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[Candescence]

US comic-book sales are a joke compared to what they are in countries like Japan and France. The difference? Comics are everywhere, they're cheaper and they don't fall into pieces unless you put them in a plastic bag. You won't find a single kid who doesn't read comics in my country. American publishers decimated their own market with shitty practices. There's still a readership and it's growing but Marvel just isn't in a good place right now.

Pretty much this. The comics industry in the US and a few other countries that follow its example tied itself to idiotic practices that are vastly surpassed by comics industries in Europe and Japan.

 

[Aaronrules380]

US comic-book sales are a joke compared to what they are in countries like Japan and France. The difference? Comics are everywhere, they're cheaper and they don't fall into pieces unless preserved in a plastic bag. You won't find a single kid who doesn't read comics in my country. American publishers decimated their own market with shitty practices. There's still a readership and it's growing but Marvel just isn't in a good place right now.

I think there are other reasons as well. I think for example that the magazine model that most manga in Japan are first released under is brilliant and a much better way to expose multiple series an authors to a readership without (as mentioned in this essay) creating incredibly confusing continuities and baffling organization. Most people will buy the magazine for a favorite/popular series, but they get exposure to new stuff as well which will encourage people to try out new series and buy more stuff without all the problems that shit like events in the Marvel comics do. I get why the appeal of a huge interconnected universe exists, but I think it ultimately hurts accessibility so much that it's not worth it imo.

 

[Aurean_Mentat]

Also his last twink, 'On Preordering Comics', is a good read as well:

Let's present you a hypothetical. There's a comic you want to buy. Not a pre-existing one, a newer one. Just had its first issue released, in fact. So of course you want to support this book, and you figure, hey, I'll go to the comics store, buy the comic, take the comic home, and they'll see my purchase, right? Just like anything else. Like buying a video game, a movie, a book, you show up, you take it off the rack, you buy it then and there, and then you've shown your support with your wallet. Put your money where your mouth is.

That makes sense, right?

Unfortunately, though it does make sense to us hearing it, the fact is, buying your comic that way is practically irrelevant to the actual sales of a comic book.

Yes, I know that's fucking bizarre.

Print comics work on a pre-order system - a system that almost never comes up, and when it does, is equal parts confusing, infuriating, and awfully awfully expensive.

Here's how things work: When you go in and buy a comic off the racks at your comic store, all you're doing is depleting the stock of comics they already ordered in advance - what your purchase means is that individual sale avoids going into the back issue bins. Little to nothing else. Short of a surprise massive turnout to buy an individual comic and thus force it into reprintings, individual purchases of individual comics off the rack mean absolutely nothing to the comics publishing company, and on the individual level, to the survival of that comic you like so much.

The actual purchases, the sales that actually matter the most to the publishing companies, are made in advance. Deep in advance. About three months advance, to be exact. Before even issue one hits the stands, the real point of purchase is your local comics retailer - if you have one - putting in an order to the comics publisher for whatever books they have. Because the comics are non-returnable, the retailer can't buy just equal amounts of everything. They have to carefully weigh which comics they think will actually sell in their shop, so they're not weighed down with a massive backstock of issues to toss into the bins and hope someone picks it up, maybe years later, and takes it off their hands. This is why an awful lot of comics creators actually dread being told that a comics shop has sold out of their book - it means most likely that they made a very low order to begin with, and that doesn't spell anything good for the survival chances of their comic.

Here's how you're "supposed" to buy comics for your purchase to matter to the publisher: You go into your comic shop, and you tell them you want to buy (x) comic - long before it comes out. The moment you hear it's happening. It doesn't matter if there's not so much as a preview or even a creative team announced yet, you're supposed to pop over to the comic shop and tell the retailer "I want, and will definitely buy, this comic". That way, your interest is noted to the retailer, who sees demand for the comic, who thus may boost their pre-orders to the publisher for said comic. The retailer has to weigh local interest, available shelf-space, likeliness of actually selling, so many things together, before they make that pre-order. And what takes the guessing game out of this for retailers is if enough people show up to say "I want (x) comic", specifically in advance. Or, to make the matter feel more complex, you can take an "order code", found in Previews magazine (or on their online website), hand it over to the retailer, and they can add that to their pre-order stock. So you make sure you get your comic, and your purchase is noted to the retailer, and the publisher, that yes, people do want the comic.

By the time you're buying issue one off the rack, pre-orders for issue three are already being made. And if demand wasn't shown early for issue one, then it's very unlikely that the sales for issue two and issue three are going to be any better - there's very often a steep drop off between issue 1 and issue 2 alone, with a continual slow frittering away of sales until it hits bottom. This month to month loss of sales is a big reason Marvel's adopted the constant relaunch and renumbering model - all those purchases lost month to month come back to issue one, then flit away again, bit by bit, until they relaunch and renumber all over again. It's why you don't see comics that reach numbers in the hundreds anymore - or even often as much as 50 issues or so.

"So, wait," you might say to yourself. "I'm supposed to buy a comic 3 months in advance, usually for three to four dollars a pop, based sometimes on as little as a cover and a title, by researching it myself and looking through all these ordering systems, then telling it to the person who sells comics in my area - if one exists at all - in order to support my favorite comics in the way that the publishers actually give a shit about?"

Yes.

"That's a terrible fucking system that makes no sense."

Also yes.

Let's talk a little recent comics history. Currently, Captain Marvel is not a great selling comic. She's frequently outsold by the character who is, in canon, inspired by her in the first place - Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan. But Marvel's interested in pushing her, in giving her frequent relaunches and renumberings, largely in part to the fact that she has a movie coming up.

The first writer on hand for this iteration of Captain Marvel was Kelly Sue DeConnick. Kelly Sue DeConnick is no fool about the comics industry. She knew that, at the time, Captain Marvel stood little to no chance of succeeding, and would most likely get cancelled in about 12 issues, maybe a little more, maybe a little less. Such is the fate of many comics, be they ones with new representation like Kamala Khan, or even relaunches of very old material like Challengers of the Unknown. If you're not a character that the core market, the people who buy every week and have been buying for years, decades, already buy, the odds of you surviving are incredibly slim.

So, in order to help her own book out, KSD got talking. She talked about pre-orders. And she started, essentially, a pre-order campaign for her book, to help bolster its sales, and avoid a very likely early cancellation, since Carol was very much not an a-list character, nor was Marvel as interested in pushing her regardless of sales until the movie announcement dropped.

Here, her post on the direct market, pre-ordering, how to do it, all that, is still up. You can read it here.

Here's the thing: DeConnick did this of her own volition. DeConnick promoted and campaigned for her comic. DeConnick took the time to thoroughly explain the direct market, the pre-ordering system, how it works, why, and how to order your comics through it so your purchase is actually counted, to her fans, and to try and reach out to potential new fans, or just to people who, in general, didn't know this was how the print comics market works.

Which is, I'd wager, the majority of people with an interest in comics. From the casual, to even some hardcore fans with a deep knowledge of comics continuity, the system is not well known at all.

Now, it's very good that she did all this campaigning and this hardwork for her book, really put in the time and effort to boost Captain Marvel on her own.

But that's also just it: She did it on her own.

She was working for Marvel, one of the largest comics publishing businesses, one of the longest lasting, with the most resources in their hands to advertise and campaign for comics, to explain the pre-order system to readers, to do everything with regards to promoting and selling comics...

And it wasn't them who campaigned for the book, hyped the book, explained the pre-order system, and how to order through. It wasn't Marvel, the very company publishing her, with supposed the greatest interest in seeing their comics succeed, who explained all that, who put in that marketing and campaigning work.

DeConnick did it.

Honestly, I hope people read both of these essays, and tell the people at Marvel to just shut the hell up when they try to blame anyone except themselves for how badly their books sell. Its all on them, every last bit of it.

 

[Bronx-Man]

Holy crap this is a good read so far. Said everything that's been pissing me off about Marvel for a while now.

 

[jstripes]

I already read some of it and their business model is quiet shocking in its stupidity.

"But that's the way it's always been done."

 

[Man God]

Comics ordering has been fucked up big time since the 1990's. I remember my uncle coming over to use my PC to do it for his comic shop and he explained the ins and outs of it. It's no surprise that that decade was rough for DC and Marvel especially as more and more places just dropped comics because of the hassle. Losing grocery and convenience stores nearly bankrupted Marvel in the long run.

 

[JC Lately]

Ugh, my iPhone doesn't seem to like this download.

But the quotes in this thread about pre orders has me wondering: does digital not matter at all? And are these problems unique to Marvel. Like, I plan on buying the new Infinite Loop and Zodiac Starforce on comixology when they come out. As far as the publisher is concerned, does that future purchase "not count"?

 

[Ninja Scooter]

What is twine?

One of the worst Bond movies ever.

 

[wildfire]

Why twine.

No lies detected.

 

[Beartruck]

There is something incredibly ironic in that a large part of his argument is how the comic industry accidentally segregates their content from the average person's eyes, and his essay about it involves jumping through hoops to read. What a stunning lack of self awareness.

 

[DeathoftheEndless]

Also his last twine, 'On Preordering Comics', is a good read as well:

This is a really dumb article. This "preorder" system as he calls it is literally how the entire retail business works. Buying a product from a store doesn't give the creator money. They get their money from the store.

 

[Buddha Beam]

Well I'm not reading that. But since it sounds pretty similar to an opinion piece that was dropped a few weeks ago, I will say that the diversity disillusionment is a real thing among fans. Go to your LCBS and talk to people and odds are they'll tell you that the forced diversity is a turnoff at this point.

I don't think people necessarily have a problem with the diversity though. I think if you probed a little deeper, the issue would be more about the spate of terrible, highly politicized writing that hits you over the head with a bat with its self-righteousness. People don't want to be talked down to like that, even if they're sympathetic to the cause being put out there.
So it's not the diversity – it's the politics. The "diversity quota" thing just sort of goes hand-in-hand with this brand of politics.

And yeah, as the silly choose your own adventure essay apparently alludes to, there are other issues at play adding to Marvel's woes. Piggybacking on the diversity thing, the general concept of trying to create a legacy or mantle of all their popular characters so rapidly like that is going to turn people off, irrespective of what the new character looks like. When this all started some years back, there seemed to be a pretty positive reception to Miles Morales, Carol graduating to Captain Marvel, Kamala Khan, etc. People started really grumbling about it when She-Thor was announced, I'd say.

And that's to say nothing of event fatigue, first issue weariness and that fucking insane price points on all their books. Hell, I have opted out of reading most Marvel books except for Spider-Man, Renew Your Vows and Old Man Logan.
I was going to buy Secret Empire this week because I am a sucker and usually follow the big events anyway, but I saw the $5 dollar price on it and it was just overkill. I couldn't bring myself to do it.

So yeah. The forced diversity thing is a real pain point among a lot of fans and it shouldn't be written off or ignored in pursuit of some broader social change agenda, which I think certain people would like to do. But at the same time, it's just one of several cogs in the machine that Marvel has built that is churning up crap at this point and you can't solely point to it as being the problem.

 

[wildfire]

Well I'm not reading that. But since it sounds pretty similar to an opinion piece that was dropped a few weeks ago, I will say that the diversity disillusionment is a real thing among fans. Go to your LCBS and talk to people and odds are they'll tell you that the forced diversity is a turnoff at this point.

No it's not.

The article is totally data driven. It's not based on gut feelings.

 

[Aaronrules380]

Well I'm not reading that. But since it sounds pretty similar to an opinion piece that was dropped a few weeks ago, I will say that the diversity disillusionment is a real thing among fans. Go to your LCBS and talk to people and odds are they'll tell you that the forced diversity is a turnoff at this point.

I don't think people necessarily have a problem with the diversity though. I think if you probed a little deeper, the issue would be more about the spate of terrible, highly politicized writing that hits you over the head with a bat with its self-righteousness. People don't want to be talked down to like that, even if they're sympathetic to the cause being put out there.
So it's not the diversity – it's the politics. The "diversity quota" thing just sort of goes hand-in-hand with this brand of politics.

And yeah, as the silly choose your own adventure essay apparently alludes to, there are other issues at play adding to Marvel's woes. Piggybacking on the diversity thing, the general concept of trying to create a legacy or mantle of all their popular characters so rapidly like that is going to turn people off, irrespective of what the new character looks like. When this all started some years back, there seemed to be a pretty positive reception to Miles Morales, Carol graduating to Captain Marvel, Kamala Khan, etc. People started really grumbling about it when She-Thor was announced, I'd say.

And that's to say nothing of event fatigue, first issue weariness and that fucking insane price points on all their books. Hell, I have opted out of reading most Marvel books except for Spider-Man, Renew Your Vows and Old Man Logan.
I was going to buy Secret Empire this week because I am a sucker and usually follow the big events anyway, but I saw the $5 dollar price on it and it was just overkill. I couldn't bring myself to do it.

So yeah. The forced diversity thing is a real pain point among a lot of fans and it shouldn't be written off or ignored in pursuit of some broader social change agenda, which I think certain people would like to do. But at the same time, it's just one of several cogs in the machine that Marvel has built that is churning up crap at this point and you can't solely point to it as being the problem.

I'd counter that the focus on a small group of super hardcore fans over expanding their audience is a big part of what is hurting Marvel nowadays. The need to preorder for your purchase to matter, the constant stream of events and relaunches that are confusing to newcomers, etc. all are things that effect casual readers way more than the hardcore fan who keeps up to date on everything

 

[The Technomancer]

Honestly, this is well worth a read, as its well thought out and he makes some good point. As far as people complaining about the engine, I think that it actually works here, and is a lot more readable. Here's a point about the way comics are actually sold, as a small excerpt:

Damn, that's fucked

 

[jstripes]

Well I'm not reading that. But since it sounds pretty similar to an opinion piece that was dropped a few weeks ago, I will say that the diversity disillusionment is a real thing among fans. Go to your LCBS and talk to people and odds are they'll tell you that the forced diversity is a turnoff at this point.

To be fair, the kind of people who hang out at your average LCBS are generally also the type to complain about "ethics in video game journalism."

 

[Sandfox]

I'd counter that the focus on a small group of super hardcore fans over expanding their audience is a big part of what is hurting Marvel nowadays. The need to preorder for your purchase to matter, the constant stream of events and relaunches that are confusing to newcomers, etc. all are things that effect casual readers way more than the hardcore fan who keeps up to date on everything

The preorder thing is an issue with Diamond. Preorders are how retailers determine how many issues to order and that determines whether a book is doing well enough to exist.

 

[Aaronrules380]

The preorder thing is an issue with Diamond. Preorders are how retailers determine how many issues to order.

Perhaps, but it still ties in to Marvel's business model overall and if the problem is coming from a company they choose to work with, they still share some of the responsibility

 

[Conkersbadfurday]

I imagine the TL/DR of that is "The writing is fucking shit" because goddamn is the writing is fuck shit lately.

 

[Aaronrules380]

I imagine the TL/DR of that is "The writing is fucking shit" because goddamn is the writing fuck shit lately.

it isn't at all. It pretty much ignored writing quality because
1. It's subjective
2. For a number of reasons they point out, it isn't actually all that relevant due to how Marvel's business model works

 

[The Technomancer]

This is a really dumb article. This "preorder" system as he calls it is literally how the entire retail business works. Buying a product from a store doesn't give the creator money. They get their money from the store.

Yes but it's terrible for serialized creative content. The intersection of production timing and how they gauge interest clearly makes things more challenging for all parties involved.

 

[mlclmtckr]

Well I'm not reading that. But since it sounds pretty similar to an opinion piece that was dropped a few weeks ago, I will say that the diversity disillusionment is a real thing among fans. Go to your LCBS and talk to people and odds are they'll tell you that the forced diversity is a turnoff at this point.

The 'keep your politics out of my comics' neckbeard crowd is not who Marvel needs to be wooing anyway. The whole point is that they can't expand their audience as much as they'd like.

 

[The Technomancer]

The 'keep your politics out of my comics' neckbeard crowd is not who Marvel needs to be wooing anyway. The whole point is that they can't expand their audience as much as they'd like.

And what I keep coming back to is how structural this problem is wrt "comic book stores"

 

[Sandfox]

Perhaps, but it still ties in to Marvel's business model overall and if the problem is coming from a company they choose to work with, they still share some of the responsibility

Diamond has a monopoly on comic distribution so they don't really have a choice. All they can really do is explain the system better, but that doesn't fix the issue.

 

[Aaronrules380]

Diamond has a monopoly on comic distribution so they don't really have a choice. All they can really do is explain the system better, but that doesn't fix the issue.

Then this is problematic in it's own right, but I find it hard to believe Marvel couldn't find a way to help introduce a competitor for Diamond if they really wanted too. It'd be a long term investment that wouldn't pay off in the short run, sure, but it's also something that'll ultimately be necessary for the future of American comics

 

[Plywood]

And yet, many people do just this. One Piece keeps adding readership over the years, despite this massive length to it.

How?

It's well organized.

It's simple.

If someone asks you, "Where do I start with One Piece?", you answer "Volume 1".

And then you tell them to read volume 2, and volume 3, and volume 4, and so on and so on and so on until they finally catch up to where it is now.

It'll take a while, but it's simple. They don't have to read 3 different One Piece spinoffs or pay attention to Naruto and Bleach to know, exactly, what's happening in One Piece. You buy Shonen Jump, you've got the latest chapter of One Piece. You buy a volume of One Piece, all you need to do to keep up is buy the next volume of One Piece, which are helpfully and clearly numbered instead of expecting you to keep track of subtitles and/or publishing dates.

Say you want to read, oh, I dunno, Uncanny X-Men. And for god knows what reason, you want to read all of X-Men. What're you going to have to do to accomplish that, exactly? You might think "Well, it's a lot of issues, but I'll just read Uncanny X-Men start to finish, right?"

No.

You won't.

Wikipedia has a list of X-Men comics. Go take a look at that. And I mean really look at it. Slowly scroll all the way to the bottom, drinking in those volume numbers, the publishing years, and the sheer enormity of different series.

And, honestly, I suspect that this is an incomplete list of X-Men comics. Nor does it mention things that end up affecting the X-Men anyway, like the recent universe rebooting Secret Wars, 2015. Which itself is not to be confused with Marvel's Secret Wars, 1984. Which also involved the X-Men!

This is getting confusing, and complex, and offputting fast, isn't it? And you're not even reading the X-Men yet! You're just looking at how many series they've had!

Ohhh, but check it out, it gets even worse! Now here's the wikipedia list of X-Men limited series and oneshots!

That Captain Tsubasa list from a few pages back doesn't really look hard at all compared to all this, does it?

Not that you need to read all of this to know what's happening in X-Men - and that's one of the first things any longtime reader will tell you - but anyone jumping into X-Men at all, and anyone who does get the wild hair up their ass about wanting to read everything involving the X-Men, is just drowning in fucking material. They can start at the beginning all they want, but at an eventual point - particularly from the 90s on - they have to keep track of a million other fucking things if they want to know the whole deal. Fucking expensive too. Buying physical backissues, digital backissues, or trades, all of it is going to run up your wallet in a fucking hurry. Eat up tons of your space at home, too. Not to mention a ton of these comics aren't collected.

That's right - the only way to get your hands on physical copies of some of these comics is to hunt down the specific back issue in some comic shop. No trade collections of any kind might exist of some of this material. It took a very long time for comics here to get into the habit and industry of collecting issues, while manga has been doing it for decades and decades. Creates fundamentally an entirely different industry, and hell, even different forms of storytelling.

So complex some of this gets, that many fans have taken it upon themselves to make reading lists for people jumping into various series and characters, sort of essential information or "Best of the best" stuff, cutting out all the chaff. Which is nice and all, but 1. that they even have to do this in the first place and 2. that it's not something Marvel themselves really does for new readers. This gigantic fucking mess is only shook out to make sense by the extraordinary efforts of their consumers. Crossovers and events multiply the complication and confusion of keeping track of everything, and it gets fundamentally worse once we enter the 00s, where Marvel events start to flow like a waterfall, requiring you read (and buy) more than ever just to know what the fuck is going on.

Not to mention, many volumes of these collected comics aren't even numbered at all. It requires the reader to track publishing dates and much more extraneous information to make sure they're not buying out of order and jumping into the middle of confusing bullshit.

Naruto ran for 15 years. It has over 70 volumes to read. They are numbered sequentially. You don't need to read Bleach, or Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, or Devilman, or some earth-shattering crossover event between them, to know the entire story of Naruto.

You just nead to read Naruto. You only need to buy Naruto. From start to finish. That's. Fucking. It.

Let's bring this back to affordability for a sec. Like I said, this stuff goes on tangents and intertwines back in on itself. Try and talk about one subject, the others come up anyway.

In physical form, if you bought every volume of Naruto, it would run you 720 dollars - and that's if you buy every individual volume, and not the frequent 3-in-1 collections Viz does, where 3 volumes runs you a cheap 15 bucks, half the total price of buying each one on their own. In digital form, barring any sales or discounts or bundles, if you bought every volume of Naruto, it would cost you 504 dollars. Seems expensive, but still... that's the entire series. All of it.

Imagine trying to buy every X-Men comic. Even in discounted form. Even in bundles.

And there's always more coming.

And there's spinoffs. Side series. Miniseries. One shots. Events.

Skimming, but these parts caught my eye.

 

[TumblingHippo]

forced diversity thing is a real pain

Yeah, I read the whole thing, but this is still the worst possible take.

The problem isn't the forced diversity, it's a bunch of white straight guys writing for people of color and people on the LGBT spectrum.

You can get way WAY more diversity by going online and consuming/supporting webcomic and digital comic creators, and those comics are created by a vast diversity of ethnic, religious, and lgbt backgrounds that Marvel/DC could never match (because their fanboys would flip their shit over it).

 

[Reagan's BR]

Yes with a title like that I'm sure to take it seriously.

 

[Ernest]

It is a good read.

There's lots of different reasons, but the worst aspect of the industry has to be it's distribution model.

Diamond's done a ton of damage to the industry, mostly to the poor little indie shops.

 

[Aaronrules380]

I'm going to also bring up that even if they were shackled to Diamond for retail distribution and bringing in someone else to compete was totally impossible, better alternatives exist such as
1. Shifting the focus on how you introduce new comics to digital rather than retail, and making retail more focused on trades
or
2. Using a model similar to the Japanese manga magazines, where you package several new issues of both popular long running titles and newer series together, using feedback from things like polls and surveys that are heavily promoted within the magazine in order to determine which series are more likely to be successful and are worth keeping around. This solves the preorder issue to a large degree because the long running popular series should keep the general numbers stable. It also has the benefits of expanding the brand by introducing people to new stuff they might not have checked out otherwise

 

[DeathoftheEndless]

Yes but it's terrible for serialized creative content. The intersection of production timing and how they gauge interest clearly makes things more challenging for all parties involved.

Its how retail works.

 

[Aaronrules380]

Its how retail works.

I already explained two possible solutions to this problem in my above post

 

[The Technomancer]

Its how retail works.

I run a company that sells plastic widgets to retail, I know it's how it works. It's also in the best interests of everyone, the retailers very much included, to figure something else out for comics

 

[Sandfox]

I'm going to also bring up that even if they were shackled to Diamond for retail distribution and bringing in someone else to compete was totally impossible, better alternatives exist such as
1. Shifting the focus on how you introduce new comics to digital rather than retail, and making retail more focused on trades
or
2. Using a model similar to the Japanese manga magazines, where you package several new issues of both popular long running titles and newer series together, using feedback from things like polls and surveys that are heavily promoted within the magazine in order to determine which series are more likely to be successful and are worth keeping around. This solves the preorder issue to a large degree because the long running popular series should keep the general numbers stable. It also has the benefits of expanding the brand by introducing people to new stuff they might not have checked out otherwise

The first thing would actually cause a lot of stores to close down and there's a risk over whether going digital that hard would work out. I'd probably try something to push digital though.

As for the second point, anthology series like that simply don't sell for comics.

There's a lot of issues with the comic industry.

 

[Aaronrules380]

The first thing would actually cause a lot of stores to close down and there's a risk over whether going digital that hard would work out. I'd probably try something to push digital though.

As for the second point, anthology series like that simply don't sell for comics.

There's a lot of issues with the comic industry.

I'm not going to argue that these methods aren't without their risks. I will however argue that Marvel's current business model is doomed for failure, and that they really have no choice but to take risks because staying the course will inevitably lead to their failure. I think it says a lot about the failings of the comic book industry that the characters are more popular than ever and yet the comics are doing worse than ever

 

[Buddha Beam]

The 'keep your politics out of my comics' neckbeard crowd is not who Marvel needs to be wooing anyway. The whole point is that they can't expand their audience as much as they'd like.

Those people are generally the loyalists and diehards. It's also pretty reductionist and judgemental of you to call them "the 'keep your politics out of my comics' neckbeard crowd". It's a perfectly legitimate grievance to not want heavy-handed politics in your hobby. Again, people don't generally like being moralized to.

But otherwise, I suppose I agree that they can't expand their audience as much as they'd like based on the way the system is structured currently.

The problem, however, is that there is this line of thinking that these stories and characters are one size fits all. It's a mistake to think that if they could JUST get their product in front of a wider, newer, fresher audience, that there would be a sales revitalization. Even if they change the existing product to appeal to this new audience (like making Batgirl a hipster, for example), it won't reach them.
At the end of the day, all you're doing is needlessly meddling with the existing fanbase by trying to appeal to a pretty wildly different potential group of readers.

They instead ought to concentrate on new products that have no need to go through the direct market from the very beginning. that doesn't mean all new characters, either. Leverage the existing character's popularity all you want. They're simply never going to pull enough new people into the LCBS world, and digital doesn't seem to be lighting the world on fire either. I don't know what that new marketing push/appeal looks like at this point (maybe free serialized shorter comics in Star Bucks or something?), but if the goal is to attract younger millennials (as opposed to people in their mid-30's, which is the average comic reader's age), what they're doing now isn't working and is only serving to harm the existing market at this point.

 

[The Technomancer]

What types of comics sell in Europe actually? Forget Japan for the moment, the costs involved in weekly anthologies of low paper quality black and white manga are vastly different and make comparison very difficult. Genuine question: in Europe's comic scene, how much of it is superheroes?

 

[Machine]

The comparison of the complexity in the US comics market to the simplicity in the Japanese manga market falls apart once you look outside DC and Marvel. Those are really the only two companies with confusing continuity and excessive tie-ins. If you want to read Walking Dead or Invincible or Empowered you just start at volume 1. Marvel and DC get a lot of attention for their cape books but there's a whole lot more to comics.

 

[mlclmtckr]

Those people are generally the loyalists and diehards. It's also pretty reductionist and judgemental of you to call them "the 'keep your politics out of my comics' neckbeard crowd". It's a perfectly legitimate grievance to not want heavy-handed politics in your hobby. Again, people don't generally like being moralized to.

I don't see how having more diverse characters constitutes heavy handed politics or moralizing but I guess that's just because I'm not a diet racist "loyalist."

 

[DeathoftheEndless]

2. Using a model similar to the Japanese manga magazines, where you package several new issues of both popular long running titles and newer series together, using feedback from things like polls and surveys that are heavily promoted within the magazine in order to determine which series are more likely to be successful and are worth keeping around. This solves the preorder issue to a large degree because the long running popular series should keep the general numbers stable. It also has the benefits of expanding the brand by introducing people to new stuff they might not have checked out otherwise

The price would be too high. Manga magazines work because they're made of cheap black-and-white paper. Comic readers would never accept such a downgrade.

 

[Aaronrules380]

The comparison of the complexity in the US comics market to the simplicity in the Japanese manga market falls apart once you look outside DC and Marvel. Those are really the only two companies with confusing continuity and excessive tie-ins. If you want to read Walking Dead or Invincible or Empowered you just start at volume 1. Marvel and DC get a lot of attention for their cape books but there's a whole lot more to comics.

This is true, but as long as Marvel and DC dominate the market and are synonymous with American comics to the typical outsider, they're going to be the gateway to that other stuff. It doesn't matter if other American comic companies do it better if the only ones who really know they exist are comic fans in the first place

 

[The Technomancer]

People always dismiss the return of comics to stores outside of the LCBS as impossible, but can someone remind me why? I buy anthologies currently for two reasons: I like collecting higher quality books, and making "a trip" or multiple trips to the LCBS is frankly inconvenient. I commute into work 40 minutes by train in the morning, I would love on the first Wednesday of every month to just stop in the minimart right outside my train station and grab the latest issue of The Flash to read on the train

 

[Buddha Beam]

I don't see how having more diverse characters constitutes heavy handed politics or moralizing but I guess that's just because I'm not a diet racist "loyalist."

Again with the name-calling and baseless accusations from you. Sheesh. Once more, it's not necessarily the diversity, it's the writing. The first issue (maybe second?) of Steve Rogers: Captain America had Red Skull sounding exactly like Donald Trump, if memory serves. It was so cringe-worthy that it breaks your immersion in the story. The dialogue, the obvious intent, all of it.
And Marvel's books in particular are rife with this stuff in the last few years.
That's all being mindful of the broader societal context – we're living in a really, really politically charged atmosphere where you can say one thing and people will assume you're talking about them because it becomes shorthand based on the larger, broader conversation that is occurring.

 

[Buddha Beam]

People always dismiss the return of comics to stores outside of the LCBS as impossible, but can someone remind me why? I buy anthologies currently for two reasons: I like collecting higher quality books, and making "a trip" or multiple trips to the LCBS is frankly inconvenient. I commute into work 40 minutes by train in the morning, I would love on the first Wednesday of every month to just stop in the minimart right outside my train station and grab the latest issue of The Flash to read on the train

At this point, bookstores and B&M in general are largely on their way out, anyway. So even if they did focus on making trade-only books, or having anthologies (which I think are both great ideas), it would still be an uphill battle in many respects.

 

[jstripes]

Those people are generally the loyalists and diehards. It's also pretty reductionist and judgemental of you to call them "the 'keep your politics out of my comics' neckbeard crowd". It's a perfectly legitimate grievance to not want heavy-handed politics in your hobby. Again, people don't generally like being moralized to.

But otherwise, I suppose I agree that they can't expand their audience as much as they'd like based on the way the system is structured currently.

The problem, however, is that there is this line of thinking that these stories and characters are one size fits all. It's a mistake to think that if they could JUST get their product in front of a wider, newer, fresher audience, that there would be a sales revitalization. Even if they change the existing product to appeal to this new audience (like making Batgirl a hipster, for example), it won't reach them.
At the end of the day, all you're doing is needlessly meddling with the existing fanbase by trying to appeal to a pretty wildly different potential group of readers.

They instead ought to concentrate on new products that have no need to go through the direct market from the very beginning. that doesn't mean all new characters, either. Leverage the existing character's popularity all you want. They're simply never going to pull enough new people into the LCBS world, and digital doesn't seem to be lighting the world on fire either. I don't know what that new marketing push/appeal looks like at this point (maybe free serialized shorter comics in Star Bucks or something?), but if the goal is to attract younger millennials (as opposed to people in their mid-30's, which is the average comic reader's age), what they're doing now isn't working and is only serving to harm the existing market at this point.

The problem is the explosive mainstream success of superhero movies brought renewed mainstream interest to the comics. Marvel wants to woo these new casual fans, and the casual fans want to read the comics, but the world surrounding comics is completely impenetrable to casuals.

So Marvel's been working on the content side of their comics for these new fans, but have done exactly jack shit to bring the casual people into the fold.

Also, as someone who read tons of comics in the '90s, the format fucking sucks. It's completely collector driven, in a modern sense. No one in their right mind these days wants to spend $4 on a flimsy little monthly bundle of paper.

 

[Dreams-Visions]

Comics ordering has been fucked up big time since the 1990's. I remember my uncle coming over to use my PC to do it for his comic shop and he explained the ins and outs of it. It's no surprise that that decade was rough for DC and Marvel especially as more and more places just dropped comics because of the hassle. Losing grocery and convenience stores nearly bankrupted Marvel in the long run.

I was just going to ask. I haven't touched comics in 15 years, but when I did they were readily available in every grocery store and convenience store, though there were more options at the actual comic book store. Are they no longer available in normal stores anymore? If not, why? What happened?

 

[Aaronrules380]

At this point, bookstores and B&M in general are largely on their way out, anyway. So even if they did focus on making trade-only books, or having anthologies (which I think are both great ideas), it would still be an uphill battle in many respects.

In which case they should be shifting focus to digital anyways

 

[The Technomancer]

At this point, bookstores and B&M in general are largely on their way out, anyway. So even if they did focus on making trade-only books, or having anthologies (which I think are both great ideas), it would still be an uphill battle in many respects.

Bookstores are on their way out, convenience stores are not. If they're going to keep selling physical books I want them to sell them where I'm going to be anyway

 

[Mesoian]

Dear Marvel,

You're doing a lot of shit wrong, but $10 for a comic book? Seriously?

Like, it's physical, I get that.

6 month delay on marvel unlimited when you already have a massive piracy problem? That's fucking stupid.

 

[Faiz]

The price would be too high. Manga magazines work because they're made of cheap black-and-white paper. Comic readers would never accept such a downgrade.

Yeah the manga magazines are extremely cheaply made. The quality printing, and the format meant to last, are the collected editions.