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Post by Deleted on Oct 14, 2021 1:36:38 GMT -5
It will improve sales of Superman: Son Of Kal-El, temporarily. I guess. |
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Post by hyrkanian on Oct 14, 2021 4:41:34 GMT -5
Such a nice man. That interview almost made me cry.
I am sure Conan is next. It's just a matter of time.
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Post by bonesaw on Oct 14, 2021 7:53:48 GMT -5
"forgetting that every single [comic book] story ever has been political in some way"
Bullsh*t. There is a major difference between analyzing a comic and finding a thread of something societal or political woven into it after the fact and writers at the outset deciding on a political agenda as the crux and then wrapping a superficial story around it, like here and so many other garbage, woke comics and media. There has been plenty of comics in which the writer sat down and focused on just creating a good story and good characters without giving a single thought to current politics.
I am so f*cking tired and disgusted with this sh*t. I wish this country would find a way to split territories so those of us that believe in traditional family values can not be COMPLETELY surrounded with this degeneracy and almost everything else that exists on the left at this point. I would pick up and move in a heart beat.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 30, 2021 13:32:51 GMT -5
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Post by bonesaw on Nov 1, 2021 6:01:32 GMT -5
^
Reading that gives the a similar feeling to when arcades started to disappear. I have been thinking of taking a day off of work to buzz around Milwaukee and visit all the comic shops that are still around. I should probably do that.
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Post by Jason Aiken on Apr 10, 2022 12:43:14 GMT -5
For anyone who believes that Marvel and DC are doing well due to record growth in the American Comic Book market these past two years, I recommend watching this video that completely eviscerates that notion. This guy looks at the book scan numbers from book stores for what is actually being sold on the graphic novel and manga front. Both Marvel and DC are a shit show, but especially Marvel who don't even register in the top 700. If I was an executive at Warner/Discovery or Disney, I would fire everyone at Marvel and DC today and just license out the characters to other companies like Scholastic.
If this is how bad book store sales are, imagine how bad the direct market actual floppy sales to customers are. Marvel and DC have made it increasingly difficult to pin down their number of books being sold to comic shops since the pandemic started (Having the numbers all in one place thanks to Diamond is now a thing of the past since there are other distributors now).
All of the significant growth in the comic market these past few years has been from publishers other than Marvel and DC. It's being fueled by manga, Dogman, and the like.
Even Dark Horse is doing better in book stores due to them publishing Berserk (but that final volume is coming out later this year, so they'll need something else to replace that).
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Post by mrp on Apr 10, 2022 13:22:24 GMT -5
For anyone who believes that Marvel and DC are doing well due to record growth in the American Comic Book market these past two years, I recommend watching this video that completely eviscerates that notion. This guy looks at the book scan numbers from book stores for what is actually being sold on the graphic novel and manga front. Both Marvel and DC are a shit show, but especially Marvel who don't even register in the top 700. If I was an executive at Warner/Discovery or Disney, I would fire everyone at Marvel and DC today and just license out the characters to other companies like Scholastic. If this is how bad book store sales are, imagine how bad the direct market actual floppy sales to customers are. Marvel and DC have made it increasingly difficult to pin down their number of books being sold to comic shops since the pandemic started (Having the numbers all in one place thanks to Diamond is now a thing of the past since there are other distributors now). All of the significant growth in the comic market these past few years has been from publishers other than Marvel and DC. It's being fueled by manga, Dogman, and the like. Even Dark Horse is doing better in book stores due to them publishing Berserk (but that final volume is coming out later this year, so they'll need something else to replace that). One note, if you actually read Brian Hibbs article on this, and he's the one who actually crunched the numbers for Book Scan reports and has been doing so sine 2003 when he started the Book Scan reports for comics, he notes that while DC numbers in the actual sales has them falling down the charts, it's not because their units sold is dropping, they actually increased in 2021 over both 2019 and 2020, it's because other publishers are moving that many more units in the book trade and moving up the charts. The book scan numbers show that more units of comics sold in 2021 than in 2019 and 2020 combined. Comics are a growth industry in the mass market and the fastest growing sector of the book trade right now. What is not selling is comics are monthly periodicals, which is what the big 2 continue to focus on. It's a format nobody in the mass market wants to carry so it has zero growth potential in the market. DC has embraced the young adult GN market and is doing very well in that, especially in library sales, which is the best way to find new readers. With new ownership, and their recent publishing trends, you may see DC transition away from that model of direct market monthly periodicals. Marvel however, seems to be doubling down on that format and neglecting the book trade, which looks bad However their subscriptions to the Marvel Unlimited service continue to grow at a very good pace. Which means consumers are still coming to their products and their consumer base is still growing, just not in direct market monthly periodicals or in print in general. The comics industry is not dying. It is transitioning, and change is never easy. There will be casualties in the process. The only thing that is clear is that the monthly periodical format does not work with a modern consumer or a modern mass market consumer. It still has some life as a niche product sold to existing customers in a specialty shops, but the thing with niche products is they are not mass market products and economy of scale works against them, which means they will continue to increase in price at several times the inflation rate, because all niche market products increase in price faster than mass market equivalents, its part of the nature of being a niche product. The biggest issue is not content, it is format, especially since a lot of older existing customers conflate format with the medium itself, and resist change to new formats. Music has changed format successfully several times over the years. So have movies. The format in which is it delivered to the market has evolved over time. It's true for comics too to a lesser extent (comics are no longer oversized anthologies featuring lots of different strips in it like Action Comics #1 was, trades and webcomics, paperback sized collections in the mass market in the 70s and 80s, digital comics, etc. are all different formats for the delivery of comics to the consumer that have been used over the years), but there has been far more resistant to change and of leaving the monthly periodical format behind in comics than there has been in other entertainment mediums as they changed delivery methods. And almost everyone decrying the doom of comics are those who conflate comics as a whole with the monthly periodical format and see the end of the format as the end of comics. It's not. Comics will survive. The use of words and pictures arranged in panels and/or pages to tell stories is bigger than any one format or genre. It existed before the monthly periodical was used to deliver it to market. It will exist after the monthly periodical is no longer used to deliver it to market. The American comic industry is not just Marvel and DC. Especially if you look at the Bookscan numbers at how many publishers are entering the comics publishing field and finding growth markets. They're just not entering the periodical publishing business. Now that industry is dying, but its not just comics periodicals, its periodicals as a whole that are out of step with modern consumer buying habits. And that has nothing to do with the type of or quality of content that Marvel and DC are producing. -M |
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Post by Jason Aiken on Apr 10, 2022 17:56:56 GMT -5
Mrp, it's definitely a content problem. Whatever DC and Marvel put out, people are largely not interested in buying it or reading it across the board. And this is with popular movie and TV franchises featuring the same characters showcasing the properties in almost every living room. You can't spin how bad these numbers are for DC and especially Marvel.
It's only a matter of time before the bubble bursts. I'm honestly astounded the direct market still exists. How the heck are shop owners able to pay their rent when sales are so low? It's not their fault the big two are pumping out unsellable books, but it's up to the shops to eat the losses when those books sit on the shelves, not moving.
The American comic industry gave up on young readers during the late 90s. Manga and now even mainstream book publishers are taking advantage of that and filling the void. The big two only have themselves to blame.
It's time to go scorched Earth and save what can be saved.
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Post by mrp on Apr 10, 2022 20:01:20 GMT -5
Mrp, it's definitely a content problem. Whatever DC and Marvel put out, people are largely not interested in buying it or reading it across the board. And this is with popular movie and TV franchises featuring the same characters showcasing the properties in almost every living room. You can't spin how bad these numbers are for DC and especially Marvel. It's only a matter of time before the bubble bursts. I'm honestly astounded the direct market still exists. How the heck are shop owners able to pay their rent when sales are so low? It's not their fault the big two are pumping out unsellable books, but it's up to the shops to eat the losses when those books sit on the shelves, not moving. The American comic industry gave up on young readers during the late 90s. Manga and now even mainstream book publishers are taking advantage of that and filling the void. The big two only have themselves to blame. It's time to go scorched Earth and save what can be saved. the content doesn't matter if no one can see it. 90% of books never make it t the shelf, they are preorder only. No one goes to a comic shop unless they are already buying comics. If no one sees the content because you can't buy it unless you already know you want it 3 months before and tell a retailer to order it for you you aren't going to get new customers interested in your content, because no one sees it. Where Marvel's content is reaching new customers-Scholastic sales of trades and Marvel Unlimited, you have growth. It's not that people aren't interested in the content. They can't buy it whether they want to or not unless they order it 3 months ahead of time (which means content is irrelevant to your purchase and you are buying by title or creator alone) and make a special strip to a shop that sells comics, because they will never encounter the actual content otherwise. That is a problem of format, accessibility and a path to market that makes it impossible for new customers to discover your product and buy it. And you can't offer periodicals to mass market retailers. They don't want to carry it. It's a big reason newsstand distribution went away last century, retailers didn't want to carry periodical comics because they didn't sell enough or have a large enough margin to make it worth the retailers while to carry it, and the returns of unsold product killed an y margin you did have on units sold. The direct market was never intended to sell books off the racks for new customers. It was designed to sell books to customers who already knew what they wanted. It does that very well. The problem is that there aren't very many people left who want to buy periodicals no matter what the content is. The big three has now gone 3 generations of potential readers without a discovery market i.e. a place where new readers can encounter and buy their product to replace the natural attrition of readers who lose interest, age out, or die of. What's left is a very small customer base that wants to but periodical comics and no way to grow that market. The fallacy of movies will bring is readers is just that-a fallacy and any business model that counted on people who passively receive entertainment content (i.e. movie fans) becoming active entertainment consumers who have to go out of their way to acquire content and actively interact with the content rather than passively receive it was doomed to failure from the get go. It's the myth of if you build it they will come and we will all be saved. And it was always a case of unrealistic expectation grown out of desperation. Consumers have shown they are hungry for comics in all genres if you are willing to put out comics out in formats that are affordable, available where they already shop, and accessible and that tell complete satisfying stories where characters grow, change, and evolve based on their experiences. Super-hero comics sold as periodicals in specialty shops do none of that so will not get their content put in front of readers. The second coming of Lee-Kirby could be making comics for Marvel right now and it wouldn't move the needle on sales because no one outside of fans already buying periodical comics would ever have the opportunity to see it. You could fix every perceived content problem current fans bitch about it Marvel/DC Comics, and it still wouldn't move the needle. The idea that quality sells or that people would buy the comics if they were good is patent nonsense. Some of the best selling comics the industry has ever had in the modern error were terrible comics. And some of the most critically acclaimed quality comics sold terribly. Solving any perceived content issues is irrelevant until you solve format problems and find a format that has a chance to sell in the modern marketplace. Periodical comics, no matter the content, aren't that product. So current sales issues is not a content problem. The content is irrelevant to what ails periodical sales currently. Periodical are a dinosaur format that the modern consumer does not want to buy unless they have already been buying it since they were children. And those customers are becoming fewer and fewer because of age and attrition, not content. -M |
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Post by bonesaw on Apr 11, 2022 6:23:36 GMT -5
Fascinating debate.
MRP- don't you think though that something like turning Superman gay making national news with pictures of him kissing the pink-haired fellow has to have some kind of global affect on the overall regard a significant portion of buyers has toward DC, regardless of buying format?
I suspect I am in a minority, but I boycott for reasons like this. Like I won't buy anything from Gail Simone even though she has written quite a bit in the genres I like. Content has to matter to some extent. We may be gearing up to see if it does in an extreme example kind-of-way. If Disney truly does go forward changing the entire tone of their brand with 50% gay characters. Bold strategy, Cotton. Let's see if it pays off for em.
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Post by terryallenuk on Apr 12, 2022 1:24:52 GMT -5
As it wasn't _the_Superman it doesn't really matter.
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Post by Von K on Jul 30, 2022 22:00:10 GMT -5
How many have been following Eric July as he starts up his own Indy comics company and has just banked 3.3 million and rising for the first issue of his new comic? Two variant covers are already sold out.
He is the posterchild for what the PC crowd claimed they always wanted and yet they vilify him for his success.
He goes by Youngrippa59 on youtube.
They STILL don’t get it | “Nobody likes new characters” nonsense
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Post by themirrorthief on Jul 31, 2022 12:41:21 GMT -5
I like the old comics...guess IM stuck in the past but comics used to be the top source for fantasy...that was long ago I guess
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Post by johnnypt on Jul 31, 2022 13:05:53 GMT -5
I like the old comics...guess IM stuck in the past but comics used to be the top source for fantasy...that was long ago I guess The writing was a lot better as well. My son absolutely loves the Masterworks, we let him count that as reading time especially when he’s doing Roy or Claremont. |
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Post by themirrorthief on Jul 31, 2022 22:47:17 GMT -5
Ive had tons of old comics but they seem to always get stolen sooner or later...guess that sorta proves people like the old stuff
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