https://www.comicsbeat.com/tilting-at-windmills-297-bookscan-2023-comics-sales-sag-but-scholastic-was-still-a-powerhouse/
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Comic sales severely declined in 2023
https://www.comicsbeat.com/tilting-at-windmills-297-bookscan-2023-comics-sales-sag-but-scholastic-was-still-a-powerhouse/
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Javins and Lee are directly to blame for how bad DC is doing though…
No, there was way more than just them, and most of the problems came from Pre-Zaslav WB and Zaslav WB themselves affecting things
You sound moronic. Lee had been destroying DC since 2011 with Didio. Zaslav literally has NOTHING to do with their ills.
But you did half assembly stumble upon some form of truth because Diane Nelson was installed by WB and absolutely killed DC forevermore with the new 52.
Surely their narrow focus on superhero stories, endless rehashing of the same characters, and status quo dependent crossover continuity between stories has nothing to do with why their market appeal is so small.
Every time DC has tried to offer more genres, especially in the past fifteen years, fandom just goes “no thanks I want more Batman, could I pay more for a Batman comic?” and said non-cape books get cancelled due to low sales.
They're being compared in OP to Scholastic. Fandom might want more Batman but fandom are not the whole of the available market.
because they only offer monthly floppies in semeny comic book shops. they cancel said floppies after 2 issues have hit the shelves. they will never get a sleeper hit that brings in any new audience with this strategy, they will just keep milking whatever demographic of morons still buys floppies.
>duuurrrr they never sold them in trades
>they just cancel everything in two issues
Making up shit doesn’t make your case true.
>lowest sales since 2004
Time for another Rebirth.
We live in the darkest timeline where instead of Tomasi and Geoff at the helm it's fricking Jim Lee.
Jim Lee is just a competent artist, and even then i would argue he actually has limitations that would get called out if he was a painter and not a medium fish in a bowl of mediocre fishes
His stories always sucked ass
>and even then i would argue he actually has limitations that would get called out if he was a painter and not a medium fish in a bowl of mediocre fishes
His work is very stiff. Even during his peak in the 90s.
Never trust artists with money. There's a reason 95% of them are broke and have patreons
I haven't even read the thread and I already know it's going to be anons pointing out the obvious fact that politics killed American comics and industry shills and bots dishonestly claiming it's something else.
Too late. Nothing can reverse the decline at this point. It's been over for years. They need to stop publishing.
Oh gee, just what capeshit needs, MORE EVENTS AND RESTARTS. Fricking moronic capeshitters.
>marvel comics and dc comics will die in your lifetime
How do you feel?
I’ve felt nothing but searing contempt since Didio and Lee brought Bendis in to kill Superman. I truly hope the company is torn to shreds and sold off in pieces by zaslav.
Good. They weren't my comics and they weren't my properties, and they will disappear into the aether for something that speaks to me better.
the periodical market yes, that may die and its dying already
but Marvel and DC as an IP factory? that lives forever as long as they have multinational with deep pockets like Disney paying for it
Nah, we have copyright reform coming through in the Senate now, and the new antitrust movement is bipartisan this time. The really impressive thing is not the collapse of Marvel or DC, but the potential Mouse and Warner have of it within a decade.
you don't have any reform coming through that would change the terms of the Berne convention, so unless those timings are going up, not coming down, no change is happening
the US is not going to pull out of a lucrative international agreement and shit on its own producers when nobody else is willing to do so
You vastly underestimate the degree to which America can annihilate its producers and not care about international law. The literal moment there's political will we'll lash all the Mary Barra girlbosses to the cross and nobody will care.
It's funny how Disney pissed off Republicans now, and with how Dems already hated copyrights and want old IPs to go into public domain, they kind of fricked themselves.
It's one of the most hilarious own goals in recent American history, up there with Democrats deciding to support Iraq unanimously and Republicans hitching themselves to the corpse brigade that was Trump's 2016 run. I don't think those lobby groups really understood that the moment that Republicans were no longer cashing their checks nobody was coming to save them. Sure, there are hypocrites and Kerry flip floppers for now like Massie and Vance, but the longer we go into the 2020s with this frothing anti-woke wave the fewer of those there will be. America has fully reawakened as a progressive force and nobody comprehends that yet.
They don't really have anywhere else to go now, because this is happening in the South as well. It turns out that if you erode the hokey small town gangster social fabric of a region and replace it with Chipotle and Costco chimpouts you end up with people who know exactly who you are all in the same place. I mean, frick, are they going to go to India or China? Countries that have native protectionist industries and left-wing media willing to skewer them because they're allowed to do that to foreigners? It's the end of the line.
>but Marvel and DC as an IP factory
IM SO SICK OF YOU moronS SAYING THIS. THE IP WAS FARMED WHEN THEY BOUGHT THE FRICKING COMPANIES.
Well you should be just as tired of hearing that DC and Marvel are dying. Even the article in the OP says sales for DC were as bad as 20 years ago and they bounced back. It's all one big cycle. There's still new movies, shows, games, and more being made.
>I’m a paid shill and/or semi moronic
I accept your concession
If anything your post sounds like a concession because you have no actual response.
>n-n-no you
Kek your further concession is accepted
>There's still new movies, shows, games, and more being made.
And all the movies and games released in the last few years have been absolute box office bombs halving the Disney and WBD stock value.
It's over bro. Wake up.
>posts a picture of a character about to appear in a sequel to a well received film
Sometimes it's fun to see morons like you act like you understand what people want.
>Doesn't recognize where the picture is from.
You exposed yourself.
>specifically mention the character
>brings up something completely unrelated
Really? Sales figures told you people don't want more Joker?
>Sometimes it's fun to see morons like you act like you understand what people want.
Sales figures tell us people didn’t want what they put out. You’re just saying “the house will be fine” over and over while flames engulf you.
>bro the live service games in current year are failures
Wow it's almost like the live service bubble burst years ago and the stragglers found out the hard way. You should see what happened to Square already.
>Even the article in the OP says sales for DC were as bad as 20 years ago and they bounced back. It's all one big cycle.
What comics do they have that are going to revive their sales? Everything they’ve made for the last 5-6 years has been REVILED
>There's still new movies, shows, games, and more being made.
Those have nothing to do with comic sales you coping homosexual
>What comics do they have that are going to revive their sales? Everything they’ve made for the last 5-6 years has been REVILED
Have you just gotten into comics? Shit happens all the time. Did you think DC was doing well after Convergence? No because they were in the dumpster. All their comics sold like shit. Marvel went through the same thing with their ANAD 2 shit that led to Alonso stepping down because he fricked up that badly. You people need to stop reacting to stuff like it's the end of the world. Been there and done that.
>Have you just gotten into comics? Shit happens all the time
Lol anon it’s cute of you to project your own shortcomings on to me but 5000 dollars worth of comics from the last 20 years of collecting is all the confidence I need.
Their sales have quite literally never been this bad, both in the book market and direct market.
samegayging to point out that you didn’t answer my question.
Let’s try again.
What comics do they have that are going to revive their sales?
And back then comics were the ONLY thing on the market, this is why they kept bouncing back, that and them being cheap enough that there would always be stupid kids paying for shit comics.
Now with the comics rising in price, kids having tons and tons of content to melt their brain to AND manga suddenly getting huge means comics are genuinely in deep shit, they have actual competition, and yet they are still acting as if they can charge 5 bucks for a floppy when you can get a whole manga volume for just a bit more
>but Marvel and DC as an IP factory? that lives forever
There's no point in running an IP factory that isn't making any money. Anime and video games are flooding the marketing with new IP:s that makes Superman seem as relevant as Popeye the Sailor.
Disney isn't as rich as it used to be. Big companies run mostly on collateral and investments, with little in the way of reserve liquidity.
Not only is Disney not as powerful as they used to be but between two hideous CEOs, Iger and Chapek, the Disney Theme Parks have suffered monumentally and I mean worse than simply scandals like Splash Mountain's change or the Genie app. And next year in Florida Disney has to fight Nintendo's theme park. Disney's nightmare is only going to strengthen.
And as we all know Disney's safety net is their theme park. And if Iger or his replacement keeps fricking up the theme park game over for Disney I can see Comcast EATING Disney as an example.
It will have the same fall into obscurity the sunday comics did years ago. Significantly less impact on media outside of a few old big names. But even then that will have less importance to later generations
>that lives forever as long as they have multinational with deep pockets like Disney paying for it
Sure but the IP will eventually mutate into pure Toy IP and forget its comic book roots completely with this pace. Spider-Man and Hulk toys still sell like hotcakes.
Pretty good, actually. It's actually the healthiest thing that can happen to American comics as a whole.
It's true they'll keep making movies and games and whatever else about these characters. There's something sad about how comic book characters aren't known for comics anymore, though. It's proof that even the strongest American characters can't survive decades of woke writing.
This is part of the natural life cycle of any scene, and it's the other way around. The "woke" writing is an attempt at broader casual appeal, because the core demographic is not financially lucrative enough.
That's not what happens.
1. Something gets popular.
2. Eventually it declines.
3. It tries to renew itself.
4. Sometimes it works [if so repeat 2 - 4].
5. Eventually it fails.
6. Now they need money from investors.
7. Make woke content so they can get a high ESG score.
8. Loses its identity and because part of the wokeslop.
9. Sales plummet.
10. Closes down.
This is why manga works, because it ends. And if it's still popular after the ending it may get a Part 2 if the writer has another story to tell.
>the virgin x-men
>"Uh so the newest villain is, get this, Mr. Sinister...BUT HE'S ROKO'S BASILISK TOO!! And he exists outside space and time, but he still needs this one timeline Moira exists in to maintain his existence because shut up"
>allegedly one of the highest selling comic book titles
>The Chad Dragon Ball Super
>"Goku turns a new colour, his new enemy is so strong that he's stronger than time, and after that he fights Frieza who has become ungodly powerful by donning blackface"
>Sells out entire fricking stadiums in Mexico
>.BUT HE'S ROKO'S BASILISK TOO!!
Stop watching moronic Youtubers chasing clout by making unrelated references, Enigma has nothing to do with Roko's Basilisk.
Roko's Basilisk is a creepypasta of an AI that would forever torture anyone who knew about it and didn't actively help in its development. And it only got popular because a mod freaked out about it and closed deleted the thread.
Enigma was an AI created to fight of a future alien invasion, and it may or may not go rogue.
>Enigma was an AI created to fight of a future alien invasion
I actually did read the books. So I'm aware it's Sinister's attempt to bootstrap himself into godhood before the Dominions can harvest Earth by cloning himself (and his wife) and cucking them all out of their own separate Dominion plans, and I'm aware this has somehow made him into the omniverse-level threat the Beyonders tried and failed to get control of in Defenders: Beyond. And. AND.
Based on the fact that he can't just instantly snap the X-Men out of existence with a thought, he is an absolutely pathetic specimen of a cosmic threat.
So what does this have to do with Roko's Basilisk? Nothing, absolutely nothing.
It's a poorly explained meme evil AI from the future with an interest in the past.
Well yeah, that's my point. Somehow, with far less effort Dragon Ball created an objectively more marketable product going by sales figures.
All thanks to old man Toriyama's napkin doodles.
>It's a poorly explained meme evil AI from the future with an interest in the past.
You're reaching, when Skynet was right there.
>It's a poorly explained meme evil AI from the future with an interest in the past.
Enigma isn't from the future. We literally saw it come into being, and there's nothing to suggest that it's interested in the past.
The only reason you're making the connection is because you heard an idiot Youtuber make the connection because fake trivia gets views. He probably didn't even read the story himself, and instead watched Rob's video on it that came out a month earlier.
Dragon Ball is based however.
You're using the ESG buzzword to describe a much older and more general phenomenon.
1. Cool creatives create something cool.
2. Fans are attracted to cool thing.
3. Casuals are attracted to cool thing.
4. Enough casuals are attracted to cool thing that suits smell money.
5. Cool thing is altered by suits to better appeal to casuals to make more money.
6. Cool thing loses what makes it cool.
7. Casuals abandon no-longer-cool thing.
8. Suits abandon no-longer-profitable thing.
9. Fans left in the ashes.
This is every scene ever.
You don't seem to understand the concept of "serialization". It's not meant to "end", you literal autist.
I think it might be you who doesn't understand that concept.
Good. That’s what they get for putting out shitty propaganda
The comics part is the only part that will die.
If the movies continue to flop I doubt we'll see any more of them. I mean we don't get any more Transformers movies.
Good
Depends entirely on whether the parent companies will kill the Comics completely or license them out to other publishers like DC planned to do with Marvel in the 80s before Crisis sold so well
Thank God
Pretty great. They should have been dead after the shit they pulled in the 90s but there's no redeeming them now.
Schoolastic isn't playing fair, but the fact that the biggest fricking comic publishers with characters known by a majority of the literate world can't fricking sell comics to anyone is a sign that they deserve to die.
>marvel comics and dc comics will die in your lifetime
They already died. The corpses are starting to smell, their makeup and wigs are disheveled, but the whole industry is dead to me, it all died in 2016. It's sad. I've seen the death of Toys R Us, Arcades, and comics.
I talked about this a while back with a few friends and it feels like what's actually happening is the larger 10s geek culture wave is just.. limping, outside of weaboo culture. It got a 15 minutes of fame before the tropes got old.
why should i care? I'm not their target audience anymore.
SOMEONE WASN'T AROUND IN THE LATE 90S........
Fricking children....
>SOMEONE WASN'T AROUND IN THE LATE 90S........
>Fricking children....
This mindset is what helped contribute to the new generation of kids not giving a frick about the medium and it only being a thing for dorks.
What’s crazy about anime and manga is even tho it was considered very niche and even tho the fandom is made up of very passionate people that can sometimes feel scary to a newcomer, it’s not elitist, unlike comics
Anime and manga has huge numbers of different properties to read/watch so if you enjoy one it feels more like you just enjoy a thing. With comics it's so centralized into a few tiny IPs that you end up feeling like you're a fan of "the medium itself" and that mentality subconsciously leads to more gatekeeping.
Anime/manga absolutely is elitist.
only if you're western
Try going on Cinemaphile. Anime and manga fandoms are WAY more elitist than comics.
Nah, Cinemaphile is more elitist. Cinemaphile will not accuse you for not having read the story if you forget parts or details, they will just call you a speedreader.
And yet you're here, on a website for people in their twenties.
Pathetic grandpa.
I thought this site was for geriatrics, if you're in your 20s you shouldn't be here. It's not too late to save yourself.
>SOMEONE WASN'T AROUND IN THE LATE 90S........
I was. It was nothing like it is today. You can't seriously compare the two eras. Things also rebounded in the '00s because there was a concentrated effort to lure back fans. Today, nobody will acknowledge the deep rot infesting modern comics, and the fact that the movies aren't creating tons of new fans (Like every Batman film from 89-90's did) is deeply telling.
>on a website for people in their twenties.
We're the generation that started this website, you think you simply get it handed to you you snot nosed whelp? Remember, YOU'RE HERE FOREVER. That includes those that came before you, child.
>you think you simply get it handed to you you snot nosed whelp?
Kings made tombs more splendid than the houses of the living and counted the names of their descent dearer than the names of their sons. Childless lords sat in aged halls musing on heraldry or in high, cold towers asking questions of the stars.
Culture has stagnated because of you, enjoy the ruin you have worked so hard for.
>Culture has stagnated because of you, enjoy the ruin you have worked so hard for.
No, culture has literally stagnated because of YOU and your generation's willingness to accept and consume slop.
The unshakeable truth. Just look what's become of the video game industry.
>Just look what's become of the video game industry.
God, how sad. Then they b***h about the state of it while playing the slop anyway. Vidya is a bluepill that keeps them in the Matrix dreaming their lives away anyway, so what would you expect of sheep?
>the movies aren't creating tons of new fans (Like every Batman film from 89-90's did)
Not true. Only the first Burton Batman film had any positive effect on sales. The others more likely actually hurt sales, though that could have easily been coincidental timing, but they certainly didn't help.
>bullshit cope
Sure kid, whatever.
Look up actual sales, dumbass.
Maybe they'll finally release a competitor to Mangaplus, if they think ads will be enough.
Or a 'Netflix of Comics' if they think subscriptions will be better.
They have too big of a catalog for so much of it to be behind a million paywalls.
Either way, something has to give. And dropping the shilling to whales in the physical market is part of that.
Put together more single storyline trade compilations too. The Knightfall+Azrael compilations, for example, makes for a great package, but before that point was spread across a dozen sources that you had to track down individually. And there are a lot of other storylines that are in a worse place than that today.
Comics stopped mattering ages ago. I’m surprised people still won’t them go despite how unimportant they are. It has zero effect on how I enjoy the characters in the movies etc.
Do you want to know how I feel I feel like tr ons are truly my biggest allies destroying marvel, DC, Disney and all the other awful corporations owned by J ws that I spent my entire life watching screw artists and destroy the competition with the dirtiest tactics
I hope this expands into destroying the fast food industry, social media and all the other evils in the world
WOF is cute.
>company that basically monopolized federal & state level govt deals massive outsells everything
>i'm supposed to be surprised
glad to know indies outsell the big two, as it should be.
Scholastic also knows how to place things and advertise.
better than Disney? doubt it.
Disney has never been able to sell print outside of the 50s and 60s. They thrive only on their movies, which makes all of these acquisitions moronic and short sighted.
Every grade school I know of has 'Scholastic Book Fairs' where children are encouraged to beg their parents for money to buy Captain Underpants and whatever art book on dragons and zombies they re-released that year.
Not that anon, but Scholastic shares profits with schools. It's essentially a fundraiser, of questionable ethics on the part of schools, and perhaps only a step or two above multilevel marketing.
At the very least, their performance should not be compared with other publishers. They're not playing the same game.
Its all money in the bank, either way.
That you don't see series aimed at younger audiences like Marvel Adventures Spiderman in contexts like that is a pure failure to play the game right.
You know how many kids would have loved to read about Peter and Chat? If only the books were advertised to them like Diary of a Wimpy Kid was.
I meant to reply to
Anyway, it is money in the bank. The point though is that the difference is not in marketing prowess, but business model. Scholastic has a great business model with a captive audience. It's also not replicable by other companies, so it's not really all that helpful to study them.
That said, is there a free market business model that Marvel and DC can look to? We kind of know the answer.
And, you know, Scholastic actually gets new readers to buy their books unlike the Big 2 who are over reliant on the again collectors market. I don't know a single Gen Z or Gen Alpha who reads Marvel or DC comics.
>unlike the Big 2 who are over reliant on the again collectors market
Not in the bookstore sector. I’d argue, as I have for years, they need to stop collecting almost any of their ongoings and need to start focusing on OGNs.
Ongoings can go back to being written for that format by and for people who don’t give a frick about trade sales and the book market can be satiated by 4 or 5 monthly OGN releases.
But that's what I'm saying, pivoting towards selling OGNs would be pivoting away from collectors. For clarification, I'm talking about people who collect the floppies, exclusive variant covers, gimmick issues, that sort of thing.
>For clarification, I'm talking about people who collect the floppies, exclusive variant covers, gimmick issues, that sort of thing.
I’m well aware moron.
What you’re saying is leave that behind which is moronic. I’m saying split the two lines. Floppies are still their biggest revenue generator, cutting them completely would kill them.
The problem with their sales approach is they want to double dip. OGN readers don’t like the same shit as direct market readers (as you would call, erroneously, “collectors”). If they stopped making it so ongoings needed to be written for trades then quality and sales would improve. It would last force them to make more OGNs that aren’t just collected ongoings and thus they wouldn’t have the attrition problem. If people miss out on volume one of a trade collection they won’t buy the subsequent ones. OGNs/paperbacks should be one shots.
Anon, I'm saying the same thing as you. Such a pivot would have to be done gradually but purposefully
Then just say the words
>yeah you’re right I agree
>thing slightly increases sales artificially
>artificial sales boost dips
The only effect it has on sales is inflating the totals, having them is a bad investment from the company standpoint but it isn’t effecting sales negatively which is why it isn’t worth bringing up, let alone as much as morons like to do so.
>Then just say the words
>yeah you’re right I agree
Why are you being so confrontational? Are you on your period? I already told you I agreed with you
Variants have nothing to do with poor sales. Stop bringing it up as if it matters in any way shape or form.
Variants were an easy way to squeeze more money out of collectors/comic shops but now that money's tight and the pool of collectors is getting smaller and smaller, variants won't be enough to make up for fundamental weaknesses in how DC and Marvel are currently run
Yeah, they make it too hostile to kids because it's only collectors that think floppies (a dead format) are worth it, and the trade paperbacks are expensive too. Going to a smaller more book or tankobon style format and pushing that with kids would pay off as long as you have actual hits, which would be easy enough with the money you'd be saving in printing plus the scale of massive expansion.
I think you could still sell floppies to kids if you can get the price back to under a dollar, but that would probably require cheaper paper or maybe even a return to Black and White along with necessarily massive scale to make up for the lower per-unit margins
>I think you could still sell floppies to kids if you can get the price back to under a dollar, but that would probably require cheaper paper or maybe even a return to Black and White along with necessarily massive scale to make up for the lower per-unit margins
This is the most moronic thing I’ve ever seen said.
Every consumer good has been effected by absurd inflation just this last four years. Not to mention color printing would save less than a dollar per unit.
I genuinely can’t imagine being so moronic to type what you just did. Nothing costs less than a dollar lol
the version of shonen jump I picked up in kiosk is printed on toilet paper with what seems like a water stain and costs $2 for like 800 pages of comic
Floppies are a dead letter. Magazines (like they do for manga) actually work when you cram them full of stuff, and anthologies work better in that format. Archie still sells, and people still buy The Sun/People for some godforsaken reason in spite of itself. The best way to make this work in the digital age is to have a few free stories and previews published online, plus subscriptions and mail orders up front. Even fanzines can be easily sustainable if you have enough people buying them, and DC and Marvel have major reach that they let stay fallow.
>Archie still sells
It really doesn’t and all those things really are is miscellaneous reprints, so you don’t have to pay for anything except the reprinting costs. Meanwhile original material being created costs a lot.
>Going to a smaller more book or tankobon style format and pushing that with kids would pay off
They did this in the mid-2000s and it quite literally saved the books they did it with that weren't miniseries (Runaways, Spider-Girl, Sentinel) from cancellation. Spider-GIrl and Runaways got relaunched, Sentinel got a second volume/miniseries to wrap up its story. Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane got an ongoing because the Mary Jane digest-sized collections did well. So naturally they stopped doing them.
Yeaaaaah.
Frick I think about the school fairs we used to have in elementary school. I wouldn’t be surprised if Scholastic had a hand in making that a thing. You will always find their stuff decorating the kids section in Barnes and Nobles and even your local library with Captain Underpants and Dog Man standees.
And yes as this anon pointed out
the big two mostly rely on hardcore fans and collectors, rarely do I see a kid in the comics isle of a Barnes and Nobles, in fact kids mostly read indie stuff from what I’ve seen, and of course they are always in the manga isle
>I wouldn’t be surprised if Scholastic had a hand in making that a thing
They were literally called scholastic book fairs anon…
Kids grow up reading American graphic novels, but once they get into middle school or high school they want something different. I see a lot of what I call librarian comics that are the things librarians and teachers buy that they think kids should be reading but they look boring as shit so kids go read edgy action manga.
This is why I find it funny when people are like
>Marvel and DC should do more KIDS comics!
and then it's always the safest, corniest crap no kid over 9 would want to actually read.
Yeah, manga is very popular with kids due to a very grassroots interest in them. Stories that don't talk down to them and a focus on cool characters doing cool things, and due to its foreign origin, their parents don't understand it and its "theirs". A lot of modern comics I've read seem to want to emulate manga's trends, but by the time they figure it out it'll be too little too late. And older comics that I'd be confident that they would scratch that itch for kids are all out of print and don't seem to be on the slate to be reprinted any time soon.
>And older comics that I'd be confident that they would scratch that itch for kids
like what?
Probably anything from before 2011 or so.
The one I hand on mind (due to a recent story time) is The Legends of the Dark Knight from the nineties. Dark stories that don't shy away from the gruesome and tackle mature themes without any modern sterilization. Sure you can get an e-book, but a consequence of Manga's grassroots base behind the current popularity is seemingly an entire infrastructure to get chapters of their latest favorite series free and ahead of the official release, so I don't think Amazon or DC's apps that you have to make accounts for and they pay a monthly fee to get access to out of print series are ever gonna compete. There are sites to read comics free online, but dumb kids that can't install ad blockers are gonna have a bad time trying to navigate them.
I work in a library. We try, we really do, to find things we think kids will like but we can only buy what is available. I spend more budget on manga than Western comics, we all know that's what the kids prefer and that this preference starts young. Last month an 8 year old girl and her mother asked me to help them find Vampire Knight volume 6 for the daughter. Volume SIX, meaning she's read all the previous volumes and liked them and her mom was OK with the content being read by her child (a fairly notorious shoujo manga). My youngest cousin is 11 and has been watching Attack on Titan since she was 10 and her favorite anime is Demon Slayer.
The CORE problem with Western comics is an unwillingness to meet the audience where they're at and actually give them what they want because parents, artists, writers and every higher up gatekeeper has an idea of what is 'appropriate' for children that is completely at odds with what children actually, demonstrably like. Hazbin Hotel is another good example where it's so obviously ideal for a teenager's tastes but no one on staff is allowed to admit that, "Um, teens shouldn't be watching this, it's for ADULTS". On the one hand I wonder if they've forgotten what it was like to be kids themselves on the other I do feel bad for parents that want to shield their kids, there's enough negativity in the world.
Yeah I remember walking in Walmart and seeing Five Nights at Freddy's as one of the brands in the kids section. I don't even think you need to be super edgy or anything to get their attention, but it really seems like a lot of the industry is really out of touch and thinks making the same Stunning and Brave biographies will really hook everyone.
I think this goes back quite a ways. Linear broadcast television meant kids had little choice about what to watch so they never expressed their TRUE preferences up until they got access to personal laptops and tablets. I think of this whenever I see Lauren Fausts's pitches or stuff like Craig's Kid Cosmic. Kid Cosmic is rated tv-y7 meaning it is considered appropriate for kids 7 and older but lets be honest here, a 7 year old is cusping on AGING OUT of finding KC entertaining and engaging, because at 8 they're probably watching Naruto or whatever. Kid Comic is like for ages 3-7.
The people who determine the age ratings and associated marketing have no idea what kids like nor hard evidence about what is and isn't or should be appropriate or inappropriate.
>The people who determine the age ratings and associated marketing have no idea what kids like nor hard evidence about what is and isn't or should be appropriate or inappropriate.
They're not necessarily basing it on their own opinion, but the opinions of
>advertisers who don't want to offend anyone
>Parents who don't want to expose their kids to..anything, but also don't want to watch with their children
>Aging TV execs who don't want hateful booger fart cartoons
Ultimately they want to avoid offending anyone and getting letters that threaten to pull the real money- advertisers("HOW DARE YOU ADVERTISE FROSTED FLAKES ON THIS SHOW THAT SAID CRAP!?")- and as stupid as it is networks and publishers still lend credence to angry letters from parents over anything else.
>Aging TV execs who don't want hateful booger fart cartoons
OK I'm gonna risk flaming but I get where these guys are coming from. I hated gross-out humor as a kid and I totally get why parents dislike it too. I wouldn't want my kid acting gross and thinking it's funny, I'm aware its a developmental stage but no need to encourage it.
>advertisers who don't want to offend anyone
I think advertisers are very price conscious and would be willing to let their morals slide more easily, they'll advertise on what's popular if it's allowed to be popular
>Parents who don't want to expose their kids to..anything, but also don't want to watch with their children
I blame them most of all
Anon, the problem is they apply that gross-out humor 'accusation' to anything even slightly out of step.
Everything must be sanitized with these people.
I think there's a definite dearth of good action comics for kids.
Look at how much people sperg out over the fighting in Dragon Ball or Jujutsu Kaisen. How much they meme the powers and abilities.
When was the last great 'action comic'. With great choreography and abilities that kids could fantasize about? Compare that to how many are made with a focus on character drama and soap opera plotlines that just don't keep young readers.
Character drama and soap opera stuff works fine for hooking female readers. Reina Telgemeier is the QUEEN of Western kid's comics and it's all character drama stuff with humor. Action though I'll give you that. I think the emphasis on color hurts Western comics in this sense. Too much or too little color detail probably hurts legibility and it probably takes more time and money compared to black and white where your brain is willing to interpret the information in a more forgiving way.
iirc the problem with action in kid's content is something called 'reproducible violence', you don't want the action to be something kids can easily replicate (and then get themselves hurt and you sued). This means everything involving guns and martial arts is off the table. There's just less kid's comics with good action so kids switch over to manga at a young age to get their fix I guess.
Public libraries have content for kids, teens and adults while school libraries have to serve a smaller age demographic.
>public vs school libaries
Sure, but as said in the thread, many people were brought into the manga world by reading stuff like Naruto or Hunter x Hunter or other fairly edgy and graphic Shonen Jump series in elementary school or middle school in their school libraries.
Which didn't have equivalents from the US next to them on the racks.
There is a way greater permissivity towards manga than comics. And in a way that only helps make manga more appealing to young readers.
>There is a way greater permissivity towards manga than comics.
Honestly, it's probably got more to do with the artstyle than anything, your average boomer or Karen teacher/librarian would look at something like pic related and think it's a fun lighthearted story for 6 year olds.
But isn't it easier to just look at the demographic? Your image is from a seinen, correct?
Honestly, based on my interactions with most teachers and librarians, I get the feeling that they ordered most comics/books based entirely on the covers and nothing else.
Certain art styles fit the narrative but I do think the symbiosis between presentation and story tends to be more apparent in western comics.
>I do think the symbiosis between presentation and story tends to be more apparent in western comics.
That's a detriment tbh, you can't have a "serious" story in American comics told with a cute, airy style, it's either seriously drawn with lots of hatching and shadows and realism, or done in some indie comics style that's very graphic design oriented..and bland.
Like even using your example, shit like chibi Star wars characters popping in Berserk or characters like Puck would never be in an American fantasy comic with the same tone. Some comic relief, sure, but not aesthetically "Egregious" aspects.
Cerebus is kind of like that I guess. But I get what you mean.
Currently a lot of parents and library professionals are both old enough to have grown up with that stuff and have kids of their own so they're more permissive. Back in the day? Parents were not as permissive I think they just assumed the content would be fine because it was so popular and had sold so much (can millions of parents/kids be wrong?) and they were just happy to have their kids reading ANYTHING. They didn't bother to inspect the tankobons because their eyes glazed over seeing how thicc they were and them being in black and white. Library professionals had less information to work off so if something was designated as being 'for kids' or 'for teens' they just sort of accepted it and couldn't research it more deeply than if they'd wanted to.
I remember Chobits circulated around my school like hotcakes and I think every adult that saw us reading it looked at the cute girl on the cover and assumed it was a fashion comic. Otherwise though I think there are probably more parents with reasonably relaxed attitudes towards what their kids read it's really just a matter of a minority of parents being VERY loud. Do you remember how controversial Pokemon and Harry Potter used to be? That was never the majority but they have a lot of sway.
I remember my first manga ended up being Alien 9 cause my parents saw the characters on the cover and thought it was fine (Dad likes Dragon Ball, thought it was just more of that).
Shit bro.
That is a rough fricking start.
Mine was Battle Royale, but even that is preferable to fricking Alien 9.
lol. Oh my gosh what a first experience. I remember really wanting to read that for some reason. I thought it was a magical girl thing but apparently it turns into fetish shit?
Teachers and librarians get special ordering catalogs to make purchases off of, these catalogs usually only provide cover art, a small sentence long blurb and genre.
Magical girl series but also a puberty metaphor.
With the message that becoming an adult is actually a bad thing, in most cases. And that it will permanently harm any child in a way that will never be acknowledged or fixed.
Honestly, that's how it was when I was in middle school too.
I was HUGE into kid's comics and newspaper strips when I was a kid (used to bring the funnies page to school with me every day until I was ~13), but as I got older and started getting into edgier stuff that I "shouldn't be seeing" in middle school like [as] shows, South Park, Drawn Together, weird internet Newgrounds shit like moronic Animal Babies, Madness, Happy Tree Friends, etc. etc. I just stopped paying much attention to comics since they don't really do "edge" all that well outside of maybe violence.
Like, when 13 year old me was reading shit like Berserk or Parasyte or Narutaru in the library after school I sure as shit wasn't going to find something like that in the comics section.
The reach of Western comics to younger audiences really is terrible.
Schools will happily just order at manga at random from whatever they hear is popular - stuff like Hellsing, Naruto, Attack on Titan, while at the same time judging comics with the most jaundiced eyes possible.
As a kid I could read stuff like Naruto in my elementary school library. Now Naruto isn't an adult manga, but it does have gore and violence from the start and a lot of action setpieces, which is what kids love. But from the Western side of things, nothing more adult than Captain Underpants and the earliest Spiderman serials were allowed.
In high school I had stuff Bleach, Hellsing, and Claymore, but for comics, you basically just had Watchman.
The ability to put interesting series in the hands of the youngest readers at the most important time, absolutely sucks.
I had to get into comics as an adult by willingly forcing myself to learn the ropes. Because there was absolutely no good on-boarding for me as a kid.
The only western comics kids read are the scholastic stuff.
I read tons of comics as a kid and still lost interest and followed manga/anime instead for years.
Getting my hands on The Killing Joke in middle school made me a life long Batman fan. It's really something that needs to be repeated, kids want exciting stories that don't baby the reader. I don't think mindlessly emulating manga is the way either, its likely to run into the same problem, just instead of making stories "for kids" it's making stories "for manga readers".
>stuff like Hellsing, Naruto, Attack on Titan
I mean, those are all very different series.
The problem with comics is that whenever someone "wants to get comics into the hands of younger readers" it's always lame shit like Gender Queer or They Called us Enemy or some other lame gay shitty celebrity puff piece disguised as a comic, so you end up with a library where half the selection is stuff kids would actually want to read and the other half is shit their lame-ass teachers THINK they should be reading.
They're all violent, bloody, a bit to a lot edgy, and have a lot of dramatic presentation going for them.
They're the type of stuff young boys absolutely love. Every teenager that's read Hellsing has tried to do the Major's Speech at least once.
There are great comics runs out there. But for some unknown reason the only place you can find them are in bookstores and large public libraries.
I don't know if the ratings systems are different or something or teachers just know more about comics to judge them vs manga, but the difference is absolutely noteworthy.
Even for girls comics you got Fruits Basket, Rosario + Vampire, and Nana, vs 'ugly lesbian morons'. School girls love trashy romances, hot men, and drama. But you'd be damned to find many comics that appeal to them in school libraries.
Putting the books on sale in the places the majority of their audience will mandatorily have to be is such a no-brainer that it's not surprising in the least that the scheme is working so well. All the marketing and data is done for them. The ads are handed directly to the customers. Each location is allocated a number of copies of each book based on the school's enrollment and financial status. Kids are given plenty of lead time to pick out which books they want most and save up or ask for money ahead of time.
DC and Marvel couldn't compete with that sort of business model even if they were giving comics out for free all year round.
DC and Marvel would never be able to do that because it'd be blatant advertising and they didn't have the benefit of getting in on the scam of advertising product in kids' schools under the guise of "fostering a love of reading" under a very pro-business President as the book fairs started in the early '80s. Of course there's nothing more educational about Goosebumps or Clifford than X-Men but Scholastic got onto the grift first and were able to spin it in such a way to make it look like they were doing a public service.
Is your complaint that Scholastic is monopolising the business of selling books to kids, the fact that it's a capitalist scheme rather than public funded, or the fact that they're doing it at all?
>Of course there's nothing more educational about Goosebumps or Clifford than X-Men
Sure there is. Goosebumps is prose. Clifford is a picture-book series for a low reading level. For preference I wouldn't use comic books as a tool for encouraging literacy.
Makes me remember I haven't been to my LCS in a while. They barely carry capeshit, only frenchshit, image and manga
Imagine if other, teen/adult targeted book publishers went for the graphic novel market like Scholastic does for kids. Hell imagine if the YA novel boom 10 years ago had better graphic novel adaptations.
As subsidiaries of TV/movie companies like WB and Disney, comics will never get priority. For book publishers though, pushing new readers is everything.
There are no teen publishers; just the big 5. The fact they got kids as well as they did at the turn of the century was an accident of an age of narcissistic out of touch navel gazers having kids and wanting to discover kids' books through them. Still, I'd love a Lunar Chronicles adaptation. It can be done as cheap as Sailor Moon, which it basically is.
You know who owns those YA novels? Here’s a hint: the companies already beating the shit out of Marvel and DC.
>Comic sales severely declined in 2023
fricking HOW? weren't the sales already hitting rock bottom? were they struggling to sell double digits or something?
Collectors are dying/quitting because they can't afford to buy dozens of books every month due to inflation
No, we’re quitting because the comics aren’t written for us. They’re written for Twitter.
t. 30 year old well paid, healthy customer who still visits the LCS weekly and only buys two or three big 2 books a month.
That's true too
Dog Man was written for children and it does very well in that demographic
>Dog Man was written for children and it does very well in that demographic
I know but it looks generic so I was just wondering what's the secret behind it
>it looks generic
You answered your own question. It's for the lowest common denominator, bland and therefore innoffensive.
>They’re written for Twitter.
Elon sycophants, porn bots and nazis? That doesn’t sound right.
Not true, 35 year old collector here. Only things I get now is worlds finest and green lantern (hal). Everything else DC puts out is garbage.
>fricking HOW? weren't the sales already hitting rock bottom?
Barely any book can crack 100k sales per month, there's still room for further failure, sad as it is
>Collectors are dying/quitting because
Many were told if you don't like the toxic writer's politics not to buy the books. Corporate policy seemed to be to support this anti-customer stance. Funny thing is, once you stop buying, its easier to just walk away rather than resume when that toxic writer is gone.
Why do I need to pay for comics with stories like Thanos coming to Earth to prevent a specific black woman from finding true love? That's not the Thanos I know.
Probably comic book stores going out of business meaning they cant get away with drawings the numbers anymore
Quickly! Make more characters gay or black! That will save them!
It's kind of funny because DC gays celebrated the fact that the MCU was dying, thinking of it as an opportunity for DC rather than realizing it's the end of the era. People aren't going to watch the DCU for the same reason they don't watch the MCU. There's too much going on. No one knows what's what, and people stopped caring a long time ago.
DC barely put out any books in 2023. Hopefully the Finest line will turn things around
That’s not true at all. It literally says right there in the screencap they had their highest amount of titles in the bookstore market.
One of you is talking about comics, and the other graphic novels
As usual, some tourist or pol baitshitter has posted an out of context screencap; the post is about graphic novels, not floppy sales.
You can tell because it says all sales of DC and Marvel are 750k units; that's far, far less than just the Batman titles sold in a year the last time we had real data. If the market had crashed so hard that all titles sold less than one line, the article would be about how the direct market died entirely this year.
>DC and Marvel combined couldn't crack one million comics
>They sold so little they literally had to lump every single western comic maker and it still couldn't hit over 1 mil
Would you ever imagine it'll get this bad?
Come on guys, you're falling behind!
No the top 750 titles combined didn't crack 1m which is still very depressing but slightly less bad.
>Would you ever imagine it'll get this bad?
Yeah? They've been putting out garbage for years.
>go to Cinemaphile
>VIDEO GAMES ARE DYING
>go to /tg/
>MAGIC/WARHAMMER/D&D IS DYING
>go to Cinemaphile
>TELEVISION AND FILMS ARE DEAD
>go to Cinemaphile
>THE OUTDOORS ARE DYING
>go to Cinemaphile
>THEY'RE MAKING DINOSAURS GAY
>go to /toy/
>TOYS ARE DYING
>go to Cinemaphile
>COMICS AND CARTOONS ARE DYING
What the actual frick is wrong with this website everybody is such a downer c**t all the time.
GAMES ARE DYING
Record breaking layoffs and multiple studio closures on top of playstation and xbox being on jeopardy because their companies are insanely moronic
&D IS DYING
Magic keeps shooting itself in the foot
AND FILMS ARE DEAD
Hollywood is unironically worse than Cinemaphile bro
>TOYS ARE DYING
Hasbro lost a gorillion and shuttered several toylines
>COMICS AND CARTOONS ARE DYING
yes
Things are just bad right now, anon.
I just want an escape from the harsh reality of life...
have you tried drugs and alcohol?
Knowing how this series ends I can only go "yes you are, Butcher and good fricking riddance you piece of shit"
>Things are just bad right now, anon.
Not everything is bad...
>Less than 4 million dollars
Pfff, I guess that is what happens when you rely on anime adaptations, which anime sales have dropped massively, to sell your works which is a fad in the west. It just took weebs 5 years to realize that.
billion*
It's 4.5 billion, which is rather impressive, especially since it's just Japan alone.
Japanese porn is so cheap now that I wonder why anyone even would even bother paying some average western 20 bucks for some shitty titty picture when you can get a full 20+ page doujin for less than 5 bucks.
Shipping costs is the only thing saving Japan from being completely over taken by the dollar at this point.
>Japanese porn is so cheap now
Porn is free...
Anon, that's just 2B.
Or not 2B?
Buying porn is largely parasocial. People pay for non-JP porn art because
>they like the characters, many of which would never get a doujin
>They like the artists' style, specifically kinks and fetishes they cater too, even subtly like bigger hips and asses
>when it comes to commissions, they like the ability to art direct.
It's like why Onlyfans girls can make a living despite countless free porn, people like having that connection.
Most of the popular works are ending or selling less and less as time goes by, that's what happens to trends.
Some anime/manga franchises have also benefitted from multiple writers. I think Lupin III is a good example. The original manga was decent, but really tonally different from the more well known anime adaptations.
Even right now, there's the anime Pluto on Netflix which is another writer's interpretation of Astro Boy and it's great.
Facts
I hear that with video games, it's not even just about video games, the tech bubble popped a while back and now it's basically a dog and pony show to keep up investor confidence and has been for years.
video games were a low interest rate phenomenon
>goto Cinemaphile
>history and archeology are both in a literal golden age with new discoveries every month
Good for them. If only I could bring myself to care about the past if the future looks so shit.
>new discoveries are only because the cultures that made them already died.
More like
>go to Cinemaphile
>people arguing about religion for the infitieth time
>go to Cinemaphile
>people aruging about haplogroups for the infitieth time
they are, I though archaeology was dead like paleontology
No shit Cinemaphile is rejoicing since they only get new stuff whenever something dies so the current scenario of everything dying is like a buffet to them.
Western culture is in a stagnant state/decline. Nepotism and way too much pandering to moronic minorities for years has made people more cynical. A little bit of pandering you can ignore/handwave, too much and it takes you right out of what you are trying to do for a hobby. Shitting on the majority/native population entirely to get a new audience or to preach is always self destructive. For Cinemaphile, pollution/overpopulation/selfishness is ruining stuff and there is really bad things like in the US there is a huge tick population bigger than ever outdoors in the North East that can give you lyme disease or a allergy to red meat.
All non anonymous social media needs to be shut down too, and other huge reforms need to happen if we want to end the stagnation
Overpopulation is really only a problem in 3rd world countries where people have nothing better to do than frick without condoms or the pill, but being poor means they run to the 1st world countries. And we have the space it's just corpos and government greed keeping housing unaffordable.
Same with your other listed problems, it's all just big business being shitheads and keep us distracted from this fact by breeding the culture war.
>Overpopulation is really only a problem in 3rd world countries where people have nothing better to do than frick without condoms or the pill, but being poor means they run to the 1st world countries. And we have the space it's just corpos and government greed keeping housing unaffordable.
Housing is unaffordable partially because construction can't keep up with the influx of people, partially because of giga israelite landlords that encourage that influx (among other things), partially due to monetary problems in general (in the US we dump tons of government money into gibs/grants for non natives or really any demographic that isn't a white male, they even give illegals gibs), partially from mega corps like blackrock buying up a ton of land, and partially because of miscellaneous factors like Boomers owning multiples houses or refusing to give family members a house.
Overpopulation is definitely a problem in the west/japan despite what homosexuals tell us about "irreplaceably bad birthrates", the truth is that white people and japanese/koreans know when problems crop up due to overpopulation and can see the signs, most other races either don't see the problems or don't care since they are used to a shitty quality of life anyway.
If every nonnative white was deported and india/china had 2/3s of their population culled the world world lose nothing except frick tons of pollution.
nonwhite nonnative I mean
The only argument against it is a moral "that would be mean" moronic argument. Living next to white people or japanese is not a human right
Because you're being willfully ignorant and not follow the fricking news
I know for a fact outside of Cinemaphile and even then thats debatable seeing all the massive layoffs.
All of those are dying
There are literal fricking business articles explaining how theyre dying.
750k and being less than 10% of a market is fricking horrendous for comic sales.
Toy companies going out of business and in massive debt is not fricking good
Selling of IP just to stay afloat is not a sign of good times
>why are you a downer
how am I supposed to stay happy reading all of that crap every other month.
>>go to /tg/
&D IS DYING
/tg/ is actually angry because Yugioh, 40k and D&D are GROWING TOO MUCH and everybody only play those 3 games all the time.
They are upset because their favorite games Gurps and Historicals are dying.
Embrace Cinemaphile anon
The banks decided they were done with turning housing into a ponzy scheme and decided entertainment was a great target
All of those things are either dying or at least going though a rough time. There's massive cultural shift in how Zoomers and Gen Alpha spend their free time and it's having a strong negative impact on traditional media forms. The next generation of young people have shifted towards the Internet in the form of social media and streaming at the expense of older media forms.
Covid lockdown saw a lot of industries get a big boost because people had to find new entertainment. Comics was one of those industries that saw a surge in sales.
Covid boost is over, so it was expected to see comics crash into their usual pitiful numbers again.
Complete misread of the stats being discussed. Book store numbers for comcis didn’t get a boost during Covid. Back issues did.
Dog Man literally can't stop winning but why? I've never even heard of it outside of Cinemaphile
gets sold at book fairs via special deals with the state. it's sales are inflated beyond belief
I think Marvel and DC found a few methods that would temporarily boost sales (constant relaunches and pissing fans off) that ultimately turn out to be a poison pill and slowly burn out the fan base.
Incentive variants also seem much much more prevalent these days as well.
Dog Man continuing to hold strong in times good and bad.
>Dog man is the only reason they reached 700k
imagine
Last time I checked Dog Man didn't put his pecker in another male.
I urgently need the bottom panel redrawn with Dog Man.
It's okay guys... DC and Marvel just sell a lot more in the direct market... people love floppies...
You do all realize that this article has nothing to do with single issues and is about GNs and trades? It's about 85% of book stores, a small % of comic shops, no library sell thrus, no single issues, no digital, etc. It is data to show some trends, but it is incomplete. And with the change in how people purchase content, it's an outdated methodology overall. This chart is not what comic publishers look at for their primary strategies, no matter what people are trying to suggest in this thread.
So continue your doom and gloom - but at least know what you're talking about. Yikes.
I'll believe you when you bring evidence that single issue in direct moves more money than GNs/trades
It’s all connected anon. You’d know this if you actually participated in the industry. The big 2 write ongoings for trades and most of their paper back releases are collections of them. If the ongoings sell poorly and are poorly received their collected editions will sell even worse.
Are you moronic or just being a smarmy homosexual from (You)s?
How the frick do we save DC?
It's a mystery...
I love that he says this while trying to cop a feel.
It looks like they have too much slop and not enough good sellers (typical Zaslav). Only push a dozen big titles, plus lots of smaller to medium size ones in all sorts of formats and genres. Get weird people to do them instead of the same stagnant aging crowd.
These problems have plagued DC since before ATT owned DC, let alone Discovery.
>DC sells fewer comics in a year than a single issue of Jimmy Olsen in 1965
Stop collecting ongoings in any way for at least 5 years after publication. Even then, most don’t need to be collected EVER.
Anything released as paper back should be a one shot ORIGINAL graphic novel. Reader attrition especially when earlier volumes go out of print limits later sales. If it is to have a sequel it should be treated as a new one shot comic. If in the future you have a consumer base asking for more you can release more episodic paper back series but you cannot be cheap and let earlier volumes go out of print.
Meanwhile allowing ongoing writers to focus on traditionalist fans and more compressed storytelling, never to be collected, would improve direct market sales.
I just saved DC. You’re welcome.
>Just kill trades and sales will go up, bro!
More like
>kill trade collections of ongoings, thus eliminating one of the biggest problems with ongoings: painful decompression
>print MORE paper backs in the form of graphic novels
Yes. Sales would improve on both fronts. Ongoing sales are hurt by the fact that if you wait six months you can buy them in trade format, paperback sales are hurt by the fact they’re based on ongoings and thus have a barrier of entry. One shot OGNs are easier to get into and evergreen sellers.
That only works if you are producing a series people want to buy for their story, which is tough to do. Floppies sell what they do because of they gimmicks you can put on them, like variant covers or special # issues or anniversary ones, or because of collectors who wants to buy all the batman or spider-man issues. Those things don't exist with trade sales which are completely ignored by those reader groups.
>That only works if you are producing a series people want to buy for their story, which is tough to do
I agree with this but it’s the same problem they have with paper back collections of ongoings - most of which don’t warrant collection sales wise.
>Floppies sell what they do because of they gimmicks you can put on them, like variant covers or special # issues or anniversary ones, or because of collectors who wants to buy all the batman or spider-man issues
These have been diminishing which is why direct market sales are in the tubes. It’s also ignoring that manga and scholastic books do quite well without any of those gimmicks.
>print MORE paper backs in the form of graphic novels
So you literally have no understanding how long it takes to produce a full length graphic novel.
>I just saved DC. You’re welcome.
Nothing is going to change. You're expecting the same writers and editors who created this mess to fix it.
>force tradewaiters to buy floppies
>they just pirate everything instead
>all income from trade sales lost
Truly a gigabrain move.
tradewaiters to buy floppies
They don’t buy them anyway as evidenced by the sales. Instead they could do what they already do and continue to pirate or maybe buy the OGNs.
I notice you haven’t proposed what they should do instead.
are western comics the one thing that are actually negatively affected by piracy?
A lot of it is good. Dogman is simple but actually funny.
>Anything released as paper back should be a one shot ORIGINAL graphic novel.
I agree
There is still room for multiple trade long series. There's only so much you can tell in a standard length release without making it 1000 pages long.
But put a cap on it and make sure a story can be started from chapter 1 and read to the end without any confusion about what is happening.
If someone wants to pick up some modern version of HUSH or Knightfall, it should all be well labeled, the starting point should be placed where basic understanding of comics is enough to begin, and it should end with all the loose strings tied up.
And if they want to read a different series, it should be the same.
Cut down on the intertextuality, especially.
Time to reboot again.
bring their comics to smartphones
Can you?
A reboot wouldn't save anything when the writers aren't making stuff people want to read.
Even that Superman Totally-Not-An-Anime didn't do great. And that pandered to every fetish and trend that is out there.
It’s time to follow the manga formula. One writer, one creative vision with a story with consequences and an actual ending that lasts 2-3 years. They are already doing this the new ultimate universe. Alongside that amake animated 1:1 adaptations of the Ultimate line similar to Invincible. It’s time to condense this shit,
Nah that would kill sales even more if people don’t like the creative team or direction. It’s better to do this approach on non-canon OGNs like anon said here:
Frankly ongoings need to have mostly shorter stints by creators. Wells is clearly only on ASM still because hey signed him to a specific number of issues/years and they don’t feel like buying out his contract.
Runs need to be shorter most of the time to be honest. The longer someone is on a book the less jumping on points there are.
Until Hickman's Ultimate came along, Wells's Amazing was consistently Marvel's best seller. They'd have to fire everyone else if they fired him and that kind of shakeup can result in a death spiral.
This is literally Waid's World's Finest.
>. They'd have to fire everyone else if they fired him and that kind of shakeup can result in a death spiral
If they fired wells and Lowe ASM would instantly sell 100K for the first 5-10 months
>This is literally Waid's World's Finest.
Good, morenhsould do the jh82ksame.
Look at your phone before you press post
>They are already doing this the new ultimate universe
This fricking guy actually thinks the Ultimate line will not have creative shuffles and that they will have “endings”.
This. I refuse to read comics because they are visionless.
Why don't you read American comics done by single creators, then? Then exist.
Because he thinks comics mean the big two and manga means Shounen Jump.
I have. We are not talking about independents.
Nothing about the OP, your post, or the post you replied too specified independents.
Tough shit.
How about cape comics should go back to not looking like dogshit by not adding all this realistic lighting and frills again. Modern cape comics look so cluttered that way.
Agree with this. The art gets too complex in many of them. I prefer the simpler colors.
Oh my gosh that looks so much better. It feels like proper graphic art instead of whatever we're getting on the left. It's a skill in of itself to know when to stop.
Cape comics are in a schizophrenic territory where they both seem to be ashamed of being a comic and want desperately to be a movie, while at the same time refusing to drop the most moronic things about the medium like adding shitty sfx. They never look natural in english
>They never look natural in english
This is "Thing:Japan" territory, though digital sound effect lettering is usually pretty sterile. More artists are experimenting with sound effects that match the art, though.
>This is "Thing:Japan" territory
It's true. Calligraphy mostly looks terrible in english too. It *can* look good, but it is much harder and usually the tradeoff is that it is harder to read. There is a reason some languages have a huge calligraphy scene and others don't.
>I was also a little surprised to see a fairly low number for the webtoon-originated Batman: Wayne Family Adventures where v1 only trickled in about 6700 copies. And let’s maybe try to forget the other webtoon titles Zatanna and the House of Secrets or Vixen NYC where v1 of those didn’t even sell enough copies to pay for the printing costs – 757 and 302 respectively
Ouch, so much for the Webtoon push DC tied.
Just follow manga. They have the recipe for success. They're making a hundreds times more money with just a fraction of the budget.
>worked to death with borderline slave labor assistants
I wish, current comic people already complain about the poor pay.
>t. regurgitating bullshit
Very few manga are weekly. And many mangaka procrastinate on their work. Acting like they get worked to death is just a lie.
>Just follow manga. They have the recipe for success.
Yeah, it's called anime and a workforce pushed to the brunt of collapse.
Except artists and animators are very happy because they get to do what they love.
lol can't wait to see her in five years
after they passed that controversial law back in September, its only going to get worse
what law was that
The new invoice laws, essentially killing smaller companies as its basically the equivalent of raising the minimum wage and that's it and they can't afford it, and to further push big companies to consolidate. Taxes will be risen so less emphasis on original animations as its too risky, new workers will have no chance unless they choose by choice to pick smaller wags but if you thought they were being treated horrible now? They're gonna be the new slaves as they are allowed to write off projects as "Not too demanding", a process they do in how they schedule the creation process in time for sending the finished episode/season to the contracted broadcaster thus making animators who were already overwork go even further to make unreasonable deadlines. Its why Mappa is infamous as they love writing off many of their adaptions as "Reasonable time table". This also affects voice actors as they practice religiously after getting roles but now they to will be faced with deadlines making that impossible.
Most of your food is produced by severely underpaid mexicans, do you really expect us to believe you are treating your artists like kings?
Animation isn't anywhere near the level of migrant workers, you fat frick.
>Just follow manga
There's plenty of Manga I like, but Japan has no answer/equivalent to cape comics. There's certain Shonen that comes close but not close enough.
Why on gods green earth would you want manga to be more like cape shit?
Not more like, but there need to be equivalents.
There are franchises that are constantly getting new installments, as far as that goes.
There are like a dozen spin offs of Tezuka series like Astroboy or Black Jack. And classics like Parasyte or Devilman also get sequels from other writers and spin offs.
But they're in the minority, for sure.
Or do you mean specifically super heroes?
>Parasyte or Devilman
Yeah I love that shit but I'm specifically talking about super heroes. My Hero Academia doesn't really compare to the big 2's best stuff.
I think the difference comes in how the Japs approach heroes.
They far more like the self-interested or duty driven hero, over one that is being heroic for purely altruistic reasons.
More of an embracing of selfishness in Japanese pop culture compared to the US. You could have an anime character with Spiderman's powers, but not Spiderman's attitude towards justice and altruism. The framework just isn't there.
>More of an embracing of selfishness in Japanese pop culture compared to the US
Depends on the series, there are plenty of series in Japan where you have no nonsense justice lovers that sometims have secret identities or guys that claim to like it vaguely but prefer to play around. Both Sentai and Rider have examples of both of these I can name off the top of my head, some in the exact same show/team at the same time
True.
Sentai stuff is probably the closest you get.
But even then I've read some Sentai from Ishinomori of all people that has an explicitly villainous protagonist. And others where the heroes are basically just buttholes.
But I think the relationship to the enemies is different there, denoting some of that cultural gap. Most Sentai teams are trying to kill and destroy the enemies for real, and that is treated as the heroic thing to do. Something mostly confined to 'revisionist' cape comics.
But just the same, it isn't like modern comics are lacking selfish and self-centered heroes. But the readership does react more negatively to them than they would a Japanese anime hero. Stuff people call Goku 'based' for, would get them pissed off at a Cape for saying.
>Stuff people call Goku 'based' for, would get them pissed off at a Cape for saying.
In capeshit there are people who call the villain based plenty of times, old fans just seem to have a meltdown if there is a fresh spin on stuff instead of "same dynamics as before but supes is gay now". This is really an issue of capeshit being too one note and the only risks it takes are meta ones in order to chase a "wider audience". Tons of manga/toku mix shit up just because the author thinks it would be neat or just because they think it would work better, for better and worse.
Vocal minority in the west who don't know better. I know since I was that way too before I read manga or comics at all and thought I would never like manga since it wasn't colored - I thought it would be too hard to tell what the hell was happening. Really though I rarely run into that issue unless there are bad scans
>s, old fans just seem to have a meltdown if there is a fresh spin on stuff instead of "same dynamics as before but supes is gay now".
what
old fans throw a tantrum about turning characters gay all the time. That's basically all cape threads on this board these days.
>old fans throw a tantrum about turning characters gay all the time. That's basically all cape threads on this board these days.
I was under the impression it was closer to 50/50, most people I assume just buy comics because it has their favorite character or brand on it. I have seen the same with sunk cost Star Wars gays even on this very board
Kamen Rider toes the line all the time. There are anti-heroic Riders who don't call themselves heroes of justice
>There are anti-heroic Riders who don't call themselves heroes of justice
There are also straight up villain Riders. Say what you want about Rider and Sentai, they aren't afraid to mix it up every once in a while. Part of the issue with capeshit is that the story never just ends for characters usually. It would be like if every season of rider they wheeled out Hongo all the time.
>My Hero Academia doesn't really compare to the big 2's best stuff.
Do you mean like a cape wearing superhero because when it comes to urban fantasies with characters fighting for good, there are some pretty good manga out there. If you mean the jap equivalent of sueprhero there are : Golden Warrior Gold Lightan, Gyakuten! Ippatsuman, Gatchaman, Casshern.
I mean both
Do the example I've given fit what you were looking for? Also what are your favorite superheroe, since it's not like they all fit the same niche in stories.
Kind of, yeah. I haven't read/watched all of the ones you listed but I'll check them out.
>Japan has no answer/equivalent to cape comics
Kamen Rider has manga based on a couple series. That's as close as you are probably going to get.
Has it ever occurred to you that the success of manga is due exactly because they don't follow the capeshit model?
Manga is more popular because pirating it is less enforced
Manga piracy communities are kind of insane because sometimes they're just really well organized. A good fan translation usually isn't just one person- they tend to be entire groups of people with a raw provider, translator, editor, clean-up artist, etc. I'm pretty sure people would read pirated manga less if it was all machine translated, so I think a lot of credit for manga's popularity should go to those guys.
*Also reading manga on a phone is much easier compared to comics, especially older ones
If they were all pirating it then they wouldn't buying it. Which they apparently are.
That's nonsense. Pirates usually buy their favorite stuff. No one even pirates American comics.
Good point.
What makes manga so popular in the digital world, at least, is that you can go to an aggregator and find thousands of freely translated works that require no payment to view. And most are even translated fairly well.
And that bleeds over into the real world afterwards. Series like Attack on Titan got popular before their anime came out or official localizations were a thing, because of people freely pirating and translating its chapters.
How could Western comics ever compete with literally free?
Any barrier to entry is too much. They'd have to go all advertisement based for it to work, and that rarely works out long term.
From my perspective interacting with Japanese fandom Japanese people just have a different perspective towards manga and piracy. It helps that manga is so cheap there but a lot of them act as if purchasing manga is a social responsibility that fans have towards the mangaka. I'm not gonna lie and say I don't pirate stuff but I wouldn't admit that to my Japanese friends, especially when you see them actively sharing pictures they've taken of their new purchases. Like a chick will buy a manga and will take a pretty picture of it set against some flowers or something and then other people will start sharing pretty pictures and, "Ohhh did you get your copy yet anon-chan???" Y-yeah I totally did . . . Since I've started interacting with more Japanese people I've bought more manga, maybe there's some social bullying thing to it lol. I notice they're also more likely to buy manga as a small present for other people.
Japan in general seems to have a harsher penalty on piracy amusingly enough considering how most of their manga finds its way to the west. Nintendo gets shit all the time with how they enforce their copyright protections. But even in Japan where they feel compelled to pay for everything, weekly releases, and more time to read it daily due to commuting makes it near impossible for western comics to compete. The only one up western comics have on manga is that by taking longer, in theory they should be able to achieve a higher level of average quality, but that just hasn't happened consistently in the last decade really, even longer if you're a pessimist.
Something to thing to keep in mind is the work conditions. Page rates have been stagnant for a long time and unreliable contract work forces creative teams to spread themselves thinner with other projects so they aren't left hanging to dry if any of them don't pan out. You look around and you'll find horror stories and complaints by artists and writers who have to pester companies like Marvel for their paycheck. Conditions like that aren't conducive to establishing a long term consistent team.
There are also horror stories about terrible work conditions for shit pay in Japan with manga too so it's not as if it's all sunshine and roses as EAST VERSUS WEST shitposters often suggest.
>How could Western comics ever compete with literally free?
As if pirating western comics is difficult
How much do non cape comics sell? Does ANYONE buy that stuff? When that one comics guy got #metoo'd to death recently I had literally never once heard of a single one of the "industry professionals" involved in that shit show. Do these indie comics even sell 100 copies?
Clearly some people do.
That said with Ed Piskor's death, the people he said harassed him were all nobodies even by indie standards.
There's a lot of micro publishers. Places like Fantagraphics also put out a lot of stuff (mostly shit) but they rely on Peanuts reprints to keep the lights on.
They are stuck. They can't "reboot" and streamline their continuity because people will immediately start b***hing that "X character isn't back yet", and DC will start flooding their ongoings with tons of characters with no idea what to do with them and continuity gets fricked again. Then they can't just trim their line without rebooting because that would cause massive layoffs, and to offset the declining sales they have to just keep increasing prices and cover gimmicks which slowly forces the current reader base out of the market.
Isn't Scholastic the comics equivalent of mobile shovelware?
No worse than most kid's books.
>people still crying about decompression in 2024
why do these threads always attract old men hellbent in repeating archaic mantras that stopped being valid 20 years ago?
The problem with decompression is just that American comics aren't built for it. Decompression needs more pages to really work.
>Thi priblim with dicimprissiin is jist thit Amiricin cimics irin't biilt fir it. Dicimprissiin niids miri pigis ti riilli wirk.
get fricking real, this isn't 2004. decompressed ongoings didn't change jack shit. you just don't like modern comics.
>changing all vowels into i's
Are you alright anon?
i'm not a dumb mobile poster so i can just google a character replacer.
This is what happens when you don't advertise and don't curate your catalog effectively.
>Marvel continued to severely underperform in the bookstore market, with their licensees having greater success – sometimes with the exact same materials. Marvel had one book in the Top 750, while Viz, Disney, Scholastic and Abrams beat every single comic Marvel itself published.
>DC had a pretty bad year, with their lowest sales since 2004 – down 25% from 2022 in the bookstore market – even with their highest ever number of titles in the total list. In 2023 they had only 14 titles in the Top 750; in 2013, ten years ago, they had 130. That is a huge and troubling drop – but maybe laying off nearly your entire sales and marketing team is not a great strategy for growth? If someone had been been making a concerted effort to dismantle DC Comics, they couldn’t have been more surgical – luckily, DC still has talented execs like Marie Javins, Jim Lee, Annie de Pies and the rest of the staff who have thwarted those plans. And from what we’re hearing, 2024 will see some more moves to reverse this concerning trend.
>IDW had the best year of any traditional comics publisher, borne aloft on the wings of turtles. TMNT: The Last Ronin sold an astounding 148k in its SECOND year on the chart. Talk about backlist success. Top Shelf’s beloved classics were also strong sellers: George Takei and Harmony Becker’s They Called Us Enemy sold nearly 44k this year, while March by Lewis, Aydin and Powell sold 23k of Book One (which always sells more.)
What the hell
way I see things
>cape movies fad never affected ongoings
>cape comics became either seriously uncool (indie capes lol) or self-destructed their fandoms
>tv pitches fad basically destroyed the "mainstream indie" comics following, nothing on saga's level happened again
>"alternative indies" and comix have pretty much not grown or shrunk in the last 30 years.
>all other sequential art followings are 100% web-based (funnies, webtoons, previously homestuck)
it's no surprise the only company that actually grew is schoolastic, and only because they got the state to shill their comics for them.
>IDW had the best year of any traditional comics publisher
>i ain't heard no bell
>>tv pitches fad basically destroyed the "mainstream indie" comics following, nothing on saga's level happened again
The Walking Dead, Invincible, The Boys and even Umbrella Academy were very successful. But they committed to being long form comics first instead of a shitty short tv pilot. The proof of concept is still there and nobody wants to capitalize on it, it's fricking sad
Yes but also:
Walking Dead and Invincible started in the early 00s
The Boys and Umbrella Academy started in the mid-00s
Even though there was a move to make comics as movie/TV pitches in the 00s these had solid ground to them to get a following unlike a lot of forgettable comics in the 2010s
>>i ain't heard no bell
Turtles together STONG
>itt no one wants to aknowledge that teenagers and adults don't want to buy a superhero comic with 3 panels of fighting but 30 pages of being cucked, beaten, depressed etc
Just write a SUPERHERO story where most of it is about them FIGHTING SUPERVILLAINS and USING THEIR POWERS is that too hard? Romance and drama are subplots at best, no one wants cuckoldry, no one wants political lecturing, no one wants any of that crap
Content is irrelevant because nobody wants floppies.
The last floppy I touched was Archie Sonic when I was a child.
>Sonic
I don't think you're representative of any consumer, autist.
Yeah, especially when Sonic comics are the niche part of Sonic, LOL
The point, jackass, is that floppies are the dumbest thing in the world and the last time I held one I was in a supermarket aisle and it was about a blue rat.
And that was a long time ago.
>floppies are the dumbest thing in the world
Floppies can be great as a way to preview stories people might like, or get complete stories..if they were cheap.
If floppies are over $3 they're pointless.
I think kids would like floppies if they were $2.50 max.
It's a hard sell at $4-5. Wal-mart sells Manga for $7.50. Even if you densely pack a floppy with words so it takes you as long to read as half a manga volume(this isn't necessarily attractive to read, part of the appeal of manga is more readable pages), it still won't be as good a value at $5.
Stop focusing on just selling floppies.
People are buying whole volumes of My Hero Academia or Chainsaw Man.
The trade market is the most consumer friendly market and should be focused on. israeliteing people on floppies ran its course when they couldn't keep the price down enough anymore.
Floppies are a dogshit format. People are straight up not used to paying per item anymore and floppies are expensive. Its too late to switch to an anthology format now because print is dying but maybe had they done that ages ago it might have helped because purchasing entertainment bundles is the more common preference now.
please see
We get more leeway with what we buy because we don't just serve students and because the area isn't walkable kids always come here with their parents anyway so they're technically being supervised by a parent when they are checking out their edgy battle shonen or trashy romance manga. School librarians have to be more careful about what they order because the kids can check the items out independently so there's more pressure on the librarian to play parent and not buy anything too edgy.
Since parents still ask us for recommendations though we DO keep a list of more child friendly manga. It's one thing for a mom to check out a copy of Rosario Vampire for her kid it would be another for an employee to recommend that to a kid. As far as Western stuff goes I honestly think the kid's comics are underrated and usually better than the stuff for teens and adults. You guys aren't giving Dogman the credit it deserves, it's genuinely good.
I think the question is why are libraries 'allowed' to have something like Bleach in stock, which is objectively pretty edgy, but never have something like Hush or Azrael, which are also objectively pretty edgy?
Same reason libraries tend to allow "the classics" when some are incredibly edgy or full of mature shit but you can't show a guy getting shot and bleeding on children's television. People blanket ban instead of looking at a case by case for specific fricked up material
I just checked and at my library you can get hush from a few libraries we work with most of the copies being currently checked out. I think most of the difference comes from most libraries not being able to commit to large comic collections so they get a few random ones. Where I work we have around a couple dozen marvel and DC comics, but that only leaves characters with 1 or 2 volumes each. Also, when looking at numbers it's easy to know to get bleach volume 2 if volume 1 circulates well, but it's harder to know what to get from seeing that Arkham asylum circulates well.
>You guys aren't giving Dogman the credit it deserves, it's genuinely good.
Eat shit.
The real difference is that Japan is trying to adapt to the digital age, knowing that people will read on their phone and such. Comics should be reworked into smaller pages with less text even if it's just for that
Thank you for pushing civilization destroying propaganda. Enjoy your reward.
Meanwhile, manga sales severely rose
Here's how to save Marvel, at least:
Go through - and hire some help if needed - the E N T I R E T Y of Spider-Man's publication history in every book he has ever appeared in and filter out all non-serialized, episodic, or otherwise unimportant issues.
If it isn't part of a larger story, is not referended later on, does not flow well into something else, or doesn't introduce a person/place/thing/concept etc. then ignore it.
Take all those issues and start collecting them in a manga style ('tankobon'?), digest, format. 220 pages, 6 by 9 or smaller. The MIGHTY MARVEL MASTERWORKS series is doing something similar right now.
The appendix/index of these books do not list pages by issues, but instead as chapters. The issues can be listed elsewhere or near the chapter numbers.
Any issues or stories that retcon something that is considered better, done well, or doesn't ruin a twist or spoils something later on, is included instead of the original it retcons.
Start releasing these digests in as many outlets as possible and, for the love of God, start advertising. It should be the first thing you see at Marvel.com
Present it as a flagship product. Not some fancy collector's bullshit, but as a cheap, disposable option for regular people. Present as THE definitive story and history of Spider-Man.
Go slow at first. One volume a month or so. If sales are good, release one every two weeks instead.
Start releasing in other languages, too.
Call it something like 'Absolute Spider-Man'.
A single word adjective that is memorable, short, not too weird/clunky and works in those other languages.
Next:
Go to Japan or Korea or wherever the proper studio for this would be, take this book series, and make an anime/animated series.
Just like how manga is adapted as an anime, do the same here.
In Japan, an anime can be an advertisement for a manga and vice versa. Simple logic.
If it works, start doing the same thing with other Marvel teams and characters.
Also, unlike the Might Masterworks, it NEEDS to be under $10. No more than $9.99.
Do whatever it takes to hit that price point. Take out color if needed, cheaper paper, whatever.
This. 100% this. The problem is it will never, EVER happen. Marvel isn't smart enough to do this. Like, this is literally the solution to their problem. You could shove the above anonymous post down their throats and they still wouldn't do it though. That's how fricking stupid they are.
You can't save capeshit. Capeshit shouldn't be even saved. It should've been a temporary fad in the 1950s and a historical curiosity. Get it through your thick head - capeshit is DEAD and NEEDS to be wholly abandoned. it's a fundamental part of the problem, even THE problem itself.
Actual good Marvel anime that properly adapt things like Spider-Man and X-men would be such a ridiculous hit that it's insane that Disney hasn't done it. They do all this licensing and one-off stuff but they can't commission a seasonal serialized adaptation of Spider-Man from Bones or Mappa or something? Pretty ridiculous.
No joke, I don't think I'm getting enough for my buck. I love Green Lantern, I think it's the only good superhero DC has but this run is so slow and the premise is derivative of the same issues that have plagued GL for a decade. They're wasting time giving a run to fricking John Stewart that could have been used to get the GLC together and Jeremy Adams is going to focus on Bendi's dumb teen lantern character. I hate it guys, I really do.
The overlooked reason as to why comics aren't selling (among other things) is the fact the art is ugly, unappealing and too realistic. The anime/manga artstyle is perfect and realistic art, bad art, talking animal bullshit and so forth just can't compare or compete with that. It's just ugly. For all practical purposes Western artists just don't know how to draw. Their approach to art and drawing is thoroughly obsolete and archaic.
They're hiring tumblr artists and fanfiction writers, that's the real problem.
Competent western artists seem fine living on Patreon money because its much easier.
A lot of those tumblr artists ARE patreon artists, or are you so out of touch you think tumblr was all animal crossing red triangle nose stuff?
Not that it matters since tumblr's been dead for like 6 years.
>or are you so out of touch you think tumblr was all animal crossing red triangle nose stuff?
Yes because it literally was.
Why do you think
is a thread.
>He missed the years every porn artist was on tumblr
Ok so old and out of touch.
You know how Cinemaphile likes to tell people to lurk moar?
You oughta do the same, not get your experience from A fast food equivalent like cringe threads or ED pages.
I would right.
This. The writing is a factor too, but you can have all the genre variety you want and it'll mean shit if the art isn't appealing.
Even "cartoony" comic art is bad. People WANT manga art styles(yes there's a variety, but there's still distinctly Japanese qualities about them)
The art is bad? Then why do TDKR and Watchmen and Sandman sell so much?
You're talking about over 30 year old comics, and you ever see how a lot of people read watchmen and Sandman? They glaze over the art.
Even when TWD was popular and moving the comic, no one was really talking about the art.
>They glaze over the art.
The heck? The art is one of the best parts of Sandman on account of how trippy it gets.
I forgot Etrigan was in Sandman
Weird but true. It doesn't help that older comic art lacks "polish" to people who grew up with digital art.
When I was in highschool when Marvel movies were getting big(16 years ago jeezus) everyone was into manga but wanted to check out comics, and I'd lend out stuff like watchmen and they'd complain the art was boring.
Watchmen has very rigid art that would seem boring to a casual
>I'd lend out stuff like watchmen
Watchmen is unironically too advanced for normies.
I can't blame them. There's so much manga with much better art than most comic books. Just look at what Toriyama and Oda can do with just a pen
Unless we're talking anime-inspired webtoons, then those are the stiffest trash.
I wonder how much the coloring process robs the art of motion for comics sometimes.
Bad coloring can utterly ruin almost any image
And the thing is I don't think audiences have a strong preference for it anyway. If it made such a difference manga wouldn't sell so well and color manga would be more popular (it does exist) but it's still a minority. So color is a waste of money sort of.
Flat shading
Depends on personal preference. Manga art can be pretty good but it's instantly recognizable and very specific. I'll always have a preference for western artwork.
There's a lot of manga with more realistic art styles I think it just looks less uncanny in black and white
Eh?
The issue is the editors and writers. They don't have to create timeless masterpieces, all they need to do is make good stories. Marvel and DC has a 100 year legacy, all you need to do to win is not write bad stories. You have the biggest advantage and you still frick it up somehow, get your shit together.
>I would simply not make mistakes
Fricking froggot
Has anyone made that Simpsons UN meme yet where Cinemaphile changes to /misc/
>Once again, let’s state the obvious: Marvel is literally synonymous with the very idea of “comics” for a meaningful percentage of the American population, they have utterly dominated pop culture for multiple years here, and the source material of comics is actually usually better realized than the various bits stolen by the adaptations. Plus, on top of that, they have Star Wars (and also all of the 20th Century Fox library now) – it is absolutely incomprehensible to this observer that they are not entirely dominating the sales of western comics to adults. And yet, they can only sell a single book into the book market at over 10k copies? My considered opinion says to me “Someone isn’t doing their job”.
>It’s possible, I suppose, that they’re making it all up in the Direct Market, but since there are no longer any sales charts to establish this, and since I know so many retailers who run fairly specifically Marvel-driven stores who are complaining incessantly about the drops in sales of Marvel periodicals, I’m going to strongly doubt that this is actually the case (at least in a sustainable, non-“Franklin Mint” kind of fashion). It’s too bad: a strong comics market could really really use a strong Marvel that leads the market; instead we are stuck with leadership that doesn’t appear to have any vision besides just following trends… and not even doing that especially well. It makes me sad.
This part:
>and since I know so many retailers who run fairly specifically Marvel-driven stores who are complaining incessantly about the drops in sales of Marvel periodicals, I’m going to strongly doubt that this is actually the case (at least in a sustainable, non-“Franklin Mint” kind of fashion).
kind of confirmed to me that all the rumors I'd heard about Marvel having direct market sales problems in 2022 to the end of 2023 probably had some truth to them despite their alleged dominance
I wonder what the monthly views for DC and Marvel shit is at readcomicsonline
Good, I just hope that I Hate Fairyland was also part of this decline because of what they did to my girl Gert.
I got into comics hard over the past year and I’ve bought a ton. Unfortunate that the industry isn’t doing well but I’m enjoying the reads both past and present.
SCHOLASTICBROS
WE DID IT
MY FIVE YEAR OLD SON LOVES CAPTAIN UNDERPAINTS
just like his old man in 1997
Comics is an evil medium written by evil people. I suggest everyone still clinging to this fallen industry to run and never look back.
>DC still has talented execs like Marie Javins, Jim Lee, Annie de Pies
is this sarcasm?
anyways, frick these companies. frick the tom kings and tini howards and rainbow rowells and stephanie philipses. burn you pieces of shit.
Do you think they've taken the hint yet that people don't want to see Spiderman be black or Thor be a girl? If they want to make those characters, then make them be new characters with their own lore. Call them Arachnoguy and Thorina. But they need to stop ruining already established characters.
Tarene already existed, stupid concept but still better than Jane of all people being LITERAL Thor
Girl Thor sold very well at the time. The gimmick wore off though over time, but most sales do.
Girl Thor sold about 32 million movie tickets domestically in 2022 at an average $10.53 ticket price, and probably as many again worldwide based on the international gross
if you think it sold higher priced tickets on average, fine, but that still means millions of Americans were prepared to pay more than twice the average comic book cover price to see it, and if you think it sold for lower average prices, fine, but that means it sold a lot more than 32 million tickets
the top selling comic book of 2022 was the $6.99 Batman/Spawn which i guarantee you did not sell 32 million units, or even 320 thousand
do not mistake what you want to see in comics for something that would sell at a level that makes those comics financially viable to produce and sell to you
That movie is one of the most reviled of all the MCU anon. It got whytitty fired. Imagine using that as a barometer of anything.
Let alone bringing up movies in a comics discussion >>>Cinemaphile go back you massive homosexual
uh huh
but the point you've failed to address here is that it sold 32 million tickets at twice the cost of a comic book
which no comic book does
so evidently you don't know what sells, let alone why it sells
People saw that film cause they liked the one preceding it, and the reaction was to proclaim the director was washed cause the film sucked.
yeah, that's why nobody saw Shazam 2, because they liked the first one
that's totally a normal thing that real people do, going to see an objectively bad movie that "everyone hates" for literally months at a time because they liked the previous movie
Will these fossils finally die off and we’ll get something more akin to the manga industry where creatives can do what they want and have endings for their stories?
Never, because the manga industry is based on a work ethic and exploitative publisher content farm that you don't see in the west.
It's not the same but if 2000ad can put out weekly anthology I'm sure American companies can do it to, not like they aren't known for being exploitative themselves.
The problem isn't the companies per se (although they are 'a' problem), it's more of the difference in perspectives. In Japan, there are two paths to success:
>Can you draw? Okay, good, go make a oneshot and sell it to publishers. If successful, anime adaptation awaits you.
>Can you not draw? Okay, fine, go write a web novel that if successful can be turned into a manga and maybe an anime.
But in the west there is no path to success. If you have an idea, then it's likely no publisher is interested because new ideas are risky. If you get hired for a publisher for whatever reason, you're probably just going to draw/write what you're told to. If you get into a position of power, you're guaranteed to abuse it. The Japanese manga/anime industry is extremely exploitative, but the west is just flat out incompetent and allergic to anything that isn't Batman/Spiderman.
You can make web comics and shit, or self publishing or indie comics, there are many avenues for success, I don't know what you are talking about here. I don't think you read anything besides Batman and Superman.
>webcomics
It's not the 00's anymore. Webcomics are for the most part dead unless you publish on Webtoon, which is not only exploitative but ALSO incompetent - worst of both east and west. Self-published webcomics mostly died out when online advertising crashed in the mid-10's.
DWS on Transformers right now got his start with a web comic that lead into a mainstream career. Lot of people start off in web comics, self publishing, indie, etc.
Sad that webcomics collapsed before patreon really took off. But I remember the online culture back then was REALLY negative about tipping or direct payment like that. The only 'legitimate' way to host your comic was to have your own site and the only legitimate way to monetize your comic was via merchandise (which turns into it's own job to upkeep). In retrospect I think that was an extremely destructive mindset that just served to gatekeep against creators that lacked the money or technical skill to self host.
The best thing WSJ does is the vote system. If you buy a magazine or have a subscription you are able to vote for your favorite three series every week and these votes determine whether a manga lives or dies. "Voting with your wallet" is just too abstract for people compared to *literally* voting. You might be interested in the recent case of Kagurabachi, which built up a Western fanbase and the desire to see it survive convinced Westoids to actually spend money on it (subscriptions/votes and manga sales) when Western readers are notorious pirates.
Feel like the only web comics I read are patreon funded porn, and Kill 6 Billion demons.
Webcomics got swallowed up by Webtoons, which apparently has an issue with not actually being all that profitable and the site/app promoting Korean content over Western stuff. I find that Webtoon also somewhat invariably has worse art than manga so I only read manga.
Honestly can't remember the last time I read a Western webcomic or regular comic that I really liked other than the short stuff illustrated by Kerascoet and KSBD.
Korean webtoon art is like if you blended manga art with weird uncanny wikihow tutorial art. That's the best way I can describe it.
wikihow has more soul
I never thought I'd see a statement like this, and also that it would be true, but somehow here we are.
>But I remember the online culture back then was REALLY negative about tipping or direct payment like that. The only 'legitimate' way to host your comic was to have your own site and the only legitimate way to monetize your comic was via merchandise (which turns into it's own job to upkeep). In retrospect I think that was an extremely destructive mindset that just served to gatekeep against creators that lacked the money or technical skill to self host.
When ever I see people outraged or cry about internet artists not drawing/animating for free anymore, I just wonder if they realize that it's because those creators aren't teenagers living at home anymore
iirc they were mostly college students, the last time they'd have enough free time to devote to it. Lots of webcomics functioned as portfolios so the second they graduated and got jobs they'd drop the comic. I think a lot of stuff was more soulful back when things were mostly done for fun but I also despise audiences who are unwilling to put two and two together and put their money where their mouth is. If you want more of something don't be surprised if you need to pay for it because those artists need to pay rent and buy baby formula.
The geezers buying 2000AD now are the same ones who bought it as kids in the 80s. The numbers are dwindling and there's no real new readership for the prog. In fact, Rebellion releases more youth friendly stories in the Regened progs and the reception they've been getting for them is more than negative because the geezers want stories in the old 2000AD style, not in a new and modern one.
>the manga industry where creatives can do what they want
That's not how manga works and it's never been how manga works.
How manga actually works is that it's ruthlessly meritocratic where you have to sell or else you get cancelled. Top manga creators are massively overworked to stay ahead of their competitors. The American comic industry is extremely nepotistic and cliquish where people continuously fail upwards.
There's also the doujin scene in Japan. Due to lower publishing costs, it's easier to self publish your manga, and there's a culture that supports this endeavor with one of the biggest cons in Japan being Comiket, which is almost entirely centered around them. (shame that doujin as a term is associated with hentai in the west, but that's all the doujins that tend to make it over here lmao)
While it might be tempting, I think blindly emulating manga to try and bring up the sales of western comics is a folly since there's so many different cultural difference between the US and Japan that makes manga a much bigger market domestically and strong enough to export with great success overseas.
>meritocratic
A lot of manga is still complete garbage with horrible endings, decompression and filler when the author can’t figure out what to do next, shitty story arcs that take years to complete, tons of (wot if X but with cute Y) rip offs, etc.
And that’s before you get to the whole otaku are so schizo they will destroy their collection of a series simply because the story revealed that the romantic interest waifu character had a previous boyfriend.
so it's like american comics but there's more of it
90% of everything is shit but the thing is that there are still more genres and more ambitious projects in manga that there are in american comics taking both of the industries as a whole up until today.
Because the western market doesn’t actually want to support many different genres. Even with translated manga the range is very limited and most of them don’t sell particularly well.
The manga range in shops is huge. Sure, the heavy lifters are going to be the Shonen with anime adaptions. But people will eventually try out different things.
The problem with Marvel and DC is that they're expecting their first book to be a massive hit. So they will release something like My Mother Starfire and when it doesn't sell they will just give up on the market.
Like many images and videos, that one exaggerates the problem. You can tell there are more shelves because they are alphabetical and From Hell is on the bottom shelf.
Did you'd think they'd not order the sections for the customer's convenience? This isn't something new, manga is still expanding year after year and you'd have to suffer from dementia not to realize it. And they wouldn't have all of these genres if they didn't sell.
>you'd have to suffer from dementia not to realize it
Most DC fans damaged their brains trying to read that inconsistent slop. Now their minds make huge gaps in logic because they trained themselves to not critically think just to read a story. Superhero stories are not only a waste of money but terrible for your health.
Have you ever been inside a Books-a-million? If anything things have gotten worse.
>Because the western market doesn’t actually want to support many different genres.
No shit.
>Even with translated manga the range is very limited and most of them don’t sell particularly well.
If you take fan translation into calculation then there is way more diversity even in the translated market alone.
>most of them don’t sell particularly well.
Ok and?
You think that people in America don't want to read fantasy comics or romance comics?
I know both exist, but the problem is that you have to seek them out and they're always extremely short series ran by small publishers.
Don't other comic publishers in the U.S. put out things besides capeshit? Where the hell are those? Why aren't they selling?
They're just not good. Also, all of them publish capeshit. Some dude on Cinemaphile even got mad at me when I said that not all publishers like Humanoids need to publish superhero comics because in his mind, all publishers should have capeshit.
>all of them publish capeshit
No, they don't.
1. Shitty art: And I don't mean lazy/quick art, I mean the proportions and perspectives are bad.
2. Written by amateur writers, and contains way too much dialogue. Comics is a visual medium, and should rely on its visuals. Environments, facial expressions, etc. "show don't tell."
3. The stories don't have any direction or goal, the protagonist is reactive rather than proactive.
When 99% of indie comics are like this then people are going to avoid them.
>Mogs the western comic book industry
Maybe it's time to adopt the WSJ/WSM format.....
Won't work without trains
>IDW had the best year of any traditional comics publisher, borne aloft on the wings of turtles. TMNT: The Last Ronin sold an astounding 148k in its SECOND year on the chart. Talk about backlist success. Top Shelf’s beloved classics were also strong sellers: George Takei and Harmony Becker’s They Called Us Enemy sold nearly 44k this year, while March by Lewis, Aydin and Powell sold 23k of Book One (which always sells more.)
IDW is literally only able to keep the lights on because of TLR and I can only assume that it's at a point where it's selling because the only thing people hear about it is how well it's been selling.
>Wow the rest of the comic industry is fricking bleeding to death
>And what's that? This one-shot TMNT book has sold more copies than Marvel and DC combined for 2 years straight?
>Maybe I'll check that out!
I don't think WBD would shut down DC because it's an IP farm for their capeshit, but all the shit they use from DC for capeshit movies/TV are much older than most people alive on planet earth. Is it really losing enough for WBD to care? They shut down RoosterTeeth which certainly cost way less to operate then DC does, but does DC make a greater loss?
>DC had a pretty bad year, with their lowest sales since 2004
>but maybe laying off nearly your entire sales and marketing team is not a great strategy for growth?
It's pretty amazing to see Hibbs still obtusely refusing to address the root problems. The best marketing team on Earth cannot sell these comics.
>It's pretty amazing to see Hibbs still obtusely refusing to address the root problems.
It's on Comics Beat, what do you expect? Everyone is so quick to admonish and demonize those THEY accuse of WrongThink then they wonder why the market has shrunk. The books are bad, the writing is shit, and the personalities behind the scenes are incredibly toxic while hiding behind "virtue".
Those who've participated in the death spiral for comics will never admit fault or identify the true causes.
>Those who've participated in the death spiral for comics will never admit fault or identify the true causes.
This includes Hibbs, which is why I stopped following these reports. They don't have the honesty to interpret the data the collect in any meaningful way, which makes all of this a waste of effort.
Meh, I look at it like the "stopped clock is right twice a day" adage. Pointing out how utterly bad DC & Marvel is doing is really telling, and he had a few interesting tidbits, like reminding us that the Direct Market no longer publishes sales numbers, which should open anyone's eyes, and even his fellow retailers are complaining about plummeting Marvel sales at their stores.
Capeshit is stupid just make fantasy stories like manga does
There is just no salvation at this point, deciding to alienate a great part of their base readers was a huge mistake and trying to appeal the kids audience wasn't going to work anyway, kids nowadays are obsessed with manga and they just can't compete with that and even if they could catch the little kids audience this will also fail, birth rates have been abysmally declining for quite some years already, soon there will be more childless single adults than families with kids.
I never really thought about it but the fact that people have lost the ability to afford to have kids really hurts the media industry, where so much shit (specifically Disney) is literally built on shit that's made for kids.
Hmmm, I dunno, must be the crossovers fault!
This entire thread is full of ideas that would only make things worse. At the same time, no one is actually pointing out REAL sales numbers or discussing them in context. And Cinemaphile is just blatantly business illiterate, yet it doesn't stop them from shooting their mouths off on the subject which they know nothing about.
>REAL sales numbers
they stopped reporting real sales numbers years ago, the best thing we have are approximates and the last time i checked the top selling comics were around 80k to 100k, i don't know how sales are nowadays.
>At the same time, no one is actually pointing out REAL sales numbers or discussing them in context.
Because both Marvel and DC refuse to release the actual sales data. What we have is data based off samples that dates back to long before we even had actual sales data.
It's similar how we estimate wolf populations. We catch them and we tag them, and if we keep seeing packs with the same tagged wolf with we can concluded that the actual population is small. It's not an exact science, but it's good enough to figure out that a wolf population is increasing or declining.
>Diary of a wimpy kid and Captain Underpants still on top all
What can the big 2 learn from this?
Kids are a market eager to buy comics.
A comic that’s accessible, one and done, and fun is pleasing to most people.
Making continuity heavy, crossover obsessed series for an aging audience was never going to last forever
>Kids are a market eager to buy comics.
Delusional.
They can't do what made comics good right
They can't make anything new thats good
They hate straight white males(90% of comic book guys)
Movies took over, comics only exists to keep licenses
Knowing all of the above, they just let their cousins/diversity hires do what they want
Hard to care at this point, i accepted it ten years ago.
Maybe AI will make art easy enough where creative people can make comics out of passion again.
How’s image doing?
Meh.
They've been worse off.
The page lists their top sellers and unsurprisingly there’s invincible, saga, and at number 7 there’s that British girl’s autobiography. 9900 copies is nice, I hope she’s happy
Scholastic has the benefit of being able to set up shop directly in schools. It's easy to sell a lot of books when you bring the product directly to the customer and then force the customer (under the guise of "education") to walk through it as part of their school day. Take away the book fairs and I'd bet you'd see Scholastic's numbers take a large hit.
The problem is that Disney should be in the same spot.
Why aren't they marketing Spiderman and Thor and Captain America to kids in their own bookfairs or piggy-backed off Scholastic's?
It'd be the easiest thing in the world to start up some runs of more kid-friendly storylines for those characters. And they'd sell like gangbusters.
Also OP's figures already don't include book fairs.
The only wah to increase sales is to make official porn comics of Marvel and DC characters. However even if that happens, chances are it will be very Tumblr level.
So capeshit is dying as it gets worse and worse? Oh no? Anyway
>Captain America gets the shit beaten out of him by Captain Underpants
grim
Should've stuck to Shooter's advice.
Thanks Jimmy
Ironic since Marvel has never published good comics.
>Marvel has never published good comics.
>le HURRRRRRRRRRR
go back
Truth hurts?
Also I find it weird when people compare capes with battle shounen especially in regards to board culture. Early Cinemaphile was all about liking cape comics while early Cinemaphile was all about hating shounen. If I were to make a one page thread, 90% of the pages on Cinemaphile could come superhero comics while on Cinemaphile less than 50% would be from battle shounen. Cape stuff is this board's culture together with some other comics.
>How do I get into Diary of a Wimpy Kid?
Book 1
>How do I get into Bone?
The beginning
>What's the reading order for Captain Underpants?
Release order
>what about manga? Where would I start with Jojo's or One Piece?
Issue one
>How do I start reading Batman?
Uh, what kinda tone are you looking for, more light or serious? Are you interested in any Robins or Batgirls in particular? If you had to pick a favorite out of these ten art styles, which would it be?
>What about Spider-Man?
What a-frickin'-bout him? He's never had a good comic in his life. Stick to the cartoons.
Why can't Marvel and DC sell any comics?!
>Where do I start with Batman?
Detective Comics #27
>Where do I start with Spider-Man?
Amazing Fantasy #15
Oh wow who couldn't figure that out
>start with 27
>start with 17
Do you hear yourself and the shit dripping from your mouth?
I was agreeing with your point, not arguing against it
>Spider-Man?
>What a-frickin'-bout him? He's never had a good comic in his life.
Ooooooooh so EDGY!!! Must be why Spidey disappeared forever in the 60s without selling a single comic, huh kid?
http://jimshooter.com/2012/03/doctorow-doctrine-and-other-techno_12.html/ He layed out exactly how to have a successful comic company in modern timed and no one is listening.
>He layed out exactly how to have a successful comic company in modern timed and no one is listening.
It falls under "easier said than done". Sure, just make good comics, and make then easily accessible to everyone. Problem is, most writers think their own shit doesn't stink, and they are all unappreciated geniuses. Nobody sets out to intentionally make a bad comic, most just can't fathom that their work is bad. Then they cope and claim they are following his suggestion since they are making "good" comics.
>Nobody sets out to intentionally make a bad comic
Some are absolutely aware of how bad their writing is. They just don’t care.
Who the FRICK cares about writing a good story?
I only write comic books so I can push my LGBT pairings and cuck all the heroes so little white boys don't have any role models.
>It falls under "easier said than done".
You know what should be easier than good writing? For publishers to stop hiring bad writers. Publishers don't even need to have taste. They should be able to look at declining sales and make an objective call on whom to hire or fire. Has the big 2 done that?
There's really no point in talking about the quality and performance of comics when these companies cannot even behave rationally enough to seek out and reward those things. They don't even know whom they're making comics for.
>comic sales severely declined
>it's actually comic sales from two publishers that severely declined
The sooner you homosexuals stop seeing Marvel/DC as the sole purveyors of comics, the sooner you will be free.
You see any other publishers doing better? Image sales decline too but they weren't that big to begin with.
>You see any other publishers doing better?
Per OP Scholastic is down the last couple years but only -2.23% and -7.52%, after 35%-95% annual sales increases the preceding ten years. These are retail sales exclusively, not book fairs or school libraries.
Is that the hill you're willing to die on? It's fine if all the other publishers die off because Scholastic will still be around?
It's fine for publishers to die off, yes, including Scholastic. I don't consider it a hill because I'm not really sure what you're arguing - you asked a question and I answered it.
It's not only the starting point, but also the reading order that keeps people out. With all of the tie-ins and references you have to jump from comic to comic.
Hulk ends at #8 and the story continues in Avengers #23. I pick up Avengers #23 and I don't know what the frick is going on because I didn't read Avengers #1 - #22. They're literally trying to up-sell the readers with their own stories. And you can only get hustled for so long before you say "Frick it, I'll just read manga instead."
Batman starts with an origin in the first few issues of his appearance. Then he gets another origin called YEAR ONE, in issue 404! But wait, it's not the origin for the same Batman the comic started with, it's the new origin for this Batman after a totally unrelated comic event that changed the timeline of every DC comic book, also there's several spin off titles that show his early days which you have to read since they are referenced in the main comic. Also the next arc is called Year Two, but it's not canon so don't bother. Yeah, no wonder cape audience is limited. This stuff is bad enough in comics, but now they're doing it with their live action stuff as well, and surprise, audiences are leaving.
The Kang guy getting himself cancelled and the MCU not knowing what to do about it has really fricked up their upcoming plans huh, like we're going to get a movie that'll bill itself as bigger and more high stakes than Endgame that will be have to be brushed under the table and quietly forgotten about because they don't have the balls to recast anyone after Rhodey.
Just like everyone is ignoring the giant Celestial hand sticking out of the planet.
>and surprise, audiences are leaving.
Audiences went and saw three Spider-man reboots in 20 years.
Or you can just buy trades and not be a whiny little baby. WHO THE FRICK STARTS READING COMICS TODAY BY BUYING RANDOM SINGLE ISSUES FROM DECADES AGO?!
People start by pirating, you nitwit.
>baaawwwww pirating is hard
Motherfricker they literally rip collections.
moron homosexual, the numbering does not fricking help is the point, you read a few and then you have to jump around.
>r-reading trades is too hard
Apparently so if we check the sales.
>WHO THE FRICK STARTS READING COMICS TODAY BY BUYING RANDOM SINGLE ISSUES FROM DECADES AGO?!
This is literally what everyone here tells you.
"Just start wherever you like."
This is what I mean. With manga you don't have to research the reading order or risk listening to people who'd mislead you and have you waste your money on shit you didn't want. You pick up #1, and if you like it you pick up #2 and so on. No writer or artist switcheroo after 3 issues after-the-reader-is-hooked abuse.
>Dude, just go buy expensive back issues from the 70s and 80 on ebay!!!
Nobody says this, you disingenuous fricktard.
>With manga you don't have to research the reading order
Apart from all the manga with multiple spinoffs and confusing titles. Apart from all the times there’s sequels that make it harder to know what’s what.
This. I bought volumes 1 and 2 of JoJo's Bizarre adventure and they had absolutely nothing in common, someone told me I'd bought volume 1 of part 5 and volume 2 part 2? Like what? Incoherent nonsense
>[bullshit]
JJBA is literally labeled 1 - 63 by Viz. No parts in the US.
Well frick you it still happens just as often you dumb weeb.
Bro, no one is complaining about reading orders over at Cinemaphile, no one.
Plus, manga isn't losing readers like comics are.
What? The volumes for each part are completely visually distinct
>Phantom Blood has green-on-black
>Battle Tendency is red-on-black
>Stardust Crusaders is blue-on-black
etc.
Should have consulted pic related
>But muh Boruto
Let me explain to you how it works.
Naruto is its own story. It has 72 volumes, conveniently labeled 1 - 72. And you're meant to read them in that order.
Boruto is a continuation of the Naruto story by a different writer (it even says so on the cover) that has 21 volumes, labeled 1 - 21.
So you read Naruto 1 - 72 and then you're done. If you really want another story in the same universe you can pick up Boruto.
And 99% of manga don't even have these.
Bleach is just one story, One Piece is just one story, Demon Slayer is just one story, Ragna Crimson is just one story, Jujutsu Kaisen is just one story, My Her Academia is just one story, so on and so forth.
There's a reason why there's no confusion when it comes to the reading order. And if you have any doubts you can just ask the clerk and they'll tell you.
Yeah but you're talking about a few exceptions in manga, whereas in comics it's almost every story. For the most part if you pick up a manga, you can just read that one manga and follow it from beginning to end. It's cohesive, coherent, isn't rebooted 9 times during the run, and you don't have to be following nine other manga to keep up with the whole story.
Neither is most western comics. Stop being disingenuous.
They are. Especially the big names that would get people into comics. Trying to read modern Spider-Man is a shitshow. You're being disingenuous.
Stop conflating western comics to just superheroes. You are dishonest.
Most western comics ARE superheroes. YOU are dishonest. Your argument is like saying "stop conflating manga to just shonen" when it's 70% shonen. Go away. This discussion wouldn't even be being had in the first place if there wasn't a discussion to be had. It's an issue with the medium. Find a way to cope besides responding to me and being an annoying pest.
>"stop conflating manga to just shonen" when it's 70% shonen
That's not true though
>Most western comics ARE superheroes. YOU are dishonest. Your argument is like saying "stop conflating manga to just shonen" when it's 70% shonen
Are you conflating superheroes with shonen? One is a specific sub-genre. The other is a demographic within which many genres exist.
I think he's trying to group all the "battle shonen" under that term but he forgets "battle shonen" is a fictive genre created by western fans so they can more easily categorize action centric stories but it's silly because even so, a lot of them simply differ too much in setting, tone, artstyle and so on. It's like try to put Hack/Slash and Monstress into these pseudo cape categories simply because they're action centric stories (and even then there's more merit to it because the creators are often people that regularly work in capes.)
And then there are the other shonen series that aren't action centric like Death Note and Bakuman or that soccer manga that sold the most units in 2023.
>Apart from all the manga with multiple spinoffs and confusing titles.
You couldn't even name 50 manga like that if you tried, much less 50 that are actually being sold today. Are you seriously comparing that with comics? Hell, give me 15 manga that are confusing like that. Write all your Nagai Go titles that are totally representative of manga if you will.
>video games are flooding the marketing with new IP:s
Helps that that encompasses both the east AND the west, and has both the mainstream and indie scenes.
Is Dragon Ball japanese capeshit at this point? I doubt that it will end due to Toriyama's passing.
Tbqh all the trending big shounens are japanese capeshit
>MHA (Deku lost his fricking arms again)
>Lobotomy Kaisen (Author can't stop fellating Sukuna)
>Dragon Ball (Frieza is now black, and with his dying breath Toriyama wanked Gohan one last time)
>One Piece (One Piece)
Yeah. I consider Dragon Ball capeshit.
I honestly like the confusing lore and continuity of comics
It's fun
>I honestly like the confusing lore and continuity of comics
>It's fun
The only thing fun about it is these kind of copes
Comics are just genuinely too expensive per issue
Super heroes are not the problem, we see shit like My Hero Academia and One Punch Man doing really well. It's Marvel and DC that is the problem.
But I don't think it's a problem that can be fixed.
The comic industry admits to disliking the fans yet there are still people here who defend them. These are either shills or idiots. No inbetween.
You can’t post comic media anymore on this board without it getting hijacked by derailers. I would feel bad but these dying group of fans deserve that for trying to convince others to read their bad flopping stories and draw them into their cult. Big 2 comics are done and useless.
They've reached the point where I don't even bother to read them online for free.
Everything DC is currently doing in their comics is absolute shit, and Marvel is the most repetative power creep.
They don't have anything to offer, and there are no good sequels to Black Label content either.
How to fix capeshit:
1. Variants are removed from existence, the interior artist is simultabeously the cover artist so the consumer knows whats he's getting. No more 50 variants for a single issue. Theres always just one cover for any given issue, period. This is non-negotiable.
2. Every comic is self-contained, no crossovers allowed. Any references to other characters/stories are reduced to a minimum, or even eradicated completely.
3. No more company wide events, ever. No big universe ending shit, none of that shit.
4. Introduce art direction and specific guidlines for every title to retain maximum consistency, every colorist must use the same method, inkers the same artstyle and so on.
5. No more numbering shenanigans, no endless number 1s. If you want to reset a character, you introduce a stand alone run with a clear subtitle so the consumer knows its a separate entity thag can be read independently.
Theres more but these are from the top of my head.
The only thing the comics industry could do to revive is to adapt it's business model to compete with manga, wich means giving more opportunities to original concepts and specialize in different genres other than cape shit, in other words, they must take great risk in developing new IP's. That said, knowing how creatively bankrupt and cliquey are the industry professionals, it's over, western comics are dead.
The great majority of comics are already hard-carried by a relatively small number of big sellers. In theory there should be no serious risk.
>adapt it's business model to compete with manga, wich means giving more opportunities to original concepts and specialize in different genres other than cape shit
This is antithetical to their true business model of being IP holders. Publishing is incidental.
The manga industry, for all its faults real and imagined, are still true publishers. They act like book publishers in the west. The creators own their work even if they may sign away exclusivity.
Many manga creators don't even deal with their publishers directly. They are handled by editor-agents who work on their behalf.
It's kind of funny how people are in denial when not even Justice League has a single on-going run.
>when not even Justice League has a single on-going run
Holy shit you're right.
I dont know about Marvel, but DC is broken beyond repair. There’s nothing you can do about that anymore.
Marvel is why the industry is in the shitter.
And that’s DC problem because? No one is forcing them to copy Marvel and write poor stories.
Man, you're obsessed with DC.
I was never into Marvel.
Haven't picked up a floppy in years, haven't regularly collected a series in close to two decades. Comics aren't written for me anymore, the big two have bluntly stated as much many, many... many times. The funny part is that they lost me several reboots before they went with the current nonsense. The real death knell was in the early 90's when writers were pushed aside for brain dead artists, artists that treated deadlines like a dirty word. Once Comics stopped being run by businessmen it became a farce.
Comics exist solely as hardcovers, omnibus, absolutes, masterworks, and trades for me. I want Silver and Bronze Age material... occasionally dipping my toes into Golden Age and the hidden gems of the later ages. That's it. You could shut down Marvel and DC tomorrow and my only regret would be that DC took too fricking long to collect anything. Marvel, to their credit, has been mining the past so thoroughly that I can't think of a title they haven't yet gotten around to re-releasing, especially now that they're pushing through ROM and Micronauts. I guess... Godzilla Comics?
So long, good riddance. Please finish George Perez JLA and LOSH before you close up!
DOO DOO COMICS
>https://www.comicsbeat.com/tilting-at-windmills-297-bookscan-2023-comics-sales-sag-but-scholastic-was-still-a-powerhouse/
>Comic sales severely declined in 2023:
Maybe peeminism, commie and homosexualry agenda didnt work
Who cares? Comics have been so bad, for so long... what's the point of rooting for or against them at this point? If they die, they die.
>If they die, they die.
Or they're migrate to webtoon format