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Post by LovesGilKane on Jul 17, 2017 17:19:39 GMT -5
If you look at # of copies sold on the Diamond charts only the top 8-10 books break 50K in sales among all publishers. According to ICV2, the top 30 comics published in June sold in excess of 50K. link50k won't get you decent royalties if you're getting a good page-rate. unless you can pencil 2 to 3 pages a day. which the old guard could. |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 17, 2017 17:37:25 GMT -5
If you look at # of copies sold on the Diamond charts only the top 8-10 books break 50K in sales among all publishers. According to ICV2, the top 30 comics published in June sold in excess of 50K. linkNow take out all the top 30 that were 2 issues of the same title (i.e. all the DC books in the top 30 because they ship bi-weekly) and you are much closer to 8-10 titles selling in the 50 K range, then take out all the #1 issues that haven't achieved a sales record and are fueled by 10-15 variant covers so their actual sales are inflated and by issue 4 will be under 50K, and you get to about 8-10 titles that consistently sell 50k on average month in and month out. -M |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 17, 2017 18:12:37 GMT -5
Also in the current ICV2... June Direct Market Sales down 21%, and the highlights of the article... So sales overall are down in both trades and floppies in the direct market over last year (though we have no info on digital sales or sale of trades through the book trade to round out how the market as a whole is doing, but since creator costs are paid out of sales of floppies, you can suss out how it might affect page rates which is what we are looking at). -M |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jul 17, 2017 21:31:50 GMT -5
I'd bet the farm that I read an article in the last couple of days that showed Graphic Novel/TPB sales up for at least the fifth year in a row. But I can't for the life of me find it now.
So I guess you get the farm.
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Post by LovesGilKane on Jul 18, 2017 0:13:06 GMT -5
I'd bet the farm that I read an article in the last couple of days that showed Graphic Novel/TPB sales up for at least the fifth year in a row. But I can't for the life of me find it now. So I guess you get the farm. very good point, and most respected. but as per the OT, it's about how Classic Artists would fair in todays market, where success/failure comes from how/if they get paid, and that in turn depends on how much the person hiring the artists are paying for the printing and whatever 'fulfilment-program' the 'publishers' are using. There are alarming disparities in how much it costs to print/publish a graphic novel/trade-paperback. |
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Post by MDG on Jul 18, 2017 8:40:29 GMT -5
I think it's pretty clear that the monthly floppy format + price point + distribution system is pretty untenable. Marvel and DC may explicitly see monthly comics as a loss leader to maintain and cultivate a fan base for the real money-makers that reach a larger audience--movies and licensed products.
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Post by LovesGilKane on Jul 20, 2017 4:04:33 GMT -5
it makes one wonder if self-publishing artists will need to go the manga route, as apparently 'Bleach' sells in the millions, in the usa, each year, as compared to standard 'western' comics.
and a lot of Nippon material has been looking more and more 'anglo' over the past decade.
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Jul 20, 2017 20:25:08 GMT -5
I'd bet the farm that I read an article in the last couple of days that showed Graphic Novel/TPB sales up for at least the fifth year in a row. But I can't for the life of me find it now. So I guess you get the farm. |
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Jul 20, 2017 20:36:15 GMT -5
George Perez has Been a legend for the last 30 years but the only time I really liked his "detail" was in the Avengers/ JLA crossover. Pretty much all other times, it was a distraction. How many bricks does he have to draw in the wall ? Hear frickin' hear. I think he's a really good storyteller SOMEWHERE in there, but it takes me forever to figure out what I'm supposed to be looking at when I look at a Perez page. (And, yeah, Avengers/JLA really worked for me, too.) |
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Post by kirby101 on Jul 21, 2017 5:31:46 GMT -5
George Perez has Been a legend for the last 30 years but the only time I really liked his "detail" was in the Avengers/ JLA crossover. Pretty much all other times, it was a distraction. How many bricks does he have to draw in the wall ? Hear frickin' hear. I think he's a really good storyteller SOMEWHERE in there, but it takes me forever to figure out what I'm supposed to be looking at when I look at a Perez page. (And, yeah, Avengers/JLA really worked for me, too.) And this is what made Sal Buscema so good. Though I like his drawing style as well, when reading a book by Sal, there is always a clear idea of what is happening, with done with great pacing and dynamism. I like Perez, but agree his books can be overly busy. |
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Post by Nowhere Man on Jul 21, 2017 7:03:04 GMT -5
I agree that the overall quality of art at Marvel and DC is better now than ever, at least in terms of draftsmanship, but I also agree that storytelling has taken a backseat. I think a lot of modern superhero art has gotten much too "serious" and often lacks the personality and individuality of past greats like Kirby, John Buscema, Aparo, Byrne, etc. As I get older, I prefer art styles that have at least a bit of cartooniness to it. I like the nuance of balancing a style like that with action and drama. I think this is why I find Mike Allred and Chris Samnee to be much more interesting artists and storytellers than guys like Stuart Immonen or Francis Yu.
Another factor to consider is that the older artists were working under a different paradigm. They often had to crank out their work to meet demanding deadlines, often working on multiple books at once, and didn't have the luxury to "grow roses" so their art would look pretty in a trade collection. Just look at how much better Kirby's art got when he only had to focus on Thor and FF. Some of John Byrne's detailed commissions are as good or better than anything he's ever done in comics. I think many of the greats could more than hold their own if given more time and leeway to make their stuff look as good as possible.
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Post by kirby101 on Jul 21, 2017 7:27:55 GMT -5
If you look the art books about many of the older artist, you can see that they had the talent to compete in today's market. Both Buscema brothers worked in advertising and had excellent drafting skills. Their styles were the result of the influences and market conditions at the time (as Nowhere man points out).
I think if they came up today, there art would be just as great.
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Post by BigPapaJoe on Jul 21, 2017 20:31:32 GMT -5
I agree that the overall quality of art at Marvel and DC is better now than ever, at least in terms of draftsmanship, but I also agree that storytelling has taken a backseat. I think a lot of modern superhero art has gotten much too "serious" and often lacks the personality and individuality of past greats like Kirby, John Buscema, Aparo, Byrne, etc. As I get older, I prefer art styles that have at least a bit of cartooniness to it. I like the nuance of balancing a style like that with action and drama. I think this is why I find Mike Allred and Chris Samnee to be much more interesting artists and storytellers than guys like Stuart Immonen or Francis Yu. Another factor to consider is that the older artists were working under a different paradigm. They often had to crank out their work to meet demanding deadlines, often working on multiple books at once, and didn't have the luxury to "grow roses" so their art would look pretty in a trade collection. Just look at how much better Kirby's art got when he only had to focus on Thor and FF. Some of John Byrne's detailed commissions are as good or better than anything he's ever done in comics. I think many of the greats could more than hold their own if given more time and leeway to make their stuff look as good as possible. Also, the artists of yesterday would have the modern day luxury of the computer to get things done at a faster pace. Seeing John Buscema use a Wacom and Manga Studio would have been interesting. |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 21, 2017 20:51:34 GMT -5
Another point to consider, a lot of the books in the Silver and Bronze Age weren't monthly. Many DC titles were only published 8 times a year, and a lot of Marvel books were bi-monthly, such as the X-Men through most of the Cockrum and Byrne era and Daredevil through the first part of the Miller era, so they had more time to put into a book since they had longer to produce a single issue (and it's also why some artists could handle multiple books, the books weren't always monthly. Many also had lead features and back ups, meaning fewer pages to produce for each issue and at the height of the Bronze Age, Marvel books only had 17 pages of content, and yet the Dreaded Deadline Doom still struck requiring reprints and/or inventory stories depending on when in the Bronze Age it was. Big 2 books these days put out a minimum of 12 issues per year, though not always with the same creative teams, sometimes they rotate by arcs, but today's artists don't have the luxury of bi-monthly or 8 issues per year schedules to create long strings on a book as some of the classic artists did. A lot of folks just assume all those classic books were always monthly and issues came out every 30 days when criticizing the output of modern artists compared to classic artists, and that wasn't always the case.
As for Big John and artists of his era, they may not have had Wacom and Manga Studio, but they had lightboxes and stock poses they reused as time savers to get things done at a faster pace.
-M
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Post by kirby101 on Jul 21, 2017 20:54:30 GMT -5
I agree that the overall quality of art at Marvel and DC is better now than ever, at least in terms of draftsmanship, but I also agree that storytelling has taken a backseat. I think a lot of modern superhero art has gotten much too "serious" and often lacks the personality and individuality of past greats like Kirby, John Buscema, Aparo, Byrne, etc. As I get older, I prefer art styles that have at least a bit of cartooniness to it. I like the nuance of balancing a style like that with action and drama. I think this is why I find Mike Allred and Chris Samnee to be much more interesting artists and storytellers than guys like Stuart Immonen or Francis Yu. Another factor to consider is that the older artists were working under a different paradigm. They often had to crank out their work to meet demanding deadlines, often working on multiple books at once, and didn't have the luxury to "grow roses" so their art would look pretty in a trade collection. Just look at how much better Kirby's art got when he only had to focus on Thor and FF. Some of John Byrne's detailed commissions are as good or better than anything he's ever done in comics. I think many of the greats could more than hold their own if given more time and leeway to make their stuff look as good as possible. Also, the artists of yesterday would have the modern day luxury of the computer to get things done at a faster pace. Seeing John Buscema use a Wacom and Manga Studio would have been interesting. There are a lot of things that computers do, like easily redoing inking lines. But they don't really save much time. |
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