| Author |
|
Eric White
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 17 October 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 1072
|
| Posted: 19 June 2009 at 12:09pm | IP Logged | 1
|
|
|
Most comic fans I know couldn't care less about how well a store is run. If a shitty store offers a bigger discount, goodbye to the store where everyone wears a green shirt!!
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
Brad Danson
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 02 May 2007
Posts: 1440
|
| Posted: 19 June 2009 at 12:09pm | IP Logged | 2
|
|
|
QUOTE:
| if so many stories hadn't been either unpleasant or poorly run, sales wouldn't have dropped as drastically as they did. |
|
|
Then I'm assuming you don't know the story of the speculator bust. Hundreds of thousands of people were buying comics in the early to mid-nineties. It was the equivalent of the Pokemon card phenomenon. It was a fad. The fad passed and thousands of customers went away and didn't come back. There was no way to keep all of those customers....though better comics might have helped.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
Donald Pfeffer
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 14 March 2009
Posts: 194
|
| Posted: 19 June 2009 at 12:16pm | IP Logged | 3
|
|
|
eric wrote:
| Most comic fans I know couldn't care less about how well a store is
run. If a shitty store offers a bigger discount, goodbye to the store
where everyone wears a green shirt!!
|
|
|
And that's the reason so many comic shops fail: They cater to the fans and nobody else.
brad wrote:
| Then I'm assuming you don't know the story of the speculator bust.
Hundreds of thousands of people were buying comics in the early to
mid-nineties. It was the equivalent of the Pokemon card phenomenon.
It was a fad. The fad passed and thousands of customers went away and
didn't come back. |
|
|
No, I'm aware of it. I certainly agree that it helped pave the way for the crash of the market, as I said. I simply don't think it's the one straw that broke the comic camel's back. A fad could've been a good thing for the industry, had there been more comic stores that were capable of winning over those new customers. I don't think it was just speculators who were buying up comics, but people who were actually interested in the medium. That's what a fad is, afterall. It wasn't speculators who made the hula hoop a fad, and those still sell, though certainly not in the numbers they did in their prime.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 134818
|
| Posted: 19 June 2009 at 12:18pm | IP Logged | 4
|
|
|
During the whole Doomsday/Death of Superman thing, there were a couple of shops in my area that lied and said they didn't get any of those books in when they did....... and a few weeks later selling those issues for 10-20 times cover price. •• I was doing a signing at a local store the week the issue came out, and saw the owner take the books out of the delivery bundle and put them on the counter for $40 each, The day they came out. He said he didn't want to "lose money". On a book that was going to sell many multiples of what the previous issue had sold.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
Eric White
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 17 October 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 1072
|
| Posted: 19 June 2009 at 12:18pm | IP Logged | 5
|
|
|
You guys spent half your time making pinups and posing for wizard cause
you sold there mag for them in the 90's..and they sold you to the
public but when crap came out and the stuff was late or unreadable the
person who fell for it was the comicshop owner and he paid the heavy
cost!! he lost his store!!
++++++++++
That's closer to the way I remember things. I don't know how the distributor wars affected comic shops but I do know all the Image late books and speculator driven "special issues" had a huge negative impact which killed half the comic shops.
Now we have DC and Marvel pumping out tons of crap to keep their hold on the direct sales market. Something they did back in the 90's when Image was a legitimate threat to them.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
Greg Woronchak
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 04 September 2007
Location: Canada
Posts: 1631
|
| Posted: 19 June 2009 at 1:10pm | IP Logged | 6
|
|
|
Now we have DC and Marvel pumping out tons of crap to keep their hold on the direct sales market.
I've been quite impressed with the wide variety of material Marvel puts out; they have books that cater to young readers, comics for folk who like novels, even books directed at female readers. DC is starting to think outside the box with new formats (Wednesday Comics) that are being marketed properly (USA Today).
If the average person on the street was more aware of what is being published today, and could actually find them easily (and they were produced in a professional manner, including being on time), I'm certain the industry would be in better shape.
I remember when the 90s bubble burst how things looked very grim. What eventually happened is that talented creative teams started producing work (which shipped mostly on time) that got people excited about reading comics again. I hope this current trend of decompressed television screenplays fades away, and that more folk who are passionate about comics, not simply in it for the money, take over.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
| www
e-mail
|
| |
Arc Carlton
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 13 April 2009
Location: Peru
Posts: 3493
|
| Posted: 19 June 2009 at 1:13pm | IP Logged | 7
|
|
|
I was doing a signing at a local store the week the issue came out, and saw the owner take the books out of the delivery bundle and put them on the counter for $40 each, The day they came out.
__________________
That guy was an evil speculator.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
e-mail
|
| |
Erik Larsen
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 February 2008
Location: United States
Posts: 344
|
| Posted: 19 June 2009 at 1:20pm | IP Logged | 8
|
|
|
The Question was "Wasn't it all those Image late books that caused so
many comic shops to go under in the 90's?" The answer is "No."
Certainly we, as a group, acted in an irresponsible manner. Some of us
got out act together--some did not. I did not, personally, cancel any
books in those early days or even ship many late titles. I had a grand total
of ONE book which was returnable due to lateness. Several others had
near-spotless track records--others did not.
But both X-Men #1 and the Return of Superman were ordered in the
multiple millions of copies and there were literally millions of copies that
went unsold. In the case of Image books, some were over-ordered--but
not to that extent--and like I said, orders fluctuated wildly as books
sold out and didn't sell out and retailers scrambled to figure out a pattern
to the madness.
I'm sure there were a few stores that did go under because of what we
did--but both X-Men and the Return of Superman caused HUNDREDS of
stores to close their doors (somewhere I heard that X-Men #1 led to the
closing of a FIFTH of the existing comic books stores at the time--that
seems unfathomable but a lot of small stores did live pretty close to the
edge and all it took was a little push, I guess).
Did we contribute? Absolutely. Did every other publisher contribute as
well by pumping out multiple "collectables?" Absolutely. There were few
innocents in the early to mid-'90s. But if one was to point to the two
biggest culprits-- X-Men #1 and the Return of Superman were the ones
that did the most damage.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
| www
|
| |
John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 134818
|
| Posted: 19 June 2009 at 1:25pm | IP Logged | 9
|
|
|
If the average person on the street was more aware of what is being published today, and could actually find them easily (and they were produced in a professional manner, including being on time), I'm certain the industry would be in better shape.•• Of course! Never in the history of marketing has a mass market product been deliberately turned into a niche market product, as the producers stand around scratching their heads and wondering where all the sales went. For more than half their history, comics depended in large part on impulse buys. Kids (like me!) who walked into the drugstore, the newsstand, the grocery store, the bus station, the airport magazine kiosk, etc, etc, etc, and found comics for sale. I bought the Dell adaptation of JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH (the 1960s movie) off a magazine stand in the lobby of a hotel my folks and I were staying at in San Francisco! I bought the first Silver Age Hawkman appearance (in BRAVE AND BOLD) off a rack at the end of one of the aisles in the grocery department of Woodward's, a big chain store up in Western Canada. Comics were everywhere, and they sold better. Duh!
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
Bruce Buchanan
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 14 June 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 4797
|
| Posted: 19 June 2009 at 1:31pm | IP Logged | 10
|
|
|
I can say with near certainty that I never would've gotten into comics had it not been for impulse buys.
When I was around six, I was at our local Kmart with my parents when I spotted a Marvel Comics three-pack containing Amazing Spider-Man #165, Captain America #210 and a Jack Kirby Eternals comic that went way over my young head. I begged them to buy it for me and the Spider-Man and Captain America stories hooked me instantly.
Even today, there's not a comics shop in my small hometown. So had those books not been available in a general retail store, I never would've discovered superhero comics as a kid.
Edited by Bruce Buchanan on 19 June 2009 at 1:32pm
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
| www
e-mail
|
| |
Eric White
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 17 October 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 1072
|
| Posted: 19 June 2009 at 1:40pm | IP Logged | 11
|
|
|
I've been quite impressed with the wide variety of material Marvel puts
out; they have books that cater to young readers, comics for folk who
like novels, even books directed at female readers. DC is starting to
think outside the box with new formats (Wednesday Comics) that are
being marketed properly (USA Today).
+++++
I'm not impressed at all. How many more "EVENTS" can they pump out and how many more ways can they find to publish a new Spider-Man or Batman title.
Yawn....
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 134818
|
| Posted: 19 June 2009 at 1:40pm | IP Logged | 12
|
|
|
Starting to collect (or even just read!) comics has been turned into a major undertaking. A kid (and let's pretend for a while that it would be a kid) has to decide to start buying, then has to locate a comic shop, then has to (most likely) get a ride to wherever that is. And tough t*tties if it's in the next town, forty miles away!When I was growing up, I never lived anywhere (and, remember, didn't have two Xmases in the same house until I was 16) where a store that sold comics was more than an easy walk or bike ride away.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
Topic Closed)
