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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
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.
What you say could be true, but I think the SJW campaign is probably the biggest reason. It's not just Wolverine.
X-23 is wearing Wolverine's old costume and going by the name "Wolverine" now. Tony Stark is gone, and a teenaged black girl is Iron Man now. (Her name is "IronHeart" but the comic book is still named Iron Man.). Thor is gone and a woman picked up the hammer (she was worthy). Spider-Man isn't gone but there is a second, Hispanic Spider-Man, plus comics where Gen Stacy became Spider-Gwen. They killed Captain America and had Falcon (a black guy) become the new Captain America. There's even a new Hulk, an Asian guy.
In short, SJW Marvel seems to have had a policy of getting rid of the white male versions of their most popular characters, so they could swap in more diverse versions.
There are two huge problems. One is little kids seeing the movies and wanting to buy comics featuring the same characters; none are for sale. They have been walling off their own comics, preventing new customers from becoming fans! The other is that they forgot that their core mission is to tell good stories and entertain their customers... none of this diversity stuff was in service to the story, in fact the stories have been very poor.
There is a guy on YouTube whose channel name is "Diversity and Comics" and he has covered all this. He says that SJW Marvel has been hiring people based on who they are, not their experience making comics. The character of America Chavez is a lesbian female, and Marvel hired a lesbian female to write the comics. But she had no comics experience, and she has done a terrible job of writing comics that fans want to read.
It seems clear that the corporate overlords are out of patience with SJW Marvel. The editor-in-chief was recently replaced, and all signs are that the new guy is going to axe the SJW campaign and try to give the fans what they want. The SJW usual suspects are melting down over this. A half-dozen comics with extremely poor sales were cancelled and the blog coverage was all about the impact this will have on diversity.
If the new editor-in-chief can turn things around, 2018 could be a much better year for Marvel. Most of their problems were self-inflicted.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely