate. |
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Post by Reptisaurus! on May 24, 2019 11:54:46 GMT -5
Even when legacy characters are featured in anthologies, I think the same reasoning can apply: readers don't want to "waste" time on stories that are unlikely to "matter" (because any significant event, even if it's bound to be retconned away eventually, is unlikely to occur in an anthology book). True. Human nature in consideration of its creative interests tend to embrace continuity, and in literature, it has been proven time and again that readers enthusiastically desired the "continuing adventures" of characters. Long before the superhero comic book, Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and Burroughs' Tarzan were immensely popular characters readers wanted to follow, rather than being satisfied with a one-off. While some anthology material is interesting, or even great, human nature also loves the idea of "getting to know" a character--making him "their own" and sharing the journey, which is--to many--far more appealing that "one and done" form of storytelling. Its the reason the superhero team up book--from what the Brave and the Bold turned into, to Marvel-Team Up and Marvel Two-In One--all repurposed the idea of randomness into the continuing character anthology. Some of their stories shared continuity with parent titles, while others were single-purpose tales, but the constant was that a main character was the one who took readers on the journey, instead of the aforementioned "one and done" books, superhero-related or not. Tales to Astonish or Tales of Suspense were not going to keep readers interested for much longer in the 60s, but TTA splintering into The Incredible Hulk and the Sub-Mariner and ToS into Captain America and Iron Man proved that the continuing character was where audiences wanted to go, much like the once omnipresent TV anthology vanished in favor of the dominant continuing character dramas. I don't think it's 100% human nature, though. Shonen Jump in Japan still moved 1.7 million copies a week in 2017 in a country with a population of 127 million. That's 25% of what they were selling a couple decades ago, and individual collected volumes of lead feature One Piece sell more than 1.7 million copies. But still in 2017 Japanese anthologies were selling what American comics were selling in the '40s and '50s - and far, far more than any American comic has regularly sold in the last 60 years. (Also team-up books are by far my favorite thing in mainstream comics. And Scooby Doo Team-Up (published by DC) is gonna hit issue 50 in a month or two, so they still sell in the non-direct market!) |
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Post by Deleted on May 24, 2019 12:16:38 GMT -5
shaxper ... I understand completely.
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Post by Cei-U! on May 24, 2019 19:25:33 GMT -5
When we talk about anthology comics, we need to realize that we're talking about two different things. On the one hand, there are the true anthologies like Crime Does Not Pay or the classic EC titles where, aside from narrators, there are no recurring characters and most stories are standalones. On the other hand, there are the more familiar titles like Action Comics, Whiz Comics, or Marvel Mystery Comics, books featuring multiple series featuring recurring characters, usually headlined by a Big Name Star. Issue-to-issue continuity was rare in such comics during the Golden Age but not unheard of, as in the classic Monster Society of Evil story that ran in 25 consecutive issues of Whiz, and a selling point for those titles like Famous Funnies that reprinted syndicated strips. Just wented to clarify the terms of discussion.
As for why anthologies can no longer make it in today's marketplace, I attribute it in part to the shift in demographics from a predominately young audience that was assumed to have a short attention span and valued variety (the 1930s through 1960s) to a predominately adult audience addicted to character-focused comics with dense issue-to-issue continuity (from the '70s on, the underground and indie scenes excepted). It's a different audience with different expectations. And that's too bad, because I enjoy reading both kinds of anthology comics--at least when their contents are good.
Cei-U!
I summon the Friday afternoon ramblings!
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Post by brutalis on May 31, 2019 7:54:20 GMT -5
Bottom line is the actual CONTENT found in any anthology. Having one HIT and multiple misfires means no readers will continue to purchase. Constant rotation is almost a necessity and once you find a HIT then that character is either pushed into the spotlight or main feature position making all the rest feel "less" or too much focus is placed upon the HIT feature. Nothing wrong if the spotlight brings in new readers but if all they are wanting to read is the HIT then spin it off and into another comic. 2000 AD in its prime was very good at developing multiple series interest and mixing that with one and done stories.
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Post by rberman on May 31, 2019 8:18:34 GMT -5
Do DC's Wal-Mart 100-pagers count as anthologies?
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Post by MDG on May 31, 2019 9:19:17 GMT -5
When we talk about anthology comics, we need to realize that we're talking about two different things. On the one hand, there are the true anthologies like Crime Does Not Pay or the classic EC titles where, aside from narrators, there are no recurring characters and most stories are standalones. On the other hand, there are the more familiar titles like Action Comics, Whiz Comics, or Marvel Mystery Comics, books featuring multiple series featuring recurring characters, usually headlined by a Big Name Star. Issue-to-issue continuity was rare in such comics during the Golden Age but not unheard of, as in the classic Monster Society of Evil story that ran in 25 consecutive issues of Whiz, and a selling point for those titles like Famous Funnies that reprinted syndicated strips. Just wented to clarify the terms of discussion. As for why anthologies can no longer make it in today's marketplace, I attribute it in part to the shift in demographics from a predominately young audience that was assumed to have a short attention span and valued variety (the 1930s through 1960s) to a predominately adult audience addicted to character-focused comics with dense issue-to-issue continuity (from the '70s on, the underground and indie scenes excepted). It's a different audience with different expectations. And that's too bad, because I enjoy reading both kinds of anthology comics--at least when their contents are good. Cei-U! I summon the Friday afternoon ramblings! A big thing against anthology comics is the page count. In the Golden Age, there were 64 pages to fill (not sure how many were ads). This eventually dwindled to <20 story pages, only enough for one story by the lead character.
Anther problem is that, with anthologies, editors seem comfortable with having one or two half-assed "filler" stories each issue. This is true whether it's something mainstream like Action Comics Weekly or an alternative like Zero-Zero.
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Post by wildfire2099 on May 31, 2019 9:19:40 GMT -5
I think they do NOT.. they're more of a trade. It's a good marketing plan.. give new readers a taste of a bunch o stories, give Wednesday Warriors a new story they can't get anywhere else, and advertise trades. But it's not an Anthology, it's more like the old 100 page giants, with a small new story and a bunch of reprints.
I do think an anthology can sell (manga does it), Marvel and DC just don't do it right. An Anthology book should be like a sampler... give people 10 8 page stories for a good price (say $6.99?).. make sure they vary in length so people do just take off cycles, and be sure to collect them quickly afterwards. I'd do it by title group.. Marvel could have an Avengers one, and X-Men one, and a Spidey one, etc. Put out 2 a week... most people will buy every one. The main team gets the first story, then the others are solo stories of the team members, or side teams, or whatever. Tie'em in or not... I think either would work.
I think stories 'mattering' is not really a thing. People like events because they have lots of their favorite characters interacting, not because they 'matter' (because let's be honest, they don't)
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Post by wildfire2099 on May 31, 2019 9:29:51 GMT -5
Just to give you an idea of what I'm talking about...
Avengers Assemble! Anthology book
Lead: 'Main' Avengers team (whatever that is these days),, maybe give this 2 of the slots, so a 'standard' 16 page story (ads in the middle.. maybe even go with 'chapter 1 and chapter 2 like in the old days)
8 page stories for Iron Man, Thor, Captain America (paid ads separate each story)
nice 2 page house ad spread for recent trades for same
Mid-Book focus: Champions (another 16 page story)
8 page stories for Ms. Marvel, Viv Vision, and Iron Heart
another nice 2 page house ad
4 pages of letters, polls, contest, etc.. general reader interaction
Maybe the lead goes for 6 issues (standard trade length, natch)... after 3 weeks of Thor you do 3 weeks of Wasp, thowing something else in for a week or two, then go back to Thor maybe 4 weeks of Iron Man, 3 Weeks of Vision, go back to Iron Man, etc. Once a particular character has enough for a trade, give them some time off for the trade to sell (like Image does) then go back to it.
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Post by Deleted on May 31, 2019 9:49:47 GMT -5
I miss the late great DC Dollar Comics. Those were awesome anthologies!
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Post by EdoBosnar on May 31, 2019 10:53:32 GMT -5
I miss the late great DC Dollar Comics. Those were awesome anthologies! Me too. I was particularly fond of dollar phase in World's Finest and Adventure Comics. |
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Post by Reptisaurus! on May 31, 2019 12:49:20 GMT -5
I think stories 'mattering' is not really a thing. People like events because they have lots of their favorite characters interacting, not because they 'matter' (because let's be honest, they don't) I dunno. I've seen a lot of anecdotal evidence that "This story matters" is a thing. I don't understand the logic or the mindset behind it AT ALL, personally. Edit: I'd really like an article on why people buy crossovers despite the fact that they're an editorially mandated cluster$%^&*, but I get the sense that even Marvel and DC aren't too interested in the question "Why do fans buy what they buy?" |
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