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Post by badwolf on Apr 5, 2022 19:43:58 GMT -5
Look at people like Kurt Busiek... look how many good, really good, Astro City stories he's told without resorting to any of these character-breaking stunts. Look at his Untold Tales of Spider-Man. I mean, the man wrote stories BETWEEN Stan and Steve's stories and they are STILL good. His Avengers was what got me back into reading these types of comics after a decade away. Literally Heroes Return--the return of the characters we knew! He was a fan.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 5, 2022 20:03:15 GMT -5
Uh, Norman Osborn has been alive again since about 1995... Ha Ha... "alive again"... a concept only found in the funnybooks! or religion. or mythology. or soap operas. -M
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Post by wildfire2099 on Apr 5, 2022 20:06:36 GMT -5
It's not confusing at all, if you've actually been reading comics since the 2000's. I think that is his point. IF you’ve been reading comics for 20+ years, it isn’t confusing, but for someone who came to comics later, maybe due to liking the MCU, it isn’t quite as easy. Take Iron Man, for example. You had Tony as a person, Tony as an AI, Riri Williams, and now Tony as a person again, all serving as that character. What about Cap? Is it good Steve before “dying”, Bucky, good Steve again, evil Hydra Steve, good Steve again, Sam, or Steve and Sam at the same time? For you and me, probably not an issue to keep up, but if I were a new fan coming into this monumental fudge-up, I’d walk out of the comic shop and go find something easier to follow. You forgot Evil White Armored Tony and Doom trying to be good using Tony's Armor. Oh, and Tony's long lost maybe evil brother.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 5, 2022 20:12:07 GMT -5
Yes. They should limit the kinds of stories they tell. Good ones. If there were an actual correlation between the quality of a comic and its sales, I might agree with you. But if you look at the actual comics that have succeeded and the comics that were "good" by some kind of objective standard, the lists are not the same. In fact, some of the best selling comics of all time have been really bad comics. It's not the mandate of publishers to produce good stories. It's the mandate of publishers to produce comics that sell well within the parameters of the current marketplace. If you ask 10 comic consumers what makes a good comic, you are likely to get 10 different answers. If you are going to run a successful comics publishing business, what you need to ask is what makes a comic you will buy. If your answer is good ones, you are giving no answer since that is going to very from customer to customer (as we have already seen in responses to this thread). The biggest fallacy among fans (and consumers) and the ultimate hubris is to conflate personal taste with objective quality. If I like it it must be good is hubris pure and simple and does nothing but muddie the conversation about what makes a successful comic. -M
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Post by adamwarlock2099 on Apr 5, 2022 20:12:17 GMT -5
Ha Ha... "alive again"... a concept only found in the funnybooks! or religion. or mythology. or soap operas. -M Soap operas for sure. Watching General Hospital with my wife for 22 years. Yeah its a trope. But than thats all comic books are is soap operas.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 6, 2022 6:47:30 GMT -5
Yes. They should limit the kinds of stories they tell. Good ones. If there were an actual correlation between the quality of a comic and its sales, I might agree with you. But if you look at the actual comics that have succeeded and the comics that were "good" by some kind of objective standard, the lists are not the same. In fact, some of the best selling comics of all time have been really bad comics. It's not the mandate of publishers to produce good stories. It's the mandate of publishers to produce comics that sell well within the parameters of the current marketplace. If you ask 10 comic consumers what makes a good comic, you are likely to get 10 different answers. If you are going to run a successful comics publishing business, what you need to ask is what makes a comic you will buy. If your answer is good ones, you are giving no answer since that is going to very from customer to customer (as we have already seen in responses to this thread). The biggest fallacy among fans (and consumers) and the ultimate hubris is to conflate personal taste with objective quality. If I like it it must be good is hubris pure and simple and does nothing but muddie the conversation about what makes a successful comic. -M I’m kind of having the same conversation at times with others about wrestling. Wrestling PPVs (now called “premium events”) and wrestling shows on the USA Network and Fox can do good PPV buyrates/TV ratings, but there are some that still ask why wrestling promotions such as WWE are not giving fans what they want. Hell, I’m only human so I’ve gone down that rabbit hole more than one would have liked. If the USA Network, Fox and various sponsors are happy with WWE ratings, then, sadly for those of us who might not be happy with a certain direction, it’s kind of tough. Some wrestling personality recently did a podcast where he talked about how the true “customers” now are sponsors, TV executives, etc. WrestleMania 38, which took place over the weekend, has been dismissed by some (although most usually enjoy at least one or two matches), but reports are that it broke a previous attendance record. Over two nights, a lot of fans attended the event, and I’d wager we might see a good or great PPV buyrate. So there might be someone that say something sucks, of be angry that their favourite wrestler didn’t attend the card or win a championship, but I guess WWE will only be interested, rightly so, in attendance and PPV figures. I can be emotive about comics. I can be damn frustrated at times. I can rant about there being 13,500 X-Men books on the shelve and 138-tie in issues to “X-Universe Apocalypse Crisis Final This Time It’s Final Whatever”, but then I’ll browse Comichron’s site and learn that one of those X-books was the highest-selling Marvel book of a particular month. And, as bitter a pill it is to swallow, I have to slap my face and say, “They’re not making standalone X-books for your preferences, they’re doing it for the hundreds of thousands who bought the aforementioned X-book.” Very frustrating, but maybe, just maybe, I’m starting to get it.
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Post by tonebone on Apr 6, 2022 7:02:16 GMT -5
Ha Ha... "alive again"... a concept only found in the funnybooks! or religion. or mythology. or soap operas. -M Touche!
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Post by Deleted on Apr 6, 2022 10:39:18 GMT -5
Brian Hibbs has released his analysis of the Bookscan numbers for 2021. For those who aren't aware of it, it measures sales of comics ithe mass market, usually OGN and collected editions. So it represents what the mass audience is buying comics wise. The verdict-comics are a growth medium again. 2021 saw more comics sell in the mass market than 2018 and 2019 combined. The bad news for traditional comics fans-it's not generally stuff from Marvel or DC. In fact, Marvel had zero books in the top 750 sellers in the mass market, and the top sellers on this list moved over a million copies. As for total sales, in the traditional comic publishers, DC, Dark Horse, Image, BOOM! IDW and even Dynamite moved more copies of books in the mass market in 2021 than Marvel and that's with the power of the MCU behind those characters. However, the graphic novel imprints of the big book publishers continue to outperform most of the traditional comic publishers in the mass market. The Top 10 publishers of western material (as opposed to manga) in the mass market in 2021 were: 1. Scholastic (with about 40% of the market) 2. HarperCollins 3. Penguin Random House (not including their distribution deal for Marvel) 4. Holtzbrinck 5. Andrews McMeel 6. DC Entertainment 7. Dark Horse 8. Harry N. Abrams (also publishing as AbramsComicarts and Amulet Books) 9. Hachette 10. IDW (fueled mostly by Top Shelf) and if you add in manga sales, all the traditional book publishers go up and all the comic publishers except Dark Horse dip. Here's a point for context to show how the market is growing and shifting away from traditional comic publishers-DC had the fewest books placing in the top 750 ever since Hibbs starting doing this in 2003. Yet their units moved and dollars earned numbers were up from previous years. Which means there are a lot more units moving and dollars being spent on comics in the mass market and a lot more people producing material for that market. so what does it all mean-basically comics are a healthy an vibrant part of the mass market and sales continue to grow, just not periodical comics sold in the direct market which nobody in the mass market wants to carry or deal with. Super-heroes are no longer the dominant seller in comics, and the fastest growing and best selling segment of the market is young adult and kids material. Which means the future is bright for comics, just not in the form that most traditional comics think of when they speak of comic books. Comics are dead. Long live comics. -M
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Post by Deleted on Apr 6, 2022 11:21:45 GMT -5
Exactly... As I said, I've been reading comics for 50 years, and I HATE going into my local comics shop. I just see a wall of something I no longer understand. I no longer recognize the characters, and I couldn't possibly keep up with the numbering restarting every 3 weeks. I read classic comics every day, and buy collections all the time, but it makes me sad that I have no interest in anything on that wall of new releases, and haven't had an interest for at least a decade. AND I WISH I DID. That being said, I keep up with comics news, and I "know what's going on", generally, but still am still out of the loop. Imagine how a normie feels.
Not to mention the sea of variants which compound the confusion....even some of the best are duped into buying a book they already have sometimes...yeah, me too....
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Apr 6, 2022 11:49:53 GMT -5
Comics =/= superheroes.
There. I said it.
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Post by Marv-El on Apr 6, 2022 11:53:44 GMT -5
I've yet to meet a moviegoer turned comic reader by watching the MCU. If they weren't already comic readers before they entered the theater. PAD had it right awhile back when he related a story of meeting a pair of brothers who liked the Rami Spider-Man films. But instead of going out to read the monthly adventures of Spidey (as PAD suggested to them), they were only interested in seeing the next Spidey film to get a new adventure of him.
To their credit though, Marvel has been trying to adjust their characters and titles to fit the MCU mold. Tony Stark now talks like RDjr (read an Iron Man issue by Bendis and one by Michlenie/Layton, it's night & day difference). Matt Murdock begins looking like Charlie Cox. You can tell what the current focus of the MCU is by looking at the upcoming/current titles being released by Marvel. But again, it's more aimed at already existing comic readers than trying to attract new ones.
But I'm the minority apparently, I still read and support current books and projects by both Marvel and DC. They are quality products being produced by excellent writers and artists today. If you don't like them, fine but at least read some of them first to form an actual honest opinion of their work instead of just knee-jerk bashing them outright because 'it's not the Marvel Universe of my youth.'
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Post by tartanphantom on Apr 6, 2022 11:56:28 GMT -5
Comics =/= superheroes. There. I said it.
That's how I've always looked at it...
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Post by Deleted on Apr 6, 2022 12:02:14 GMT -5
I've yet to meet a moviegoer turned comic reader by watching the MCU. If they weren't already comic readers before they entered the theater. PAD had it right awhile back when he related a story of meeting a pair of brothers who liked the Rami Spider-Man films. But instead of going out to read the monthly adventures of Spidey (as PAD suggested to them), they were only interested in seeing the next Spidey film to get a new adventure of him. To their credit though, Marvel has been trying to adjust their characters and titles to fit the MCU mold. Tony Stark now talks like RDjr (read an Iron Man issue by Bendis and one by Michlenie/Layton, it's night & day difference). Matt Murdock begins looking like Charlie Cox. You can tell what the current focus of the MCU is by looking at the upcoming/current titles being released by Marvel. But again, it's more aimed at already existing comic readers than trying to attract new ones. But I'm the minority apparently, I still read and support current books and projects by both Marvel and DC. They are quality products being produced by excellent writers and artists today. If you don't like them, fine but at least read some of them first to form an actual honest opinion of their work instead of just knee-jerk bashing them outright because ' it's not the Marvel Universe of my youth.' I wish they WOULD go read the modern monthly comic books, and stop driving up all the classic back issues to stratospheric prices.
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Post by tonebone on Apr 6, 2022 13:22:33 GMT -5
Comics =/= superheroes. There. I said it. Agree. As much shade as I throw on modern comics, I feel like the non-superhero, mostly independents, are where it's at. That's where I feel all the creativity and great writing is coming from. There's some crap, too, of course, but so much innovative stuff is being done in that part of the industry.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Apr 6, 2022 13:49:47 GMT -5
Comics =/= superheroes. There. I said it. Agree. As much shade as I throw on modern comics, I feel like the non-superhero, mostly independents, are where it's at. That's where I feel all the creativity and great writing is coming from. There's some crap, too, of course, but so much innovative stuff is being done in that part of the industry. It depends on where you're going. Overall I'm not terribly interested in superhero books any more. But there have still been interesting superhero books done in the recent past. Jeff Lemire's Black Hammer books have generally been good with some being excellent. Mark Russell's Wonder Twins was quite good (though middling for him). The Wrong Earth books by Ahoy have been fun and interesting. There's very little incentive for creators to do interesting innovative work on the Big Two heroes.
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