|
Post by MDG on Oct 20, 2021 11:00:54 GMT -5
I don't see that they're unavailable. I'm not even in America, and there are two comic shops within twenty five miles of me. One of them just half an hour away. And of course, there's always eBay shops. I don't think it is reasonable to expect a non-comics reader to drive 25 miles to one of only two specialty shops in an area to buy into a very expensive hobby that is not remotely aimed at newcomers. The direct market is aimed at existing readers, and the big publishers don't do much to make it easy for someone to jump in. Even if they wanted to, how could they? How many # 1s, new origins, renumberings, jumping on points are there? Not to mention comic stores are closing all the time. There are fewer comics made than before. Those that are made are more expensive than ever and sold exclusively in specialty shops. You can buy some back issues online, sure, but it's not easy to consistently get full stories, and keys are already priced at a premium. Not everyone who isn't already a collector is interested in buying lots of back issues and piecing together runs. Really, the logic seems quite similar to saying unless you track down a band's first-pressings on the original LP only you're not a true fan if the band. The statement "comic books are available for purchase" might be technically true, but it's about as unapproachable and unwieldy as anything could be, and expecting movie fans should not only want to be are somewhat obligated to dive into an expensive, dense and convoluted hobby is quite unrealistic IMO. But digital copies are plentiful and easy to get. Someone interested in the history of the MCU can get a month of Marvel Unlimited for the price of a movie ticket.
Does Marvel have an on-ramp to their history for those people, though? Someone coming off Avengers Endgame is going to find reading Avengers #1 a much different experience.
|
|
|
Post by impulse on Oct 20, 2021 11:23:07 GMT -5
I don't think it is reasonable to expect a non-comics reader to drive 25 miles to one of only two specialty shops in an area to buy into a very expensive hobby that is not remotely aimed at newcomers. The direct market is aimed at existing readers, and the big publishers don't do much to make it easy for someone to jump in. Even if they wanted to, how could they? How many # 1s, new origins, renumberings, jumping on points are there? Not to mention comic stores are closing all the time. There are fewer comics made than before. Those that are made are more expensive than ever and sold exclusively in specialty shops. You can buy some back issues online, sure, but it's not easy to consistently get full stories, and keys are already priced at a premium. Not everyone who isn't already a collector is interested in buying lots of back issues and piecing together runs. Really, the logic seems quite similar to saying unless you track down a band's first-pressings on the original LP only you're not a true fan if the band. The statement "comic books are available for purchase" might be technically true, but it's about as unapproachable and unwieldy as anything could be, and expecting movie fans should not only want to be are somewhat obligated to dive into an expensive, dense and convoluted hobby is quite unrealistic IMO. But digital copies are plentiful and easy to get. Someone interested in the history of the MCU can get a month of Marvel Unlimited for the price of a movie ticket.
Does Marvel have an on-ramp to their history for those people, though? Someone coming off Avengers Endgame is going to find reading Avengers #1 a much different experience.
But they are still very expensive (to buy), and people who already like comics don't even like reading digital comics (obviously not all). I don't have Marvel Unlimited, but I've heard in the past it is not easy to browse or navigate and there are gaping holes. I have no idea if that is still the case, so take that with a grain of salt. I agree that to have a chance of making it accessible for new fans, they would need some major cultivation of libraries and reading orders. Even just the MCU in order sequentially might be a start, but as you said, reading a comic from the 60s for the first time now would be very different indeed from the movies.
|
|
|
Post by Slam_Bradley on Oct 20, 2021 11:55:49 GMT -5
I don't think it is reasonable to expect a non-comics reader to drive 25 miles to one of only two specialty shops in an area to buy into a very expensive hobby that is not remotely aimed at newcomers. The direct market is aimed at existing readers, and the big publishers don't do much to make it easy for someone to jump in. Even if they wanted to, how could they? How many # 1s, new origins, renumberings, jumping on points are there? Not to mention comic stores are closing all the time. There are fewer comics made than before. Those that are made are more expensive than ever and sold exclusively in specialty shops. You can buy some back issues online, sure, but it's not easy to consistently get full stories, and keys are already priced at a premium. Not everyone who isn't already a collector is interested in buying lots of back issues and piecing together runs. Really, the logic seems quite similar to saying unless you track down a band's first-pressings on the original LP only you're not a true fan if the band. The statement "comic books are available for purchase" might be technically true, but it's about as unapproachable and unwieldy as anything could be, and expecting movie fans should not only want to be are somewhat obligated to dive into an expensive, dense and convoluted hobby is quite unrealistic IMO. Does Marvel have an on-ramp to their history for those people, though? Someone coming off Avengers Endgame is going to find reading Avengers #1 a much different experience.
And this is one of those things that I think funnybook fans don't quite "get" about the popularity of, for instance, the MCU. The movies are taking sixty years of stories and distilling them in to a few hours. There's really no single or even a couple of books where you can go and get the essence of the MU distilled in that manner. It's not remotely reasonable to expect someone who's only knowledge of the characters is the movies to try to wade in to 60 years of periodicals and made sense of what is and what isn't worth their time.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 20, 2021 12:09:57 GMT -5
But digital copies are plentiful and easy to get. Someone interested in the history of the MCU can get a month of Marvel Unlimited for the price of a movie ticket.
Does Marvel have an on-ramp to their history for those people, though? Someone coming off Avengers Endgame is going to find reading Avengers #1 a much different experience.
But they are still very expensive (to buy), and people who already like comics don't even like reading digital comics (obviously not all). I don't have Marvel Unlimited, but I've heard in the past it is not easy to browse or navigate and there are gaping holes. I have no idea if that is still the case, so take that with a grain of salt. I agree that to have a chance of making it accessible for new fans, they would need some major cultivation of libraries and reading orders. Even just the MCU in order sequentially might be a start, but as you said, reading a comic from the 60s for the first time now would be very different indeed from the movies. MU is better. Every major Silver, Bronze or Modern comic featuring major characters are there. There are some exceptions (for example some of the Bronze Age Ghost Rider series is not there), however most of the holes are in Golden Age material (though a lot is there) and in non-super-hero comics (the war, western, and romance comics are not well represented). A major reason for this is that a lot of it hasn't been processed digitally for print in collections previously as has the super-hero material, so the gaps are very much market driven. There are also several curated reading lists-some by character, some by event, some by creator, and you can search/browse for comics by series, character, or creator, which provides an in for someone new to search based on what little they do know-someone getting it because they just watched Into the Spider-verse could search for Miles Morales, Peter Parker, Spider-Gwen. Spider-Ham or Spider-Man in general to find more, or the Spider-verse event Marvel had several years back and get curated reading lists for each result. And as you finish each book/series/list, it offers options for further discovery that could lead to other options related to what you have been reading. Is it perfect? No. There are a lot of bugs and a lot of options to slog through if you are searching by series, and it can get persnickety-for example, if you are searching for Amazing Spider-Man, you can't pull up the 1963 series by searching Amazing Spider-Man because the search brings you to A, but that series official indicia title is The Amazing Spider-Man and is listed under T, but the 1998 relaunch is just Amazing Spider-Man and the Annuals associated with the 1963 series are re just Amazing Spider-Man Annual and come up under A. But if you just do a search on Spider-Man by character it bypasses that issue. The reader interface is ok. It's better than the one the Hoopla service offers for instance. It offers a panel by panel approach or a page by page account, and the page by page offers 2 magnification size options (one where you can view the entire page, one where the page is divided into 3 tiers that you can scroll, which works well with the 9 or 6 panel grid, not so much with splash pages or double-page spreads. What can be an issue with MU is paralysis by choice. There is so much there that if you don't know what you want to look for, or if you are one who can get overwhelmed by options, it can less than optimal, but I find the same to be true with services like Netflix or Amazon Prime as well. A lot of the resistance to digital for comic readers though is not issues with the platform, but resistance to change fueled by nostalgia and perceived personal preferences. There are pros and cons to digital, each person has to make their own choice. There are pros and cons to reading physical copies too though, but most comic fans have already come to terms with that and ignore the negatives because of their longterm engagement with comics that way. We are creatures of habit in many ways, and change is scary, especially when it means our habits may have to change or adapt to new realities (it also means acknowledging we are getting older and the world has changed around us). -M
|
|
|
Post by Prince Hal on Oct 20, 2021 14:06:53 GMT -5
I really can't imagine that the movies, either DC's or Marvels, were ever expected to draw legions of new fans to reading the comics themselves. How many peope have paid good money to see those movies... tens of millions or more? And how many more comics are DC and Marvel selling as a result? Um... not many?
So there's no way would there would be enough new buyers of the actual comics to justify having some kind of on-ramp to inculcate in them a desire to know the history of either universe.
Besides, comics readers have always jumped on a moving train when they start out. And because comics companies simply morph and re-invent not just their characters and their origins, but the history of their universes every couple of years, a new reader doesn't need a deep-dive into Timely Comics or Golden Age DC when the current comics reflect (I'm guessing) stories and characters closer in style to those of the movies.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 20, 2021 15:30:53 GMT -5
I really can't imagine that the movies, either DC's or Marvels, were ever expected to draw legions of new fans to reading the comics themselves. How many peope have paid good money to see those movies... tens of millions or more? And how many more comics are DC and Marvel selling as a result? Um... not many? So there's no way would there would be enough new buyers of the actual comics to justify having some kind of on-ramp to inculcate in them a desire to know the history of either universe. Besides, comics readers have always jumped on a moving train when they start out. And because comics companies simply morph and re-invent not just their characters and their origins, but the history of their universes every couple of years, a new reader doesn't need a deep-dive into Timely Comics or Golden Age DC when the current comics reflect (I'm guessing) stories and characters closer in style to those of the movies. There is a significant portion of folks who subscribe to the "If you build it, they will come" mentality when it comes to comics and movies. That if you expose people to the wonders of super-heroes, they will flock to comics and become new hardcore fans just as they did when they discovered super-heroes. I've seen it among comic fans, comic retailers, and comics pros who got their start as comic fans. It's naïve and unrealistic, but its more commonplace than you might think, and despite now 21 years years of it not happening since the first X-Men movie exploded on the scene in 2000, a lot of people still cling to that belief (moreso because they cannot admit they were wrong than because of any evidence or hope that it might still happen). The Batman movie in '89 created a merchandising bonanza that temporarily increased sales of Batman comics, but it did little but it did little to move the needle on sales of other comics, and as soon as the Batmania faded and the merchandising boom played out, those increased sales returned to market norm. But lots of folks only remember the first part of that, and not the eventual conclusion of it, and base their hopes of movies affecting comic sales on that and cite Batmania as evidence for its reality. It's not. It's wishful thinking, but it hasn't stopped comic suits, retailers, and fans from pinning their hopes and marketing strategies on it. -M
|
|
|
Post by MDG on Oct 20, 2021 15:32:32 GMT -5
I really can't imagine that the movies, either DC's or Marvels, were ever expected to draw legions of new fans to reading the comics themselves. How many peope have paid good money to see those movies... tens of millions or more? And how many more comics are DC and Marvel selling as a result? Um... not many? Well, there was an increase in comic shops after Burton's Batman came out. I've never heard of a connection, but it might've been one of the things that fueled the bubble in the 90s. And IIRC, the EIC at Marvel when the first X-Men movie came out was canned when he couldn;t translate the success of the movie into sales. (When I saw it, they gave out a promo comic which was not very good.)
But, yeah, I think it became clear pretty quickly that successful movies weren;t going to drive sales.
|
|
|
Post by tartanphantom on Oct 20, 2021 16:09:35 GMT -5
I really can't imagine that the movies, either DC's or Marvels, were ever expected to draw legions of new fans to reading the comics themselves. How many peope have paid good money to see those movies... tens of millions or more? And how many more comics are DC and Marvel selling as a result? Um... not many? So there's no way would there would be enough new buyers of the actual comics to justify having some kind of on-ramp to inculcate in them a desire to know the history of either universe. Besides, comics readers have always jumped on a moving train when they start out. And because comics companies simply morph and re-invent not just their characters and their origins, but the history of their universes every couple of years, a new reader doesn't need a deep-dive into Timely Comics or Golden Age DC when the current comics reflect (I'm guessing) stories and characters closer in style to those of the movies. There is a significant portion of folks who subscribe to the "If you build it, they will come" mentality when it comes to comics and movies. That if you expose people to the wonders of super-heroes, they will flock to comics and become new hardcore fans just as they did when they discovered super-heroes. I've seen it among comic fans, comic retailers, and comics pros who got their start as comic fans. It's naïve and unrealistic, but its more commonplace than you might think, and despite now 21 years years of it not happening since the first X-Men movie exploded on the scene in 2000, a lot of people still cling to that belief (moreso because they cannot admit they were wrong than because of any evidence or hope that it might still happen. The Batman movie in '89 created a merchandising bonanza that temporarily increased dales of Batman comics, but it did little but it did little to move the needle on sales of other comics, and as soon as the Batmania faded and the merchandising boom played out, those increased rales returned to market norm. But lots of folks only remember the first part of that, and not the eventual conclusion of it, and base their hops of movies affecting comic sales on that and cite Batmania as evidence for its reality. It's not. It's wishful thinking, but it hasn't stopped comic suits, retailers, and fans from pinning their hopes and marketing strategies on it. -M Agreed. Said mentality is also one of the factors that encourages speculators to drive up the prices on first appearance books of 3rd and 4th-tier characters-- often inducing "FOMO" (Fear Of Missing Out) in collectors and other speculators... it's especially ridiculous on books which aren't even 10 years old.
|
|
|
Post by tonebone on Oct 25, 2021 15:12:07 GMT -5
I really can't imagine that the movies, either DC's or Marvels, were ever expected to draw legions of new fans to reading the comics themselves. How many peope have paid good money to see those movies... tens of millions or more? And how many more comics are DC and Marvel selling as a result? Um... not many? Well, there was an increase in comic shops after Burton's Batman came out. I've never heard of a connection, but it might've been one of the things that fueled the bubble in the 90s. And IIRC, the EIC at Marvel when the first X-Men movie came out was canned when he couldn;t translate the success of the movie into sales. (When I saw it, they gave out a promo comic which was not very good.)
But, yeah, I think it became clear pretty quickly that successful movies weren;t going to drive sales.
It worked for Star Wars, but not much else. And that X-Men promo comic.... I was in line with my co-workers at the time on opening day (our company paid for it), and some pimple faced usher walked down the line handing out the promo comic, and my memory of it is that it contained a portion of a Wolverine story (like the middle part of a 3 part story), where he's wearing the yellow suit, and featured none of the other X-Men characters, locations, or even the Blackbird. It was completely worthless as a bridge from the movie to the comics. After the movie, the floor of the theater was littered with them, and every trash can was stuffed with them.
|
|
|
Post by impulse on Oct 25, 2021 15:39:09 GMT -5
Yeah, I don't know if there was a way for the comics publishers to have successfully capitalized on the comic book movie adaptations starting en masse, but if there was a way, what they did around the first X-MEN movies wasn't it.
|
|
|
Post by profh0011 on Oct 25, 2021 18:09:27 GMT -5
A TPB collecting Dave Cockrum's 1st run on the book issued to coincide with the 1st or 2nd movies might have helped.
|
|
|
Post by wildfire2099 on Oct 25, 2021 18:50:16 GMT -5
I definitely think it's clear that 'if you build it, they will come' doesn't apply, but, OTOH, Marvel didn't try very hard. I mean, sure, they changed some of the main Marvel universe characters to match the movie, but Marvel continuity is scary for someone who nows nothing about it
Maybe if a Ultimate-like reboot was done specifically to continue/emulate the movies, and done strictly in trades at book stores, where movie fans have to see them? Something might have happened. But that's a big risk, and there was enough people blinded by their love of the medium that were sure that exposure = sales it was never going to be taken.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 25, 2021 19:14:19 GMT -5
Giveaways = throwaways in most cases at things like theatres, ball parks, etc. So the quality of that X-Men giveaway was pretty much irrelevant in whether people kept it, read it or kept it.
Something they paid for on the cheap would have actually gone home with more people even if not everyone got it. I always felt they should have had some kind of commemorative comic for sale at the concession stands for those movies.
For X-Men maybe something that had 3 stories-here's how the X-Men started in comics reprinting X-Men #1 from '63; here's the team the movie is based on reprinting GS X-Men 1 and finally here's the X-Men of today in comics with either a recent issue reprinted or an original story of the current status quo giving movie-goers what they might need to know to pick up a current book. Include a coupon redeemable for either a free mail subscription to an X-Men book or redeemable at an LCS (that Marvel or Diamond will reimburse the retailer for) for a free X-Men comic or $5 off a purchase of Marvel Comics with the info for the Comic Shop Locator) and charge like $3-$5 for it at the concession stand, and you would have effectively reached more actual customers homes than the giveaway did because people actually paid for it giving it perceived value to the consumer, but the coupon offers make it a net $0 spent if they redeem it.
I have no illusions such a program would have brought masses of new readers to comics, but it would have brought those inclined to try comics a chance to get actual comics in their hands to sample at no cost to them.
Spider-Man could have done something similar reprinting AF 15, the first Goblin appearance in ASM 14 and Ultimate Spider-Man 1.
Again not a perfect tool, but one that could have reached a larger number of potential consumers with an incentive to actually try comics.
In later years, after the launch of Marvel Unlimited, I would have had the coupon be for a free month of Marvel Unlimited with a promo offer for a year's subscription, giving the consumer a chance to sample whatever they wanted in the convenience of their home. Again, not a surefire way, but a way to get those inclined to read comics among the mass audience an opportunity to do so that is accessible and affordable for them.
-M
|
|
|
Post by tonebone on Oct 26, 2021 13:24:52 GMT -5
A TPB collecting Dave Cockrum's 1st run on the book issued to coincide with the 1st or 2nd movies might have helped. Yeah, I think some planning and forethought could have gone a LONG way to bridging the gap. DC actually does a better job of that, releasing "essential reading" TPB's when a big movie or tv show launches. It's sort of scattershot, but they are at least marketed at a crossover audience. I have no idea how much of it attracts crossover interest, but at least it's there. I do remember seeing Watchmen, and the TPB's were at the theater, prominently displayed, for a discounted price, to entice new readers. I think they were something like $12-14. I've always wondered how well they sold. Marvel tried, later, and very superficially, to tie into the LOOK of the X-Men movies, with Morrison and Quitely's New X-Men. But, aside from black leather, it was totally disconnected from the experience of watching the movies. They're great comics, but probably FARTHER from the movies than the era of X-Men you cite (the Cockrum era).
|
|
|
Post by tonebone on Oct 26, 2021 14:21:32 GMT -5
Yeah, I don't know if there was a way for the comics publishers to have successfully capitalized on the comic book movie adaptations starting en masse, but if there was a way, what they did around the first X-MEN movies wasn't it. Here's a piece of anecdotal info I just ran across: From www.lrs.org/2009/03/16/watchmen_who_knew/
|
|