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Pedro Bouça
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: Portugal
Posts: 1465
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| Posted: 08 May 2013 at 3:59am | IP Logged | 1
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Stephen, I don't think anyone buys the ENTIRE Marvel output. And even if it was cut to one third, I doubt it would make lots of people read it all.
Reducing the line has been tried before. As an exemple we all know very well, when JB got into Spider-Man, the regular Spider-Man titles were reduced from four to two. Sales went up for a while, but they certanly didn't double. The same happened when the Superman books had a similar downsizing.
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Greg Woronchak
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Joined: 04 September 2007
Location: Canada
Posts: 1631
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| Posted: 08 May 2013 at 6:30am | IP Logged | 2
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Can publishers and retailers really make any money on $1.99 comics?
Any business can thrive if it finds a way to reduce costs; it seems to me that there are a long list of employees (mainly 'suits') at the Big Two that are superfluous.
Wasn't the Marvel bullpen 'lean and mean' in the early days?
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David Ferguson
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Joined: 17 March 2007
Location: Ireland
Posts: 6782
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| Posted: 08 May 2013 at 6:53am | IP Logged | 3
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I'm wondering how much "free money" the publishers are making on the back issues that are available digitally. There's the cost of scanning them I suppose. I don't know if any of the creators are getting a piece of that pie. I somehow doubt it.
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Ed Love
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Joined: 05 October 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 2712
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| Posted: 08 May 2013 at 8:05am | IP Logged | 4
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It's still not "free" money. You either contract through another company (which most seem to do) or you have to pay programmers and for servers, upgrades, etc. Someone is paying for that overhead. Most comics nowadays are created digitally to start with, so the scanners/image techs are only needed for the older stuff. But, from the numbers I've seen, the companies are getting about the same cut from the digital copies as they are the paper ones. And, the sales aren't as strong.
As the article talks about is that the strength with digital is the longer shelf life. It basically means that when someone buys a back-issue, the companies (and hopefully the creators through royalties) get a piece of the pie instead of the retailer. Also, when you're Warner Brothers and Disney, you can spread out those monthly fixed costs across thousands of issues.
However, reboots harm back issue sales. There was an article about how pre52 trade paperback sales dropped after the reboot. Because the company is sending the message to the readers that older issues and comics don't matter. To fuel interest in their incredibly rich library, their stories need to be that they all matter, to rejoice in the vast history. You don't get that with scorched earth attitudes towards writing. This is also true with crapping on characters and cannon fodder attitude towards any character the creator happens to not like. You foster interest by showing what makes them great and cool, not highlighting why you think they are lame. I think the article was dead-on in that assessment. The current approach to comics at the big two is all about short-term. It's not interested in creating a cash cow. And, other companies are just as guilty. Archie, Dark Horse, Valiant are all dusting off their superhero concepts and doing revamps, rendering their back issues irrelevant. Imagine if they built on instead of built over and then offered all the back issues at $1.00 apiece digitally. But, there's no reason to be interested in those older issues because they are either largely irrelevant or repetitive as the new issues play over the same themes.
What they'll probably ultimately do, especially now that the Mouse is in charge at Disney, is control supply and create demand by keeping popular stuff only online briefly and re-release them every so many years (with some new content or reformatted to better take advantage of new technologies to entice the older readers that bought it once before).
I think there's a ton of money to be made with the companies creating a safe place on the kindles for kids to have various entertainment options at their fingertips while in the car or a rainy day. You want your kid to read, you hand them a kindle where they can read Scooby Doo, Bugs Bunny, Donald Duck or do some puzzles, and play interactive games involving their characters. And, the big two have the libraries already made if didn't compartmentalize their divisions so much. They got the characters parents know and trust, the comics, the books and activity books, decades of cartoons, and the resources. They just need to bring it all together.
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John Z Cannan
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 30 November 2011
Location: United States
Posts: 181
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| Posted: 08 May 2013 at 10:47am | IP Logged | 5
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Ed, you've crystalized one of the reasons I don't buy comics as much as I used to. What's the point of becoming emotionally invested in a series if it is going to be rebooted anyway?
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Jesse Perkins
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 14 April 2013
Location: United States
Posts: 172
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| Posted: 08 May 2013 at 3:30pm | IP Logged | 6
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Do long time readers think digital comics read as well as printed versions?
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Steve De Young
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Joined: 01 April 2008
Location: United States
Posts: 3496
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| Posted: 08 May 2013 at 4:08pm | IP Logged | 7
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Any business can thrive if it finds a way to reduce costs
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That to me seems to be the biggest positive impact of whittling the line down. Look at all of the book from the 'New52' that have already been cancelled. None of them was a shocker, other than some surprise that a few of them lasted as long as they did. It seems to me that if the sales are so low that these things are getting cancelled after, say 8 issues, it would have made more financial sense for DC just to never publish them in the first place.
Regardless of its effect on the sales of the remaining books, which I would think could only be positive, only publishing the books that sell in profitable numbers would seem to cut costs and increase revenues.
P.S. Did anybody else notice today that on the day DC published the last issue of Ravagers, cancelled due to low sales, they also published a Ravagers TPB collecting the first 6 issues? Can anybody make sense of that for me?
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Lars Sandmark
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Joined: 05 October 2007
Location: Canada
Posts: 3144
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| Posted: 08 May 2013 at 4:09pm | IP Logged | 8
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I kinda feel comic companies are happily allowing the elimination of comic stores in favour of digital.
I can imagine back in the day some company suit saying:
"A copy of Action Comics #1 just sold for a million dollars, how much of that profit is coming to the company?"
"None, sir. That amount goes to a retailer shop."
"We can't have that. Let's crush the middle-man."
I'm sure that never happened but man, it feels like the companies aren't supportive of back issue market health.
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David Ferguson
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 17 March 2007
Location: Ireland
Posts: 6782
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| Posted: 09 May 2013 at 4:51am | IP Logged | 9
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Do long time readers think digital comics read as well as printed versions?
*** They look great on the iPad. I've moved to mostly digital since I bought mine.
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Joe Zhang
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Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 12857
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| Posted: 09 May 2013 at 5:31am | IP Logged | 10
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Whoa, whoa, guys. I would be happy with cheaper comics and less "title bloat", but that way leads to a lot of unemployed writers and artists, many of whom would be the experienced, higher-earning guys whose work I follow.
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Topic Closed)
