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Post by thwhtguardian on Jan 18, 2016 11:37:47 GMT -5
Their runs don't have definitive endings but they weren't meant to (so there is little point in bringing that in) but the individual arcs did in much the same way that Year One did so I'm not sure how you can hold that story up in one hand but dismiss the others on the other. But the fact they don't have definitive endings is exactly my point-that's why they will never resonate with mainstream audiences. The ending is the most important part of the story in terms of lasting impression and affection with mainstream audiences. The fact ongoing comics don't do them well, or at all is one of the single biggest reasons that they will never be more than a niche. When you look at comics that sell of super-hero stories in other mediums that do do well with mainstream audiences, they almost universally have a strong or definitive ending that offers closure to the audience. You can still tell further stories with the characters sure, but the ending offers closure if you stop there. Monthyl comics, even those divided into arcs, don't often do that and rarely do it well when they do. The fact they're not meant to have an ending is not something irrelevant to handwave away, it is the core of the problem. Audiences may invest in a big backstory (i.e. the continuity) if it has a payoff. That payoff has to be an ending with closure though, or the whole story is pointless, and mainstream audiences will consider it a waste of time and effort without that being present. The fact you have to go 6 months to get the whole story nad then it has no payoff when it ends-not going to go over well with mainstream audiences, and sales reflect that. -M Many popular adventure series like James Bond, the Jack Ryan novels and the Bourne series all lack a definitive ending and seem to do just fine. Although there is no real closure in sight each individual story introduces its own set of issues, develops them and then solves them at the end and the different arcs in the comics do the same, even Year One, there is no final conclusion in sight but each story that makes up that ongoing narrative has its own beginning, middle and ending which gives that satisfaction while still saying there is more yet to come. |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 18, 2016 11:55:33 GMT -5
But the fact they don't have definitive endings is exactly my point-that's why they will never resonate with mainstream audiences. The ending is the most important part of the story in terms of lasting impression and affection with mainstream audiences. The fact ongoing comics don't do them well, or at all is one of the single biggest reasons that they will never be more than a niche. When you look at comics that sell of super-hero stories in other mediums that do do well with mainstream audiences, they almost universally have a strong or definitive ending that offers closure to the audience. You can still tell further stories with the characters sure, but the ending offers closure if you stop there. Monthyl comics, even those divided into arcs, don't often do that and rarely do it well when they do. The fact they're not meant to have an ending is not something irrelevant to handwave away, it is the core of the problem. Audiences may invest in a big backstory (i.e. the continuity) if it has a payoff. That payoff has to be an ending with closure though, or the whole story is pointless, and mainstream audiences will consider it a waste of time and effort without that being present. The fact you have to go 6 months to get the whole story and then it has no payoff when it ends-not going to go over well with mainstream audiences, and sales reflect that. -M Many popular adventure series like James Bond, the Jack Ryan novels and the Bourne series all lack a definitive ending and seem to do just fine. Although there is no real closure in sight each individual story introduces its own set of issues, develops them and then solves them at the end and the different arcs in the comics do the same, even Year One, there is no final conclusion in sight but each story that makes up that ongoing narrative has its own beginning, middle and ending which gives that satisfaction while still saying there is more yet to come. Each of them stand on their own though, and the ending is definitive enough to give closure to that adventure. You don't have to read (or watch) the next James Bond adventures to tie up what happened in this one. You don't have to have read previous James Bond novels to enjoy this one. If I read an arc of Detective and there are dangling sub-plots (why is Jim Gordon in the armor what happened to Bruce Wayne for instance) even though the adventure is over and the villain defeated, the story has not reached an ending. It has not provided closure. Questions raised by the story are not dealt with. Will James Bond have another adventure after this one-most likely. Do I have to read that adventure to answer questioned raised by this one?-no. Spectre may still be around, Bond is still a secret agent, but neither of those leaves a hole in the closure of the adventure. Ongoing monthly comics rarely tie things up neatly. Which is great for the addict who will come back for his monthly fix each time, but not so much for someone who is looking for a complete story to read, digest, and enjoy, and then move onto a different story, who wants this one to stand alone, and not be a fix until the next one comes along. Publishers want you to come for your monthly fix, it's their business model, but it's an antiquated one in today's market and they cannot deliver content fast enough in that format to satisfy the pace at which modern entertainment moves for mainstream audiences. It's fine for hardcore comic audiences and they don't want it to change. And it's fine as long as comic publiahers are content to be a niche market product fighting to be the biggest fish in their very small pond, reslicing the same pie up and fighting for the crumbs. But if they want a bigger pie, if they want to swim in a bigger sea, they need to leave that format behind and develop something that works for the larger mainstream audience who is already enjoying their characters and comics with a different set of standard operating procedures in massive quantities and getting much deeper market penetration. Putting a fresh coat of paint on the turd the mainstream market already rejected is not going to get better results. I grew up on monthly comics. I get the appeal. But it's not 1977 anymore or 1987, or 1997 even, and marketing techniques and products that worked in those times don't often still work in 2016. The monthly ongoing 20 page pamphlet is not a product well-suited to succeed in the market of 2016. Especially when it doesn't meet the standards and expectations form the audience and what they demand in narrative based entertainment. A small segment will always enjoy retro products, but that is the definition of a niche. It's not a product designed to succeed in the reality of the mainstream market of 2016. Evolve, die, or wallow in the retro niche scraping by in the limbo that has defined what comics are for the last 15-20 years while the content they trade in has exploded in popularity elsewhere. -M |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 18, 2016 11:56:23 GMT -5
The only caveat I will mention with DCs sales as reported by Hibbs-he makes a point to say it is the evergreen titles that keep DC at the forefront, not the new releases coming from the collections of monthly continuity driven books. Most of DC's evergreen books are either self-contained stories (THe Dark Knight, Year One, Killing Joke, Watchmen) or parts of finite series (Sandman, Preacher, Fables, etc.) not stuff that comes form the never-ending monthly grind comics. The ones that do come form it tend to be anthology collections (The Greatest Batman Stories ever Told type books, the recent 75th anniversary editions, etc.) and not the longass ongoing stories in tpb form that get one printing and done, and are out of print when they sell through the initial print. Batman being the exception because well Batman, and it is just Snyder's Batman that is the exception, not ther collections of Detective, Batman: Dark Night, Batman/Superman, Batman & Robin) or any other contemporary Batbook that makes the transition into evergreen territory. Most of the evergreen sales that propel DC in the bookscan trade are stories that have a beginning, middle and end in the book or finite series, and do not require the reader to follow a long drawn out never-ending story the way monthly comics do in whatever format they are releaed in (digital, single issue or trade collections). This is also true of the many indy/creator-owned books in comic format that do well in the book trade. For me, the lesson here is not the a particular publisher, or character type, or genre is the key to success, but the storytelling format, skills, and goals that are the focus of the release. Stories that have a beginning, middle end, or series that as a whole present a story that does, do relatively well in the book trade outside the normal customer base of the comic shop-whether that is Killing Joke, Sandman, March Book One or whatever. Books that are part of an ongoing sprawling never-ending story that can never give the customer the satisfaction of an ending with closure on the story don't do well with audiences (except with the hardcore audience seeking their next fix and who hope it never ends-and that audience isn't served by the outlets Bookscans services, they are served by Diamond). -M I can't really think of a modern on going that doesn't rely on tightly constructed arks that each have their own beginning, middles and ends so I don't think that's an issue either. I can't think of many modern ongoing a that have true mainstream appeal. But the few I can think of are not involved in a shared universe, have never been retconned or remembered, and aren't involved in a continuity that has been ongoing since the 1940's |
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Post by thwhtguardian on Jan 18, 2016 12:07:18 GMT -5
Many popular adventure series like James Bond, the Jack Ryan novels and the Bourne series all lack a definitive ending and seem to do just fine. Although there is no real closure in sight each individual story introduces its own set of issues, develops them and then solves them at the end and the different arcs in the comics do the same, even Year One, there is no final conclusion in sight but each story that makes up that ongoing narrative has its own beginning, middle and ending which gives that satisfaction while still saying there is more yet to come. Each of them stand on their own though, and the ending is definitive enough to give closure to that adventure. You don't have to read (or watch) the next James Bond adventures to tie up what happened in this one. You don't have to have read previous James Bond novels to enjoy this one. If I read an arc of Detective and there are dangling sub-plots (why is Jim Gordon in the armor what happened to Bruce Wayne for instance) even though the adventure is over and the villain defeated, the story has not reached an ending. It has not provided closure. Questions raised by the story are not dealt with. Will James Bond have another adventure after this one-most likely. Do I have to read that adventure to answer questioned raised by this one?-no. Spectre may still be around, Bond is still a secret agent, but neither of those leaves a hole in the closure of the adventure. Ongoing monthly comics rarely tie things up neatly. Which is great for the addict who will come back for his monthly fix each time, but not so much for someone who is looking for a complete story to read, digest, and enjoy, and then move onto a different story, who wants this one to stand alone, and not be a fix until the next one comes along. Publishers want you to come for your monthly fix, it's their business model, but it's an antiquated one in today's market and they cannot deliver content fast enough in that format to satisfy the pace at which modern entertainment moves for mainstream audiences. It's fine for hardcore comic audiences and they don't want it to change. And it's fine as long as comic publiahers are content to be a niche market product fighting to be the biggest fish in their very small pond, reslicing the same pie up and fighting for the crumbs. But if they want a bigger pie, if they want to swim in a bigger sea, they need to leave that format behind and develop something that works for the larger mainstream audience who is already enjoying their characters and comics with a different set of standard operating procedures in massive quantities and getting much deeper market penetration. Putting a fresh coat of paint on the turd the mainstream market already rejected is not going to get better results. I grew up on monthly comics. I get the appeal. But it's not 1977 anymore or 1987, or 1997 even, and marketing techniques and products that worked in those times don't often still work in 2016. The monthly ongoing 20 page pamphlet is not a product well-suited to succeed in the market of 2016. Especially when it doesn't meet the standards and expectations form the audience and what they demand in narrative based entertainment. A small segment will always enjoy retro products, but that is the definition of a niche. It's not a product designed to succeed in the reality of the mainstream market of 2016. Evolve, die, or wallow in the retro niche scraping by in the limbo that has defined what comics are for the last 15-20 years while the content they trade in has exploded in popularity elsewhere. -M There are many, many elements similar to Gordon in the bat-armor in the series I mentioned, and when you encounter them you either accept the information you're presented with in the story in your hands and roll with it or you go back and read the book you missed. I do agree that the monthly 20 page comic is not the way to move forward though, as I've stated all along. I think they need to either skip the individual issues and deliver several independent stories a year, preferably by different creative teams so they can deliver the stories to market regularly or by doing that while still publishing monthlies but perhaps fewer of them so that they can focus more on OGNs. |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 18, 2016 12:53:31 GMT -5
Personally, I'd like to see publishers experiment with format that gave more bang for the buck. If you are going to market a shred universe for readers, give them a product that uses the scope of the universe-for example DC could offer a $10 monthly action comics with say a cardstock cover that includes 2 Superman stories-a done in one and a serial, and 3 other features, all around 20 pages or a 40 page lead Superman feature and 3 other stories-say a Green Arrow story, a Hawkman story, and a Legion story. You get 5 stories for your $10 (better bargain than current monthlies. Maybe downgrade the paper quality or something to make it cost effective. It's about the price of a current slick magazine on the newsstands anyways, so find a way to get it out to grocery stores, wal*Mart, etc. that stock magazines. Then every 6 months or so, collect the individual features- so you get a Legion trade/gn, a Hawkman trade GN. a Green Arrow trade GN. etc. Plus the Supes stuff. Make sure every issue of Action has at least 1 story with a beginning middle and end. Amke sure each collected serial has a beginning middle and end. Sell the individual installments of Green Arrow, Hawkman, Legion or Superman as a single story digitally for sat $2 each so someone what only wants to read one can buy as they go along in digital, but the Action anthology in print, or buy the trade of the individual features down the road. Make the trades combo packs you can also get digital copies of the installment with (but only the trades, not the Action anthology.
Market your content to the way entertainment product is sold in a contemporary market. Tailor the format of your product to work in those markets. Tell complete stories that can sell to appeal to a mainstream audience, but keep the appeal of a shared universe and a bigger tapestry that also appeals to the hardcore fanbase.
Marvel could do the same with a Defenders monthly that has a Hulk, {Power Man & Iron Fist story, a Daredevil story, a Jessica Jones story or Punisher story in the big monthly book, sell them digitally, collect the features into trades etc.
Give the collected trades unique titles: Daredevil: The Rise of the Kingpin (collecting the 6 parts of the serial form Defenders 1-6). Daredevil 2: Bullseye (collecting the serials form Defenders 7-12, etc.) so they have longer shelf lives and market windows.
If you want to further expoilt the products-turn the trades into omnibus editions or sell 3-4 trades as a boxed set with a slipcase, etc.
Improve the paper quality on the trades form the monthly anthologies-a special edition as you will.
Sell product the market will bear. Tell stories that work for a mainstream, not in terms of content, but in terms of format and structure. Have clear beginning, middle and ends. Remember the Stan Lee maxim every issue is someone's first-so make it accessible and satisfying (without hamfisted recap and repetition that was the default answer to that in the bygone era). The recap pages are a good step for that but they need to be done well not tossed off at the last minute by an assistant editor or production intern without a clue how to do them.
Play to the strengths of the characters but design products that work in today's entertainment market. Complete stories. Value for the dollar and bang for the buck. Formats for people who like a variety forms of content delivery and put products where potential customers are don't rely on destination venues to be the only place to get products. $10 is still an impulse buy price point in today's retail world, but it has to be worth the money and easy to get if it is going to be an impulse buy.
Marvel and DC have to do what they do best-I am not looking for Image style content form them-that ship has sailed long ago, and I don't think the mainstream is looking for that content form Marvel or DC either-but the content and the format have to work together to make a product that works for a mainstream product or it will never succeed in a mainstream market. If they want top repurpose or repackage the content they produce for Action or Defenders say as 5 monthly 20 page story print pamphlets and continue to sell them in that format to the hardcore monthly audience, well so bit it, but if that is all you are reaching for with the way you shape content and format, that's all you get.
Comics at their heart are a marriage of words and pictures into a singular whole as a storytelling medium. That is the art of comics. How you shape, format, and market the stories produced by the artform is the business of comics. The artform of comics has a timeless appeal. The products of the comic business have to evolve with the times or die. They have not, and the viability of the business side has suffered for it. Super-heroes in many ways have left comics behind because comics business models have fallen behind the times. You have to have a successful marriage of format nad content to succeed in the modern market. RFor the most part, modern mainstream monthly comics are not a successful marriage of those two elements, they are mostly dysfunctional when it comes to operating in the modern entertainment market. Niche, not mainstream.
Image does what it does and does it well. They are finding mainstream audiences for their products and seeing market growth. IDW, Dark Horse and others are following their model and finding their own levels of success to varying degrees. The European and other international markets are different animals than the American market-as sales on the newest Asterix album demonstrated. If MArvle and DC are going to succeed as publishers in the mainstream market (something very different than succeeding as IP factories for multi-media with a niche publishing business on the side which is how they seem to be constituted now), they need to evolve to produce products for the mainstream publishing market, not tailor their efforts for the niche market of a bygone era. That means looking at how they shape content and format for that marriage of words and pictures which is the artform of comics to produce products for the market.
-M
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Post by Cei-U! on Jan 18, 2016 15:25:50 GMT -5
What's happened to superhero-centric comic books is not unlike what's happened to soap operas. The soaps once dominated daytime TV (as they did daytime radio before that), and are now down to a scant five half-hour daily shows that re scrambling to survive against far more accessible (and cheaper to produce) talk shows. And like the Big Two lines, they feature never-ending stories at a pace we comics fans call "decompressed," built on a dense, contradictory, impenetrable continuity (including faux deaths, resurrections and toddlers becoming teens overnight) that in some cases spans fifty or more years. Modern audiences don't seem to want to commit to these shows anymore, even though primetime programming has adopted a more serialized approach and seems to be thriving as a result. So it's not necessarily the concept of ongoing storylines that aren't flying with the public but the specific pace and complexity of the daytime soaps. Yeah, I think mrp has a solid point.
Cei-U!
I summon the apt comparison!
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Post by Action Ace on Jan 20, 2016 16:21:46 GMT -5
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Post by Deleted on Jan 24, 2016 14:18:48 GMT -5
I posted a video over in the Convention section a kind of post mortem of the Cartoonists Crossroads Expo that occurred in Columbus last year that in part discusses the place of comics in the greater artworld and the mainstream that might be of interest to some pf the people following this conversation... Cartoonist Crossroads thread-M |
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Post by Action Ace on Jan 24, 2016 16:18:20 GMT -5
What's happened to superhero-centric comic books is not unlike what's happened to soap operas. The soaps once dominated daytime TV (as they did daytime radio before that), and are now down to a scant five half-hour daily shows that re scrambling to survive against far more accessible (and cheaper to produce) talk shows. And like the Big Two lines, they feature never-ending stories at a pace we comics fans call "decompressed," built on a dense, contradictory, impenetrable continuity (including faux deaths, resurrections and toddlers becoming teens overnight) that in some cases spans fifty or more years. Modern audiences don't seem to want to commit to these shows anymore, even though primetime programming has adopted a more serialized approach and seems to be thriving as a result. So it's not necessarily the concept of ongoing storylines that aren't flying with the public but the specific pace and complexity of the daytime soaps. Yeah, I think mrp has a solid point. Cei-U! I summon the apt comparison! Another industry in the US like comics is the horse racing industry. Had its own way for a long time, but then collapsed as more popular and more cost effective forms of gambling emerged. Now most race tacks survive thanks to slot machines just like a lot of comic shops survive due to Magic cards. Its daily audience is also old and shows up mainly due to tradition and force of habit. Virtually every other form of gambling gets you better bang for your buck, but they like horse racing. |
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Post by Action Ace on Jan 24, 2016 16:23:37 GMT -5
Brian Hibbs Stores Year in ReviewHe owns two stores in San Francisco. One is a typical superhero oriented store he bought, the other is his the one he founded a long time ago. See the difference above and one thing they both have in common that DC Comics should note.
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Post by thwhtguardian on Jan 24, 2016 19:12:40 GMT -5
Brian Hibbs Stores Year in ReviewHe owns two stores in San Francisco. One is a typical superhero oriented store he bought, the other is his the one he founded a long time ago. See the difference above and one thing they both have in common that DC Comics should note. Yeah, if what he's posted is anything close to being the norm for other stores out there the smart DC execs are probably furiously updating their resumes and scouring the land for new jobs. |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 25, 2016 0:36:29 GMT -5
Brian Hibbs Stores Year in ReviewHe owns two stores in San Francisco. One is a typical superhero oriented store he bought, the other is his the one he founded a long time ago. See the difference above and one thing they both have in common that DC Comics should note. I read Hibbs' Tilting at Windmills column all the time. Very informative. As was this. One thought reading the comments that followed this article. Someone surmised that if Hibbs GN reading club represented 10% of the print run of some trades that it combined with his store sales made him an important cog in the machine, and then asked if there were any other stores who represented disproportionate %ages of sales of certain books. It made me think of how disproportionate the % of monthly sales are skewed towards some of the big time online sellers-what percentage of monthly issue sales do DCBS, Westfield, Midtown Comics, Lonestar, and Thing From Another World account for? That issue of Wonder Woman sells 50K copies over 5000 Diamond accounts so the average is 10 copies per account. But averages are misleading. What would the median number be? I mean if DCBS sold 1000 copies and Westfield 500 and Midtown 1000 etc. then the per account average is misleading as to how well the book sells at a local level and how much it permeates the comic culture of the area so to speak. And if each of those accounts is over-ordering up to reach variant thresholds so they can fill all of their variant orders, how many of that skewed percentage copies of the book sold is actually reaching end customers? Hibbs often points to needing to get an 89% sell through (4 out of every copy ordered needs to sell) to start making a profit on books, but variants can skew that (and note here Hibbs says he doesn't order variants at his main store usually so the variant inflation is not necessarily a universal phenomenon) but by that standard only 40K of the 50K sales listed in the Diamond charts would be hitting end customers thereabouts. So yeah, it makes me think how many shops are selling 2-3 copies only of some major books and are one pull list customer dropping away from losing any margins on some of the books they carry. How sustainable is that business model for the small time retailers running the smaller standalone LCS out there? -M |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 31, 2016 14:46:57 GMT -5
So I am hearing rumors and inklings (and seeing my least favorite face of comic retailing, Dennis Barger lose his shit over it) that Wal*Mart is going to do a test run of a grahic novel section in 50 of its stores, it will focus on manga at first but adding some mainstream books into the mix to see how it does for them before deciding if they will carry GNs full time.
So not the weekly floppies, but a readily accessible place to get comic stories into the hands of general audiences. Be intersting to see how it does and which 50 outlets will get the test sections...
-M
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Post by Action Ace on Jan 31, 2016 20:55:32 GMT -5
If Kevin Tsujihara of Warner Brothers and Bob Iger of Disney ever find out who Dennis Barger is, the Direct Market will be shut down in an hour.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 4, 2016 11:34:07 GMT -5
Brian Hibbs analysis of graphic novel sales via Bookscan numbers (i..e. the book market not Diamond) for 2015 is up Tilting at Windmills2015 saw a growth of over 30% in units sold and 24% in dollars earned in the book trade, and here are the top 20 sellers... 352,791 -- DORK DIARIES 10 296,415 -- DORK DIARIES 9 263,932 -- DRAMA 240,045 -- SMILE 219,421 -- SISTERS 116,683 -- KRISTY'S GREAT IDEA: FULL-COLOR 115,424 -- DORK DIARIES 1 89,774 -- BIG NATE: SAY GOOD-BYE TO DORK 73,258 -- EL DEAFO 69,913 -- BATMAN: THE KILLING JOKE HC 69,748 -- JEDI ACADEMY 68,081 -- THE TRUTH ABOUT STACEY: FULL-COLOR 66,898 -- BIG NATE'S GREATEST HITS 66,442 -- THE WALKING DEAD: COMPENDIUM V3 TP 62,666 -- BIG NATE: WELCOME TO MY WORLD 60,493 -- THE WALKING DEAD COMPENDIUM V1 TP 60,485 -- BIG NATE: THE CROWD GOES WILD! 58,818 -- HYPERBOLE AND A HALF 58,338 -- PERSEPOLIS 1 58,261 -- DORK DIARIES 9 TALES FRO B&N EDITION 1 super-hero book in the top 20, and that a Batman story form 1989 in a new edition. I haven't had a chance to really dig into Hibbs numbers and analysis (and I need toleave for work in 15 minutes so I won't have time to until later tonight or tomorrow), but initial skim seems to highlight a lot of what I had been talking about vis-a0vis comics and the mainstream audiences. -M |
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