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Post by Deleted on Apr 9, 2020 16:58:23 GMT -5
Fairly sure the 90s had the same proportion of greatness, mediocrity, and crap as every other decade. Sturgeon's Law, which it seems Slam_Bradley or I usually bring up whenever quality of the output of the 90s (or any other decade/era) is brought up, but speaking for myself, I get tired of saying the same old thing when the same old topics come up time after time after 6 years here. One of the things that makes the 90s stand out is not the quality of output, but the quantity of output. So many publishers, flooding the market with so many titles and so many issues of titles that there was just such a massive glut of books that it becomes a chore to slog through the 90% to find the 10%, simply because there is so much more to go through. And Marvel was one of the worst offenders in flooding the market with product to build up marketshare and choke up the shelves keeping space from competitors. -M |
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Post by tartanphantom on Apr 9, 2020 17:04:02 GMT -5
"And Marvel was one of the worst offenders in flooding the market with product to build up marketshare and choke up the shelves keeping space from competitors."
I see... so it's not all progress since then, is it?
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Post by Batflunkie on Apr 9, 2020 17:08:42 GMT -5
I see... so it's not all progress since then, is it? Agreed. I'd even argue that the market is even larger and far broader now, especially with digital and foreign translations like Cinebook |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Apr 9, 2020 17:17:51 GMT -5
Fairly sure the 90s had the same proportion of greatness, mediocrity, and crap as every other decade. And Marvel was one of the worst offenders in flooding the market with product to build up marketshare and choke up the shelves keeping space from competitors. -M Crowding the competition off the newsstand was a Marvel tradition. It was one of Martin Goodman's favorite ploys and it had to just kill him when Marvel's books were so limited by distribution in the early 60s that he couldn't do it. Goodman may have been long gone but the memory lingered. |
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Post by codystarbuck on Apr 9, 2020 17:47:17 GMT -5
DC and Marvel both used that strategy in the 80s and 90s. In the early-mid 80s, DC and Marvel were both churning out Baxter-format reprints of classic storylines, crowding the new indies off shelves. As the decade progressed, they continued that and added tons of new series, mini-series, one shots and crossover books). They continued into the 90s doing that. Good luck getting anything on display in comic shops ifyou are Eclipse or Comico, let alone someone like Renegade, who was doing less mainstream work than many indies. Same in the 90s and when Diamond became the evil overlord of Distribution, they relegated everyone else tot he back of the book, like something out of the Segregated South.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 9, 2020 18:32:53 GMT -5
DC and Marvel both used that strategy in the 80s and 90s. In the early-mid 80s, DC and Marvel were both churning out Baxter-format reprints of classic storylines, crowding the new indies off shelves. As the decade progressed, they continued that and added tons of new series, mini-series, one shots and crossover books). They continued into the 90s doing that. Good luck getting anything on display in comic shops ifyou are Eclipse or Comico, let alone someone like Renegade, who was doing less mainstream work than many indies. Same in the 90s and when Diamond became the evil overlord of Distribution, they relegated everyone else tot he back of the book, like something out of the Segregated South. And Diamond became evil overlord only because of Marvel's failed gambit with their Heroes' World grab. Smaller distributors starting merging or going out of business because Marvel took a large chunk of the market share out of their purview leaving them to try to consolidate the remainder to survive. Geppi was just the best positioned in terms of cash flow and liquidity to be at the center of that. The fact that everyone else collapsed is because Marvel took away nearly half their revenue stream in one fell swoop and very few had the cash reserves to withstand that loss of revenue. Diamond did, and when Heroes World collapsed, Marvel had to go crawling to the last distributor standing to get their books to market. I don't like Diamond per se, but they are not the ones who initiated the whole situation, and if they hadn't been cash rich enough to consolidate all the failing pieces of the crumbling market destroyed by Marvel's move, there would have been no path to market left for any of the publishers. Alternate distribution to bookstores was just a fledgling piece at that point and nowhere near big enough to sustain any of the publishers, and digital didn't exist. The other publishers sold out to Geppi or closed altogether because Marvel destroyed their revenue streams leaving their business model nonviable. The Diamonf consolidation was pure survival mode, however once the crisis was over, no one (retailers or publishers) wanted to invest in creating a new infrasruture because it was simpler, more cost-effective and less time consuming to del with just one distributor and account than several. Once the crisis was over, they could have sought new paths of distribution, but everyone in the industry was complicit because it was easier and more profitable to just leave Diamond be. -M |
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Post by codystarbuck on Apr 9, 2020 20:50:30 GMT -5
DC and Marvel both used that strategy in the 80s and 90s. In the early-mid 80s, DC and Marvel were both churning out Baxter-format reprints of classic storylines, crowding the new indies off shelves. As the decade progressed, they continued that and added tons of new series, mini-series, one shots and crossover books). They continued into the 90s doing that. Good luck getting anything on display in comic shops ifyou are Eclipse or Comico, let alone someone like Renegade, who was doing less mainstream work than many indies. Same in the 90s and when Diamond became the evil overlord of Distribution, they relegated everyone else tot he back of the book, like something out of the Segregated South. And Diamond became evil overlord only because of Marvel's failed gambit with their Heroes' World grab. Smaller distributors starting merging or going out of business because Marvel took a large chunk of the market share out of their purview leaving them to try to consolidate the remainder to survive. Geppi was just the best positioned in terms of cash flow and liquidity to be at the center of that. The fact that everyone else collapsed is because Marvel took away nearly half their revenue stream in one fell swoop and very few had the cash reserves to withstand that loss of revenue. Diamond did, and when Heroes World collapsed, Marvel had to go crawling to the last distributor standing to get their books to market. I don't like Diamond per se, but they are not the ones who initiated the whole situation, and if they hadn't been cash rich enough to consolidate all the failing pieces of the crumbling market destroyed by Marvel's move, there would have been no path to market left for any of the publishers. Alternate distribution to bookstores was just a fledgling piece at that point and nowhere near big enough to sustain any of the publishers, and digital didn't exist. The other publishers sold out to Geppi or closed altogether because Marvel destroyed their revenue streams leaving their business model nonviable. The Diamonf consolidation was pure survival mode, however once the crisis was over, no one (retailers or publishers) wanted to invest in creating a new infrasruture because it was simpler, more cost-effective and less time consuming to del with just one distributor and account than several. Once the crisis was over, they could have sought new paths of distribution, but everyone in the industry was complicit because it was easier and more profitable to just leave Diamond be. -M I didn't say they initiated it; but, they were never friendly to the independents and they further demonstrated that when the changed the format of Previews to feature DC and Marvel first, then Image and Dark Horse, then everyone else joined the Professor and Maryann as "The Rest." Capital, who were Diamond's chief competition, was far friendlier to independent publishers and creators and had better terms for comic shops. DC is more at fault than Marvel for the Distribution wars, as they had the market power to continue with both Capitol and Diamond and the rest of the market would follow suit. By going exclusive with Diamond, they touched off the fear and Image and Dark Horse soon joined them, leaving Capitol to fend with Kitchen Sink, Fantagraphics and the other small publishers. Capital sold off to Geppi and then Marvel crashed and burned. Had DC remained non-exclusive, other publishers would likely have remained, as well and Marvel would still have crashed and burned, as Heroes World did not have the infrastructure to support every comic shop in the country and Marvel still wouldn't have infused it with capital to cope, leading to their massive cash drain. It would have still likely been bad for shops, as they would be carrying two accounts and dealing with Marvel's crappy terms and price coercion, via bundling and discount tiers, killing their cash flow. The Justice Department had the power and the precedents to stop Diamond's monopoly; but, didn't give a s@#$ as the Clinton Administration proved just as corporate friendly as other administrations. |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 9, 2020 22:08:40 GMT -5
And from what I understand, Capitol was making overtures to sell out and divest from the market once Marvel made the Heroes World move, not seeing much of a future or a revenue stream, and that was what spurred DC to look for a partner that was better capitalized and in a position to maintain the path to market, causing to to partner up with Diamond, and then when DC did cut the deal, Capitol quickly sold out to Diamond. Had Capitol not signaled weakness and the appearance of not being willing to stay in for the long haul out of fear for their bottom line, DC might have stayed the course. I am still waiting for Beerbohm's Comic Store Wars to see his full account of the era, as he was front and center for a lot of it and positioned to see a lot of the behind the curtains stuff everyone else only guesses at or assumes they know; he's only put out drips and drabs of his work on that over the years, but what he has put out there challenged a lot of the assumptions people make about what happened.
And as for featuring Marvel and DC first, tell me what distributor is not going to lead with their best-selling products? It's just common sense business practice, and practicing common sense business practices is what put Diamond in the best position to survive the turmoil and in a position of being the most attractive option in the storm Marvel started.
I don't like the fallout of it, but the industry was in survival mode after Marvel's miscalculation and cash grab to cut others out of their pieces of the pie. People sometimes make bad choices in situations like that, but sometimes they make the choices they do because there aren't better options available to them.
-M
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Post by berkley on Apr 10, 2020 2:59:15 GMT -5
Maybe I just got lucky with the local comic shop I used to frequent back then but the great thing about the 90s to me was that at least in this particular shop, the kind of independent comics I was interested in used to be given their own section, so they weren't crowded off the shelves by product from the Big 2. I discovered a lot of creators just by seeing one of their comics on the shelves and leafing through it - Seth, Julie Doucet, Chester Brown, ... Marvel and DC, and I think those independents like Image producing the same kind of mostly superhero-centred comics, had a much bigger section and I suppose on those shelves probably Marvel/DC did dominate the space - I can't say for sure because I would only give them a cursory glance, most of the time. The covers alone were so inimical to my taste that my eyes seemed to just slide off them with noticing any details. Now and then I might look at an old favourite like Thor or something but the interior would only confirm that this wasn't something I wanted to read. Looking back, I did miss some good stuff because of that: all the Vertigo books, for example - I assume they must have been shelved with the superhero comics because I don't remember ever seeing any of it; also the odd mainstream DC thing like some of the Moench/Gulacy Batman miniseries. I can't think of anything from Marvel though.
So from one perspective, I think the 90s were great: a lot of my favourite comics came out in that decade. But I understand why many fans say the 90s really were that bad: I assume they're thinking solely of the mainstream superhero comics put out by Marvel (not sure about DC) at the time and yeah, they looked pretty awful.
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Post by pinkfloydsound17 on Apr 10, 2020 6:03:08 GMT -5
Pick any era and I can show you something great artistically that would get you intrigued. 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's. The 90's? I have yet to see something that blow me away or that I would even consider nice enough to display on a wall or share with someone. If you can convince me otherwise with something, do it. Otherwise, 90's comics will forever be a meh world for me and one I just prefer not to visit. Not a Lee fan, not a Liefeld fan and their styles seemed to dominate and were emulated and I disliked all of it.   I'd certainly frame and hang that on my wall. I mean it isn’t bad but I also dislike Superman so I would pass on it. |
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,222 
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Post by Confessor on Apr 10, 2020 8:28:45 GMT -5
A mullet on Superman was just wrong. A mullet on anyone is just wrong! |
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Post by brutalis on Apr 10, 2020 8:43:27 GMT -5
A mullet on Superman was just wrong. A mullet on anyone is just wrong! Says the green rabbit with hair ALL OVER his body?  As they say in Battlestar Galactica: NO MULLETS!!! SO SAY WE ALL! |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Apr 10, 2020 8:58:47 GMT -5
Maybe I just got lucky with the local comic shop I used to frequent back then but the great thing about the 90s to me was that at least in this particular shop, the kind of independent comics I was interested in used to be given their own section, so they weren't crowded off the shelves by product from the Big 2. I discovered a lot of creators just by seeing one of their comics on the shelves and leafing through it - Seth, Julie Doucet, Chester Brown, ... Same here. That one comic-book store I frequented in Lakeforest Mall, Gaithersburg, MD (free plug for a shop that may no longer exist, as that was 23 years ago!) was brilliant when it came to independent comics. Not only could they be found in abundance and in their own section, but you could find SIGNED copies, sold at regular price! (The shop used to invite as many creators as it could). |
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Post by tarkintino on Apr 10, 2020 9:36:07 GMT -5
Maybe I just got lucky with the local comic shop I used to frequent back then but the great thing about the 90s to me was that at least in this particular shop, the kind of independent comics I was interested in used to be given their own section, so they weren't crowded off the shelves by product from the Big 2. I recall a few shops doing the same. The owners separated books by content or publisher, so it was easy to access independents which were not forced out in favor of the majors. |
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Post by tarkintino on Apr 10, 2020 9:41:17 GMT -5
Pick any era and I can show you something great artistically that would get you intrigued. 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's. The 90's? I have yet to see something that blow me away or that I would even consider nice enough to display on a wall or share with someone. Alex Ross had 90s work that actually became framed art and captured attention beyond comic book fans. |
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