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Post by LovesGilKane on Jul 27, 2017 11:28:02 GMT -5
'some publishers' really need to give up the 'cancel the series just to start again' with a new #1, simply because their millennial 'editors' can't get off their playstation long enough to learn what a profitable long-term series is, and means.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 27, 2017 17:50:26 GMT -5
just because something is not a 'new' trend does not mean it's not a BAD trend. for sales. for readership vs 'collecting'. or creativity in general. like Felarca vs Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, or the bad bands from the Manchester Sound of England in the 1990's vs Stone Roses or Charlatans UK (Confessor knows what I mean). Same applies to comics. 'some publishers' really need to give up the 'cancel the series just to start again' with a new #1, simply because their millennial 'editors' can't get off their playstation long enough to learn what a profitable long-term series is, and means. That old trend of collectibility is what made the direct market itself a viable market for comics when it was launched. Without that trend, there is no direct market and the field never opens up to publishers who can't get picked up for newsstand distribution. The problembecame that the industry reacted to the success of the direct market by embracing the collectibility factor and the hardcore fanbase to the exclusion of everything else, which did not allow for the next generation f readers to be created and stuck with it so that now we are on the third generation of potential readers who did not have easy entrance into the medium, so all that is left is to pump the collectibility aspects to gain sales bumps because the bulk of what is left of the customer base is those who value the collectibility of comics and will respond like Pavlov's dogs to new #1 when they are released. It is not the current editors who do not understand long term success, it is the editors who embraced the direct market and it's collectibility facotrs for large short term profits through the 80s and 90s and lost sight of the long term viability of the market that is at the heart of this problem. The only real solution is expanding the customer base with readers who won't chase the hot #1 collectible variants cover event story trend that drives the market now, and that is not going to happen without a long term plan coming form a level much higher than the line editors or even the editors-in-chief currently working in the field. The problem is those people's jobs are reliant on what short term quarterly reports say, not long term growth plans, so they have no incentive whatsover to employ any plan that does not maximize quarterly earnings each quarter to ensure they have a job the next quarter. The industry has created a vicious circle for itself that is not easily broken. It's going to take a vision and a dedication form someone in a position of being publisher or higher willing to suffer potential short term losses to create the long term gains, and that just doesn't ahppen in the corporate world these days, and the mainstream comics market is currently embedded deep in the corporate world, and publishing revenue and growth is not a priority, or even on the radar really, of the people there benefiting form the revenue streams the characters create overall. You can blame current editors and millennials all you want, but they didn't create the problem, they inherited it as the legacy of the decision makers of the industry from the late 70s onwards who not only put the industry in this vicious circle but eliminated most of the tools which would be able to bring the industry out of it by eliminating the infrastructure needed to reach a mass audience and create feeder programs for new readers which could create growth and sustain sales so collectible #1s wouldn't be necessary for revenue spikes to keep current employees jobs. Anyone who tries to make the kind of changes needed is most likely to be fired and replaced by someone else who will find a way to keep those revenue spikes for the quarterly reports because that's the way business is done these days. The biggest problem is comics aren't marketed or sold to end customers. They are marketed and sold to retailers who run shops reliant on the collectible model to move enough books to keep their doors open. -M
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jul 27, 2017 18:28:39 GMT -5
I think the #1 thing is because this generation is obsessed with reading the 'whole thing' of something.. I can't tell you how many of my daughter's and brothers friends have said to me 'yeah, Batman is great, but I don't read the comics because there are too many'... the current mindset is that you can't just read what's going on now, you have to start at the beginning... the #1s are an attempt to allow people to 'read the whole thing'
You can see this in the sales charts after the Wonder Woman movie.. it was the 1st trade from the new 52 series that got the sales bump.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 27, 2017 18:38:24 GMT -5
I think the #1 thing is because this generation is obsessed with reading the 'whole thing' of something.. I can't tell you how many of my daughter's and brothers friends have said to me 'yeah, Batman is great, but I don't read the comics because there are too many'... the current mindset is that you can't just read what's going on now, you have to start at the beginning... the #1s are an attempt to allow people to 'read the whole thing' You can see this in the sales charts after the Wonder Woman movie.. it was the 1st trade from the new 52 series that got the sales bump. it's not just this generation. How many of our peers here have mentioned they are buying back issues but won't read them until they have the whole run? Or keep buying so they don't have a gap in their run because they have been there since #1. Again, it's not just a modern thing, we're just reaping what has been sown for the last few decades now and people are upset because they didn't foresee the consequences of the decisions and actions they took then. -M
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jul 27, 2017 18:41:09 GMT -5
That's true.. I have seem people here say that. All the more reason why the Manga model is better
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Jul 27, 2017 20:11:18 GMT -5
I think the #1 thing is because this generation is obsessed with reading the 'whole thing' of something.. I can't tell you how many of my daughter's and brothers friends have said to me 'yeah, Batman is great, but I don't read the comics because there are too many'... the current mindset is that you can't just read what's going on now, you have to start at the beginning... the #1s are an attempt to allow people to 'read the whole thing' You can see this in the sales charts after the Wonder Woman movie.. it was the 1st trade from the new 52 series that got the sales bump. Also DC/Marvel/Image are doing their damndest to make stories so complex that if you do start with issue # 8 you will be completely lost. (Except for Squirrel Girl. Every issue of Squirrel Girl is a perfect, self-contained, priceless gem.)
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Post by Trevor on Jul 28, 2017 6:45:05 GMT -5
I think I wouldn't mind every long series comic having one of those full page "the story so far" recaps on the inside front cover. Was it Marvel that had a period where they had them in every book for a bunch of years?
Could even be a cool device for the creators to throw in little Easter eggs.
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Post by The Captain on Jul 28, 2017 9:05:03 GMT -5
I think the #1 thing is because this generation is obsessed with reading the 'whole thing' of something.. I can't tell you how many of my daughter's and brothers friends have said to me 'yeah, Batman is great, but I don't read the comics because there are too many'... the current mindset is that you can't just read what's going on now, you have to start at the beginning... the #1s are an attempt to allow people to 'read the whole thing' You can see this in the sales charts after the Wonder Woman movie.. it was the 1st trade from the new 52 series that got the sales bump. it's not just this generation. How many of our peers here have mentioned they are buying back issues but won't read them until they have the whole run? Or keep buying so they don't have a gap in their run because they have been there since #1. -M Hey, I resemble that remark...😒
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,069
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Post by Confessor on Jul 28, 2017 10:28:33 GMT -5
I think I wouldn't mind every long series comic having one of those full page "the story so far" recaps on the inside front cover. Was it Marvel that had a period where they had them in every book for a bunch of years? Yeah, Marvel did this on some of their books back in the late '90s and early 2000s -- certainly Amazing Spider-Man had regular recap pages. In fact, I think ASM had them again much more recently...say, 3 or 4 years ago.
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Post by Spike-X on Jul 28, 2017 16:35:45 GMT -5
Some Marvel books still have them. I don't know if they all do, because I don't read all of them.
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Post by LovesGilKane on Jul 29, 2017 5:20:51 GMT -5
I can't do the 'quote' thing poster-per-poster as others do.
all I can do is agree with everyone above on this sub-topic. and say as someone whom has had skin in the game, versus 'sourcefednerd', which hires actors from 'Birdemic 1 and 2 to me a mouthpiece, I agree.
at least that means here, in a beautiful place which never like twitter relies on block-bots (I've been off tweety since before Dan Slott and others went 'block-botty', it must be said), we can discuss these issues.
versus being 'triggered', lol.
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Post by LovesGilKane on Jul 29, 2017 5:24:59 GMT -5
(Except for Squirrel Girl. Every issue of Squirrel Girl is a perfect, self-contained, priceless gem.) this depends on one's definition of 'constructionist' art/writing versus deconstructionist. as per deconstructionist, I agree. Though as someone whom has received royalties from things Spike-X and Slam_Bradley have likely purchased, which are constructionist, I must politely disagree.
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Post by LovesGilKane on Jul 29, 2017 10:10:46 GMT -5
That's true.. I have seem people here say that. All the more reason why the Manga model is better from the printing-cost side leading to the net profit (vs gross profit) side, absolutely! and i like the size better, too.
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Post by LovesGilKane on Jul 29, 2017 10:15:29 GMT -5
just because something is not a 'new' trend does not mean it's not a BAD trend. for sales. for readership vs 'collecting'. or creativity in general. like Felarca vs Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, or the bad bands from the Manchester Sound of England in the 1990's vs Stone Roses or Charlatans UK (Confessor knows what I mean). Same applies to comics. 'some publishers' really need to give up the 'cancel the series just to start again' with a new #1, simply because their millennial 'editors' can't get off their playstation long enough to learn what a profitable long-term series is, and means. That old trend of collectibility is what made the direct market itself a viable market for comics when it was launched. Without that trend, there is no direct market and the field never opens up to publishers who can't get picked up for newsstand distribution. The problembecame that the industry reacted to the success of the direct market by embracing the collectibility factor and the hardcore fanbase to the exclusion of everything else, which did not allow for the next generation f readers to be created and stuck with it so that now we are on the third generation of potential readers who did not have easy entrance into the medium, so all that is left is to pump the collectibility aspects to gain sales bumps because the bulk of what is left of the customer base is those who value the collectibility of comics and will respond like Pavlov's dogs to new #1 when they are released. It is not the current editors who do not understand long term success, it is the editors who embraced the direct market and it's collectibility facotrs for large short term profits through the 80s and 90s and lost sight of the long term viability of the market that is at the heart of this problem. The only real solution is expanding the customer base with readers who won't chase the hot #1 collectible variants cover event story trend that drives the market now, and that is not going to happen without a long term plan coming form a level much higher than the line editors or even the editors-in-chief currently working in the field. The problem is those people's jobs are reliant on what short term quarterly reports say, not long term growth plans, so they have no incentive whatsover to employ any plan that does not maximize quarterly earnings each quarter to ensure they have a job the next quarter. The industry has created a vicious circle for itself that is not easily broken. It's going to take a vision and a dedication form someone in a position of being publisher or higher willing to suffer potential short term losses to create the long term gains, and that just doesn't ahppen in the corporate world these days, and the mainstream comics market is currently embedded deep in the corporate world, and publishing revenue and growth is not a priority, or even on the radar really, of the people there benefiting form the revenue streams the characters create overall. You can blame current editors and millennials all you want, but they didn't create the problem, they inherited it as the legacy of the decision makers of the industry from the late 70s onwards who not only put the industry in this vicious circle but eliminated most of the tools which would be able to bring the industry out of it by eliminating the infrastructure needed to reach a mass audience and create feeder programs for new readers which could create growth and sustain sales so collectible #1s wouldn't be necessary for revenue spikes to keep current employees jobs. Anyone who tries to make the kind of changes needed is most likely to be fired and replaced by someone else who will find a way to keep those revenue spikes for the quarterly reports because that's the way business is done these days. The biggest problem is comics aren't marketed or sold to end customers. They are marketed and sold to retailers who run shops reliant on the collectible model to move enough books to keep their doors open. -M i agree with EVERYTHING you said, all of it, except what i 'bolded'. because it still comes down to art first, then story, after that, aught else. especially if we wish to entice 'new' readers' apart from that, i reiterate, I agree with 99.98% of what you stated above.
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Post by Nowhere Man on Jul 29, 2017 11:00:28 GMT -5
I hate the idea that some writers hold that the "Hulk Smash!" Hulk is a boring character to write and a dead end. All you have to do is read the Len Wein and Roger Stern runs to see that this isn't the case at all. Stern even managed to show that the Hulk could retain this personality while still being clever and not some child-like idiot. I think this is a failure of certain writers who are just more comfortable writing generic soap operas. That era of the Hulk was unique in many ways, not the least of which the fact that the main character has a completely different personality compared to 99.9% of the other superheroes out there.
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