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Jason Mark Hickok
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 08 February 2009
Location: United States
Posts: 10472
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| Posted: 19 June 2009 at 7:44pm | IP Logged | 1
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Brian- No more FF. There is the Batman: Brave and the Bold cartoon on Nick.
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Keith Thomas
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 06 April 2009
Location: United States
Posts: 3082
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| Posted: 19 June 2009 at 8:18pm | IP Logged | 2
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Iron Man
Oh yeah I've seen this, awful. Bad CG and nothing to do
with the real Iron Man, and everyones now a teenager.
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Ron Chevrier
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: Canada
Posts: 1641
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| Posted: 19 June 2009 at 9:11pm | IP Logged | 3
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Back in the 80's, when you could still find comics in convenience stores, I was still in my teens. My best friend and I would bike or bus to four or five convenience stores in the area every Wednesday after school. We'd haunt the stores until the owner would get fed up and open the magazine bundles, letting us have our first crack at the comics. Since funds were in short supply, we usually divided up the titles we liked, and swap our books on the weekend to read. That was how things went for a long while, and things were good.
I remember the gigantic monkey wrench in our routine that threatened to bring our world to a shuddering halt (at the time) when Marvel announced that henceforth Moon Knight, Micronauts (two of our faves), and Ka Zar (never found an issue in our neighbourhood) would be direct only. We kids were less worldly back then, and not really allowed to go downtown to the only comic store in Montreal at the time, so we pretty much dumped the books. I got a subscription to Micronauts for a while, but they always got pretty mangled, so that didn't really work out too well. Anyhow, once that precedent was set, DC followed suit by announcing that Teen Titans (probably our favorite title) and Omega Men (drawn by Giffen in back when he was ding his cool Legion style) would also go direct only. I was two or three months away from graduating high school, so even when I began college downtown in September, that would still put me about five months behind on the title. I remember doing a lot of sneaking around to the comic shop that summer, all the while worried that Someone Who Knew My Folks would see me.
Around that time, I remember going to those convenience stores less and less, since all the comics I wanted (and some I didn't even know I wanted until I saw them) were available at the comic shop.
And sometime after 1984 when I graduated, comics slowly disappeared from the convenience stores, and I think hardly anybody noticed or cared. Now, I can't even find a frikkin' Archie Digest in these stores unless it's in French, but that's a Quebec thing. Whole 'nuther story.
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Robert Oren
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 23 March 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 1209
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| Posted: 19 June 2009 at 9:32pm | IP Logged | 4
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If they don't read, why are they downloading comics?
...................................................
Gee mike cause they like the pretty pictures
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Brian Talley
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 5123
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| Posted: 19 June 2009 at 9:34pm | IP Logged | 5
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I do see comics in local 7-11 stores here in eastern VA. Not many mind you, but they are there.
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Charles Valderrama
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 4949
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| Posted: 19 June 2009 at 9:41pm | IP Logged | 6
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The biggest enemy ....is the times and advancements in the digital age!!
*******
Maybe the bigger enemy is poor parenting... kids should be told NOT to
spend so much time with video games and pick up a book... or a COMIC
BOOK... there should be time for BOTH and the importance of reading should be
stressed more than downloading the latest games or sending
text messages.
-C!
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Jeff W Williams
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 06 August 2007
Location: United States
Posts: 299
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| Posted: 19 June 2009 at 10:22pm | IP Logged | 7
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QUOTE:
| Aside from an unwillingness to do so, is it logistically and
economically possible for Marvel, DC and others to once again place
their comics in convenience stores, corner groceries, pharmacies, etc? |
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The convenience stores, groceries, and pharmacies don't want them. They don't make them anything close to as much money as a rack of magazines does, and take up too much space to just sell as a loss leader. Even if Marvel, DC et al made a concerted effort, it's just not worth it to those places, generally speaking. It's not a matter of DC and Marvel "choosing" not to put their books "everywhere". At the dawn of the direct market, yes, it was, but not anymore. It could be argued they made their bed and have to lie in now, certainly. But to suggest that it's somehow up to them at this point is silly.
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Erik Larsen
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 February 2008
Location: United States
Posts: 344
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| Posted: 19 June 2009 at 11:50pm | IP Logged | 8
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That's pretty much the case--some time ago some marketing guy
determined that, based on square feet, spinner racks were not economically
worthwhile compared with other items. They also attracted people who
would loiter and read or destroy the books. So--out they went.
For a while it got pretty bad. At least there are spinner racks in some
bookstores now.
As a kid I had to make a serious effort to get comics but having been
exposed to them (thanks, dad) I found a way--even if it meant hitchhiking
20 miles (no joke).
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Knut Robert Knutsen
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 22 September 2006
Posts: 7374
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| Posted: 20 June 2009 at 12:56am | IP Logged | 9
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Even though newspapers are supposedly dying, I would think it would be possible to create comics in the Wednesday comics format (about a newspaper worth) and do as we do with national newspapers over here.
To cut down on distribution time and distribution costs, the major newspapers here lease printing time at the printers of the regional newpsapers and just send out the files electronically.
Space is set aside for regional ad-space so that instead of a few national ads and a lot of ads limited to the city that the national paper is originally printed in, you get ads specific to the region the paper is sold in. Which increases ad revenue. The regional newspaper gets a cut for getting in the ads, doing re-edits and handling the hands-on work with the printers and distributors.
So, you can ship comics out as a weekly newspaper, on newsprint. That's not going to be economically viable everywhere, but in New York, Boston, Chicago, Miami, LA and all the other major urban centers you can probably set up something like that and have a hope of balancing out. It would have to be in co-operation with a lot of regional newspapers and in some areas it might even serve as a weekend supplement for a newspaper.
Of course we're talking about well written, well-drawn all-ages comics here (proper all-ages as in not "dumbed down for the kids" but "let's not go overboard with the sex and the swearing and the blasphemy" i.e. keep Garth Ennis far away from it), without a lot of deep continuity stuff, but it might be worth a shot. Remember, this doesn't come instead of the comics shops or challenge the comics shops in any way. For some the weekly paper would be the only comic they read, but for some it's going to whet the appetite for what the comics store can provide.
Oh, and the paper should not be going to comics shops, at least not through Diamond. It is important that the newsstand sales are strong.And I know the comics shops will gripe about that. But collected editions are going to the comics shops anyway. And that's where the real money is.
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Joe Smith
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 29 August 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 6709
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| Posted: 20 June 2009 at 1:00am | IP Logged | 10
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I hear that, Erik.
I don't know what was worse, riding my 10 speed 20 miles
two towns away at 15, or a friend stealing his Dad's car
while we skipped school to go two towns over at 18. (Yes,
we got in an accident and got completely screwed, but we
MADE IT to the damn store and GOT OUR COMICS! It was
Byrne's MAN OF STEEL and Maguire's JUSTICE LEAGUE!! We
had to!!)
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 134829
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| Posted: 20 June 2009 at 4:44am | IP Logged | 11
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I remember the gigantic monkey wrench in our routine that threatened to bring our world to a shuddering halt (at the time) when Marvel announced that henceforth Moon Knight, Micronauts (two of our faves), and Ka Zar (never found an issue in our neighbourhood) would be direct only.•• That was one of my earliest "voice crying in the wilderness" moments. Is this a good idea? I wondered. And asked. It seemed to me that books that slipped below a certain level of sales should be canceled, not turned into something that was basically an early example of the diminished expectations that have become the standard of the Industry.
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Robert Walsh
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 24 July 2008
Posts: 456
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| Posted: 20 June 2009 at 7:12am | IP Logged | 12
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Maybe the bigger enemy is poor parenting... kids should be told NOT to
spend so much time with video games and pick up a book... or a COMIC
BOOK... there should be time for BOTH and the importance of reading should be
stressed more than downloading the latest games or sending
text messages.
* * * * * *
Yeah, get parents to encourage their kids to read comics. That'll kill 'em faster than a bullet :)
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