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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."
Maybe it helps that DC headliners haven't (yet) been replaced with disastrous forced diversity versions?
Marvel focuses on movies and does a good job there, leaving their second string people to work on the comics.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
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.
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.
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
-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.
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.
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.
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.
... 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
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.
There was a movie meme trend in recent years of the cute, tiny woman who gains super powers somehow, and goes off on a spree of killing men.
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?
Actual social justice should ab a lofty goal. But the warriors are not necessarily about justice. Often it is revenge, or just another form of hate.
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.
Ah, just the right place to start. Instead of properly attacking the problem of creepy fucks like Weinstein, the crazy feminists you speak of go the #metoo route. Which is making more problems than it fixes. A world where due process is thrown out with the pursuit of justice isn't going to be quite like most women want.
What young women shold be taught to do is turn the guy in immediately after he harasses you. And a much better defined version of what harassment consists of would be a big help. And she needs to understand that by not turning the guy in, she is enabling him to harass more women. The same can go fro men harassed by women. Yes it happens.
Instead, we have now entered a brave new world where men, as the target, are taking measures to protect themselves from claims of harassment. Measures as having a chaperone present to avoid any one on one meetings with women. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/1... https://www.theatlantic.com/po... And some are trying to make this illegal! I kinda doubt that will work. Besides, who could object to having a chaperone for both parties protection?
Have you seen NBC's new gender interaction rules? No shared taxis. You will be fired if you do not report anything that you might consider sexual harassment, You will be fired if you do not report a suspected romance between employees. Any interaction between opposite sexes must be reported to Human Resources. And taking a vegan to a steak house is expressly forbidden. Aapparently some vegan was pissed because of a party at - you guessed it - a Steak House. There are very specific rules if you were to hug a person. Quick, and step away to avoid bodily contact. Seriously - I wonder if they have to have a reservation to hug, and a person with a stopwatch to time it? This is the new workplace, because in a world where an accusation from 20 years ago is sufficient evidence to destroy your career, it means that there is no due process, which means none is needed when she sues the company. So in that light, the rules make perfect sense. Google NBC's sexual harassment rules. And the problem is most women and men simply hate this - who wouldn't? But if you listen to the "Crazy feminist" who rather obviouly is a misandryst you'll end up with these sorts of rules as we abandon due process and the rule of law in order to protect women from all men. Most men and women can get along with each other. But in this brave new world, one cannnot be too careful lest they lose everything. I had this happen to me when I simply predicted what was goint to happen with the #metoo witch hunt.
There's too many examples of injustice to list. It feels like we're letting the chick
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
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.
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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.