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Erin Anna Leach
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 21 February 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 746
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| Posted: 04 February 2009 at 11:38am | IP Logged | 1
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I'm not denying anyones claims against comics going digital, part of me feels the same way. However, to ignore that this is most likely the way things will be in the not too distant future would be a mistake. Just like when lettering went from being hand done to computer done back in the 90's. Yeah the by hand people were way more talented, and what they did was an art form unto itself. Despite all of their protests lettering went to the computer, and those who did not adapt to this soon found themselves looking for work. Don't get me wrong, I have the utmost respect and admiration for comics being created in the " old school " method, and I do feel that it should be more recognized for the artform it is. However, those methods aren't cost effective in todays world, and little Jonney can't afford $3.99 a comic book to buy it in print form. I LOVE comic books, so much so I have let nothing stand in my way of persueing a carreer in comic books. I also recognize that comic book publishing is a business, it has always been a business, and at the end of the day businesses have to be making money and showing profits. If they are not doing this, they can't employ people like John Byrne, and many others that work in this field. I'm not trying to defend this, as there is nothing to defend, it's just how things are going to go, and we the fans are left with the choice of accepting it or not.
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Robert White
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 4560
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| Posted: 04 February 2009 at 12:00pm | IP Logged | 2
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All I can say is that I'm a 31 year old guy who thought I could never get used to reading comics on a laptop. I was wrong. I have a subscription to Marvel Digital Comics, virtually all of the CD-Rom's and use CDisplay for digital versions of my back-issue library. The idea of having thousands of comics at my finger tips, neatly organized in little folders by my favorite creative teams and runs, is appealing to me. Getting a new laptop with a clearview monitor changed everything for me as far as reading comics online.
The only thing I care about is the characters and the creators-the content. It's also a blast reading a Kirby comic at the same large page size that he used to draw at. Don't knock it till ya tried it.
*I'd also like to comment for those turned off by the limitations of the PDF format to understand that there are FAR superior technologies out there for reading comics, like CDisplay.
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Andrew Burton
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 04 January 2009
Location: United States
Posts: 116
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| Posted: 04 February 2009 at 12:23pm | IP Logged | 3
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I'm sure this has been brought up but what about the cost? $3.99 for one comic book is pretty high even when factoring the cost of inflation. I think they are pricing themselves right out of business. I understand they can't be $1.00 anymore but what about $2.00 or $2.50?
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Jason Czeskleba
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 30 April 2004
Posts: 4620
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| Posted: 04 February 2009 at 1:37pm | IP Logged | 4
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The price of a comic can't be reduced too low or it wouldn't be attractive to conventional retailers to stock them. That's a big part of the reason they disappeared from drugstores and grocery stores in the 80's/90's. I don't think there are many periodicals these days that sell for as low as $2.50. It's already an uphill battle to get them back into conventional outlets, and if the profit margin for retailers is too low they will say why bother.
That said, I think a large part of the reason people feel today's comics are over-priced is that the minimalist decompressed storylines don't give you very much entertainment bang for your buck. An average comic from the 60's or 70's takes me 15-20 minutes to read, whereas an average comic from today takes about 5 minutes. So content is part of the problem.
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Albert Holaso
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 23 May 2008
Posts: 17
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| Posted: 04 February 2009 at 1:46pm | IP Logged | 5
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Does anyone know how the subscription market is going? My brother and I have read comics for a long time. But we didn't become serial readers until my brother had a number of subscriptions thanks to our mom and the school book club. (At the time he was about 8 years old) When the subscriptions ran out, we were hooked on many characters and stories and became regular comic readers.
*side note: A good part of those subscription books happen to be John Byrne books...such as Alpha Flight and Fantastic Four. We also received Amazing Spiderman, X-Men, and the Hulk via mail.
The subscription opened our the world to the rest of the Marvel Universe and we visited comicshops to find our extra niche.
I haven't seen offers for subscriptions like how it was when I was a kid. It seems to me a very viable way to increase readership. And if subscriptions were more easily available, it feels hard as a parent to find appropriate books nowadays for young (pre-teen) children.
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Jason Czeskleba
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 30 April 2004
Posts: 4620
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| Posted: 04 February 2009 at 2:48pm | IP Logged | 6
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Based on the statements of circulation that appeared in the books back in the old days, subscriptions amounted to an extremely miniscule portion of the overall sales. I don't know if that is still the case today, but my guess would be that they account for an even lower percentage of sales than they did back then.
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Albert Holaso
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 23 May 2008
Posts: 17
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| Posted: 04 February 2009 at 4:23pm | IP Logged | 7
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Another point I would like to make is that subscriptions should be seen as an entry point for expanding readership rather than a revenue pot.
Subscription deals are essentially a marketing tool. If the stories and art are strong enough that alone should sustain the reader base after the initial subscription period hook in.
When my subscriptions ran out we didn't renew our subscriptions. Instead we went out to hunt for our books directly from newstands and eventually comicbook shops.
By today's standards I suppose Hollywood Movies can be seen as a marketing tool to drive comicbook sales. I wonder how much comicbook sales increase there was each time a comicbook movie made of respective books.
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Wes Wescovich
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 21 June 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 1726
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| Posted: 04 February 2009 at 11:31pm | IP Logged | 8
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Re: comics in Wal-Mart
In 1993, I worked for a newsstand distributor as a merchandiser/salesman. I had many Wal-Mart stores on my route and they had endcap racks (two flattened sides of a spinner) in each store. Some were in the toy department, some near the stationary(?). This was when Sam Walton was still living and Wal-Mart was VERY strict about what was carried there. We were not allowed to bring them Rolling Stone as Walton personally felt the magazine was subversive and un-American.
As far as comics, we had a unique problem, there were more comics each week than there were pockets on the racks and we were under strict orders to only put copies of one title per pocket. Some genius in marketing got the idea to create a "best-seller's" list with number tabs on the rack and only stock those comics. The result was that the purchasing agent would order twice the amount of comic titles than we could put out for sale. This meant that many titles were earmarked as best -sellers by our marketer and many others would be returned before ever being seen by potential consumers. At the time, we carried Marvel, DC, Archie, and then new companies, Malibu and Image. Which were both under the same publishing umbrella. Superman died and the rush that followed from the media coverage guaranteed those books a pocket, and the Image/Malibu sales staff had made an arrangement to get their books greater exposure, so they were very prevalent, as well. Marvel had only a few titles making the "top ten" and Archie NEVER made it. I would usually sneak a few copies of each onto the regular magazine rack, but most were returned, unseen. Then it happened. All the field agents received a copy of a letter from Wal-Mart corporate stating that ALL comic books were to be removed from their stores immediately. The reason we were given was that the subject matter of the comics was not consistent with the family atmosphere that they were trying to project. At the bottom of the letter were muddy looking photocopies of the follwoing covers:
 
While these were no more "indecent" than what was on the ocver of Cosmopolitan or Allure magazines, because they were comic books, Wal-Mart deemed them obscene and vulgar. So out went the comics. I wouldn't really blame Image, or Jim Lee for the entire company dropping comics as there were many, many other retailers dropping them in favor of using the available shelf/floor space for more profitable items, it certainly sticks in my mind whenever the topic of the death of newstand sales comes up. In recent years, I have seen some of the Marvel Adventures books and the two-in-one double reprints on the magazine rack at Wal-Mart in in my hometown. But I shake my head everytime a comic book movie comes out and the only non-apparal items stocked to promote it are coloring and story books. They also have dabbled in manga books, but I don't see them moving through the checkouts at any pace.
As far as putting spinner racks back in the stores? Too many casual readers would not touch a book from a spinner simply because of the general mentality that they are "gonna be worth something" and the racks generally allow the books to be damaged when people are flipping through the comics on them. Add in the fact that even at almost $4 a pop, the retail outlets are not going to make very much on each unit sold even if someone doesn't care if the comcis are beat up.
And since somebody usually brings this up, Archie has a very expensive, very long-term contract to put those digests at the checkout. All checkout pockets have to be purchased like advertising space and can be contracted for many years at a time. Archie's production costs on the digest are very low through the use of reprints with no royalties, so it makes them their highest selling product. Keeping them there in that line of sight insures the maximum sales and profit for the minimum production investment.
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Chris Geary
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 January 2009
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 1158
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| Posted: 04 February 2009 at 11:40pm | IP Logged | 9
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One of the problems with using Hollywood films as a marketing tool is that the comic they buy isn't the same as the film they watched. Even if they get the adaptation, that is usually very different from the film. Both in content and the experience. The Batmobile chase in the 1989 movie is seriously compressed to a few choice shots in the comic. Same as the triple lightsabre fight in the Phantom Menace. Anyone coming from the film to the comic is quite likely to say,'This is shit!!', and not worry about continuing. Or if they go to the main book, there's usually so much baggage and multi-part stories it makes it a bit tricky to get into the groove straight away.
One way to solve that in the past was to bring the comic in line with the film, which has been done in the past, and that is just asking for trouble.
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Warren Leonhardt
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 10 July 2008
Location: Canada
Posts: 454
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| Posted: 05 February 2009 at 12:17am | IP Logged | 10
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Archie's production costs on the digest are very low through the use of
reprints with no royalties, so it makes them their highest selling
product. Keeping them there in that line of sight insures the maximum
sales and profit for the minimum production investment.
++
Out of morbid curiosity, I have to ask why don't the Big 2 follow suit? Is there a clause w/ legal repercussions re: royalties and reprints?
Those newfangled Essentials and Showcases offer a lot of comics for the price. How hard would it be to toss a bit of colour in the stories (back-dated only as far as the 70s/80s which visually wouldn't seem so dated and yet not have the potentially objective material we saw in the 90s), mixed well with current cartoon crossovers (Brave & the Bold, Ben 10 Alien Force, etc) and sell 'em as a smaller digest that would fit the racks right next to the Archies? In the 80s I used to buy those DC digests up like crazy as a kid...Wha' hoppen?
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CJ Grebb
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 21 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 449
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| Posted: 05 February 2009 at 9:09am | IP Logged | 11
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As far as putting spinner racks back in the stores? Too many casual
readers would not touch a book from a spinner simply because of the
general mentality that they are "gonna be worth something" and the
racks generally allow the books to be damaged when people are flipping
through the comics on them. Add in the fact that even at almost $4 a
pop, the retail outlets are not going to make very much on each unit
sold even if someone doesn't care if the comcis are beat up.
****
Who are these casual readers you're speaking of? The 18-35 year-old speculators and fanboys? I'm not looking for their business. They have the Direct Sales Market to satiate their desires for event comics and "realistic" stories about superheroes.
I'm looking for the 9-14 year-olds with a little disposable income. The ones who don't care if the books are "realistic" and "gritty." The ones who just want to see the big monster throw a tractor trailer though a building. The ones who will mostly move on to other forms of literature in five years, leaving the comics for the next 9-14 year old. Most importantly, the ones who don't know or care that they're making an "investment."
On a side note, a lot of that Image stuff WAS inappropriate for kids, and taking it off the racks was perfectly reasonable. In my Wal-Mart fantasy, those are NOT the kind of comics that would be on the spinners.
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Dan Avenell
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 06 March 2008
Posts: 1038
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| Posted: 05 February 2009 at 11:25am | IP Logged | 12
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I think the Archie model is the way to go. Cheap reprinted (anything suitable from the last 50 years) digests, available in the local store or Wal-Mart.
In the UK when I was a kid, US Marvels were hard to find. British Marvel reprints were in my local newsagent - and often reprinted the classic stuff. And thus a fan was born.
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