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Post by Deleted on Aug 9, 2014 23:22:30 GMT -5
I don't think alienating the current readership would be as easy as it seems. Yeah, they'll pick up the "real" series before an out-of-continuity series. But if continuity was thrown out the window, like it has been several times, they're still there. They complain, and they buy it next month. I think pandering to the core audience is why the industry is pared down to a core audience. They're the diehard fans, they will buy Spiderman as long as Spiderman is in print. They may not be able to afford all 50 titles with Spiderman in it, so they reduce it to a reasonable five or ten, but they're definitely in for that. If American comics as a medium changed format to a bookstore friendly prestige format with a good page per dollar ratio and featured done-in-one or at the very least linear serialized stories without any sort of plot crossing with other titles, and Marvel and DC changed business ideologies to downplay the continuity upsell and to promote new readership, the core audience will still be there, after some complaining. Just like I think taking the cheesecake out won't run off any of the core audience either. They like it, they complain when it's taken away, but they need their X-Men. Make it a good story with broad appeal outside the demographic they've focused on for the past few decades and you may see a New York Times bestseller with the TPB. Maybe it can be on there for a year or two (or four) like Saga and Walking Dead. In the long run I think that's more profitable per page.It would take some risk though, because it will not work as long as the old format still exists. The core audience would think of the old format as the "real" format and reject the new experimental format. They don't seem to like change, but when change is forced upon them they end up sticking around. Thor is a woman, Captain America is black, they're not going to lose a single reader despite the harping online over it. I think giving them more pages for their money would work out the same, except it would do much better to draw in more demographics than giving Thor big ol' boobies.
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shaxper
CCF Site Custodian
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Post by shaxper on Aug 9, 2014 23:27:45 GMT -5
Yeah I run into it all the time at the shop, and it bothers me too. I really despise the "I have to get that because it's important, bu my budget is tight, so I am going to drop a book I actually enjoy more to get it..." decisions I see made all the time. -M While most continuity adherence is ultimately like tilting at windmills, it can and should be a powerful thing when a company and creative team handle continuity correctly. It's time to resurrect a post I made at CBR a long while back that's always been the one of which I'm proudest. Written in response to the question "Why do you read comic books?" it's my final word on why ongoing continuity is comicdom's single most important undermined resource: The one thing comics can offer that no other form of literature can is a sense of legacy. An author can publish a series of books and, if they're truly committed, pump out 20 to 30 books starring the same character in their career. Now, either time will barely pass across those 30 books, preventing the character from undergoing much change and growth, or the writer will have to leave out entire years between stories, making us feel somewhat divorced from the character (who is now somewhat older and different from the one we saw in the last book) and relying upon the author's explanation to fill in all that we missed between books. A comic, on the other hand, can provide 30 issues worth of near-continuous character growth over the span of less than 3 years. For me, it's not the pictures, the action, the easily accessible writing, nor even the superheroes. It's the opportunity to watch characters grow and develop slowly and organically over the years, ideally earning each major change and new phase in their lives. Granted, writers who ignore continuity throw all of this out the window (and piss me off to no end in the process), but Claremont's X-Men, Wolfman/Perez's New Teen Titans, Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo, and many short lived story arcs on other titles that did their best to acknowledge continuity and growth all offer an opportunity to watch characters grow and change in response to all that they encounter over the years. It's not always more character-intensive than a good book, but it can offer greater/better earned transformation and growth. That's why I love comic books -- the opportunity to grow alongside my favorite characters and chart how far we've both come. I can tell you right now that if I hadn't read New Teen Titans #39 when I was eleven, I probably would have quit collecting comics after the novelty wore off. This was the big issue where Dick Grayson gave up being Robin for good, all while reflecting carefully on his entire career up until this point. I knew then what potential comic books had, and I instantly became a fan for life. This above all else, is why I can't stand when writers ignore or just plain violate continuity, as well as why I think fans who feel that it shouldn't really matter are off-base. Continuity is one of the greatest advantages that the comic book medium can offer.  |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 9, 2014 23:31:06 GMT -5
I don't think alienating the current readership would be as easy as it seems. Yeah, they'll pick up the "real" series before an out-of-continuity series. But if continuity was thrown out the window, like it has been several times, they're still there. They complain, and they buy it next month. I think pandering to the core audience is why the industry is pared down to a core audience. They're the diehard fans, they will buy Spiderman as long as Spiderman is in print. They may not be able to afford all 50 titles with Spiderman in it, so they reduce it to a reasonable five or ten, but they're definitely in for that. If American comics as a medium changed format to a bookstore friendly prestige format with a good page per dollar ratio and featured done-in-one or at the very least linear serialized stories without any sort of plot crossing with other titles, and Marvel and DC changed business ideologies to downplay the continuity upsell and to promote new readership, the core audience will still be there, after some complaining. Just like I think taking the cheesecake out won't run off any of the core audience either. They like it, they complain when it's taken away, but they need their X-Men. Make it a good story with broad appeal outside the demographic they've focused on for the past few decades and you may see a New York Times bestseller with the TPB. Maybe it can be on there for a year or two (or four) like Saga and Walking Dead. In the long run I think that's more profitable per page. Yeah, no. Not the customers I deal with. Not the bulk of the comic fans I interact with in real life and not on the net. You piss in their Cheerios and they are gone, and will spend their money on something else. How many "die hard" DC fans stopped buying DC because of the new52...and it was not my guy anymore. Happened to a good chunk of our customers with Marvel Now too. When rumors hiot that Age of Ultron might reset the timeline, we had half our pulls drop Age of Ultron and most of their Marvel titles and the rumor wasn't even true. So how many would stop buying super-hero comics if you got rid of continuity-more than you would think. They have become fans of the universes not the specific characters, and if you take the connective tissue away they will become disconnected. Working a con table for a dealer is kind of like being a bartender-you hear everyone's complaints and see how they are really spending their money, and see what they are trying to selling off because the publisher pissed them off and if it's not my thing any more I don't want any of it anymore.....I am done with it. So yeah, don't underestimate the knee-jerk reactionary ability of the die hard super-hero fan and their ability to spend their money on things other than comics in a heartbeat. -M |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 9, 2014 23:56:43 GMT -5
How much have sales dropped for the New 52? I was under the impression long term sales have been steady. Same with Marvel. Steady sales, while doing nothing to market to a new audience, leads me to believe it's pretty much the same people.
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shaxper
CCF Site Custodian
Posts: 22,864
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Post by shaxper on Aug 10, 2014 0:18:28 GMT -5
How much have sales dropped for the New 52? I was under the impression long term sales have been steady. Same with Marvel. Steady sales, while doing nothing to market to a new audience, leads me to believe it's pretty much the same people. A quick look at comichron shows that the most recent month of sales available (May) showed DC holding 30% of the market for that month, whereas exactly one year earlier, it had been holding 36%. |
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Post by Action Ace on Aug 10, 2014 0:23:50 GMT -5
I prefer the "Confidential" style myself. A creative team comes in, does the Superman/ Batman/ JLA story it wants and then we move on to the next one. Superman could be one power level against mad scientist Lex in one arc/ issue/ five year long run and be another power level against business Lex in the next one. The Marvel style of continuity where someone needs to devote space as to why Jimmy Olsen is no longer a werewolf and the Daily Planet is suddenly standing again after Chuck Austen's run needs to die in a fire. I've seen people throw a fit on a message board because Geoff Johns changed the name of Bart Allen's favorite video game system. And heaven forbid a new writer starts to marginalize supporting cast members from a previous regime. There were times over the years I swear people were reading titles for the barnacles and not the boats. Had I been buying New Teen Titans #39 as a 13 year old, I would have been angry that my two favorite members were leaving and dropped the book like third period French. I would have preferred the New 52 rolled Dick and Wally (and the rest) back to their teen days.
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Post by tolworthy on Aug 10, 2014 2:23:21 GMT -5
I'm with Shaxper on this. Done right, continuity is the most glorious thing. It gives every action, every word, extra significance. It turns a fairy tale into a novel. It gives the character a life after the book is closed. But I also agree with the consensus that it's very hard to do right. The only problem with 2000ad at least when i was reading it - you'd decide to start reading and it would be part 13 of 36 of one story, part 23 of 24 with another, and part 3 of 12 with another. it could take literally months on end until you were fully synced up with all the stories. I agree, that was my experience too. I prefer the one or two parters. Continuity still mattered, but it was easy to pick up: it enriched the story without controlling it. For example, in a short Dredd story some old technology or character might evolve, or some major event had a consequence, but it didn't make you feel lost. As with all things, I think the classic era Fantastic Four (say, issues 45-60) shows the way. Continuity was everywhere: Reed and Sue just got married, then on their honeymoon they visited the Inhumans' land for the first time (having known Medusa for years), and in issue 50, the climax to the Galactus saga we also had Johnny starting college. But these events were easy to follow, and could easily be ignored if needed. Stories were typically two issues long. Continuity added new layers, and invited the new reader into a bigger story, but did not punish anybody who missed the wedding. Back on topic, I think the classic FF also works as a kind of anthology. Around issue 50-60 there were essentially three different stories (Inhumans, Johnny and Wyatt, and the rest). Arguably 4 stories, if we treat Ben Grimm's melancholy as a separate plot (e.g. in issues 38-40 and 51). We were always seeing new characters and new locations: it was essentially a grab bag. It is such a contrast to today's comics, which are doomed to endlessly repeat old ideas with old characters. While it's easy to blame a focus on hardcore fans (which is a serious issue) I wonder if the biggest reason for inertia is that the writers are fans themselves? They grew up on superhero comics, so have a narrow view of what's possible. In contrast, people like Lee/Kirby (or even, say, Alan Moore) could easily throw in ideas from history or literature. I love how the early FF would reference everything from the old man of the sea to Prester John. Good writers can simply do more. The best comics were just packed full of big ideas. This morning I read a 5 page story from 1960(?) that combined a modern art dealer with the Greek Fates. Last week I re-read the first Hulk/Tyrannus story, and it has ideas from ancient Rome, classical Greece, the Bible, and more. It also had conflict (both spoken and physical), romance, tragedy, a journey to an underground worlds, high technology, and much more, all in just five or six pages. I think modern writers simply do not know how to write short stories full of different ideas, yet still keep the superhero fans on board. It's not easy. OK, I'm rambling here, but the best thing about an anthology is the variety. I wonder if the big two's writers are capable of variety any more? |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 10, 2014 22:51:36 GMT -5
How much have sales dropped for the New 52? I was under the impression long term sales have been steady. Same with Marvel. Steady sales, while doing nothing to market to a new audience, leads me to believe it's pretty much the same people. A quick look at comichron shows that the most recent month of sales available (May) showed DC holding 30% of the market for that month, whereas exactly one year earlier, it had been holding 36%. The new 52 reboot took place in 2011. I don't know how to use that site, but a more accurate image would be to compare, say, 2010 or even 2009 before the announcement of the reboot with 2013 which would be the last complete year. total units sold or total annual revenue instead of market share for the entire year for each compared against each other. The reason I'd say an entire year instead of a month is I think it gives a more complete image of their actual popularity. Events coming and going, titles coming and going, something's always going on, and of course they are in direct competition with Marvel, so whatever Marvel is doing in any given month could effect DC's numbers as well. The reason why I don't think percentage of market share is an accurate measure is because I've been lead to believe (I think on this site in another discussion) that while sales are steady at Marvel and DC, they are increasing elsewhere, resulting in the Big Two holding a smaller market share while still remaining exactly as popular as in prior years. Of course that could be wrong too, it's just what I've been told. |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 10, 2014 23:10:49 GMT -5
The new52 reboot was a case of initially drawing in more relapsed readers coming back because of the fresh start than you lost because you alienated a group of the current readers resulting in a net gain in sales initially. The fact that all but the top 10% of titles are currently selling less than before the relaunch and that somewhere around 40% of the titles launched since the reboot have been cancelled because of poor sales only demonstrates how top heavy their sales are, and that those sales are concentrated on those titles deemed "important" by the readers because they are the key to the shared universes continuity and ongoing story. However, those initially drawn back have not stayed in large numbers across the board, only those top titles, and the alienated readers haven't come back either, and even the best selling titles have experienced a large amount of attrition since the relaunch.
-M
If you want data, look at the survey results DC did when they relaunched trying to figure who was buying the titles. They hired Gallup to do it I believe, and the results are floating around the net somewhere, it's been a few years since I looked at them, but the takeaway was the new readers they were seeking were not there and their main gain was in readers who had stopped reading DC and had come back to try the fresh start.
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shaxper
CCF Site Custodian
Posts: 22,864
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Post by shaxper on Aug 11, 2014 7:35:53 GMT -5
A quick look at comichron shows that the most recent month of sales available (May) showed DC holding 30% of the market for that month, whereas exactly one year earlier, it had been holding 36%. The new 52 reboot took place in 2011. I don't know how to use that site, but a more accurate image would be to compare, say, 2010 or even 2009 before the announcement of the reboot with 2013 which would be the last complete year. total units sold or total annual revenue instead of market share for the entire year for each compared against each other. The reason I'd say an entire year instead of a month is I think it gives a more complete image of their actual popularity. Events coming and going, titles coming and going, something's always going on, and of course they are in direct competition with Marvel, so whatever Marvel is doing in any given month could effect DC's numbers as well. The reason why I don't think percentage of market share is an accurate measure is because I've been lead to believe (I think on this site in another discussion) that while sales are steady at Marvel and DC, they are increasing elsewhere, resulting in the Big Two holding a smaller market share while still remaining exactly as popular as in prior years. Of course that could be wrong too, it's just what I've been told. Since there was initially a massive upswing of sales from the Nu52, I intentionally avoided using figures from the first few inflated months. And since the most current figures available are from May, I I thought it made the most sense to compare to the previous May since different months of the year tend to each come with their own particular trends. |
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Post by adamwarlock2099 on Aug 11, 2014 9:47:55 GMT -5
I prefer a middle-ground like Matt Wagner's Grendel, where there's a strict and implicit continuity to adhere to, and yet different creative teams are invited to go wild with their take on the character so long as they can make the pieces fit. That takes true talent, requiring the team to neither be derivative of what came before nor simply ignore previous efforts as if they didn't count. In essence, I think that's also what made Legends of the Dark Knight work. Otherwise, I agree with mrp that you're basically in the Golden Age again, where every story is entirely disposable and will never be remembered by future writers, so why should they be remembered by the fans? Yeah, Grendel is a great example now that you mention it. For one reason I don't have all the Grendel stories, have not read any of the Grendel stories I do have in any kind of chronological order, but have enjoyed each story to some degree. While there is definitely a history of the name and the characters that have used the name, you never feel, reading them, that you are missing out on the present by not knowing that past references. Yes while a few times LOTDK tied in with Knightsquest and maybe Contagion (?), it still went back to the self contained stories that allowed you to enjoy the characters without the weight of always assuming that if you had gotten the references, or went back and read the comics referenced in the past, you would better understand the character. I think that's where continuity can ruin a good story and character. If there is not a reasonable amount of points to jump into a story to read it (especially long time superheroes) than I'll most likely not start it. It's not that I don't ever want to not start fresh with a story even if it means back tracking ten issues or so to start from the beginning, but when every major superhereo CAN have this handicap then it just turns me to other types and genres of comic books. I have not read a lot, if any golden age comics. My oldest comics read were mid to late 60's and the greater majority in the 70's and then on forward. I have a few #100's in Hulk, FF, and Avengers (Celestial Madonna) and some Tales of Suspense and the first SS series. Even thinking about it now SS, seemed to be written in a way to pick up any issue and enjoy it. It may have had two issue story lines, but they still seemed reader friendly. Course that might be because SS was still pretty fresh character, only having been a guest star in other series up to that point. |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 11, 2014 18:10:16 GMT -5
The new 52 reboot took place in 2011. I don't know how to use that site, but a more accurate image would be to compare, say, 2010 or even 2009 before the announcement of the reboot with 2013 which would be the last complete year. total units sold or total annual revenue instead of market share for the entire year for each compared against each other. The reason I'd say an entire year instead of a month is I think it gives a more complete image of their actual popularity. Events coming and going, titles coming and going, something's always going on, and of course they are in direct competition with Marvel, so whatever Marvel is doing in any given month could effect DC's numbers as well. The reason why I don't think percentage of market share is an accurate measure is because I've been lead to believe (I think on this site in another discussion) that while sales are steady at Marvel and DC, they are increasing elsewhere, resulting in the Big Two holding a smaller market share while still remaining exactly as popular as in prior years. Of course that could be wrong too, it's just what I've been told. Since there was initially a massive upswing of sales from the Nu52, I intentionally avoided using figures from the first few inflated months. And since the most current figures available are from May, I I thought it made the most sense to compare to the previous May since different months of the year tend to each come with their own particular trends. But it's still not a comparison to pre reboot numbers. May 2010 or 2009 seem like they'd be a better figure to use. |
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Post by travishedgecoke on Aug 11, 2014 19:13:27 GMT -5
I love anthology comics, and short comics collections. World War 3 Illustrated, 2000 AD, Crisis, Animerica Extra, those fat 70s 100 pg Detective Comics issues. The newspaper funnies pages.
But they don't seem click with the superhero-buying audience in a big way.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 11, 2014 23:55:21 GMT -5
I like DHP and Negative Burn a lot. What I've read of 2000AD I liked, but it's a bit prohibitive to get into price wise. I think that's one comic that could get me into digital though.
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Post by Pharozonk on Aug 12, 2014 12:46:01 GMT -5
The one thing comics can offer that no other form of literature can is a sense of legacy. An author can publish a series of books and, if they're truly committed, pump out 20 to 30 books starring the same character in their career. Now, either time will barely pass across those 30 books, preventing the character from undergoing much change and growth, or the writer will have to leave out entire years between stories, making us feel somewhat divorced from the character (who is now somewhat older and different from the one we saw in the last book) and relying upon the author's explanation to fill in all that we missed between books. A comic, on the other hand, can provide 30 issues worth of near-continuous character growth over the span of less than 3 years. For me, it's not the pictures, the action, the easily accessible writing, nor even the superheroes. It's the opportunity to watch characters grow and develop slowly and organically over the years, ideally earning each major change and new phase in their lives. Granted, writers who ignore continuity throw all of this out the window (and piss me off to no end in the process), but Claremont's X-Men, Wolfman/Perez's New Teen Titans, Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo, and many short lived story arcs on other titles that did their best to acknowledge continuity and growth all offer an opportunity to watch characters grow and change in response to all that they encounter over the years. It's not always more character-intensive than a good book, but it can offer greater/better earned transformation and growth. That's why I love comic books -- the opportunity to grow alongside my favorite characters and chart how far we've both come. I can tell you right now that if I hadn't read New Teen Titans #39 when I was eleven, I probably would have quit collecting comics after the novelty wore off. This was the big issue where Dick Grayson gave up being Robin for good, all while reflecting carefully on his entire career up until this point. I knew then what potential comic books had, and I instantly became a fan for life. This above all else, is why I can't stand when writers ignore or just plain violate continuity, as well as why I think fans who feel that it shouldn't really matter are off-base. Continuity is one of the greatest advantages that the comic book medium can offer. I agree 100% shaxper. When I got into comics circa 2005, I spent hours poring over Wikipedia and other online resources wanting the learn the histories of these characters. In fact, that was half the fun of the hobby for me. Now I just don't feel like I have anything to get invested in with the new DCU. Maybe it's for the best and time I move on and let someone else play in my comic sandbox |
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