Fascinating read.
tl;dr version:
>Marvel killed it's "new" audience by assuming they were the old audience and dumped a pile of spin-offs, cross-overs, etc on them. Marvel tried to sell them a line of books when the audience just wanted to buy a book.
Those two are big issues but there's a lot of other factors that led them to what they are today.
That article sums up what's been happening in the comic book industry since 2003. The mainstream publishers have been ruining the market with their incompetence.
Seriously, Marvel is going to release OVER 70 BOOKS in May, and the bulk of those are spin-offs, events, or bi-monthly titles.
It's fucking insane. Nobody is going to buy that many comics.
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You expect me to take this cuck seriously?
Hate to defend Marvel but comic fans are fucking retarded
Those fucking nerds with their nerd ways of thinking
Similar branding, different author, different artist and after a few issues you gotta read all of them to make sense of the original thing you were reading.
By the way what the hell is he talking about when he writes about a 'meat and potatoes' style? All google is giving me is food.
A return to basics. Metaphorically, worrying less about the fancy food and focusing on what sustains you
Now that expression suddenly makes sense to me. Thanks.
Not to mention the one title you were reading might change writers every two issues and have three different rotating artists.
Ever heard of paradox of choice? Offering shitload spin-pffs titles just confuses the newcomers. When someone who never read a comic wants to read a Spider-Man or Deadpool, they have to choose from bunch of different books, but don't know which one to go with. For long time readers, it just dilutes the brand. Spider-Man is no longer unique, when there are dozen webslingers in New York alone. It's even worse when all these titles cross-over and you are forced to buy multiple series to be able to follow the story properly. Inconsistent art style due to rotating artist doesn't help either.
The cuck is mostly right, despite being partially in denial
Fuck
No wonder comics aren't getting the movie audience. How do they expect normal people to climb this mountain of crap?
SJW shit isn't the problem but a symptom of the problem. Marvel hired a bunch of shit writers to churn out books for a line targeting the new readership they were seeing. Those readers liked "diversity", so those shit writers crapped out shallow garbage because fuck writing characters.
Now we're looking at a line of books that new readership didn't understand nor want, leaving us to question "what the fuck were they thinking?"
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Diversity was a move by editorial iirc. I know the muslim Ms. Marvel was decided upon beforehand and then pitched to the writer.
nailed it there champ
so, exactly everything we already know?
Oh yes, comic prices. That's why nobody buys them. It has nothing to do with the fact that recent comics have been absolute lowest tier of garbage.
Every fucking time you post this picture you say something retarded.
He isn't wrong, do you really think a company believes in this shit? It was a desperate attempt to revive the company and it has found a new audience.
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Which of the 94 comics Marvel published this month was lowest tier garbage?
And then they strangled that audience in the crib just like they smothered the neckbeards that came before it.
Mainstream publishers are horrible at business.
It's a 94-place tie.
is it seriously so hard to not fuck up the bussines?
Well the entire industry was essentially crippled twice in the course of 50 years and the two heads of the industry are currently being used more as IP farms for their parent companies than actual comic publishers. What you need to understand is that even if they successfully got the neckbeard AND SJW crowds to all loyally buy comics the sales would still be garbage compared to the sales before the college for boom and crash. Because everyone put all their eggs in the direct market basket in the 90s they've fucked themselves out of ever having real mainstream success again. So they cope by following fads like memepool or diversity Thor and hoping these will somehow lead to getting Normie's back into comics. They never will.
*Collector's
When you've been focused on short-term gains your entire existence, it's kinda hard not to fuck up.
You forget how heavily connected all these books are. If you don't buy all four, you read the next issue the month after and it's like you missed four episodes of a TV show.
sadly they won't actually die so long as daddy Disney is there to keep their blood pumping. It's a shame really, they get away with terrible pricing, horrible quality, and actively mocking the people that made them.
We'll see how long the movie boom lasts.
To all things an ending, eventually.
I will give you that, he is right about pretty much everything else in that article regarding. That doesn't make the SJW shit a non-problem even if a symptomatic problem, just one more reason why Marvel is shit instead of a main reason.
Hopefully Avengers Infinity War brings an end to that. You can already see the seeds being planted for critics hating it on Guardians of the Galaxy 2 (too much focus on one character detracts attention from all others) and Infinity War has a pretty saturated cast as it stands. After that movie, the old guard will pretty much retire and Captain America, Thor and Iron Man will be replaced by the very diverse Black Panther and Captain Marvel. Those movies are pretty much guaranteed to do well with libshit critics, but nostalgic audiences will feel about this.
With that said I don't know… Shit that doesn't even live up to normalfags expectations manages to make a billion back.
There's the production cost of oversaturating the market. If you have a base of consumers who have a limited amount of money, they're going to only choose a limited amount of comic books to buy at a given time and forgo buying the other options that hit the market at that time. Basically wasting all the production and distribution costs of those unsold comics.
They won't die but they can/will go into reprints
You know who really needs a movie before the boom is over?
Peter Porker, the spectacular Spider-Ham!
The guy who started Mile High Comics wrote a good bit about this:
posting the link to the full list in case anybody wants to read the other ones, but the relevant bit is Evolution of the Direct Market.
Short version is: Marvel switched to the direct market because the newstands were fucking them over massively, getting refunded on unsold issues and then turning around and selling those issues, i.e. those shrink wrapped comic book bundles they'd sell in Sam's Club. The next problem becomes that the direct market is shit at getting new readers into comic books, since it's now a trip to a specialty store, instead of bugging your parents to let you get a comic at the grocery store.
How recent is the policy of returning unsold issues? Was it really not around when they first left the direct market?
Direct market is comic book shops. They moved exclusively into comic books shops partly because comic books shops can't return unsold stock
Sorry I meant left newstands FOR the direct market. I always thought the newstands had to return the books or shred them or some shit to get a refund, so how were they two timing Marvel like that?
Marvel switched to direct market because they were greedy and direct market, when the industry was healthy, represented almost pure profit for them. The fucking over was never as bad as its made out. Jim Shooter claims that they would always in the very least break even on newstand sales despite its expense and, because of spotty distribution, any kid who took an interest in their comics would eventually find himself in a comic book store if he wanted to buy back issues.
You left your sage on.
Whatever the reason was(probably greed) it ended up fucking up the entire industry and making the community insular as fuck. With Archie on it's last leg there's pretty much no hope left unless someone else finally grows the balls to get back into grocery stores and shit. I swear what we really need is like an American Beano with a couple of kids action serials in it.
You've been proven wrong at this point. Your cucking out was annoying two years ago, but at this point you should just kill yoruself. Even fucking Marvel admitted readers don't want the SJW shit.
Except you still had the same "trying to sell an entire series to people who only want a volume" problem going there.
Those SJW characters are so hated because they got shoehorned into the roles of the series leads, pissing off long-time fans who liked the characters being replaced better than their replacements, while the SJWs they were supposed to attract didn't buy because to be up-to-date on everything takes more fucking books than the Library of Congress, and they're too busy fighting for "social justice" to spend the time to read those 70+ books.
That limb is only going to keep festering and sucking up funds if they don't cut it off. Give it a few years.
Even if the movies dry up you can't forget about merchandising. I imagine shit with Spidey's face on it alone sells enough to more than cover the costs of the actual comics fucking up.
That's because Marvel was expecting every twitter hipster to go out and buy 10 progressive books plus the tie-ins. That's why they flooded the market with all of this crap. They thought this new audience would buy books like neckbeards did in the 90's, despite shops telling them that these stunts were driving them away.
Since nobody ever learns in the comic business, we can watch as Marvel make the same mistake again with "Legacies" and continue to dump a bunch of shit on the market that nobody will buy.
Are you referring to Star Wars? Remember, that franchise is "classic", it began before many current fans were even born. It's going to have to get ultra-pozzed (like down to Doctor Who levels) before people will drop it.
Marvel, on the other hand, is only 9 years old. Once normies start turning off, it will be regarded as a "fad that passed", like Westerns, Kung-Fu films or Disaster movies. The sales drop will be near-vertical, the last few films will have no-name replacements for the stars and be DTV, if not digitally released only, and then it will be over. Disney might even sell Marvel.
Britfag here, "the newsstands fucking the publishers over" is something that is currently happening in the UK. Shops charge the publishers "shelf rental", meaning the publisher is actually paying the shop to display their items (a situation that would give US comic shop owners wet dreams, I imagine). The "newsstands" (major newsagent chains, primarily WH Smith) also own the distributors, and literally tell smaller businesses how much stock they are getting. A small "mom and pop" (not really, they're still part of a chain) newsagent might have 10 kids coming in to buy the Beano, but if one week those kids get sick and only 3 buy it, the distributors will only send them 3 copies in future, and there's little the shop can do.
I think he means stuff like Transformers and Fast & Furious.
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I actually referred to stuff Marvel made like Avengers: Age of Ultron… That movie was a step down in every way imaginable and didn't even manage to make as much profit as the original movie, but still managed to make a billion dollars in box office. Same thing with Civil War, which made nearly as much money, but for some reason people thought it underperformed either because BvS harmed it somehow. But the comparison with F&F and Transformers is apt too. As long as Marvel cranks out stupid popcorn shlock, the mouth breathers will keep giving them money. If Black Panther and Captain Marvel inject social justice in their movies, they will reject being lectured and then we will see Marvel going to shit.
The fuck is going on here
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Is that affecting 2000AD too?
Black Panther is the movie that will be the ultimate test.
Because remember the Eastern market especially China fucking hate niggers, especially in their movies. If it has SJW BLM Dindu Nuffin stuff it will be the end.
Who comes up with these rules? It's pretty retarded.
I sometimes worry that I am letting myself be deluded into assuming my politics are right… Thinking that maybe I'm just seeing things I want to see them because it makes me feel like I'm right.
It's somewhat comforting to know that I will never be so utterly delusional, so out of touch with reality, so willfully, antagonistically ignorant of reality that I pen a series of pages where I represent Hillary as a faultless, goddess of a woman beset by undeserving cretins who dared to question her failure. Never so delusional that I refer to a major issue of national security and blatant corruption and disregard for the law as just "the emails".. and definitely not so delusional that I imagine Hillary GODDAMNED Clinton as a magical savior of Earth who retreats to the wilderness to gather her mystical powers so she might begin her magical machinations to save the world with her ill-conceived logo as a symbol of power.
I thought they were ironic?
It's essentially retelling Watchmen as the 2016 election, and in this case, Hillary is Doctor Manhattan.
I think I now understand why Alan Moore disowned Watchmen.
Every fucking time
You faggots still say he is right, comic truly are doomed
While he is definitely a cuckold for trying to downplay the Tumblr elements in comics and make it a non-issue, he is right in the sense pricing and saturation of volumes is a serious problem too that would have plagued even a non-SJW comic. Everything he said about that aspect was an unquestionable fact and hard to argue against. Now him saying that "SJW characters" are no big deal was his opinion and a shit one at that. A broken clock is right twice a day sometimes.
It works like that with magazines and booze at a lot of stores here in burgerland, the idea is that those items are so frequently shoplifted that it wouldn't be worth the hassle for the store under the normal model
Holla Forums…. I lack the capacity.
I completely and utterly lack the capacity to express the despair, hate and sorrow in my soul upon seeing this filth expressed.
I don't have the malice, or the rage, or even the ignorant screeching to in some way convey what I am feeling at the moment.
I do not know what black sin the universe exists to suffer in recompense for but surely this is beyond even that, no?
When you stare into the void, it stares back, but now I fear that the look in its eyes is one of pity.
I think so, 2000AD is actually only sold in a minority of newsagents and supermarkets now (even in the late 90's it was everywhere, we used to get it in Tesco while mum did the shopping, that would be unthinkable today), and is sold through the direct market, too. I beleive it even got into American comic shops on a regular basis recently. The UK also has a chain comic shop called Forbidden Planet, which gets American (and American-format British ones like Titan) comics straight from Diamond (though there's also "3-in-1" UK editions, which are several months behind, and sold in newsagents), most Forbidden Planet branches I've been to actually stock the last five 2000AD's, I imagine most of the sales come from there. I doubt they charge shelf rental either, come to think of it.
But Forbidden Planet is, of course, a shop for serious and mature comic fans (who read squirrel girl and buy pop vinyl figures), so they'd not touch The Beano (or Commando or My Weekly Pocket Novel) with a shitty stick.
Having a look at the charts from Diamond Distributors, and it looks like both Marvel and DC put out 92 comics in March.
However, Marvel had 8 more GNs on sale than DC.
They have 35.41% of retail share, 7% above DC, but DC is selling more units than them.
That's pretty insulting. DC is selling more units despite Marvel is pumping out more variety in content.
And, Diamond don't track actual sales or orders, they only track what they ship, so that's not accounting for those giant piles of Marvel pull-lists we see retailers posting on Twitter every week. Nor do they track all those free copies Marvel are giving out every week to retailers, who don't know what to do with 20 copies of Squirrel Girl and cannot sell them, forcing them to give them away or use them to light fires when their electricity gets cut due to low sales.
It's just pictures, calm down.
I've come to realize that the sjw stuff is "sjw" because it's poorly written. Where they have to shove the characters race, gender, and sexual preference in everyone's faces because "representation". It's a situation where nobody would give a fuck if they were a nigger or a fag if they were written as characters first, but they aren't. They're written as a crutch-ridden sterotype because the writers are hacks.
Also,
Get off my board, casual.
But it's not variety. It's just derivative crap. Marvel isn't releasing a bunch of Horror, Crime, Mystery, and Romance comics. They're releasing a bunch of tie-ins to other cape books. X-men had 5 titles in March and it got even more this month. It only going to get worse as summer rolls on.
DC is the one that has actual variety here. Only about half of their output in March was their mainstream cape titles. The rest was licensed comics or stuff like Gotham Academy and Young Animal.
I guess it shows the impact of diversity compared to "diversity".
this is psychological warfare. they're trying to break our very brains.
never before have the words 'what the actual fuck?!' been so salient.
It's amazing how even after all the shit that's come out about her in those emails, her brain dead supporters still think those emails don't exist!
We know the Clintons and CIA are crooked as all fuck, because they brag about it in said emails! For fuck's sake she got paid an ass load of money by Wall Street to give a speech!
What's next are you gonna tell me the CIA never spied on anyone? And that the only people who hate Hillary are men?
You can't even?
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2000AD sells like 10% of what it used to sell in the 80s, actually. And I've heard that in some stores the prog gets shoved to the back almost maliciously, so it's hard to see if it's there. Rebellion made 2000AD a relatively more sustainable business, and they have managed to avoid the stupidity that the prog suffered during the first half of the 90s.
I've also heard that Beano is pretty much the only comic that manages to sell well, but that's also because they bundle it with a little toy so it's like a Happy Meal in comic book form. That one and Commando, which is 95% reprints now.
if that's not supposed to be taking the piss and the author of that thinks Dr Manhattan was a character we were supposed to like and identify with, that's pretty damn funny.
if it's just the obvious (that both gained so much power they could no longer care about human beings), then it's just kind of 'eh'.
The majority of what I see is just pictures.
Heck, everything might as well be pictures.
Pretty much. Its just another problem to add to the pile that Marvel has on top of shitty marketing.
Not that user, but I think he was believing everyone was suddenly okay with the SJW in the article, rather than "wanting to fix comic books".
They tried to shift to an audience that didn't exist or was extremely unfprofitable. SJWs don't buy stuff to enjoy it. If they aren't bitching at something for being offensive, they have no purpose. It would be like a BBQ restaurant getting rid of the pork to appease Muslims and then being shocked with the Muslims don't give them any business.
No one actually likes Black Panther. He's the ultimate token character, and one of the most dislikable "classic" Marvel characters in existence with the personality of a brick. No ones going to pay to go see that shit. It will also be associated with the Black Panther Party and go over like a lead balloon with normies when they show up to the movie theater. It better have like a 6 million dollar budget.
I like Christopher Priest's Black Panther all right, but Marvel seem to be trying to erase all the stuff he did.
They weren't trying to sell just to SJWs, they somehow though doing SJW shit would get normalfags to like them.
Too bad they fucked up Powerman.
Normal fags don't like SJW shit period. What a bunch of idiots. The Marvel board room should have a complete purge.
Yeah, but they thought that because MSM endorses it and normalfags were sort of passively tolerating it for so long that that meant they were on board with it. It's becoming a very common marketing mistake lately.
What do you expect from bunch of richfags living in their bubble and barely interacting with rest of the populace? All of their kids are dumb leftist hipsters, who obsessed over pop culture and twitter. They think that all young people are like that, and research using their kid's friends and classmates only confirms it.
This is nothing more than a room full of typewriters and monkeys(sjw) and putting paper to practice. But just like socialism and communism it will never work. Shit writers will only ever produce shit writing. Especially if shit writers will take pennys for a paycheck if they get to virtue signal.
No one should, certainly, but if some people buy some of them, they can usually recoup their losses.
Their industry died. Not even 1% of Americans buy comic books. The American comics industry itself, movies aside, is an obscure subniche. Can't really blame them for trying every desperate last ditch tactic to get new readers or bilk their regular ones. They're doing so bad that they probably can't do any worse, even if they make every mistake possible, at this point it would probably only increase sales by a tiny fraction of a percent.
Why? How?
I like it because it deals with the inherent problems of Wakanda and all the other stupid niggers trying to ruin their shit because they want gibs instead of blaming the whitey boogeyman for everything.
It basically treats Africans as Africans, and T'Challa is an interesting character in it because he's the one bright guy among a bunch of religious zealots who have no common sense. Also, good fights and it's in general a pretty wild ride.
As for how Marvel are trying to erase it, I haven't personally read it but as far as I know as soon as the next guy took over the Wakandans became all "HEY MY BRUDDA" with every other black guy and hated whitey because of American oppression or some shit that never had anything to do with them.
Priest's a good writer, even when he got pinned into writing token characters.
I'd pay to see Black Panther movie if it was cool Jack Kirby shit.
The article makes it clear that the sjw shit wasn't what killed it, but the sheer number of books they shit out. They had success with some titles, but promptly lost that audience when they dumped cross-overs, spin-offs, etc. all over them. That audience didn't understand that was the shit comic companies do, nor was it something they wanted. So they chose to drop the titles they were reading than have to wade through the confusing (and expensive) bullshit Marvel created.
So it wasn't that books of that type weren't selling, it's that they were selling but that Marvel snuffed it out by fucking flooding market.
As for the "real fans", Marvel hunted them to extinction. They milked them until dust came out, and now there are few, if any, left.
Yes, how dare comic readers tire of being lectured to in damn near every single comic, when other publishers just want to tell stories. How dare they!
Welp.
I wouldn't say they hunted them to extinction. Rather, they pushed them out of the comic shop and into online piracy.
Hell yeah. Its much easier now than ever to read comics online without even having to download or torrent.
That was Reggie Hudlin who is a hack and tossed out everything Priest built for his Gary Stu. He had Wakanda have the cure for cancer but wouldn't give it to the US until they were spiritually ready. Everyone loved T'Challa no matter where he went. He also got caught arguing over his on message boards under an alias and allegedly tried to call a shop to order a few hundred issue of his run to make it look better.
Same asshole who was also responsible for the Black Panther BET cartoon.
Didn't Hudlin also have the Panther marry Storm?
Wasn't said cartoon just a motion comic?
Pfft, normies are buying Saga and TWD. And the only people I know who are buying comics spend most of their money on either that or Berserk.
If your friends weren't into Saga I'd envy you.
Yes. Up until AvX separated them.
Hah, I wish. I just live in an area with tons of comic shops.
Well now I do envy you.
I'll fuck you till you love me, faggot
A-as if I'd let you, baka!
I remember seeing that years ago but only now do I notice the lawyer's hooked nose. Fuck does the redpill change a man's past in ways he could never have predicted.
I'm late to the party, but this is the funniest shit I've read in a week
Well she did get killed by a billionaire business tycoon with a plan to save the world.
Only explanation that makes sense.
These people are insane
I'm sad that this isn't a real comic.
Why do people still care about big two shit after all the backstabbing? After all the reboots, the retcons, the crossovers and what else? Fuck them. Go read Dark Horse or one of those other more niche comic companies where the continuity isn't the biggest clusterfuck in fiction.
Comics feels like my local anime scene. I want slice-of-life, sports and feel-good shows; most people just want shonen fighting only.
Actually The Beano is about the only weekly comic that is able to sell WITHOUT a shit toy stuck on it. Most retailers (or their one distributor) won't even look at a new title that's not a tie-in "free magazine" given away with a toy.
And Commando is exactly 50% reprint at the moment.
Are they trying to say she was a god like figure? Or that she really is above us "normal people" when it comes to not accepting election campaign blame or being charged for breaking the law over email/illegal stuff? WTF?
It's like they went so so far into pro-Hillary their gone in a circle and now on the side of anti-Hillary.
Also considering that Weiner is substituted for Rorschach. Will he end up getting (Watchmen Chapter 12 spoiler) roasted vaporized by Hillary? And that not even counting how ridiculous the plot becomes when you think of any Rorschach moment with Weiner instead.
I miss Cassandra Cain
Retailers might as well stop stocking up on Marvel comics since it doesn't make any money.
The only thing I don't understand is how they thought this would bring in new readers.
Typically the only places I can buy comics are online or in stores dedicated to selling them. So why not give a digital copy with a movie ticket, introducing the movie fans they're target right out of the gate, or selling comics at larger retailers?
Think about it like this:
It won't work all the time, but at least it makes sense. More so than selling to the new market at places only the old one shops at.
That would require the comics sold at Wal-Mart to be accessible to new readers, suitable for children, and an entertaining, reasonably self-contained read. And that's just crazy talk.
False. Disney's CEO is running ESPN and Marvel into the group with liberal bullshit so he can prop up a 2020 run for PotUS (which will fail because he's white and male).
Not to mention all the ham fisted injections of political bias
Funny cause Marvel admitted "diversity" was the problem. They alienated the people who actually buy comics by catering to special snowflake assholes who don't even read comics. Then they made it 10x worse by doubling down and making more twice as many books by shitty writers.
The thing is that they didn't really say "diversity" itself was a problem. They said "readers didn't want diversity" and Marvel VP was trying to frame it as the audience's fault for not buying it. Too bad for them that the media completely misread what they were trying to say and assumed that Marvel themselves were blaming diversity because those cumdumpsters cannot read.
Gonna level with you. I've stopped reading comics cause they are shit and the cringeworthy race swapping and gender flipping bullshit is insult to injury.
nigger fuck you
DC put out similiar amount of books but with less sjw themes and their books actually sell apparently.
Repost : from Superversive SciFi looking at the long term decline of comics in the US, citing among other things poor management, distribution, 'gimmick' sales and overall bad business decisions, regarding socjus as latecomers trying to take over an already crumbling ruin.
This is the full version of a 1997 yup bad then essay by John Workman (DC and editor of Heavy Metal) - includes afterword -
superversivesf.com
or -
archive.is
He is wrong, but also right. SJW shit sadly can make income but the comics are so stupid and over complicated that casual leftist shits really can't be bothered to get into that trash. I remember when my former co-workers told me they wanted to read Green Lantern now because he was a faggot, but then ended up telling me that shit was too confusing for their casual asses to understand so they refused to buy any more comic shit. But yeah, the retailer is both wrong and right, SJW/leftist shit is just one part of the problem but its not the main key problem. The problem itself is a large collection of problems that I honestly doubt will ever get fixed. Only reason DC is making a mild comeback is because they've actually decided to make comics that appeal to specific crowds. Still keeping sjw shit in some parts but have completely removed it in others, like our dear Capn Marvel, who is now named Shazam because they had to be little bitches and surrender the name to Marvel's updated and shittier version of Ms. Marvel.
GotG comics have always been shit.
