https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/55665/world-according-griepp-can-comics-be-saved
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Can comics be saved?
https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/55665/world-according-griepp-can-comics-be-saved
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Why haven't they already outsourced the IPs, or hired asian artists who work longer hours for less pay? Why pay talentless american hacks when you can get quality asian talent for cheap?
What Marvel and DC ought to do is find a small to medium sized manga publisher in Japan they can purchase a stake in. Finance them so they can start a monthly boys magazine, print or digital, if they don't already have one. Have them devote roughly one-third of the stories to Marvel/DC properties. Give them a few notes on what should be unbreakable canon, the amount of sex and violence they're comfortable with, but otherwise let the Japanese develop the manga completely independent of western editors. After a while, sell the trades here.
They're already kind of doing this at a small scale, they just need to expand so that they can have an actual line/imprint. I don't know if people noticed this, but the 1st and 4th top selling DC graphic novel in September were manga: One Operation Joker and Superman vs Meshi. Yes, Superman eating food was the best selling non-Batman book for DC, and that's just in the direct market. Imagine the business they're doing in bookstores.
no.
i don’t want filthy israeli gaijins fricking up my anime and manga.
wienerroaches and rats should stay in their own habitats.
Is anyone gonna tell him?
The West has already moved in on the industry more and more.. particularly in collaboration regarding vidya
>particularly in collaboration regarding vidya
That only proves his point, most of the Jap vidya devs who've been heavily collaborating with the west (Squeenix, Sega, Konami) have gone to shit.
I understand your sentiment. I'm only suggesting what they should do, if they were smart and forward thinking. Frankly, you don't have to worry.
see
>Have them devote roughly one-third of the stories to Marvel/DC properties. Give them a few notes on what should be unbreakable canon
It's already doomed, then. Marvel and DC would have to let go of all that old accumulated baggage and take a hands-off approach for anything like this to work. Your idea would fall right into the same problems that destroyed the comic industry.
agreed, and maybe some lesser known characters can get a second look
I could see Etrigan or Deadman translating well.
I'm a nip and I get it that One Operation Joker sells but vs. Meshi is the least funny manga the author has ever done. I can't believe it's popular in US.
Hell, it was the second shittiest manga in the shittiest seinen manga magazine in Japan. That's gotta be something.
I guess your worst beats our best.
>Why haven't they already outsourced the IPs, or hired asian artists who work longer hours for less pay?
They're already hiring Latin American artists who are cheaper and better that normal ones. As for licensing out the IPs, that would just be admitting you're dead. It wouldn't solve the problem, it would be giving up in the face of the problem.
Asians have 0 attachment to the characters or understanding of their history. Not to mention, American comic books are very different from manga.
No one has attachment to the characters or understanding of their history, jap or otherwise.
Zero understanding of their 'history' is the important part.
People loved Spiderman: Fake Red more than pretty much any recent Spiderman comic because the writer didn't give a shit about 'canon'.
>Why haven't they already outsourced the IPs,
They did, then the higher ups didn't like having outsiders work on their property and slammed the brakes. You know Superman 64, that really shitty and awful game on the N64? It became like that because higher ups at DC decided they didn't want a video game company touching Superman and kept denying the developers from doing anything up until release date. Now fast forward to today where DC is even bigger and more powerful, with much greedier people at the helm. That kind of corporate meddling has been normalized.
>or hired asian artists who work longer hours for less pay?
They did, then the other artists that work at those companies became jealous that asian artists generally have more talent and demand less compensation for their work so they got rid of most of them (or at least shoved them out of any real work like the inside pages). Look at what happened to the Squirrel Girl single for more information. The other issue is that asian artists that do comics tend to want to be both writer and artist, and for the Big Two that is a massive no-no that can't be allowed.
>Why pay talentless american hacks when you can get quality asian talent for cheap?
Most of the comic industry doesn't care about asian artists in the first place. They see asians and asian comics like manga and knock-off manga as both competition that's doing well for itself as well as an encroaching cancer that's going to kill off the industry for good.
Disgusting parasocials will sing praise on Twitter for having asians as diversity checkboxes, but in reality they won't tolerate how they've been taking jobs away.
>The other issue is that asian artists that do comics tend to want to be both writer and artist, and for the Big Two that is a massive no-no that can't be allowed.
I think they finally agreed to let Peach Momoko do that for the Ultimate X-Men relaunch. And it's looking an awful lot like a CLAMP manga from the previews.
>I think they finally agreed to let Peach Momoko do that for the Ultimate X-Men relaunch
For the number 1 only, and only because they want her to debut a new asian mutant that's going to be in the lineup. After that the series is going right back to John fricking Hickmann again because frick this industry
A Gwenpool manga would bring in bank.
What manga magazine would serialize it?
Do a whole ultimate universe in manga format and have it slowly over time replace the main marvel line
so instead of saving comics we're gonna give in to the japs?
i support this.
Her own ongoing didn’t do good.
Gwenpool just has a small vocal coomer fanbase
Comics will be fine. Direct Market capeshit might be in some trouble though.
Direct market capeshit still makes up the brunt of all western sales. If you remove dogman numbers (which we should since it’s an anomaly mostly created by scholastic book fair placement) it makes up a large majority.
Kickstarter, patreon and webcomics are not an industry.
It doesn’t, but sales reflect that nobody is buying anything else.
>Direct market capeshit still makes up the brunt of all western sales.
Except it doesn't though. The YA OGN market is miles larger. And for as much as you say we should exclude Dogman, Raina Telgemeier is the highest earning western comics artist in pretty much the entire existence of the market. Those other millionaires that make comics? Syndicated newspaper strips. Western capeshit has never been the dominant force. Even in Europe duck comics and funny animal books outstrip capeshit. Face it, capes are and have always been a niche. Just admit you're america centric and ignorant of the western market at large outside of superhero shit.
>capes are and have always been a niche
lol no they weren't you stupid bloviating homosexual. 60 years ago every kid read superhero comics. I read two noir novels a few months ago and both mentioned capeshit characters like namor and superman.
Capes haven't been relevant since the market crashed in the 90s grand dad. Superhero movies are famous now but nobody reads floppies anymore.
>Capes haven't been relevant since the market crashed in the 90s grand dad. Superhero movies are famous now but nobody reads floppies anymore.
why can't they be, if Japanese action schlock is able to be? DBZ and Naruto are cut from the same cloth
>why can't they be, if Japanese action schlock is able to be?
Because Japan is trendy right now. Give it time. MHA is just X-men. Kids are already moving off manga and onto chinkslop.
Manga is just written better and looks better. And way more variety than superheroes everyday. And hotter drawn fanservice.
Comics are just written better and look better. And way more variety than battle shonen everyday. And in color.
Dude come on, there are so many different art styles in the manga industry. Yes some suck but some are truly amazing. Western style artists seem to be stuck in a distinct style and drawing like "anime" was frowned upon in art schools for years in the West. The stories of manga always allow you to self inserted easily. Battle shonen for instance typically has a power system that allows children to easily make their oc donut steel. Comics allow this but mostly only with superheroes.
Then there is fan service. The West isn't coombrained the same way the east is. Manga is better at fan service mainly because the West for a long time simply had a better moral compass, i.e should kids really be shown sexy e-girl and Gwen Stacy going kyaa~ every ten chapters etc etc
You say Naruto and DBZ is schlock but the level of fight choreography, the power scaling and the variety of characters who are actually cool are better than the average capecomic. If we lived in a world without corporate scheming and Black person worship then I'm sure comics would be a powerful threat to manga but as it stands that isn't the case
I'm sorry but that's just so wrong when some of the interior artists of today are straight up trash like gregland.
No. They are beyond saving.
Bullshit we just need some good writers also a chaange in Marvel and DC editoral would do wonders. At any rate I vastly collect the older books to be honest.
These wouldn't survive today.
Maybe not but I a, glad I have them in my collection.
>we just need to throw some water on this grease fire
holy kino
Damn, I've read most of these
What issue number is that Spectacular Spider-Man in the upper right? That cover looks amazing!
#66
Should they be saved?
No.
Killing direct market periodicals and their retailers will through out today's bathwater with tomorrows baby. Letting today's bad comics tank the industry drags any future good comics into non-existence with them outside of webcomics. As someone who enjoys books as tangible art objects an all-digital future doesn't appeal to me.
Yes.
Clearly we need more gays and blacks in comics.
>I think there’s a very general reason why Marvels and DCs aren’t selling: they aren’t very good.
>I had a rule when I was in distribution, and it was "good is as good sells." That means the definition of a good product is that when you expose it to an audience it sells. That’s not happening with Marvels and DCs, so by definition, they’re not very good.
This sounds smart until you realize that shit like Spawn and Youngblood were outselling something like Starman. Or that current ASM is Marvel's top seller. Then it kind of falls apart.
"Good" is subjective, and things like Spawn and Youngblood were absolutely delivering what kids wanted from their comics, back when kids were actually reading. No matter how much older readers and critics hated them, the actual target audience thought it was good.
Current ASM being the top selling comic in the industry most months has no logical explanation, it's just an indictment of the absolute state of the industry, and how a book can sell better than anything else despite those sales appearing to be propped up by variant covers and by completists who hate the run but don't want holes in their collection. It means there's nothing out there enough people actually enjoy to buy in larger numbers.
>"Good" is subjective
No it's not. Spawn is an objectively bad comic and it was outselling stuff like Sandman that were objectively good because people thought it looked cool and was edgy. Yes it appealed to thirteen year olds and the type of dumbass that really loves shit like Megadeth and Friday the 13th but it was still a shit comic outselling things that were much better. His argument is "just make good comics" when "good" isn't a guarantee that something will sell. "Good" only works in this context if you mean "flashy" which is what the industry moved towards in the '90s and then "good" meaning "important" which is what the value became among readers in the 2000s.
> the type of dumbass that really loves shit like Megadeth and Friday the 13th
What kind of homosexual doesn't like Megadeth and Friday the 13th?
friday the 13th is REAL bad, you'd be better served with the living dead trilogy, return of the living dead, chainsaw massacre 1 & 2, or the first one or two hellraisers
jason x was a step up, but still not good
People who like Sandman, apparently. And not the cool one from Marvel.
Anyone who's not mentally 13. You got some Freddy Krueger statues? What's your favorite Mortal Kombat ninja?
I'm not disagreeing that Spawn is edgy schlock but Cinemaphile is just about the last place to be if you want to complain about juvenile taste.
Noob Saibot, obviously.
Sandman is shit.
Yeah, no. Great comics go unnoticed all the time while people will always read Spider-Man despite being dogshit 90% of the time
A better question is why the frick does an entire industry need to be centered around a handful of longrunning characters from a genre that is by its nature inherently niche.
Because they sell better than the other genres
Do they really though
Manga sales disprove that
We're talking about the direct market
Horror and science fiction do well but unfortunately the people who buy from the direct market are capeshitters for the most part
Huh? 90% of manga sales are shonen.
Out of all the manga that sold 20 million copies or more:
100 are shonen
50 are seinen
6 are both shonen and seinen (like JJBA)
5 are kodomo
20 are shoujo
2 are josei
Out of all the manga that sold 50 million copies or more, which is only 55 manga total:
5 of them are "other"
8 are seinen
42 are shonen
Super heroes fill the same Niche as Shonen, the problem isn’t the genre it’s the awful writing
>90% of manga sales are shonen.
1. Shounen's a target audience, not a genre in the sense of content.
2. Marvel and DC wishes they could market comics to kids. That shounen does so well in the most thriving branch of the comics industry suggest Marvel and DC are absolutely fricked.
>Super heroes fill the same Niche as Shonen
No they fricking don't
>my stories about superpowered people are different from your stories about superpowered people!
Shit, I must have missed the part in Komi Can't Communicate where everyone summoned their stands.
Let's look at that highest selling list and some of the shounen series on it. Other than superpowered people fighting there are
>two detective series
>a basketball series
>baseball series
>gag comedy or however you describe Kochikame
These are all shounen. Shounen is not a genre. Deal with it.
>6 are both shonen and seinen
You mean soft seinen (like Hunter x Hunter)?
>soft seinen
what does that even mean? At least when people refer to soft or hard Sci-fi or Magic I get a vague idea of what someone means but what does Soft adult male book mean?
Whatever it is, it certainly isn't ERECT!
>Genre
None of those are genres you filthy fricking weeaboo shitter. Those are the intended target audiences. Maybe you should actually learn Japanese before speaking out of turn.
Shonen is not the same as superhero.
Many of those are sports manga, or romcoms, or globetrotting adventure series, or even mystery series.
Compare that to superhero comics, where at best you get references to other genres within the guise of superheroes, and it is entirely different.
Naruto
One Piece
Dragon Ball
I rest my case now eat dick.
Manga is not remotely centered around those three. If they all vanished, they'd be replaced overnight with something that sells equally well. But if Batman and Spiderman stopped existing, there would be nothing in their stead, ever.
No. Bleach used to be a thing, died, and nothing replaced it.
You live and die by your tentpoles. And when they all go, so does the industry.
? in terms of hype it got replaced for sure by things like hero academia, attack on titan, JJK, Chainsawman etc.
Not even close, sales wise.
It's simple: Your big tentpole franchises that bring in all the money are used to fund smaller, less straightforward works. Risky works. I hate to say it but it is a case of Trickle down economics. That's not just manga and comics but movie studios as well. You can afford the art piece movie flopping cause the Smurfs starring Adam Sandler made gangbusters.
>Not even close, sales wise.
Anon, all of those series sell more units per volume than Bleach, with the exception of Chainsaw Man.
Like, a lot more.
The only reason they haven't outsold it is because they haven't all run for 15 years and 70+ volumes like Bleach did.
Personally don't think any of them will even after 20 years but agree to disagree.
Bleach wasn't even selling particularly well by the time it ended. It's always been the least popular of the Big 3.
I don't think people in Japan even considered it a big 3 it was just a big 2 with OP and Naruto. The Bleach anime got axed and replaced with a Naruto spin off. They re finally finishing it this year a decade later
Anon, Jujutsu Kaisen, Demon Slayer, and My Hero Academia have all outsold One Piece at times. They haven't had an long a run yet but they're very successful more successful than Bleach for sure
Manga feels better at balancing having a few big name classics like those with a healthy amount of shorter series that get big for a few years than get mostly forgotten about. It provides some stability while also allowing for people to not get bored of the medium as a whole.
None of them had been rerun with alternative universes.
Those three are all more different from each other than DC and Marvel are from each other. They also just popular and don't necessarily aggressively choke out most of the rest of their medium's floorspace like DC and Marvel do.
Exactly.
If MHA, Naruto or One Piece stop entirely; eventually there's something taking their place as top seller and new fad. If DC and Marvel die, the industry won't be saved altogether because there's nothing that sells as much as them.
What was the last independent hit that didn't rely on a TV show?
Saga? What year did that start?
You don’t rest your case because Dragon ball and Naruto haven’t been the top manga for years now.
Why do no of these interest me?
>Akane-banashi isn't on this list
Sad.
>Kaiju no. 8 is
How? It isn't bad but the author's taken a million breaks and the story has barely gone anywhere. This week's chapter was another kaiju showcase, for frick's sake.
Official English release of Kingdom when?
I like Osamu Tezuka, Junji Ito, Kiyohiko Azuma, Nico Tanigawa, Masaaki Nakayama, Hideo Yamamoto, and Keiichi rawi
Akira Toriyama's Dragonball was good and so was Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira
I'm really not that big into any of the works in that image at all, lol
American comics used to be much more varied but the comics code authority put an end to that for "corrupting the youth"
Superhero isn't niche at all. After all, lost battle shonen are basically superhero stories with different stories.
>basically superhero stories with different stories
Explains the issue, doesn't it.
Superhero comics doesn't own the concept of super-powered heroics, and that's not what anyone implies when they talk about "the genre". It's the comics themselves that are niche. The way they are executed is niche. The business model is niche.
Honestly, there's no problem with being a niche industry, one simply has to understand itself and live within its means. Looking at the current identity crisis in the industry, I don't think it does.
>Superhero isn't niche at all
It 100% is.
>muh horror and crime comics
Frick off moron
>"I wonder what Superman's cum tastes like!"
literally you! lmao
>MUH WOKENESS IS KILLING COMICS
I think people need to stop taking angry youtube bait about comicsgate shit and ignore those idiots. Comics is doing fine overall and isn't going away. The problem isn't wokeness it's just that there's to much shitty manga available for free and even though it's objectively worse than western comics it's free and easily accessible.
If they actually had more fleshed out plots for progressive characters and themes rather than really short one off books that feels like they don't really care about progressive issues they'd sell more. Having more diversity and inclusion isn't just about shouting WE MADE A CHARACTER gay to sell a single book, I want to know their coming out story, I want a romance, I want meaningful plots.
Race and gender swapping characters is good and adds more diversity but it means nothing if they don't really follow up on it and make these characters shine. They need to retire the old characters from an older era and give us the new characters that we want.
No, its wokeness. That's why those "angry youtubers" get views. Now get lost Kelly.
Comics were dead/dying long before “Wokeness” came around. Think of Wokeness as the infection that comes when an immune system is too weak to defend the body. The entire industry needs to die before something new forms.
No, it was merely correcting itself AFTER the speculator boom of the 90's. Manga also had a similar downturn. You know what it didn't have?
The New52 which sought to eliminate old fans and wokify characters for a "new audience".
Marvel's "All new, all different" initiate which sought to wokify/replace characters to attract a "new audience.
The economic downturn was normal. The fall afterwards wasn't.
No, even before wokeness no one in my generation (Zoomer) gave a frick about comics. Everyone I knew as a child who enjoyed drawing was inspired by manga/anime or cartoons. Who cares if boomers started to come around to comics again, the big 2 already lost a generation. The manga boom didn’t happen overnight, lots of us were fans but we had no money to buy it until the mid 2010’s
>Cartoons
The lack of proper cartooning in many comic books nowadays is part of the problem. That's not a woke thing mind you. Just what happens when you don't grow any talent like manga does with its "assistant" system. Comics used to have that.
>No, even before wokeness no one in my generation (Zoomer) gave a frick about comics. Everyone I knew as a child who enjoyed drawing was inspired by manga/anime or cartoons. Who cares if boomers started to come around to comics again, the big 2 already lost a generation
what? The Sam Raimi Spiderman movies and Nolan Batman movies DEFINED Gen Z lmao
None of that translated over to buying comics.
Kids didn't watch Spiderman and then go out and buy Spiderman comics. And certainly none that were post OMD.
At most, some fans of the Nolan films bought the Killing Joke run, and that was it.
>I will totally start paying money for things that don’t even exist yet as long as the thing I don’t spend money on is no longer existent
No, you won’t.
Everything about this post is bait and no more useful than the CG homosexuals.
I genuinely wish you’d have a nice day
Comics are definitely not doing fine but I agree it's not wokeness. Comics are tied to the direct market which is just not sustainable at all. The model has to change from the ground up and I don't think the Big 2 have the capacity or will to shift it. Too much institutional inertia to stop now
>Comics are definitely not doing fine but I agree it's not wokeness.
It's not the singular cause of the industry's problems like some people claim, but let's be honest and acknowledge that it's really not helping. It's a highly visible problem when compared to a lot of bigger problems that are more behind the scenes and not visible to the audience, and it's a problem that's alienating fans who would have otherwise been lifelong buyers. Often deliberately, gleefully alienating them. Firing everyone responsible and blacklisting them from being on Earth wouldn't fix all the problems in comics, but it would be a sign that they WANT to fix things.
bait or twitterhomosexual, either way, have a nice day.
How is he wrong?
>even though it's objectively worse than western comics
I can't help but feel like half of american liberalism is pretty much just american nationalism/imperialism disguised as progressivism. it's driven by cheap narcissism, and after all that's the problem.
I guess lots of redditors who talk about this kind of thing would actually 100% agree with you. I kinda wish you guys were as intelligent as fascists or communists in 1940s at least.
>and even though it's objectively worse than western comics
This is the most delightful bait post
this sort of post always looks the dumbest and overly optimistic. its a mindset of cult religion.
I hope not
By its very definition, clickbait is monetized trolling.
Therefore, anyone and everyone who posts it must be reported as soon as possible and as much as possible for breaking Global Rules 3 and 11.
ICV2 is clickbait now?
Editorial articles always are.
>It would be true if I was agreeing with the facts.
>but I clearly do not like this article, there for the article spouts lies.
>calling for people to report posts
Did you get rejected for a janitor position or something?
Capeshit shills in this thread trying to defend a dying industry.
It is just gay leftists trying to do damage control for their dying propaganda.
remove the cancer and they can be saved
leave the cancer in and comics will die
it's that simple.
A collapse is definitely something that's on the books tho.
I guarantee no one in this thread has actually read the article (it's not even the one in OP's link, that article just links to the original article).
Why bother talking about the content of something you haven't fricking read?
Paste the green text of it. You’re only saying this because you added a screenshot of your own article and are looking at the google analytics and not seeing an uptick.
1. The article's text is over the character limit
2. I will not wipe your ass for you. The link to the real article is in the linked article something I already mentioned. Such a good-for-nothing you wont click a fricking link and want strangers on the internet to copy paste things to you.
3. Because of point 1 I know you have never read a real article in your life as all of them are over Cinemaphile's character limit.
>you’re right I’m shilling my article
Blow your brains out and stream it, I’ll follow the link to that.
That's never stopped moviegoers from talking about the comic counterparts of characters
Only after it's been burned to the ground.
See
In the grand scheme of things that means getting rid of that fake Spider-Man for good I suppose?
The downfalls of comics can be recorded using Cinemaphile. Look at a favorite comics on Cinemaphile compared to one Cinemaphile. The one on Cinemaphile will not only have more titles but also more niche, that can be someone interested just in thriller/horror manga, someone that likes just SoL with great backgrounds manga, a woman that only likes josei manga, someone that is interested only in sci-fi, someone that likes manga about board games/gambling etc. Most comics fans do not explore the medium.
As said above most of the non-shonen manga do about as well (read: poorly) financially as non-capes. And there are wester comics about all sorts of shit. Also if you don’t include the webcomic/digital manga then genre diversity is much more like the west.
>what is Superman, x-men, saga, walking dead
This to say nothing of their individual quality. Stop dealing in extremes Senor autismo loco
Catering comics to straight, relatively non-progressive (which doesn’t mean conservative) readers isn’t all that sweeping
Easily, but that would require sweeping changes that no-one in the industry—even indies—don’t want to do.
Like what?
Get rid of episodic storytelling and shared universes. No moronic rogues galleries full of goobers like Spot, Captain Boomerang, and Captain Cold. And most importantly, let stories end.
Comics has more problems than politics. You’re blind if you can’t see.
Who said anything about politics. Progressive POC with expendable income simply isnt a sustainable demographic.
But given the reply to the other anon you seem to be baiting.
>Comics has more problems than politics.
True but the thing is the politics is the BIGGEST problem because it both destroys the good will with the customer that they built up over the decades while negatively impacting the product itself, it's a lose lose
The Comics Code killed American comics forever, Manga just did the finishing blows.
When every single genre of comic except Capeshit and Disney comics could no longer be made. It spelled the end for true diversity in the medium. Especially Pulps getting removed from book stores. By the time the Code was no longer used, it was far too late.
Other genres moved to Magazines and Black & White, both of which were not subject to the Comics Code. While it did help cause the fall, things like Romance Comics just went out of style in favor of Romance novels.
And that's ignoring how Marvel and DC ALWAYS needed a parent company to bankroll them. Even when prosperous.
Comics sold better with the code than without and indies didn’t need CCA approval. It was never really that big of a deal after the 70s
>When every single genre of comic except Capeshit and Disney comics could no longer be made.
The Code had already been rendered toothless by the early '70s. Marvel and DC have flooded the shelves with capeshit for decades since then by choice, because of their own creative bankruptcy.
>because of their own creative bankruptcy.
Nothing else sells.
Archie has survived
Archie uses a totally different business model and has been barely limping along after losing Sonic
Manga has no problems selling without capeshit. There's obviously an audience for other genres. Marvel and DC just don't have the creativity or the talent to tap into it themselves.
>When every single genre of comic except Capeshit and Disney comics could no longer be made.
Are you too autistic and moronic to actually change your beliefs when people explain to you repeatedly that you're wrong, or are you an actual bot that's been programmed to keep posting this?
You have to understand everyone from keyfabe to the washed you big 2 guys on Twitter to all the YouTube losers spouts this shit.
They genuinely don’t know any better because they believe them. As if anything made from 2000 on is anywhere near as good as the 70s and 80s.
Because if it weren’t for wokeness I’d still be buying Batman, detective, Superman, action, Titans, Wonder Woman, catwoman, aquaman which I dropped the second KSD came aboard and is now dead, as well as many others like JSA books I refuse to touch if Alan Scott is in them.
That’s money they left on the table.
None of those books' problems is wokeness. Sounds like you can't handle anything you don't agree with. Perhaps with better media literacy you'll be able to move onto criticising bad prose.
You don’t decide what I consider woke and trying to discuss that is a fool’s errand. It will bare no fruit. Have a good one. Buy the comics you enjoy, I’m currently doing the same.
Why are you talking with an imaginary person? I never said they weren't woke. I said they have bad writing, which is a bigger problem than Robin or Superboy being gay.
They have bad writing because Marvel and DC hire literal morons like danny lore, jadzia axelrod and tini howard for diversity points.
>They have bad writing because *talking points unrelated to the execution on the page*
You lack the media literacy to engage with the work critically. This is why nobody engages you in good faith.
Disingenuous troony wienersucker and his excuses
>hiring unqualified morons because they're friends with an editor or gay or brown is unrelated
you're a drooling, semen slurping chimpanzee.
Do you know what writing is? Editorial hiring politics is not writing.
see
Frick your delusions you worthless homosexual
You will never be a woman
do you know what a writer is? they're the ones doing the writing, and it turns out when you hire actual morons with no writing experience or homeless bums or dumb fricks like yourself the quality of writing plummets.
Being in denial like this is why your industry will never recover.
is the poor industry wanker angry?
gonna cry?
the truth must hurt.
hehehe.
You specifically said the problem was not wokeness. I would argue the bad writing comes from the woke hires and their woke plots and character alterations depending on the title.
Sounds like you’re begging for attention in all honesty. If you want to have a discussion don’t kick the can down the road and express your fricking thoughts all at once.
I would argue bad writing is about terrible prose, terrible editorial coordination, characters with the wrong voices, bad continuity, decompression. None of which is related to wokeness.
Yes or no they’re also woke? We agree on the rest now it’s time for you to clarify if you were being disingenuous. If you say no I’ll refer you to:
I never said they aren't woke, schizo moron. Actually engage with my words.
No no, we agree on the rest; discussion had. So say it, yes or no, they are also woke. You continually said you didn’t say they weren’t, you have yet to affirmatively say they are.
I think they're woke as you define it.
>as I define it
So you, in conversation with others, would not say they’re woke?
Again we agree on the rest so don’t try to change the subject if you even reply again. I’m going to nail down your thoughts concretely though.
except it is, because they're hiring "woke" people based on their own ideology which compels them to hire women, gays, trannies, and brown people regardless of talent or experience. before you had writers like ann nocenti rising through the ranks through talent and pure work ethic. now you have morons like tini howard failing at every gig she gets and still being given big characters and crossovers.
try not to be a slimy, disingenuous rat when you post from now on.
why should people buy books with messages they don't agree with?
You contradicting people does not mean they need to believe a word you said.
If you honestly believe that no comics except superhero books and Disney comics were allowed to be made because of the CCA, you're just an idiot who's too stupid to do five minutes of work to verify that claim before you post it here. If you actually did any research on it you'd know it's not true, no matter what you heard from some fat oaf on Youtube.
People keep on telling you how things like science fiction, monster, western and romance comics were popular into the 60s, and their eventual decline had nothing to do with the CCA, just the market responding to what was selling, and people have told you how horror comics had a resurgence in the 70s when the CCA's rules were relaxed, but you just won't listen.
The CCA was just the right-wing version of what is happening now.
Now that the libs have control over media, they clearly didn't learn from thier conservative counterpart and just did what they wanted. Was comics in a tight spot before wokeness? Yes. But wokeness is just Liberal CCA, causing people to just see comics as a joke and worthless as they did when CCA was in affect.
Comics were incredibly popular when the CCA was in effect though. The silver age gave us Superman at his most classic and the Stan Lee era of Marvel.
Yes. But it will happen during the next superhero renaissance. Right now, Normies are tired of superheroes (especially with the low quality of stories). As such, people are tired of them. And thus, people are tired of Marvel and DC (especially DC).
The smart thing to do would be to take a break from releasing superhero movies. Then ten years later, reboot the MCU and DCEU with new continuities to get general audiences excited. That will cause people to want to check out the comics.
How can anyone ever get into comics when you cant casually buy them in your own language? The Mikey Mouse comics were peak and are so well selling cause any parent can buy them as a present for their kid like mine did and I could read it without needing to know the english language. Parents cant buy their kids comics about Spider-Man being beaten to a pulp without going out of their way to look for them.
Put me in charge, I can turn either DC or Marvel around within the decade, it's literally not that hard just stop actively making the wrong choices over and over.
The Japanese manga industry has literally laid out the blueprints to success
I don't think the direct market is going to help, the way they are sold is a major problem
Comics need more adaptations. Anime and manga feed into each other and this can work with comics too like The Walking Dead, The Boys, Invincible, Hellboy etc.
The problem is American adaptations have a tendency to not be very faithful to the source material. Also, while anime/manga do follow trends, there's still overwhelmingly more variety for adaptations than American comics offer.
>Comics need more adaptations.
More adaptations that follow the source material.*
Adaptations that are basically just fanfiction or an AU aren't going to do anything for comic sales.
There's no fricking benefit adapting any of the current comics because they all are worthless as stories. You adapt that to a cartoon you just get a worthless cartoon. Two times zero is still zero.
The number 1 problem in comics that MUST be solved before any healing can even begin to happen is the story quality has to go up. That means almost all current writers need to be replaced with better ones. And to get better ones, you need better pay in some form or another. Currently they're doing the reverse of this as the article says:
>The talent migration away from the Big Two has been dramatic over the last decade, related to compensation and rights, with the situation now in a spiral in which lower sales produce lower compensation for comic creators, which causes good talent to leave, which lowers sales, and so on.
None of the people you're replying to were talking about the big 2 specifically. We were talking about the overall health of the industry as a whole, indie comics included. The big 2 could die off for all I care. The problem is the greater talent pool is shallow.
The benefit of adaptations aren't just that they attract normie interest, but by retaining their interest more people grow up wanting to write comics. It's a self perpetuating cycle.
The Big 2 ARE comics in the West. They account for the majority of sales in the West and they account for the majority of interactions with comicbooks period (adaptations, movies, toys, etc).
AKSHUALLY, the majority of comic sales in the West is manga
>The Big 2 ARE comics in the West.
Your quote was talking about talent moving away from the big 2 to indies. I don't understand what your point is unless you somehow think indie comics are bad for the industry.
Just so you don't sound like complete hyperbole, name all the writers that need to be kicked out of "the industry". Without a list of names, you just sound like you're blowing smoke out of your ass.
Jason Aaron needs to go. He's ruined both She-hulk and The Punisher.
Tom King and his wannabe Alan Moore garbage as well.
I'd also kick out Zach Snyder not so much for writing but for letting in so much cancer into the industry.
I want them all fired.
You don't know who's writing comics nowadays, do you?
Why would I need to? If you want a list of names, you google it. All I need to know is that there isn't a single comic released by DC or Marvel that I like, therefore all their employees are terrible at their jobs and need to go.
>Why would I need to read comics before I know if they're good or bad?
You're a walking joke.
I read them, through piracy sites. I don't memorize the names of the people who worked on them. Only an extreme autist would do something like memorize the names of the people working at a particular company.
What are the last 5 comics you read?
I don't fricking know. Who the frick keeps track of that shit either? Here's how I read comics: I go to Readcomicsonline, go to latest releases tab, pick the covers that look the least offensive to me and leftclick until I'm done. I don't even begin paying attention to anything until I start getting vibes that the comic might be passable after all. On an average week this happens less than once. The most recently it happened with Batman Off-world which was acceptable. NNot great not good, just acceptable.
If you're so fricking confident that there's just tons of great comics out there and there's no quality problem whatsoever, how about you list your top ten this month? Should be the easiest thing ever you insipid autist.
So you don't know what you read or who writes them? Are you even sentient?
This month I've enjoyed Monica, Groo, Hellboy, Judge Dredd, Love and Rockets, Motorossa, Tenement, Usagi Yojimbo and The Extraordinary Part.
Aaron also ruined Thor, don’t forget.
Zack Snyder has nothing to do with comics.
Quite a bit actually...which is why he's being targeted by a certain idiot right now.
I do have to each crow as I was thinking about Scott Snyder who revived the "DC writers workshop" and he was the one who let cancer into the industry. I can't be the only person who's mixed up those two.
>I’m kind of a casual
Just say that next time homosexual
>irrationally mad over a name
Why are SJWs like this?
tini howard, chip zdarsky, vita ayala, stephanie phillips, tom taylor, tom king, danny lore, jadzia axelrod, leah williams, mariko tamaki, sarah gailey, joanne starer, matthew rosenburg, zeb wells, simon spurrier, rainbow rowell
and many more I'm sure I'm forgetting!
The big two already gets adaptations. It's why Spider-Man and Batman are two of th emost popular fictional characters ever. I'm taking more on the indie and mid sized publisher front. Ask the examples I listed benefited greatly from their adaptations
The thing is, if you watch the movies or the shows and then go read the source material, you get mindfricked in the process.
Daryl and Carol aren't a thing in TWD comics. The Boys is an edgier slopfest without any of the aspects that people like from the shows, there's no cute dorky crush between Hellboy and Liz in the comics; and Invincible even suffers from changes in characterization of some characters like Amber.
With anime and manga, what you see on tv is what you see on pages; hence why filler arcs in anime are usually despised or confuse the viewer; think the DBZ OVAs because in no moment Goku fights Broly, Janemba, Turles, Garlic Jr or Slug in the manga; and it creates discrepancies in the anime timeline.
>Comics need more adaptations.
No.
>Comics need more adaptations.
I have always wanted to see a animated cartoon show adaptation of Ghost Rider. At least it's good to the X-Men '97 is coming early next year.
There are tons of adaptations made by DC all the time.
They're constantly releasing new animated films.
They're just not any good.
Yeah, you just retool the industry to be like anime. The problem with that is that it would take everything out of the hands of a duopoly and you wouldn't be able to use comics as a way to push ideology (Which today is Wokeness) because you'd have to actually let authors create whatever the frick they want. That is, reorganize the industry around selling actual products instead of selling IPs. That's simply not going to happen, "comicbooks" are IP farms for movie studios that are propped up by inflation to act as political culture apparatuses.
>Yeah, you just retool the industry to be like anime.
anime and manga* hurrrdurrr
>That's simply not going to happen, "comicbooks" are IP farms for movie studios that are propped up by inflation to act as political culture apparatuses.
This is gobbledyasiatic you added to sound intelligent. The IP has already been farmed moron, they don’t need to continue making new comics to pull from 80 years of stories. And the part about being propped by inflation is genuinely completely meaningless akin to saying my health is propped up by the average GPA of the kids at a school three states away, inflation has quite literally nothing to do with movie studios being “political culture apparatuses”. You sound like a black dude on a stoop trying to spit knowledge after hitting a blunt.
Beyond that there is no reason indies and small press would sell better if the big 2 shut down.
Honestly, most people who like comics and cartoons like anime and manga too. There isn't really this great divide between the two fandoms outside of a couple autists like you.
Are you the same homosexual that reported my thread about Comic Book youtubers and the sorry state of them? If so, get fricked with a rusty pipe covered in aids blood.
a lot of people who like (or used to like at least) comics and cartoons like anime and manga as well, specially now that pretty much all western entertainment is pozzed as frick and japan is the only one offering an alternative in entertainment.
It's honestly impossible to save comics, they're right wingers.
Please for the love of God, just STOP making capeshit. All you have to do is give new series a chance, prop them up and invest in advertising. Most people, normies, aren't gonna spend hours going over decades of material just to enjoy the latest capeshit comic.
Adding to this: art is still the most important ingredient. A nice cover is what gets someone to pick up a series, and good story/characters is what makes them stay. Zoomers don't like very western art. Not saying to go full anime, but real original talent is necessary. And the artist needs to be the one doing the covers, people don't like this false advertising shit with the carpet not matching the drapes.
No, they have to give their industry friends the covers so that the nepotism and collusion that happens within the industry can continue and they can all keep making money from being irreputable leeches.
That's how Zoe Quinn became a writer for both DC and Marvel, right after falsely accusing an innocent man of raping her and driving him into suicide as his friends and family took Quinn's side and publicly exiled him.
>That's how Zoe Quinn became a writer for both DC and Marvel, right after falsely accusing an innocent man of raping her and driving him into suicide as his friends and family took Quinn's side and publicly exiled him.
alpha as frick
>All you have to do is give new series a chance, prop them up and invest in advertising.
They do this all the time though. AS PART OF THE SHARED UNIVERSES WITH ALL THE OTHER FRICKING homosexual ASS CAPES
>two years tops
aren't you people tired and embarrassed about being wrong all the time?
>can comics be saved?
Yes. Just make them fun, cheap, and accessible, like they managed to do month in and month out for about 60 years.
How do you make something cheap when the sales are already so low?
Sacrifices must be made, which means making them more like manga. Smaller books, possibly no color either.
A lot of woke movies and woke video games are very successful which shows that ultimately most people don't care how woke something is as long as it's entertaining them. Thanks to favoritism, a lot of poor writers who signal wokeness get into comics and think that because their works are politically correct they must be good, and they have a chorus of hangers-on to tell them so, but the results speak for themselves.
>Smaller books, possibly no color either.
Cheaper paper. Manga is practically newspaper-tier in cost.
Anthologies like Shonen Jump doesn't really work in the west though. Even Shonen Jump stopped their physical magazine
Wasted
Good anthologies work though, Marvel and DC even make some and get mangaka involved sometimes
don't work in the US things like 2000AD are still going in other countries
changed the format from something that isn't a floppy and how it's distributed to people but no one in the US market will ever do this
tpbs exist.
trade success rarely matters for a books continued existence the Big two still relay on Monthly Floppy sales as their main barometer of success
Anyone saying "wokeness" simply does not read current comics.
>inb4 tard rage
Name 5 ongoings you keep up with.
Worlds finest, time before time (just ended), shazam, fantastic four (despite having dropped it from my list because north sucks), UY, hexagon bridge, any of the rocketeer releases, old dog, I don’t buy them anymore but read Superman and action here for free as well as Batman and detective.
The ones I noted I don’t pay for are dog shit, the ones I said otherwise I buy. Also have the new sandman, jay garrick flash, Godzilla v Kong v JLA, anything by peach momoko on my pull.
Wokeness is killing comics. You, who doesn’t pay for a single comic will claim otherwise.p and we’re back at square one.
Hey, I read those! Weird, there's nothing woke about them.
Funny how they’re on my list. Almost like I agree those particular comics aren’t woke, you stupid c**t.
Wokeness is killing the industry however.
How do you know wokeness is killing it if the only comics you buy don't have woke in them?
>how do you know poison is bad for you if avoid poison? checkmate.
You're awfully confident for someone who admitted being wilfully ignorant.
nta but are you being intentionally dense?
Are you? Every single doomsayer on this thread also happens to not participate in the hobby. Why are you even on this thread? Why are you in Cinemaphile?
>Every single doomsayer on this thread also happens to not participate in the hobby
Every one of them participated but you don't want to admit that you're dying of cancer so you just keep insisting all the doctors are frauds.
>How do you know wokeness is killing it if the only comics you buy don't have woke in them?
Just the laziest fricking writing imaginable.
So out of context crops? Got it. Dismissed.
What's the context that would make that writing not embarrassing?
You're asking me, meaning you don't know? Thanks for admitting you don't read shit. Why did you enter a comic book thread btw?
>You're asking me, meaning you don't know?
I don't read capeshit, now answer the question.
>I don't read
>I don't know the context
Why did you enter a comic book thread?
NTA but no amount of "context" will make bad writing plateable. NOTHING. Alan Moore got away with paragraphs upon paragraphs but that's cause he's Alan Moore.
There is literally no possible context where those panels are acceptable to any human being. Admit it or die.
lol
>Shaved side head
Nothing makes me drop a book faster than that...Which is sad cause I gave Vampblade a chance cause bare breasts.
The composition here fricking sucks, nothing on this page is readable save for the closeups.
>undercut lesbian
really boring trope at this point
This is such a cute style, shame it's wasted on stale capeshit. Also that lettering is practically illegible.
I only keep with one: Venom
And yes, wokeness is part of the problem. Not the end all be all but unquestionably a problem.
>I know how the industry is doing by reading a single book from it
Thanks for letting us know we should disregard you.
>Don't ask questions, just consume product
I'd be reading more if the books were better. Also, I miss Zombie Tramp...
Can you teach me how to rate books without reading them?
No but I can teach you without buying them.
Step one: Go to a comic book shop
Step two: Pick up a random book
Step three: Read a little
Step four: If it sucks, put it back on the shelf. If you read it till the end buy it and consider it for your pull list
This shit ain't hard. The recent issue of Amazing Spiderman bored me. The new Conan book looks great tho.
>I can recall similar conversations as this one taking place all the way back to my entry into the business in 1989. No doubt, they were going on before that, particularly in the 1970s and the 1950s, and so on and so on. For whatever reason, the comic book field has a stronger pull towards its own mortality than other areas. We somehow delight in predicting the demise of the very thing that we enjoy so much. Maybe that reveals a poor sense of self-worth or something, but also, in any endeavor, if you bet in favor of failure you’re going to be right sooner or later. Nothing lasts forever, entropy wins. Still, those folks who were predicting the demise of the field ten or twenty or thirty years ago would no doubt be shocked to learn that it is still here. The diversity of material new and old that is readily available today is astounding, and shows no genuine sign of abating. What is likely happening is that the market is changing. And change is almost always scary. But it doesn’t have to be the end, it just means that some things are going to be different now, and it falls to us to adjust to those changes. People hoping that the comic book industry will somehow revert to being the way it was when they were kids are definitely in for disappointment, but I feel confident in saying that the medium will survive. It continues to grow in all sorts of interesting directions. But the days of a spinner rack in every Mom and Pop Candy Store are likely gone forever—mostly because that type of store no longer exists. This all comes back to a slogan that I’ve been threatening to put onto a T-Shirt for many years now, but have never actually bothered to do: COMICS: DYING SINCE 1935.
Tom scioli can fricking kill himself. Mark Russell can do the same.
Looking at these recommendations, I can see why the comic industry is in the state that it's in.
You haven't read any of them, have you?
I've read Girl Juice, Big Game, American Jesus, Ice Cream Man, Usagi Yojimbo, and Vampirella and they all sucked besides Ice Cream Man and Usagi Yojimbo.
So you found four bad comics in a list with over 70 and felt it merited a snarky dismissal?
>with over 70
There are 46 comics in that image, frick are you talking about?
All the comics in that rec pic are terrible and it is your duty to prove they're not, one by one.
The concept of needing to have explained to you why Love and Rockets is worth your time while also acting smugly is almost too much for my brain to handle.
You are a shitsucking bottom feeder. If you're happy eating feces have fun, but don't inflict your palate on other people.
You're not fitting in by calling Daniel Clowes "feces". Everyone can see you have no idea what you're talking about.
Love and Rockets is hilariously overrated.
I'm dying to hear what you consider better.
The Vision
The Omega Men
Mister Miracle
Strange Adventures
Rorschach
Human Target
Danger Street
And of course the complete run of Batman by Tom King
>drug stores and 7-11s no longer exist
What a fricking stupid shithead
who the frick recommended american jesus and big game
Me. It's a great payoff to 20 years of build up. Millar Haters are hysterical.
I certainly aint a hater, but man did you have a different experience with that comic
You REALLY oughta remove those two titles and like half of these other recommendations man
It's no wonder manga is winning
>like half of these other recommendations man
Which ones? You need to have specifically read them.
Here ya go, I put question marks next to the 2 I'm on the fence on
Honorable mention goes out to Ribbon Queen
*question marks are next to Paklis and Thessaly in case that's unclear
Not the anon you were replying to but thanks for this, definitely going to pick up Hairball at least.
there's a new koshchei book? AWESOME
>big game
>recommended
OK STOP, i am the biggest MILLAR shill, i do enjoy his stuff but that shit was completely joyless. rushed and had literally no hook other than the novelty of seeing this chars act completely out of character for two pages before disappearing from the story and then just return for the finale acting more OOC, Larraz was completely wasted on this unfocused piece of shit comic.
it should had been 12 issues with an actual MC.
You completely miss the point of Millar. It's post-ironic, tongue in cheek bluffing and winking with genres and concepts mashing together to create creative pages. It's not about having serious stories. The fact people think Millar created a storytime of pain with Nemesis instead of a comedy tells me Cinemaphile is years behind on their reading.
frick off, i am the very first to think his shit is a b-movie on purpose kind of thing, but BIG GAME was purely zzz-tier
waiting for it to get good and dumb fun like all of his stuff ro 3 issues just to see NO IT WON'T by the 4th, it was the biggest let down of the year because this should had been his big dumb frick fest instead it was a whimper so sad and low dogs around the world heard it.
I'm sorry our experiences were so different. For me there was at least one interesting happening per page which made me eager they wouldn't run out each issue, with a great value for my buck.
Riveting argument.
>Riveting argument.
Not much to argue about, he's just sincere, he's literally just doing what he enjoys, with the exception of American Jesus which he wrote for his parents
You're an idiot if you think he wrote the womb bomb thinking it was a serious dramatic twist. The guy is a comedian.
Uhhh... give some of his interviews a watch...
There's a reason he no longer views Nemesis 1 and Unfunnies as cannon. I do agree with you on it being funny though.
>post-ironic
You don't understand Millar
Real ways to fix comics:
>ban variant covers
>start reprinting Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman from the start of the latest reboot with every flashback story in chronological order (pic related) so you can direct readers to start at the beginning
>ban further early year stories
>stick to the continuity
>ban multiple ongoings of the same character at the same (Batman/Detective Comics redundancy), instead do your editorial job and plan the timeline in advance so you know if the current Tec arc goes before or after the current Batman arc and print them accordingly from start to finish
how does Elmer Fudd vs Batman work pre Silver Age? Silver Saint Cloud wasn't bruces girlfriend till after that
It's a new timeline.
but also all the bronze age and Silver age stuff in there as well otherwise shit like Morrison's Batman run doesn't make any sense.
Mircleman just needs to come out for often, i thought the recent Sandman book have been kinda weak honestly
I know, but it's not exactly 1:1 to how it was originally printed. Silver dated Bruce before the bronze age. They have carte blanche for stuff like that.
>ban variant covers
It'd ruin their current strategy of selling variants
>start reprinting Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman from the start of the latest reboot with every flashback story in chronological order (pic related) so you can direct readers to start at the beginning
It'd require making compilations which goes against their current strategy of pumping out as many books as possible
>ban further early year stories
It'd conflict with their current strategy of oldgay nostalgiabaiting
>stick to the continuity
Which continuity?
>ban multiple ongoings of the same character at the same (Batman/Detective Comics redundancy), instead do your editorial job and plan the timeline in advance so you know if the current Tec arc goes before or after the current Batman arc and print them accordingly from start to finish
It'd prevent their current strategy of having as much widespread exposure of their big IPs across as many different books at once
TL;DR Can't fix anything because the big two are too set in their ways to change what they're already doing.
>muh wokes
remarkable how consistently it identifies know-nothing tourist homosexuals in search of places to scream and cry
>i buy comics, honest!
lol not fooling anyone
and if you do buy comics and think wokeness is the issue then you're even more unforgivably stupid
No.
Marvel and DC traded the maintence of their niche geek fans-running-the-asylum industry for 10-15 years of mass media notoriety. Everything passes, now is the time for superhero comics to pass. They're used up, culturally. Their time is over.
STOP FOCUSING ON CAPESHIT AND PUBLISH ORIGINAL CONTENT IT'S THAT FRICKING SIMPLE
After seeing this discussion occur again and again both here and elsewhere, I have a better question: why should the comic industry be saved?
>why should the comic industry be saved?
Old people have an emotional attachment to it.
Other than that, it's really kind of pointless. Should just make videogames and tiktoks.
Why dont comics just follow the anime pattern? Start a book series, animate it. People buy the book because of the animation. A gwenpoole animated series doesnt sound terrible.
But that mean spending money and spending money without insurance risky
DC had those New 52 DCAMU DTVs which seemed to be a failure given how they ended it.
They weren't failures, they had a long ,10 year run, and it actually for me into comics. If it really failed they wouldn't start a new one.
Let's say not as successful as they hoped then.
>want to buy 3 issues of the current superman run
>$5 each
>plus tax
>plus shipping
Why would you buy that trash? Go spend that money on literally anything else. Save that amount each week for a year and invest at the end of the year.
The new Superman book is actually pretty fine writing wise. Art is definitely a drag though.
It's pointless to talk to the doomsayers. They don't read anything.
Superman, Shazam and Green Lantern are the only good books from the big two right now.
No, World's Finest is not good.
>Feel good filler fluff: The books
No. Miracleman, Wildstorm, Sandman Universe are better.
Both green lantern books are dreadful. We won’t even acknowledge poor Alan. Superman is mediocre as well.
Shazam is dope though we agree.
My boy getting the recognition he deserves.
>spend hard-earned money on a book titled "Dynamo Man"
>75% of the panels are his supporting cast eating and talking about their feelings
>the remaining panels involve Dynamo Man being emasculated or saved by his new female counterpart
>the letter column is the writer b***hing about his audience
Comics in their current/past formats are dead. Almost nobody is willing to pay a few dollars every week to get a comic that they can read through in 10 minutes.
I’d argue that’s untrue. 20-30k is sustainable and many times it goes close to 100k when there’s enthusiasm.
The problem is the people who are willing and able are not being pandered to. They’re specifically being baited by ideas like making Alan Scott gay and having the batfam go soft on crime because ACAB… or something
>10 minutes
6 minutes
Those people aren't being pandered to because pandering to 50 year olds doesn't keep an entertainment company in business long term cause eventually they fricking die and then you're fricked cause you never brought in new customers.
Business is about growth.
The problem is comic companies pander badly, not who they're pandering to.
As one of “those people” I’m 30 and I’m one of the older people that I see in Wednesdays. Stop talking about shit you have no clue about.
>business is about growth
You cannot grow when you’re losing your base. That new audience can be pandered to without physical distribution in any way, because they read digitally. This frees up physical publishing slots for more traditional fare.
>As one of “those people” I’m 30
Being a part of a dying breed doesn't make you special, m8. I'm sorry your parents failed you.
>You cannot grow when you’re losing your base
Plenty of businesses have completely fricked over their current base to expand to new markets, products, or target demographics. It happens all the fricking time. A base that cannot support a company going forward is worthless.
As someone that has no horse in this race, is not "in" the community and is not mentally ill
The issues are multiple but i will try to list them.
>1. When people think of comics they only think of super heroes
While superheroes are cool having only these as your main guys are extremely limiting and for a extremely niche audience, its all the same stories about the same characters eternally forever with a billion different realities instead of just good stories.
Manga has shonen but shonen atleast has multiple different genres of stories in itself (although it has its own problems). Also yes i do know indies exist.
>2. Marvel and DC monopolized the entire genre
This ties to the first one but Marvel and DC are only know for superheroes and by what i know they never try anything aside from that.
>3. The "super-hero comic" artstyle is niche
This is subjective but you cant apply something like the superhero jack kirby artstyle to every type or genre of comics (i do think its a very good artstyle however)
>4. Extremely weird way of selling their own media
While i dont know if this is a me thing only since i dont live in america but i can walk to literally any newsstand and either see a bunch of manga to buy or comics from my own country, comics i need to actively search for, doesnt help they are generally very expensive too.
Theres a bunch of other things to but these are the biggest i could think of, the biggest for sure is the lack of different genres out of the big publishers.
Also no its not because of >muh heccking wokeness or >muh japerinos just write so much better.
The comic i most enjoyed reading in the last 5 years was Scott Pilgrim and i definitely think that is neither "anti-woke" nor japanese
Also for the love of God, no, trying to be just like manga is >>not<< gonna work either.
As i said i have no idea what happens inside the comic industry since i barely read many of them in most of my life, im talking by a outsiders - that just got really interested in the medium after reading a certain comic - perspective
I sure hope you're not implying that the "certain comic" was Scott Pilgrim, because if so you're the exact kind of c**t who's been fricking up this industry.
I would for sure love you to explain how Scott Pilgrim destroyed the comics industry actually
>Also no its not because of >muh heccking wokeness or >muh japerinos just write so much better.
Wrong
Your average joe (which is the people i assume you want to market your story if you dont want them to be niche) cares if a story is entertaining or not, they do not give a slight of a shit about if the heccking legebeteeh are in them
If actually do think japanese are naturaly better at writing even with the amount of regurgitated, samey, garbage that comes out of that country comic industry (like any other industry in the planet) you are either moronic or extremely obtuse sorry.
>worries why the normies dont care about his interest anymore
>HOW DARE YOU ENJOY MY INTEREST CASUAL
lmao
>cares if a story is entertaining or not
And they aren't entertaining. Because they hire "woke" morons with no writing experience who can't write, self-insert with their troony OCs, and dislike their core audience.
>If actually do think japanese are naturaly better at writing even with the amount of regurgitated, samey, garbage that comes out of that country comic industry (like any other industry in the planet) you are either moronic or extremely obtuse sorry.
The manga industry has plenty of garbage, but without a doubt they are unquestionably more appealing, and thus, by the only objective measure, better at writing and entertaining their audience. Modern japs can't into books or movies or TV, but they blow Amerifat comic and cartoon writers out of the water both in sales and quality.
We didn’t need this completely useless blog post from a homosexual ass casual.
>>3. The "super-hero comic" artstyle is niche
>This is subjective but you cant apply something like the superhero jack kirby artstyle to every type or genre of comics (i do think its a very good artstyle however)
Kirby style hasn't been there since the 90s and 2000s
I know people who talk about Manga are morons but really we need to bring back cheap comics because kids aren't gonna spend $4 to read 20 pages of Batman. Put out lower quality paper and uncoloured issues for $2.50 then save the good stuff for the Trades.
>Can comics be saved?
If you mean Marvel and DC, then no, they're too bullheaded to change and they will be forced to downsize their operations eventually, meaning only the big names will get new issues and the other will be forced into side character or background character status, how long can they continue like that? I don't know, at this point i don't think they even care as long as they can point at someone else and claim it was their fault
Just waiting for the death of the industry once this price point for issues at the big 2 hit 8 to 10 dollars b/c they act like greedy fricks.
I'm not paying $4.99 for 5 minutes of entertainment. Frick off. Floppies are outdated
Can they? Yes.
Will they? No.
I just kind of prefer manga due to it's elasticity in paneling and art and I supposed I am not the only one. Whenever some old comic reviewer reviews a manga he always makes remarks regarding the angles and motion present in it, things that are nor really that impressive manga readers because they are used to it.
they're just gonna start lumping them into one great book again. You go to Walmart and pickup the MARVEL TALES/DC Digest December edition and inside is 2-3 page stories of minor characters and 5-10 for big ones for the low low price of $15 monthly. All black and white of course.
DC tried a couple of years ago and it was disaster with them not selling and LCS disliking it due to exclusive stories
I've been seeing ideas like doing manga-esque anthologies and getting into supermarkets gaining steam again, but I don't think people realize what would be required to get them to work. Marvel and DC would have to accept one thing: that comics be treated as loss leaders. Anthologies aren't going to sell if you charge more than 10 bucks. Grocery stores aren't going to carry spinner racks unless you pay them for the space. Marvel and DC must be willing to lose money on these things, with the goal being to drive interest for trade paperbacks. But it's 2023. If we're at this point, then they should just release comics online for free. That would cost them less while serving the same purpose.
Marvel actually did do this for a time back in the early 00s. The early Ultimate comics were available in full for free on their website. I don't know why they stopped.
>I don't know why they stopped.
Probably two reasons. First, as I pointed out, doing this would require publishers to think of this as loss leaders, i.e. they're losing money to sell something else. It's like losing weight, you have to stick to it for the long term. They weren't able to.
Second, direct market retailers probably complained. They always do, they're always wrong, but Marvel and DC are beholden to them. Think about the example of One Op Joker and Superman vs Meshi again. Were these released as pamphlets to the direct market? No. People read them online. Mostly illegally. Then they ordered the trades at comic shops. It works.
This is why I suggested that Marvel and DC get a stake in a manga publishers in Japan. Not only do they need to do this at scale and keep most of the money to make it work (they're paying half or more to Kodansha, for sure), they need to keep this stuff out of the influence of the direct market. They don't get to have a say.
I should also add, this alone wouldn't save comics. It would be the right thing to do, it would be the smart thing to do, but people are putting too much stock in fixing format or distribution. If people were actually interest in comics in sufficient numbers, those problems would magically disappear. Publishers would have the cash flow and the incentive to create as many formats as possible to resell comics, while distributors and retailers of all sorts would line up to carry comics. There is no demand, because the content is the problem. Fix the product first.
Meh, who cares.
idk if it can
even at a high price point comics have such a low profit margin you have to sell a shit load to make any money.
90's boom got everyone used to lush full colors and nice paper, consoomers still expect that even in these dire days.
Big companies will have to decide to use influencers to convince people that physical media and comics are cool & collectible...which would be a big undertaking....and again, low profit margin. so unlikely
Comics have become shit. I've abandoned manga as well.
I guess it's up to me now.
These people that come to Cinemaphile to b***h about comics despite not reading them aren't that big of a problem. The cape readers that reject everything that isn't capes are much worse.
I said it
right here.
In order for comics to bloom.....capeshit must die
The better question is: Should comics be saved?
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TLDW:
No, we deserve the industry we have.