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Post by Deleted on Apr 8, 2015 21:46:09 GMT -5
I agree that Waid's Daredevil and Slott and Allred's Silver Surfer give me a similar feeling to my favorite Silver and Bronze Age runs. I haven't read all of either yet, but I'm about to get caught up with each after I finish Batman Zero Year. Marvel and DC have it in them to produce quality stuff, it's just that their fixation on editorial driven event comics makes it hard to loyally follow the A-list* series nowadays. *Silver Surfer and Daredevil are "A-list" to me. The problem is those editorial driven even t comics and A-list books outsell most of the "quality" titles like Waid's DD and Surfer 2 or 3 to 1. As long as that tentpole style stuff keeps outselling the books that are of the ilk of DD and Surfer, that's what Marvel's decision makers will keep focusing on and putting out. If those "quality" books sold better than the editorial event based stuff, there would be more of it. No company is going to stop producing their top selling products to satisfy a small minority of their customer base, whether it's comics or cola or cars or canned goods. There's no economic incentive for Marvel to stop publishing events and start producing more books like DD and Surfer, until there is, you get what people pay for. All the internet kevetching in the world can't outspeak the dollars given by the buying public. -M |
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Post by berkley on Apr 8, 2015 23:12:51 GMT -5
I agree that Waid's Daredevil and Slott and Allred's Silver Surfer give me a similar feeling to my favorite Silver and Bronze Age runs. I haven't read all of either yet, but I'm about to get caught up with each after I finish Batman Zero Year. Marvel and DC have it in them to produce quality stuff, it's just that their fixation on editorial driven event comics makes it hard to loyally follow the A-list* series nowadays. *Silver Surfer and Daredevil are "A-list" to me. The problem is those editorial driven even t comics and A-list books outsell most of the "quality" titles like Waid's DD and Surfer 2 or 3 to 1. As long as that tentpole style stuff keeps outselling the books that are of the ilk of DD and Surfer, that's what Marvel's decision makers will keep focusing on and putting out. If those "quality" books sold better than the editorial event based stuff, there would be more of it. No company is going to stop producing their top selling products to satisfy a small minority of their customer base, whether it's comics or cola or cars or canned goods. There's no economic incentive for Marvel to stop publishing events and start producing more books like DD and Surfer, until there is, you get what people pay for. All the internet kevetching in the world can't outspeak the dollars given by the buying public. -M Obviously. But what's wrong with talking about what you'd like to read, rather than what you think is the smartest business move for Marvel or whatever company? I'm a reader, not a Marvel executive. |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 8, 2015 23:31:13 GMT -5
The problem is those editorial driven even t comics and A-list books outsell most of the "quality" titles like Waid's DD and Surfer 2 or 3 to 1. As long as that tentpole style stuff keeps outselling the books that are of the ilk of DD and Surfer, that's what Marvel's decision makers will keep focusing on and putting out. If those "quality" books sold better than the editorial event based stuff, there would be more of it. No company is going to stop producing their top selling products to satisfy a small minority of their customer base, whether it's comics or cola or cars or canned goods. There's no economic incentive for Marvel to stop publishing events and start producing more books like DD and Surfer, until there is, you get what people pay for. All the internet kevetching in the world can't outspeak the dollars given by the buying public. -M Obviously. But what's wrong with talking about what you'd like to read, rather than what you think is the smartest business move for Marvel or whatever company? I'm a reader, not a Marvel executive. Nothing wrong with it, but Trebor was talking about a fixation on editorial driven comics over "quality" stuff, and my point was that this fixation is really in the hands of the customer base not the producer. If more people bought "quality" comics not event driven editorial stuff, Marvel wouldn't be "fixated" on it, because in this case dollars are speaking louder than any internet conversation. Happy consumers tend to buy more and talk less and since there are more people buying what is being produced than there are those talking about what they want to see instead, it seems more people reading want what more of what Marvel is producing than readers not buying and reading it who want something else. The people buying the stuff are readers too (not Marvel executives) for the most part and they are saying what they want by buying it. -M |
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Post by Randle-El on Apr 9, 2015 0:09:06 GMT -5
All this talk has reminded of a question that's been sitting in the back of my mind for a while --
Who buys all these titles that we constantly bemoan? *Someone* must be buying them, since MRP points out that these are usually high selling books.
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Post by hondobrode on Apr 9, 2015 0:26:00 GMT -5
Even Joe Quesada used to say "vote with your dollars."
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Post by Nowhere Man on Apr 9, 2015 0:47:17 GMT -5
All this talk has reminded of a question that's been sitting in the back of my mind for a while -- Who buys all these titles that we constantly bemoan? *Someone* must be buying them, since MRP points out that these are usually high selling books. A portion of the people buying the event books are the same that bitch about them in podcasts and on the internet. Make no mistake. Without question the majority that buy them enjoy them, but there is certainly a portion that buy them simply because they can't let go of their favorite characters, even when they're not enjoying them anymore. You also have to factor in the collector mentality that buy them just so they have complete runs. Lastly, you have the speculators, who I believe is Marvel and DC's most prized demographic in terms of the consumer base. In the end I don't have to worry about economics when I make a critique. I don't have a stake in the game in terms of profit, so I get to look at it from a pure "quality" basis. I've long since realized that the main culprit in the popularity of event books isn't the publishers, but the collectors and speculators. I don't fault Marvel and DC for wanting to make a profit. If the better non-event books sold better, they'd be more than happy to change their publishing strategy. Much with mainstream music and movies, I blame questionable taste quite frankly. Obviously people have the right to buy and enjoy whatever they want, but on the flip side those choices aren't immune to constructive criticism. |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 9, 2015 1:08:34 GMT -5
All this talk has reminded of a question that's been sitting in the back of my mind for a while -- Who buys all these titles that we constantly bemoan? *Someone* must be buying them, since MRP points out that these are usually high selling books. A portion of the people buying the event books are the same that bitch about them in podcasts and on the internet. Make no mistake. Without question the majority that buy them enjoy them, but there is certainly a portion that buy them simply because they can't let go of their favorite characters, even when they're not enjoying them anymore. You also have to factor in the collector mentality that buy them just so they have complete runs. Lastly, you have the speculators, who I believe is Marvel and DC's most prized demographic in terms of the consumer base. In the end I don't have to worry about economics when I make a critique. I don't have a stake in the game in terms of profit, so I get to look at it from a pure "quality" basis. I've long since realized that the main culprit in the popularity of event books isn't the publishers, but the collectors and speculators. I don't fault Marvel and DC for wanting to make a profit. If the better non-event books sold better, they'd be more than happy to change their publishing strategy. Much with mainstream music and movies, I blame questionable taste quite frankly. Obviously people have the right to buy and enjoy whatever they want, but on the flip side those choices aren't immune to constructive criticism. In my experience at the comic shop, the people buying events and tentpole books like Avengers, et. al. were readers and fans, the speculators may have looked for variants of these books, but they knew these events weren't the books they could flip quickly for a profit, but were more likely buying up all the extra copies of Image #1s and Walking Dead so they could flip them on ebay in a week or two for more than cover. The guy buying the event book was the comic book fan who read as many titles as he could afford and always added the big events so he could follow his favorites. More often than not, they would come in, buy them, come back the next week and ask..did you read event series issue #1, man it was so cool, it's a great comic man, I like seeing all my favorites together, when's #2 coming out...? And all you can do even if you don't like the book is smile and say, glad you liked it man..I'll make sure #2 gets pulled for you when it comes in... Those are the same conversations I hear at cons among the general populace of comics fans as they walked by my table in artist alley or as I walked through dealer areas. I think as fans of classic comics with our preferences and bias, we forget that for the mass of current comics fans these books are their favorite era and the era they discovered books in, and these books speak to them the way the Silver or Bronze Age spoke to us when we discovered comics and were first in to it. We've become a bit cynical, but the mass of people are eating this up as "good comics" because it is "their comics" theway Silver and Bronze age books are "our comics" By the way, most of the speculation I see right now is on variant covers, Image #1 issues, Walking Dead, and any book that gets optioned for TV or a movie, plus back issues featuring first appearances of characters now in movies or on TV or soon to be. The speculators tend to know what they can flip, and rank and file Marvel (or DC) series and events aren't it, unless they get severely underordered creating a temporary demand blip. Speculation really isn't fueling those numbers (Star Wars may be the exception but 68 or so covers and Loot Crate helped with that). -M |
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Post by Action Ace on Apr 9, 2015 1:24:56 GMT -5
All this talk has reminded of a question that's been sitting in the back of my mind for a while -- Who buys all these titles that we constantly bemoan? *Someone* must be buying them, since MRP points out that these are usually high selling books.  (well not on the Marvel side, but definitely on the DC side) and  |
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Post by berkley on Apr 9, 2015 1:30:11 GMT -5
All this talk has reminded of a question that's been sitting in the back of my mind for a while -- Who buys all these titles that we constantly bemoan? *Someone* must be buying them, since MRP points out that these are usually high selling books. A portion of the people buying the event books are the same that bitch about them in podcasts and on the internet. Make no mistake. Without question the majority that buy them enjoy them, but there is certainly a portion that buy them simply because they can't let go of their favorite characters, even when they're not enjoying them anymore. You also have to factor in the collector mentality that buy them just so they have complete runs. Lastly, you have the speculators, who I believe is Marvel and DC's most prized demographic in terms of the consumer base. In the end I don't have to worry about economics when I make a critique. I don't have a stake in the game in terms of profit, so I get to look at it from a pure "quality" basis. I've long since realized that the main culprit in the popularity of event books isn't the publishers, but the collectors and speculators. I don't fault Marvel and DC for wanting to make a profit. If the better non-event books sold better, they'd be more than happy to change their publishing strategy. Much with mainstream music and movies, I blame questionable taste quite frankly. Obviously people have the right to buy and enjoy whatever they want, but on the flip side those choices aren't immune to constructive criticism. This, as well as mrp's last post (sorry, mrp, I still haven't figured out how to multi-quote) leads us into the question of what's happened to the Marvel/DC reading audience. It seems to have shrunk, and at the same time to be more and more comprised of people who don't read much outside of superhero comics. How did this happen? I don't know, but I do feel that if you keep feeding them only what they think they want, you're not doing them any favours - and maybe not yourself, i.e. Marvel & DC, either, in the long run. That is, while it might be good business in the short run to keep pumping out the same stuff over and over, in the long run it could well lead to commercial as well as creative stagnation. Then why hasn't it happened already? Maybe it is happening, if the reports of shrinking readerships and profits for comics are accurate - everyone seems to agree that the Big 2 don't make money from their comics directly. Commercially they're being kept alive by being owned by big multinationals that make their money elsewhere. I think what's keeping them alive creatively, is appropriating ideas and creators from the independents, usually in a much watered-down form. Thus the current multiverse sagas of the JLA and the Avengers look suspiciously like rehashes of Planetary or various Grant Morrison projects (some of them admittedly done originally for DC, not an independent), repackaged for fans of the established Marvel and DC heroes. |
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Post by the4thpip on Apr 9, 2015 3:00:58 GMT -5
Obviously. But what's wrong with talking about what you'd like to read, rather than what you think is the smartest business move for Marvel or whatever company? I'm a reader, not a Marvel executive. Nothing wrong with it, but Trebor was talking about a fixation on editorial driven comics over "quality" stuff, and my point was that this fixation is really in the hands of the customer base not the producer. If more people bought "quality" comics not event driven editorial stuff, Marvel wouldn't be "fixated" on it, because in this case dollars are speaking louder than any internet conversation. Happy consumers tend to buy more and talk less and since there are more people buying what is being produced than there are those talking about what they want to see instead, it seems more people reading want what more of what Marvel is producing than readers not buying and reading it who want something else. The people buying the stuff are readers too (not Marvel executives) for the most part and they are saying what they want by buying it. -M Then again, Hawkeye was both a critical and financial success, the rare case of a book that barely lost any readers over its run. Sure, it's not a top 20 book, but that kind of stability makes business sense, too. And it did influence Marvel's output: Secret Foes was clearly influenced by Hawkeye's style, as were the recent runs of Secret Avengers, She-Hulk and Spider-Woman (at least after the big crossover that launched it). |
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Post by Randle-El on Apr 9, 2015 9:48:56 GMT -5
The thing that I find odd is that, if all the statistics are to be believed, the average comic book reader is male anywhere in his mid 30s to 50s. And if those readers are folks who stayed with comics since they were kids, or returned to comics after being lapsed readers, you would think that these tentpole books would have less appeal for them because they've either seen all this before, or have noticed that current books definitely have a different aesthetic from the books they remember as kids and have nostalgia for.
As for the publishers -- I'm not so cynical as to believe that they don't want to put out better work, but as has been pointed out repeatedly, they answer to the whim of their corporate parents, most of whom couldn't care less about comics as a medium and see publishing as primarily an incubator for film/TV plots. I'm sure that there are probably creative types who work in editorial who are frustrated that the wheel keeps getting reinvented. Who knows, some of them may have even been the forces who advocated to let books like Hawkeye, She-Hulk, or Gotham Academy to get published. I'm even prepared to accept the notion that the tentpole books may be a necessary evil that keeps the bean counters happy and provides the space that lets these more interesting books get published. At the end of the day, if Marvel and DC are willing to put out interesting, quality books that stand on their own, I'm happy to read them regardless of what is going on elsewhere in their respective universes.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Apr 9, 2015 15:28:27 GMT -5
Sometimes quality tells in the value too.. it's not JUST variants. The regular Ms. Marvel #1 is running $30-$50 on e-bay for the 1st printing, and even 2 and 3 are getting a premium. Going back a bit farther, Runaways #1 usually pulls $20-$30 too. I think variant have an inherent value due to their rarity, but otherwise it really has to be a good comic to hold value. The first appearance of some random minor character that happens to be on TV right now isn't going to stay valuable once the show is off the air.
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Post by Paste Pot Paul on Apr 9, 2015 18:23:06 GMT -5
R. Bishop comments makes me wonder why the big two didn't always overly hype their events even in the 60's/70's ? They were always in in to make money. They did, using the mechanisms available to them then, which were house ads and the bullpen bulletins type pages, the blurbs at the bottom of the pages in early 70s Marvels and in what fanzines existed a the time. Marvel produced FOOM to hype their stuff and DC did the Amazing World of DC Comics. There was no fan press and internet available hen, no websites like CBR and Bleeding Cool, the LA Times didn't have a Hero Complex section in there daily paper like they do on their website now, etc. They hyped as much as the market allowed them at the time and when comics as a business and newsworthy subject got noticed the opportunities to hype grew and comics took them. If the resources to hype their materials that we have now were available in the 60s and 70s, they would have been used much like they are being used today. We think of things like FOOM and Bullpen Bulletins as quaint, cool, treasured memories, but they were the crass commercialism of comics of their time. The impulse was there, the tools didn't allow it. Give them better tools and the impulse sees fruition. -M Yeah I think its naive to believe that publishers in the 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s wouldnt have abused the internet and other media to sell a book or two. Wasnt it the old Marvel publishers philosophy to copy anything that showed signs of selling well, so if book A sold better than average, next month he would have 4 books aping the look of book A. Comics compete against entertainment that is so much more interactive these days, why begrudge them the chance to maximise their exposure ? |
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Post by berkley on Apr 9, 2015 19:43:12 GMT -5
They did, using the mechanisms available to them then, which were house ads and the bullpen bulletins type pages, the blurbs at the bottom of the pages in early 70s Marvels and in what fanzines existed a the time. Marvel produced FOOM to hype their stuff and DC did the Amazing World of DC Comics. There was no fan press and internet available hen, no websites like CBR and Bleeding Cool, the LA Times didn't have a Hero Complex section in there daily paper like they do on their website now, etc. They hyped as much as the market allowed them at the time and when comics as a business and newsworthy subject got noticed the opportunities to hype grew and comics took them. If the resources to hype their materials that we have now were available in the 60s and 70s, they would have been used much like they are being used today. We think of things like FOOM and Bullpen Bulletins as quaint, cool, treasured memories, but they were the crass commercialism of comics of their time. The impulse was there, the tools didn't allow it. Give them better tools and the impulse sees fruition. -M Yeah I think its naive to believe that publishers in the 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s wouldnt have abused the internet and other media to sell a book or two. Wasnt it the old Marvel publishers philosophy to copy anything that showed signs of selling well, so if book A sold better than average, next month he would have 4 books aping the look of book A. Comics compete against entertainment that is so much more interactive these days, why begrudge them the chance to maximise their exposure ? I totally agree. There was always a strong element of the old carny barker in Stan, the fast-talking salesman who'd tell ya whatever he thought you wanted to hear, in order to sell his product. The difference lies, as mrp says, in the tools that were available at the time, especially if you include in the idea of "tools" the whole administrative aspect which has become much bigger and more tightly controlling. It isn't that the companies were less profit-driven back then, it's that they were less likely to micro-manage every detail of the creative aspect. It's telling that you see the editors interviewed almost as often as the writers now. I don't think that would have been the case in the 70s. There's also the happy coincidence that the totally unforeseeable creative alchemy of artists like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko with Stan Lee meant that instead of producing tired, note-for-note imitations of DC's superhero line, they came up with something new - in great contrast, IMO, to today's Big 2. No doubt Stan would have been happy to produce those straight imitations if they had sold, but luckily for us, his story-telling instincts got the better of his salesman's instincts - or rather, they worked together, because what was good for the reader turned out to be good for the company too, in the long run. |
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Post by Icctrombone on Apr 9, 2015 19:56:25 GMT -5
It's interesting to note that for the first few dozen issues of Thor, he was an imitation of Superman. Thank God they added the Asgardian mythos along the way.
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