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Post by Nowhere Man on Jan 28, 2016 14:04:59 GMT -5
Martin Goodman was out of the picture by the early 70's, so unless we're just talking about the 60's, I don't see the point. Marvel and DC are flooding the market with superfluous crap in a way that they never did in the past. The thrust of my point is that Marvel, during their height in the 80's, weren't releasing nearly as many books nor were they obsessed with milking every hot property to exhaustion. There seemed to be a balance between licensed properties, a kids line, Epic, the mainstream stuff, etc. Just take a look at this checklist from 1987 (granted Marvel was in a decline at this point) and compare it to today. Do you see twenty variations of Avengers titles? Spider-Man is the only thing close to saturation, but even then, this selection pales to the glut we see today. What I see is that Marvel had 62 comics on the stands that month. Looking at the solicits for January of 2016...I see about the same number of books. Was there more variety then? Yes. But there also wasn't Dark Horse and Dynamite and Boom and IDW and a dozen other companies that were competing for the licensed properties. The Epic Line had a lot less competition for creator-owned titles. Comics hadn't yet been completely ghettoized into comic book shops. The Star Comics line was an attempt to grab the Harvey market...when Harvey died and most of the line didn't last a year. My point is that Marvel, in particular, DC to a lesser extent, has always flooded the market in an attempt to get shelf space. And it continued as a culture for the company well past when Goodman left. You can look at all the reprint titles that constantly flooded the stands in the 70s. Nobody was clamoring for reprints of The Ringo Kid in 1975-76. But they published the book for rack space in hopes of pushing other books off the racks. That's all true, but when you factor in variants, limited series, etc., I'm sure the number of titles inflates beyond what's seen in that checklist. Obviously if you only focus on the core titles, it shrinks even further. This was of course right at the end of Shooter's tenure and featured his Marvel at its most bloated. Back in 1975-76, Marvel was basically only trying to push DC off the racks since that was the only real competition. When you focus that practice down to specialty shops, and factor in that there are far more publishers publishing comics nowadays, things look a bit more cutthroat to me. Basically, there wasn't an Image, or even a Dark Horse, back in 1975 that had any kind of potential to compete with the Big Two. Marvel won't even play nice and do crossovers anymore. I agree that they've always been ruthless, I'm just stating that I feel that they're even more so today. |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 28, 2016 14:21:06 GMT -5
Just for the record you had Charlton, Western(Gold Key/Whitman) and others in the 70s who made up as much of the overall marketshare as Iamge/Dark Horse/IDW et. al do today, and your reasoning doesn't take them into account. They were all fighting for rack space then just as they are now...
-M
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Post by Nowhere Man on Jan 28, 2016 14:39:52 GMT -5
I take them into account, but the newsstand and the specialty shop are different beasts. The death of those companies had as much to do with a lack of interest in funny animal comics, westerns, etc, as it did Marvel and DC hogging all the rack space. That said, would many newsstands have carried independent and alternative comics even if Marvel and DC never existed? I'm skeptical. When you take that same basic strategy to a specialty comic shop, where ideally a potential reader should have access to a bit of everything, I think the market flooding thing is even more harmful than it used to be.
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Jan 28, 2016 14:55:56 GMT -5
Conversely, I think that Marvel is less about trend-jumping and trying to push other companies off the shelf now than at most any point in their history.
Marvel/Atlas whole strategy in the '50s was to identify a potential trend and then pump out more books than the competitors, basically making sure that random purchases were Atlas books. Then they'd move on to the next trend.
Epic was designed very specifically to canabalise sales of First, Eclipse, and Heavy Metal.
Anyone remember Comix Book in the '70s?
Right now, Marvel seems content to pump out superhero titles based on their major franchises and licensed books. They're fighting with DC for space, but they're not trying to move into Image territory (and their 10% market share) in ant significant way.
So, to sum up, Marvel is "nicer" and not as good at business now as it was in the past.
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Jan 28, 2016 14:57:53 GMT -5
The late '50s through Mid-Sixties were an exception, but that was just because their disripbutorship was (I over-simplify here a little) basically controlled by DC, and they were only allowed 8-10 books a month. It isn't that they didn't want to flood the maket - They simply weren't allowed.
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Post by Action Ace on Jan 28, 2016 14:59:46 GMT -5
Considering how much I've enjoyed their Star Wars line in the last year, my message to Marvel is FLOOD BABY FLOOD!  |
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Post by Nowhere Man on Jan 28, 2016 15:03:16 GMT -5
They don't need to compete with them directly in terms of content. We all know that in the recent past Marvel and DC have swelled to well over 100 titles each, so that's a lot of bloat to get past even for Image and Dark Horse. I'd actually be more comfortable with them attempting to cannibalize sales from Image and Dark Horse, as opposed to releasing more and more superhero titles, if for no other reason than it would force them to innovate despite themselves.
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Jan 28, 2016 15:07:22 GMT -5
They don't need to compete with them directly in terms of content. We all know that in the recent past Marvel and DC have swelled to well over 100 titles each, so that's a lot of bloat to get past even for Image and Dark Horse. I'd actually be more comfortable with them attempting to cannibalize sales from Image and Dark Horse, as opposed to releasing more and more superhero titles, if for no other reason than it would force them to innovate despite themselves. I totally agree, and - as I've said before - their current strategy doesn't make much sense to me. Marvel should be trying to create New IP that can be made into movies and put onto lunchboxes. But they're mostly just doubling down on competing in the direct market rather than trying to create new multi-million dollar franchises. |
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Post by Nowhere Man on Jan 28, 2016 15:12:29 GMT -5
The late '50s through Mid-Sixties were an exception, but that was just because their disripbutorship was (I over-simplify here a little) basically controlled by DC, and they were only allowed 8-10 books a month. It isn't that they didn't want to flood the maket - They simply weren't allowed. You also have the late 70's and early 80's where they were publishing around 30 titles or fewer I believe. Of course this was that time period where comics were coming out of a low ebb in terms of sales. Interesting how so much good stuff came out of that era. |
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Jan 28, 2016 15:18:02 GMT -5
The late '50s through Mid-Sixties were an exception, but that was just because their disripbutorship was (I over-simplify here a little) basically controlled by DC, and they were only allowed 8-10 books a month. It isn't that they didn't want to flood the maket - They simply weren't allowed. You also have the late 70's and early 80's where they were publishing around 30 titles or fewer I believe. Of course this was that time period where comics were coming out of a low ebb in terms of sales. Interesting how so much good stuff came out of that era. Oh yeah, that's true. That was post-DC Implosion and everyone thought the US comic book market was on it's way out for good. |
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Post by Action Ace on Jan 28, 2016 15:48:56 GMT -5
You also have the late 70's and early 80's where they were publishing around 30 titles or fewer I believe. Of course this was that time period where comics were coming out of a low ebb in terms of sales. Interesting how so much good stuff came out of that era. Oh yeah, that's true. That was post-DC Implosion and everyone thought the US comic book market was on it's way out for good. And more than three decades later there is a chunk of comic book commentators and fans that lament that it didn't go out of business. For some people, the Direct Market is the worst thing to happen to comics since Wertham. |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 28, 2016 21:08:50 GMT -5
Comics are still plenty of fun, if you get the right comics. Hint: there's a lot more to comics than Big Two superhero continuity porn. Problem being, "big two superhero continuity porn" is whats fun for me. Not against non big two superhero. Have read plenty of non big two superhero. Do read non big two superhero. But big two superhero happens to be my favorite. It is its own flavor and it's the flavor I desire from the cooks I want cooking it. It doesn't matter how good artisan pizza is if you want homemade pancakes. As long as you're enjoying it. Something out there for everybody. |
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Jan 28, 2016 21:12:49 GMT -5
Hey, I reallly like a lot of what Marvel's doing right now. I mean, I do fundamentally like superheroes a lot, and Marvel's putting out a good half-dozen or so JLI style *nods at Shaxper* "light" superhero books that are writer/artist not editor/marketing suit driven.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 28, 2016 21:15:21 GMT -5
Hey, I reallly like a lot of what Marvel's doing right now. I mean, I do fundamentally like superheroes a lot, and Marvel's putting out a good half-dozen or so JLI style *nods at Shaxper* "light" superhero books that are writer/artist not editor/marketing suit driven. I know I ALWAYS say this, but I love what Soule and that other guy are doing with the Inhumans. I mostly like what Soule is doing, but yeah. Is Hickman off all the things now? Or is that nightmare still going on? |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 28, 2016 21:15:36 GMT -5
Marvel's sales would be worse than they currently are. It's not 1985 and trying to sell products in 2016 based on what appealed to customers in 1985 and what they were buying then is a surefire way to go out of business. The problem is that they are still looking backwards and not at what the current market for entertainment is (and not what the niche direct market is) when coming up with their publishing plans, not that they aren't still doing what they did 30 years ago. -M I think we all know that literally trying to sell Dakota North and Ewok comics in today's market would meet with a tepid response at best.  I don't specifically know why hardcore modern Marvel and DC readers have less eclectic tastes, but I suspect it's a mixture of the high price point and the fact that the bulk of the reader ship is primarily nostalgia fueled. Of course you still had a lot of kids reading comics in 1987, so that alone changes the paradigm immensely. You also seemed to have more older readers open to the idea of something like Epic, even though it was fading at this point. I don't think it was fading at all. As Marvel abandoned Epic, Vertigo grew, Dark Horse grew, Image exploded, and countless other publishers came on the scene. Marvel let Groo and Elfquest go, both of which are still in print today. Epic Illustrated, which was essentially Marvel's Heavy Metal was abandoned, and Heavy Metal is still around. None of those publications would be hurt with Disney's corporate backing. Marvel also abandoned popular licenses, which are also still in print. Conan, Transformers, G. I. Joe, Star Wars, it's impossible for me to count every license Marvel abandoned that is still turning a profit for someone else. If Marvel had stayed all about acquiring IP outside of super heroes they may have ended up owning TMNT when the time was right. If Epic had never been abandoned, how many creator owned series from Dark Horse and Image would now be Marvel books? Would Marvel be publishing Walking Dead? Hellboy? It's possible. |
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