"There is no Secret Society of Super-Villains to blame. The world has shifted. Retail sales are down everywhere. Numerous factors lowered our foot traffic: the pandemic, strikes that impacted TV and film jobs, and most unfortunately, the neighborhood is no longer a vibrant social center. Our building sits between two lots destroyed by fire with no reconstruction in sight, attracting squatters and graffiti without assistance from the city or the entities who own the real estate.
"Our lease is up. Moving is not an option. Wholesale discounts are smaller. Shipping is higher. The distribution system has fractured and because each vendor processes data differently, it takes longer to order and restock product. We're making less on each comic sold than we did ten years ago. Further, publishers are also feeling the pinch. They have cut back incentive programs that helped us grow readership, and tightened print runs to the point they can't meet demand when a title is a hit.
"This year, I attended the annual ComicsPRO Meeting for retailers, publishers, and distributors. It's always energizing to talk shop, and I remain in awe of the comic book slingers who inspired me and the new breed who embrace the challenges of the evolving market. They are my friends and I appreciate their wisdom and kindness, especially those who showed me there is a way to sell comics without the 24/7 demands of a shop."
...
https://bleedingcool.com/comics/comic-shop-earth-2-of-sherman-oaks-california-closes-after-21-years/
Real solution:
Sells comicbooks and TPBs in Target, Walmart and Bestbuy. Also in newsstands.
also drop direct market forever.
>Sell comicbooks and TPBs in Target, Walmart and Bestbuy. Also in newsstands.
But they don't want to sell them. Comics take up too much shelf-space for too long.
You guys say this shit, but I went to my local walmart recently and do you know what I saw on the shelves in the book sections?
FRICKING MANGA! THEY WERE SELLING CHAINSAW MAN VOLUMES AT THE FRICKING WALMART!! WHY IS WALMART PUTTING CHAINSAW MAN ON THE SHELF AND NOT ISSUES OF CAPTAIN MARVEL AND AMERICA CHAVES!??! IT'S BECAUSE CHAINSAW MAN WILL SELL AND IS POPULAR! I WENT BACK AND MOST OF THE BOOKS WERE SOLD! QUIT COPING!
NO ONE WANTS TO READ ABOUT SUPERMAN'S GAY SON! YOU CAN EASILY PUT COMICS IN THE WALMART BUT YOU HAVE TO BE BETTER THAN CHAINSAW MAN!
The vast majority of comic books published by DC do not feature Superman's gay son.
And those are so boring and uninspired that no one even cares about them. No one cares until they do something moronic and controversial and they only care enough to make fun of and mock it, certainty not buy.
And because superman's gay son is the only shit that get's any notoriety that colors people's perceptions of the industry as a whole. That's what people think western comics are now, because that's all anyone sees. If it isn't the case then they have done a terrible job marketing it to me.
I don't think you're entirely wrong, but I also think you're needlessly cynical, and your deep seeded bitterness is stopping you from enjoying the good stuff that is being published right now, or even from just acknowledging that it exists. It's simply to just say all comics are terrible, but it's simply not true, and there are many reasons the industry is facing hardship.
I remember them putting floppies over by the Pokemon cards and stuff around Rebirth, did they stop doing that?
They do, every time I go to Wal-Mart I see them selling comics, these morons never leave their houses.
Take a photo next time and someone might believe you.
I don't care if some homosexual shit poster believes me
>Lies
>"I don't care if you believe me"
Of course you don't....
NTA but all the walmarts in my region only offer aftermarket random grab-bags tucked away in a sloppily set up box, sealed packages of 3-4 random issues [and I mean random, I bought a few once to see what was in there and got a random couple of "Metal" issues, Speed, Death, etc, and a copy of Nubia's thing nobody bought] depending on if it's DC or Marvel, they cost like 7 bucks or so and they usually are on one of the upper shelves out of the way and just kinda tossed there. Kids don't even realize they're there.
Manga meanwhile gets placed with the books, with the anime/videogame merch in n ice displays, and sometimes in its own endcaps and kiosks and sells super fricking well. I'd have to actually learn delivery times so I could get there in time before it all got picked off and bought by somebody else, but if I wanted to and was willing to do that I could reliably buy a new volume of the flavor of the month manga and most of the big name long runners every new release just from my local walmart.
Cinemaphile BTFO
that's the funniest thing about these stories, everyone dancing around the root of the issue being that all the new stuff sucks and is written by crazy people with 30 gender pronouns that no average reader can connect to
The industry is super nepotistic so that is no surprise. Indie shit has practically no presence for big comics or cartoons compared to manga so you have to suck dick and know people to even get published. Not to mention that even if you do there is a non zero chance you are just going to be working with the same old relic characters that should have been retired years ago with maybe an occasional story coming out from time to time so it doesn't get stale.
It would be like if every big manga still wheeled out astro boy or something similar at one point or another. It's boring to focus on the same couple of homosexuals, powers, and repeating drama about those homosexualy characters for so long.
Yet it’s not a problem that manga has 50+ years running series still in publication? You frickers always do the same dance where you pretend the big two is the only kind of western comic and then Japan is super diverse even though all you care is basic shounen jump shit. It’s pathetic.
>Yet it’s not a problem that manga has 50+ years running series still in publication?
Depends on the series. Dragon Ball should have just ended certainly. I don't tend to read those super long series, I thought Berserk was overrated as frick too.
The difference is, Dragon Ball was written and illustrated for its entire run by the creator of the franchise, and that same guy also oversaw the creation of and had final say on the sequel manga (DB Super). Compare that to Superman, whose creators only wrote/drew for less than 10 years before DC let them go, and then passed the character through an average of three artists/writers a decade.
>durrrrr muh one creator
Nobody but spergs like you care. This is not a problem. If someone reads a Batman comic they just want to read Batman. People still read new James Bond novels even though Ian Fleming has been dead for half a century. Same way they continue to read Mike Hammer books written by Max Allan Collins. Nothing stops people reading and enjoying Sherlock Holmes stuff not by Doyle.
Muh artistic vision doesn’t mean jackshit when manga series suck all the time because the author doesn’t know what to do after a certain point or the ending is just shit. It’s not a draw like you claim. It isn’t stopping people from enjoying Dennis the Menace comics or Phantom comics or Popeye comics. Like most bullshit perpetuated in these threads it’s all just unconscious bias inside your own stupid head that’s the problem.
>Muh artistic vision doesn’t mean jackshit
Yes it does you fricking moron.
> when manga series suck all the time because the author doesn’t know what to do after a certain point or the ending is just shit
I'd rather read a shit manga made by 2 guys. Then read interpretation number 49983 by whoever. If your point was as sound as you think then what's the point in any new media? All books should just be reinterpretations of established franchises. Same with all movies, same with all cartoons since the vast majority of original stuff is mediocre right? Also like
mentioned, I am glad that there is no need for such a classification in manga.
>oh yeah well I prefer to read shit made by this arbitrary creator limit
Like I give a shit whatever stupid mental gymnastics you operate under.
>If your point was as sound as you think then what's the point in any new media?
Most media is just reinventing and reinterpreting old material and ideas under a new coat of paint or gimmick. That doesn’t stop you from doing “original” material. You’re talking nonsense.
Seethe and Cinemaphilepe
>>oh yeah well I prefer to read shit made by this arbitrary creator limit
Yes, I prefer to read comics the same way I read normal books also hilarious how your own mental gymnastics about artistic vision being irrelevant because some manga suck. That is the most anti-intellectual post you could have made.
>Most media is just reinventing and reinterpreting old material and ideas under a new coat of paint or gimmick.
Are you serious? Did you really change the subject from people complaining about not reading superhero number 476433467 interpreted by author number 23 to "actually nothing is original, we are still all copying the greeks".
You’re trying to make serialised fiction that’s decades old bad simply because you have a different preference. It’s stupid.
And manga is hardly original when they just chase after trends and gimmicks like everyone else. Muh artistic vision is just pure cope by weebs who can’t accept a lot of manga is just same shit wrapped in a slightly different kind of packaging.
>You’re trying to make serialised fiction that’s decades old bad simply because you have a different preference. It’s stupid.
I am saying that when it dominates the industry, yes it's problem. 70% of all comcis are capeshit. The market if flooded with them. Less than 20% of all manga are battle shounen in comparison.
>And manga is hardly original when they just chase after trends and gimmicks like everyone else.
A medium itself can't be original, are you dumb? Only individual works can be original.
>Muh artistic vision is just pure cope by weebs who can’t accept a lot of manga is just same shit wrapped in a slightly different kind of packaging.
Once again, please reread
.Yes, I prefer to read comics the same way I read normal books also hilarious how your own mental gymnastics about artistic vision being irrelevant because some manga suck. That is the most anti-intellectual post you could have made.
but slowly.
I wasn't talking about money anywhere. Anyways what are the top 10 best selling american comics of all time.
>I am saying that when it dominates the industry, yes it's problem.
The industry is just following what sells. The problem is the fans who claim they want one thing but then never actually follow up by supporting anything that is put out addressing said demands that when successful would start change the comics output they way the fans claim want.
Artistic vision is irrelevant because a lot of just leads to bad material. So trying to make it come kind of inherently vital aspect of appeal to consumers is ridiculous cope by weebs.
>Artistic vision is irrelevant because a lot of just leads to bad material.
Once again. That's a stupid. It's like I am talking to a wall. There are like a million comparisons that I could make that would surely make you understand that X is a good thing even if it leads to bad stuff but I don't feel like it.
>well sometimes there’s good stuff
So it’s entirely irrelevant as an argument as to why something is better than multiple creators because it still produces as much bad material. It’s a stupid and entirely superficial way to decide what you want to consume.
>>well sometimes there’s good stuff
It's like you are not getting it. Yes there probably is as much good stuff in percentages but that good stuff in manga is way move varied and prone to attract attention and then when we go to the above average stuff the 6/7-10 material, there manga absolutely reigns. There artistic vision matters so much because people write a lot of stuff usually about their lives and even if it's shlocky, it's still much more interesting than just interpretations. There could be a nip fisherman that draws his manga about the beautiful fish he catches on the side. This is where artistic vision excels.
>Less than 20% of all manga are battle shounen in comparison.
And 99% of those titles that are not battle manga sold like shit.
Cool number you didn't pull out of your ass at all. I'll be sure to take it very seriously.
For the record, the highest selling manga of 2023 was a soccer manga, Blue Lock. Not a battle shonen.
Originality doesn't sell. Manga is propped up by a handful of shonen series that make megabucks. Comics are propped up by a handful of characters from the 40's. Movies are propped up by a handful of franchises.
Originality doesn't sell. Brands sell. You have to accept that.
Holy shit I never thought I'd actually see some drooling cape comic fan sincerely defend the constant writer changes.
It's a fact that we would miss out on a lot of great comics if the only people who made them were their own creators. You are free to make your own choices and only read creator-owned comics, of which there are many even in the US.
Its a fact that we have *already* missed out on what those same great writers and artists would have made if the industry allowed them to make their OWN works, ones that stand on their own and are remembered on their own, as opposed to "Yeah, this one specific run of Superman for 2 years in the 1980s? Really excellent." which no casual fan will ever read because they both won't know it exists and won't know how to find it even if they did. And it certainly doesn't indicate that they will enjoy the Superman comics on either side of that window.
>Its a fact that we have *already* missed out on what those same great writers and artists would have made if the industry allowed them to make their OWN works
The industry does allow this though. Creator owned comics didn't cease to exist in the 20th century.
Yes anon. And I've seen the magazine and book section of my local Target, all Targets really, start to carry more and more manga as well. No one is denying manga has eaten comics alive and is doing well while comics fail.
>manga has eaten comics alive
Manga are comics. If rap eats country music, the music industry should still benefit. Comic shops should be able to use manga/anime, Harry Potter, Pokemon or whatever as a gateway of sorts or as an addition to their business. Looking at a picture from Earth 2, I see seven posters and two neon lights in the storefront window - all DC and Marvel. Vast majority of inside looks like regular single issue comics. Looks limited to like what a middle age comic dude would envision or want. Shop owners used to say they wished they could attract females somehow. Then a minor miracle happens with the manga cosplay girl crowd, but some shops owners mostly ignore them?
>Manga are comics
While this is technically right, you know that's not how it works in practice.
Target is selling a bunch of DC trades in stores now though. They've also got some turtles trades too.
Based Dunning-Kruger poster.
Eat shit.
There are no newsstands (or combined greeting card/magazine stores that were around when I was a kid). Pharmacies, grocery stores and the like have curtailed magazine sections drastically. My Barnes and Noble cut their magazine area by 2/3 in half after a recent remodel.
>Going to Walmart for anything
Holy frick no. KEK
Walmart is fine if you pick one that isn’t near apartments or a bus line. I drive 20 minutes to one that’s suitable for humans.
Bestbuy doesn't even want physical discs in their stores anymore, what makes you think they'd want comics? Forget about the big three retailers and focus on places like grocery stores, they still have magazine stands at every register. Plus the stands are filled with such tripe dogshit that they probably wouldn't mind pulling some of them to replace with equally shitty comics.
boffo idea pal, we should sell them at the sockhops and sodafountains too! Maybe even those newfangled malls!
But those stores used to have those but eventually phased them out? If not even regular magazines could survive and are now regulated to miniature shelves on some cash registers why would any store take the risk of setting up a dedicated area for comics of all things?
There are shelves of magazines at my grocery store. There's no reason comics shouldn't be on those shelves.
Guess it depends on the area. In nearly every grocery store I've been to, big or small and of varied chains, the only ones that still have magazine stands have been Ralph's or Vons. And those aren't exactly as easy to find as most other grocery stores.
They need to kill floppies. The floppies model just doesn't work anymore will never work anymore hasn't in years. They need to make 4 issue volumes once a month.
Fpbp
And /thread
>Target, Walmart and Bestbuy
Why do you hate Costco?
Look, I love Costco. They have the best store brand imaginable and their food court is what fed me during University. But you gotta admit they suck at media releases. They used to have a huge book section, but have been phasing it out. Hell I don't even think they sell Blu-Rays any more.
Those stores will also be dead before 2040
>Real solution:
>Sells comicbooks and TPBs in Target, Walmart and Bestbuy.
god dammit. This is why we can't have nice things.
I'm with you on newstands, but big box stores are charmless pieces of shit that cater to uber-normie tastes.
Anon, you need to get the normies to buy your product. At least some of them. Catering only to a niche audience is how comics have degraded the way they have.
If you can't sell your product in a walmart because no one will buy it, odds are good that no one was going to buy it no matter where it was for sale.
News stands are dead in the water delivery system.
found the normie
Yes, but they’re also the only place you can buy things. At least for a lot of people.
HURRRRRRR DURRRRRRR
Saved, it gets frustrating seeing those same arguments show up in these threads as if it was Groundhog Day again
You're both fricking moronic. Every single one of those arguments is debunked by the fact that literally every other fricking comparable industry is capable of doing all of them. They have their own problems, but it demonstratably can be fricking done.
>Get rid of color
Works for Manga, national papers ship fine and even manage to stay barely above water despite fricking google existing, something more exclusive content wise with longer lasting value should be fine
>sell in grocery stores
magazine, manga, national distribution papers.
>Anthologies
Manga, manga, did I mention fricking manga?
>Go digital
irrelevant in the face of "little Timmy cannot want to get the comic book if his 8 year old brain does not every see that it exists to ask for it" which the grocery store solves. This is such a settled, known fricking fact in marketing and has been for decades that it's the strongest argument that whoever is incharge of figuring this shit out at Marvel/DC is either unqualified in a literal sense and lied to get their job or actively doesn't want to improve the situation. "Put something with bright colors at child eye level in the check out isle under 6 dollars>make millions" is a known fricking quantity.
But we already fricking knew that the later is the case. Mewling and handwringing about the market changing, and distribution problems that somehow only comics have, is the perfect scapegoat and smokescreen to justify why sales are terrible inorder to protect the rat's nest of homosexuals currently in writing and editorial at both offices, who *do not care* about the state of the industry.
Full stop, the vast majority of them want to continue being paid a whole lot to do less work than ever in the industry playing in the biggest toybox in the world and get asspats and blowjobs in their social circles to mimic a feeling of accomplishment. All the bullshit you're claiming is a total fricking cope and always has been.
How well do black and white anthology manga sell in American grocery stores? You fricking moron.
>How well do black and white anthology manga sell in American grocery stores? You fricking moron.
Pretty fricking well going by how Walmart is regularly out of stock a day or two after delivery. Goddamn you're moronic.
Really, they sell anthology manga in American Walmart? What would be some of those titles?
>What the frick is a shounen jump
>what the frick is a tankobon
NTA but unless you use some really janky fricking hyperspecific definition of anthology they very much do. Not every walmart carries the same selection but Walmart's made it their business model to carry anything and everything they legally can that doesn't give bad optics and undercut every commercial goods business in a region as much as possible to make a profit. As a rule of thumb if it's legal in the US and has some kind of market for it, Walmart has it in at least one store within a hundred miles of you somewhere.
Which is really telling when the three hole bawds of general goods doesn't carry more than shitty aftermarket comic books in multipacks.
>Buying tankos at Walmart
Even the most ghetto of ghetto weebs don't buy tankos at fricking Walmart.
Do they sell Shonen Jump in Walmart? Is there even an English version at all? Or any sort of anthology manga? And I mean anthology manga in the same way as anybody would, which is chapters if several different comics by different authors in a single volume. Those kind of publications haven't been successful in the US for ages, not even for manga.
A tankobon is the same as a paperback and American comics already sell those in many places others than comic book shops.
>Do they sell Shonen Jump in Walmart? Is there even an English version at all?
The answer to both is "used to".
>"used to"
Gee, I wonder why they don't anymore since it's obviously the key to success in America.
Magazines died.
Then how an anthology magazine would save western comics?
Then why that other moron says that they sell them in Walmart and that's what comics should do?
Supposedly they went full digital because somebody was using some exclusivity deal to muscle them out of local production/distribution, though nobody has a fricking name on to who was doing it so who fricking knows how true that is. Sales were still solid until then though. The other thing that's usually mentioned is it made giving the US a weekly shounen jump release way easier as well to match demand.
Magazines aren't dead, just hurting due to consolidation and the internet meaning everyone can google whatever moronic news or gossip they wanna hear about and due to largely being seen as one and done disposable. You can do that with comics and manga to a lesser extent but normies are still spooked by the piracy boogieman to various degrees and a comic/manga is something you actually, y'know, want to keep.
You still have a few titles still releasing even now, though their selection of manga and chapter tend to be a lot more limited to more in the vein of previews like Otaku USA and its derivatives which still sell solidly [usually only have a handful of chapters from a few titles each month though] or NEO which while predominantly UK based gets sold frequently enough via import racks on the East Coast as well. Selection is more limited than it was a few years ago though definitely, but they're the companies probably holding up the best out of the magazine market other than like, Nat Geo or the usual NRA mags that have infinite money.
Shonen Jump international went full digital years ago. Pay $4.99 and get access to all their manga.
>Shonen jump
Yeah they did until relatively recently, then they went full digital for on account of the whole debacle going on with somebody muscling them out of deals on distribution some fricking how with legalese [nobody knows who to this day apparently] and sales kept going up anyway. So it kinda BTFO's both the "Won't sell in common stores" thing and the "Digital will never work!" thing, though being fair the later is helped by "This anime is on TV and all your frequently shilled streaming services and has commercials and ads even now" which helps awareness and sales and like...
Is there even a Spider-man cartoon out right now? Superman got one recently but y'know. Awareness is not particularly high.
Wait did Shonen Jump actually get BTFO from distribution?
Nobody's certain but they and Viz started having massive issues fulfilling orders across the US out of nowhere and according to what anyone could get at the time, companies capable of producing and distributing them in a timely and efficient manner [that "here's a whole bunch of magazine high gloss then a shitload of standard coarse pages" in these monster sized magazines is apparently a bit of a headache due to not being very standard] were being given offers they couldn't afford to not take with how bad the industry as a whole was doing that included clauses about not servicing competitors, which apparently Shounen Jump and a few others in that vein qualified as.
To this day, nobody knows how true it is or if so who the frick was responsible but it would explain a whole fricking lot because the demand for them was still climbing at the time, so much so that Viz and them launching Weekly Shounen Jump digitally was a massive success and is still going fairly strong.
You're a fricking moron. Manga gets most of its western sells from book stores, not Wal-mart. Magazines and newspapers are doing even worse than comics in terms of sells.
Anyone crying JUST SELL IN WAL-MART is a stupid c**t that doesn't understand that the root of the problem is that comics give less value on the dollar.
Digital is having issues because it's price point is bad and what it offers is limited. Anthologies do better because people are willing to pay more for a lot more than what they normally get.
Comics as a medium is a dinosaur it's Sears to manga's amazon. It's blockbuster when netflix is coming. It's doing bad because it's so resistant to change and is dragging it's heels at every corner.
>Digital is having issues because it's price point is bad and what it offers is limited.
I dropped Marvel Unlimited some years ago, but, do they still have that thing where new available comics are a couple months behind the original publication date?
You'd have to ask someone else because I just pirate comics at this point.
>Comics as a medium is a dinosaur it's Sears to manga's amazon. It's blockbuster when netflix is coming.
Kinda weird comparisons as Amazon might be the world's biggest seller of physical books. Saying comics and manga aren't the same medium is like saying Taylor Swift and Jpop aren't both music. Most manga is black and white, so if anything they look more "dinosaur" in comparison. Netflix allows the same and better viewing of movies on televisions as Blockbuster. A Netflix for comics can't recreate the having a physical book in hand, could only get better with virtual reality type stuff, but then it would be more an animated viewing than a book.
The medium is a dinosaur, that is. Their distribution, their online methods, their floppies. It's not about the quality of the work but their willingness to adapt. Most manga is in digital format where it's cheaper than a physical version. You can buy subscriptions for a couple bucks a month to access to hundreds of manga. Western comics look at manga and upcharge by 5x the cost on average and they usually don't let you get issues the day they release. It's an unsustainable model when you have to compete with pirating.
A bigger problem is content creators not having a reason to sell their ideas to Marvel/DC, even if you create a character so sucessful that their MCU movie get 1 billion dollars you will not be rich, so what is even the point? Some other writer will be as well paid as you for pushing another pointless sidekick for Batman or Spider-Man, If you are that talented as an idea guy then just write your own book, be massively rich like Stephen King, George RR Martin and J. K. Rowling rather than a another disposable wage slave among thousands.
These are a couple of authors in a VAST sea of authors who has made it insanely big, your chance of striking it big is miniscule even if you are a very good writer.
Stephen King was the result of a different era, one where people in general read quite a lot and his paperbacks sold like candy due to name recognition and long story horror being popular, nowadays it's mainly females who read books and that audience keeps shrinking.
JK Rowling is a single franchise success targeted at YA and managed to capture a whole generation, this could happen again but it seems unlikely.
Of course AI will make all this obsolete, you will be able to ask for a story in a genre you like, with characters you describe (if you so want), hinting at the storyline (if you want) and the AI will generate endless such stories for you, read aloud by your favorite voice actor, even illustrated (if you want) and of course eventually whole movies or tv episodes etc.
>Of course AI will make all this obsolete, you will be able to ask for a story in a genre you like, with characters you describe (if you so want), hinting at the storyline (if you want) and the AI will generate endless such stories for you, read aloud by your favorite voice actor, even illustrated (if you want) and of course eventually whole movies or tv episodes etc.
I think you have a very basic misunderstanding of the purpose of art and culture in society.
The purpose of art and culture is to reach an audience which will enjoy it in one form or another.
99.9% of said audience doesn't care if it comes from an AI or some 'so deep misunderstood' artist.
>The purpose of art and culture is to reach an audience which will enjoy it in one form or another.
Imagine being this much of a soulless automaton kek
Nope. Artistic expression as the term implies, is an act of communication. In recent years it becamed entangled with the concept of product and commerce but that's also how you have many ephemeral products of entertainment yet still get some endeavours with enough artistic merit to transcend their immediate context, or at the very least capture the zeitgeist in a way that works as a snapshot of that culture in a specific moment in time.
AI only regurgitates pre-existing works, without the creative impulse to push it into actual artistic territory. There might be a place for that slop in the market, but artistic expression will survive as it always has. It's an inherent part of human culture.
>AI only regurgitates pre-existing works
No more than humans do, we do not create anything actually original.
We are inspired by everything we come across in life and like, and this is the basis upon which we create.
We, like the AI, mix and match that which we have been inspired by when we express 'art'. Which is why the AI is so effective at replacing artists, it does the same, only million times more efficient.
If we ever get stories as good as by the best comic writers in their prime, like Frank Miller etc, it will be through AI, comic book writers have only gotten worse.
>We, like the AI, mix and match that which we have been inspired by when we express 'art'.
>Which is why the AI is so effective at replacing artists, it does the same, only million times more efficient.
If it's so effective, how come AI has never made something good?
Checkmate, atheists.
>No more than humans do, we do not create anything actually original.
Yeah, and that's why art nowadays is exactly the same as it was 1000 years ago, you fricking moron. AI might replace simpletons like you, that's for sure.
I listened to the Alan Moore Maestro course on writing and the Nas Masterclass on rap writing, both of them independently reached the view that the whole point of art is creating something from your soul and communicating it to the world, wherein other people will relate to your thoughts and feelings because they feel as though someone is personally speaking to them.
Art reminds us that we're all part of a greater human experience and none of us are truly alone.
AI will never achieve that. It's going to be AI books getting rave AI reviews, I've no doubt it'll continue to exist but I don't think there's much demand for reading something that nobody wrote.
It might be a fad, like synthetic muzak was in the late 70s/early 80s but ultimately only stuff like Kraftwerk survived because they were actually saying something.
We're starved for communications among human beings, it's fundamental to our species. All these c**ts that claim to be all about facts and pragmatic and whatnot keep misunderstanding why culture and art is present in every single civilization all around the world. It's a fundamental aspect of humanity.
>Of course AI will make all this obsolete
ok, moron.
Their miniatures sales increased +12% on the stores and +5% online, which not only show they are selling more game pieces but are having a more active fandom rather than just people who wanting a little space marine miniature on their shelf.
That being said, I'm pretty sure they will have a fall at some point, GW grew from an obscure little game to the second most mainstream space adventure franchise after star wars in a single generation, such growth didn't happen to an old western franchise since the MCU so they will probably peak just as Marvel live action peaked.
meant to
Why would Target, Walmart, Bestbuy want to stock comic books ? Nobody buys them.
Also, they would demand the right to return unsold copies, the comic book industry can't do that anymore, it would collapse in a heartbeat.
We all know it, the pros know it, the customers know it, the western comic book market, as in carried by big seller superhero books is OVER. They decided that they no longer wanted their majority customer base, white guys, who are 60% of the population and are a lot more of the population in the age range of those with disposable income enough to buy lots of comics today.
These fricking morons went all woke with the 'white males are bad' agenda and now the industry is dead. What a bunch of jackasses.
>These fricking morons went all woke with the 'white males are bad' agenda and now the industry is dead
Man, that's quite the leap in logic right there at the end.
Target and Wal-Mart stock comics.
Not very many comics... but some.
I've also been in some Gamestops that sell comics.
>who are 60% of the population
It's 70%+, more if you count Hispanics.
Pfffff ha ha ha ha!
No, the real solution is to copy manga. And I don't mean copy the stories, I mean the business model.
1. Weekly comics, not monthly.
2. For the cost of a floppy, a phonebook full of comics.
3. Couple this publishing with a fast-track to merchandizing and cartoons/movies for stories that make it big.
That's all you have to do.
>B-B-But what about paying the artists and writers?
First little b***h to scream "union" gets taken out back and beaten to death with a baseball bat, just like in Japan. The goal is to sell black and white phonebooks to children for less price than an overpriced monthly floppy. That's how the industry survives. The cost gets put on the wagie, not the customer, not unless you want the industry to die The writers and artists will be paid peanuts unless they make it big, in which case they should be paid big as well.
Man, I can't wait for One Piece to finish. Not because I hate it (I'm a fan) but I want Oda to enjoy his golden years, dude is turning 50 next year.
Any idea how much Oda made starting out? I bet it wasn't much at all. That's the problem with western artists. They expect to be superstars from the start and be paid like superstars.
Mangaka largely get paid in royalties from tankobon sales, and One Piece was fairly popular right off the bat, so he made more than your average newbie. Getting into Weekly Shonen Jump means your comic is seen by a TON of people, so unless you get axed right away because nobody liked your shit, it's surprisingly good money.
There's a BIG difference between current day comics and manga.
Manga is purely a meritocracy, if it sells they will publish it, if it doesn't sell, come up with something else.
Now, just like superhero comics drives the western comic book market, shonen (books targeted at young males) drives the manga market. The difference is that the manga market keeps itself aimed at this demographic, which has grown the overall manga market to a size where it can sustain lots of niche genres.
In the west, the morons in charge went all DEI and started changing the superhero comics so that they instead target niche audiences, which shrinks the ENTIRE market.
This just means comic book creators working for peanuts like trained monkeys in a cage for the publishers. It's a plantation business model.
>Sells comicbooks and TPBs in Target, Walmart and Bestbuy
They already tried that
>newsstands
Not even successful manga sells there
Clearly, this is the fault of the gays.
Gays AND israelites, anon. Don't just give half the story.
>There is no Secret Society of Super-Villains to blame.
Well they're certainly not secret about it.
It’s going to get much MUCH worse once inflation increases.
There's one thing I really don't understand about the retail apocalypse.
>be commercial landlord
>make money from rent
>my tenants can no longer run a profitable business in the current economy because their costs are too high
>do not lower the rent
>in fact, try to increase it
>tenants leave
>my property is now empty
>I still have to pay property taxes
>and either maintain the building or let it fall into ruin
>I am now losing money and my property is gradually becoming worthless
>this is fine
What's their endgame? Are they just hoping for a law to pass that lets them convert all their commercial property into housing?
>What's their endgame?
Drive down property values so the chinese can buy it. Which they are already doing. The sjws and politicians all take money directly from the chinese government/corporations (same difference).
>Drive down property values so the chinese can buy it.
Why would the owners of property want to drive down its value so they can lose money by selling it for less than they paid for it? That makes no sense.
meds
It's more profitable to rent out 50% of your properties for $10,000/month each than it is to rent out 100% of your properties for $4,000/month each.
>What's their endgame?
Sell to foreign investors so that they can build "luxury" apartments that mostly lie empty but are useful as tax havens.
why would anyone NOT increase rent when the market is dying? the ship is sinking, best to get all you can.
Because your tenants can't afford to pay it and just close their businesses and leave once their tenancy is up rather than bankrupt themselves for their landlord's profit. I mean I know where we are, but have you been outside recently and seen all the empty retail units?
April 2022.
Here's the thing: they don't see those as lost profits. Not really. You have to think like the real estate industry.
There is a finite amount of space on Earth. No new land is going to be created, and everyone needs it. That makes it inherently valuable. Land that is in close proximity to where people have already built is even more valuable. Land only gets more valuable over time, not less.
If I price out all of my tenants to the point they have to leave, thats not a downside to me. That just means there is no longer a reason for me not to inflate the price as arbitrarily high as I want. Because, eventually, someone WILL pay me for control of that lot, no matter how expensive I have made it. It is a fact that will happen, its only a question of when. Not renting out the property in the meantime is a the equivalent of having lost your loose change compared to real estate speculation that results in you getting paid 10 billion dollars 5-10 years down the time.
That is the game they are playing. Or, at the very least, the game they think they are playing. And if you are a corporation or some rich frick who can afford to just sit back and collect interest for as long as it takes to be right, eventually you'll get your payout anyway. You never aim for the small sale, you only aim for the big sale and even if it takes 10x as long to happen you still win in the end.
Its the same logic that leads developers to take said land and exclusively build multi-million dollar mansions on them when what people need is affordable housing. Their job isn't to make sure most people have housing, their job is to make money. And the best way for them to make money is to sell a mansion. Frick everyone else that needs a place to live.
>What's their endgame?
A bailout from the government on the stated value of their commercial real estate (they will get it)
No way they're going to get a bailout in this congress and this era.
If you think congress isn't full of REIT owners that will vote themselves free money you're naive.
Guy who's family is actually in real estate here.
If I think that another business can pay the higher rent I don't care if you can't come up with the money. You will leave and someone else be there. I might be wrong or I might not be but all investments involve speculation. Plus you really learn to not give a shit about tenants. You try to cutting them some slack or moving things in their favor. They are not going to treat you better in return. They are still going to do stupid shit like fall asleep with a lit cigarettes and leave you with a bill for fixing the roof. Meanwhile if you scrooge 'em they will actually be more respectful because they are afraid of losing their house. They'll post online about mai single mothers or whatever but they will actually respect more than you when you were trying to be nice to them.
This is especially true of nogs, browns, & women. The 'nice guy' landlord gets exploited.
As much as I hate landlords I agree on the treatment of women, single mothers, browns, and blacks as a human nature thing, most groups need oppression to function properly. The less of an butthole you are the less they respect you.
You know I was going to give you shit about this at first but it honestly makes sense that landlords have a huge incentive to be a c**t to everyone. That's how the world works I guess.
Eh, people who aren't homeowners get what they pay for.
The real c**ts are those speculators who sit on houses like they're stocks.
Commercial loans have to be restructured since they are based on rent values. If the rent changes, then some of that loan needs to be repaid asap based on the difference in rent. They're heavily punished for lowering rent, which is why they often give away free months of no rent rather than lowering rent.
They raise rent to try and make up the losses they are experiencing from the same financial pinch. Property taxes are higher, utility costs are higher, repair costs are higher, tenants are vacating their properties meaning they have to rely on a smaller number of tenants to make money.
The vast majority of landlords make very little money on each individual property, and are instead relying on volume (lots of tenants) to increase their income.
As someone who has negotiated with commercial landlords, normally when they have empty space they do whatever they can to fill it. Can't pay $50/sqft? How about you pay $10/sqft and then pay me 12% of your revenue? If it doesn't work after 12 months, well at least the building looked full and people came in so that the mall doesn't look fricking dead.
Landlords, especially the ones that aren't national companies reliant on hedge funds and private equity to keep them going, are always worrying about occupancy and tenant deliquency. You never have a real moment where you can go
>Ah, now I have passive income and can relax
That you have to ask such a moronic question should disqualify you from ever voting in an election ever again.
It's caligayia. They even mention that their shop is between burnt down buildings. That's the consequence of tolerating sjws. They literally killed comics.
Cool story, schitzo.
It's a slow death for the comic market, and manga is to blame.
Comics died years ago without manga.
Comics are written for troons who don't give a shit about comics.
I'm turning off my VPN for this; If manga is killing comics, then what does that mean for comic artists like myself who wanna make comics? Should I make manga instead? Should I copy how manga works and never have any gays blacks and troons in my comics? Or should I not copy comics because I'm a westoid and I'm a cancer who should not trifle with media I suck at making?
>Should I make manga instead?
Yes?
Make what you want and publish it yourself
create a concept and art that actively makes people want to buy back into comics. Don't just follow shitty trendy things & actively create pieces that make people want to invest in you.
I'm in a similar boat. Manga is clearly doing a lot better than comics but there's more to it than simply the woke shit. That's a part of it though, a compounding factor.
Here's a list of things that are why in my opinion Manga does better.
>Anime art style is generally more appealing than western art style
>Instead of trying to make fully rendered drawings where each panel is a complete illustration Manga artist only draw enough to convey the message of what's happening.
>As long as the reader knows what's going on it's good enough
>Black and white is cheaper to print and can be printed on cheaper paper than comics, driving down costs
>Focus on an individual creators vision rather than corporate mandates or large teams. Western comics have too many cooks a lot of the time
>Better paneling which emphasises flow.
>Less stiff characters because they don't make complete illustrations for every panel
>Smarter use of text. They don't have wonder woman say a whole paragraph mid punch which breaks up the action
And the biggest thing
>APPEALING CHARACTER DESIGNS!
>APPEALING CHARACTER DESIGNS!
>APPEALING CHARACTER DESIGNS!
And yes
>No contemporary politics that dominate the plot of feel out of place within the setting.
As for making money in the west good fricking luck. You'll never get published here because of corporate morons. Your only hope would to try and make a living online.
This is a sensible post, I think a lot of oldgay comic fans seem to think if comics were just like the good ol' days before the woke(whether that's the 2000's , 90's,80's, 70's, 60's) it would have the same appeal as manga.
It won't. Because ultimately they still lacked much of what you describe.
>i think the main difference is the current wertern thinking where they put the woke ideology over quality and entertainment.
the feminist and metoo fricked America industry really bad, they hate half or their potential readers just for being white or male or straight and don't see any problem in alienating them.
I have no idea what any of that means. I think you mean, they stop telling a story to give you a speech about rightious stuff. At this point, people think black people existing now is woke because of recent events.
The only comics I've been reading are from Image and IDW because of Skottie Young and Sonic. Maybe I'm just good at avoiding a converbelt of comics made without much thought.
As for anime being more appealing than a western style, I suck at drawing anime, and I feel held back from drawing anime since I grew up watching and drawing cartoons. Should I just accept the fact that more people like anime more than cartoons and force myself to draw something I don't enjoy just so people can read my fricking comics?
I try to incorporate anime inspired designs that break the moe mold and goes for expressive cuteness, even some modern western cartoons do that, so it's not all calarts shit.
My question is, should I throw away what I wanna do with my comics and just do what YOU guys want because that's the only way I can ever get successful?
Because
is on point, I already have a comic I've made money from thanks to fans. You'd be surprised how if you make characters with stories, people care about them because they have stories. It's just hard for my self esteem because what if doing what I want makes me selfish without realizing?
So maybe that's the big takeaway; Do what you want, don't be dated, and you can't rush art
>the feminist and metoo fricked America industry really bad, they hate half or their potential readers just for being white or male or straight and don't see any problem in alienating them.
Those things are a consequence of the 2008 recession FUBARing male purchasing power, and making media companies dispense with highly paid white guys in favor of dipshit college kids.
>At this point, people think black people existing now is woke because of recent events.
it wasn't woke years ago, but then people decided to push an anti-white sentiment and patronize minorities, so now having black characters became this sort of stand against white people and now all black characters must be annoying, angry and full of resentment, same with female characters, Men are the evil incarnate and women are beings of light so now all things men enjoy are bad and all female characters must be as unappealing and boring as possible to avoid the male gaze unless they are lesbians or bisexuals.
I have never seen such a case, I've only seen people interpret cases as that and the very few times I did see such cases, they were all forgotten and B movie tier releases
Some advice I have it to go look at manga from the 50s and 60s and integrate that into your work. The divergence point between toony comics and manga didn't start becoming pronounced till the 70s and full divergence didn't start till the end of the decade.
So go check out Astro Boy
>Should I just accept the fact that more people like anime more than cartoons and force myself to draw something I don't enjoy just so people can read my fricking comics?
Yes. You have to make what the market wants, not what you want. This has always been the case.
>My question is, should I throw away what I wanna do with my comics and just do what YOU guys want because that's the only way I can ever get successful?
Yes. You have to make what people want if you want to be successful. Once you're a success you can try making these things but you may need to accept that very few people will want this.
>I already have a comic I've made money from thanks to fans.
If you're happy with this level of success keep doing what you're doing. If you want more readers you'll need to make a different comic with more mainstream appeal.
>Maybe I'm just good at avoiding a converbelt of comics made without much thought
>reads IDW Sonic
There is the big one that all of manga is not in the hands of the same dozen or so writers that make everything, float between every book and you just have to wait for them to retire or die before stories can change again. There is actual variety in creative minds and writers making things.
Not just Bendis making book A, then Book B, and Book C, then shifting over to DC and Making Books D, E, F and team book G.
While Tom King is making books H, I, J, and K and every fricking one of them has the exact same themes and characterizations.
If you really hate one or two major A+ writers, then the industry as a whole might as well be dead to you because their shit is going to be everywhere for at least a decade.
I genuinely do not understand this modern media mindset of attack some segment of the population that is acceptable to attack for some kind of internet points. I want as many people as humanly possible buying my books, I don't fricking care if they are ideologically opposed to me. I want their money. I see no reason to waste ink targeting demographics of any kind ever. I want all of them buying my book, watching my movie, buying my toys. This shit is just insane and I'm amazed that the corporate suits allowed it to go on for as long as they have.
CHARACTER DESIGNS!
This right here
>this girl, who's not even part of the main character group and only hung out with them for about one arc got into the top 10 in a global popularity contest.
Her biggest moment was going White and helping the crew escape enemy territory. Got 8th.
Wish I knew, but the dude makes bank now. Royalties, licensing and others.
>and never have any gays blacks and troons in my comics?
Many manga has those you know?
i think the main difference is the current wertern thinking where they put the woke ideology over quality and entertainment.
the feminist and metoo fricked America industry really bad, they hate half or their potential readers just for being white or male or straight and don't see any problem in alienating them.
Use manga format(study how panels are composed, page size, styles), but for the love of christ don't attempt to move to Japan to publish manga.
In a few years I predict we're going to start seeing more things like Radiant which are made in manga format but published by western publishers. There's already been experiments but I think it's going to be more common. Even things like the size of comic books are dated.
Depends what you mean when you say you want to
>make comics
because you can just "make comics" right now by making twatter/tumbr accounts and putting them online. If you're good enough and able to stick to a schedule, you might be able to make patreon bux and stay entirely independent of the shitty, sinking industry. Frankly even if you do want to get published I'd still recommend that as a starting point because you could potentially use that as a stepping stone to have your comics published in a trade format by an indie publisher. If you want to work in the industry for one of the big names my first question would be "fricking why?" you'll have to draw stuff that doesn't interest you for shitty writers on harsh deadlines and probably earn less as well. Be an online/indie GN creator Anon, that should be the dream.
Comics or manga styled, it's not like you are going to make money. It's hard to make money by doing Art in general but especially doing comics. If you are really keen on doing it, make it a side project and have a steady job to sustain yourself, hell a lot of mangaka are like that. That's why you will find manga about anything, because a lot of them are side projects done by nips that work in other industries.
There's a metric ton of chinaman cartoons with blacks and gays and all other things. Fricking CLAMP made a living out of ambiguously gay characters, and don't get me started on Utena, Card Captor Sakura or Nightwalker, you uncultured swamp dweller.
And the fricking hottest b***h on Bleach is a chocolate honey who goes around mostly naked. The problem is not the character designs themselves, it's how you write them.
I’m 28 years old and I still haven’t found a girlfriend to cosplay her for me 🙁
It's both it and lecturing people
Truth is very few people give a frick about a character race or sexuality, but no one wants to read a passive agressive rant on how Democrats are right and you must vote for them even if you are not even american.
Do you even know who Japan prime minister is? Who is the mayor of Tokyo? Which social issue japanese people are discussing right now on twitter? Of course you don't, because Naruto and Baki are not going to talk about it.
Yes, anon. And even when social issues and politics are touched, it's mostly in a parody way.
i can remember a couple of times when shinzo abe appears, but those mostly happens in edgy seinen series and usually depicted during a press conference/news where they proclaim the crisis of the manga, either going "the goverment will exterminate this threat" or "we're fricked"
>And the fricking hottest b***h on Bleach is a chocolate honey who goes around mostly naked.
I can't tell if you are joking or not but no one, not even the most racist people, has a problem with the sexy bombshell black girl archetype. The hate for homies is mostly addressed to male ones and ugly ones in general.
Nobody complained about the black dude from black lagoon
Then why didn't he use him or Barret? My point is going for the hot women as an example is moronic when appreciation for the other sex knows no discrimination.
NTA but Yoruichi's in a series that just got its anime continued and is pretty entry level so I imagine she just came to mind first.
She's the best.
>Fricking CLAMP made a living out of ambiguously gay characters
Those are just pervy Japanese women who don't do it for the social messaging and the westerners these threads complain about would dismiss that as "queerbaiting" anyway.
There's also ambiguous pedo shit in CLAMP too like the pedo teacher in Cardcaptor Sakura kek
>social messaging
Just say you’re a homophobe who hates gays. I don’t really understand the urge to pretend you’re not on Cinemaphile of all places.
Go back to twitter if every wording of every statement tangentially connected to your precious fellow gays is gonna trigger you, gay.
You can't make manga. You can ape what works in it and use it as a guide of sorts in your comics. That's about all you can do.
>non Japanese writing fake manga
Didn't you learn from all other failures?
Write a webcomic, do something fun that people want to read, search for what people like then add something unique to it.
Just make indie comics and either put them up online with a patreon (webcomic sites will NOT give you any amount of money that's anywhere near worthwhile). If you've successfully built up an audience through that then start putting out kickstarters for physical editions and go from there.
You can also always do some small minicomic or whatever DIY stuff and try to get a little table on any sort of artsy fair, or whatever local cons you might get where you live.
You'd be surprised at how many people are into that kinda thing, as long as you make it look somewhat appealing and artisanal, and it will also give you a motivation boost that you won't get from getting faceless money through the internet.
>Should I copy how manga works
Probably. Choreography and panel structure is just better. Alternatively study old comics, like mid-90s at the latest for that. Don't forget good pacing. A lot of manga struggle with it too these days but it's particularly bad with modern comics. Bread and butter plots of "The shocker is robbing a bank and that's the immediate physical problem of the issue" are important for building and reinforcing the status quo and characterization. As well as establishing stakes. Ghost Sweeper Mikami back in the day did a good gob of frontloading a lot of this on the manga side of things so that the big bad scary cosmic villain felt like a real escalation and out of the ordinary.
>and never have any gays blacks and troons in my comics?
You can have them but they have to be fun and cool. See Dutch, Blackest Man Alive in Black Lagoon, Fire Emblem in Tiger and Bunny, or honestly pick a given Trans girl in anime, 90% of them are more likable, interesting, and less repugnant than western equivalents and come off as people you can tell a joke about rather than caricatures who just are a fricking joke.
>Or should I not copy comics because I'm a westoid and I'm a cancer who should not trifle with media I suck at making?
Never know until you try, just don't be too proud, if it sucks it sucks, just learn from it, accept it, and try to improve. Nothing to be ashamed of with fricking up so long as you own it.
Manga sells because of the sheer variety which means all niches are filled. There are turbo rainbow troony commie manga, there are manga that openly promote neonaziism. There are manga for and against anarcho-capitalism. There are manga that don't inject politics at all. There's manga for people who only think with their dicks, there's manga for aspies that only care about astrophysics. There's something for everyone, it's not just a vehicle for the author's ego.
This, combined with the excellent dollar value (one 8-12 chapter volume sells for maybe $10) means it simply is a better deal than American comics. No, ultra-detailed art on each individual panel is not as much of a selling point as you think it is; people read comics to enjoy a story, of which the art needs to CONTRIBUTE to it. Not distract from. Excessive detail can detract from the overall experience. Conservation of detail, and all.
>No, ultra-detailed art on each individual panel is not as much of a selling point as you think it is
>western comics
>ultra detailed
There's manga for that too.
My point was manga isn't sold or bought based on how detailed each individual panel is. They recognise the art is merely an aspect of the manga, a tool used to enhance the storytelling. In that very page, there is a lot of blank space used to draw your attention to the opulence of her outfit. In an american comic, the backgrounds would be just as detailed which would detract from the point of making her design so detailed; to highlight the boy's attention being drawn to her appearance.
Japan knows how to make good use of negative space, its true. Its actually why anime-style faces are so simple instead of detailed, because that creates a large patch of white space on the black and white page that is less detailed than everything around it, which draws the eye towards the faces by making them effectively 'brighter' than action going on around them.
Japanese beauty standards also place far more emphasis on the eyes, whereas western beauty standards are more about the mouth. Which is why anime characters have such massive expressive and detailed eyes whilst the rest of their face is tiny and simplistic in comparison. Meanwhile the average western artist draws women with giant bright red DSLs that dominate her face.
>In an american comic
You're just reading shit comics. The same would happen with a shit manga.
just make webtoons.
Webtoons are money losers. Ad revenue is shit these days now that Google has a monopoly on ads and nobody can find you if you're not published on the big sites which take 50% of your revenue.
Well yeah but it's his only real choice if he wants to make em. Either simp for a Korean monopoly on comics or find another career.
Just get off Cinemaphile and start hanging out with fellow comic book artists. Get something real going, in the real world, and just use social media to shill your stuff.
Lol slightly off topic but back in the day I published indie comics with a small group of other artists, anyway one day someone asks us that they're interested in making comics but they like manga, if they wanted to make stuff in the west then how should they format it (i.e. like traditional manga right to left, or like western style).
Everyone answered that you have to do western format because manga is unprofessional/will confuse people etc and I replied that actually if it's manga they want to make then right to left is fine because manga readers will already understand how to read that way (it's how I would instinctively expect to read any manga tbh). The other artists were unhappy with that answer and tried to shut me down even though I knew I was right (they were mostly interested in western stuff). Reading this post made me think of that for the first time in years, crazy to see just how dominant and mainstream anime/manga has become in that period of time.
That's assuming that manga and western comics are directly competing which isn't true. There is literally no reason someone couldn't be interested in both manga and western comics
They literally are directly competing.
God this is such massive cope. The reality is western comics and most entertainment is gone to absolute shit while Japan still actually provides shit that's cool and entertaining. The reality is WESTERN COMICS SUCK! You can make a million excuses about distribution or covid, but the core of the problem is WESTERN COMICS SUCK! They are a SHITTY product. Manga sales didn't die because of the pandemic.
Theoretically people can enjoy both, but if you have limited funds (which a lot of people do in this economy) and you have to make a selection of what to spend your money on or your time, you choose the better product.
When france gave out money to teenagers to "buy culture" they spent it all on manga, not DC or Marvel. And they choose manga because it's better. At the end of the day you need to have a good product. All the things that idiots in the industry and here on Cinemaphile think is icky and problematic is exactly what the audience wants. Western creatives refuse to give it to them out of principle and a false sense of moral superiority.
You do not read American comics except for out of context panels from miniseries that no one bought.
If there was something worth reading I would have heard about it and read it. You think the fact I don't read these comics is some own, but why can't western comics draw men in and get me as a customer? It's because they're garbage and i don't have to read them to know they are garbage. There's no context that makes the shitty cringe bullshit they insert into comics any better. I've read some of the disney star wars comics and they sucked. The whole red kyber crystal retcon was dumb and cringe. The only part I liked about any of them was Darth Vader watching luke pod race and reminiscing about it. But most of those comics were bad and the art wasn't appealing. Neither were the characters.
American comics fricking suck. If they didn't I would read them. And before you call my biased I used to absolutely hate anime and shil for western shit all the time. But I can't defend western shit anymore. I still have my gripes with Japanese shit but it's way better than anything we are producing entertainment wise.
Everyone knows western comics sucks, I don't need to read a hundred shitty books to know what.
What shitty cringe bullshit was inserted into Jeremy Adams' recent run on The Flash?
>I used to absolutely hate anime and shil for western shit all the time.
That happened to me. Preferred cartoons and thought anime was shit. Now western entertainment is so fricking abysmal I naturally fell into manga and was a fan for years.
> I used to absolutely hate anime and shil for western shit
I wish you gays would go back to doing that. I always hated people that hate stuff for no reason and then do a 360 at the slightest opportunity. Fricking homosexuals.
>If there was something worth reading I would have heard about it and read it.
I think the only thing worth reading recently was Meg, Mogg, and Owl. An indie comic that is actually good.
First find somewhere you can make indie comics.
Second you can make them in Wstern or manga style.
Huh, I thought this was a web comic.
Megg, Mogg, and Owl was self published zines, but then it got picked up by Fantagraphics.
Okay, according to you, comics don't sell well because they suck. But that doesn't mean that it's manga's fault that they aren't selling, therefore, manga is not the reason comics aren't selling well. Also as far as funds, this is purely anecdotal but everyone I know that reads manga pirates it and I always assumed that the overseas market for manga wasn't much of the industry's profit. Regardless I don't think it would be a very expensive hobby for most people, even if you are tight on funds.
No, manga is winning because comics nowadays are sold as a collective item not a medium to read a story. There is no equivalent to what SHUEISHA did with mangaplus. Manga is much more cheaper to produce and the bulk really masquerades much of the low sellers. 75% of the manga volumes sold less than 5k copies. But the top dogs could sell hundred of thousands.
What anime do boomers watch?
Akira, speed racer, Astroboy.
If comics were sold in more places, more people would read check out the specialty comic shops. But since there's no way to get hooked on comics without going to a specialty shop, it's hard to get new readers. I think it's very sad.
It’s hard getting hooked on comics even with piracy. The stories are so fricking bad and useless, that they won’t be able to hold the interest of the reader.
>The stories are so fricking bad and useless
Some of them are, but most of what Marvel and DC is putting out is fine to good. Most of it probably isn't worth $5 an issue, which is a problem, but if you put these books in more places then people would buy them.
This delusion is why comics will continue to fail.
There's plenty of good books coming out from both publishers. Especially DC right now I think. Green Lantern and Batman/Superman are really good.
Nah I ain't reading capeshit
No you won't, but you'll spend hours a day complaining about it anyway.
I know it's commonly seen as a joke but there's also just so much to have to go through that it's hard to justify wanting to start. I can't imagine someone trying to get into anything of any remote size now a days. Indie or lesser known stuff sure, but then that's not really the kind of stuff that would be sold outside of dedicate shops.
I jumped into Spider-Man because I played the Spider-Man PlayStation game and I really liked it. It's not like you need to understand all previous lore.
I think there should've been an insert in the game case letting people know they can subscribe to Amazing Spider-Man online.
I think this was once true, but they're too expensive now. $4.99 for a floppy? No. They need to sell TPB's for $10-12 TOPS.
The price is definitely insane. If there were more readers it could come down, but the price is certainly rough. For Marvel and DC, I've pretty much switched to mail subscriptions. You get them a week or two after release day typically, but they give you a huge discount so I'm okay with it.
>Our building sits between two lots destroyed by fire with no reconstruction in sight, attracting squatters and graffiti without assistance from the city or the entities who own the real estate.
Biden's America, thanks Antifa.
They already sell comics in Wal-Mart and other places morons.
My friend was b***hing to me yesterday about having to go to three different Targets to find their exclusive cover of some Batman comic.
Let's be honest, the real reason why Walmart or other stores don't sell comics is because nowadays comics are mostly garbage that don't sell, nobody wants that shit.
This has been happening since the 90s. The crash really impacted comics as a pastime on America.
it might also have to do with comic shops high pricing everything because they think comics are the next gold. also dont forget they sell "retro" games. because I really want to pay $250 for a copy of mario kart for the N64. One opened up near me thats pulling that shit and when they eventually go out of business they too will cry its retail sales going down and totally not because they are trying to sell overpriced comic and games to nerds who they believe will give their life savings for some paper and some old nintendo games
can't forget funko pops.
literally yes
The one opened by me is selling shitty comics, funkos, retro games, warhammer shit and then posters and used xbox and PlayStation games. and the shit is mad expensive, and its always empty. how are they affording the malls $7,000 a month rent is beyond me when many other big stores left and its in the shell of one basically.
I'm half convinced most shops like those are just elaborate money laundering schemes. There's no way they can afford to stay in business if all they sell is bargain bin forgotten games for consoles multiple generations old at nearly triple the price you could find them online. And if it's a cartridge game more often than not those are fake as well. Something has to be going on there and it's clearly not actual business.
The ones that survived are toy stores now or sell Warhammer shit
There's one near me that sells ice cream and makes pottery in addition to comics.
For some sure, but there's one shop in a big mall near me that just never dies. It's had the same merchandise and selection for over twenty years and obviously never sells anything. They made a switch to start carrying Neca figures a few years back but it's one section in a store full of over priced stuff that clearly never moves. Something has to be happening there.
it has to be some money laundering or trust fund baby who thinks he will hit it big. Like the market just isnt there for such a big rent and employee cost when you sell like xbox 360 games for $5-10 and some comics and funkos. it always feels weird, like you go in and know its bleeding money but dont know why
Yeah, it's just an awful business. I've seen similar stores try to open up and make money off selling "retro" games and it just never goes anywhere. This stuff just gathers dust on their shelves. Hell, I think I've seen more interest in some of the posters they had up than the over priced games.
There is a complete distortion on people's perception of "retro" media and its value. Here where I live, some people just try to make a steal from selling old VHS and vinyl that have no collectible value whatsoever just because they think the format itself is somehow what gives it value.
I'm not paying you even a fricking dollar for some old ass rental VHS of some shitty 90s thriller, you dickface. Same for people trying to sell you any random compilation vinyl that's all beat up for like 5 dollars just because they saw some article online about "vinyl revival".
We all love brick & mortar stores and whatnot, but unfortunately, more often than not the owners are just fricking scumbags.
I worked at one of these briefly after it opened up here and I am friends with the manager of it. They make an absolute killing on toys--Funko Pops yes but also all kinds of paraphernalia, mostly anime, and retro 80s toys. They sell a bunch of those bootleg anime sword replicas--like an absurd amount. Despite selling comics, new and used, they are pretty small parts of the sales. They also make a lot of money selling used DVDs.
I work at one and I'm pretty sure it primarily serves as extra storage space for a local boomer with a six figure income who can afford to eat a small loss if it means he has an extra place to put his crap so his wife doesn't complain. We get a single digit number of customers most days in person but also sell a ton of shit on the internet.
it's entirely possible
the dude who runs the one here now used to own and run a record store and was gutted by Covid lockdowns; he made less money there but he enjoyed it a lot more
this isn't a locally owned place, though; they have a couple dozens stores over the US now
There's something to be said for passion projects. I used to work at a bar that was owned by an ex-wallstreeter. He made a ton of money early on, retired fairly young, and then opened a wienertail bar near a pretty big artistic hub. He basically wanted a place he could invite artists he liked to come hang out after their events and rub elbows and occasionally throw parties for his friends. Most shifts were dreadfully slow but he was fine taking a loss on it.
I guess some rich people buy boats or motorcycles or old cars knowing they'll sink a ton of money into it with no return. A hobby is a hobby. I'd rather they open bars/record stores/comic shops so the public can actually get something out of their expenditures than watching news cycles prattle on about how the dickhead burned billions of dollars to take a joyride to low orbit space.
Now if an eccentric billionaire could just bankroll an animation network...
Nike is aleady bankrolling Studio Laika.
Yeah, let a billionaire son run your studio, then it doesn't matter how much money the movies lose.
Unlike Marvel and DC Warhammer40k actually sell like hotcakes, stores always manage sell everything in less than a week with something like a 25% discount, meanwhile not even a 90% discount can clean Marvel and DC shelves.
Games Workshop enforces a 15% of retail maximum discount or else they cut you off. Any stores closing out on warhammer models for less is going to get cleaned out immediatley because you can't get them cheaper anywhere. Meanwhile the comic vendors pretty much all sell direct to Amazon who sells the books at such a steep discount that brick and mortar shops can't compete.
Even so it's insane how they can instantly sell tens of thousands of dollars in a massive pile of plastic in 3 days with such a small discount that still give them a pretty decent profit.
40k sales probably. It doesn't sell all that well for GW but the price is so fricking high and accessibility is so low without shipping that any store in an area can expect to make their bills so long as there's even 5 guys in a 120 mile radius who play and model regularly because they'll blow thousands. It's like Gatcha, the whales pay for everything.
>It doesn't sell all that well for GW
They just announced their highest sales record ever in their latest financial report like 3 months ago.
/tg/ here, yeah, because they've been folding their license profits from the games and the new amazon series into margin, and finally got Japan to buy....6-8 inch gunpla-style showcase models and figma action figures. The actual build and paint game models had a modest bump from Cavil publicity and WH40K being pulled into the newest front in the culture war but as usual it stays marginally profitable by itself by selling a 10 cent production cost product for 50 dollars unfinished and then sells you the paints and tools whenever possible while getting most of the competition to kill itself by trying to copy its bad habits.
It also just recently got *gutted* by Battletech in a revenge killing 30+ years in the making, which was why GW panicked so hard and started licensing shit out to staunch the bleeding right after making a huge deal about IP control and trying to launch their own shit and do everything in house.
>it might also have to do with comic shops high pricing everything because they think comics are the next gold
That has nothing to do with weekly comics.
>$250 for a copy of mario kart for the N64
Post the name of the store because I don’t believe you.
not the same anon but one that opened in the mall near me last year wants like $200-something for paper mario 64 in its box. not even sealed mind you, just the game cart and box. and $300 for pokemon red, again in the box but not sealed. its under the glass where you check out like their holy grail.
Very true. Most of the "nicer" comic shops I've been to had jacked up prices on plastic crap that you could've found on the internet for half as much. Theres no reason to visit your local comic shop
I mean it sounds like he's going to keep selling comics, he just doesn't get enough sales IN STORE to justify renewing his lease because his neighborhood turned into a shithole and landlords are probably one of two groups of people who are more greedy than collectorgays.
It's going to get worse when inflation gets worse, and inflation hasn't been able to be stopped yet. Also a lot of cities have gone to shit with breakins with stores. It's sort of why most comic places host traditional games and sell them more often than most now, and why many places became game stores. Superman coming back after being killed set off a reaction they couldn't prevent and that eventually causes rising costs, which rising costs is hurting a lot.
Inflation, media with streaming and services impacting the general cost people expect to pay and more is hugely important. Getting costs lower while still getting a profit is heavily required to regain market share.
F
Floppies are a terrible outdated format and there's no point in trying to save a system like that. Especially these days.
I think it's incredibly telling that they just straight up stopped publishing sales figures for floppies.
When did they stop doing that?
Comics are dead, and manga killed it.
more variety in one shelf than 50 years of American capeshit
All kinds of stores are closing and they're all closing for the same reason: less and less people have money to spend.
i wouldnt even say that, just big stores like amazon and walmart, etc push heavily to buying online which has cheaper overheard (no rent, lights, hiring people to sit and do the cash register, etc) so they can lower prices so people are use to low prices online. why go to a big store and pay 80 for something thats 60 on amazon and you dont have to put on pants
maybe the reason comics were popular in the past was because it was literally one of the only ways to get those stories and they were fairly inexpensive. most houses didnt have a tv so of course they buy comics to read when there is no other ways to consume content
I do feel like video games growing more in the 90s when the comic market crashed had something to do with it.
I remember when comics sales started to fall and Cinemaphile was like "it's because the physical market is dying" meanwhile manga kept selling like ice cream on a hot summer day.
Give me one fricking reason I should spend $5 for 18 pages of this shit. Just one...
You shouldn't for that comic. You should buy Green Lantern or Batman & Robin, or any of the good comics being published now.
>You should buy Green Lantern
No thanks....
That is a miniseries that is not connected to the main Green Lantern book being published now.
The overwhelming majority of books published by DC are nothing like that.
>hat is a miniseries that is not connected to the main Green Lantern book being published now.
Dude, I'm not going to try to navigate a mine field when I don't have to.
You don't have to. Almost none of the books are like that.
Uh-huh...
That is another tie-in miniseries that also does suck, and it's embarrassing that it ever got published, and that's a real problem. But again, you're not going to run into stuff like that in the average DC book.
>More excuses
Half of DC is on the LGBTQ spectrum
Okay I haven't even seen that one. Is it from some Pride anthology? That shit doesn't even matter. All you're doing is proving me right when I say that the only thing you know about comics is outrage bait thumbnails. Yes, there are bad comics that come out. Some are shockingly bad, and when woke stuff gets shoved into them, it's atrocious. But that mostly only happens in miniseries, the writers who write that slop don't write on the big titles you'd actually be interested in, and it's not that big of a problem. It IS a problem, but not that big of one. And I could recommend you ten comics that don't have any of that stuff, but I know you'd say that they all suck without knowing anything about them.
It's all gay. It permeates the medium. The fact that I could post over a hundred images proves it.
But I don't really have to prove it. Because the decline in sales do it for me. Manga sales go up, comic sales go down. All news articles are saying the same things.
Yes, there is gay stuff in the book that says "Gay Pride" on the cover, and I'm always sure to never buy it. You don't know anything about comics aside from what outrage bait YouTubers talk about.
There's gay stuff in the books that don't have Pride printed on the cover too.
That is a problem, and it's probably why that book got canceled. Aging Jon up was a bad idea. It would be hard to undo now though sadly. I think he's "bisexual" so they could theoretically ungay him at some point.
But if you read Superman now it's a good comic.
>It's good now
Then why doesn't it sell?
And why does every character have to be gay, trans or queer?
The sales have increased quite a bit compared to where they were when Superman was in space and Jon was acting as Superman on earth. That's the book that your screencap was from.
>You don't know anything about comics aside from what outrage bait YouTubers talk about.
I'm glad someone else notices this
It's just frustrating to me because the comic industry clearly has a lot of issues. I can't pretend it's a healthy business. But at the same time there's a lot being published now that is really good, and sometimes it feels like people are intentionally ignorant of that because it's more fun to pile on and say everything is terrible.
Friendly reminder there are gay manga as well.. the difference being that the creators, comics and characters arent insufferable fricking morons that dont shut the frick up on twitter.
Also, if your manga sucks shit, its canceled and you dont work again. If your western comic sucks shit, they turn the series into a "mini-series" cancel it, and give you the option to write 13 more books in the next two months.
>Friendly reminder there are gay manga as well.
Okay, but the difference is that there is non-gay manga too. With comics it's all gay.
If I read Kaiju No 8 the story doesn't hit me in the face with the main character getting semen up his ass.
>Okay, but the difference is that there is non-gay manga too. With comics it's all gay.
When you start to think everything around you is gay, it’s time to see a shrink and talk about how you can’t think about gay men having sex and sucking dick 24/7
>Superheroes literally suck dick
>"You're gay for thinking about it"
How about I just stop reading the comics?
>"NOOOOO!!"
Yeah, why don’t you take your homophobic, gay sex obsessed ass and frick off.
Sorry that readers aren’t buying your gayshit
Your talking to a real DC editor. They're on here all the time shilling for DC is every single thread.
>Yeah, why don’t you take your homophobic, gay sex obsessed ass and frick off.
How can I be homophobic AND gay? Sounds like a contradiction to me.
Self loathing?
Who said they were gay? They’re obsessed with gay sex. They aren’t necessarily homosexually oriented.
>has a collection pages and panels of gay moments and characters
>Keeps describing extremely explicit homosexual acts like 'getting semen up the ass' despite the pages they're posting being extremely tame
>See's one character non-straight or non-cis character as "It's all gay" as if they can't stop thinking about homosexuality once it's in front of them
Watching anon having their sexual awakening in LCD thread
oops I meant LCS thread
>Kaiju No 8
No you'd get a really shitty book about the army that sideline's it's best concept for a shitty jingoistic book about how Japan want's it's military back like half of popular manga nowadays' It's utter trash and I'd rather read about a gay getting railed than that generic shit. I don't know how you chose the worst example possible but congrats for proving you have shit taste in anime.
You keep saying that but maybe 2 from the last 50 manga I've read(both old and modern) had any troony, gay shit. I also like hot black ladies(other races as well) in both manga and comics so that doesn't bother me.
>the difference being that the creators, comics and characters arent insufferable fricking morons that dont shut the frick up on twitter.
>the difference being that no one uses gay manga as rage bait so I don't think about it nearly as much
fixed that for you
Yes it's from the pride anthology that's just a charity book ironically, it's format makes it easier for gay people who want to buy it. It does decent figures because it's an anthology not a fricking floppy.
It's the goddamn medium that's the problem. Costs have made it so you aren't going to spend fricking seven bucks for 18 pages with ads. It used to be 3 bucks a floppy but now it's seven.
>It used to be 3 bucks a floppy
Spawn books are $2.99 with cardstock covers.
No, supporting any comic from DC will result in more of this
You have either an idiot or a shill to think DC will ever change.
when will they figure out that people who wants "woke" stuff in comics, video games, etc. don't actually buys it
they just wanna feel good about it being in there, they wanna feel
one example is when they made She-Ra a lesbo
do you think everyone who wanted more lesbian representation it went out and got a netflix subscription to support it?
nope. they came up with every excuse in the book as to why they're not subscribing to netflix
No clue. It's been long enough that they've clearly got the numbers that prove it. At this point it's mostly likely only kept afloat by investors rather than customers.
>Buy Wonder Woman expecting sexy girl fighting
>Half of the comic is dedicated to her now gay ex-boyfriend
This is every comic now. A superhero fight is maybe a couple panels on one page. The other 18 pages are just personal and self insert drama stories.
Comics really shifted over to this around 2019 and I slowly dropped everything I cared about
No joke comic stores can only live if they attach themselves to TCG stores.I knew this store. It was mainly comics and memorabilia. Got offended when I asked an TCG I play like how dare I think they would be related. It was weird in general but seeing this being their fate I'm not surprised. There's a handful of shops in my area that have comics and TCG and table top games. Grouping them together makes it so it doesn't depend on one dwindling niche community.
Hmm. I wonder why...?
That book is terrible and it never should've been published, but it's also a D-tier miniseries written by a nobody writer who will never work on a major DC title, and probably won't get much work on minor ones after this sales failure.
Probably has more to do with they're a comic book shop in Sherman fricking Oaks, some of the most expensive real estate on Earth and is selling his retail space for mad cash.
Store selling comics has to close after over 20 years in business because comics aren't profitable anymore according to the owner.
>It's the location
Really? You think having a great location is a problem for a business? Thousands of potential customers walking by your store every hour is a problem?
No comic shop will make enough money to pay rent in Sherman Oaks. The landlord made the screwed up and greedy decision to price out the comic shop and not repair the area around so he couldn't make money so he could sell the entire lot to another developer or bulldoze the entire thing and make a new lot can attract businesses than can afford to pay the exuberant rent that area of Los Angeles can demand.
>No comic shop will make enough money to pay rent in Sherman Oaks.
They did for 20 years, what happened?
>The landlord made the screwed up and greedy decision to price out the comic shop and not repair the area around so he couldn't make money so he could sell the entire lot to another developer or bulldoze the entire thing and make a new lot can attract businesses than can afford to pay the exuberant rent that area of Los Angeles can demand.
So why would other businesses be able to operate and be profitable?
>what happened
Apparently you've been living under a rock, maybe watch the fricking news or something holy shit.
>So why would other businesses be able to operate and be profitable?
none of them, the plan is to sell the real estate to some (likely foreign) developer in a few years to make pod housing
That or an Amazon distribution center
So why do we constantly see LCS closing but never stores like Barns and Nobles?
B&N brought in a new CEO who changed some things with how the stores work. For one, each individual store has more wiggle room to order stuff to match the demand on their area as well as having cafes in the store.
>why do we constantly see LCS closing but never stores like Barns and Nobles?
Anon, I don't know how much attention you've paid to retail over the last decade or so but Barnes & Noble fired most of their full time staff and closed 100 stores before they started to turn things around. Borders did not survive at all. Go watch some dead mall videos if you want to see the absolute state of retail in the US.
Stores "like" Barnes and Noble have closed en masse. Including places me and my friends got manga from in the late 2000's. The stores that remained are the ones in sustainable areas but even then you still see downsizing.
Like
said they were in trouble during the 2010s
But around 2019 what
said happened; the new owners of B&N had the company go private, and hired a new CEO. The new CEO was a guy who helped revive a bookstore chain in the UK.
Then in 2020 when the lockdowns happened people started buying books not just from Amazon but also Barnes and Noble which helped give B&N a second wind. After that the CEO put a major plan in motion what
also refers to--each store now got to choose what to order for their customer base, and each store may be designed up differently. B&N since started OPENING more stores in the past two years.
This is a whitepill story. All it took was one person who came along and figured out how to turn around the physical bookstore business. I hope it happens for comics soon.
>each store now got to choose what to order for their customer base, and each store may be designed up differently
Ahh, that explains why my local B&N started stocking so much smut.
>They did for 20 years, what happened?
It's easy to piece together
>California rent, particularly Los Angeles (Sherman Oaks is in Los Angeles if you didn't know; it's about 10-12 miles from Hollywood depending which route you go)
>COVID/lockdowns throwing everything off
>Marvel/DC massively fricking up during the 2010s to the point where they were unprepared during the post-COVID era and did really badly last year
And most importantly:
>The Hollywood strikes of 2023
People forget that these strikes don't just affect Hollywood but also the surrounding area because people in Hollywood were supposed to frequent the businesses. plus it didn't help that the agreed-upon new rules from the strike may have cut writing jobs
Enough gloom and doom. I'm sure 10 manga shops closed down between this comic book shop closing and the previous but nobody makes a fuss about that.
>manga shops
That thing only exists in japan(and France?)
The comic shop store is just kind of an outdated concept, much like the newspaper kiosk.
The only specialty stores that will still survive are electronics stores like Best Buy and PC part stores like Microcenter.
>The comic shop store is just kind of an outdated concept
Zoomer here. I really appreciate physical stores focused on things like Comics and manga, and I wish that there were more of them. Stores could definitely be more accommodating and make themselves a place I want to spend lots more time at and potentially be a place for meeting new people, but I digress.
I'm definitely in the boat that thinks comics are difficult to get into, however, if comics started creating series that were more similar to manga, similar to how the original Teen Titans was a mesh of anime and comic book-style animation, young readers like myself would find them much easier to delve into.
That social aspect is no different either. It's always nice having someone recommend you things based on your interest. That's why manga & comic book stores are so important. Maybe you like a certain manga, and some nice fellow points you towards a neat comic book that has the same feel. That's how you get new readers and that's how you rejuvenate the market.
>Stores could definitely be more accommodating and make themselves a place I want to spend lots more time at
Problems is if store become a hang out spot it could lead to kids taking shit from school and fighting it out at the store. It's happened before sadly.
Blacks don't buy comics.
What do you think ice cream parlours and soda/malt shops were back in the day?
It's not just a "blacks" thing, kids have gotten violent in recent years.
Because society has become swarthier. More blacks and Hispanics means the fewer white kids have to match their violence to not get ripped apart.
True, but at least people would actually be in the store. Look. Bad shit's gonna happen either way, that's a risk you take by running a small business. Whether you make it a hangout spot or not, you're always gonna have bad apples.
The point is that a LCS should be part of the community and make itself available for people to lounge around and read comics or manga. Nothing beats real, physical connection with others, and that's something that I barely see. We would rather sit around and complain about everything wrong with this industry than try to make an effort to actively improve it. It's sad.
(You), me-- We can do better.
>Comicbooks are selling poorly.
Why?
>Because they aren't good
No, no, we just need them on shelves in grocery stores and shopping centers!
>They don't put comicbooks in these places
Why?
>Because they sit on the selves onsold taking up space
Why don't they sell?
>Because they're not good.
Well maybe if we abandon floppies and switch to tpbs.
>Nobody buys those
Why?
>Because they're not good.
lol big 2 comics are absolutely dead. The only people who follow them are morons.
What’s stopping the industry from following manga footsteps? Let these writers have some freedom to write their own stories that aren’t cape shit.
That requires time and money and they would prefer to let what were considered national champions to die so they don't have to put in the work.
what's stopping you from googling and looking up if there's non capeshit comics?
He only gets his info spoonfed from outrage grifters, not google
Because there’s nothing interesting that’s out there lol. Meanwhile there’s plenty of manga for me to read and enjoy. Make some good shit on the western side and not only will it catch wind but there’ll be more people reading outside of Cinemaphile.
I don't think your post really disproved what I said in
I also don't believe you read much manga
>What’s stopping the industry from following manga footsteps?
That's only the comic industry, regular novels are identical to manga and sell just as many copies
I have absolutely no idea why american comics are all stuck with Marvel and DC rather than a publisher that actually make deals with several content creators rather than fully owning everything. That's awful because Marvel and DC are all the same shit because they follow they same team of editors vision and style, if you don't like one Marvel comic you will probably hate them all. Meanwhile everybody book and manga is their own thing.
They're stuck because they have a monopoly, or at least a monopoly on contracts and talent. The more DC and Marvel die (and they are dying, smaller publishers have bigger market share now) the more better models of business will come to the fore. This is a legacy business stuck in the 1960s trying to compete past three or four paradigm shifts in management. It will lose every time.
If you look at who's writing for Marvel, DC, Image, Dynamite etc it's all the same people. Comics are the refugee for people who can't cut it elsewhere.
I certainly won't deny that Image and Dynamite are legacy as well, but they at least captured the new wave in the 90s and 00s and brought things forward. In a better world we'd be complaining about them flagging instead of wanting DC and Marvel to die, as they would have supplanted them and now seemed old and tired instead of decrepit.
Ironically, the biggest infusion of fresh creative talent into comics in the past 20 years was Umbrella Academy, which was made by the guy who decided becoming the face of the most famous emo band was an acceptable detour before entering comics. The model is unfixable, so once Marvel and DC are out a new idea will come to the front.
Here’s your non capeshit comic my guy. This will create a new age of western comics.
Also, why do American comics love their pronouns so much?
Because Grant Morrison thinks it's funny
comic perception is synonymous with big 2 capeshit so they are doomed to fail barring drastic production shifts. Ask yourself why would any sane person want to be involved with big 2 comics. They're worse than bad; it's like they're designed to piss you off and make you feel like a jackass for getting invested or caring. You can't sell stuff like that anymore and expect to be successful long term
>They're worse than bad; it's like they're designed to piss you off and make you feel like a jackass for getting invested or caring
This made me regret getting into them. I ignored all the warnings given by others and still read them. Wow they are really fricking terrible. No wonder they have no fans. You have to be insane to put up with that wack fanfiction. I was close to wishing dead on the writers and editors. Never again.
>strikes that impacted TV and film jobs
All the other reasons are legit, but what fricking mental hoops is this guy jumping through to think that THIS had any impact on his business?
I think it's too late to save the industry as it was. Now even the MCU is crashing and burning due to hero exhaustion. The comic industry is trying to be baseball when everyone else is playing soccer. Japan had the right model all along and now every kid world wide wants to be Goku or Yuji, not batman or spiderman. I think going forward, western comics are just going to be this niche thing that collectors buy into, like trading cards. It could have been different, but the industry didn't adapt to the changing times.
Pretty much all comic characters are gay these days. The writers even spew their hate for heterosexual men. So I'm not sure why people here are denying it.
The same is true for movies and tv so I don't see your point.
Given he just NEEDED to come to the defense of the industry that drove him into shutting down, it’s no wonder he’s out of business. These homosexual fricks always ignore reality and I bet he has hundreds of copies of woke shut nobody ever bought yet he felt compelled to support for diversity’s sake.
My LCS is doing better than ever, I talk to the owner every Wednesday and ask him every now and then and he always just shrugs and tells me between back issues and weeklies he’s doing better than ever. I personally see foot traffic up at random points but about the same many wednesdays but I also don’t seem him buying big on moronic shit
Say it with me: Manga won.
Can anyone in this thread name a comic book nowadays that is even half as enjoyable as picrel?
The industry needs some massive changes.
I've never read that and have no interest in reading it.
Ok?
Was that supposed to make me mad or something? Lmao.
>Can anyone in this thread name a comic book nowadays that is even half as enjoyable as picrel?
No, because only you have read that.
Your sales are dropping.
Good. I hate going to the comic book store. Buy all my shit online or at the flea market
Comics suffer because writers don't give a shit about them anymore.
She's not talking about the writers. She's talking about leadership.
The writers don't give a shit either. It's all PR, they rather do anything else but is stuck in that barrel of shit because they can't get work anywhere else.
And who employs the writers?
>but they feel like they're not qualified for any other work.... which is why they'd never the job despite being completely numb to it.
I wonder how much of the entertainment industry is made up of people who are good at keeping their job and not much else...
Only Boomers visit LCS.
The comic shops and the big 2 comic themselves are both scams.
At the end of the day the biggest hurdle for the industry is going to be public perception. We've now gone generations of people associating the word "comic" with all kinds of baggage. You could create an amazing comic with great art and sell it for cheap in a place people can get it and they still wouldn't buy it. The fact that the MCU spend a decade as the biggest franchise on earth and Marvel barely sold any more comics is honestly astounding.
Sales of trades went up. Floppies are dying but that's the way the dying comic shops prefer it.
Anon, those were manga sales...
Perhaps, but in 2015 and 2016 their sales were practically zilch compared to comics as a whole.
>Sales of trades went up
No they didn’t. Stop posting 4 year old stories.
https://www.comicsbeat.com/sales-charts-adult-2023-graphic-novel-sales-fell-22/
Even manga did relatively “bad” in 2023.
I was responding to
>The fact that the MCU spend a decade as the biggest franchise on earth and Marvel barely sold any more comics is honestly astounding.
During peak MCU they did sell more trades. Endgame was released in 2019 of course it's all over now.
No, it’s just wokeness and gayness. Cinemaphile told me so.
The public perception is that all comics are about gays and ugly people.
My LCS within the last year or two opened a second store and I think they plan on moving into a bigger place because they wound up getting a lot o stock from other stores closing so they need more space. It's also a well run store that's been around for like 30 years with good people working there though.
That's good to hear. What do they do really well there?
Just a good place, that's all. The guy who runs it is an actual fan, like I remember him geeking out about how much he loved Quantum & Woody when I bought some trades and chatting with me about it and old school Legion and stuff. It helps that it does have a lot of toys but without crowding out the actual comics. It's laid out well with all the newer stuff and trades up front, the toys and back issues (which there are a ton of) in the back. It shares space with a tabletop gaming place which probably helps draw people in. They do a lot of sales too, especially during May, which probably helps.
Really it's just a compently run business with some nice people running it.
I checked my comic store and its still open and its doing alright.
Manga often aren't initially released as collected edition tankobons, the books you see on store shelves, but in monthly magazines like shonen jump, which allows readers to view a multitude of series and later can decide to buy the collected editions. I think the comic industry should try this, release a monthly magazine for 20 bucks that features 5 different comics and readers can decide to buy the paperbacks later if they just want to focus on one of the series. Also switch to black and white art, and fire all the colorists, full color books have made the pencilers and inkers lazy with there art.
>release a monthly magazine for 20 bucks that features 5 different comics
They’ve tried anthologies. nobody buys them.
Why do people who know nothing about comics keep talking about comics? Why are you on Cinemaphile?
>They’ve tried anthologies. nobody buys them.
I think that's because the anthologies are always collections of stories that you know won't be important in the continuity. They've never tried having the main Batman title on an ongoing.
>They've never tried having the main Batman title on an ongoing.
Just tell me you don’t know the history of the medium why don’t you lol you really think Japan started the anthology format?
Detective, sensational, action, whiz; every major character launched in an anthology.
That's obviously not what I was talking about.
i think you neckbeards need all the help you can get and should stop being so abrasive and elitist
You're the neckbeard here
no u
>They’ve tried anthologies. nobody buys them.
Because they fricked it up, the same way that they intentionally frick up anything that would push them outside of their comfort zone. The anthologies that they tried were too expensive, poorly marketed, and were full of shit content. It's like they heard that in an anthology the commercial success of the better material can bolster the sales of the weaker stuff in the book, and everyone interpreted that as "okay, cool, I can just publish the worst shit I have in my backlog and the rest of the group can carry my ass to victory" with no one every putting anything of value up for sale. It was all bad.
>The anthologies that they tried were too expensive
Anon, Shonen Jump in the US in the 2000's, 20 years ago, cost $10. For translated material and it was still less pages than the JP version and 3 times the cost.
How much do you think they'd charge for anthologies with all new material in 2024? Have you seen the prices magazines cost these days?
The cost is just unfeasible.
Here's my idea, just looking through the Marvel solicitations (DC has headwinds that are almost always entirely related to the president of Discovery and his malicious negligence) for April. There's like 70 floppy titles here, with three or four variants each. That's totally unsustainable and entirely there to prop up variant collectors and speculative morons. Why not collate them into anthologies of 5 (about 120-160 pages) and cut the price by about 40 percent, so about 12 bucks a book? Then you figure out which ones sell and push them, and cut down and stick the good stories from the bad ones into them until you're up to the seven or eight hard-hitters the Japs do in a book. I'm sure there's something I'm overlooking here, but a singular Venom book and a Spider-man and Spider-Black book each seem a lot less overwhelming than this madness.
Makes sense to me.
It's really quite fixable. They're trying to reach that with content and putting in more manga-like elements, but the format really is the problem. Floppies are a dead letter, and they kill any chance you have of softer chapters that ramp up because they have to stand alone. One Iron Man, one Hulk, two X, three Spider, one Deadpool, two other properties Disney owns, and an Avengers anthology, plus a pick and mix would kick ass and be easy to market not only in LCS, but in big box stores and online. If they fix the digital pricing and the subscription service I really think they could be at least two percent profitable and not just a loss leader.
Spidet-Man fans wouldn't want to waste 1/3 ofthat money on Spider-Black.
Or Venom, as a matter of fact, isn't it still some kid in the suit?
>Then you figure out which ones sell.
If they can't stand on their own, then they go back in the Spidey anthology or get shelved. Right now it's overwhelming and badly thought out to have so many floppies of the same character line when pushing them together makes things cheaper and easier to monitor.
For a second I thought you were talking about manga anthologies, those are pretty popular even when there are no A-list mangaka as part of the group.
>no A-list mangaka
That is a comic term that is useless when talking about manga or mangaka.
they did lmao. it was terrible and sold poorly so many stopped.
Do you think where going to have threads like these, when Manga starts dying in the western and Eastern world?
I don't know much about how comic/video game stores operate, outside hearing a lot of them are going online only and only getting a store if they have enough of a demand in the area with lots of money to burn.
If it happens, probably on Cinemaphile
It varies. In the case of comic shops, a bunch are relying on online orders. Others sell other stuff like cards and Funko Pops.
IIRC One of the longtime comic shops that closed last year is still pulling new comics for people, they just show up in a comics-themed bar on Wednesdays rather than having a storefront
Cinemaphile will probably no longer be a thing by then
>when Manga starts dying in the western and Eastern world
Literally never happening. Manga was strong in Asia way before the west collapsed and the now lack of any competition secures their future until the middle of the century
Do keep coping though
>when Manga starts dying in the western and Eastern world?
>Do you think where going to have threads like these, when Manga starts dying in the western and Eastern world?
You mean in 80 years? What is going to replace it? Disney already scrapped most of their studios, DC and Marvel already retired most of their heroes from having their own comics. There is not even the infrastructure nor resource to rebuild the industry.
People complaining about woke in comics turned me off comics way more than the minor examples they overreacted to.
I didn't feel silly for liking comics until I saw people frothing at the mouth over an outfit change.
The discussion around comics is truly repulsive, on all sides.
Because the content is repulsive and attracts bad people.
What is the last comic you read that you found horrible, and wasn't just a panel of some shit tier comic no one bought that you saw on X.
Why do you hate yourself so much?
Yeah this they should totally just make everything even gayer and less white obviously. Making chuds seethe will make me buy more comics!
Kys
Do comics even have a database with as good tagging as something like anidb or mal?
No, because that would require there to be enough active consumers to create and maintain it. No one in the anime industry is involved in My Anime List one bit, its an entirely fan driven engine. They are the ones that create the pages and add the tags.
If comics had an active enough fanbase to have a comprehensive db like that, comics wouldn't be in such dire straits. Not enough people read comics to provide coverage, and certainly not enough people enjoy the comics they read enough to curate pages about their favorites online.
League of Comic Geeks kind of.
I don't think you can search for any particular genre or something like that but you can search for creators, characters, series, etc.
It could definitely be better.
Searching be creators and searching by genre are the most important and accessible feature
A genre search would be nice.
Theme tags as well.
But you can search for creator. For example
https://leagueofcomicgeeks.com/people/1392/tim-seeley
That's ok. Under each comic there should be a section that states if if he was the writer and the artist or just the artist for that comic.
Oh yeah 100% agree there is a lot that could improved on.
I hope every single comic shop closes and everyone working in comics becomes homeless
Here's the secret.
Comics actually have zero effect on DC.
Crisis on infinite earth movies are nothing like the comicbook. Gunn's new DCU doesn't care about the comics. The movies are definitely NOT like the comics.
And if they're inspired, it's always the old shit. What's the point of "canon" when those "canon" traits never make it to the general public when they're the most important audience.
But why can't there be a synergy? Manga, anime, and videogames have this synergy where they each boost each others popularity.
Because Warnerbros doesn't care about the comic division. They just want the IPs for merch, movies, and shows. That's it.
Doesn't work like that.
Western movies and games became massively budgeted ordeals that take years to come out.
As late as the sixth gen you had games that attempted to be in line with contemporary comics.
Now the games are their own retellings. Movies used to use comics for expanded universe stories, but since none of the filmakers cared about the comics they lost the appeal of being canon.
Western IP handling is some bizarro shit, where the brand name you paid for exists almost purely as a replacement for part of your advertising budget, and the idea that the source material should somehow inform the contents of your adaptation is just completely alien conceptually. This isn't just a comics problem, think about it. Think about how many things you watch are adaptations of some source material, and how many of them are so wildly different that you are pretty sure no one involved ever picked up the original. Why, when they already had a successful formula to work from, did they ignore it to make something horrible no one wanted?
Because it was never a genuine attempt at an adaptation in the first place. In much the same way that Die Hard 2 was a completely unrelated script that someone said "Hey, is Bruce Willis available? If he is we can change some details and call this Die Hard 2" the same logic is how someone rescued a rejected Robocop reboot script and instead got the rights to call it Ghost in the Shell instead. Buy the rights for the IP, jam in a couple of specific scenes to put in the trailers so you can say its GitS, and thats the job done.
You can't have synergy if you don't have respect for the source material, and the idea of having respect for the source material isn't even on anyone's minds one you get above the C-rank pencilnecks in the industry because the entire movie has been boiled down to abstracted spreadsheets and numbers.
I don't care, I hate everybody working in comics.
They are all bad now, something I used to enjoy greatly has been ruined. The people who ruined something I enjoyed should be ruined.
>I don't care, I hate everybody working in comics.
Anon I don't like them either, but I can relish in the fact that the characters I like get better moments in mainstream than the comics which are dead.
Then walk away. You’ve grown out of comics.
Then fricking. You're sitting in shit, saying how much you hate it, then continuing to sit on it in some act of masochistic defiance.
>And if they're inspired, it's always the old shit.
The MCU is mostly modern Marvel shit, instead of going with classics.
That post had nothing to do with Marvel.
Fair enough. Does DC take some degree of inspiration from classics? I know they went with the sword-and-shield bullshit for Wonder Woman, and the Blue Beetle movie was mainly about the ethnic replacement. Everything about the Flash now seems to incorporate the Flashpoint bullshit retcon*.
What made you so angry about comics?
NTA, but anon is just a contrarian dickhole. People like him do the same thing in animation threads clapping their hands for AI because they want everyone to lose their jobs and the industry to crumble (all because they dislike shows that were made for kids well over a decade younger than them).
Rest In Piss
He should have sold manga.
It feels like DC and Marvel are just publishing anything because even they know it's over.
comics will go to the grave stubbornly hanging onto the physical model when all you ever hear is the high cost of paper. Every other product that could go digital did so and it revitalized them. The PC gaming market was on life support until Steam came along and now its a behemoth. Spotify saved the drowning music industry. e-readers turned on a generation that hated carrying around pounds of dead tree material.
imagine a Steam for comics. DC and Marvel should be salivating at the notion of selling you a comic for $2 that cut out printing and shipping, while also having the option of a $5 special edition and a $8 collectors edition. massive sales on the back catalog because a comic from 20 years ago sold at $1 is $1 of pure profit, everybody wins.
you people are just so goddam stupid
And the thing is, you can STILL DO limited print runs of high demand material. Frick it, let your users just *vote* on what they want to see printed next, and anything that gets enough votes goes to the printers. Its like a kickstarter, where you only make the product if the financial backing is already there. Some people will still want physical media, and you can cater to them without alienating everyone else.
>The PC gaming market was on life support until Steam came along and now its a behemoth.
This is 100% bullshit. PC gaming was more or less a fixed market until around 2000, when suddenly everyone had to have a PC for the internet. Then PC gaming started growing, right before Steam launched. PC gaming wasn't going downhill before that point either, it was just a mostly static market for about 5-7 years prior to 2000. It wasn't shrinking, but it wasn't growing either. Early 2000's PC gaming prior to Steam was all about Diablo 2, Starcraft Brood War, BF1942, Unreal Tournament, The Sims, etc. That was not life-support at all. Especially when you consider The Sims broke sales records previously set by Myst.
I get tired of this modern revisionism of early 2000's PC gaming and how Steam somehow saved an industry that was on an upswing before they appeared.
What happened is that MS made the xbox so all the pc devs decided "okay we're making xbox games now" inspired in part by how retailers wanted to order fewer pc games and more xbox titles. A lot of devs who were around back then are incredibly glad that digital distribution ended the chokehold retailers had on what kind of games get made.
>if you don't have respect for the source material
For big 2 in particular, there's nothing to respect. I see what you mean for the rest.
You're not wrong. You can't expect other mediums to respect your material if even YOU don't respect your material.
These threads are always my favorite just to see the autistic posters try and cope about the state of comics and western media.
Peak entertainment.
Woke comics ended all interest in DC and Marvel comics
Thanks Biden I love being poor
You were born poor
>here is why I don't read comics
>that isn't actually a problem
>yes it is, here are examples
>uh you're so obsessed chud
The comics industry would rather die than change. Comic fans would rather the industry die than change. Allow it to die, and let them keep denying the problem until the dirt covers the coffin.
>yes it is, here are cherry picked spergy examples and when people point out all the reasons they’re wrong and don’t represent everything and how my stupid fix ideas don’t work I will ignore them because lol I win
Fixed
>21 year lease for a profitable business
Landlords need a solution.
I work at a pretty successful comic shop. AMA
how does wokeness affect your sales?
Honestly couldn't tell you. Contrary to what you may believe here, your everyday pull list person isn't affected by clickbait panels. If they're devoted, they'll probably just weather the storm and keep up with the book unless the writing really dips. Though I can tell you Wonder Woman only has THREE subscribers at our shop. But that's less woke and more her struggling to have a decent writer since new 52. Don't hear anyone talk about Tom King's run at all. Man I miss Azzarello
Oh we're a comic shop, through and through. Big part of our sales. We do weeklys, back issues, buy collections, and have ties to the biggest auction house on the east coast. I could go into more specifics, but the key is treating it like a business you're invested/knowledgeable in rather than treat it like a hobby. We just got approved to do CGC submissions
Ha. You jest, but yeah its a hard business. Its not meant for everyone. Too many immature lazy hobbiests with "shops" out there.
We had ama anons like this in a certain thread all the time. All turned out to be fake.
Really? That's fricking weird. Not the lying part, that I get, but to LARP as that of all things is odd to me. But I guess whatever attracts attention I suppose.
But yeah, I'm happy to answer anything concerning what it takes to help run a successful shop. Ours has been in the game for 34 years. Obviously I haven't been around that long, I just kinda started helping there on weekends and became friends with the owner (RIP) and the workers.
Simple question. Does your shop sell manga? If so, how does it compare to floppy and GN sales?
Are comics a significant part of your sales, or are comics just something you sell occasionally while other products are what keep you afloat?
If comics are a big chunk of your sales, what actually moves and what never gets sold?
Clearly fake ama.
Death by woke
Because all of mainstream media is taken over by "people" with the same mindset as Adam Sessler. That's why.
>There is no Secret Society of Super-Villains to blame.
Psy op thread. Ignore.
Haha it's funny because Americans shit on Arabs and China for years only to be rendered obsolete by the very same """subhumans"""
Oh well nothing some more troony worship can't fix
>the dogeating communist bugmen (who literally turned SnK into a dimeadozen IP farm) and the desert inbreds who worship a pedophile are better than mutts because... uhh... they let the country second only to France in degeneracy make games the way they want
I almost respect the amount of pure seething hatred for burgerland but then again, your post reeks of autism
Sir, I just want to say you have made the most based post in the world for shitting on Japan, Saudi Arabia, Muttland, Frogland, and Chinkland.
>Yet another massive Cinemaphile franchise saved by a random Saudi obsessed with its classic identity
So like, will this one partner with Red Bull to host tournaments too or will it have to go ask if Monster or Rockstar are available.
What the frick are Saudis doing funding this degenerate coomshit, aren't they supposed to be following Sharia?
No, they're like the Swedes. The religious stuff is just for everybody else. Their nobility can do whatever the hell they want. And the U.S. wonders why every single other nation in the Islamic world picks Iran over monarcho-KFCism.
Saudis are currently busy whitewashing their image by throwing billions into everything that they see as popular. They’re doing it with MMA, sports leagues, etc. to make people forget how much human rights violations they do and how they literally killed and chopped up the body of that journalist.
And gullible morons like that person go BASED SAUDIS I LOVE YOU even though couple years ago they were busy calling every Muslim slurs and hyperventilating how the America was being turned into a sharia state. Because these people don’t care one bit about anything except their own butthurt feelings and navel and as long as their idiotic brains thinks someone is “on their side” by promoting whatever they like that entity has to be great because that’s as far as their interests and values go. And the more sexist and misogynistic it is likely the better.
There's a frickload of rich Saudis with nothing to do but sit around fricking hookers and playing vidya all day, particularly in the House of Saud themselves. The ones that don't care about getting into the succession clusterfrick generally keep their heads down but a few of them just say frick it and do what other people would do with like a billion dollars and no responsibility because they live in a weird environment where you either end up super entitled because your part of the family [as in literally your mom and full blood siblings/friendly cousins/half siblings] is strong enough to bully the frick out of the others, or you end up weirdly normal with like a persecution complex and are scared fricking shitless of that first group because you never had the clout to survive if you looked like a threat, so they keep their heads down and just go be various flavors of okay if they aren't too assmad about it, so shit like this happens.
You have to remember that the Saudis are so fricking rich that just one prince low in the succession with no real ambition was able to accidentally cause Al Qaeda pretty much without trying by throwing money around at some guys who were still mad about us fricking around in the sandbox before.
Maybe part of the reason is Marvel and DC to an extent are just shitty at reprinting stuff or what they print is ridiculously expensive like where I live Epic collections for older runs are nearly £40 and an omnibus is almost £100. I've also noticed that series from even a year or two ago are going out of print maybe it's because probably due to shitty management and some continunity stuff is involved but it really shouldn't be hard to find a 12 issue run that's been collected in volumes from a year or two ago of a specific character you're interested.
>where I live Epic collections for older runs are nearly £40 and an omnibus is almost £100
The Forbidden Planet in my city was trying to make some fast cash in between all the lockdowns and were selling omnibuses and absolute editions at over 70% discount.
They were sold out by the time I found out, they closed for good a few months later.
Check around your local Oxfams I've been lucky enough to find some decent stuff in there I got the God Butcher omnibus for £12 and the Days of Future Past trade for £5 and the first volume of Low for £3 lately. It's rare to find them in there but they do occasionally turn up if you have a good enough hunt. I haven't been to my Forbidden Planet in years because it was quite terrible last time I was in and I heard it's only gotten worse in various ones around the country.
>they need to publish them as anthologies
They tried that.
>and also stock them at Wal-Mart
THEY. TRIED. THAT.
This has always been a simple question to answer.
What's a kid going to buy? A 5.99 comic that contains about 20 pages of a decompressed story that won't be finished for months, if not years, or a 2.50 magazine with 400 pages of story?
WOWY WOW WOW SO HARD TO FIGURE OUT? You can take the troon-core stories and the gay sex out of comics and they would still sell less because you get so much less for your dollar.
No matter how many threads we make, the big 2 are done. You can't fix what the company themselves don't care about.
This. Marvel and DC are not comics publishers anymore. They are IP farms for their respective media empire parents who have to move some pieces around often enough to justify getting some middle aged dudes closer to retirement before their paychecks go away, and if they can make it across the finish line they win.
This shit makes me glad that the shop I go to owns the building it's in and could keep itself afloat indefinitely off MTG singles.
Effort shouldn't be put into saving Marvel or DC but in creating more ways to get original comics in front of people. I feel like there's a lot of artists in America who would like to make a comic but don't want to deal with the industry.
All we need is a good platform for reach and 90 percent of the problems with e-commerce are solved. Somebody whose job is to get people to reach other people cannot shove ads into the reaching of people, or force some people to be unable to reach anyone. It's basic common carrier law, with tying to mop up the boosting items.
Yep. Its good that webcomics exist, but not at the expense of there being a 'real' indie comics industry.
I honestly wonder how owning a small business like a comic shop would go in the modern day
afaik most of the successful ones basically need to make a lot of their money going to conventions and other events and sell non-comic merch like busts and shirts to rubes.
Kinda figured, I don't see a lot of people buying comics in bulk.
Small businesses have been universally squeezed out of existence by government regulation. Trump pulling a Milei is the world's last hope.
>government regulation
>Milei
kys e-girlcontrarian
Die, statecuck, die.
You will never be a billionaire. Also, why is it that your solution to government overregulation is always to swap it for corporate overregulation? The solution to "woke companies" is to take away their right to harm people through the apparatus of the state.
>Corporations
No one mentioned corporations. You are obsessed with corporations, and since you are, maybe you'll want to turn a critical eye on the largest corporation on Earth, aka the US Federal Government?
Who are you quoting?
>If I give the government power they will never use it to frick me in the ass
How about you leave people alone, homosexual?
You'll never be intelligentsia, Bolshevik. You'll be in the lithium mine with the rest of us.
>regulate me harder Uncle Sammy, I love paying taxes to finance foreign wars!
Funny, 'cause a shitload of small business have gone down since Milei took over but big companies are growing stronger and stronger.
It already happened in the 90s, when they tried to do exactly what Milei wants to but you're too fricking moronic to even learn anything. All that matters is to own the libs 'cause some girl didn't pay attention to you in school.
https://twitter.com/GlennJacobsTN/status/1785658320340095485
>OH NO NO NO SWEET MOLOCH NO! MY FELLOW LEFTY ZERS, REALITY IS BEATING OUR ASSES AGAIN!
How is that proving that small business aren't going down?
And sure, I guess he didn't tank the peso if we don't take in account that the first thing he did as soon as he took over was devalue it by 50%
Also, wtf is that graph supposed to show? All I see is some numbers but I've no idea what any of that relates to and how.
All the lasting ones where I live are a hybrid of Comics Store and Local Game Store.
What is /tg/ if not Cinemaphile's older brother who still shitposts on a computer vs our phone based shitposting.
Maybe you need to have a series in stock instead of only having the latest issue of a current run. Seriously, why the frick would you only carry Issue 1 once!?
Just put everything on webtoons already. No one buys physical stuff anymore.
Comics just aren't for me anymore, given that both DC and Marvel see me as a dying market. And that's fine, but I'm not going to buy their comics anymore nor am I going to mourn for the industry that has left me behind and is glad that I'm not part of their market.
>DC and Marvel
There's lots of other comics out there.
Kind of sad much DC and Marvel dropped the ball and ran so many of their fans away.
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Do you agree? Should DC return to more family friendly comics?
Just less apocalypse porn would be nice. Nowadays big events are always about watching characters die before a plot device resets the multiverse and someone says a vapid line about hope and faith. The formula for comics has always been action, mystery, and adventure. But now the action is tepid, the mystery is "big evil thing that has always been her in the shadows yet no one has realized it until now," and the adventure is "something outside your window wants to kill you."
Comics just aren't fun anymore, and that's just when they aren't trying to be self-therapy books for the writer. There's no way a kid would want to read a book by King or Ewing.
Abso-fricking-lutely. It's baffling that they allowed things to reach the point they did.
No.
I'm gonna say something that is going to make a bunch people cope, as people on Cinemaphile always do when anyone says
>We should somewhat improve the state of the medium.
When I was 11, maybe 12, my parents took me a town away to a near by comic shop, to go buy some.
Want to know why they told me that I couldn't regularly buy comics?
It wasn't
>This is too gorey, you can't read this.
It wasn't
>Anime is better read that instead.
It wasn't
>There is extreme sex and anti social behavior in this.
If that were true, teenagers wouldn't like Chainsaw Man, or Jujutsu Kaisen.
Sorry but this isn't the case.
What they said to me was simple
>What the frick, $5.99 a comic?
>Frick no we're not letting you get comics weekly, that's fricking moronic we're not made out of money.
And so I never did, never have, and might not ever again because piracy is easier than ever unless you're looking for something recently published with no rips yet.
Alan Moore basically lamented this ages ago, comics went from 99 cents a pop and something that kids could buy, to a more self contained hobby that basically no one could afford but hyper autists with a obsession willing to pay pig for that shit.
Though I can't be sure when this started, as an issue of Archie was 66 cents in 1974, which is 5 bucks today, but that was also, I can't tell honestly, for a digest/omnibus size.
I won't bother double checking but let's just say that if a omnibus size was actually that price God help us all.
So while
>Make comics more like manga
>Make comics more accessible in distribution
>Make comics more simplistic and faster to pump out in the streamlining process
Are all good ideas, absolutely none and I mean none of these ideas will stick at all unless you somehow drive the final sale price of all comics back down to $1.
Not $1.99, or $2.50, not $3.
$1.
Now, personally, that isn't my problem yet, it may never be.
But at the moment, if anyone should care, and it is your problem, that's your only solution.
Oh this was like, oh shit a decade ago.
I don't know how much comics cost now.
Frankly I don't want to know, I'm not throwing them a cent, I'm not even sure I want to put in the labor time into walking to my local comic shop this week for the first time to pop in, grab free comics, and walk out.
Sticking with floppies was a mistake.
Market forces prevent this. Back in the 90s, Marvel sold Untold Tales of Spider-Man for 99 cents. Great comic, sold like shit, people would much rather buy the clone saga issues that they claimed to hate for $1.95 Back in 2011, DC made a big campaign push to draw the line at 2.99. Marvel still sold more at their higher price point.
Well, looks like that shill is back. They don't even change their tying style. Like everyone knows who you are at this point.
If anthologies, single issue stories and selling at grocery store aisle were the magic fix to comics why isn’t Archie the biggest comic publisher in the country?
Archie still costs like 5 bucks for a Readers Digest type buy that just isn't worth it, no family is going to go "Hm yes let me spend FIVE DOLLARS I COULD HAVE USED ON FOOD HERE." For a bunch of Archie reruns too which is a problem since new issues are comic shops only and cost the same as 1000 page ones.
Basically either price things down or everyone dies.
That store literally has been fighting against a collectables and card store down the street from it. They got pissy if you asked for things they didn't have. Frick them I'm happy they are closed. The other store is better anyway. Why the frick does some homosexual on Cinemaphile care?
Thread is almost limited but no one has mentioned the real reason manga is selling more: It simply looks better on a shelf.
The books are smaller so you don't have to worry too much about shelf size and having them all lined up actually looks really nice since they're all standard even between different series. Some manga volumes even have really nice side cover art. This also has a physiological effect on wanting to start collecting all the volumes to "fill it out".
You have to remember that's also why people some people still buy physical books too. It's sometimes nice to look at a filled out shelf and, on occasional, pull one something out. This is also the generation who will buy a game and just watch people play it on twitch. Some don't buy it to read but to show that they're part of the fandom who do.
Compare that to floppies where you just store them in boxes that will just gather dust. Some tradebacks are also a bit too thin to appreciate while most manga volumes are decently chunky at a smaller cost.
>I buy comics because of spines
Nobody does this. This is not a thing. People do not look at comic trade spines and go “oh damn, I can’t buy this because muh shelf will not look good”.
Influencers and streamers do.
>closes after 21 succesful years
dobut
>There is no Secret Society of Super-Villains to blame
Only because they're not so 'secret' anymore thanks to the internet lol. This is why ~~*they*~~ want to ban TikTok in the United States, ~~*they're*~~ being revealed more and more every day to anyone paying any attention.