Can Mark Millar save comics?
He says he is going to defeat the "cancel pigs" and fix the problems with the retail market and bring enthusiasm back to comics.
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Can Mark Millar save comics?
Can Mark Millar save comics?
He says he is going to defeat the "cancel pigs" and fix the problems with the retail market and bring enthusiasm back to comics.
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DMT Has Friends For Me Shirt $21.68 |
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Honestly, good luck to him
Well, he’s enough of an butthole to make something happen, and nor beholden to failed editors for work, so maybe.
You need several creators with diverse approaches making mainstream hits at once to save the industry
Essentially, a "mature" comic, a Feminine romance comic, a Teen spirit comic ala battle/sports shounen, an "artsy" comic, an androgynous appeal to both genders comic , a hard boiled masculine comic
Comics up untill the 70s, and Manga both benefitted from this diversity in both approaches and genres and even personalities of their creators. That's the only way to save comics
Sadly while he can put a spotlight on it the only way to save the direct market is to somehow message the corporate owners that destroying the IP from the bottom up is hurting their stocks. Unless shareholders and suits take notice of the rot it cannot be saved because that market is wholly dependent on the success of the big 2.
This has nothing to do with the direct market which I’m sure you want dead. All the stuff you want already exists online and in book stores. All of millar’s efforts are about regrowing the direct market. Please stop conflating and derailing discussions.
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This has nothing to do with the direct market which I’m sure you want dead. All the stuff you want already exists online and in book stores. All of millar’s efforts are about regrowing the direct market. Please stop conflating and derailing discussions.
NTA but the question is can he save "comics". Saving "comics" and saving "the direct market" are two different things. And no, no single writer or any single creative is going to single handedly save brick and mortar stores that sell overpriced luxury items in an age of rising costs. Jesus himself could descend from the heavens and put out a comic and people would still look at a 5 dollar price tag and think "that's too much."
>NTA but the question is can he save "comics". Saving "comics" and saving "the direct market" are two different things. And no, no single writer or any single creative is going to single handedly save brick and mortar stores that sell overpriced luxury items in an age of rising costs. Jesus himself could descend from the heavens and put out a comic and people would still look at a 5 dollar price tag and think "that's too much."
I just explained why that isn’t what he’s been focused on considering he’s been talking to direct market retailers and focusing on LCS. Please, please stop. And I know you’ll act like me saying please means you get to act like le hekkin badass or something but don’t be a homosexual. Just go discuss what you like elsewhere and stop conflating the topics and derailing the discussion.
I thought the guy was fat and ideologically prog-leaning.
But wouldn't said people team up like the guys who created Image?
>Can I fix this sunk ship by piloting it right again?
No Mark you moron. The time for piloting it right was BEFORE IT SUNK
IF he has genuinely good intentions, it won't matter, because he doesn't have any talent.
Your ideas are garbage. NO ONE wants ANY of the shit you suggested. You would put the business out of business even faster than they're already doing on their own.
If people didn't want any of that why does manga sell so well. And there's definitely a big overlap between manga and comic.fans as evidence by Cinemaphile itself.
Manga series end, which creates FOMO.
Capeshit is kind of the anti FOMO genre. It doesn't really matter what happens since it'll get undone by the next guy and the story goes on forever.
>having a complete story is FOMO
I mean, kind of yeah.
Look at TV. The Series Finale of long running show generates hype. It motivated discussion. They gets a lot of eyeballs for a reason. People want to see how it ends and they don't want to miss out on it.
With capeshit, when something major happens, people sleep through it because it'll just go back to status quo. It's not like they'd ever have the balls to kill off a character for real, etc.
>With capeshit, when something major happens, people sleep through it because it'll just go back to status quo.
Give me a fricking break. You’re just outright making shit up now
Anon be honest. Do you REALLY care that Alfred died? Or that Bruce was going to marry Selina?
I never treated the wedding as some kind of life altering event in the first place like lot of people here did. I was only annoyed when they immediately separated them after King left the main book. And I was surprised they stuck to Alfred dying rather than treating it as a fake out.
Alfred died before back in 1964. They brought him back a few years later for Batman 66 synergy.
Your point being?
That there should be no surprise in Alfred dying. He's been dead before. He'll live again once there's an editor in charge who decides they miss the classic Alfred dynamic and want him back.
You need a good editor with an autistic vision and obsession of detail.
>You need a good editor
Weak editorial combined with continuity is another big problem. They never say no to stupid ideas, and everyone has to live with them. It's why there are constant resurrections and reboots and retcons, comics are constantly needing to repair themselves because dog shit can't be nipped in the bud.
But most retcons and reboots are to shit up stuff, not fix the mess already done...
Porn comics are the future
HE SAID DIVERSITY GET HIM
Honestly l don't think much of him, he can write some top tier shit (Big game) then just chooses to make the worst most edgy shitty slop (IE the entirety of Wanted and especially the last panel)
We need a lot of authors to make up for how shitty the industry is and l doubt one guy can save it.
i respect the approach and while i think it's very optimistic of him to think he can do it alone, i'm gonna make great comics in his honor
Frick no.
Edgy schock blatantly written to court hollywood is not gonna save shit.
seventh post best post
He can light a fire under people, but ultimately the retail market needs to save itself. Even though we always talk about "the industry" as some monolith, the various sectors do not have the same interest. Marvel and DC can survive a DM crash. The DM can survive a Marvel/DC crash. That's the first thing everyone needs to acknowledge.
Marvel, DC, and their creators seem to believe comics are doing great, diversity is great, and comic shops are failing because of their own poor practices and unwillingness to embrace the material. Retailers seem to believe the comics are poor quality, their brand of diversity does not sell, and it will kill the industry. Is that a fair if simplified assessment? If so, then the best way forward would be for those retailers to organize a hard, month-long boycott of the big two. Not right now, maybe a slow month like February. Maybe brand it as "Manga Awareness Month" if they want to be cheeky.
A boycott would bring tremendous hardship on retailers, but the alternative according to them is industry death. The publishers have signaled they will not change. They dismiss retailer concerns. So drastic action is justifiable. In fact, retailers have talked about boycotts over some really dumb things in the past, like digital comics or DC leaving Diamond. It would be silly not to consider boycotts for an existential problem.
If a retail boycott can bring Marvel and DC to heel, then we'll know the retailers were speaking the truth. If retailers aren't willing to boycott, then we'll know Marvel and DC were speaking the truth, or at the very least retailers aren't willing to do everything they can to survive. In that case, I don't think they deserve anyone's sympathy or attention.
Retailers can't survive without the big 2, even Image would get fricked if that happens because they wouldn't lose Spawn fans from the fallout
>Retailers can't survive without the big 2
Which is why there should be a boycott. Again, assuming we don't know the truth of it, retailers are claiming the big 2's sales are in the toilet because of their editorial decisions. Which means the retailers need to make a fuss big enough to get them to listen and change course.
If not enough retailers participate, then we can assume that it's not a widespread problem. If no retailers participate, then we can assume they were lying, or do not have the wherewithal to save themselves. I'm not taking sides, I just want see what's real.
>Which is why there should be a boycott.
It's why they should close down. Putting all your eggs in one basket is something we teach literal children not to do. Why is it that LCS schlubs need to be saved from their own stupidity?
Many already sell other products. Most probably don't count new comics as their core product. Which means a boycott, while painful in the short term, should be doable.
That’s not feasible. You’re a basically asking for them to take a few fiscal quarters off. Some of the big 2 books do sell, they’re simply not selling as good as they could and the loss leaders hit even worse. But it sounds more like you’re a twelve year old what doesn’t understand business.
Oh look another massive fricking homosexual who doesn’t understand running a business. Blow your brains out, please stream it.
>Some of the big 2 books do sell, they’re simply not selling as good as they could
Wait, so they have wokeness but they’re still somehow selling well but also without wokeness everything would sell well?
Sounds like circular logic
>Oh look another massive fricking homosexual who doesn’t understand running a business
People don't want to buy a thing so the stores that focus on selling that thing are closing down. What's hard to understand about that?
>You’re a basically asking for them to take a few fiscal quarters off
No, I'm telling them to take one month off. It just needs to be organized and be a single voice to the publishers.
>Some of the big 2 books do sell
I know they do, but as long as retailers continue to support those books, they're subsidizing the bad books. That is how bloat in any industry works. So if you want to make a change, you have to make tough decisions and take tough stances.
Now, if retailers aren't willing to boycott to save themselves from what they claim is an existential threat that will destroy the industry in a year? Then that tells me they're full of shit, and I don't need to listen to their bellyaching. It's pretty simple.
>But it sounds more like you’re a twelve year old what doesn’t understand business.
I'm not the one claiming the industry will perish in a year or two. That's the retailers. If you're not willing to give up one quarter to save the industry long term, then you're the one who doesn't understand business.
NTA but I'm curious as to your plan.
If i understand this right, all the LCSes band together and boycott big two for a month until they, what, cancel all their woke books and go back to the core cast of the 90s?
Assuming that the big two capitulated, how would uninformed consumers that aren't tied into this shit even know about that? How does that grow the paying audience?
Not just that it would then take them 6-8 months to get all new creative teams, meanwhile the stores would have had to stop ordering for 2-3 months.
Anons like this are homosexuals who backed a Kickstarter once because they watched a YouTuber and dont understand reality.
The point isn't necessarily to get Marvel or DC to change immediately, but to reveal the truth of the situation.
I have noted that in the past, retailers have threatened boycotts over things like digital comics. In fact, they succeeded. They saw what they felt was an existential threat, and got Marvel and DC to pivot.
Now, they claim woke comics are killing them. I'm not taking a stance on this. I'm just asking why they don't take the same action here.
Think about this. Retailers derailed digital comics and set them back a decade compared to manga. If they aren't able to get Marvel and DC to change course now, then they would know where things stand, and gradually phase out comics completely after the boycott. Maybe the ideological capture at the big 2 is too strong, or maybe they actually do good business outside of comic shops. Either way, that's an irrefutable sign for stores to get out of the business. They're the ones having trouble selling this stuff.
>how would uninformed consumers that aren't tied into this shit even know about that?
The store could just tell them? Stores have boycotted DC for leaving Diamond. What's the difference?
>How does that grow the paying audience?
It seems to me that stores are losing legacy readers faster than the industry is growing them, which makes that the more pressing concern. Again, this is not about how I think the industry should run. It's about how these retailers think the industry should be run, and taking concrete steps to achieving it. From my vantage point, they aren't doing that. At least, they aren't doing it effectively. Tom Brevoort, VP at Marvel, already shot down their complaints. What else are retailers going to do?
>No, I'm telling them to take one month off
That’s not how it works moron. Comics are made and solicited a fiscal quarter ahead of time. Taking one month off does nothing.
>give you one quarter
And of course they’ll just get a pause on rent, right?
Not every single title is woke. Just the vast majority and the status quo they’re forced to work within.
Thank you for further showcasing that you’re not even a high school graduate you absolute moron.
>Thank you for further showcasing that you’re not even a high school graduate you absolute moron.
For the record I'm not saying the problem is wokeness killing capeshit or closing down LCSes. I'm not the guy trying to call for a boycott; think there are far greater systemic issues that cause capeshit sales to dwindle.
Case in point I stopped regularly paying for comics back in 2003 well before the "woke mind virus" or whatever really even showed up.
I think that the reasons people don't want to buy comic books in the LCS model actually has very little to do with the content of the books.
>I think that the reasons people don't want to buy comic books in the LCS model actually has very little to do with the content of the books
You’d be wrong considering the problem at present is that people WANT to buy the, they’re still going to shops they’re just buying less. Even the whales. They need to sell to the audience that buys and they don’t want to. There is nothing they can do to appeal to a non-buyer like you. If anything I don’t know why you’re in the thread other than to be a fricking homosexual for (You)s. Go support a Kickstarter and wait 16 months for fulfillment if you like.
>You’d be wrong considering the problem at present is that people WANT to buy the, they’re still going to shops they’re just buying less.
Except I literally agree with that.
Comic books are a luxury entertainment item/collectible. When a dozen ages costs 10 dollars, reasonable people are not going to buy fricking Spider-man, regardless of whether it's Peter being a gigachad, a cuck, or if it's Miles in the suit.
Comics do not exist in a bubble and people are buying less because of reasons outside of anything the industry is doing.
The main thing is that Comics have hit a number of 30K something whales who are keeping the industry alive, yet for some reason they keep on alienating them despite how risky it is
I meant a dozen EGGS. I have no idea how I typed ages.
I thought you meant a dozen pages. Not that far off.
>The status quo itself is woke!
You heard it here, folks! Superman and Lois being married and having kids is woke! Captain America fighting Nazis? WOKE! Spider-man having bad luck? Super-woke! Green Arrow being a bleeding heart liberal is too woke!
>who are Alan Scott, time drake and Jon kent
Between the rightoid Kickstarter gays and you disingenuous leftist homosexuals I wish you’d all fricking die of AIDS already.
>Who are B-listers
Not the characters you think of when you want to define the status quo
JSA was a great book thatvran for years because of moments like Alan Scott burning the darkness out of Obsidian through sheer force of will, you know-nothing homosexual.
>Taking one month off does nothing.
Doesn't matter. If retailers aren't going to do anything, there's no sympathy to spare. It's pointless. If you're not going to fight, no one else will fight with you.
>And of course they’ll just get a pause on rent, right?
Then they should have acted on this problem earlier.
Or maybe store owners should just know how to sell their products better.
Most big two comics right now are unsellable.
For that matter, the same probably goes for most anything by millar at this point. Featuring a big superhero name on the cover probably won't bait anyone to buy those anymore.
Perfectly acceptable outcome too. Like I've said already, this would reveal the truth of the situation.
>Comics are made and solicited a fiscal quarter ahead of time.
Comics may be solicited months in advance, but the publisher would get the message the moment the orders are turned in. You don't think they'll be frantic phone calls to every store at that moment?
And then it would take 6-8 months to write draw color and letter new ones moron
Doesn't matter. No one said change would be immediate. They just need to initiate it.
>Marvel, DC, and their creators seem to believe comics are doing great, diversity is great, and comic shops are failing because of their own poor practices and unwillingness to embrace the material
It’s more insidious than that. They flat out WANT comic shops to die because then they think the companies will just let them write whatever the frick they want for book stores. They truly think the death of the direct market will lead to a Renaissance and they think homosexualry and trans shit is going to win the day. Book stores and libraries are gate kept by pink pussy hat, mask wearing in 2023 boomer women who hate their sons and husbands and only push woke shit. If the DM dies the physical comics industry is fricked.
What do you think is stopping them from selling like they want in bookstores right now?
I didn’t say anything was, if you read my reply. I said they think they’re being stopped because money is being diverted to make le backwards, outdated, stupidly-steeped-in-canon ongoings. The only thing stopping them is book publishers recognizing they’re untalented no matter how woke they are and there being obvious limits on what stores of any kind can order and shelve. For some reason they seem to think DC and Marvel will just turn into YA novel and GN publishers rather than just licensing their shit out.
Bookstores not being able to sell the product efficiently would just result in the bookstores deciding not to order comics especially if the margin is shaky.
>Book stores and libraries are gate kept by pink pussy hat, mask wearing in 2023 boomer women who hate their sons and husbands and only push woke shit. If the DM dies the physical comics industry is fricked.
This is the God's honest truth. I'm one of the few librarians to work in a school who isn't Woke AF and slapping rainbow flags over every available space. These people are the A#1 purchasers of those pinkish-purple tumblr art comics and every single other school library I see is choked with Miss Marvel trades, those creepy DC young adult books about teen Poison Ivy's first lesbian kiss or whatever, and then a bajillion Scholastic book fair graphic novels about either some Palestinian girl's first period or a couple of mixed race American girls beating each other up over who has the uglier braces or some shit with titles like "UGGO" or "TRAUMA."
>Marvel, DC, and their creators seem to believe comics are doing great, diversity is great, and comic shops are failing because of their own poor practices and unwillingness to embrace the material. Retailers seem to believe the comics are poor quality, their brand of diversity does not sell, and it will kill the industry. Is that a fair if simplified assessment? If so, then the best way forward would be for those retailers to organize a hard, month-long boycott of the big two. Not right now, maybe a slow month like February. Maybe brand it as "Manga Awareness Month" if they want to be cheeky.
I think many retailers are drifting towards this option without even realizing it, just by virtue of following the market. Compare a comic book aisle to a manga aisle sometime. Not in Barnes and Noble, in an actual comic book store, if there are any left near you.
can someone explain what has been going on with Mark Millar and this "Cancel Pig" thing?
Retailer from MA made a video about how books don't sell when the woke authors disregard characterization and write themselves. Twitter comic writers started whining and then Mark Millar came in to rescue the people who actual make a living selling books to the people who choose to spend money on them
that sounds kinda based, tbh
That's because it is.
>when the woke authors disregard characterization and write themselves.
wouldn't be a problem if they weren't such shitty people.
>wouldn't be a problem
Blatant self-inserts are always a problem.
I dunno, underground & alt comics are filled with self-inserts (and straight up bios) and work well.
I think it comes down to self-deprecation & humor vs. cringey "wish it was me" self-inserts for shallow idpol "representation".
And of course re-writing classic characters as self-inserts is a big no-no.
>some LCS owner wrote an article whining about how "woke" comics are totes destroying the business, so now the goat-licker is joining casualgate to get in on the grift
ftfy
Don't forget how he's siccing the casualgate marks on Gail Simone, even though she helped Millar when he was a struggling young writer i.e. she ghost-wrote all his early stories that weren't shit
lol no
for someone who claims to believe in good comics, he is only capable of producing shit 90% of the time
No.
Inb4 goatlicking.
YOU SLY MOTHERFRICKER.
Tick Tock, Rich Johnston
Millar is moronic if he thinks consumers at large keep up with the drama of what writers or creators or critics b***h at each other about.
Superhero comics and many western comics are losing sales because consumers would rather read manga.
It is that simple.
All this drama is only listened to by a small tiny number of consumers.
There's actually not that much of a crossover , maybe two decades ago
The anime to manga pipeline creates a lot of young readers who want to know where the story is going, but don't want to wait for the next season of the anime, so they read the manga. It's a superior system. All you have to do is look at the success of Invincible to see that it could work in the US as well. If the secondary media stays even somewhat close to the original- books will be sold.
The problem is really ancient corporate properties that can't be properly adapted in any kind of secondary media- thus making such a pipeline impossible.
inb4 Invincible sucks!
That's completely beside the point. Lots of people hate One Piece, but it sells like a motherfricker.
There's also a manga to anime pipeline since fans that read ahead or read unadapted manga spread excitement for new series that are coming out. Anime cause people to read manga and people reading manga create word of mouth advertising for anime. Both mediums support each other.
Can someone clue me in on the reason for the weird bad beef between Millar and Johnston/BleedingCool?
I'm guessing Millar's butthurt that they won't suck his dick
>Implying half the people working in comics even like comics
He should hire a co-writers.
He comes up with good pitches and knows how to sell them, plus he apparently treats the artists well enough to have a lot of big names working on his stuff.
The ploting is also not bad, but he ruins everything with his absolute shit writing and his terrible pacing.
I don't know if he can but I hope he does
>the Captain Kirk avatar
here we go Cinemaphile
It's amazing how many people are whining about how "woke" Star Trek is now, when the original series went out of its way to make sure Uhura was in background shots, even though they knew it would piss off the anti-woke of the 1960s
Its because you don't know what words and concepts mean, causing you to conflate obnoxious performative faux equity and neo reddit racism with civil rights.
to claim that 1960s was woke as 2022 is at minimum a dumb statement and at maximum intellectual dishonesty
They convince themselves that when someone is complaining about woke shit that they're actually just a cartoon racist who wants to bring back slavery, because it helps maintain their self image and the worldview they want where they're a valiant hero struggling against evil by pretending to like Miles Morales on the internet.
the more time passes, the more I believe those people just wan't some ground to stand on and wave a fricking flag without knowing the meaning of anything
Oh yeah one guy can totally “fix” an industry by hosting a podcast where he whines about cancel culture
It’s actually a YouTube show not a podcast.
Oh it’s even worse
Great, he can join the 5 billion other YouTube channels grifting the easily triggered
No, his comics suck and are still getting out competed by shit like manga. Just because he's not the same shit that most people have a problem with doesn't mean he's not shit.
How do Comic book stores even make money anyway, isn't the direct market like 200M in profits? With most going to the publishers
I remember back when Borders closed there wasn't this big lamentation about how everything was cancel culture and wokeness and how leftists were killing the written word. When various newspapers went under to the 24 hour news cycle and later the internet, the common refrain was "technology and pricing have changed how things work" and when news stands shuttered their doors it was "people just don't read as much anymore". I find it strange comics (and let's be real we're all talking almost exclusively about capeshit) are somehow immune to or exempt from those market forces and it's ALL culture wars to blame.
Honestly it's kind of amazing floppies have hung on as long as they did. How is it that free market capitalism worked its magic on all those other forms of print media and at no point did comic book guys look at those things falling and take it as a sign?
Overall, Comic Book stores are viewed as an integral part of Suburban America, for better or for worse
Losing them will make a lot of 40 years olds feel old
No they aren’t, comic book stores are very much a thing of the past. Go to any mixed retail store and they’ll all tell you comics don’t sell neary as well as stuff like board games or figures.
>Honestly it's kind of amazing floppies have hung on as long as they did.
Comic and manga enthusiasts are a bit like furries. They tend to dedicate a significant portion of their income to their hobby. Honestly you could open a fursuit shop in any major city and probably do as well financially as the average comic book store. This dedicated autism from the consumer is what keeps the gravy train going. Even now I'm blown away by how many people are still invested in comics when all it seems to bring them is misery. If it weren't for "woke" content, this autism might have existed in perpetuity, just like furshit has been going strong since the 80's at least. But disrupting the autism of the autistic customer is a terrible idea for this kind of niche market
Manga is in a country that prefers Physical Media and even Manga is suffering from younger Japanese people moving away from it
Comics are a completely different story
I make no comment on how manga is doing in its own domestic market. I'm talking about American consumers who consume comics and manga. They are typically extremely dedicated to their niche which I affectionately refer to as autism
>Manga is in a country that prefers Physical Media
THANK YOU.
This doesn't get brought up nearly enough. People here always go
>But the Japs read manga!
Japanese people LOVE obsolete media. They still sell VHS and cassette tapes there. Of course decided to hang onto print media longer.
>M-Manga is obsolete media!
Print media is dying across the planet. In a certain way yes, tankobon are an obsolete format. Japan has an issue with loving old stuff. Remember the KyoAni fire and why that was so bad? Because the building was made of wood rather than concrete?
Jesus christ you sensitive homosexuals. Just because the stuff something is printed on is old doesn't mean the thing getting printed is bad.
NO, NEW THING GOOD
OLD THING BAD
Fursuits are custom tailored to each autist's insane vision of their alter ego. A store is a bad idea but people who do them on individual commission can charge thousands of dollars.
I envisioned a sort of fursuit tailor who sells fake fur fabrics and shit like pawprint decals who will repair their shit after they tear open the seams doing degenerate sex acts at a convention. Or general fittings and sewing stuff.
Comics are marketing/propaganda tools. That's why they keep coming out. But Disney doesn't even list comic sales in their reports.
This anon here, this is the smartest anon on the board. Comic books are failing because they’ve coasted for literal decades on autistics this anon
mentioned thinking that gravy train would never go off the tracks and now that it has they’re desperately trying to latch onto fads without any idea how to actually reach new readers so they’re selling trying to sell these new fads to the autists mentioned above and they’re crying about “woke”. Mark Millar’s attached himself to the cry because he’s a massive homosexual with a giant ego and is always looking for a way to plug his shit. Comics, specifically Marvel and DC, are failing because they refused to keep up with the times, specifically technology, not because two girls are kissing on a panel or a boy is wearing girl clothes. If you want the retail market to survive they need to focus on quality, everything from the writing, to the artist, all the way down to paper stock.
>and Millar ain’t quality
Honestly Amazon buying Comixology was what fricked over the comics industry
If Marvel and DC we’re actually smart (they’re not) they’d hire all the people Amazon laid off from Comixology to overhaul their shitty subscription apps and start pumping real money into it instead of treating it like an afterthought.
This implies that they have a fricking clue on how digital distribution of comics should work. Or that the laid off people know either.
The Comixology app, before Amazon took it over and butt-fricked it, was far and away the best way to read comics on a device.
Now that I have panel by panel I can never go back to plain cbz files.
The problem with blaming technology or people not reading anymore is that manga is flourishing under the same conditions. So clearly it must be the actual product itself that makes comics so unappealing
>actual product itself
Before going into the content, which might as well be at fault, also consider:
- the literal chasm between the production pipeline of a manga and a comic (coloring, release schedule)
- the also literal chasm between the product and how is it offered (you can 'rent' a manga chapter for like 100yen, like 1 dollar, online; versus floppies you're gonna have to shell 5 bucks for at a LCS)
Address these and yes, then everyone can dive in headfirst about how what usual Marvel/DC writers like to write about is to blame. I'm not even saying it's not: I'm saying you'd be hardpressed to see even manga doing well if the logistics were as ass backwards as comics has been for decades.
Because the simple answer is people who buy it prefer Japanese storytelling and art. Even when they can’t quantify what that means, they understand there’s something different
>The problem with blaming technology or people not reading anymore is that manga is flourishing under the same conditions.
They're not the same conditions though. Between scanslations and Viz and Mangaplus' e-readers, manga is easily accessible online ni a way western comics aren't.
>I meant in Japan.
Different culture. Not only do they have a greater love for older formats, they have mass transit which keeps news stands alive.
Is it just because I've never had a good LCS that I don't understand why there needs to be a concentrated effort to save them and they need to be treated with kid gloves?
I agree. I've never lived anywhere with a decent comics store, but that's no big deal because I can find plenty at B&N and BAM (though they'll have multiple aisles full of manga vs maybe half an aisle for graphic novels and the floppies are with the magazines). So to me, comics seem to be doing just fine.
It's like some people talk about "saving comics" when really they only mean "saving the dedicated comic book store part of comics." Then get irrationally pissed when you think they're talking about comics.
>It's like some people talk about "saving comics" when really they only mean "saving the dedicated comic book store part of comics
As stated earlier this entire discussion millar is having is about comic shops. Go start your “let’s celebrate the comics industry being buoyed by dav pilkey and mangaka” thread if you want, moron.
omg, this person exemplifies the autistic silliness that the person they were responding to was talking about.
"Comics" is not "comic stores." If you want to talk about comic stores, say "comic stores." If you say "comics" instead, then don't have a cow when people think you're actually talking about comics instead.
Christ you people are losers.
You're out of your element Donny
Way to make his point.
He is out of his element and you are too, disingenuous homosexual. Mark Millar, referenced in the OP, didn't work in "comics". He worked in corporate serialized adventure product sold in the direct market. His Millar World books may not be produced by the big 2 but they're still distributed the same way. Kickass isn't being sold at the elementary school Scholastic bookfair or the diminishing shelf space of Barnes and Noble.
Damn, screwed up my edit. Kickass trades assuredly are sold at national booksellers. My point was the discussion OP spins out of relates directly to the direct market retailer end point of distribution for this product. The distribution chain is a problem, which as a laymen customer and not a retailer or specialist, I couldn't properly speak about fixing. But what I do see is product I don't want to buy made by producers who thumb their nose at anyone who declines to accept their garbage.
Frick you Anon, I'm in the store every week. I buy Vault, Image, Dark Horse, Boom, even some Marvel. I'm even buying a DC book again after giving up on them years ago.
>Frick you Anon, I'm in the store every week.
U wot. Why frick you? My point is that a lot of retailers are crap and a bunch of so called fans are. Not you in particular.
Jesus frick.
The question is not how to save comic book shops. The question is how to save comics.
What the frick is going to save comics?
Part of the solution is to get rid of comic book shops and bring them back to supermarkets, just like how they are in the entire rest of the world. Casuals read comic books in Japan and Europe, thats why they're so big. As much as Cinemaphile b***hes about Fortnite and casual audience, kids playing Fortnite will eventually find better and more obscure games and thus big mainstream products help the entire industry as a whole.
There are no designated comic book shops outside of maybe special comic book shops in France and Belgium in very specific areas in very specific cities. Comics and manga are sold in generic hobbyist shops that sell /tg/ shit as well in Europe. Dark Horse comics are sitting right next to Warhammer figures, meanwhile european supermarkets have Sillage and Donald Duck monthly books sitting on shelves for the casual audience.
>Part of the solution is to get rid of comic book shops and bring them back to supermarkets,
You have no idea how anything works
>Part of the solution is to get rid of comic book shops and bring them back to supermarkets
You can literally buy anthologies in Walmart.
If that distro model was viable it would be happening already.
https://www.comicsbeat.com/walmarts-dc-100-page-giant-comics-have-arrived-heres-how-to-find-them-in-the-store/
Been done before
Are those still being sold? That article is from 2018.
There are numbers in the Mark Waid thread but I don't think the greatest percentage of sales of big 2 action serials goes through national chains. Those stores sell kids picture books and ya stuff.
>Are those still being sold?
No idea. I live in the UK and you can find 48 page anthologies in some newsagents. So anthologies in shops are still around.
Those were terrible, at least the batman one was. The first one included one new story, the first issue of hush, and the first issues of new 52 nightwing and harley. Keep in mind this was 7 years after new 52 started.
>Those were terrible
Nearly all comics are terrible. This has become an industry writers fail into, not something people actually want to do. There are entire years that come and go without a single decent comic being written and published.
But isn't it?
See this anon:
Anyway, we're talking about comics as a product, not about lcs as a distribution model.
The topic is literally about LCS shops. The pic in OP is talking about retailers. This whole thing started because a retailer was complaining about comics, got insulted by creators and Mark Millar defended him
>Just put them back in supermarkets bro!
Yeah, that’s exactly why Archie is outselling every big two c- oh wait they aren’t. Archie was already being sold in supermarkets in thick reprint digest format ten years ago and their sales were still crashing back then.
Anon, Millar was responding to the complaints of a retailer regarding the product, the comics. The retailer was shit on by pedantic producers, who I even addressed in my post. Couldn't bother to read the whole thing eh? How are yav even gonna get through 22 pages of story?
Regardless, they've gotta make product people want and avoid shitting on the audience. I can appreciate the critique of the retailer by Marz and Ram V, but they're also not entirely correct. Sure, a writer makes what his heart desires, but if he can't push units he's gonna starve. It's the same in music and film. Make the art that speaks to you, but if there's no audience, or you actively chase away the audience, yngmi.
Personally, my biggest complaint is that these ostensible action adventure serials do not have enough of either. Too much talking, too much didacticism, too much social critique.
I want to see a team of super-powered hotties work tactically to take down villains while garishly displaying their abilities. See em overcome adversity through sheer force of will. And I want subplot hooks to build and pay off down the line.
>Too much talking, too much didacticism, too much social critique.
Bendis speak, story decompression and making comics for the trade all helped do this. For me it kind of parallels television. TV went from one-and-done episodes to everything having season wide arcs. But nowadays you get a show with less than 10 episodes in a season, a season wide arc and there is STILL filler. If you can't tell a good story in a single issue once in a while you have no business with this medium.
Anon, if you wanna claim Bendis irreparably harmed the industry then I agree, I agree. Hack couldn't script a fight to save his life. Just splash pages everywhere.
Let me put it this way; what do you think will happen to books that wouldn't sell in bookstores when comic shops close? Or old backissues
It might not seem like a big deal if you personally don't care about them, but I don't get why comic fans seem to be the only ones who outright seem to dislike the idea of specialty stores than can carry things bookstores cannot or won't.
>Let me put it this way; what do you think will happen to books that wouldn't sell in bookstores when comic shops close? Or old backissues
They get released online for 99 cents and the physical copies get recycled into something useful, like toilet paper.
Realize how many non-big two books still don't have digital versions. Or don't have their original versions available.
Why is it my fault that some people insist on relying on an outdated publishing and distribution method?
Why do you have such apathy for preserving physical media that can't be tampered with, locked away, or priced way more than they should.
I don't care what your feelings are about current, monthly comics. What I do care about is comic shops as a place to keep older comics in circulation in an accessible way without online price gouging.
Mom and Pop retro game stores or record stores don't get the same level of vitriol as some people give comic shops.
Because the video game and music industry is healthy with many more options to buy these things. Comic shops are holding the industry back at this point.
>the video game and music industry is healthy with many more options to buy these things
you would not see more niche and older music and games in most big retail stores. Even Best Buy shrunk their media section. The whole point of these specialty stores is to get physical media beyond the newest and most popular things.
>Why do you have such apathy for preserving physical media that can't be tampered with, locked away, or priced way more than they should.
If you want to have a conversation about the scummy practices plaguing the concept of digital ownership and how that needs a significant revision and possibly legislation to ensure that people are able to actually own things and not have those things be tampered with I am right there with you.
If it's strictly a matter of preservation-ism? I'd say offer some kind of program where failing comic book stores can either donate their inventory to libraries for a tax write off or collaborate with them for some kind of lending program.
I have apathy for the comic book store model because so many people running the stores exhibited that apathy in turn. The simpsons stereotype of a store manned by a surly guy with poor hygiene that's really only opened the place as a sort of extended toy chest for himself that regards his customers with contempt is NOT a big a parody as some here insist. You have to get LUCKY to get a good LCS. A lot of them suck.
A better question is ‘should they be saved?’
Doesn't Millar also write homosexual shit, who's he to talk
So here's a weird question.
How well lit is your LCS?
I'm trying to think and of the 10 or so comic book different stores I've been to in my lifetime, only 2 of them had good lighting. The rest were always dimly lit, like they were trying to keep the electricity bill down.
And this matters, because how you light your store can make it look inviting.
Name names otherwise I don’t believe you’ve ever been in any at all.
The anon you’re replying to likely just backs a few kickstarters and is, definitionally, a casual. He doesn’t buy or read comics to any notable degree so he doesn’t care. At most he has a Kickstarter himself and is seething that nobody backed it and thinks without those dastardly LCS he’d have more backers.
>Name names otherwise I don’t believe you’ve ever been in any at all.
Of the well lit ones? Midtown Comics in Manhattan comes to mind, and my current favorite store, East Side Mags in Montclair New Jersey.
Of the poorly lit ones? Amazing Heroes in Union NJ, and Time Warp Comics and Games in Cedar Grove (which is relevant in this particular conversation since it recently closed down.) The Comic Book Market in Bloomfield also had bad lighting, but that closed over a decade ago now.
>reee you morons don't buy comics! You just back kickstarters!
My brother in christ maybe look in a mirror. Kickstarter guys have money to burn. If LCS aren't able to capitalize on those people that's THEIR problem not anyone elses. Screeching they need to frick off and leave you in your comfy little dungeon isn't going to keep the lights on.
Yes, some people don't read comics. THEY ARE THE TARGET. You can't save a nation wide brick and mortar system with the dwindling number of gen x-ers and millenials that you already have your hooks in, they're adults now and have other expenses in an era of rising costs across the board. Get some new blood in there or die. Get the people that left back in or die. It's that fricking simple.
A proper arcade looked like a dark alley, and everyone loved those.
>A proper arcade looked like a dark alley, and everyone loved those.
I mean yes I loved them but also they did tend to attract a lot of drug dealers which probably wasn't good for business.
But also yes let's look at video arcades because I fricking miss video arcades. They died to console gaming because people could just play those games at home. What's so special about comic book stores that they're able to and deserve to avoid that fate?
The fact that the Big Two didn't have the balls to tell CBS to go frick themselves and go online
Image had Business Ties with Diamond so I get why they didn't do it
The reason they didn't is because a few things- firstly digital media is valued less, and as for shipping things out they're almost always behind. People getting monthly releases want them ASAP because the value in them is what's new.
Where do you live where there isn't a video arcade? I live inna flyover town and there's 3 within 30 minutes of me full of arcade machines and ddr
Northern New Jersey. They only place I'd consider a proper video arcade in my range is Chinatown Fair. The rest are barcades or dave and busters with frankly, shitty game selection.
Weird. The biggest one near me splits its revenue with a sort of indoor carnival games type thing. Half the place is classic arcade with some decent games, and the other half is giant claw machines with big prizes, bumper cars, and tons of merchandise from shit like Pokémon. Pretty sure they offer food and drink too. The places all popped up alongside laser tag and escape rooms in the last decade or so. Honestly comic books could be making great sales in a place like that where kids are throwing their money away already
I've always found it strange that I've never seen a comic book store that sells video games, personally. I have to wonder if there's some kind of obscure licensing thing because surely they could move some copies of Spider-man PS4 instead of using that shelf space for overpriced statues that are never getting moved.
That was Acclaim's thing in the 90s and 2000s. They had a bunch of games and comics for a while, like Turok.
>I've always found it strange that I've never seen a comic book store that sells video games
High cost, high minimum purchases, and even smaller profit margins than comics. You can't have a small section of video games, you have to go all in. If you can't stock new games, then you don't really have the clientele for a used games business either.
I guess that makes sense. And now that I think about it Gamestops are kind of like the major chain version of the LCS dynamic; digital is just more convenient for people so they tried to pivot to merch and it's not going so well.
I can't help but think if comic book stores were publicly traded we'd be seeing a different take on their failure.
I don't think the two are perfectly comparable, as far as the effects of digital sales are concerned. Digital comic sales is still a minuscule part of the market once you remove manga. There's really no significant shift from print comics to digital. Also, the video game experience is identical regardless of format. People are still divided over digital and print comics.
If anything, a lot of independent video game stores have started to act more like comic shops, because old cartridge games have become a collectibles market.
>ey could move some copies of Spider-man PS4 instead of using that shelf space for overpriced statues that are never getting moved.
a lot of comic shops do sell retro games, but for new games they aren't competing with retail stores or amazon. You'd have to buy a bulk order direct from the retailer and most likely they aren't going to move that order of 10-20 games as fast, if only because no one's thinking of going to a comic shop for a new game.
Where as that statue might sit, but has a higher chance of selling because someone seeing it in person is more likely to impulse buy than if they saw it online.
Niche shops exist for a reason. A record store could dump all obscure shit they have and just sell Taylor swift merchandise and make more money..but that isn't the point.
>Northern New Jersey. They only place I'd consider a proper video arcade in my range is Chinatown Fair. The rest are barcades or dave and busters with frankly, shitty game selection.
Arcades have ALWAYS had a shitty game selection. Its part of why they died out.
Yeah but now it's all shitty gacha gambling games and apps.
It's probably BECAUSE you live in a flyover town. Those sound great.
That's exactly it; Northern NJ rents are expensive due to proximity to NYC. a flyover state can manage an arcade that makes far less and break even, in a more densely populated state it's harder to break even.
>What's so special about comic book stores that they're able to and deserve to avoid that fate?
Let's treat the comics market like a symbiotic system. You go in to buy your monthly fix of good Spider-Man comics IF THEY HAD ONE, you see something decent from, like... Oni Press? Or like, Godzilla from IDW. Another month you might be coming back for Godzilla and see that DC decided to finally put out some decent shit about a character you liked, and eventually you could hear Marvel magically put out another good book, as a mistake. Word of mouth going around the store could get you hitched, since actually meeting COMICS fans in the wild seems to be as hard as ages ago, oddly enough, even if now everyone and their gay neighbor knows who Thanos is.
Now if you're just subscribing to Marvel's online service or however people buy online comics, you're not seeing a bunch of different comics and might eventually just feel it's not worth the hassle or turn to piracy altogether. Talking about comics with other people keeps you thinking about them.
>Now if you're just subscribing to Marvel's online service or however people buy online comics, you're not seeing a bunch of different comics and might eventually just feel it's not worth the hassle or turn to piracy altogether.
You're acting as if
>Frequently Bought Together
or
>From the Manufacturer
or
>Customers who viewed this item also viewed
aren't regular features on e-commerce now. Word of mouth not only still exists, it's been amplified into algorithms. I mean hell, just going to RCO and seeing the new releases every day is a great way to see what's new and what's hot.
Having a physical concrete box doesn't even guarantee the dynamic you're talking about. Most of the ones I go to are empty save for the cashier, or at best filled with a bunch of guys playing Magic the Gathering. Who is talking about comics with other people there?
>Most of the ones I go to are empty save for the cashier, or at best filled with a bunch of guys playing Magic the Gathering. Who is talking about comics with other people there?
That's the point. There aren't a lot of comics to get anyone hyped right now.
>early 2000's wasnt that bad
The early 2000s definitely were. Late 2000s looked like they were getting their shit together a bit, but that didn't last long.
the leather x-men was early or late? maybe got my dates mixed up. that was the timeframe i was saying
Early. On the "definitely bad" end, specifically.
>Not falling over public's pressure over Chappelle's special
>Giving people like Stavros & Shane Gillis comedy specials, Mulldog & Friedland might be next to get one as well
>Mogging Warner/DC by giving Zack Snyder a multiyear deal to do whatever the frick he wants, including continuing the Snyderverse if they get the rights to do so
>Now the president of one of their major subsidiaries is openly and rightfully shitting all over the comicbook industry
Wtf are they lowkey based now?
No.
The big problem is everything being trapped in comic book stores in the direct market. Floppies being 5 bucks for one part of a 10+ arc. His Netflix shit will not change any of this.
no. marvel and dc are happy to destroy the industry completely and end all distribution and comic shops and are labelling anyone that disagrees with the garbage they shit out and business practices they employ to stifle all competition and any new entries into the industry as racist alt right -isms. a fricking comic shop owner made a plea to put out good comics again instead of tumblr art and less than minimum wage/worse than chatAI writing and creators and cbr and all the milkshake girls wrote articles about how the guy is ugly and a nazi.
To be fair you shouldn't wait for the hornets to build their entire nest before you attempt to remove it. People affected by this should have nipped this issue in the bud way sooner. But everyone just kept waiting and even now when 90% of consumers are tired of the abysmal quality of the product there's practically nothing that can be done to get rid of these entrenched hornets and their dogshit art/writing
Frick all cancel pigs and cancel pig apologists. You oinkers in this thread know who you are. Keep oinking. You will lose, and we will laugh at you in ridicule and scorn.
He's one of the people that helped kill it.
I feel like it was already dying by the time his career started taking off
Nah.
It was relatively stable. 90s crashed from million+ sales, but they had actual sales data - not self reported numbers they have now. marvel basically pulps all their comics. they have contracts to maintain printing costs and distribution. they have to print them, but they go straight to pulp mill. not sold. official comic numbers right now are completely fabricated nonsense. its a dead industry. billion dollar franchises like spiderman sell hundreds of copies. not thousands. not tens of thousands. hundreds.
It was stable but not healthy, like a dying patient barely clinging to life. Regardless I don't think the business strategies or the outdated writing of the 90s/2000s are going to help, a lot of them are still around as it is anyway.
People don't read comics anymore, they just watch the films and if they like the films they might read a comic. The only people who read comics were 30-50 year old males and they lost all those readers after they made every character woman or gay or both.
Also the fact that those 30-50 year old males have to pay for their own homes, kids, health insurance, cars, and retirement funds now. Maybe the funny picture books of guys in spandex punching each other just isn't as big a priority anymore?
Also the stories just get worse and worse. I can't think of any good comic stories from the last 10 years.
In other words you don’t actually read comics
Guys like Millar or Ennis or Morrison would have no career if not for comic shops. You see what comics book stores and retail stores want- it's shit like the Webtoon Hooky. Stuff that sells to girls.
how can someone possibly think he is not saying the truth? we're seeing this shit happening since before 2015, and there's still morons who think the industry is not worse
wtf
He's been the village idiot for years on end, it's kinda understandable that some people ignore when he has a sober moment.
but anyone who actually read comics know for a fact that shit is really, really, really boring and bad right now in the big two
Well, yeah. Most anyone disagreeing is probably a no-reading casual or a shill in the industry.
I don't want to just go back to 2015, it was definitely better no doubt but I can't think of really any point in the comic industry after like the 80s that I would call good and healthy.
late 90's and early 2000's wasnt that bad, but suddenly every marvel super hero was embarassed of being a super hero. still, not that bad
early 10's things were starting to look strange, x-men and ff being shoved into the backlog, still not as strange
2015 shit really hit the fan and today not even DC is saving themselves after what bendis did
He won't. Comics are in a bad place because comics are bad, his included.
How is this any different from the Rippaverse or Ethan Van Sciver, except by a mainstream figure instead of literal whos? Why are you only now supporting this
Well, for one, I think that he's likely to make something actually readable, if high on goat licking. No disrespect to rippa Dixon's work.
He'll make something for Hollywood and then get it adapted into a single season streaming dumpster fire, and pat himself on the back for a job well done while another dozen stores close in the interim.
> I think that he's likely to make something actually readable
Are you familiar with the work of Mark Millar?
>B-b-b-but muh Civil War & Unfunnies
Yeah he often fumbled the bag hard back in the day.
Hated Civil War for example. Kick-Ass was super mid. But he did write some pretty good books as well.
Starlight & Red Son are genuinely great.
His Ultimates run is a fun reread too, at least in my opinion. Specially the premise of the Avengers reimagined if they debuted during the post-9/11 Bush administration era. It's an all around funny "What If?" scenario.
I have read plenty of Mark Millar comics. Nemesis, Superior, Ultimates, Authority, Wanted, Jupiters Legacy, Civil War, Ultimate X-men, Unfunnies, Old Man Logan, Red Son, all of them but Red Son sucked and Red Son is not great it's just good. Doesn't compare to the other top Superman stories. Ultimate Fantastic Four was alright too, I'll give him that one.
Give Starlight a read if you haven't yet, it's pretty great.
and even those "just good" comics is miles better than the disgraced slop the big two are shilling and crapping to us
>Are you familiar with the work of Mark Millar?
Are you aware of how BAD the current flagships of the big two are? I'd take even his entertainingly bad storytimes of pain over the current Spider man paul-kekshed run, also featuring poochie, and Batman/Catwoman's adventures in economic restorative justice by teaching criminals how to fricking steal better.
>Look mom I’m triggered and strawmanning
Don't be such a b***h anon. Those issues have been storytimed here, and universally shat upon.
The b***h here is you and how you meltdown over not liking a subplot about Peter and MJ not being together anymore
Lol look at the Marvel employee claiming it's just because Peter and MJ aren't together and not because everything else about the run is pure ass
Cuz the rek rap arc was eisner level writing.
Then maybe don’t just whine about Paul cucking your waifu
>The entire run is ass
>"y-you're complaining about Paul le cuck le waifu"
Marvel employee on meltdown watch
Well someone really got their panties in a twist here
He's not having a meltdown, he's getting paid! In experience.
LOL. Don't derail the thread with your squealling piggy. That was just to identify WHICH run I was talking about. It's got plenty of problems beyond that. But that's besides the point. If you want to follow up on this, take it to the next Spiderman storytime thread. I think the Gang War one is still probably up.
Would you BUY his "entertainingly bad" crap, though?
honestly, a few studios need a no nonsesne guy who is not afraid to be the butthole and tell everyone to shut the frick up, we're here to make money.
Every studio in all of western entertainment needs that guy, but everyone's egos are too fragile and they go crying to HR or twitter the second they're told they suck. They come up with all kinds of excuses to remove the offending party. Artists are the worst about this. They take an objective critique of their work as a comment on their very existence as a person.
Studios are entirely full of those types and the reason we are were we are with diversity is the desire for more markets and more customers. That's where the logic of money and expansion at all costs inevitably leads, the eventually abandonment of the old fans because we've reach a limit on how much cash we can drain from them. These guys just don't have any good ideas on how to expand.
I respect Millar for calling out a lot of the industry's bullshit without turning it into a politicized comicsgate thing tbqh.
>without turning it into a politicized comicsgate thing
Kinda sounds like he's doing that though. Who else are the "cancel pigs"?
He didn't attack "cancel pigs" for being woke. He called them that because they were defaming and mocking an honest guy who owns a comic shop for reasonably pointing out that modern shit isn't selling. No one attacked anything for being female or gay or raceswapped or whatever.
Maybe "cancel" has a connotation for being a liberal thing but Mark's not really taking that explicit angle with it.
Fair enough.
I would expect a writer to choose their words more carefully but then again it's Mark Millar we're talking about.
It only does because the industry is so far left. The conservatives have and are currently canceling shit as well, like the book "gender queer" from libraries. And conservatives have absolutely gone after millar's shit before.
I think it’s too converged at this point to save (at least where Marvel and DC are concerned). But hope springs eternal.
>Can Mark Millar lick goats?
>He says he is going to lick ALL the "goats" and fix their problems by making all of them employees of MillarWorld with benefits and everything!!!
>Millar has to get his ideas from somewhere after all
Who are you going to rape this time Millar? Who's doing the raping this time Millar?
>bunch of folks who look like dry-cured gammon calling other people 'pigs'
First time Miller & Co. have made me laugh.
they just want to make a safespace for themselves and their opinions when we get down to it, why can't they just admit it
hi Heidi
Literally who?
I'm not sure if anyone can save comics
They had 30 fricking years to adapt to Dragonball sucess, 30 fricking years to copy Japan formula and didn't even fricking tried.
So they lost over than 2/3 of a market share they had control over for a century. I have no idea why the american industry is like that but there is something terribly wrong with it
>They had 30 fricking years to adapt to Dragonball sucess
What success would that be, finish the series and then make sequels that are hilariously bad because you ran out of cash?
>What success would that be
Probably selling more copies per month than Spider-Man or Superman ever did, probably having their animated show being more popular than every single Marvel animated show combined. Selling more games than Spider-Man and Batman combined would also be quite sucessful.
>Selling more games than Spider-Man and Batman combined would also be quite sucessful
Yeah it also helps that there are like 100 Dragonball games out there, are we counting the gatcha game as well?
>selling more copies per month than Spider-Man or Superman ever did
Yeah numbers here, I'm calling bullshit on that. Superman specifically.
Unironically some of the indie press books have adapted to the manga market and it's been successful. Scott Pilgrim has volumes that are similar sizes to manga volumes and that's sold well enough to get reprinted a ton of times and has been adapted I think twice now. It's a shit book but it sells. The fact that it's black and white helped keep print costs lower too.
Any good recommendations, preferably still something capeshit related? My group is getting ready to run a M&M campaign in City of Heroes and I want some quality indie inspiration.
I don't even like Kirkman comics but I want him to be the most sucessful comic writer in the USA simply because he's the only one who is trying to copy the manga to anime formula and make shows for teenagers rather than safe unfunny shows for little kids or cheap sitcoms for "adults" like everybody else in the entire country.
Survival of the fittest, he's the only one smart enough to copy what is working.
>he's the only one who is trying to copy the manga to anime formula
Oh my god dude all he did was make a fricking cartoon deal for a book that was always really hard sell as a live action show/movie due to the level of budget it would need.
Lightning struck twice for Kirkman, the first time it was The Walking Dead.
and in the end it was the only superhero cartoon to simply adapt the entire comic into a new format just like anime(with a few tiny changes) and it's destroying Moon Girl, Teen Titans Go and Marvel What if
The second season started and people already lost all the hype for it.
https://screenrant.com/invincible-season-2-premiere-viewership-record-season-1-comparison/
And the discussion about the show is…. Where? Where are the memes? Why is Invincible generating nonstop discussion?
I have no idea how the US was so insanely incompetent at it.
this changed happened to fast that no life +30 year olds still think "weeb" is a valid insult when most kids in the last 3 decades watch anime, anime is no longer a niche thing, they are not even a fandom anymore just like people who watch movies are not a fandom
I still hate tranime and the gays who watch it
>Mark Millar
>saving comics
You mean the guy that literally only writes glorified script pitches for movies and TV?
If you've read any fan stuff from the 80s and 90s when Gaiman, Morrison, Miller, Milligan and all those people were coming up, people - mostly men in their 40s and 50s - were kicking up merry hell about how comics were doomed because of a bunch of writers were going in weird directions that they didn't like and writers were putting too much of themselves into their work and we needed someone to come along and 'save' comics and make them good again.
DOES ANY OF THAT SOUND FRICKING FAMILIAR, MARK?
>mostly men in their 40s and 50s - were kicking up merry hell about how comics were doomed because of a bunch of writers were going in weird directions that they didn't like and writers were putting too much of themselves into their work and we needed someone to come along and 'save' comics and make them good again
and in the end those wise elders were right and not a single kid is reading Spider-Man nowadays
They were right.
They were right, now we can have people jerk off in the DCU but no kids read the comics.
Exactly. So what are the odds Millar, EVS and all their gammony chums are every bit as wrong today as they were then? Seems pretty high to me!
The proof is in the pudding you fat homosexual, those people actually sold books, sales went bananas the point here is the entire industry is now literally drawing its last breath
Empress was unironically one of the worst comics I did ever read so no, yes even worse than Bendis and Slott laziest comics, worse than King worst mental breakdowns.
What prompted Millar into this downward spiral? Is he that desperate for attention? Does he get a stiffy whenever he hears the notification chime of social media engagement? It's odd that now is the time he decides to be vocal about industry woes people have been bringing up for a while and uses that attention to promote some garbage conspiracy theory expose "novel" coming out next year. Stinks of outrage marketing by a narcissist addicted to the thrill of talking shit.
>conspiracy theory
riiiight
>Is he that desperate for attention?
Is the guy who lied about Avengers being such a dead brand they had to call Ultimate Avengers Ultimates, despite Avengers being one of their best selling titles at the time of Ultimates launch, lied about having a billboard for Nemesis in Times Square, lied about being the Kevin Feige of Fox’s Marvel stuff before the Disney buy out, and lied about a whole lot of other shit that I can’t remember at the moment desperate for attention? Yes
He has a flu and nothing else to do. Seriously.
After seeing every Mark Millar comic storytimed several times in the past few years, I can say that he'll continue churning out the same comic with the same tropes and the same phrases and the same sequel baiting ending he's been doing for a long ass time. Anyone who says they're changing the industry haven't done shit.
Don't forget all the characters looking like established actors so when the mini gets optioned, all the hard work of casting has already been done!
It'll all get ignored, his fantasy casting will be the first thing cut and the script will just be some warmed-over shit that's been sitting on a shelf for decades with the names changed, but Mark will still dutifully say it's the best thing that he's ever been involved with, just like the hollowed out shitbag his is!
I don't know. I'd say Wanted and Huck and Chrononauts are all quite different from each other. I wouldn't call them same-y.
>tropes
terminally online dork.
Ultimately what Millar makes are comics for teen boys. Comics you can read in tpb form and get a solid story.
>Ultimately what Millar makes are comics for teen boys
only webcomic writers and mangakas write comics for teenagers
And those are the only writers making any money.
Comics demanding TPBs to get a whole story is one of the things that got the industry at this sorry state.
>comics would be in a better state if floppies were self-contained stories
I mean maybe there's an argument for that but also floppies are fricking dead because they cost $4 for about 5-10 minutes of media which is insane if you try competing with shit like Youtube and Tiktok that's free.
>I mean maybe there's an argument for that but also floppies are fricking dead because they cost $4
That's part of the point. Floppies cost apparently 5 bucks now, and you don't get your money's worth in any way because now they "write for trades", which started going full force back when millar was writing for Marvel. It's one of the reasons people say Marvel needed Jim Shooter back as editor, he used to say a comic had stand on its own legs.
Millar's own twitter, apparently.
>More people like Millar would definitely be good for the industry.
Damage in the not-so-short run, as it was.
I know of at least three times Millar has shown how smart a character is by having them engage in multiple chess matches while doing something else. And then they win everything, have a comment on the matches, talk about something else they were doing in addition to everything else, and then walk away as someone talks to them about something to move the plot along. Don't be triggered by a word and gloss over how repetitive he is. His comics are predictable and formulaic. I'd call out the same behavior for any other writer, whether I like them or not. Millar is mildly entertaining but he hasn't done anything more than make comics that work better as movie and show pitches. And sometimes the adaptation is so different from the source material you wonder if Millar even deserves the credit. Millar isn't changing the industry, he's figured out a way to exploit it the way it is. I can at least give him credit and praise for that.
>Anyone who says they're changing the industry haven't done shit.
I've noticed it's always people that are either already entrenched or nostalgic that insist they can change the industry.
Usually by insisting they go back to the last time it crashed.
This. All of this just sounds like a bunch of mid-life crises and a need for things to go back to how things were 20 years ago.
>verification not required
all these old heads have never worked in a competitive market and none of their popular work has been original
These hacks don't know shit about what audiences would want because they've only relied on writing half-decent stories for brand-name heroes that already had an installed fanbase
so no, he can't save comics
if guys like mark tried working in a market like manga he wouldn't last the first month
>spoiler
Bullshit, garbage like Attack on Titan, Goblin Slayer and Berserk exist. The bar is even lower than for western comics. He'd be like a pig rolling in the mud.
>Berserk
>garbage
I WILL FRICKING RAPE YOU, OKAY? I AM GOING TO COME TO YOUR HOUSE AND FRICKING RAPE YOU IF YOU SAY THAT AGAIN
>Berserk
>garbage
Ha! Almost got me.
what audiences want isn't the same as being good
as shlocky as stories like attack on titan and goblin slayer can be, they present beats that readers like
Yeah, for their target audience. I'm saying he'd be right at home.
What kind of ass-backwards comparison is this? People said the br*tish invasion was trouble, and they were right, culminating with 2000s edge schlock which fricked up the perception of superhero stories. Now people have been pointing out the cuckish invasion is fricking up comics in every way, with objective evidence that this is the case, starting with how it's killing the industry.
What “woke” book has had anything near the effect of a British Invasion book? Ma Marvel?
The British Invasion did long term damage to comics, while the woke invasion did serious salesdamage right away. It wasn't one "woke book". I guess you weren't around for the All-New, All-Different Marvel? Does that ring a bell? Do you think most people one day just thought "oh man, all these books are SO great, but I'll cut them from my pull list because they're too expensive"?
>The British Invasion did long term damage to comics
Man you frickers don't like anything or want anything. These threads are as pointless as this fricking industry.
>Man you frickers don't like anything or want anything. These threads are as pointless as this fricking industry.
They won't be happy until the industry is a smoking crater.
>AN ENTIRE LINE WENT WOKE AND IT WAS AWFUL FOREVER
There's a mindvirus at work here, I absolutely believe that, but in your case, it's more like a brain parasite, or maybe cancer, you absolute fricking melt. Just stay away from comics, for your own sake and others'.
>Just stay away from comics, for your own sake and others'.
This has been Marvel's message for everyone, and it's been working.
If Millar was in the manga industry he'd fall into being an editor.
At this rate he's just going to find his own niche like July and co. have. Everyone knows this is a tightly knit hell hole and it's always about who you know and who you get along with as opposed to your talent (moreso "if you have the right opinions" for the right-leaning-Youtuber-generation), so this is just Millar finding a way to make more money on the side. I mean, good for him, but things will stay the same.
>this is just Millar finding a way to make more money on the side.
Millar is a multimillionaire executive at Netflix who has producing credits with the anime studio behind My Hero Academia and a $100 million dollar blockbuster with Halle Berry and Elton John.
You really think Millar needs to "cozy up" to fricking Rippaverse types?
Yeah I don't think he'll mind even more money thrown his way, with no strings attached whatsoever
This is the weird thing about this whole thing to me. He's successful so why is he taking a nosedive into the outrage content farm clown circle? Is he going through a midlife crisis because he doesn't want his legacy to be "this is my face while I'm fricking you in the ass?" Did he finally shit the bed one too many times behind the scenes and is trying to get ahead of a different mess? Is he actually not making as much money as people think? This kind of outrage pandering usually indicates something happened to the guy pushing it.
>why is he taking a nosedive into the outrage content
I mean
it's millar
>He's successful so why is he taking a nosedive into the outrage content farm clown circle?
Dude
I want you to consider the following possibility, as remote as it may be, seriously:
The outrage farmers are RIGHT.
They're right and Millar isn't so much joining them as agreeing with them that their vision of reality is correct: comics in fact are dying, and they are dying exactly for the reasons the outrage farmers claim, and the people saying otherwise are lying.
But the outrage farmers act like the issue is "wokeism" or whatever outrage bait buzzword is in vogue when there's already a long list of documented issues which they seemingly never address. I've never heard any of these kinds of outrage content mills discuss stagnant wages, exploitative contracts, poor payment management, let alone something like the stranglehold Diamond had with the direct marketing model that left comic shops holding the bag. What about Amazon purchasing and then intentionally gutting comixology by stripping it to the point of non-functionality despite it being popular and a successful digital distribution platform? Stuff like that would give their complaints actual depth and legitimacy instead of the political shitflinging dressed up with summaries of characters lifted from a wiki and out of context cropped panels you see making the rounds in those outrage content farms.
Do you want to have to put out a comic at a stable rate, and let it live or die on its own merits, or do you want to live off Youtube ad revenue by going on about pointless drama or just scalping off dumb decisions done by the big two? These guys clearly made their choice. They don't even pretend to hide it. Sciver's channel actually started out with art tutorials and when dunking on The Last Jedi not only became a national sport, but a lucrative one, he lightning-fast pivoted to it.
The job for outrage farmers is actually done daily on social media and Youtube. The comics are occasional perks their audience humors because they like their opinions.
You think Millar wants to pivot to youtube funding? I don't think you're sane here.
Hold up. Does anime count as the same medium. Because if so, your entire argument gets flushed.
Manga are comics. Anime is animation. They are different mediums. An entertainment medium is like film, TV, radio, print - books, comics, etc. But why would that flush my argument? Outrage mills focus on criticism and not really discussing things people should be checking out, outside of certain marketing/shilling.
>I've never heard any of these kinds of outrage content mills discuss
The worst thing for me is how none of these mills can truly talk about what they like. Everyone constantly says the industry is shit but never talks about the medium as a whole. Bring up indie books and they stereotype all indie books as arty farty biographies or woke Image sci-fi. Manga leads to the same east vs west troll debate. Bande dessinée, other countries comics.. do they even mention them? When they talk about books it is usually to shill someone's Kickstarter but there is no depth, all it is, "This is like a 90s book!" Like a 90s extreme comic has a targeted audience, sure, but what is there beyond that. The truth is these mills have such a narrow view of the medium. The reason why the industry is shit is because of all the myriad of reasons you list and more. But also because the people in the medium don't seem to even really like it, want to explore it or be enthusiastic about it. "Capeshit is bad now and everything outside of capeshit is also bad." Why not just move on at that point? Because they will say they are invested and the other side should move or w/e. I'd love to hear what comics people actually enjoyed lately, put themselves out on a limb to enjoy something and explain what they actually like in the medium.
The CHUCKLEFRICKS who went after the retailer could have made the points your'e talking about, and since they're the ones directly affected by those economic factors? Either they're idiots, or you're talking out of your ass. They mostly went culture war as well.
The RETAILER who the chuckefricks went after doesn't have any visibility into that shit anyways.
all that happened is that comic shop owner complained bout modern writers, Twitter jumped o him, and Millar stepped in to save he had good points and featured him on his podcast. Then other retailers reached out to him and told him similar stories.
Yeah, Millar unironically did nothing wrong, and the retailer who complained did nothing wrong either. The only people who did wrong were the ones who jumped on the retailer as an online lynch mob for voicing extremely mild criticism against the people who are ruining his business. He didn't even name any names, he just said that writers today try to insert themselves into their comics too much and those comics don't sell for shit. Which is all true.
When people punish you for telling the truth, those people are evil.
First. It's Millar. Clownshows are his home turf.
Second. He's been around long enough to have dumbfrick cancel attempts on him from both political directions, and he's taken financial hits because of it.
Third. Look at the fricking cowards that completely retreated from criticizing the shop owner giving the view from the actual retail trenches? The big 2 have insulation on what's actually sold because of the preorder system, but everyone who tried to cancel the dude absolutely deserves the market thrashing that's coming.
He already has his own niche.
What downward spiral?
Directly from millar.
Producer. Picking winners for TV tokyo.
Where has this term cancel piggies come from? Never heard it before until like a day ago and now you're all trying to make it a thing.
Comics will never die, it is a medium.
The shops, distributors and parts of the American industry might.
All this moaning is essentially "muh LCS". How many people ITT actually go to their LCS?
I don't give a frick about capeshit and that shit will always be on life support no matter what shit they do.
The retailers are just as bad as the distributors or creators. Out of all the comic shops I have been to only one was good. The stereotypes of comic shops exist for a reason.
Not sure. He's hit and miss and his style gets stale after a while, BUT he has a genuine interest in crafting stories for a mass audience instead of only using the medium to push thinly veiled propaganda. More people like Millar would definitely be good for the industry.
I think Millar has a good sense of what bandwagon to jump on, and he clearly senses that the momentum is with the (vaguely-defined) "anti-woke" stance in a way that it wasn't a couple of years ago.
Will he be able to change anything? Of course not, he can't.
>more moronic right wing culture war slop.
>more attempting to deflect away from the most important problem in comics because it makes your side of the culture war look bad
Who's deflecting? You people grossly misconstrue, overinflate and fail to understand the problem/s. moronic right-wingers have the mental capacity of toddlers and can only grasp very simple issues and only one at a time. Can't let their brains work to hard.
>Can Mark Millar save comics?
No
>You people grossly misconstrue, overinflate and fail to understand the problem/s
Oh the irony
>can't even respond to the right comment.
>Namaste
God, this guy really was the bottom of the barrel of the British Invasion.
I just want comics to feel like they matter again bros. I want them to not be so expensive, and I want them to be good.
>Can Mark Millar save comics?
Probably not. The industry is too damaged.
>He says he is going to defeat the "cancel pigs" and fix the problems with the retail market and bring enthusiasm back to comics.
Good luck. I hope he succeeds.
>we have to save the dying field of comics by making sure all the new blood, artists, writers and other voices are treated like shit so they leave!
>a bunch of fricking neckbeards who just download/pirate all our comics off of Cinemaphile anyway are absolutely going to magically re-invigorate the entire industry for some reason very soon I'm sure
>it's the women trying to tell a story about adventure and magic for younger audiences that need to be expelled from comics, they're the ones ruining it, so if we can dox them enough times they will finally give us back our shitty $8 dollar re-re-re-re-rebooted x-men dick tugging side-comic that's all traced from AI generated pictures!
flawless plan, fellas! we got this!! don't give up!!
Most obvious seething tourist post I have ever seen on Cinemaphile lol
He will never recover from the authority and the unfunnies
why do you guys always need to build huge "SJW feminist" windmills to fight against and give your life purpose, why not do something good that helps the world for once
Why did people go after the retailer and call it feminisim?
You do realize that in this context the act of "going after retailers" consists of staying home, doing nothing, and saving your money?
That's actually really easy to do.
Not sure if you're on the same page. We're talking about actual comic book professionals in the industry here.
Wait. Who went after the retailer then?
>https://boundingintocomics.com/2023/12/06/comic-book-pros-mock-deny-complaints-from-veteran-shop-owner-regarding-abysmal-state-of-the-market-his-business-is-dying-because-he-refuses-to-change-with-the-times/
Hey Donny. Your hammer A SHIT
Try selling retailers hammers made of good metal, you fricking idiot
Donny still doing drugs I see.
These threads as bizarre. Like you have two issues, the retailers and the culture wars. Well we all know where you stand on the culture wars. But like the retailers, do you honestly care? So many people here pirate or don't even read comics. The odd one might support a good LCS. But the rest?
The silly thing about this whole retailer debate, especailly in the wake of that other controversy, is that these retailers are the ones propping up the industry that you all hate. It is bizarre that people also want to pretend like these businesses are a service. For every great shop there are 10 that are shit and don't deserve to survive, anymore than any other bad business.
If the shops crash and burn then you might actually get them to do something different. Ditch floppies and move towards book market? Actually make a good digital service?
>So many people here pirate or don't even read comics.
This is a good point. A lot of people openly brag about never paying for comics, and then wonder why publishers don't try to appeal to them.
I thought it was parent companies willing to take a loss that was propping shit up.
Shops are the real customers The only sales figures we get are not fully accurate but they are the sales figures to shops. Shops often over order certain books because of variant covers which sell for huge numbers. E.g. some of these 1 in a 100 variants sell to whales for crazy amounts. The shops are as much of an issue as the comics companies or distributors. What they choose to buy has a huge impact.
Blaming the LCS for the shortage of comic book sales is kind of like blaming a baker for a wheat famine.
I am not blaming shops for everything. There are hundreds of reasons at play here. But shops are a factor. If they over order a bad book just to get variants to sell to whale customers who only want the cover and not the content of the books, do you think that helps anything? More bad books get sold and more will get produced. They aim more stuff towards those customers not even reading books but who want variant covers. Unlike other industries these retailers and their choices matter far more than you realise.
My local shop has a great owner. His recommendations and knowledge are fantastic. He deserves to stay in business. The truth is, comics retail is incredibly difficult. You need that knowledge and enthusiasm. But so many shop owners were either enthusiasts or walking stereotypes. The kind of people who don't foster a relationship with a consumer to actually get them into things. No other modern retail really needs this relationship as much, it is almost archaic.
My walking distance LCS just closed. It had super motivated, passionate second generation ownership, a metro area with a lot of people, was at a transit stop, for the people who say it's only manga that can do it.
Except there is no famine or drought. There is tons of product to choose from. And plenty of it is good. The problem is the entitled type of fandom who want nothing but everything to be stuck in the 80s/90s/00s when they grew up in, and retailers who are lazy and have no interest in getting their customers to diversify what they read if they no longer care for cape comics, because their entire model is built on expecting the same people to come in every week to get the same comics they always do. And if a title doesn’t sell anymore then it’s because it went woke, obviously. But btw I just have to buy tons of stuff I can’t sell just to get that variant cover which I hope to re-sell for profit but is completely a gamble if I actually will be able to do that. But that’s good business!
>excuses that worked in the 90s and 00s but don't work now
>who want nothing but everything to be stuck in the 80s/90s/00s
People accepted change and progressing stories when those changes and the story progression were good. They've stopped accepting them when the change is nearly always the shocking revelation that a character sucks wiener now, or has a black doppleganger who happens to be better at everything except returning shopping carts. You people overcomplicate the simplest things. People want good stuff and reject bad stuff. Its a lesson that comics might have learned twenty years ago to avoid the death spiral they're trapped in now.
>People accepted change and progressing stories when those changes and the story progression were good.
Oh bullshit. People were mad over changes all the time and then two decades later you have an entire generation of younger people loving comics featuring those changes and ironically whining how all new stuff is bad because it’s changed from what they grew up with. Rinse and repeat.
People were mad over bad changes, and happy with positive changes. The industry succeeded when it responded sanely to this customer feedback, and began failing when it began refusing to accept this feedback.
There also isn't "an entire generation of younger people loving comics featuring those changes", because there isn't a generation of young comic fans. You can find corner cases, but the average age of a comic book reader is old and getting older, and it isn't because the source material is such high-end and mature story telling. They've become a very closed off, self referential and low-end medium that can only possibly appeal to a dwindling number of people who are so invested in the characters that it takes a tremendous amount of diversity garbage to drive them away. But drive them away they will with each passing year.
>All print media
Why are they buying printed manga? Its not the medium. In an era where EVERYONE watched the Avengers, it was easier to sell a manga about some fricking fox girl ninja falling through a portal than it was to sell a comic book about Iron Man.
>People were mad over bad changes, and happy with positive changes.
Oh frick off with this bullshit. People were fricking furious with Ben Reilly, Kyle Rayner, what have you and now you have entire generation loving that shit. Same way people were complaining about minority characters when they debuted and now people go WTF John Stewart is the best Green Lantern because I grew up watching him in a cartoon!
It’s always the same fricking OLD GOOD, NEW BAD mentality. If you published the original John Stewart or Rhodey as Iron Man stories today people would be whining about how the black characters are forcing propaganda down their throat and they’re obsessed with race. But because those comics were published decades ago they magically get a pass from people who think identity politics was invented yesterday and race, politics, religion, etc. never came up or were used in subtle ways in fiction until today when suddenly it’s a rampant problem because suddenly you actually can understand subtext and allegory and now it triggers you because apparently comics aren’t just two muscular homoerotic men punching each other for ten pages
>and now you have entire generation loving that shit
Once again, no you don't. You have a massively shrunken down audience composed entirely of the sort of people who would love anything and be nostalgic for anything, because those are the only people that could possibly remain in modern comics. What you're describing is a survivorship bias. "Marvel and DC did really dumb things, and now the only readers they have left is the tiny subset of original fans who liked it!" isn't quite the argument you think it is.
And your example continues today, I'm sure in ten years someone with an even lower IQ will be here to argue that Miles and Kamala were really good characters to bet the house on, because the 3,500 people left in America who still read comic books are really into them.
>OLD GOOD, NEW BAD
This is another fundamental problem - nothing you are describing is new. Nothing these companies do is new. "The exact same character, but gay" is not new. "Here's a BRAND NEW CHARACTER named spider-man who has spider powers and is a teenager...but BLACK wow!" is not new. We already had that guy, its literally from the 1960s.
Yea, you do. That’s how it works. Old fans hate new stuff, and are nostalgic about old stuff. New fans like new stuff and eventually turn into old fans whining about new stuff. The only problem we have now is that reading is something people do way less than before in general and they also have way worse reading comprehension skills (as we can witness every single day on this very board) so new readers are not being generated in the same numbers as they used to. And that has nothing to do with wokeness or how le everything sucks now. It’s everything to do with parents not reading and failing to get their kids to read, culture more and more being about video games and online stuff and watching stuff and not sitting down and reading. It’s also about economics. And bunch of other factors.
And this is all also a ow moving trend that has kept up for decades as more entertainment options have grown in numbers and become more accessible to people. In the 50s and 60s people read way more, were more articulate, novels were chic and shit people widely talked about in media. Today novels are shit you might see get a soft interview plug on a morning tv show or be mentioned when talking about the movie adaptation. Catch-22 would not be a cultural phenomenon today. Twilight and 50 shades of Grey wouldn’t have the same fame today and those aren’t that old. Because reading is going out of fashion.
The only reason manga is having better time is because it’s an accessory to anime, which is what people consume more. And that’s going to lose its popularity too, same way it did in the 00s during the first manga crash.
>New fans
There aren't any. Old fans hate new stuff because it's bad. Old fans like old stuff because they like remembering a time when the comics industry output was good enough to make someone a comicbook reader. It isn't magic. If someone started making new stuff that was actually readable, the few readers that remain would praise that instead, and certainly wouldn't look towards the wasteland of the last twenty years with any kind of nostalgia.
>people don't read
Then why are they reading manga? Because its an "accessory to anime"? Go ahead and show me the anime that pulls in an audience even half as large as the MCU. This last decade was the absolute peak of public awareness for major comic book IPs, but they couldn't do anything with it but meme dog shit like hood Thor and his "swagger".
I don't know what it is with the few comics readers left and this insane desire to reframe everything as "well this always happens, it'll be fine" in the face of such a massive, stark decline, like there hasn't been something pushing the audience out the door for so many years.
"Well, people didn't like this bone headed audience shrinking move thirty years ago, so a constant unending stream of even worse moves now is okay."
"Well, people just don't like print. Manga? Oh, they're only reading that because the cartoon is so popular, unlike the Avengers."
Insanity. It's like watching some fat guy standing in the last Blockbuster in the world and insisting this is just a phase. Is there any level of abject industry wide failure that you would notice?
>New fans don’t exist!
Come on.
>if you just made goo-
Just shut up. Old people literally refuse to like new stuff. They just hate it because it’s different. They are not being objective, they’re being fanboys. Fanboys hate new and different stuff even if it was of good quality. This is precisely why acclaimed b-list titles die all the time because the old guard chucklefricks will not support anything new from what they already read.
>Then why are they reading manga?
Many reasons. They function as trailers for future anime, essentially. Hence it’s exciting when you get to know in advance what the next season will do. Also they can be low on text, big on visuals so you can just sort of browse without really reading them. It’s also a popular cultural fad with young people, where as comics are considered lame.
>But MCU was huge
Yeah but comics are still lame because the culture considers it lame. That’s why you say Bro I love Thor! and they just
mean they like the movie Thor, aren’t at all interested in comics. Comics can’t be accessories to movie specifically because you can’t tell what is going to be adapted next. That’s why you see individual clearly marketed trades sell but nothing else will. It’s stupid bandwagon behaviour but people are stupid.
>Le Doom and Gloom
You can be a whiny b***h that just cry, or you can be an adult and admit that readership is declining and there isn’t a magic fix to it nor does scapegoating wokeness do anything. Jim Lee has spoken a lot about how his kids want manga and go to animecons and give a shit about US comics. And they can’t explain what would make them care about US comics, because it’s just “comics are lame”. Same way being a weeb was lame once. This is a cycle. Maybe comics won’t recover, then it won’t. The industry will just change and adapt. That’s how it works. Might as well be crying that vaudeville needs to come back.
>You can be a whiny b***h that just cry, or you can be an adult and admit that readership is declining and there isn’t a magic fix to it nor does scapegoating wokeness do anything.
hold the frick up. Because the comics pros were scapegoating the fricking retailer, and compeltely inventing political positions for him. Scapegoating chuds like quite a few professionals have been doing is at the very least equally ineffective, and probably worse.
The retailer that was complaining that comics don’t sell because the characterisation is off because it’s not just like whenever his arbitrary cutoff point for the characters is. Because the comics just aren’t good because everything is s bad now. Typical dumb bullshit.
Are you deliberately ignoring part where they MADE UP POLITICAL BULLSHIT about him?
It isn’t hard to make certain presumptions when he sounds exactly like specific kind of people.
So, what marketing firm are you from?
Completely shameless anon. The political shitposting isn't going to fix the industry, but the biggest source of it is from professionals in the industry.
>The political shitposting isn't going to fix the industry
But whining and blaming wokeness 24/7 as to why everything is bad will?
Unless WOKENESS is the actual problem. Nice try retreading what South Park said knowing they only shat on KK now that its "safe" to do so.
Now skip to the part where you misconstrued what "wokeness" is and claim "but manga is woke" when it isn't.
The first step is solving problems is to acknowledge that a problem exists, and to honestly discussion the origins and nature of said problem. If you can't do that, you'll never solve anything.
Wokeslop has undeniably been a driving force in comics for many years now. Marvel had a whole slate of characters that were Power Rangers diverse to take over for Spider-Man and Hulk and so on, and the result has been helping an already terminal industry into the grave. When these books don't sell, they just double down because wokeslop is the mission, and so sales get worse, and worse. If you can't see the direct connection between trying to bash everyone over the head with this shit and the general decline, I don't know what to tell you. I guess you can watch it get worse and worse and then be taken by surprise one day when publishing starts to draw down because their mega conglomerate owners don't see the point in an industry that pulls in less than the pretzel stand at Disneyworld. "Bu-but how can this be? What about all the new fans? There was nothing wrong and no problem at all, things were always like this, old people always hated comics, everything was fine!"
>The first step is solving problems is to acknowledge that a problem exists
People have talked about declining sales for decades. And everyone who isn’t obsessed with culture wars will acknowledge it’s very hard to just point to one thing when it’s far more complex. Yet here the conversation always just immediately boils down to GO WOKE GO BROKE finger pointing and raging how REAL FANS hate everything because it just sucks okay and if you don’t agree you’re a fake fan and manga is doing great because it’s not woke.
>Fake fans
Are a real problem in the internet age. Marketing firms trying to "control the narrative" hence why you REFUSE to admit that Wokeness is the problem.
https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/hbo-casey-bloys-secret-twitter-trolls-tv-critics-leaked-texts-lawsuit-the-idol-1234867722/
Bots lying about how everything is aokay because they are paid to lie. Makes perfect sense.
Yes, remember: any time I say I don’t like something and someone disagrees that person is a fake fan bot and I am always right about everything as I sit on my fat ass and complain that X-men is too woke now because Mystique and Destiny had a baby, just like what Chris Claremont wanted to do with Nightcrawler forty years ago, also known as the super woke Reagan era.
>Appeal to authority
>Pretends to care about Claremont
Yes, you are a super woke fake fan. We know. There was a reason Claremont didn't get his way back then...Cause the industry was much much better. Never mind that it wasn't Claremont but super woke Si Spurrier who wrote this retcon but details, details.
Terrible and goofy ideas that encapsulate exactly why it is so embarrassing for your peers to find out you read comics are okay, so long as someone proposed a version of that same terrible and goofy idea several decades ago and got rejected because it sounded awful.
Imagine defending the middle-aged man pouring out his gender-bending lesbian impregnation fantasies onto the page and at the same time pretending that people will stop thinking comics are lame.
>People have talked about declining sales for decades
Yes. And the problem has not only continued, but gotten far worse - not only is the decline still happening, the rate of decline is worsening. Yes, there are multiple things at play, nobody has denied that. But leaning so heavily on woke nonsense and doubling and tripling down on it, even in the face of collapsing sales, is undeniably one of those things. And yet you and people like you consistently deny it and pretend it doesn't exist, because you think your virtue as a person depends on you toeing the line and saying the words.
The conversation here drifts towards wokeness precisely because it is such a glaring, obvious issue, and is at the root cause of so many other issues. It isn't some gang stalking conspiracy where a bunch of evil nazis on the WRONG side of history woke up one morning, swore an oath to lucifer to NEVER trust the science, and then began posting lies on Cinemaphile about how woke comicbooks are. The reason you see such a huge number of people constantly bringing this issue up for several years is because it is an actual issue.
If anything, regulatory capture performed by political ideologues on the moderation staff of websites where these discussions take place have ensured that these remarks are artificially suppressed, and you're seeing them even less than you should be, because many of the gathering places for the few remaining comicbook fans will just ban you outright for suggesting that maybe "Hulk...but this time he's Asian!" wasn't the right move, no matter how bad the sales get.
>Yes. And the problem has not only continued, but gotten far worse - not only is the decline still happening, the rate of decline is worsening. Yes, there are multiple things at play, nobody has denied that.
>But leaning so heavily on woke nonsense
Removing woke shit won't fix these issues, which existed before that term and other words that have been used in its place. Wokeness didn't invent swapping a hero's identity to a fresh face to try and boost sales. It didn't invent doing 200 variant covers to focus the entire market on whales. It didn't invent the shit editorial turn tables where a team gets moved off a book before they can flesh out all their ideas. Ironically the left being pro job security would mean you're more likely to long lasting creative teams, like in manga. This would also mean less quick gimmicks to try and boost sales. While the right opposes any sort of power going to creatives, cause writers are woke so shouldn't have nice things.
That's the problem with the whole woke debate. You'll happily have a nice day in the foot if it means any kind of political victory. If comics were burning but lefties were upset then you'd take it as a win.
>Removing woke shit won't fix these issues
Removing woke shit will fix the issue of the comics being unreadable and embarrassing because of an overflow of woke shit, yes.
If you mean to say that removing woke shit won't fix the industry, I agree with you, as someone already said the ship has sunk and is about to hit the ocean floor, it's a little late for course corrections. The audience for comic books has been allowed to shrink so much that if the big two started publishing the highest quality comics you've ever seen it wouldn't matter, because who would even know? Nobody reads comics. I bet most under 20 have never even seen one in real life.
>Wokeness didn't invent swapping a hero's identity to a fresh face to try and boost sales
No, but it did invent swapping a hero's identity to fulfill a diversity quota and then bashing the reader over the head with it for a decade in lieu of any kind of interesting story. This is part of the reason you can't understand the problem and probably never will, you're so dedicated to the idea of denying that wokeness is a problem (or often that it even exists) that you'll reframe events in a dishonest light just to keep the lie going. Any honest outside observer knows full well what the context difference between Hal to Kyle vs Peter to Miles is, and so do you, but you need dishonest framing and feigned ignorance to keep up appearances. It's impossible to reason with someone that can retreat to their custom made faux-reality any time they're challenged.
>If comics were burning but lefties were upset then you'd take it as a win
I am a leftie. I support UBI, I supported gay marriage back when even Obama and Hillary wouldn't, etc. The comics are already burning, and wokester nu-leftists like yourself are largely holding the match. You'll deny reality until the industry is dead because your political identity and self image demand it as a matter of faith.
>I bet most under 20 have never even seen one in real life.
This. Showing a kid a comic today would be like showing them a VHS tape.
>comics are unreadable
They’re not. Maybe you just have bad reading skills.
ba dum tsh, upvotes to the left
No, if anything illiteracy might improve modern comics by removing the garbled fetsh fanfic and just letting the reader imagine a better story. At least the art is still sometimes good about a quarter of the time.
>but it did invent swapping a hero's identity to fulfill a diversity quota and then bashing the reader over the head with it for a decade in lieu of any kind of interesting story.
You really are a forest for the trees kind of guy. Its clear to everyone that identity swaps for sales boost is bad, and that its been done for ages. But instead of fighting that cause, we've just got to remove one of the many variations. This will not stop them doing it and likely be replaced with a whole new reason to still do it. You aren't interested in fixing problems, cause actual solutions like creative teams have more power is seen as woke.
>Removing woke shit will fix the issue of the comics being unreadable and embarrassing because of an overflow of woke shit, yes.
>If you mean to say that removing woke shit won't fix the industry, I agree
Well we didn't stop the house burning down, but we did put the bins out. Good job guys!
>Its clear to everyone that identity swaps for sales boost is bad
No, it isn't clear to everyone, there are people in this thread who have defended it because a wave of nonexistent new readers will suddenly emerge and remember these swaps nostalgically.
>cause actual solutions like creative teams have more power is seen as woke.
Because the creative teams are political obsessives who are themselves largely only there because of wokeslop marketing, because Marvel and DC think that promoting the identity of their writer and artist will be a winning strategy. I'm not particularly interested in giving even more power to some crazed hotep who exists purely so that Marvel can say "its the first time a black person has ever written anything, wow, buy our ooze!" with a straight face. Nor am I at all convinced that giving creative teams more power is anything but a moron having a giggle, because I've not seen any evidence of creative teams having even the slightest restriction in years. As
said, comics are stuck in a moron spiral of publishing shit and then publishing more shit to retcon and repair the old shit because nobody in editorial would say no. How much more power do they need? If shit like hood Thor and chicks-with-dicks lesbian impregnation fetish comics are getting published, what the hell are they saying no to?
Man someone people just can’t fricking get over a multiverse version of Thor that’s black or that a shapeshifter who might impregnate a woman. Truly far too outlandish and controversial ideas compared to… a shapeshifter getting pregnant or a horse alien being Thor.
Yeah, in a conversation about comics being a woke dumpster fire, they bring up two easy and egregious examples of it. Crazy.
Especially the one with the dick-chick lesbian impregnation fetish story being too stupid to publish before, but getting published now, illustrating the steep decline of the industry and its standards.
All it shows is that we aren’t in as conservative world anymore where you can’t show lesbians having a child together. As well as that Claremont was forty years ahead of his time when he wanted to do it.
And of course, we get to see the labour on page. Just what everybody wanted in superhero comics.
Any attempt at an industry reform would fail because it would be co-opted specifically by the the same liberal progressives who co-opt and water down leftist movements in general. Because that's what "woke" fundamentally is, corporate goons who sabotage opposition and are rewarded with middle management authority within the status quo. These people are not on your side, they don't care about your causes.
This is why I say you guys aren't really looking for solutions. No reform can happen they are all bad to the bone. We saw one person say this cash grab method was okay, so nothing can be done we'll just remove the woke version and let them continue doing it anyway. Having a consistent team on a book that aren't told they need to change something for a quick boost in sales would improve comics. It creates a format closer to manga where a long running story can be developed with a higher level of consistency in the world. That's an actual solution which could help develop a long running fan base. But your point of contention is just politics I like vs I don't. The same bad actions would've been taken over the last decade even if they weren't woke, cause it is down to structural issues in the industry.
>Having a consistent team on a book that aren't told they need to change something for a quick boost in sales would improve comics
If the team was made up of talented people with a story to tell that wasn't a remix of the same story everyone has been telling for two decades, yes. The political infestation of the industry ensures this won't be the case. You're imagining a separation between the issues, when the reality is that one is chained to the other. What exactly do you think someone like Bendis would do with a guaranteed ten year contract and a free hand? I think he'd probably publish more of his crazed black obsession and weird fetishes. Do you think he'd be replaced with a body snatcher and suddenly start writing good shit? Come on.
>If the team was made up of talented people with a story to tell that wasn't a remix of the same story everyone has been telling for two decades, yes.
So you can see this would be better for the industry, yet instinctively pushed against it. Talented people won't magically do good work in a bad environment, you have to fix the industry even if that means someone writing about black people also suffer less. Better standards will attract a higher level of talent who are put in a better state to do good work. However because people you hate politically might benefit from a better system too you don't want it to happen. Almost seems like your motivation is more political than wanting to fix the industry.
>So you can see this would be better for the industry, yet instinctively pushed against it.
I can see this would be better for the industry in a fantasy where the creative teams were highly competent and motivated to tell good stories, and then "pushed against it" by bringing you back to reality where the creative teams are insane wokest twitter addicts who want to write more stories about whatever new fetish they discovered in last night's porn binge. You saw this, and took it as an opportunity to continue pushing the dishonest framing that the people writing this garbage aren't to blame, and its simply the evil editors that are making them suck ass, despite there being zero sign of any editorial control at either of the big two for most of your life.
So because a good change may also benefit people you disagree with politically it shouldn't happen. Even though you won't attract more talented people to the industry without improving the work environment and they wouldn't be able to work at there best without such changes. You're either allergic to pursuing your actual goal, or never wanted comics to improve. The talented people will appear if no woke isn't a serious position.
>So because a good change may also benefit people you disagree with politically it shouldn't happen
Nobody has said that. You're so desperate to force this nonsensical point that you're just ignoring what the reply actually says and going with the pre-planned script you had.
I don't care that it benefits morons. I'm saying that it won't work, because it would only benefit morons, and because you haven't demonstrated any evidence that these creative teams are being muzzled by lack of editorial control in the first place. No serious person can look at the diarrhea that gets published today and tell me that they're leaving ANYTHING on the cutting room floor.
You don't understand, there's a whole army of unicorn writers who can't wait to work on comics for waitress wages.
I guess. The position seems to be that if we take the writers currently producing slop, who appear to have zero oversight, and give them the same characters and the same lack of oversight, they will stop churning out wads of hog shit and start churning out gold. Somehow.
>Nobody has said that.
You then go on to argue a good change shouldn't happen cause the woke people there still won't make good stuff. Entirely ignoring you won't attract talented people if working in the industry sucks. The industry won't see positive change until it is structurally improved in many regards. The politics of the staff really doesn't change that fact.
> waitress wages.
You really think woke people wouldn't also be pro higher wages? You guys really just can't fathom the idea of improving anything. Ironically all you know is identity politics.
You'd have a point if Hollywood writers didn't just strike to improve working conditions. A group woke as you can get. Now remind me what politic group opposed such changes?
The WGA, collectively, is not "woke". Come on now.
No you can't have every outrage farm go on about woke hollywood for years, to turn around and say a union fighting for better workers right isn't woke actually. Especially when everyone on the right opposed it for seemingly little other reason than its left wing. Same way the thread can't spend hours complaining about blacks and gays in comics, to then go no woke means people who oppose structural reform to benefit workers.
So writers individually are all woke but when they collectively bargain suddenly they aren’t work because… magic?
>You really think woke people wouldn't also be pro higher wages?
Nothing to do with what I said. Are you ESL? Pay attention, conversation on this board is such a fricking drag anymore because for every post you need three more just trying to explain English.
>You then go on to argue
Something totally different than the argument you've been pretending I made, yes. Try to respond to what people are saying, not what you planned for them to say so you could have your shower argument zinger moment.
>The politics of the staff really doesn't change that fact.
It does, in very clear and easy to see ways that you can't acknowledge because that would make you an apostate. Comics can't pay, because comics can't sell, and comics can't sell because the quality is garbage, and the quality is garbage primarily because of year after year of "same character - but sucks dicks now, holy moly!" being pushed as the height of creativity. "It's ALL NEW ALL DIFFERENT guys, the same characters that we literally didn't even bother to give new super names to, but now they're D I V E R S E, buy yours now!" and then nobody did.
They aren't going to give out million dollar salaries to writers producing slop so bad that the entire industry gets outsold by local food trucks, nor should they, nor will the current crop of writers walk into a phone booth and SHAZAM! themselves into competent people because they got more money. What is your thesis, Bendis is sitting there, he decides he isn't getting his fair share, "well shit...guess I have to write cuck porn now, I mean there's no choice!" but if he got an extra 0 his entire writing style and world outlook would change? All these outside writers would flock to this dying industry that has been a refugee camp for people too untalented to do anything else for decades?
For as much incoherent ranting as you've done about people ignoring the issue for the sake of politics, this really seems like something you haven't thought much very about and just see as an excuse to say something-something-seize-the-means-of-production. Your brain gets about as far as realizing there's a long-running quality problem, but then it just seizes up and can't track the problem any further back than that.
The problem with getting focused on inclusivity pushes like All New All Different is that it ignores (or actively refuses to acknowledge) the reality that those were desperation moves to try and save ships that were already sinking. I agree that most of those diversity moves sucked but comics had sucked *before* then for a while too.
You go before the stuff this board seethes about and you get One More Day, or Civil War, or Ultimatum. Big moronic crossover events that did more harm than good to narratives. You get stuff like New 52, a poorly planned half assed line reboot that pleased no one and utterly failed at what it set out to do.
I agree that wokeslop is just one more turd for the pile. But it IS on the pile, as much as people want to deny that it even exists.
>were desperation moves to try and save ships that were already sinking
Nah they were just earning that ESG money, thinking reader money would keep coming too.
>You get stuff like New 52, a poorly planned half assed line reboot that pleased no one and utterly failed at what it set out to do.
It set out to do more of DilDio's moronation, which no one really asked for.
>The problem with getting focused on inclusivity pushes like All New All Different is that it ignores (or actively refuses to acknowledge) the reality that those were desperation moves to try and save ships that were already sinking.
This is nonsense. Sales were going up year by year. ANAD flatlined the growth.
>The year they started including manga
Next you'll show the chart where they started putting in Crowdfunded books to hide how things were dropping.
Comic book stores were not selling manga issues.
And guess what happened after what D'Orazio described as the Trump-Giant-Squid moment, they started dying while book store sales went up. It was an intentional murder by direct market-hating editors.
>Comic book stores were not selling manga
The absolute cope. FYI, Manga Tankobon gets rolled into Graphic Novels as they are just Trade Paperbacks.
Here are the US manga sales from that time period. It was considered dead. The resurgence only happened in the last few years.
>Can't argue against it
Comic book shops carry manga. They'd be stupid not to. No Comic book shop just carries comic books. Even when comics were big, they've always carried (among other things) manga.
>Casually glances at Steel Angel Kurumi sitting on the shelf
>the reality that those were desperation moves to try and save ships that were already sinking
Can we at least acknowledge, with hindsight, that their efforts amounted to poking more holes in the ship?
No, they were cauterizing the wounds in the wooden ship!
>Can we at least acknowledge,
Considering the amount of time dedicated to it is ten times that of every other problem. I'd say we not only have but to the point it has become a distraction from solving the source problems. They'll just start chasing another demo with poorly conceived reboots and events.
>I'd say we not only have but to the point it has become a distraction from solving the source problems
I think it's only a distraction in the sense that getting the powers that be to change their minds is a fruitless endeavor. But we're not retailers (I assume). We as individuals have the luxury to stop reading and move on to something else, and it seems many have. For comic shops, it's no so simple. This is a conflict they cannot avoid. They really don't have another fight.
>I think it's only a distraction in the sense that getting the powers that be to change their minds is a fruitless endeavor.
No its a distraction cause it won't change the trajectory of comics. Stop this trend and they'll go okay we need lots of kids heroes and age appropriate stories with no blood or violence. Or go nostalgia is the thing, lets copy a load of old stories again. I don't want another flavour of shit just cause this one particularly upsets certain people.
>I don't want another flavour of shit just cause this one particularly upsets certain people.
Would you accept changing flavors because there's a chance this one might be chocolate instead of shit, or are you content with eating shit for fear of it coming from a different butthole?
>because there's a chance this one might be chocolate
This isn't a chance issue cause we lived through it. There have been constant attempts to stay relevant through poorly thought out lets reboot our universe again or break this couple up. Your telling no this time it won't be shit, gays didn't work but we're gonna do Iron Manverse and it'll be amazing! I don't believe you. Get them to sort their shit out instead of a new gimmick.
Selling them a new magic bullet isn't any kinder. It means you're no better than the ones telling them we made everyone brown and it'll save your shop.
>Selling them a new magic bullet isn't any kinder
Getting publishers and creators to acknowledge they have a product problem is not "selling a magic bullet." That's incredibly reductive.
>to acknowledge they have a product problem
Acknowledgement means frick all if they're going do the same mistake in a different way. I want the problem solved at the root, to stop trend chasing. An apology won't save a single shop. The conversation being dominated by that and not what pricing and amount of content we should expect is why things will never improve.
>stop trend chasing
Capeshit has always been about trend chasing.
When the war efforts were hot we had Superman slapping a jap. When blaxploitation was starting to become trendy, we had the boom of black super heroes. When everything had to be super xtreeeeme, we had the '90s. Identity politics are the bandwagon they jumped for the mid-ish '10s to right now.
There's always been weak aspects of the industry we'd be better off fixing. No one looks back at the height of war propaganda in comics as the best story telling around. Its a habit the industry would benefit from breaking.
Good stories will fail if the deal is bad. Yet you seem set on changing the content and pushing into certain doom. Long as you get your apology. This is why one topic dominating the majority of the conversation, rather than being a broader discussion of the industry looks so disingenuous.
NTA, but nothing you say makes any sense and comes off like some kind of AI gibberish. "Good stories will fail if the deal is bad"...no, the average reader has no idea if the deal is good or bad, and they don't care, they just want a good story. How are you solving the captcha?
>no, the average reader has no idea if the deal is good or bad
People don't read the comic before buying. They look at the price tag and how many pages they'll get. Then realise how the manga on the other shelf is a better deal. It isn't complicated, you're pretty dim if you think only an AI could figure that out.
>I don't care for an apology from anyone.
Well its what I was responding to. Jumping in cause you really want to discuss this one issue proves my point really. Its an obsession that blinds you from the bigger issues.
>It's only dominating this particular discussion
It dominates them all. But him going for that instead of the myriad of other issues is a sign of how broken the discussion has become. There is an industry of telling them if they stop this form of pandering everything will get better. An easy straight forward solution. A comfort that your failing business just rests on this. Not that there may have to be wide scale change in the industry.
>everyone goes to the book store and carefully works out the page per dollar before mindlessly selecting "the best deal"
lmao. This is hardcore autism or someone pretending.
Not even that anon but what's so weird about what he said? If you look at Wells' Amazing Spider-Man, besides it being a dumpster fire (apparently propped up by variants), most issues you get through in around five minutes. Are you really going to go "b-but it's Spidey" or are you going to add 4 bucks more or something and pick a manga?
(I don't live in the US so I'm not too sure how manga is priced there. Given the page count, I'd imagine they cost a little more than floppies)
I'm not the anon you're responding to either, but there are people who make that choice. Otherwise all of western comics would be gone by now, because manga has had this price advantage for a decade and a half. Obviously, some people are willing to pay the premium for comics. I'm not among them, but I can't dismiss their reasons or their existence.
And that's the crux of the industry's problem right now. Publishers and creators are dismissing real problems that are growing more apparent by the day.
That's really the point, honestly. Cape comics are already too damn niche despite cape movies being the face of action flicks (and just now beginning to deflate), and this whole "we can and should charge premium!" outlook doesn't do anyone favors. It just makes sure to keep things insular and the same people in charge.
But they do have large corporations financing their increasingly niche operation, so everyone can just whistle and pretend nothing is even slightly off whatsoever.
>"we can and should charge premium!" outlook doesn't do anyone favors
No, this is not about choosing to charge a premium price. *They don't have a choice.* They're charging this price to survive.
They wouldn't have to if there were more people reading.
More people would still be reading if they weren't driven away by divisive content. This isn't rocket science, man.
Even if we accept your view comics are overpriced and being held back by that, what is the point of continuing the current editorial vision? Either you serve a niche audience, or an even more niche audience?
That's a whole lot less about me advocating for continuing "current editorial vision" and more that the current model is unsustainable. Of course, that's far reaching into where the product is even offered and whatnot.
>That's a whole lot less about me advocating for continuing "current editorial vision" and more that the current model is unsustainable
No market outside of human needs for food and shelter is sustainable indefinitely. Just because it's finite doesn't mean there's a real consideration for prolonging it as much as possible. I also believe the comic industry will be completely replaced. That doesn't mean the current discussion about content and how that has adversely affected the industry shouldn't be had. Not only for the people currently in it, but for those who will replace it.
If we want to extend things a little more, if we want to make things a little more sustainable, then improving the content will do that. And when companies are under less strain, that's when they can improve pricing. This is practically every product.
Prices have been high for a while, though, and ad space probably pays for most of the publishing. Some people think the comics are kept as just an IP farm for the more profitable stuff like movies and toys, the high prices might be to pretend sales are fine.
Or in Marvel's case, maybe it's Ike doing what he does best.
>People don't read the comic before buying.
Cinemaphile literally does
I doubt it. Nothing will make you less likely to buy a comic than reading it first and realizing how bad it is.
>what's so weird about what he said
The inhuman nature of it that betrays a total lack of understanding of how normal people go about the world and make decisions. If you're literally looking at the page count before you decide to spend $4, you're either a poor third world brown or some weirdo Moms are telling their kids to stay away from.
People buy books that look interesting to them. 24 pages for $4.10 or 28 pages for $4.20 isn't something that crosses their mind, because they're neurotypical functional humans.
>I doubt it. Nothing will make you less likely to buy a comic than reading it first and realizing how bad it is.
Well duh. People will buy it after reading only if it's good, obviously.
I think you're just describing someone who wants to take good care of their money. If you'd like to throw in charged descriptions, be my guest. Tends to poorly reflect on people making points, though.
But I can and have refrained from picking stuff from franchises I like because "price be damned, I need it". My funds aren't a bottomless sink.
Comics are overpriced because they're garbage, but they're nowhere near the price point where people start to actually think about the money involved. Again, if you think working out the page-per-dollar is some kind of normal activity, you're a poor brown, some kid too young to be here who's buying comics with his allowance, or unironically have severe and crippling autism.
Normal people say "oh look, Spider-Man, cool cover" and pick it up on the extremely rare occasion that they buy a comic at all. Even the broken down unemployed neets that infest this site would probably not bother with penny pinching to the degree you describe.
They're also a continuous medium, where one month directly leads into the next one. More often than not, every 2 weeks, because the companies want that revenue stream. I don't see anything too outlandish here for someone to say "I better keep these 10 bucks to myself because things aren't THAT good" here. Eventual one pff purchases do not empires make.
If I were to try to frame things the same way you do, I'd probably throw something like "sounds like you're better off than most people and never realized it", but that would be very reductive.
>neurotypical neurotypical neurotypical
definitely glad you learned a new word recently, but unfortunately repeating ad nauseaum doesn't make you look smart. kinda has the opposite effect tbqh
Its a pretty common word when discussing people with the sort of severe autism that makes them fret over $0.10 and start counting the pages in comic magazines while mothers nervously tell their kids not to stare.
Paid by who? The comics industry can't afford a cup of coffee.
That's because you're functionally illiterate. It's more like:
>Yes, comics are absolute shit.
>No, I don't spend money on them because they're absolute shit.
>No, they aren't failing because they're a dime too high.
Comics are available for free online and people still don't read them. They've had free comic day for ages, and people don't bother, because you literally can't give comics away. Do you understand? Comics are undesirable when they literally cost nothing, a price so low even an incompetent moron like yourself can afford it. It's not a price problem. It's already priced well below the threshold where neurotypical (there's that word again, uh oh!) people even notice the expense and register it as more than a candy bar and a coffee.
You people are always desperate to find some silver bullet that will fix comics but not acknowledge that they're just trash now. There isn't one - they're just trash now. People don't buy them because they're trash now. They don't read them even for free because - you guessed it - they're trash now.
>
Its a pretty common word when discussing people with the sort of severe autism that makes them fret over $0.10 and start counting the pages in comic magazines while mothers nervously tell their kids not to stare.
cool, if you abuse it any more you'll definitely convince me you didn't learn it recently. (even more so anyway)
Okay, thanks for the tip. Convincing a moron who can't Cinemaphile properly and sounds like he stands outside barnes and noble with a styrofoam cup begging for enough change to afford the latest issue of DEI Man is very important to me.
Sike! Just kidding. You come off as really autistic and not neurotypical at all.
>Jumping in cause you really want to discuss this one issue proves my point really
No, you're just putting words in people's mouths and making strawmen. I started with "can we acknowledge the people in charge have only sunken the ship faster."
Can they acknowledge what they're doing right now is not working? Can you at least say that?
>Can they acknowledge what they're doing right now is not working? Can you at least say that?
They could and it'd change nothing cause the issues are much deeper. You just want a small political win.
People constantly bring up how manga is a better deal. People don't like good deals is a strange hill to die on and goes against trends.
>People constantly
People here are self selected for the last remaining comic fans on Earth, and are usually desperate for an answer that doesn't just boil down to "comics are absolutely awful".
People love deals, when they actually matter. Real neurotypical people also don't put a lot of thought into purchases at the level of a comic book, because it is a miniscule amount. This must seem alien to neets and pajeets, but it's true, gainfully employed adults have no idea how much their starbucks coffee costs. You have unironic hardcore autism.
Paid shill?
>Yes, comics are absolute shit and must change!
>But I love spending so much cash on them and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
This guy seems very confused
No, I'M confused. Can't tell what's supposed to be his stance, I think he just needs his meds.
>You just want a small political win.
So you think retailers simply pointing out current comics sell poorly most be some sort of political machination? Seems to me you're the one who is disingenuously attaching politics to comics.
He can't help it. He's built like a time bomb to destroy anything he sets himself to, and he's proud of it.
I think people get suckered in by silly political narratives to make complex issues more easy to handle. If we make all our comics political it'll reach a new audience, its cause these comics are political that my store is dying. Really the industry needs large scale change. The current flavour of trend ruining/saving comics is just that, a flavour.
>Long as you get your apology.
I don't care for an apology from anyone. I'm on the pro-drop all comics side, because pamphlets are a bad business. We're only having this discussion now because retailers are starting to acknowledge problems. For me, this is purely academic.
It seems to me you're the one who's being disingenuous by trying to shut down a discussion that, at least for retailers, has only come out into the open recently. First with Phil Boyle, and now this Glenn guy.
>This is why one topic dominating the majority of the conversation
It's only dominating this particular discussion because that's what the publishers and the creators attacked the guy on, even though he did not mention wokeness. He complained about self inserts. He also complained about constant reboots, but no one has addressed that, preferring to attack the guy's store with no factual basis, along with his looks.
>The conversation being dominated by that and not what pricing and amount of content we should expect
Those are ancillary problems caused by the lack of interest in the content they're peddling. With interest comes pricing flexibility. This is the natural course of most products. If they are to fix things, content is where to start.
I understand your point, but you're speaking as someone who is already out of comics. Like I said, retailers, at least the ones who want the domestic market to continue in some way, cannot take that view. It is defeatist. It is hopeless. The only alternative, and this is actually something I promoted earlier in the thread, is that retailers get out of comics altogether. That's the rational solution. That's the easy solution. But for those who do not accept that outcome, this conversation will continue. There is no other "source problem", as you put it, that should be prioritized.
>is that retailers get out of comics altogether.
If by getting out of comics you mean simply buying less DC and Marvel and more manga and moving on to current popular things like Dog Man, Invincible, Scott Pilgrim and Homestuck then yeah they should
Yes, in this context I use comics only to refer to the western pamphlet. It's what this retailer was talking about. It's what the participants in this shit-flinging fest produce. Conflating everything as comics is a slight of hand by certain parts of the media to create a false narrative.
My point is that "woke" exists to prevent reform because it's something fostered by the corporations themselves. I get that you want the large publishers to drop their bad practices and treat creatives better, but you clearly understand that corporations are fundamentally hierarchical for explicit purpose of exploiting labor, which includes not respecting creative integrity. Labor movements and more ethical competition tries to challenge this, but this is where "woke" comes in. It's a new, and a more sophisticated tool of sabotaging opposition. It masquerades as a good cause but the point is that pro-corporate yes-men hijack and derail criticism and the real problems go unaddressed. It should alert you that Marvel/DC have replaced their old creatives and editorials with these types, the people who had beef with pay/deadlines/interference/etc. have left and while the sales are worse tha ever the company leadership is happy because the employees are compliant. Personally I think companies like that are beyond saving and their deaths should be accelerated... except they are owned by megacorporations and wield disproportionate power because of it. You can compete against them, but they will outspend and kneecap you, and the general trend is to extort the competition to be absorbed by the clique in exchange for money and connections. Sooner or later you find your good intentions taken over by the corporate goons and you've become what you tried to destroy, because you think "woke" is just something invented by nazi incels.
Maybe I shouldn't use the term "woke" since it's so contested but tl;dr there's definitely a phenomenon of companies countering demands for better working conditions by replacing everyone with backstabbing bootlickers who nominally espouse some feelgood agenda to give the impression that our charitable masters are addressing the REAL issues.
Man, it must be really frustrating to have Shonen Jump existence make your entire political propaganda look like a schizo rant.
It's funny because in a previous thread someone desperately tried to claim the retailer was part of the poltical culture war and yet couldn't provide an example from his videos
>>New fans don’t exist!
>Come on.
Anyone who can look at the sales trends from 2000 to today and come away thinking there are "new fans" is an insane moron. When you have 100 customers, and then one day you have 25 customers, you aren't adding new customers.
There are no new fans. "Old people refuse to like new stuff" because the new stuff is garbage, hence why there are no new fans and sales are constantly going the wrong way. You are a moron to think "trailer for future anime" is some kind of selling point, but "trailer for future MCU" somehow couldn't sell an issue of Iron Man in 2015. The culture considers comics lame because they are lame, because they have been publishing an incredible decline in quality at the exact moment anyone would have bothered to look at them.
Your posts are filled with extreme anger and just a general denial of reality. I'm not sure you even understand that the comics business is in decline, you act like nothing is wrong. I can't reason with someone like you, because your response is to just retreat into a fictional dreamworld. Maybe part of the problem is that someone like you is running the duopoly and making it hard to adequately respond to the market.
Comic stores would probably be completely dead by now if they weren't selling manga.
Just how popular ARE Kyle Fricking Rayner and John Stewart? Ben Reilly has his fans, but it's a big leap to claim he's all that popular or that anyone would want him as Spider-Man.
Neither one can carry an ongoing.
Kyle did for years. And it was great. I generally like Johns, and the book was even good, but bringing back Hal was a mistake.
And so did Wally West, but currently? No chance.
>Insanity. It's like watching some fat guy standing in the last Blockbuster in the world and insisting this is just a phase. Is there any level of abject industry wide failure that you would notice?
They've got no answer, just more of the same.
Original X-Factor where they're pretending to be mutant hunters is the dumbest shit. Louise Simonson worked a fricking miracle.
Wally has had an ongoing for the past couple of years.
Yeah, there are loads of decent to good books on the shelves feom smaller publishers. You're probably right to a degree about the audience, but I am that demographic and I already get those books. I don't want to be too reductive but seems like this discussion is really about the doldrums of the big corpos.
>and have no interest in getting their customers to diversify what they read if they no longer care for cape comics
The problem is the comics pipeline is blocked. It is hard to get people to actually read different things. There are like different types of entrenched consumers.
>the comics pipeline is blocked
What the frick does this even mean?
>It’s hard to get people to try different things
Maybe the fanbase should actually start to accept that and do some self reflection instead of immediately going FRICK YOU MAN I’M JUST GONNA READ MANGA INSTEAD OF THIS WOKE SHIT the second they read something they don’t like.
>What the frick does this even mean?
You get someone into x which leads them to y which leads them to z. It is a pipeline and journey into the medium. The problem is the discussion around comics, particularly in the mainstream online can be rather basic and rather than being a pipeline it becomes a dead end.
>Someone wants to read comics, they read Watchmen and nothing else.
>Someone wants to read Batman they might read a couple comics off the same recommended lists and nothing else. So the same few evergreen books like Batman Year One sell, and nothing else.
>Some people want to buy Batman and Detective comics, no matter the quality of the current run, nothing else.
A good shop owner might be like, oh you read Watchmen, maybe check out other Alan Moore stuff like Swamp Thing. Or you liked this genre, try that. The problem is that comics are a niche product and the discussion online about them is often rather surface level and basic. So people consume the same things and end up at dead ends in the medium.
>Maybe the fanbase should actually start to accept that
People get defenseive because they feel like the things they love and ruined even though in the past bad runs happened all the time. The problem is the heightened feeling of the culture war. Fan attitudes are so entrenched here. The issue is most of them don't seem to actually enjoy the medium beyond the capeshit.
I'm a casual, so I'm going to believe you without investigation. It seems completely nuts that the comics pros would go after the retailers like this then.
In 2017 something similar happened. At the time you had a bunch of diverse characters coming up and A-list characters sidelined. Sales had dropped. In 2017 there was a Marvel Retailer Summit. The shop owners let Marvel have it:
>"I don't want you guys doing that stuff," he said of political content. "I want you to entertain. That's the job. One of my customers even said the other day he wants to get stories and doesn’t mind a message, but he doesn't want to be beaten over the head with these things."
>Initially, Marvel VP of Sales David Gabriel said: "We saw the sales of any character that was diverse, any character that was new, our female characters, anything that was not a core Marvel character, people were turning their nose up against."
>But later he changed this: "Discussed candidly by some of the retailers at the summit, we heard that some were not happy with the false abandonment of the core Marvel heroes and, contrary to what some said about characters “not working,” the sticking factor and popularity for a majority of these new titles and characters like Squirrel Girl, Ms. Marvel, The Mighty Thor, Spider-Gwen, Miles Morales, and Moon Girl, continue to prove that our fans and retailers ARE excited about these new heroes. And let me be clear, our new heroes are not going anywhere! We are proud and excited to keep introducing unique characters that reflect new voices and new experiences into the Marvel Universe and pair them with our iconic heroes.
>"We have also been hearing from stores that welcome and champion our new characters and titles and want more! They've invigorated their own customer base and helped them grow their stores because of it. So we're getting both sides of the story and the only upcoming change we're making is to ensure we don't lose focus of our core heroes."
Retailers literally let them have it. And Marvel did bring back some of the A-listers and do some legacy numbering in response to their concerns. But also doubled down.
>I don't want you guys doing that stuff," he said of political content. "I want you to entertain
Can someone post that one Bullpen post from the sixties or seventies, where Stan Lee himself cheerfully dismisses a person writing in with a similar complaint?
Or maybe the story about Bill Gaines on the phone on the subject matter of the last EC Comic he ever published?
There's this absolutely psychotic drive to completely defang comics politically, when this kind of shit goes back to Jerry Siegel, sitting down and writing what he'd do if he had the strength of ten men, if he was strong enough to hold bigots, exploiters and reckless drivers responsible for their actions.
You can basically find reader letters from any decade where there’s also angry buttholes whining about the current generation of young people being degenerate slobs ruining everything. The best ones are the oldest where they’re whining that kids today don’t want to work 24/7 and just want to listen to jazz records or women wearing practical clothes than don’t cover every part of their body under several layers like in the 19th century is a sign of loose morals and society falling.
It isn’t that long that people were complaining that kids today just want to eat avocado toast, can’t work hard, and that is why nobody has any money, because they’re all just lazy.
It’s actually kinda amazing that there’s an entire generation of butthurt men now in their 20s who sound exactly like the people who whined about them playing too much video games and being too politically correct because they didn’t believe Obama was a Muslim terrorist who was born in Africa and Michelle was actually a man who has had a sex change.
>You can basically find reader letters from any decade
My favourite is this one. Kurt Busiek was a big fan of the OG X-Men (Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Beast, Angel, and Iceman) and hated the reboot (Cyclops, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Storm, Thunderbird, Banshee, and Wolverine). He hated the Dark Phoenix Saga too. Then he got into comics, became a writer and helped push for the OG team to reform in X-Factor and to resurrect Jean Grey.
>He hated the Dark Phoenix Saga too. Then he got into comics, became a writer and helped push for the OG team to reform in X-Factor and to resurrect Jean Grey.
B-B-BASED
>Frick this, I'm gonna work in comics just to fix this bullshit
Early X-Factor was shit though. And resurrecting Jean Grey was bullshit too.
>Early X-Factor was shit though.
It gave an option for fans of the O5, at least. Overall it was a positive thing.
>And resurrecting Jean Grey was bullshit too.
Jean fans would beg to differ, I'm sure. Turning her into a galaxy-genociding lunatic wasn't a good move to begin with.
Also, we got the 90s Scott & Jean marriage status quo, which was peak X-Men.
>It gave an option for fans of the O5, at least. Overall it was a positive thing.
It fricked up Cyclops character development (pic related).
OG X-men was cancelled and turned into a reprint book. Roy Thomas and Neal Adams run of issues at the end had a sales boost. Marvel only got the sales info collated after time. They decided later to reboot it as an internationalist team for more appeal. Len Wein and Dave wienerrum did Giant Size X-Men #1. Then Claremont's run became one of the most celebrated runs ever, in part due to his building of the characters and storylines. X-Factor pretty much shit on that building of storylines. The increasing amount of X-Men spin-offs only damaged what Claremont had built X-men into.
>Jean fans would beg to differ, I'm sure. Turning her into a galaxy-genociding lunatic wasn't a good move to begin with.
And yet it is one of the most classic X-Men stories that is still celebrated today.
>Also, we got the 90s Scott & Jean marriage status quo, which was peak X-Men.
Yeah but we also got the excesses of the 90s. Jim Lee helped force out Claremont (then Jim Lee went to Image anyway) and went back to the status quo of Magneto as a villain, undoing all that character work, and more Shi'ar stuff since he enjoyed it. Sure it sold but it hit a peak and eXtreme 90s stuff became a mess.
Claremont just wanted to retire Cyclops, who was in the center of the whole X-Men mythos from the start. He did what he wanted, and got upset by people who didn't like it.
As much as I love Claremont's run, which is where I started reading anyway, it's far from perfect and shouldn't be a sacred cow over what was there before, either. Hell if X-Men Forever is anything close to what he really wanted to do in the 90s, we should be glad he didn't have it his way.
>Claremont just wanted to retire Cyclops
That's a common misconception. He didn't want to fully retire him, he would have still been around. Having him just leave was a mistake that did damage the character.
>it's far from perfect
True. Siege Perilous is something I still find fricking bizarre. But it is also true to point out that it was built into this huge thing by him and is one of the longest runs ever for a reason.
>and shouldn't be a sacred cow over what was there before
Earlier X-Men didn't sell, hence why it was cancelled. He built X-Men into the biggest book at Marvel. The cashing in of OG X-Men didn't even last because X-Factor ended up going through a bunch of different iterations anyway.
>Hell if X-Men Forever is anything close to what he really wanted to do in the 90s, we should be glad he didn't have it his way.
I consider taking X-Men Forever as definitive, "What he would have done," as dubious. Stuff was changed a lot for a variety of reasons and him mulling over ideas over the years hardly makes it full reliable as what he would have done in the past. Look at a character like Sinister. One Classic X-Men back up story he made wanted to imply that Sinister was actually a child mutant making the character of Sinister. Or the conflicted origins of Gambit; at one point he was going to be just Sinister or perhaps even another Summers brother. Those 90s storylines were all up in the air and landed in all kinds of different places.
X-Men Forever is what he decided to do after 20 years, no editorial interference, and changing plans because Millar used a similar idea (in Enemy of the State) that he had
If he had done the death of Wolverine back in the 90s, Logan would've survived because they still needed to keep the ongoing going.
>It gave an option for fans of the O5
Early X-Factor was really fricking bad. They have them pretending to be mutant hunters. It was really fricking stilted and only picked up when you got Apocalypse and Archangel.
>They have them pretending to be mutant hunters.
I know, it kinda make sense for me.
>Siege Perilous is something I still find fricking bizarre.
Yes
>I consider taking X-Men Forever as definitive, "What he would have done," as dubious.
That's why I said "if X-Men Forever is anything close to what he really wanted to do in the 90s", he even had Tony Stark as a villain, which was very much a post-Civil War thing, and used the Black Panther and Storm marriage as well. There were a lot of other bizarre choices like killing off Wolverine and replacing him with Sabretooth, which I have no idea if he would have done if editorial allowed it.
As for X-Factor using the O5, it's not like they were getting used in X-Men, so no harm in using them for a few years in another book for whatever fans there were. Most of them were in... Defenders? Champions? which just ended at the time (with Moondragon ALSO getting Dark Phoenix'd. Seriously, that was a bad trend).
>It’s actually kinda amazing that there’s an entire generation of butthurt men now in their 20s who sound exactly like the people
The saddest part is how genuinely performative their nostalgia is. Its all kids these days are playing the bad video games, not like the PS2 where sometimes Soul Calibur 3 just bricked your memory card. Although culture moves faster these days in many ways there aren't that many big leaps. Going from 50s pulp comics to 90s edge would be quite the cultural shock. Going from shit 00s Spider-man to shit 20s Spider-man is a cultural shrug at most. People seem desperate for this imagined generational difference to fight over even when they know it is fake.
Quality has always been the issue. I just find it funny how David Gabriel pretty much admitted that those comics didn't sell and then completely back tracked on this comments.
I think comics are terminally ill. If Marvel and DC started publishing the best stories ever told in the history of humanity tomorrow, it wouldn't make a difference because nobody is reading. They've let the industry shrink so much that is has achieved a sort of anti-critical-mass where they'll never escape being this self referential thing for an always shrinking audience of more and more insufferable people. The time to save comics was years ago when the MCU was hitting its peak, and Marvel (and DC) instead decided that this was the time to push such creative and financially successful ideas as "same hero....but black and gay, wow!". As things stand now, there are probably erotic Carol/Kamala fanfics that have more readership than even the biggest comics.
That said, I wish him the best. I'd love to be wrong, and for him to save the industry in a way that it is actually worth saving.
No
After last week's storytime, i've gained a greater respect for Millar.
He is not saving comics though LOL..
All print media is dyeing. Comics are just dyeing faster than most due to agenda pushing and "Outrage Marketing". Marvel is a pestilent boil on the ass of Disney that only gets prodded as disney shits out a new movie. DC is in the same boat.
Shit is fricked and cant recover. Comics are already dead and this is just the last twitches of its corpse before it finally gives up the ghost.
First, he has to learn how to write non-shit comics. Once he masters that, the sky's the limit.
We just need to team up together and make a market where troons and gays are gatekeep out of it.
If he couldn’t save hip hop, why would he save comics?
>It's time to have a grown up conversation
>NAMASTE!!!
So are you a grown up or not, Mark?
This is clearly a bot
Anyway, I don't think DC or Marvel care about "quality" cause they know they can keep milking collectors who only care about Spiderman and Batman. Unfortunately for them, the "muh mantel" arguments aren't working and the collectors let Miles and Jace die in a ditch.
what manga does better is keep the same author/artist throughout the characters journey. I'm tired of most comics switching the artist/author after only 3-6 issues. Cause then they act like they have to reintroduce them and reset the stakes.
This is a really good point - when you read an old Claremont comic for example the characters felt fully fleshed out, because Claremont had a part in creating or defining most of the characters over a significant period of time. You knew how Storm or Wolverine "sounded". Now all the characters seem interchangeable or one note, stories are disposable, new characters are constantly being created with no time to breathe... It's hard to have a quality vision and focus with so many cooks in the kitchen
>stories are disposable
Stories are always disposable
Changing writers is not really a huge issue, several great series had a dozen of different writers
The problem is how Marvel diversity of titles is nothing but an illusion, reading 20 Marvel comics is no more diversified than reading 20 Warhammer40k novels, it's still the same franchise with the same messages and style.
Reading every Marvel comic is no different than reading every Star Wars expanded universe novel, you are not a comic fan who knows a lot about the medium you are an obsessed Marvel cultist and a casual who read only one story over and over. Buying only big 2 is killing american comics.
What are the woke comics?
Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. What is happening in those books, and to be generous include Detective and Action Comics, that is woke? Three Jon back up stories? As far as I can remember the JLA has been the classic team until they disbanded recently. The Titans are the premiere team (in theory) and they're just the Wolfman/Perez team with no changes
So at Marvel you get the X-Men sure.
Avengers has been Jason Aaron movie roster until this year. Now the current roster is all classic members with Carol as the leader and Sam as Cap. Has there been any noticeable changes. Steve has had a Cap book for the past few years and is getting a new push with a big name writer. Iron Man has been Tony since 2020. For Thor Jane has only had guest appeared or been in secondary books for the past few years.
>Pretends to not know what woke is
This guy
totally called it.
Always a language game with these people. Can't discuss ideas, so we'll just redefine words or pretend concepts don't exist.
Its hard to tell honestly. Super heroes were always kind of left leaning. Before becoming a propaganda figure, Superman in the golden age looked like a anarchist that hated war and guns. Then you have Captain America, who after being a propaganda figure, was reimagined as a man who fight for the american dream and not the governement.
Hell, Iron Man was made to be a right leaning superhero to go against that trend.
With DC and Marvel I'm just over their convoluted lore. I can't care anymore. It doesn't feel like I'm reading anything that matters. I'd be okay with a full on reboot of both, but I have zero confidence it would matter or stick and in a few years all the lore would become just as convoluted again. Then if I try to go look at indie comics it is all just people trying to do pitches for TV shows or movies where I don't feel like there is anything that interesting being done.
>It doesn't feel like I'm reading anything that matters
Nothing matters. If someone dies, they'll be brought back. If someone is married, they'll be broken up. If someone is traditionally married but now they're separated, they'll be brought back together. Writers are given unlimited freedom to do anything that comes to mind, and that usually amounts to killing characters they don't like and pursuing their tumblr ships. Then the next writer comes in and reverses it out so the IP is brought back to a stasis point that is in line with the new movie. Rinse and repeat forever. Weak editorial, bad writers, alternate universes, retcons, all of it has made it so that nothing is must-read. There is literally nothing you could write that would merit more attention that looking at a scan posted here, because I know to an absolute certainty that it won't mean dick. Batman went crazy and fricked Alfred to death? Catwoman literally ate Damien? Aunt May got telepathic powers and Cyclops got caught fricking her two hours later? Oh well, there's a big never before seen mega super crossover event in six months, and none of that shit happened.
This is an "I've outgrown Marvel and DC" issue, which is fine, but they shouldn't change to appease people who outgrew them. DC was trucking along mostly fine for over 60 years, Marvel for over 40.
There is little else to read of any quality. Yes, I've read comics that aren't from the big two, but that doesn't make it okay for the big two to be horrible, and it doesn't make being horrible some intrinsic property of the big two. There was a time when they both had the discipline to just let Gwen and Jason be dead.
>There is little else to read of any quality
Lmao, this is the EXACT same shit that happens at /tg/, people thinking that DnD is somehow superior to everything else quality wise when it's just a bunch of bootleg characters written by a bunch of literal who writers with awful art full of stolen traced images from google, it's so similar it's not even funny.
Okay?
If comics are in such a poor state that I have to make it my full time job trying to find a decent one, then it isn't worth it. The truth is that the people who defend modern comics tend to have really low standards, and will put forward anything as good simply because they don't know any better, or because they have a desperate need to believe that the industry is just overflowing with quality and so everything will be fine. Over the years, I've probably put far more effort into looking for comics than I've ever had to put into finding good TV, good films, good games, good music, and the results have been far worse and steadily declining. I'd love for the medium to be healthy, but it simply isn't.
You’re being an entitled child who expects everything good to be dropped directly to your lap.
>There is little else to read of any quality.
This is always such utter bs. Anyone who says this is just being lazy. Even on the offhand that literally everything new being published is bad doesn’t change the fact you have century’s worth of media to explore. What you’re actually saying is you can’t be bothered to put any effort to looking for stuff you might like. Or you barely have any real variety of what you consume.
>but that doesn't make it okay for the big two to be horrible
Why are you even insisting on those 2 companies whose comics have been a joke for more than 20 years now rather than simply forgetting them and reading other comics? At this point crying over it no longer makes any sense, you should be laughing at them instead and stop expecting anything to ever change, Marvel and DC are awful companies that release nothing but awful comics and they want to stay like that because they are lazy and want easy money.
How many people have to outgrow Marvel and DC before you recognize it as an issue?
Because arguably we've reached a nadir where even people that never read comics are familiar with the tropes (go ahead and get triggered by the word and dismiss this post) that
points out, so they never onboard in the first place. Then when the existing readership ages out or fricking *dies* because many of them are over 40 now and that's a concern, you get the line going down.
I don't get how declining viewership of al ong running show like the Simpsons can be dismissed as it being past its prime and general audiences are tired of it, but when superheroes that have been around for 3 times as long have declining readership it must be for some other reason. After all, telling the same stories with the same characters a thousand times? That's evergreen! People love that!
But this is the cycle of comics, this is the proud decades long tradition that KEEPS everyone reading! These characters are built to last :^)
>even people that never read comics are familiar with the tropes
Not that anon. A trope is a pretty large concept. What do you consider tropes? Conventions of basic heroic stories? Classical story structure and writing concepts? "Traditional" morals?
I'm not sure you can blame the tropes, rather than the age of the IPs themselves. Tropes are tropes because people like them. One might even call them an expectation. It's the specific characters and storylines that people may be tired of. In that case, modern Marvel and DC really have the worst of both worlds: subverting tropes people like, while using characters that are stale.
Outgrowing comics used to be a normal part of growing up. It was the weirdos who kept reading them into their 20s.
>I don't get how declining viewership of al ong running show like the Simpsons can be dismissed as it being past its prime and general audiences are tired of it, but when superheroes that have been around for 3 times as long have declining readership it must be for some other reason. After all, telling the same stories with the same characters a thousand times? That's evergreen! People love that!
The Marvel movies over the past decade have made loads of money. People are getting tired of them now, but that's on account of oversaturation thanks to all the tv shows and declining quality.
Have you tried not reading Marvel?
We are in the exact same situation as /tg/ where everybody b***h at Dungeons and Dragons and treat it like the entire medium rather than playing other games.
Similar situation where D&D has over 50% market share and the next closest is like 10%.
>Aunt May got telepathic powers and Cyclops got caught fricking her two hours later
There's no saving comics when 95%+ of the editors and writers at the two biggest comic companies have an active interest in destroying them to rebuild them in their image. Either the people at the top would have to clean house or Millar would have to build up a company as big as they are to compete with them which would be a huge undertaking and at high risk for failure (the big two have a massive advantage when it comes to recognizable characters, and early Image's attempt at competing with them in the superhero space was a flash in the pan because their concepts were pretty lousy and quickly dated).
The problem is that the paltry amount of space that bookstores and libraries started to give comics in the 2000s is shrinking to the point of near disappearance. It's half a shelf, and being caught looking at it is like getting caught looking for porn. It's entirely possible that this legitimately is their plan, but it's a really stupid plan if so.
There's unlimited shelf-space at Amazon.
Where they've been selling since at least 2006. Have the sales skyrocketed? Have they even remained flat?
If the plan has shifted from killing comic shops for the sake of the bookstores now rejecting them to killing comic shops for the sake of a website where they're buried and not selling, I don't know if that is any better.
Like D'Orazio said, selling isn't the point. As long as they get paid, they don't care what the sales are. They're just tired of dealing with the icky comic book fans and don't want them as an audience anymore.
>Have the sales skyrocketed? Have they even remained flat?
Before anyone comes in with stats, there's sort of a reverse undercount bias with comics sales data from the likes of ICv2 and Comichron that gives the illusion of a growing comics market, which they deliberately created by gradually expanding the kinds of things they counted as comics. Kids graphic novels and manga are relatively recent additions. I seem to recall there being a minor debate over whether Diary of a Wimpy Kid is a graphic novel at all the year they started including that in the stats.
Looking at dollar amounts is also unreliable as a way to gauge audience size, because comic prices, especially recently, have grown much faster than inflation. In fact it signals audience decline - raising prices to make up for lost readers.
To get a realistic picture of how comics are doing, we have to look at the data, and the methodology, and consider anecdotal evidence and make some subjective observations. What is the mood among creators? What is the pay like at the big 2? There's a lot of room for conjecture here, and it's likely why much of the mainstream comics media cabal and many current writers are trying to present a united front. They want to moderate perception and impose narratives, even as some of these same creators beg for rent money on gofundmes.
I think you’re right in that this plan is blowing up in their faces. The decided to go all-in on libraries at a time when libraries had really big graphic novel sections. Now they’re all stocking far fewer books (and converting to lower shelving that allows greater visibility thanks to schizos, bums and hooligans, which halves the number of books they can store). This is what’s going on in my area anyway.
Not to mention wondering IF those bookstores would want to give them more space, after seeing how that worked out for specialized stores.
Is there a way to make comic sales from the direct market more transparent? I know that bookstores have the NPD BookScan, but is there a way to have something like that for comic shops?
wokeness and racism/sexism against white men is whats killing comics
until someone adresses it nothing will change
And pray tell how do you personally experience racism/sexism in all comics today?
together with boomer comic creators? kek
its fricking impossible for boomers to make comics for zoomers reading manga. millennials worship only woke garbage or else read manga sometimes, so they cant be the target audience either.
That Zdarsky shill is desperate.
>this thread
tl;dr: Cinemaphile knows NOTHING about business.
Well why don't you tell us, Mr. Monopoly?
YOU'LL GET MORE SALES WHEN YOU FIX THIS DAMN DOOR!
IT WILL BE OUT WHEN IT'S OUT
Maybe
Killing the most moronic thread on Cinemaphile rn
>he got cucked out of the last bump
Lose forever.
Salvation for the industry lies with Todd McFarlane, Robert Kirkman, and Mark Millar in that they have ZERO connection to the rot in Marvel and DC.
When the shitty people (mostly Disney) finally kill Spider-man, Superman, and Batman, we'll get an industry that isn't pure trash. Until then, I'll continue watching the woke shills play defense for giant megacorps who use them like $5 prostitutes with a $5 off coupon.
Kids today love anime so much even their girl's trends are about looking and acting like some kind of anime/pixar hybrid on tiktok. Buff realistic men and square jawed women as the face of your product is never ever going to sell with them ever. Forget any arguments about woke, the visual direction dooms it from the start. Kids don't even pick up your rags to see the woke stuff inside in the first place that people here point fingers at. Superheroes are synonymous with ugly and boring unless it's My Hero Academia. Every other complaint about comics is from people who already read comics. People who don't read comics have no idea about anything discussed itt