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Post by Deleted on Sept 4, 2017 14:56:28 GMT -5
MOD EDIT: Posts moved from the "Kirby" thread.It's really disheartening to see Marvel sidelining Kirby's Fantastic Four, the team and book that changed how comics were made, over a corporate feud over movie rights. I can't think of another group of fictional characters more ill-treated in recent memory. If they had actually been selling in the current market, they wouldn't have been sidelined, but saleswise the FF has been a marginal title for a couple of decades now. The same feud encompasses the X-Men, but the X-Men still sell well enough to not be sidelined. If sales on FF had been robust, there would still be an FF book despite the feud. -M Since Bendis took over the the Avengers Marvel let FF and the Mutant titles slip and they have not recovered since. When it comes to FF, there's no one with the guts to write a good story (the yarn's gotta come first) without living in fear of getting the science wrong. Modern comic-book writers/artists don't have the imagination or creativity to save the FF. That's what Jack Kirby was about, his imagination and creativity will probably never be matched.
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Post by mrp on Sept 4, 2017 15:59:20 GMT -5
If they had actually been selling in the current market, they wouldn't have been sidelined, but saleswise the FF has been a marginal title for a couple of decades now. The same feud encompasses the X-Men, but the X-Men still sell well enough to not be sidelined. If sales on FF had been robust, there would still be an FF book despite the feud. -M Since Bendis took over the the Avengers Marvel let FF and the Mutant titles slip and they have not recovered since. When it comes to FF, there's no one with the guts to write a good story (the yarn's gotta come first) without living in fear of getting the science wrong. Modern comic-book writers/artists don't have the imagination or creativity to save the FF. That's what Jack Kirby was about, his imagination and creativity will probably never be matched. The audience left Marvel long before Bendis ever got there. Marvel (and DC) chose to focus on the direct market and guaranteed sales to the hardcore fanbase and left the newsstand and other places that could generate new readership to replace those who move on. They're going on their 3rd generation of missed readers. It would have happened regardless of the quality of content because there is an attrition rate for losing customers over time even hardcore fans, as fans lose interest, age out, have kids and have other focus, have medical issues and drop out, die, etc. They guaranteed comics would be a shrinking niche market when they made the choice for the direct market and its guaranteed short term revenue due to non-returnability. Other things have happened since then to speed up the attrition and put it on an entropy pace, and none of it has to do with content or whose writing what characters which way. In general modern audience switched the way they consume entertainment and shop over the last decade. Boutique destination shops are not a viable way to get product to market even for the hardcore audience anymore. The slow pace of monthly comics in tiny portions of 20 pages that are no longer priced at impulse purchase prices goes against the way people shop foe their entertainment media made the 20 page pamphlet and the comic shop 20th century dinosaurs trying to survive in a 21st century market. The audience was long gone before pissed off hardcore fanbase stopped reading because they were pouting that comics were no longer tailored to their tastes and they had seen it all before but done better at the same time they refused to by or financially support anything that was a tiny bit different form anything they had experienced before. The quality of content is irrelevant to sales, great comics sell poorly and garbage comics sell well, and vice versa. There is no correlation between quality and sales. Mostly because what you consider great 5 other readers will consider trash and not buy it, and vice versa, what you consider trash others will think is great and buy in large enough numbers ot keep it viable. Comics are never going to sell the way they did in the 60s, 70s, 80s or 90s because that time period and the market it had no longer exist. Trying to tailor business practices to succeed in those markets in today's world is business suicide. The customer base has changed, the market has changed, the way people buy things has changed, the way they consume entertainment has changed. There is no going back. The market is what the market is and entropy has enveloped it. It could last 20 years it could last 50 years or it could be gone in a few months if Marvel or Disney (or DC or WB) decide it is more profitable to license their characters to other publishers rather than produce books in house at great expense for a shrinking market. Disney has already made that decision with Disney characters, as IDW publishes Mickey, Donald, Uncle Scrooge etc. not Marvel and they have licensed Marvel characters to IDW for all ages comics as well. WB makes more money from licensing out DC heroes for illustrated children's books geared towards early readers that are sold in bookstores, grocery stores, drug stores, Wal*Marts,Targets, etc. than they do from their own in house publishing division within DC Entertainment. The lack of an audience and poor sales that you see now is the reaping of what the publishers sowed through misguided and poor business decisions over the last 30 years, not because they hired a particular writer who ruined the characters. The audience is long gone, was on the way out before Bendis and is never coming back to monthly serialized big 2 comic books. People still love the characters, hence the success of the movies and tv shows, they love the stories told there, but comics themselves as put out by Marvle and DC are not a product geared for success in the 21st century entertainment marketplace, so there is no growth potential for that product to grow no matter who is writing or what the quality level is. At this point, sales are what they are, and as long as the big2 spend their time vying to get the bigger pieces of the shrinking pie instead of looking for ways to grow the pie in the current environment, there will be no change to that reality. Attrition will continue, entropy will fully take hold and comics will need to evolve or die as a product. And Bendis had nothing whatsoever to do with starting or speeding up that process. The business practices of comics publishers and their inability to adapt to a changing marketplace did that all on their own. -M |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 4, 2017 16:16:24 GMT -5
Since Bendis took over the the Avengers Marvel let FF and the Mutant titles slip and they have not recovered since. When it comes to FF, there's no one with the guts to write a good story (the yarn's gotta come first) without living in fear of getting the science wrong. Modern comic-book writers/artists don't have the imagination or creativity to save the FF. That's what Jack Kirby was about, his imagination and creativity will probably never be matched. The audience left Marvel long before Bendis ever got there. Marvel (and DC) chose to focus on the direct market and guaranteed sales to the hardcore fanbase and left the newsstand and other places that could generate new readership to replace those who move on. They're going on their 3rd generation of missed readers. It would have happened regardless of the quality of content because there is an attrition rate for losing customers over time even hardcore fans, as fans lose interest, age out, have kids and have other focus, have medical issues and drop out, die, etc. They guaranteed comics would be a shrinking niche market when they made the choice for the direct market and its guaranteed short term revenue due to non-returnability. Other things have happened since then to speed up the attrition and put it on an entropy pace, and none of it has to do with content or whose writing what characters which way. In general modern audience switched the way they consume entertainment and shop over the last decade. Boutique destination shops are not a viable way to get product to market even for the hardcore audience anymore. The slow pace of monthly comics in tiny portions of 20 pages that are no longer priced at impulse purchase prices goes against the way people shop foe their entertainment media made the 20 page pamphlet and the comic shop 20th century dinosaurs trying to survive in a 21st century market. The audience was long gone before pissed off hardcore fanbase stopped reading because they were pouting that comics were no longer tailored to their tastes and they had seen it all before but done better at the same time they refused to by or financially support anything that was a tiny bit different form anything they had experienced before. The quality of content is irrelevant to sales, great comics sell poorly and garbage comics sell well, and vice versa. There is no correlation between quality and sales. Mostly because what you consider great 5 other readers will consider trash and not buy it, and vice versa, what you consider trash others will think is great and buy in large enough numbers ot keep it viable. Comics are never going to sell the way they did in the 60s, 70s, 80s or 90s because that time period and the market it had no longer exist. Trying to tailor business practices to succeed in those markets in today's world is business suicide. The customer base has changed, the market has changed, the way people buy things has changed, the way they consume entertainment has changed. There is no going back. The market is what the market is and entropy has enveloped it. It could last 20 years it could last 50 years or it could be gone in a few months if Marvel or Disney (or DC or WB) decide it is more profitable to license their characters to other publishers rather than produce books in house at great expense for a shrinking market. Disney has already made that decision with Disney characters, as IDW publishes Mickey, Donald, Uncle Scrooge etc. not Marvel and they have licensed Marvel characters to IDW for all ages comics as well. WB makes more money from licensing out DC heroes for illustrated children's books geared towards early readers that are sold in bookstores, grocery stores, drug stores, Wal*Marts,Targets, etc. than they do from their own in house publishing division within DC Entertainment. The lack of an audience and poor sales that you see now is the reaping of what the publishers sowed through misguided and poor business decisions over the last 30 years, not because they hired a particular writer who ruined the characters. The audience is long gone, was on the way out before Bendis and is never coming back to monthly serialized big 2 comic books. People still love the characters, hence the success of the movies and tv shows, they love the stories told there, but comics themselves as put out by Marvle and DC are not a product geared for success in the 21st century entertainment marketplace, so there is no growth potential for that product to grow no matter who is writing or what the quality level is. At this point, sales are what they are, and as long as the big2 spend their time vying to get the bigger pieces of the shrinking pie instead of looking for ways to grow the pie in the current environment, there will be no change to that reality. Attrition will continue, entropy will fully take hold and comics will need to evolve or die as a product. And Bendis had nothing whatsoever to do with starting or speeding up that process. The business practices of comics publishers and their inability to adapt to a changing marketplace did that all on their own. -M Your words are true. Concerning Bendis, I am not blaming Bendis for the decline of Marvel, but, when Bendis started his Avengers books the X-Men and FF comics were neglected by Marvel before the 'feud' with the movie studios. Publishers have failed to adapt to the 21st marketplace. But, at the same time, over the last three decades they've lacked the creativity and originality to create interest among even die-hard fans. Retailers eventually adapted to the implosion in the 90's and looking at the recent sales figures, history appears to be repeating itself. |
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Post by mrp on Sept 4, 2017 16:43:14 GMT -5
Your words are true. Publishers have failed to adapt to the 21st marketplace. But, at the same time, over the last three decades they've lacked the creativity and originality to create interest among even die-hard fans. Retailers eventually adapted to the inplosion in the 90's and looking at the recent sales figures, history appears to be repeating itself Here's the problem, though the hardcore fanbase doesn't want creativity and originality in their comics, they want them to be the same way they were when they first discovered them and they complain any time comic stories, characters, formats or whatever vary from their initial experience and don't support changes that are creative and original. Comic fans get the comics their buying habits deserve. All they want is the illusion of creativity and originality in the form of a fresh coat of paint on the sale old stories and status quo. If they wanted creativity and originality, Reed and Sue would have retired passed the mantle on to Franklin's generation to be the new Fantastic Four in the 80s and their grandkids would have taken up the mantle by now, giving us new original characters and ideas in the milieu of the FF, but characters can't grow or change too much because then fans stop buying, so there is no room for creativity and originality, as much as they say they want it, they don't support it with their wallets. There's only so many times Reed, Sue, Johnny and Ben can fight Doom before it stops being original or creative and just becomes the same old same old. But if you veer too far from that, my god you're a hack who doesn't understand the characters give me more creative originality in the form of more fights between people I have seen face off dozens of times before or you're not worthy to write my favorite comics and are ruining the characters. This is the result of catering to the hardcore base rather than the mass audience of readers when the abandoned mass market newsstand for direct market boutique shops. the books stopped appealing to the mass audience , stopped coming up with new and original ideas and catered to the tastes of the hardcore fan who was only satisfied with the way things have been always. -M |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 4, 2017 17:01:35 GMT -5
Your words are true. Publishers have failed to adapt to the 21st marketplace. But, at the same time, over the last three decades they've lacked the creativity and originality to create interest among even die-hard fans. Retailers eventually adapted to the implosion in the 90's and looking at the recent sales figures, history appears to be repeating itself Here's the problem, though the hardcore fanbase doesn't want creativity and originality in their comics, they want them to be the same way they were when they first discovered them and they complain any time comic stories, characters, formats or whatever vary from their initial experience and don't support changes that are creative and original. Comic fans get the comics their buying habits deserve. All they want is the illusion of creativity and originality in the form of a fresh coat of paint on the sale old stories and status quo. If they wanted creativity and originality, Reed and Sue would have retired passed the mantle on to Franklin's generation to be the new Fantastic Four in the 80s and their grandkids would have taken up the mantle by now, giving us new original characters and ideas in the milieu of the FF, but characters can't grow or change too much because then fans stop buying, so there is no room for creativity and originality, as much as they say they want it, they don't support it with their wallets. There's only so many times Reed, Sue, Johnny and Ben can fight Doom before it stops being original or creative and just becomes the same old same old. But if you veer too far from that, my god you're a hack who doesn't understand the characters give me more creative originality in the form of more fights between people I have seen face off dozens of times before or you're not worthy to write my favorite comics and are ruining the characters. This is the result of catering to the hardcore base rather than the mass audience of readers when the abandoned mass market newsstand for direct market boutique shops. the books stopped appealing to the mass audience , stopped coming up with new and original ideas and catered to the tastes of the hardcore fan who was only satisfied with the way things have been always. -M Interesting and valid points you make there, Mrp. Maybe we should start a new thread concerning the decline of Comic-books? I don't wanna derail the Kirby thread. If we do create a new thread I'll probably end up having very little to say cos I kinda stopped buying new comics years ago. But, every now and then my Hunnic blood races through my veins and I lament the demise of the comic industry  Hun. |
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Post by johnnypt on Sept 6, 2017 7:53:43 GMT -5
The seeds for where we are now were sowed way back in the 80s when they began the direct marketing experiment. I can still remember buying a non-mainstream title like Dark Horse's Tarzan off of newsstands in the early 90s. But by the mid 90s, they were gone to the comic shops exclusively.
If you go back and look from the late 30s through today, the storytelling style in the comics did change about every 10-12 years. And the circulation has also always been decreasing from the days of Captain Marvel selling millions of copies down to today where you're lucky if the #1 book sells 100,000.
I always thought there needed to be at least one book that would sort of keep ties with the company's history while others could go and see if it could break new ground. For Marvel, I thought Busiek and Perez's Avengers, Fabian Nicieza's Thunderbolts, Bryne's X-Men: Hidden Years and Jim McCann's Hawkeye and Mockingbird served that purpose. However, all of them save Avengers, struggled to maintain an audience that supposedly wanted books like this. I didn't much care for Bendis's Avengers either, but it gave modern audiences what they were looking for...for a while anyway.
Not really sure what's next for the industry. They've made a lot of their material available on the 'net which is as almost universally accessible as you can get. The problem: is that model going to be sustainable in a financial sense? We're still in the early days of that. They may have to move towards more of a Netflix-like model, where you drop your 4-6 issue mini all at once, or break ongoing titles up into "seasons". Can artists afford that type of change? Don't know.
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Post by mrp on Sept 6, 2017 9:44:46 GMT -5
The seeds for where we are now were sowed way back in the 80s when they began the direct marketing experiment. I can still remember buying a non-mainstream title like Dark Horse's Tarzan off of newsstands in the early 90s. But by the mid 90s, they were gone to the comic shops exclusively. If you go back and look from the late 30s through today, the storytelling style in the comics did change about every 10-12 years. And the circulation has also always been decreasing from the days of Captain Marvel selling millions of copies down to today where you're lucky if the #1 book sells 100,000. I always thought there needed to be at least one book that would sort of keep ties with the company's history while others could go and see if it could break new ground. For Marvel, I thought Busiek and Perez's Avengers, Fabian Nicieza's Thunderbolts, Bryne's X-Men: Hidden Years and Jim McCann's Hawkeye and Mockingbird served that purpose. However, all of them save Avengers, struggled to maintain an audience that supposedly wanted books like this. I didn't much care for Bendis's Avengers either, but it gave modern audiences what they were looking for...for a while anyway. Not really sure what's next for the industry. They've made a lot of their material available on the 'net which is as almost universally accessible as you can get. The problem: is that model going to be sustainable in a financial sense? We're still in the early days of that. They may have to move towards more of a Netflix-like model, where you drop your 4-6 issue mini all at once, or break ongoing titles up into "seasons". Can artists afford that type of change? Don't know. The European Market uses a different compensation model, one more akin to American book publishing. Some major American book publishers have started Graphic Novel divisions in recent years and their compensation model is more like standard book publishing than comic book compensation as well. That model uses advances to creators while they work on the book and royalties/residuals on the sales of the book as long as it is in print rather than page rates. It allows creators to make ends meet while they create books and benefit form their labors over the long haul rather than having to choose between the two as they do in the American comic book publishing field-i.e take a page rate with Marvel or DC or a back end deal with Image or other publishers of creator-owned material. Vertigo under Karen Berger toyed with the model offering page rates and creator participation deals where creators got royalties and a piece of the pie if the property got Hollywood money or something else, but one of the first things DC did when Berger left was kill that kind of deal which precipitated a talent flight from the Vertigo line to publishers like Image where the creators at least retained the rights to their stuff even though they didn't get page rates. The graphic novel market in the book trade (not the Diamond direct market) is actually experiencing a level of growth. If not, the major book publishers wouldn't be launching or expanding their own graphic novel lines. Comics or comic like books aimed towards younger audiences such as Captain Underpants and Diary of a Wimpy Kid sell extremely well, outselling anything Marvel or DC puts out by a wide margin, and some Marvel and DC products, like the Kamela Khan Ms. Marvel trades sell extremely well in the book trade or through Scholatic nearly doubling or tripling sales in the direct market for the original comics themselves. It's not the comic art form that's dying, it's the direct market and the big 2 model of monthly pamphlets of 20 pages that is dying. The market needs to evolve and move into the 20th century. A boutique destination shop is a 20th century dinosaur in the 21st century marketplace, and a monthly pamphlet containing only 20 pages of content that isn't even a complete story at a high price point relative to the market is also a dinosaur-it's not a product that holds any appeal to the modern consumer. The problem is Marvel and DC's current business model is built on that and since they are at the top of the heap of that market and benefit the most from the current status quo, they will be the most resistant to change. Those at the top, who benefit the most from the status quo, no matter how poor the status quo is, are rarely agents of change. Change requires an investment of time, resources, and creative vision into building a new infrastructure to handle the new from whatever it is when it emerges. However Marvel and DC, purely as publishing houses, do not generate enough revenue for their corporate holders (Disney & WB) to make that kind of investment. It would be easier, cheaper and in the short term more profitable for them to license their characters out to other publishers and shut down their publishing wings. Disney already licenses it's Disney characters (Mickey, Donald, etc.) out to IDW rather than self-publish them through Marvel because it is more profitable for them to do so. The end of the direct market will likely come when one of the big 2 decides to take that route and extricate themselves form comics publishing. There are already rumors swirling that Disney is considering it, but those are mostly unfounded (they did license Marvel characters to IDW for all-ages books to be produced). The flip side of the coin is that the existing customer base for the monthly pamphlet comic, mostly featuring super-heroes, is ultra resistant to any change whatsoever. They don't want major changes to their characters (even though they say the do, what they say with their wallets rather than their mouths or internet postings says otherwise), they don't want changes to the format of the books, they don't want books available outside of their safe place comic shops and they don't want new customers coming in and messing with their comics. There's a lot of gatekeeping going on, there's a lot of people who think they are the real fans and need to protect comics from wannabes or fake fans, who feel superior because they read real comics not trades or fake digital comics, etc. who will rebel and/or disappear if the publishers make the kind of changes they need to do to survive in the 21st century so any change the publishers make risks alienating the existing customer base, but that customer base is continually shrinking through attrition anyways and is approaching entropy levels leading to extinction. A specific response to JohnnyPT, yes more and more comics are made available on the net, and while that may mean they are accessible it doesn't mean customers know how and where to go to get them. Lots of things exist on the net and are "accessible" but if they are not where people normally go, that accessibility is an illusion. Having single issues available on Comixology or Dark Horse digital is no better than a brick and mortar boutique shop. It is a specific destination that only those who know to go there do. Having Amazon acquire Comixology and making single issues available for kindle or other downloads helps, but with digital comics priced the same as print initially to protect brick and mortar retailers makes them an unattractive digital product and poor value to most customers. Accessibility has to be combined with affordability and value for the investment for it to mean anything. I don't know what the answers are. I am not sure anyone does. The major obstacle to finding them however, is people looking at the issue with blinders, usually nostalgia blinders, and thinking the way to move forward is to move back and make it how it was when it worked. The issue is the market as a whole is not the same as when it worked, and the way people buy and consume entertainment is not the same as it was when comics worked last, so the answers do not lie in the past, but somewhere in a new path forward. Unless comics as a whole want to become a pure nostalgia niche industry where everything is kickstarter/crowdfunded print on demand and has no legitimate retail outlet elsewhere (lime most wargames and tabletop rpg products are now outside of D&D ad Pathfinder). The solution starts with objectively and accurately assessing the current situation and where the problems are, identifying what is not working and why before developing strategies for moving forward, but people are too busy pointing fingers and scapegoating to do this, blaming fake fans, diversity efforts, creators who don't get it, etc. for the failings of the industry when those are at most minor symptoms of the problem if problems at all, and not the source of the factors leading to the decline of print comics in the market. -M |
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Post by johnnypt on Sept 6, 2017 10:07:09 GMT -5
>A specific response to JohnnyPT, yes more and more comics are made available on the net, and while that may mean they are accessible it doesn't mean customers know how and where to go to get them. Lots of things exist on the net and are "accessible" but if they are not where people normally go, that accessibility is an illusion. Having single issues available on Comixology or Dark Horse digital is no better than a brick and mortar boutique shop. It is a specific destination that only those who know to go there do. Having Amazon acquire Comixology and making single issues available for kindle or other downloads helps, but with digital comics priced the same as print initially to protect brick and mortar retailers makes them an unattractive digital product and poor value to most customers. Accessibility has to be combined with affordability and value for the investment for it to mean anything.<<
Sorry, I once again did not make my specific point clearly. The material is available, but it's making people want to seek it out that is the current problem. I apologize for not making myself understood correctly.
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Post by deuce on Sept 6, 2017 10:30:55 GMT -5
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Post by mrp on Sept 6, 2017 10:37:37 GMT -5
the guy responsible for that is infamous for spreading fake rumors about Marvel, and even the rumor-mongering comic site Bleeding Cool has commented that this report is utter hogwash, which considering that BC rarely meets a rumor it doesn't like and won't report as possibly being true, says a lot about the lack of credibility in this report. This is exactly the kind of scapegoating and finger pointing that distracts people from looking at the real nature of the problems the industry faces. -M |
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Post by mrp on Sept 7, 2017 9:18:31 GMT -5
I posted this in another thread, a week or so ago, but it is more germane to this discussion here...
-M
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Post by mrp on Sept 7, 2017 9:30:35 GMT -5
One of the top killers for comic shops these days is people who do not pick up their books when they have a pull list, sticking the retailer with a bunch of unsold books. Not only has the retailer lost the revenue form these books, which were supposed to be a guaranteed sale, but because he held them back when they were released the retailer has missed the window of opportunity to sell these books to another customer, and it had an opportunity cost because if the retailer had known these alleged guaranteed sales weren't going to sell, he might have chosen to spend his resources on different books that would sell or that he wanted to support. Retailers have a limited budget on what they can order in most cases, the Diamond bill has to be paid each week and if you aren't up to date, Diamond won't deliver your books for a given week, once that happens, your store falls into a spiral it won't recover form because if you miss books, you lose customers. So, a retailer can only order as much as he can afford to pay for in a given week given cash flow supplies. Pull customers sticking a retailer with books they ordered without notifying the retailer well in advance they are cancelling their pull, pushes retailers closer to that spiraling edge. One local shop posted a picture of the books that they got stiffed with over a 3 month span, and it was over $10K cost (not retail, that would be double). It's tough for a small business to absorb that kind of loss.
So again, a huge issue is the buying habits and failure to live up to commitments made by the customer base. It's not all the customer/fanbase's fault, but any real analysis of the problem has to take a hard look at the actions of the customer/fanbase and their long term impact on the industry as a whole. The fans have done a lot of damage to the American comics industry over the last 3 decades, and decisions made by companies based on these customer patterns have made it worse. And this was after the industry decided to forsake the mass market and casual customer to focus on that hardcore fan/customer base and their preferences by going all in on the direct market. When you pick your poison like that, your stuck with it for the long term, and that decision really was a poison pill where the industry was concerned, even if it looked like a goldmine of unlimited sales at first.
-M
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Post by themirrorthief on Sept 8, 2017 0:57:52 GMT -5
I dont like the artwork...its way over the top. It needs to be in comic book form with six or seven easy to follow panels per page. Also there is competition with video games and computers. Lots more stuff on tv too. When I was a kid you couldnt see the stuff in comics anywhere else. Now its all over the movies thanks to computer graphics. same goes for video games. At least the heroes created by comics back in the day are still going strong. for my money, after the early eighties the industry should have just shut down
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Post by Jason Aiken on Sept 8, 2017 9:20:13 GMT -5
When you have superhero programs on TV regularly, and movies...you're not going to get people to pay $2.99 - $3.99 a month for a particular book when they can watch ABC or the CW for free on their TV. I think the explosion of superhero tv shows and movies are making things worse for shops, when it was the hope of many that they would increase sales and interest.
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Post by mrp on Sept 8, 2017 9:51:54 GMT -5
When you have superhero programs on TV regularly, and movies...you're not going to get people to pay $2.99 - $3.99 a month for a particular book when they can watch ABC or the CW for free on their TV. I think the explosion of superhero tv shows and movies are making things worse for shops, when it was the hope of many that they would increase sales and interest. It's highly unlikely those people would have ever set foot in a comic shop to buy a comic book to begin with if they weren't already buying comics. First, there are vast swaths of the country where there are no comic shops for people to buy comics even if they wanted to. I know folks who have to drive 3 or more hours to get to the closest comic shop. There are roughly 5000 Diamond accounts in the US, spread out over 50 states, which would be an average of 10 per state, but within 45 minutes of where I am in Ohio I can drive to 13 comic shops, and if I extend that out to an hour and a half to include Cincinnati and the eastern suburbs of Columbus that number doubles. If so many are concentrated in this area, there has to be vast stretches of geography where there are none. If you are going to sell your product only in boutique shops and those boutique shops don't exist in large parts of the country, where can you get new customers or casual customers to sustain your product? Second, beyond people already interested in those characters featured on television and in the movies, no one was ever going to seek out products featuring those characters before the advent of the movies or tv shows. The movies and tv shows can't hurt something that doesn't exist-i.e. customers who would have sought out comics who didn't already buy comics. There are some shops who have reported upticks of sales on the characters featured in movies and tv shows, but it is stores that focus on trades not single issues and who make a point of catering to casual and new customers who come in seeking out something that fits their tastes. Monthly comics are not appealing to the mass audience no matter if the characters appear in movies or tv or not. It's a dinosaur format that really doesn't work with 21st century audiences who didn't have their buying habits groomed in the 20th century and habitually continue them. The industry doomed the single issue when they left the newsstands 30 years ago because they cut off access to new customers being introduced to the format so the format could perpetuate itself. What the movies and tv do is funnel revenue into the coffers of the owners of the property that allows the print industry to survive at lower sales and revenue levels because it can be written off as R&D for the more profitable outlets of the intellectual properties involved. Without the revenue bump movies, tv, and licensing bring, comics would have long ago stopped being profitable enough to continue. Right now, the print divisions for Marvel and DC's owners are essentially loss leaders. -M |
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It's really disheartening to see Marvel sidelining Kirby's Fantastic Four, the team and book that changed how comics were made, over a corporate feud over movie rights. I can't think of another group of fictional characters more ill-treated in recent memory.If they had actually been selling in the current market, they wouldn't have been sidelined, but saleswise the FF has been a marginal title for a couple of decades now. The same feud encompasses the X-Men, but the X-Men still sell well enough to not be sidelined. If sales on FF had been robust, there would still be an FF book despite the feud.
