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Post by EdoBosnar on Sept 29, 2021 16:51:21 GMT -5
(...) However, looking through books is boring, (...) Say what?!
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Post by wildfire2099 on Sept 30, 2021 6:53:15 GMT -5
I'd love to see silver age collections by month, e.g.: all the Marvels (or DCs) for June 1966 (including Millie or other non-superhero books). For me, that would be a lot more enjoyable experience than trying to plow through a year's worth of Iron Man stories. CrossGen did that with their Forge and Edge trade paperbacks (each collecting 2 issues per month of 6 titles with the trades being released monthly). The problem-the material is all serialized and incomplete so its like reading 6 books 2 chapters at a time all at once. Stories and characters jumble together and it creates a very poor reading experience. That said, if it were collecting material from the eras where comics were telling self-contained stories, I would be all for it, as it would make for a great sampler anthology. For a serialized story to work in that format, it needs to be structured so that the chapters needs to be structured to work in that format and not as part of a standalone serialized feature. I am not sure Marvel stuff after '65 or so would work well in that format. DC stuff would work until a little later (sometime in the 70s), but again the changes to the way serialized stories were told in big 2 comics (and later indies) would limit the readability and enjoyability of such a formatted book. -M I picked up those Cross Gen books... They're like a sample, and felt alot like Shonen Jump and the other Manga magazines... small bits of alot of stories... it's essentially an anthology book, which, as mrp has pointed out in the past, seems to not actually sell, even though alot of people think in theory they are a good idea. I'm not sure ALL of one month from a particular publisher would work... too much people wouldn't care about, and it would have a high price point. Maybe if they could do it in a 'phonebook' format? Those didn't sell well enough to stay in print, but they seem to be popular in the secondary market, so maybe now if they came back people would be into them. Also, I LOVE the Epics... if I felt more confident in Marvel completing series, I'd buy them all and replace some singles. The problem there is you get so much good stuff to read for not alot of money it's hard to have time to read them DC has done a bit of those with the 'xxx in the silver age' collections, but not nearly as extensively.
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Post by tonebone on Sept 30, 2021 6:59:24 GMT -5
I'd love to see silver age collections by month, e.g.: all the Marvels (or DCs) for June 1966 (including Millie or other non-superhero books). For me, that would be a lot more enjoyable experience than trying to plow through a year's worth of Iron Man stories. CrossGen did that with their Forge and Edge trade paperbacks (each collecting 2 issues per month of 6 titles with the trades being released monthly). The problem-the material is all serialized and incomplete so its like reading 6 books 2 chapters at a time all at once. Stories and characters jumble together and it creates a very poor reading experience. That said, if it were collecting material from the eras where comics were telling self-contained stories, I would be all for it, as it would make for a great sampler anthology. For a serialized story to work in that format, it needs to be structured so that the chapters needs to be structured to work in that format and not as part of a standalone serialized feature. I am not sure Marvel stuff after '65 or so would work well in that format. DC stuff would work until a little later (sometime in the 70s), but again the changes to the way serialized stories were told in big 2 comics (and later indies) would limit the readability and enjoyability of such a formatted book. -M So, when is Marvel going to get off their butts and reprint CrossGen content? A lot of it was really good, and all of it was beautiful.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Sept 30, 2021 7:03:10 GMT -5
I suspect never. Marvel buys stuff to eliminate it, rather than integrate it. While I enjoyed Crossgen, much of it was derivative.. no reason for Marvel to use Brath when they have Conan, etc.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 30, 2021 7:08:57 GMT -5
CrossGen did that with their Forge and Edge trade paperbacks (each collecting 2 issues per month of 6 titles with the trades being released monthly). The problem-the material is all serialized and incomplete so its like reading 6 books 2 chapters at a time all at once. Stories and characters jumble together and it creates a very poor reading experience. That said, if it were collecting material from the eras where comics were telling self-contained stories, I would be all for it, as it would make for a great sampler anthology. For a serialized story to work in that format, it needs to be structured so that the chapters needs to be structured to work in that format and not as part of a standalone serialized feature. I am not sure Marvel stuff after '65 or so would work well in that format. DC stuff would work until a little later (sometime in the 70s), but again the changes to the way serialized stories were told in big 2 comics (and later indies) would limit the readability and enjoyability of such a formatted book. -M So, when is Marvel going to get off their butts and reprint CrossGen content? A lot of it was really good, and all of it was beautiful. Marvel doesn't own it, Disney does. Disney acquired it separately from Marvel, and while they are both in the House of Mouse, CrossGen isn't a part of Marvel. They did one short-lived Crossgen revival via Marvel that sold abysmally. Disney doesn't exploit their other IP in comics through Marvel (Star Wars being the exception, but Mickey, Donald and Uncle Scrooge, the Muppets, etc. not so much), they license it out to other publishers. I doubt they will find someone interested in a CrossGen license in the current market, and CrossGen would not sell well enough to turn a profit as a Marvel book in the current market, so unless someone comes to them asking for the license and willing to give them guaranteed money for it, I doubt you will see it. On top of that, just about every major storyline in CrossGen was left unfinished when they went out of business and they definitely won't sell well enough to create new material to finish them, so it is a product guaranteed to leave readers frustrated and unsatisfied because of a lack of resolution. So I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for new collections of CrossGen material. In fact, I would say Malibu Ultraverse is more likely than CrossGen because of the growing 90s nostalgia effect, and I would put it at a less than 1% chance we ever see Malibu collections or material again. -M
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Sept 30, 2021 9:49:41 GMT -5
Many years ago ( 30? ) , I wondered to myself why Marvel doesn't collect their books in a yearly format. EX: Avengers 1990, 1991 . Not storylines, just a year at a time. Then they started collecting stories in trades. Same difference I guess. I don't have a great love for collected editions. I feel like I never finish them, I read a few stories and put it on the shelf. I'd love to see silver age collections by month, e.g.: all the Marvels (or DCs) for June 1966 (including Millie or other non-superhero books). For me, that would be a lot more enjoyable experience than trying to plow through a year's worth of Iron Man stories. I still think it would make a ton of sense to number modern books like this. Remember Superman's triangle era, where each book for a given year was given a number so that you had a clear reading order? How much more useful would it be for a publisher to assign all of their books such a number for a given year? Example, instead of Iron Man #18 being the eighteenth published issue of that particular volume of Iron Man, "Iron Man 2021: #18" would be the eighteenth Marvel book published in 2021, intended to be read before "Black Panther 2021: #19" and after "Squirrel Girl 2021: #17" JUST IN CASE any continuity carries over. The problem is that you would then need writers and editors who actually talk to each other and ensure that the continuity is actually adhered to across titles. But it sure would be nice.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 30, 2021 11:06:30 GMT -5
I'd love to see silver age collections by month, e.g.: all the Marvels (or DCs) for June 1966 (including Millie or other non-superhero books). For me, that would be a lot more enjoyable experience than trying to plow through a year's worth of Iron Man stories. I still think it would make a ton of sense to number modern books like this. Remember Superman's triangle era, where each book for a given year was given a number so that you had a clear reading order? How much more useful would it be for a publisher to assign all of their books such a number for a given year? Example, instead of Iron Man #18 being the eighteenth published issue of that particular volume of Iron Man, "Iron Man 2021: #18" would be the eighteenth Marvel book published in 2021, intended to be read before "Black Panther 2021: #19" and after "Squirrel Girl 2021: #17" JUST IN CASE any continuity carries over. The problem is that you would then need writers and editors who actually talk to each other and ensure that the continuity is actually adhered to across titles. But it sure would be nice. It also ensures you are only going to sell your comics to a hardcore fan and not a casual audience, which is what comics since the late 20th century has done and left the customer base so small that the product is no longer a viable mass market commodity. The point should be to tell a good Iron Man story, not to tell a shared universe story that you have to buy an impossible number of books to follow. This was the mistake the big 2 made (and the switch to the direct market was a symptom not a cause of this). I mentioned this is the serialized vs. one shot thread-if your focus is on the shred universe, your only audience is fans of the shared universe, not fans of a character or readers looking for an entertaining reading experience. Just because comics can tell tightly intertwined stories with massive continuity doesn't mean they should and it doesn't mean that's what the mass audience who bought comics and made comics a viable mass medium entertainment product wanted. The more comics focused on that, the more of their audience they shed until all that was left was the small segment of the audience, i.e. the hardcore fans, who wanted that sprawling intertwined continuity. For the largest part of their audience, that was not a feature, but an obstacle to enjoying the comics they read. For every hardcore fan who liked it and cited it as a reason to keep buying comics and to get more into comics, there were 15-20 casual readers who just stopped reading because of it, and so comics appealed ot a smaller and smaller niche audience, and when that niche audience splintered over which aspects of the continuity they wanted to see perpetuated, it left an infinitesimally small consumer base for serialized continuity based monthly periodical comics. The fix has nothing to do with trying to appeal more to that small audience or doubling down on that type of hardcore continuity as a marketing device. Comics don't need more fans, they need more customers, which means broadening the appeal, not narrowing it with things like tight intertwined continuity between multiple titles and focusing on the shared universe rather than the characters and stories themselves. -M
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Sept 30, 2021 16:57:28 GMT -5
I still think it would make a ton of sense to number modern books like this. Remember Superman's triangle era, where each book for a given year was given a number so that you had a clear reading order? How much more useful would it be for a publisher to assign all of their books such a number for a given year? Example, instead of Iron Man #18 being the eighteenth published issue of that particular volume of Iron Man, "Iron Man 2021: #18" would be the eighteenth Marvel book published in 2021, intended to be read before "Black Panther 2021: #19" and after "Squirrel Girl 2021: #17" JUST IN CASE any continuity carries over. The problem is that you would then need writers and editors who actually talk to each other and ensure that the continuity is actually adhered to across titles. But it sure would be nice. It also ensures you are only going to sell your comics to a hardcore fan and not a casual audience, which is what comics since the late 20th century has done and left the customer base so small that the product is no longer a viable mass market commodity. The point should be to tell a good Iron Man story, not to tell a shared universe story that you have to buy an impossible number of books to follow. Can I get you some straw for the man you're building? I suggested a numbering system that allows readers to know what came first, second, third, etc. That way, if I want to read Squirrel Girl and Moon Girl, and the two meet one month, I can easily know which issue to read first. If I buy Iron Man and Captain America each month, I know the reading order just in case some background character or reference makes its way into both books. That doesn't necessitate buying or reading them all anymore than putting the Marvel logo on each book necessitates owning every book with a Marvel logo on it. How obsessive completists might react to such a numbering system really isn't the point unless the publisher decides to make it a "Gotta Read Them All" gimmick, and I think we'd all agree that would be a deplorable mistake.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 30, 2021 18:08:43 GMT -5
One day, in my senior years, when I'm rocking away in my chair and looking at a jar of water on the counter which contains my teeth....I'll look towards all my comic cabinets, drawers, long boxes, and ask myself if it was really worth it.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Sept 30, 2021 20:29:54 GMT -5
I suggested a numbering system that allows readers to know what came first, second, third, etc. That way, if I want to read Squirrel Girl and Moon Girl, and the two meet one month, I can easily know which issue to read first. If I buy Iron Man and Captain America each month, I know the reading order just in case some background character or reference makes its way into both books. That doesn't necessitate buying or reading them all anymore than putting the Marvel logo on each book necessitates owning every book with a Marvel logo on it. How obsessive completists might react to such a numbering system really isn't the point unless the publisher decides to make it a "Gotta Read Them All" gimmick, and I think we'd all agree that would be a deplorable mistake. I get what you're going for there... but I don't think that would work the way you hope. It wouldn't be the publisher who decides you 'Gotta Read Them All'... but the readers. People of our daughters' generation are used to consuming a story from beginning to end, and reading just a part is not ok. If you number the whole Marvel line, they'll never pick up a single issue because they'll feel like they need to start at the beginning and now want to commit to the whole pile. Perhaps if you did it in groups it would work, but even then it might be too much. I DO think that numbering the single books as '2021 #1' and starting again at '2022 #1' might work, but that would constrain things even more than they are now when they 'write for the trade'.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Sept 30, 2021 20:49:03 GMT -5
That's the thing, though.. they NEED those readers to stay viable. That's the point. If they wanted to cater to the current fans, they would never renumber anything.
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Sept 30, 2021 20:49:08 GMT -5
People of our daughters' generation are used to consuming a story from beginning to end, and reading just a part is not ok. If you number the whole Marvel line, they'll never pick up a single issue because they'll feel like they need to start at the beginning and now want to commit to the whole pile. Perhaps if you did it in groups it would work, but even then it might be too much. Ideally, nothing much would change within the books themselves. They're still telling individual stories, and it would be up to the publisher to make that clear on the covers. And, in the age of the multi-part story arc, many of those covers will still boast "PART 1 of 5" in much larger font than the "2021: #46". This doesn't have to be a problem unless it's handled wrong.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Sept 30, 2021 20:55:33 GMT -5
People of our daughters' generation are used to consuming a story from beginning to end, and reading just a part is not ok. If you number the whole Marvel line, they'll never pick up a single issue because they'll feel like they need to start at the beginning and now want to commit to the whole pile. Perhaps if you did it in groups it would work, but even then it might be too much. Ideally, nothing much would change within the books themselves. They're still telling individual stories, and it would be up to the publisher to make that clear on the covers. And, in the age of the multi-part story arc, many of those covers will still boast "PART 1 of 5" in much larger font than the "2021: #46". This doesn't have to be a problem unless it's handled wrong That would definitely be better... it seemed like Marvel was thinking about doing that for a while, with a big #1 on the front of new storylines, but it didn't seem to last long. I still even a small number as high as it would be by the end of the year would be off putting for the market the big 2 need to woo though.
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Sept 30, 2021 21:01:15 GMT -5
I still even a small number as high as it would be by the end of the year would be off putting for the market the big 2 need to woo though. As it's never been done, there's really no way to know how it would work out unless someone tried it. I question how many folks out there truly won't pick up issue #14 of a series if they haven't already read issues #1-13, or for that matter, #138. On the rare occasion that any of my kids takes an interest in a new book, they give no regard whatsoever to the issue #. It's the cover and the first page that grabs them or doesn't. Of course, they may not be typical of the target demographic but, then again, who is qualified to characterize the reading habits of the new generation? All we can offer is anecdotal evidence.
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Post by Batflunkie on Sept 30, 2021 21:16:39 GMT -5
Many years ago ( 30? ) , I wondered to myself why Marvel doesn't collect their books in a yearly format. EX: Avengers 1990, 1991 . Not storylines, just a year at a time. Then they started collecting stories in trades. Same difference I guess. I don't have a great love for collected editions. I feel like I never finish them, I read a few stories and put it on the shelf. They did do something like that with "Decades" and "Marvel Firsts", but it's mostly just a grab bag assortment of issues and not a complete run
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