A stat I heard on the radio put Tony Stark's Iron Man comic sales in perspective to me. Throughout North America, Iron Man sold less than 50K copies to retailers. Since retailers need to sell 4/5 copies to be profitable, let's assume 40K copies reached end customers throughout North America. In Ohio alone last year, 41,000 people were treated for cancer at cancer care centers throughout the state. So sales of Iron Man in a given month throughout North America barely equaled the number of people treated for cancer in 1 of the 50 states. And that is with Tony Stark (or more appropriately Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark) being one of the most recognizable characters in pop culture currently.

So I ask, how in any, way, shape, or form is trying to continue to push a character that seems to have failed so spectacularly in print in recent years a sound business strategy? Should they be considering other options if they are serious about growing their business, because there is no growth in that market for Tony Stark books.

Another idea note, from the original article-it said some people were down on the books featuring diverse because their sales attrition from issue 1 to 10 was greater than the expected 25% of the rest of the line. If books featuring Tony Stark are expected to lose 25% of their sales within a year, why keep trying with that character. But it reveals why we get constant #1s-sales drop 25% by the tenth issue and had been coming back with the #1's only to drop again, but without the new #1s, the attrition would have continued and sales gotten smaller. If the new characters attrition was greater than 25%, the problem might have been initial orders were too high rather than later issues didn't sell enough. Or it might just be that the monthly serialized pamphlet isn't a format that is going to gain or hold sales in today's market no matter who is featured on the pages within.

And people have voted with their wallets-they no longer buy monthly pamphlets in long term sustainable numbers but no one will let go of the format that is dead in the water sales wise.

-M

Wrong. The general public does not care for monthly overpriced comics

I don't know, I think it's telling that Disney licensed their characters out to another publisher rather than using their in house comic publisher, i.e. Marvel, to do their publishing. IDW has greater connections in the book trade and markets outside the direct market where they can grow sales while Marvel has been unable to grow monthly sales in or out of the direct market. If Disney didn't care about growing sales, they could have just used their house publisher, but they found farming it out the more attractive prospect.

Personally, I don't think Disney cares about the direct market, they know its a niche market reaching the end of the entropy trail, but they do care about the other markets for their characters. They care about markets with growth potential, and the direct market has become a market with a regressive reactionary customer base with little to no growth potential.

-M

Pamphlet sales subsidize production costs. They pay creators, editorial etc. Profit comes from digital and trade sales, neither of which would be profitable if the cost of producing the books were subtracted from the revenue stream they generate. Since the direct market allows preorders to determine print run, their is no losses on unsold copies, so as long as sales remain high enough to cover those production costs, they do not need to turn a profit in and off themselves. As long as pamphlet sales stay at a level where production costs are met, they remain a viable business model in the short term. However, if sales drop below that threshold, a new business model will emerge. That said, since their is no growth in the pamphlet market, there is no chance they can become self-sustainable to have a future in and off themselves.

Honestly, I think both Marvel and DC should consider getting out of the publishing business and focus on being content creators and providers. I would guess that is the direction they move if/when sales in the direct market evaporates to the point where it is no longer viable. But what do I know.

-M

That's all well and good.  But it doesn't buy groceries.  It doesn't pay rent or the mortgage.  The people writing comics have to do that.  Or else they have to work a different job.  So if you can write to rub a Hollywood exec the right way...Yay...you get to eat. 

But didn't that point happen years ago?   I mean, sales have actually gone up the last few years... the lowest point was in the mid-2000s.   If you want my opinion, comic publishers simply haven't figured out how to make money in today's world effectively.   The direct market is mostly dead, and trade and digital sales just aren't enough.  They need to find an outlet that can take advantage of the massive popularity of the characters.

Or maybe they have... we're at a point now where perhaps the main purpose of the comics is to advertise upcoming movies, sorta like the 80s Hasbro cartoons.   

You've got me all wrong as far as characters go.. I wish Marvel was more like Manga in that way.. tell stories with a beginning, middle, and end, with characters that grow and change.  It used to be that way, before everything a property instead of a story.  Having all these false events and 'huge changes' that just go back to status quo in a couple years (or for the next writer, or for the next movie) drives me nuts... THATS the problem.   If Tony Stark had a good, clean ending to his story, I'd be fine.   Instead, we get, what, the 4th time he's 'died'?  He'll certainly be back at some point.  Riri's existance, the fact they she's exactly like every other 'diverse' character Marvel trots out, and the fact the the story is nearly identical to every other one they've written when having new heroes replace old ones doesn't interest me because it's boring and poorly executed, not because of anything else.

Me too, I mean a lot of what the creators are publishing under the Image label isn't for me but what I am enjoying(Hadrian's Wall, Descender and Black Cloud looked good but it was sold out) feels new and inventive not like failed movie or TV pitches.