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Roger A Ott II
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 29 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 5371
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| Posted: 28 July 2006 at 10:13am | IP Logged | 1
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Jason, I was wondering why you let your 3000th go by without something clever to commemorate.
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Roger A Ott II
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 29 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 5371
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| Posted: 28 July 2006 at 10:17am | IP Logged | 2
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Rodgrigo Baeza: Oh, I plead ignorance on my part. This is the first time someone tells me it's a problem (it's not specified in the "rules of conduct" post either). I'll see how to create a proper sig then, and leave the link out in the meantime.
It's just a setting in your preferences, where you can enter that sort of thing to have tacked on the end of your posts. But, that way those of us who don't care to read sig lines don't have to because we can turn it off in our preferences.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 134010
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| Posted: 28 July 2006 at 10:57am | IP Logged | 3
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The "17.000" figure has no basis in reality.
*****
Then I guess everyone up at Marvel back then was
smoking dope or something.
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Rodrigo Baeza
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 26 April 2004
Location: Chile
Posts: 37
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| Posted: 28 July 2006 at 11:26am | IP Logged | 4
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"Then I guess everyone up at Marvel back then was
smoking dope or something."
When did we start talking about "everyone" up at Marvel? It's only you (and your anonymous source) making that erroneous statement.
I can't understand why someone would so insistently claim that Kirby's books sold so badly in the 1970's, when the facts and common sense say otherwise. Why treat office gossip as fact?
Rodrigo
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Gene Kendall
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 13 September 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 209
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| Posted: 28 July 2006 at 11:44am | IP Logged | 5
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Maybe they meant 17,000 in the direct market?
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Scott Rowland
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 October 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 166
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| Posted: 28 July 2006 at 11:52am | IP Logged | 6
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Doesn't Marvel cancel books NOW when they dip that low? It would have been legendary throughout the industry if Captain America went that low in the 1970's. At the price point it was at then (30 cents?), the book would have been losing tons of money and would have been cancelled, just like other long-time Marvel star Sub-Mariner had been.
A quick check of the numbers:
30 cents * 50% discount *17,000 copies = $2550 coming back to Marvel to pay for art, writing, editorial, production, and printing. IF (just speculating, I don't know what the rates were then) it was a total of $100 a page to produce the pages before printing, that subtracts another $1800, leaving $750 dollars for printing. How much overprinting was required to sell those 17,000 copies? I seem to recall reading that they typically had about 2 returns for every copy sold, so you're talking $750 to print 51,000 copies. That seems awfully low to me, but I have zero feel for the costs of printing. Still, it sounds like someone was exaggerating to emphasize his point.
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Scott Rowland
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 October 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 166
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| Posted: 28 July 2006 at 12:01pm | IP Logged | 7
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Just saw Gene's note about maybe the 17,000 was direct market only. That makes a lot more sense -- no returns, plus newstand sales to that kept the book profitable, but a warning sign that it wasn't doing as well as they thought it should.
Knowing the source of the figures would be helpful for gauging credibility, too or seeing if there could have been a motive for spinning things to Jack's disbenefit. After having discovered Mark Gruenwald's comment about "Hack Kirby," I'm less inclined to take any of his statements about Kirby at face value.
As much as I love Jack, though, I think that he was in a no win situation -- he wanted to do comics his way, and the fans and the fans turned pros running the editorial offices wanted him to do comics the way they remembered him doing them. Most of those memories being viewed through rose-colored glasses, of course.
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Jon Godson
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 05 January 2005
Posts: 2468
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| Posted: 28 July 2006 at 2:07pm | IP Logged | 8
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It was JB who taught me to look at the Statement of Ownership to determine
the actual sales of Gaiman's Sandman, so I'm going to do the same for
Captain America. Looks to be a lot more than 17,000 to me.
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Robert White
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 4560
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| Posted: 28 July 2006 at 2:11pm | IP Logged | 9
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I'm surprised Mark Gruenwald said that about Kirby. Now a lot of his "Handbook" philosophy takes on a whole new meaning. I'm sure there is more to this than meets the eye. From the very little that I've read, Kirby was less than flattering with his opinions regarding the "cogs" working at Marvel in the late 70's and 80's.
The big problem I think that Kirby had with the industry was that he was a very independent creator who just so happened to have an imagination that created concepts that screamed "mainstream appeal."
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Ian Evans
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 September 2004
Posts: 2433
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| Posted: 28 July 2006 at 2:12pm | IP Logged | 10
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After having discovered Mark Gruenwald's comment about "Hack Kirby," I'm less inclined to take any of his statements about Kirby at face value.
*******
As a young comics fan, I had many thoughts/opinions that now strike me as arrogant, unfair, wrong etc. It is wrong to hold Gruenwald's fan letter up in this way as evidence of his - what? Disrespect for Kirby?
Sixteen year olds(and seventeen and eighteen and...) are, very often, assholes. It is what we become that matters.
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Robert White
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 4560
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| Posted: 28 July 2006 at 2:14pm | IP Logged | 11
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He was only that old? Ah, well...
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Ian Evans
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 September 2004
Posts: 2433
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| Posted: 28 July 2006 at 2:29pm | IP Logged | 12
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I don't know but this quote
wrote:
| Digressing, I was disappointed recently to find an example in print of a (then-future) comics professional referring to Jack Kirby as " 'Hack' Kirby." It was Mark Gruenwald in a letter in Collector's Dream, a fanzine published by the guys who did the original Marvel Indices |
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emphasis mine
suggests a young man to me
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Topic Closed)
