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Post by lordyam on Sept 22, 2016 17:32:35 GMT -5
Conan is still selling more than most (out of 27 it's in 7 or so.) It's in the upper echelons. I think that at this point we'll get to see the ending. Roy'll probably knock out another story, and we get another main series which covers two or three stories. After that we get a.) Conan's rise to the throne and b.) His final battle with Thoth.
During Avenger the only liscenced brand higher was Buffy.
The other brands beside that are......Call of Duty Black Ops, Tomb Raider, Serenity (upcoming), World of Tanks (upcoming), Tarzan, The Strain and maybe Briggs Land.
In August the DH's that made it onto the top 300 are
290: Bounty #2: 5757 (DH created) 282: Groo Fray of the Gods 2: 5,946 (creator owned) 278: Witchfinder: City of the Dead #1: 6116 (dark horse owned) 273: BPRD Hell on Earth 144: 6233 (I think Dark horse created this) 255: Harrow County 15: 6800 (Creator owned) 224: World of Tanks 1: 8056 (licensed brand) 219: Prometheus: Life and Death 3: 8287 (licensed brand) 205: Kingsway West 1: 9551 (original idea) 203: Conan the Slayer 2: 9561 (Licensed brand) 199: Aliens Defiance #4: 10,012 (Licensed brand) 197: Aliens Defiance #3: 10459 (licensed brand) 180: Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 10 #30: 12119 (licensed brand) 169: Predator vs Judge Dredd vs Aliens #2: 13854 (coproduced with idw and 2000AD) 153: Black Hammer #2: 16,201 (Dark horse created) 147: Lady Killer 2 #1: 16,665 127: Briggs Land #1: 20228 (tie in with AMC)
There were 26 issues (not counting multiple covers).
1.) Briggs Land (licensed) 2.) Lady Killer 2 (Dark Horse owned) 3.) Black Hammer (Dark Horse owned) 4.) Predator vs Judge Dredd vs Aliens (coproduced with two other companies) 5.) Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 10 (licensed) 6.) Aliens Defiance (licensed) 7.) Aliens Defiance (licensed) 8.) Conan the Slayer (licensed) 9.) Kingsway West (Dark Horse owned) 10.) Prometheus: Life and Death (Licensed) 11.) World of Tanks (licensed) 12.) Harrow County (Dark Horse owned) 13.) BPRD Hell on Earth (Dark Horse owned) 14.) Witch finder: City of the Dead (Dark Horse owned) 15.) Groo: Fray of the Gods (licensed) 16.) Bounty (Dark Horse owned)
as for the other 10....... Usagi Yojimbo (Dark Horse owned) Tomb Raider (licensed) Weird Detective (Dark Horse owned) Dept. H (Dark Horse owned) Dark Horse Presents (Dark Horse owned) Baltimore: Empty Graves (Dark Horse owned) House of Pennance (Dark horse owned Mae (Dark horse owned) Cryptocracy (Dark Horse owned) Abe Sapien (Dark Horse owned)
In September
Licensed brands
1.) Aliens 2.) Briggs Land 3.) Tomb Raider 4.) Elfquest 5.) Tarzan 6.) The Strain 7.) Conan
Buffy's not on the list till November so I see Conan beating Elfquest, The Strain, Tombraider and possibly Tarzan. Aliens and Briggs Land are the only two brands I see beating it. Given that Buffy's not coming out till November Conan may actually be higher on the list for two months.
In October the licensed brands are
1.) Aliens (Defiance 2.) Serenity 3.) Briggs Land 4.) The Strain 5.) Tomb Raider 6.) Call of Duty 7.) Conan 8.) Tarzan
Conan: Better than Call of Duty, The Strain Tarzan and possibly Serenity; worse than Aliens, Briggs Land and possibly Serenity.
November has
1.) Aliens 2.) Groo 3.) Predators (coproduced with IDW I believe) 4.) Judge Dredd (coproduced with 2000 AD) 5.) Buffy 6.) Serenity 7.) Tomb Raider 8.) The Strain 9.) World of Tanks 10.) Elf quest 11.) Briggs Land
Conan: Better than Elfquest, World of Tanks, Tomb Raider Groo and the Strain, not as good as Buffy, Aliens and the Predator Judge stuff. Especially not Briggs Land
December
1.) Aliens (with Predator) 2.) Serenity 3.) Tarzan 4.) Buffy 5.) Call of Duty 6.) Tomb Raider 7.) Briggs Land 8.) World of Tanks 9.) The Strain 10.) Conan
Conan: Better than World of Tanks, Strain, Tomblander, Call of Duty, possibly Tarzan and Serenity. Not as good as Buffy Aliens and Briggs Land.
So at the moment Conan seems to be number 4. Call of Duty, Tomb Raider, Strain, World of Tanks, Elfquest and Groo are below it. Serenity and Tarzan MAY knock it down more but for the moment it's secure. Not the greatest but nowhere near BAD.
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Post by lordyam on Sept 22, 2016 17:41:39 GMT -5
Edit: Aliens Defiance is a 12 issue miniseries. The Life and Death stuff comes to a close in March 2017 (same time as Aliens Defiance.) Buffy Season 11 is also shorter than usual (12 issues instead of 30). So depending on how the new blood does Conan may either rise or fall in terms of ranking.
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Post by mrp on Sept 22, 2016 18:13:21 GMT -5
Just some corrections to the above...Strain started novel adapted by Dark Horse comic and then was optioned for TV not a TV show that was licensed, so Dark Horse pays no license fee on it. Del Toro had a relationship with DH because of his work on Hellboy and used comics to get wider ewxposure to the Strain story, which he wanted to do as a tv series, but couldn't find a buyer until someone in Hollywood saw the comic and jumped on the comic optioning bandwagon.
Elfquest is also not licensed. It is creator owned, the Pinis can publish it wherever they want and they currently have an agreement with DH, DH doesn't pay a license fee on the book. Same with Groo, not a licensed book, a creator owned book with Sergio choosing to publish at DH, not something DH pays a license fee for.
As for Tarzan, I believe it is only reprint archive editions DH is producing (ERB Comics has their own imprint for new material), so these are cheaper to produce as well because there are no creative costs involved in making the content (no artists, writers, letterers, etc. to pay out of sales). With Buffy and Serenity, DH pays one straight license fee to Whedon's production company and gets the license for all of them, same with Aliens/Predator/Prometheus, so the licensing costs for these are spread out fover more books and properties and cost less per title for DH to produce, so sales can be lower per title and still be profitable. With the Conan/Howard license, there is only 1 (maybe 2 if there is a mini being produced at the time as well) title that has to cover the entire licensing fee (now how much the license is compared to the others is known only to DH an possibly the license holders so it's hard to exactly compare costs), so that title has to perform well enough to cover the entire licensing costs for the Howard material.
There's been several articles of late looking into the profitability of licensed titles for publishers, and aside from some runaway hits (like the Star Wars license for Marvel or Adventure Time license for BOOM! Studios), most publishers are around break even for licensed titles, and if sales dips that gets precarious. In recent years DH has seen its overall marketshare slip a bit with the loss of Star Wars and the gains Image comics have made plus semi-successful start ups like new Valiant and Aftershock. At some point they will trim expenses by shedding some of their less successful licenses and either look for new licenses that do well or find more IPS they own to promote. They tried with their super-hero line and the revival of Ghost to find existing IP to promote and neither did that well in the existing market.
I don't think they'll drop the license unless Paradox takes it elsewhere, but I can see them forgoing a monthly book and going into the series of mini-series mode where they prodcue a couple of 4 issue min-series a year rather than an ongoing, get a creative team signed for 4 issues to do their story, and get multiple #1s in a year to try to boost sales that way since attrition on each issue after #1 eats away profitability on the books. They've done that with other licensed properties as a way to manage expenses, and I wouldn't be surprised to see it for Conan after Avenger runs its course. But we'll see. The biggest challenge to books like Conan right now is that retailers don't have shelf space or budget to stock books like that beyond what they pre-sell to pull list customers, and since they are non-returnable for retailers it is a high risk low reward scenario to stock books like that beyond what they know they can sell for books like that in the first week on the shelf. So that puts a ceiling on the growth of any title that doesn't already sell 25K + copies a month that retailers will invest their risk in.
Retailers need essentially an 80% sell through on books for it to be profitable. For every 5 issues they order, they have to sell 4 or they lose money. There are about 5K Diamond accounts in North America. If Conan sells 10K issues a month, that means on average each shop orders 2 copies. That means they need to sell both to be profitable and ordering a third is more risk than reward. Now consider places like DCBS, Midtown, Thing From Another world, etc. order far more than 2 copies each, and that means there are a lot of Diamond accounts that are not ordering any copies of Conan at all (for ever shop that orders 4 copies then, there is a shop that doesn't order any to get that average of 2, so if you saw a shop with 12 copies for sales, that represents about 4 accounts that didn't carry Conan at all). If they don't have customers for the book for #1, they aren't going to get customers for the book on #3 or #5, so you won't see any growth in sales because no one who is not already buying the book is likely to see the book to try it unless they buy digital (And digital sales aren't measured in the Diamond sales numbers anyways).
Most of the Dark Horse licenses are getting exposure in other media to draw new fans/new readers. Conan isn't. That also works against growth and increases the likelihood of sales attrition. When you break down the realities of the comics business form a retailers perspective right now, there's not a lot of reason for them to order Conan comics because of all the obstacles for the books to gain readership, and the success of comics in the current market is dependent on sales to retailers (that's what the Diamond sales numbers measure), not end customers.
Those Diamond sales numbers are the equivalent of knowing how many screens a movie shows on, not how much the movie actually makes in ticket sales. We have no idea how many copies of Conan are selling to end customers, just how many copies retailers are buying to put on sale. The fact that number shrinks steadily faster than a lot of other comics is not a good sign for how many copies are ending up in the hands of end customers.
I hope I am wrong and Conan sees a resurgence in comic sales and has a long strong life at DH, but nothing in the way the industry is currently operating makes me hopeful of that.
-M
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Post by johnnypt on Sept 22, 2016 19:16:44 GMT -5
The mini series approach may be a good idea after the current series ends if the numbers can't sustain something consistent. This way they can do adaptations of Devil In Iron and presumably Shadows in Zamboula and even set up People of the Black Circle without having to figure out how to redo it this soon. They could then go to the possible Roy Thomas-Tom Grinberg mini. It's not the plan they originally set out, but at this point it may be a reasonable alternative.
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Post by lordyam on Sept 22, 2016 20:29:02 GMT -5
I just realized. Depending on how Conan exiles sells we may get a shot in the arm. At the same time Conan was at it's peak there were other Conan products (A Conan MMO was being promoted, there was a hack and slash game, a movie being planned....). Combined with how badly the wood series went and I think THAT played a role in Conan's fall. There aren't other products to get people on board so even though the writing is better (and the art too) they have a hard time getting a new audience. If a new video game comes around and it does well, or a better film, than it could be enough to get new people aboard.
It would probably take another hmmmm Six years to adapt the rest of the stories (Avenger covered 3, Cimmerian covered 2, Barbarian 2012 one long story, Road of Kings was just filler and Barbarian 04 was 6). Slayer is covering 2, if Roy's miniseries goes through that's another......than two years for the last ones.
Basically
Slayer: Devil in Iron and Shadows in Zamboula Miniseries: Drums of Tombalku (that's what I'm banking on.) Miniseries: Pool of the Black One Miniseries: Vale of Lost Women Possible second series (if things don't decline too badly or Conan gets a hail mary): Beyond the Black River, Black Stranger, Red Nails. Miniseries: Conan ascends to the throne Final Series: Conan's final battle with Thoth, the Prince and the Wazir arc ends.
The reprints may still be doable as well
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Post by mrp on Sept 22, 2016 21:24:40 GMT -5
Don't count on movie success to translate into comic sales. Marvel is still waiting for some of those billions of dollars the movies made since 2008 to translate into sales of the actual comics and it hasn't happened yet. And if it hasn't happened yet, it's not going to happen.
There are 2 main obstacles-
1) comics are sold in destination only shops, you have to know what you want, when it comes out and where to go to get it. Casual audiences aren't going to encounter comics in the wild to buy them even if they like a movie or tv show that they see. The specialty destination shop is a dying retail model in every other area of consumer retail, but comics haven't gottenthe memo yet.
2) the 20 page monthly pamphlet for $4 plus is not a good entertainment value compared to other choices consumers have and the monthly comic is a mid-20th century dinosaur of a product trying to compete in a 21st century entertainment economy, and it is poorly suited for such.
Monthly comics are now a niche market, not a mass market commodity. As such, prices will continue to spiral upwards as economy of scale works against them (it is especially harsh in the printing field as I learned when doing self-publishing with a small comics studio) as the audience shrinks. There is no easy access point to gain new readers form a mass casual audience and no place for such an audience to find an affordable, accessible product they can buy where they normally shop.
It's taken the comic industry 20 years to get revenue levels back where they were in the late 90s when the speculation crash occurred, in that time cover prices have qhadrupled, which means even though the dollar amount has equaled where it was 20 years ago, you are moving only about 25% of the units you moved 20 years ago to get to that point.
I love the medium of comics, the use of words and images arranged in panels and pages to tell stories, but the 20 page comic pamphlet sold monthly in specialty shops most consumers will never enter is a format that is past its time and really needs to die and be replaced with something more suitable for the current economic and retail models that exist in the 21st century. Asterix can produce one graphic album every couple of years that sell millions of copies on pre-orders alone in Europe, but Conan can barely sell 100K copies combined with a years worth of issues. Sales of comic products through the big 7(or 5 or however many survive now) as original graphic novels through the book trade (bookstores, Amazon, Wal*Mart, what have you) is up. Walking Dead trades outsell the individual comics and do better in the book trade than they do in the direct market of comic shops serviced by Diamond. Publishers like IDW have moved form Diamond to Random House to distribute their trades and graphic novels in the book market hoping to gain sales there they aren't getting int he direct market. Digital sales through Comixology are growing (slowly, there was a growth spurt then it plateaued), but I am not sure DH goes through Comixology-they had their own digital platform for a while that I didn't really like very much). Marvel's Unlimited subscription service (kind of like Netflix for Marvel comics but you have to wait 6 months for new stuff to be available, but it's all you can read for 1 monthly price) continues to grow and Comixology is experimenting with a format like that.
I don't know that we will ever see a niche book like Conan sell well as a monthly comic again. I for one would love to see DH produce the Howard adaptations as deluxe GN albums and release 2 a year rather than monthly comics with rotating creative teams that give the works a patchwork feel rather than that of a unified piece of work. But the hardcore American comic book audience won't accept that, while the mass American audience will not accept the monthly pamphlet of 20 pages for $4-$5 a pop. The industry is in a cach-22 right now. The hardcore audience they need to survive won't accept new formats, and the mass audience they need to grow and be a sustainable industry rather than one scratching to survive won't accept the the existing product because it is ill-suited to how the mass audience now consumes it's entertainment.
Something has got to give eventually, but I am not sure what it will be.
-M
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Post by lordyam on Sept 23, 2016 2:09:44 GMT -5
I don't think Conan will ever achieve the heights it had between 04 and 010. That's a pipe dream. I think it will last long enough to round out the final stories and end on relative grace (I can see the last stories coming out in 2021-2023). It's still doing better than call of duty, world of tanks, and tomb raider. THOSE guys are gonna be the first to go. And since Buffy's not on sale this month and the next Conan may be higher on the list than usual. Also I'm not sure if the Tarzan stuff is reprints. It's Tarzan on the planet of the apes. Which I've never heard of.
I use the iPod app to buy my Conan. So they are still getting money from there.
Notably when I was in london I couldn't find avenger (Then again I was in a hurry). The HC was just......badly constructed. It felt fragile and I feared turning the page for fear of damaging it. Otherwise I would have bought it. I'll probably buy Witch in Hardcover though.
People here need to buy the issues. Every purchase counts and Slayer is good.
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Post by mrp on Sept 23, 2016 14:50:41 GMT -5
I don't think Conan will ever achieve the heights it had between 04 and 010. That's a pipe dream. I think it will last long enough to round out the final stories and end on relative grace (I can see the last stories coming out in 2021-2023). It's still doing better than call of duty, world of tanks, and tomb raider. THOSE guys are gonna be the first to go. And since Buffy's not on sale this month and the next Conan may be higher on the list than usual. Also I'm not sure if the Tarzan stuff is reprints. It's Tarzan on the planet of the apes. Which I've never heard of. I use the iPod app to buy my Conan. So they are still getting money from there. Notably when I was in london I couldn't find avenger (Then again I was in a hurry). The HC was just......badly constructed. It felt fragile and I feared turning the page for fear of damaging it. Otherwise I would have bought it. I'll probably buy Witch in Hardcover though. People here need to buy the issues. Every purchase counts and Slayer is good. The Tarzan Planet of the Apes book is actually produced by BOOM, with DH as a brand partner, but DH had little to do with the making of the book, it's BOOM editors selecting the creative teams and shepherding the book through production. They have the Apes license and pitched the book to DH to use Tarzan in this cross-over (the last one they did was Apes/Star Trek with IDW). It's BOOM trying to get value out of the Apes license which has had disappointing sales since they got it several years back. -M
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Post by johnnypt on Oct 17, 2016 8:55:57 GMT -5
Here's #3
194 CONAN THE SLAYER #3 8,879
down a little under 700 from last issue, about a 7% drop. Hopefully that means it's sort of settled in. Again DH's #6 book, but all of those were under 14K and under 150 on the chart. So things looks like they've settled down a bit and not in that bad of a place.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 17, 2016 11:25:16 GMT -5
Kids yesterday read comic books for fun. They don't do it anymore. They are all playing video games.
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Post by johnnypt on Oct 17, 2016 12:26:52 GMT -5
My girlfriend's son is showing a real interest in them, thanks to the movies coming out. Unfortunately I had to tell him Dr. Strange probably isn't for an 8 year old, but I'd let him read some of my old Dr. Strange comics (pdfs anyway). There may still be a way to hook a few here and there. He's definitely not ready for Conan, his mom would kill me if he read that!
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Post by mrp on Oct 17, 2016 14:06:53 GMT -5
Here's #3 194 CONAN THE SLAYER #3 8,879 down a little under 700 from last issue, about a 7% drop. Hopefully that means it's sort of settled in. Again DH's #6 book, but all of those were under 14K and under 150 on the chart. So things looks like they've settled down a bit and not in that bad of a place. Attrition on sales for new comics never stops. The best selling books lose 2-3% per issue if there is no incentive to bump orders (variants, discounts, etc.), most books lose between 5-7% per issue on average (it's part of the reason for the constant cycles of new #1 issues for the same series). Books are more likely to lose readers than gain, and retailers have more new stuff to order each month but not usually more money to spend each month so they have to trim what they order of older stuff that isn't likely to gain a new audience to make room in the budget for new stuff that may gain a new audience for a time. The 7% attrition rate is what will settle in, not the number of copies sold. That's the norm for all comics in the market, every book loses sales each issue as retailers and consumers are drawn to the shiny new stuff instead. -M
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Post by Deleted on Oct 17, 2016 14:21:53 GMT -5
Here's #3 194 CONAN THE SLAYER #3 8,879 down a little under 700 from last issue, about a 7% drop. Hopefully that means it's sort of settled in. Again DH's #6 book, but all of those were under 14K and under 150 on the chart. So things looks like they've settled down a bit and not in that bad of a place. Attrition on sales for new comics never stops. The best selling books lose 2-3% per issue if there is no incentive to bump orders (variants, discounts, etc.), most books lose between 5-7% per issue on average (it's part of the reason for the constant cycles of new #1 issues for the same series). Books are more likely to lose readers than gain, and retailers have more new stuff to order each month but not usually more money to spend each month so they have to trim what they order of older stuff that isn't likely to gain a new audience to make room in the budget for new stuff that may gain a new audience for a time. The 7% attrition rate is what will settle in, not the number of copies sold. That's the norm for all comics in the market, every book loses sales each issue as retailers and consumers are drawn to the shiny new stuff instead. -M Yeah, I think you're right. Retailers are probably ordering issue 6 by now and the numbers are gonna be lower, but, let's hope there not too low. I think there's a probability that by the 25th issue we maybe looking at the 5,000-6,000 mark.
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Post by lordyam on Oct 17, 2016 15:42:25 GMT -5
Conan the Avenger:
Issue #1: 11,565 Issue #2: 9,946 (-14%) Issue #3: 9,486 (-5.5%) Issue #4: 9,182 (-4.3%) Issue #5: 8,941 ( Issue #6: 8,820 Issue #7: 8,547 Issue #8: 8,250 Issue #9: 8,105 Issue #10: 8,024 Issue #11: 7,995 Issue #12: 7,978 Issue #13: 7,891 Issue #14: 7,804 Issue #15: 7,710 Issue #16: 7,559 Issue #17: 7,618 Issue #18: 7,432 Issue #19: 7,443 Issue #20: 7,233 Issue #21: 7,005 Issue #22: 6,985 Issue #23: 6,898 Issue #24: 6,924 Issue #25: 6,988
Overall 40% drop in sales. After it hit 7000 it actually declined much more slowly (loosing less than 100 and even gaining a few issues at times. It ended JUST below 7000; the drop between issues 1 and 2 was 14%; there was a 500 issue drop between two and three. So overall it's hard to say exactly.
Conan the Slayer:
Issue #1: 13,388: Issue #2: 9,561 (-29%) Issue #3: 8,879 (8.86%)
We lose 4000, than 700.....It will probably keep dropping but hopefully things will stabilize before they hit the 7000 mark. I bought both a hardcopy AND a digital copy and I think that helps. Overall I think that things will PROBABLY stabilize quickly and the series MIGHT end above 6000.
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Post by johnnypt on Oct 17, 2016 18:59:35 GMT -5
If it stays with a less than 7% attrition rate, they should consider it good news! The fact comics these days lose readers so quickly is probably why we keep getting new #1s every time we turn around.
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