|
|
Post by brianf on Mar 5, 2019 5:19:12 GMT -5
To focus on the creative side of Marvel/DC for a moment, I'm often perplexed by the popularity of certain modern concepts. The whole "Spiderverse" thing I just don't get. I'll be upfront and admit I never read the original event, but as a fan of classic Spider-Man, I don't think I need to get into a lengthy thesis as to why I have problems with the existence of Spider-Gwen.  Not to be a pile on guy, but I did read the Spiderverse comics by Slott and thought they were well done. I also liked the Doc Ock Superior Spider-Man comics, and the first couple of years of the Spider Gwen comics. I like some of Slotts writing. I proudly own the hardback Silver Surfer Slott/Allred collection that was collected last year. I thought the Jane Foster Thor sun was well done too. I bought my first Spider-Man comic in the late 70s. Some of my favorite comics are the 70's Master Of Kung Fu, but I think the Shang Chi character has been treated mostly like crap the last few years, but thats ok - I still own the original floppys and I bought the recent Omnis, so like Stephen King said when asked about crappy versions of his books “They ruined your books for the movies,” and King pointed at the bookshelf and said, “No they didn’t, they’re all right there.” I have no problem with change, just stupid writing like Brand New Day & the recent Secret Empire.
But hey, I'd rather see a failed attempt at something different than the same old thing. |
|
|
|
Post by brutalis on Mar 5, 2019 8:22:14 GMT -5
At some point Disney very well could stop printing Marvel Comics. They bought them up for the already existing MU concepts that everyone knows and loves. That provides them tons of stuff to keep creating new movies, television and most importantly: merchandising revenue. Disney hasn't printed their own characters in comic books for years. They allow others to doing it for them and receiving licensing fee's. I can say that at least Disney characters all remain "faithful" in context to character from cartoon to comic to toy to movie/etc no matter what format. Marvel would benefit from this concept.
The way the current comic book world is an issue of diminishing revenue and demand and following. Too limited accessibility and too limited thinking as everything Marvel does in comics no longer resonates with current or older readers for the most part. Marvel is Disney gone bad: focusing everything on the almighty dollar. Where much of Disney products/sales follows a particular standard and sells within those formats, Marvel goes off the deep end flooding the comic book market with multiple covers (further diluting their potential sales) for a quick sale in hopes of making big bucks and/or taking sales away from the other comic book companies. Marvel needs to pull back and remember that what sells best is quality over the quantity. DC might be learning this now with their scaling back.
I don't particularly care about current Marvel/DC monthly comics as very little they produce anymore has an appeal for me. Occasionally some things will catch my attention enough to check out and yet more than often I quickly stop following.
|
|
|
|
Post by Icctrombone on Mar 5, 2019 8:35:29 GMT -5
I’m okay with the new versions of old characters if they appeal to newer readers but the sales aren’t there anymore. Even if the Spiderverse movie did great, I don’t believe that it is translating into monthly comic sales. Hey man, 20k sales on your top books is crappy.
|
|
|
|
Post by Icctrombone on Mar 5, 2019 8:39:20 GMT -5
I just thought of something, maybe Sales are a lot more because of digital sales. Are the figures still a deep dark secret , or are they available?
|
|
|
|
Post by Cei-U! on Mar 5, 2019 9:19:20 GMT -5
Hey man, 20k sales on your top books is crappy. Especially considering X-Men was cancelled in '70 for dropping below, what, 150K/issue?
Cei-U! I summon the olden days!
|
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Mar 5, 2019 11:27:45 GMT -5
I’m okay with the new versions of old characters if they appeal to newer readers but the sales aren’t there anymore. Even if the Spiderverse movie did great, I don’t believe that it is translating into monthly comic sales. Hey man, 20k sales on your top books is crappy. I just thought of something, maybe Sales are a lot more because of digital sales. Are the figures still a deep dark secret , or are they available? Digital sales are still not released. Here's the problem with movies to comics-periodical comics are not going to sell to new fans no matter what content is. They are not sold in places where those new fans are going to be customers and even if they were, the monthly periodical format is not something new consumers are going to buy into. Monthly print periodicals of any sort do not sell well anywhere in the current market, whether they are about sports, news, politics, music, movies, or whatever. Why would we expect comics in that format to still sell well when nothing else in that format does, especially when they are only sold in niche specialty shops where the only people who go there are the ones who already read and buy comics. If comics are going to find a new audience, they need to be packaged in a format that will appeal to new customers and sold in places where new customers will go. -M |
|
|
|
Post by Icctrombone on Mar 5, 2019 13:26:02 GMT -5
Essentially you are saying that print is dead. Comic books are different because the fan wants to collect the physical copies. At least the old school fans, it could be that a side effect of digital is that collecting is disappearing.
|
|
|
|
Post by brutalis on Mar 5, 2019 13:29:13 GMT -5
I’m okay with the new versions of old characters if they appeal to newer readers but the sales aren’t there anymore. Even if the Spiderverse movie did great, I don’t believe that it is translating into monthly comic sales. Hey man, 20k sales on your top books is crappy. I just thought of something, maybe Sales are a lot more because of digital sales. Are the figures still a deep dark secret , or are they available? Digital sales are still not released. Here's the problem with movies to comics-periodical comics are not going to sell to new fans no matter what content is. They are not sold in places where those new fans are going to be customers and even if they were, the monthly periodical format is not something new consumers are going to buy into. Monthly print periodicals of any sort do not sell well anywhere in the current market, whether they are about sports, news, politics, music, movies, or whatever. Why would we expect comics in that format to still sell well when nothing else in that format does, especially when they are only sold in niche specialty shops where the only people who go there are the ones who already read and buy comics. If comics are going to find a new audience, they need to be packaged in a format that will appeal to new customers and sold in places where new customers will go. -M EXACTLY! And get the price point down to something more affordable for the quick time in reading or provide more reading material to match the pricing. I mostly don't buy new monthly comics because of the pricing. $5 for a 5 minute read just doesn't appeal to me. Another reason for Disney to eventually close shop on Marvel: no more employee's to pay. The cost of paying writers/artists/colorists and printing will fall on any other company paying out licensing fee's to Disney in order to publish Marvel comic characters. |
|
|
|
Post by rberman on Mar 5, 2019 13:31:02 GMT -5
Essentially you are saying that print is dead. Comic books are different because the fan wants to collect the physical copies. At least the old school fans, it could be that a side effect of digital is that collecting is disappearing. Right. People under 30 tend to rent content digitally rather than buy it. Thus Spotify, Netflix, Kindle Library, etc. |
|
|
|
Post by brutalis on Mar 5, 2019 13:35:39 GMT -5
Essentially you are saying that print is dead. Comic books are different because the fan wants to collect the physical copies. At least the old school fans, it could be that a side effect of digital is that collecting is disappearing. Print is dead if the companies keep on using ONLY specialty shops as the primary seller of monthly comica. How many children can get to an LCS when there are fewer and fewer to be found? As a child I was able to walk (3 stores) and ride my bike around (another 4 stores) the surrounding 5-10 mile neighborhood to get a CHEAP hobby fix. No comparison for today in location and cost. Time spent waiting and getting to a store versus the actual time spent reading does not compute logically and the cost spent versus value of time spent doesn't come out well either. Edit: And I don't want to pay the crazy pricing for the entire catalog of comics available when I would rather buy individual issues or series I wish to read. Copying the cable/satellite company policies of paying varying prices for package deals or a high lump sum for "everything" isn't the way to encourage sales and readers to continue following anything you publish. |
|
|
|
Post by Slam_Bradley on Mar 5, 2019 15:28:12 GMT -5
At this point monthly periodical comics aren't substantively different from the stuff sold by The Franklin Mint. They're limited edition niche items sold to a narrow market through a narrow marketing strategy.
|
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Mar 5, 2019 15:29:55 GMT -5
I only buy Immortal Hulk monthly now. There's enough there of interest to keep me hooked (plus a lively letters page!). I'm buying Star Trek's "The Q Conflict" right now as it intrigues me, too.
But I'm content to wait. Which, of course, doesn't help monthly sales. But why should I pay £3+ for a five-minute read that doesn't even tell a complete story? Where's the incentive?
|
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Mar 5, 2019 16:18:08 GMT -5
Essentially you are saying that print is dead. Comic books are different because the fan wants to collect the physical copies. At least the old school fans, it could be that a side effect of digital is that collecting is disappearing. No, comic stories in print are selling quite well. There is a growth market in the book trade for OGN, especially those geared towards young readers. Libraries are beefing up their graphic novel offerings, both OGN form major book publishers and collected editions from comics focused publishers. Books like Smile by Raina Telgemeier, Dog Boy, etc. are growing sales and finding new audiences. Major book publishers are adding or beefing up their graphic novel imprints. Sales are up on comics in the book trade (or they were as of last year, Brian Hibbs report on the 2108 book trade is due in the next few weeks). It's periodicals that are dead. Especially periodicals sold only in a niche specialty shop when specialty shops themselves are a dying breed in the current marketplace. Comics is stories told in panels and pages. It's not monthly pamphlets. The pamphlet is a dinosaur. Comics are growing and thriving. The problem is big 2 super-hero comics have become co-dependent on the monthly pamphlet format and are having trouble evolving beyond it, when the market itself has already evolved and moved beyond the monthly pamphlet years ago. There are a lot of people interested in super-hero stories. There are fewer, but still a lot of people interested in super-hero stories in print in comic format. There aren't many people interested in super-hero stories in print in monthly periodicals, and those that are have already been buying comics for decades. Everyone has been waiting for all the new fans from movies (and TV) to come to comics since 2000 when the first X-Men movie was released. Everyone keeps saying they never came. That's incorrect. They came to super-heroes and to comics, but they never wanted or embraced the periodical format. It was already a dying format that didn't appeal to the mass market audience 19 years ago, yet the super-hero comic industry stubbornly clings to the format and wonders why their customer base is shrinking and they cannot attract new customers to their product no matter what they do. Well, you can't put a fresh coat of paint on a turd of a product, but the audience still knows it's a turd, and in the current marketplace, monthly periodicals are a turd in the eyes of mass market customers. You can't make people buy a format they don't want by clinging to that format. All you do is lose potential customers by doing that, and it seems that's what the comics industry (especially the big 2) has been best at doing going on 3 generations now, losing potential customers who want to buy stuff featuring their IP but at first couldn't find it in the places they already shopped and then couldn't find it in a format they were willing to buy. The core problem is the old customer base, i.e. "comics fans" are largely regressive neophobes who only want comics to be exactly the way they were when they first discovered them and do not want the product, industry or content to evolve. In a sense, super-hero comics have gone form adolescent power fantasies for adolescents wanting to feel powerful like adults to adult adolescent fantasies for adults wanting to recapture a piece of their adolescence. And having comics evolve removes that dynamic from comics for them and hence lessens the appeal. -M |
|
|
|
Post by Icctrombone on Mar 5, 2019 16:54:31 GMT -5
I remember a few years ago Jim Starlin released what was meant for a 6 issue mini series and put it into a 20 dollar TPB. Maybe this is what the future holds for comic stories.
|
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Mar 5, 2019 16:58:44 GMT -5
I remember a few years ago Jim Starlin released what was meant for a 6 issue mini series and put it into a 20 dollar TPB. Maybe this is what the future holds for comic stories. The economics of the big 2, especially the way creators are compensated, will have to radically change before that becomes feasible for publishers like Marvel and DC. Right now the production costs of making the comics/paying the creators comes from the sale of monthly pamphlets, while collected editions are more pure profit. Without the lead sales of periodicals covering creator costs, sales of the bigger volumes are not robust enough in most cases to make them worthwhile. Marvel and DC have dipped their toe in on OGNs, but they haven't gone all in because the economics of them don't work well for them the way they are currently set up to do business. Evolving beyond the periodical is going to require evolving their entire business model and industry infrastructure. -M |
|
