Slashdot Mirror
In a Declining Comics Market, DC Beats Marvel (hollywoodreporter.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the Hollywood Reporter:
Looking at the most-ordered comic books in the North American comic market, DC Entertainment had a particularly strong year, with seven of the top 10 issues of the year being published by the home of Superman, Batman and the Justice League... just three years ago, not one DC title made it to the list, with nine titles coming from Marvel alone. (By comparison, Marvel takes just three places this year, with one of those due to its inclusion in a subscription mystery box service)... Perhaps surprisingly, the big winner of 2017 looking at the top 10 list is DC's crossover between its DC Universe and Watchmen properties. The first issue of the Doomsday Clock series charted third â" and could end up higher on the final list for the year, depending on re-order numbers in December â" but all four issues of the prologue storyline "The Button," from summer issues of Batman and The Flash, also made it into the top 10.
it's worth noting that, across the board, order numbers for comics in the North American market fell 10 percent compared with last year. The market is shrinking, unless something turns it around soon... One last thing to note about the year's top 10, and also the comic market as it currently exists in general: It's probably time to stop pretending that mass media projects significantly impact comic book orders. In a year with Justice League, Wonder Woman, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Logan, Thor: Ragnarok and Spider-Man: Homecoming in theaters, there isn't a Justice League, Wonder Woman, Guardians of the Galaxy, Wolverine, Thor or Spider-Man title in the top 10. Indeed, Marvel has just canceled the Guardians of the Galaxy comic book series.
Mavel had the most-ordered comic book of the year -- Marvel Legacy No. 1 -- though the article notes that all of its numbers are inevitably skewed by "ordering incentives put in place by publishers that require that a certain number of copies are ordered by stores in order to achieve a specific discount."
it's worth noting that, across the board, order numbers for comics in the North American market fell 10 percent compared with last year. The market is shrinking, unless something turns it around soon... One last thing to note about the year's top 10, and also the comic market as it currently exists in general: It's probably time to stop pretending that mass media projects significantly impact comic book orders. In a year with Justice League, Wonder Woman, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Logan, Thor: Ragnarok and Spider-Man: Homecoming in theaters, there isn't a Justice League, Wonder Woman, Guardians of the Galaxy, Wolverine, Thor or Spider-Man title in the top 10. Indeed, Marvel has just canceled the Guardians of the Galaxy comic book series.
Mavel had the most-ordered comic book of the year -- Marvel Legacy No. 1 -- though the article notes that all of its numbers are inevitably skewed by "ordering incentives put in place by publishers that require that a certain number of copies are ordered by stores in order to achieve a specific discount."
How can you not want to read something called Dirty Pair Flash?
Maybe it helps that DC headliners haven't (yet) been replaced with disastrous forced diversity versions?
where to get x-ray glasses when comics go the way of landlines?
Marvel focuses on movies and does a good job there, leaving their second string people to work on the comics.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Marvel sells their stuff to older teenage boys.
Marvel has done really well with their movies, but they've screwed themselves over in multiple ways with their comics. The biggest is that continuing their disagreement with Fox, where Fox still has the rights to X-Men movie franchises, and Marvel isn't happy about that, they kept Wolverine dead for 3 years, which in comic time is almost an eternity http://www.iswolverinestilldead.com/. This seems to have been essentially because he was one of the most popular of the X-Men characters. So they were willing to shoot themselves in the foot in order to be able to say "screw you" to Fox even as it only hurt Marvel's bottom line. The last few years, Marvel has had a lot of little petty things like this that haven't helped the brand.
So it's a good thing if they can end that nonsense soon
Classically, Slashdot has "News for nerds, stuff that matters"- this seems to be in the first category. One could argue that based on the classic word cloud associations this is closer to "geek" than "nerd" https://slackprop.wordpress.com/2013/06/03/on-geek-versus-nerd/, but the overlap between those two has always been pretty high.
You must be new here.
Indeed, Marvel has just canceled the Guardians of the Galaxy comic book series.
Well, to be fair, the new movie kinda sucked balls. It's as if the director said "let's refilm the first movie, but simplify the plot, add more explosions, and make all the acting reminiscent of a middle school play".
I wouldn't have expected it to drum up comic book sales.
The corporatization of comics along with the yearly "big event" (bigger than the year before) in which heros, die, are reborn, lose powers (and maybe limbs), gain powers (and maybe limbs), are transported to alternative realms and the Earth, humanity or the universe is fundamentally changed in some way. These big events seem to be set up simply for having a movie that people can look forwards to down the line. Over the past 15 years or so, there's been a real loss of character driven stories and arcs which are what made comics great in the first place. I know Disney/Warner won't give up Marvel/DC as they drive movie and TV profits which means that they drive the comics to create properties/stories for these mediums.
So, where are the great independents that can drive stories away from the corporate oligarchs? There really needs to be some new life/blood brought in.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
I am buying just two series these days : Berserk (follower since 2001) and Saga. I find manga usually easier to follow. I also like how Saga is delivered in thick hardcover versions months or years after the issues are printed.
The real question you should be asking is whether or not it's an improvement over the parade of SJW flamebait stories over the last week or so.
Spoiler alert: it isn't, and I'd wager not very many people are too stupid to tell.
Of course this is just a data point, but it goes with the general trend.
Kids are getting exposed to comic characters but not that interested in the comics themselves.
My kids were exposed to comic books at a young age. They're 11 and 14 now and love the trade paperbacks (but are not at all interested in getting individual issues).
Their friends, for the most part, just like the movies and TV shows and aren't at all interested in the back stories from the comics.
My personal take on DC beating Marvel this year: DC's previous reboot failed so miserably that there was a pent up demand for something readable in the DC universe. DC Rebirth fits the bill so more DC purchases this year.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
There'll be no loss if these two both went underwater for good.
Why buy the individual issues when they're just going to come out with a trade paperback?
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
I remember back when I was a kid, that I got into comics because of Star Wars, and bought a lot of Star Wars comics.
Even more recently after watching Firefly, first the TV series then the movie, I was really happy to find the related comics.
That's why to me it's such a surprise the very popular movies are not driving comic book sales, at all, to the point where (as mentioned and a surprise to me) they are cancelling Guardians of the Galaxy comics!
Now i have to admit, it's not like I sought out Marvel comics even after watching a lot of their properties on file and TV. But it seems like there could have been some draw from the movies back to comics, if they had tied them in better, maybe short series setting up things in the movie, or based around the aftermath of events in the movie. Maybe they did do that and I never knew...
On a side note, can you not totally see those all gold people in Guardians of the Galaxy 2 being a perfect fit with a full-page comic Hostess Twinkie advertisement? Just seems like a natural fit somehow.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Carl Barks (aka "The Good Artist") https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Barks created Uncle Scrooge and both drew and wrote the Uncle Scrooge and Donald Duck comics back in the 50s and they were the BEST comix around. Whenever I take a glance at the modern 'action hero' comics, I find the stories pretentious, repetitive and rather stupid and uninformed, and the characters one dimensional, compared to the old Uncle Scrooge and Donald Duck stories. Uncle Scrooge with his money, Donald Duck with his sheer toughness, and Huey, Dewey, and Louie with their Junior Woodchucks' handbook could take on anybody. Oh, and then there was Gyro Gearloose...
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
So tired of a new comic book movie every fucking month.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
The stories should reflect society as it is today. White men controlling everything is so 1950's.
The stories should maximize profit.
Tangentially, if the stories are riveting and artistically interesting or win awards for things (such as artwork or plot or character development), that will cause greater sales and thus greater profits.
Female Thor and black female Iron Man - those were seemingly *not* chosen to maximize profit.
This comes as a surprise?
-Who doesn't enjoy preachy fiction stories?
-Why wouldn't a story written to fill diversity quotas be as compelling as a story written to entertain?
-Don't comic book readers want to worship the latest designated victim class members?
-Why doesn't the regular comic book audience appreciate the new characters adaptations that are meant to appeal to a new, completely different audience who have never been much into comic books?
It sure is a mystery what's going on.
If they were still for boys they might not be in decline.
Batman, Superman, and Spiderman are so 20th century. Try humanoids.com for some fresh air.
What drugs are you doing today Sparky? Alex Jones calles he wants his pipe back
Pandering to a non existent market by destroying your core characters by replacing them with well intentioned morally improving replacements is not the solution.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
Marvel was hijacked by a group of SJW types that nearly destroyed Marvel a few years ago. Marvel already had a lot of diversity before this but the SJW writers decided that they wanted to purge all of the white male heterosexuals from their customer base. I'm not exaggerating or being dishonest about that statement. They literally were openly attacking 95% of their customers and started catering exclusively to trans, gays and oppressed "minorities." Naturally, calling a bunch of left leaning nerds a bunch of "alt-right nazis" is a great way to ruin your sales. Nerds went to DC and now Disney just noticed this mess. So now Disney is purging the SJW out of Marvel.
Had Wolverine both dead and not-dead for the entire series.
The future guys who occasionally travelled back had wolverines adamantium skeleton kept in a jar while in the past he was kicking ass and taking names while getting his bromance on with Sabertooth periodically.
Marvel put out a bunch of titles slanted towards social justice. And mucked with long-treasured characters in less than welcome ways.
If you can pull that off well, it might work. But they didn't.
Confusing and less than wonderful storytelling didn't help either.
So the comic-buying public has moved away, or moved to the Distinguished Competition.
Comics is a business. Produce good characters, good art, and good storylines that your potential buyers want to buy. Do otherwise, and don't surprised if you fail.
You heard me, go read fucking Snagglepuss. This is why DC is kicking Marvel in the dick on sales.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
i'm sure inspiration for batman in his tight clothes with his 'boy' , masked and all, came straight from the gay-bdsm scene
Yes, the duck comics were some pretty original stuff (and inspired the Indiana Jones films.)
But one of the benefits of mundane reboots in modern comics is they recontextualize the plot in a modern social context.
Like the Ducktales reboot is unnecessary, but without it, people will forget about the comics entirely. What has happened in the last 10 years is the introduction of social media where the previous decade introduced the Internet and prior to that computers.
So it's not comics fault that technology decided to leapfrog itself, but since 9/11 pretty much the fun and adventure has been sucked out both marvel and DC's comics, leaving only dues-ex-militarization stories that are not inspiring and more about creating screenplays for shallow films.
Young females don't apparently buy comic books in large numbers.
And apparently minorities don't buy comic books in large numbers.
It is reasonable to say, "Well all the stars are white male so why would women and minorities buy the comics?" but shifting the focus drove away existing customers and hasn't resulted in enough extra sales to women and minorities.
That being said- the reasons I stopped buying comic books had to do with price and dystopic topics. When I was a kid they were a cheap product that cost the same as a Hershey almond bar or a bottle of coke at the convenience store.
Today, they are double to triple the price. Really, two comic books which I could read in 20 minutes cost as much as a book which will take hours to read. Comic books production values are too high for the child audience so children never pick up the habit.
Second- I was an iron man fan-- until the 5th or 7th time he fell off the wagon. I don't read comic book stories to feel unending misery for literally *years*. I want to be happy, inspired, surprised for my money.
On a minor note, I do not like it when they rebrand an existing I.P. When they take Thor and make it someone else, I have no interest in the story. Make a new hero- don't step on my childhood I.P.
I have the same issue with The Last Jedi. Make a *new* movie with new characters if you want to make a dystopic piece of crap in a "no win" universe. Don't ruin my childhood I.P. or I will stop giving you my money.
(and on that note: TLJ box office is down by over 50% per day compared to TFA- no one wants to see it twice- and fewer want to see it even once because its such a nasty, toxic piece of work. For bonus points- merchansiding orders are down 47% too. That's going to get Disney's attention- I hope they fired Kennedy and put someone who l actually likes the films and characters like the executive producer over the MCU).
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
as such things go. And you'll find plenty of SJW stuff in DC. I suspect it's more to do with the movie universe making it's way into the comics and turning off the more hardcore, which are generally the only ones that buy more than an issue or two or maybe a graphic novel when a new movie comes out.
By the way, I know this is an intensely unpopular opinion but am I the only one that finds it odd that social justice is a bad word? Yeah, yeah, the crazy feminist who runs your local community college's woman's studies program is pretty annoying, amiright? But then you've got Harvey Weinstein. And Philando Castile. And Flint, Mi. And Puerto Rico. And hell America's entire for profit health insurance industry. There's too many examples of injustice to list. It feels like we're letting the chick who runs the CC's woman's study distract us from real problems. And I'm left wondering if somebody isn't using SJW backlash to engineer that...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
... market USians still think "superhero comics" == "comics".
Meanwhile European, Franco-Belgian and Japanese comics still make up 95% of the total of all comics and are still doing perfectly fine.
There, FTFY.
In other news:
"Are marvel and DC fans finally discovering how shitty, bland, boring, overpriced and repetitive their favorite comics are?"
"DC comic readers head explodes from overload after catching glimpse of Franco-Belgian hardcover by Vance & van Hamme"
"Marvel enthusiast dies of heart attack and endorphine overdose after repeatedly masturbating to French Milo Manara album."
"US Superhero fan sells all belongings, moves to southern Europe after enchanting read of Coseys "A trip to Italy" comic"
"Euro comic shipment arrives at US borders. Marvel & DC stock plummets."
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Yeah, those fucking lazy pervs, man-haters and potential suicide bombers in the Social Justice/Gender Pronoun/Feminism/ReligionOfPeace movements are really good at bringing social pressure and demanding change. They're good at proposing shitty ideas for deranging your current product lineups. And they'll beat on you long enough that, eventually, it might ALMOST sounds like a not-totally-bad idea!
And hey! You might break open a new market!
You know what they're all NOT good at?
BUYING COMIC BOOKS!
Sure, once you cave, they MIGHT, maybe, buy the first issue, maybe two. And then, mission accomplished (to make you kowtow to their ideology), they vanish.
Unless they've wormed their way into authority positions in your organization, then you're TOTALLY fucked and your business is doomed to crash and burn because of their myopic "vision".
Marvel has been told this, repeatedly.
Hell, they even ADMITTED IT.
Yet they're caught in the claws of The Monster now. And it's going to ride the corpse all the way down.
Decades and decades of labor and creativity. Flushed down the drain while they hold SHIT pressed to their bossoms.
It's sad. But not sad enough to actually make me give them my hard earned money.
Can these people please leave their comic book garbage for actual comic books?
Even since CG's been cheap enough to use all over the place in movies, we pretty much got a never-ending stream of comic book-based movies and very little else. Personally, I already had my fill after about 3 of these so-called blockbusters. I haven't had a reason to go see more than one movie a year in theaters (if that) in nearly 2 decades.
I guess I'm a little late to start complaining about this?
'nuff said.
will be a minority. If they haven't built up a fan base by then they're toast. These are large companies, they need to think long term.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Now we're burned out on the movies and TV series. DC seems fresh by comparison.
Part of the problem might be that there are about a million titles these days, and product fatigue is probably an issue. How many books do I have to read to keep up with whatever wolverine and spider-man are doing each month? Back in the 80's it would have been about 3. In addition, there a huge number of independent titles and publishers getting in on the game, so there is more competition for readers than ever.
On top of that, re-writing all the classic heroes to be more ethnically and gender diverse is kinda lame. Don't make the Hulk Asian and Ms. Marvel Moslem, just keep them they way they were, and create new characters and give them their own books. If they are well written, they will sell. If they don't sell, at least you haven't fucked up your classic characters.
Modern comics aren't cheap either. Back in the golden age of comics they were printed cheaply on flimsy newsprint and cranked out in en mass so they were pretty affordable. Over the years we got to the point that they are printed on super high quality paper and bound in book format, but when publishing shifted to digital format, I am not sure that there was any price drop to reflect the efficiency in moving to non-physical distribution.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Why read a comic book when you can watch 47 comic movies per year, as the current rate see.s to be?
First, a declaration, been reading comics since I was old enough to read, over 40 years and in general I have always preferred DC over Marvel myself, but also enjoy ones from all publishers, big name and not. I just happen to be a person that prefers the pure escapism that DC promotes more than the more "realistic" world that Marvel presents.
That being said, this article is flawed. It says that the data is only about issues ordered by comic shops. E-comics are a big part of the pie now though and especially now with a number of all-you-can-read options available, the actual readership of titles could be completely different than what these numbers say.
If that were true, then why doesn't everything get a reboot (eg, 1984, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Bible, etc)? Further, what is wrong with "forgetting" something from a previous generation?
No, we don't want a female Thor. Hopefully DC learns from Marvel's massive failure that forcing some garbage preaching SJW mottos at us equals failure.
Here's the TD;DR version of Marvel in the last few years. They let SJWs take over to look progressive and all the customers left.
This is not the first time this has happened. Marvel hasn't always been #1, and floppies don't move the way they used to. Marvel did okay in 2017, all things considered.
The single biggest contributing factor this time, in my opinion, was the harassment movement on Youtube drove away new Marvel fans by the truckload while actively promoting DC titles.Twitter only compounded the problem. This situation has nothing to do with marketing as we know it. It has nothing to do with pissing off your audience, or even the content of the books.
Instead, what you see is DC creators signing on to and colluding with harassment and hate speech campaigns designed to make the conversation around Marvel titles as toxic as possible. It's a very shrewd move on DC's part if it's premeditated.
Using targeted harassment in this way is going to explode in their faces though. It's already driving sales across the rest of the industry down. Only a matter of time before this hits DC hard.