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Post by Deleted on Sept 14, 2024 12:18:00 GMT -5
I like both. I can't imagine my bronze-age books without words on the cover.
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Post by rich on Sept 14, 2024 13:18:12 GMT -5
Looking back I enjoy the retro look with words all over the covers, but surely as a child I preferred a well drawn piece of action? I'm not sure the covers mattered very much really, as I knew which characters I liked based on the toys I played with 😅 Well drawn art seemed to matter as I was an older child- Jim Lee was the only reason I picked up X-Men #1.
By the time I had more pocket money to buy multiple comics I was buying based on the creators I had worked out I liked from what I already had and from the trades I read for free from the library. Libraries are brilliant. 😊
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Post by driver1980 on Sept 14, 2024 13:31:49 GMT -5
Libraries are brilliant. 😊 Don’t say that to John Byrne!  He once said this on his forum: I don’t know how true that may or may not be in the US. I have heard of UK authors - including one journalist - talk about how he did receive payments from libraries, and he recommended libraries to people who couldn’t afford his admittedly niche books. I did discover a few trades in my local library, and 2 of those were ones I eventually bought in order to make part of my permanent collection, so libraries served a purpose for me! |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 14, 2024 14:21:49 GMT -5
Golden Age comics. So many with stunning art on the cover, and so many with little to no wording for captions. The art quite literally sold many of those books.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 14, 2024 14:27:28 GMT -5
Golden Age comics. So many with stunning art on the cover, and so many with little to no wording for captions. The art quite literally sold many of those books.
Golden-Age Archie needed words on the cover, the gags made the book sell 
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Post by Deleted on Sept 14, 2024 14:30:15 GMT -5
Golden Age comics. So many with stunning art on the cover, and so many with little to no wording for captions. The art quite literally sold many of those books.
Golden-Age Archie needed words on the cover, the gags made the book sell
Good point on the more light humor books! On the more adventure/action based material though, those silent images could be really impressive. |
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Post by tarkintino on Sept 14, 2024 15:24:04 GMT -5
Covers that needed few captions to instantly draw the reader in, sell or tease:    ...or some covers were so powerful in making its point, no captions were required:   Sometimes, a single title justified the level of drama on the cover and what one would assume formed the story within:
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Post by driver1980 on Sept 14, 2024 15:25:37 GMT -5
Regarding that Spidey/Goblin cover, tarkintino , I wouldn’t be surprised if first-time readers saw that and then presumed Goblin was some sort of mystical foe - a real goblin, perhaps! |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 14, 2024 15:29:56 GMT -5
Those are great examples tarkintino and it reminded me of this Fireside collection I got as a kid. The cover floored me like no cover had before. My hero Spidey never looked more "Amazing"!  |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 14, 2024 15:34:06 GMT -5
It's interesting that the Spectacular Spidey #2 magazine got the word-balloon treatment when it was reprinted in the 1973 Annual
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Sept 14, 2024 15:41:56 GMT -5
Libraries are brilliant. 😊 Don’t say that to John Byrne! He once said this on his forum: I don’t know how true that may or may not be in the US. I have heard of UK authors - including one journalist - talk about how he did receive payments from libraries, and he recommended libraries to people who couldn’t afford his admittedly niche books. I did discover a few trades in my local library, and 2 of those were ones I eventually bought in order to make part of my permanent collection, so libraries served a purpose for me! It's completely untrue. And Byrne knows that. He's just a flaming puckered @^*$. Libraries buy the books just like a normal human being does albeit at a discount from the publisher but I'm pretty sure that discount does not come out of the authors royalties. So the author gets the same amount of money from that sale as he/she would if you bought the book. A significant percentage of the books sold are are sold to libraries (I haven't been able to track down the exact percentage). That percentage is higher for academic publishing. Byrne is under the mistaken impression that people who check books out of the library would buy those books if libraries didn't exist. Like with many things, Byrne is abjectly mistaken about that. |
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Post by driver1980 on Sept 14, 2024 15:55:38 GMT -5
Thank you, Slam_Bradley. I didn’t want to make any presumptions about US libraries, but I knew what the system was here. On more than one topic, it does seem Byrne made knowingly untrue posts just to push a point, there are at least 4-5 comments of his that I feel even I could debunk. And, yes, I agree about him being abjectly mistaken about that last point. There have been books I’ve borrowed which I 100% know I would not have bought had my library closed down. |
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Post by driver1980 on Sept 14, 2024 15:57:05 GMT -5
It's interesting that the Spectacular Spidey #2 magazine got the word-balloon treatment when it was reprinted in the 1973 Annual
Those word balloons definitely detract from everything else, if you ask me. |
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Post by codystarbuck on Sept 14, 2024 16:06:25 GMT -5
Don’t say that to John Byrne! He once said this on his forum: I don’t know how true that may or may not be in the US. I have heard of UK authors - including one journalist - talk about how he did receive payments from libraries, and he recommended libraries to people who couldn’t afford his admittedly niche books. I did discover a few trades in my local library, and 2 of those were ones I eventually bought in order to make part of my permanent collection, so libraries served a purpose for me! It's completely untrue. And Byrne knows that. He's just a flaming puckered @^*$. Libraries buy the books just like a normal human being does albeit at a discount from the publisher but I'm pretty sure that discount does not come out of the authors royalties. So the author gets the same amount of money from that sale as he/she would if you bought the book. A significant percentage of the books sold are are sold to libraries (I haven't been able to track down the exact percentage). That percentage is higher for academic publishing. Byrne is under the mistaken impression that people who check books out of the library would buy those books if libraries didn't exist. Like with many things, Byrne is abjectly mistaken about that. Yeah; you notice that mainstream authors, who Byrne can only envy for having a massively larger audience, have no issue with their books in libraires. Sounds more like him sniping at the fact that he drove away a significant portion of his audience, either through substandard work or negative public comments and is looking for a scapegoat for his loss in earnings. People like that will always seek someone else on whom to blame their problems. It's not my fault; I'm a genius! I think he bought into his press way too much, in the 80s, and it warped him and his work ever since. |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 14, 2024 16:06:44 GMT -5
Those word balloons definitely detract from everything else, if you ask me.
I feel somewhat differently, simply because I had the Annual for close to 20 years before I got the original magazine so it was the one I was always accustomed to. I was also surprised the Annual didn't reprint everything but that's another bug of mine....
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