Will we ever experience another Marvel Comics success? 2 2

[1Cool]

I do agree digital copies of comic books seems like the logical progression of the hobby.  But is a digital copy of a comic a valid comparison in terms of the hobby?  I people started making digital sport cards with player stats would that be considered in the discussion about the sports card hobby (market)?

[Aweandlorder]

7 minutes ago, Brock said:

This is one of my latest obsessions... The next TMNT #1 or Bone #1 could be published on Kickstarter tomorrow, or could have been published a year ago. When a title catches on, or a movie spin-off makes a billion dollars, that small print run of a first appearance could make huge price jumps, the sort of thing that might dwarf what a TMNT #1 goes for.

And - for better or worse - very, very few collectors (of our sort) will ever have heard of it, let alone have a stash of copies to flip. If I were a true speculator, Kickstarter would seem to offer the largest potential returns.

In terms of the original questions about the "next Marvel", the Kickstarter model (externally-funded rounds of financing that can grow with each iteration) is also infinitely better positioned to make a new company or innovator more rapidly scaleable than a model based on Diamond distribution (expensive and slow) to LCSs (self-limiting marketplace with limited consumer numbers and high risk aversion).

Abso-fu'in-lutely!

The only thing a modern Stan Lee needs today is to create a web-based platform and have a stellar talent search team working for him. Identify successful projects and cater to them directly. A sort of start up VC catering to comic book talent. That DEFINITELY will be a game changer on all fronts

 

[Aweandlorder]

22 minutes ago, 1Cool said:

I do agree digital copies of comic books seems like the logical progression of the hobby.  But is a digital copy of a comic a valid comparison in terms of the hobby?  I people started making digital sport cards with player stats would that be considered in the discussion about the sports card hobby (market)?

Kickstarter is not a digital comic distributor. There are many projects offering hard copies alongside digital ones

[Gatsby77]

3 hours ago, Aweandlorder said:

What are you basing your facts on with this statement?!?

Watchmen is BY FAR a bigger property than ANY of Millar's books. On screen and published paper sales combined. 

Dark Knight returns is probably the most important graphic novel published in modern history. No other book has influenced, inspired and shaped pop culture as that masterpiece. 30 years after it first published, that book STILL to this day defines who Batman is on paper and on screen.

Millar is just the flavor of the day. Shows some promise, but certainly not influential YET on pop culture. Having 2-3 good movies (heck, even GREAT movies) based on books with comparatively weak sales performance and with ZERO merchandising and marketing power other than screenplay doesn't make you influential on anybody. 

Lets see if he will live up to be even REMOTELY close to these giant writers/creators you just threw under the bus in 20-30 years shall we?

Sigh...

I'd challenge your stat about Watchmen. Yes - the comic is ground-breaking and arguably one of the best comic book stories ever to hit the medium. Nothing Millar has written has come close.

It boils down to this: Hollywood success trumps comic book success. Period.

And today, among non-comic collectors, _far_ more people are familiar with Civil War due to the film's worldwide success. It made more than $1.1 billion worldwide. Even adjusting for inflation that smokes Watchmen's less than $200 million worldwide gross in 2009.

So (on screen) it is _by far_ the bigger property than Watchmen.

Hell - Logan's domestic gross alone was bigger than Watchmen's worldwide take (again, not a fair comparison since it doesn't adjust for inflation but still...)

Even Wanted - a nearly unknown comic book property -- grossed nearly double worldwide than did the Watchmen movie -- and that is a fair comparison, since it came out 9 months earlier.

I'm not saying Millar's movies *should* be more successful than Miller's. (I actually don't believe that).

I'm simply saying that they *are*.

And it's no accident that Netflix has chosen to move into even more comic book adaptions by licensing *Mark Millar's* IP rather than *Frank Miller's.*

Their comparative box office receipts aren't close to comparable, even when you factor in The Dark Knight Returns' influence on Nolan's trilogy.

• Miller's screenplays killed the Robocop franchise, which killed his Hollywood career for nearly 20 years.
• Miller himself then killed his directing career with The Spirit.

By comparison, Millar's

• sitting on two active film franchises (Wanted and Kingsman) and
• sas a Netflix development deal.
• he then moonlights by having Fox and Disney pick _his_ stories for their major Wolverine, Captain America and FF films.

 

 

Edited August 11, 2017 by Gatsby77

[Silver Ager]

45 minutes ago, 1Cool said:

I do agree digital copies of comic books seems like the logical progression of the hobby.  But is a digital copy of a comic a valid comparison in terms of the hobby?  I people started making digital sport cards with player stats would that be considered in the discussion about the sports card hobby (market)?

I wonder if it'd help stir further interest if they made a way to 'collect' and trade/sell ecomics. Unless they have already; I'm like a couple decades out of the loop. I guess that's going on with cards.

Edited August 11, 2017 by Silver Ager

[1Cool]

3 minutes ago, Silver Ager said:

I wonder if it'd help stir further interest if they made a way to 'collect' and trade/sell ecomics. Unless they have already; I'm like a couple decades out of the loop.

Definetely hard to do since people would just pirate copies and make more copies if a book became valuable.  I think the best options companies might have is posting pages up on Instagram with links to full comics for $2 or something.  Maybe even make digital copies $1 in the hopes a hot book will sell a million copies since they are so cheap and quick entertainment.  Maybe make online comics free and make their money from commercials or pop ups.

[valiantman]

38 minutes ago, 1Cool said:

Definetely hard to do since people would just pirate copies and make more copies if a book became valuable.  I think the best options companies might have is posting pages up on Instagram with links to full comics for $2 or something.  Maybe even make digital copies $1 in the hopes a hot book will sell a million copies since they are so cheap and quick entertainment.  Maybe make online comics free and make their money from commercials or pop ups.

It could easily be done with a platform like Quidd.  Each "digital trading card" on Quidd is serial numbered, and the only way to own one is to use the Quidd platform.  If you check eBay right now, you'll see that a market already exists for rarer cards... so if Quidd itself had a monetary trading component, users wouldn't have to violate policy to buy and sell... they already risk their accounts for a few bucks on eBay.

Instead of collecting "digital trading cards", you'd collect digital comic books... which you would read from the app.  Yes, someone could pirate the content of the comic, but they couldn't pirate the actual ownership in the platform.  The serial numbered comic would only exist for one user... there would only be 100, 500, 1,000, or 100,000 legitimate copies... whatever sells.

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_fspt=1&_mPrRngCbx=1&_from=R40&LH_Complete=1&LH_Sold=1&_nkw=Quidd&_sop=16

Edited August 11, 2017 by valiantman

[Aweandlorder]

59 minutes ago, Gatsby77 said:

Sigh...

I'd challenge your stat about Watchmen. Yes - the comic is ground-breaking and arguably one of the best comic book stories ever to hit the medium. Nothing Millar has written has come close.

It boils down to this: Hollywood success trumps comic book success. Period.

And today, among non-comic collectors, _far_ more people are familiar with Civil War due to the film's worldwide success. It made more than $1.1 billion worldwide. Even adjusting for inflation that smokes Watchmen's less than $200 million worldwide gross in 2009.

So (on screen) it is _by far_ the bigger property than Watchmen.

Hell - Logan's domestic gross alone was bigger than Watchmen's worldwide take (again, not a fair comparison since it doesn't adjust for inflation but still...)

Even Wanted - a nearly unknown comic book property -- grossed nearly double worldwide than did the Watchmen movie -- and that is a fair comparison, since it came out 9 months earlier.

I'm not saying Millar's movies *should* be more successful than Miller's. (I actually don't believe that).

I'm simply saying that they *are*.

And it's no accident that Netflix has chosen to move into even more comic book adaptions by licensing *Mark Millar's* IP rather than *Frank Miller's.*

Their comparative box office receipts aren't close to comparable, even when you factor in The Dark Knight Returns' influence on Nolan's trilogy.

• Miller's screenplays killed the Robocop franchise, which killed his Hollywood career for nearly 20 years.
• Miller himself then killed his directing career with The Spirit.

By comparison, Millar's

• sitting on two active film franchises (Wanted and Kingsman) and
• sas a Netflix development deal.
• he then moonlights by having Fox and Disney pick _his_ stories for their major Wolverine, Captain America and FF films.

 

 

Are you kidding me?

Hollywood success has NOTHING to do with a single property of a best selling book being adapted successfully or not  into film . Lets start there.

Watchmen sold MILLIONS OF COPIES, won multiple awards, adapted to film several times and influenced millions of readers and writers (probably including Mr Millar himself). None of Millar's creations have done any of that. 

Second. No no no no no... Civil War or Logan ARE NOT a Millarworld property. Thats not how you play this game.

I doubt that even a small percentage of movie goers who went to see those movies even know who Millar is. The main reason why it did so well was because of the properties attached to it and Marvel's continued success at the box office. Not the story. End of story.

And last, your continued effort to plug this AMAZING DEAL of Netflix/Millarworld is nothing but that. A plug. There is nothing about this probable deal that screams success or spells out disaster. Its just one more possible acquisition by one other (personally, I think horrible) network which remains to unfold. 

I personally like Millars properties (as I mentioned earlier in this thread) more than I do his work for Marvel.

But Im not saying that Millar's properties *should* be more successful than Miller's. (I actually don't believe that).

I'm simply saying that they *arent*.

 

 

Edited August 11, 2017 by Aweandlorder

[ComicConnoisseur]

1 hour ago, Silver Ager said:

I wonder if it'd help stir further interest if they made a way to 'collect' and trade/sell ecomics. Unless they have already; I'm like a couple decades out of the loop. I guess that's going on with cards.

I think the big factor will be just the reading of them than collecting them. 

[kav]

If we are grading comic writer success based on how many movies have been made of their comics then lets change the topic to successful writers whose books were made into movies rather than successful comics and why they dont really exist any more.  

[Gatsby77]

3 hours ago, Aweandlorder said:

Are you kidding me?

Hollywood success has NOTHING to do with a single property of a best selling book being adapted successfully or not  into film . Lets start there.

Watchmen sold MILLIONS OF COPIES, won multiple awards, adapted to film several times and influenced millions of readers and writers (probably including Mr Millar himself). None of Millar's creations have done any of that. 

Second. No no no no no... Civil War or Logan ARE NOT a Millarworld property. Thats not how you play this game.

I doubt that even a small percentage of movie goers who went to see those movies even know who Millar is. The main reason why it did so well was because of the properties attached to it and Marvel's continued success at the box office. Not the story. End of story.

And last, your continued effort to plug this AMAZING DEAL of Netflix/Millarworld is nothing but that. A plug. There is nothing about this probable deal that screams success or spells out disaster. Its just one more possible acquisition by one other (personally, I think horrible) network which remains to unfold. 

I personally like Millars properties (as I mentioned earlier in this thread) more than I do his work for Marvel.

But Im not saying that Millar's properties *should* be more successful than Miller's. (I actually don't believe that).

I'm simply saying that they *arent*.

 

 

I was going to let this go but...I can't.

Watchmen was adapted to film *several times*? Prove it.

Of course Civil War and Logan aren't Millarworld properties. The significance is that...out of the _hundreds_ of Wolverine stories, Fox chose to adapt one of Millar's original storylines for a major movie. 

And it's an apt comparison, because the previous Wolverine movie was a loose adaptation of Frank Miller's Wolverine mini.

With the same director and same star, Millar's Logan story housed The Wolverine at the box office. That doesn't mean anything except -- more people saw the latter film.

Ditto with Civil War -- it's not just that Disney chose _that_ story out of the hundreds of Cap stories to adapt -- it's that, when it came time for Marvel to construct their once-a-decade full company crossover, they selected Mark Millar to write it in the first place.

Just as they selected him (and Bendis) to launch the entire Ultimate Universe.

And who cares that few people know who Mark Millar is -- few people _ever_ know who the writer is. That doesn't mean they're not influential through the stories they tell.

For anyone under the age of 40 who isn't a comic book geek (i.e. 98% of the population), Millar has shaped their understanding of superheroes more than has Frank Miller.

[Aweandlorder]

2 minutes ago, Gatsby77 said:

I was going to let this go but...I can't.

Watchmen was adapted to film *several times*? Prove it.

Of course Civil War and Logan aren't Millarworld properties. The significance is that...out of the _hundreds_ of Wolverine stories, Fox chose to adapt one of Millar's original storylines for a major movie. 

And it's an apt comparison, because the previous Wolverine movie was a loose adaptation of Frank Miller's Wolverine mini.

With the same director and same star, Millar's Logan story housed The Wolverine at the box office. That doesn't mean anything except -- more people saw the latter film.

Ditto with Civil War -- it's not just that Disney chose _that_ story out of the hundreds of Cap stories to adapt -- it's that, when it came time for Marvel to construct their once-a-decade full company crossover, they selected Mark Millar to write it in the first place.

Just as they selected him (and Bendis) to launch the entire Ultimate Universe.

And who cares that few people know who Mark Millar is -- few people _ever_ know who the writer is. That doesn't mean they're not influential through the stories they tell.

For anyone under the age of 40 who isn't a comic book geek (i.e. 98% of the population), Millar has shaped their understanding of superheroes more than has Frank Miller.

Of course u can't let it go. Because u keep flipping the -script, pun intended. 

Let's not derail this topic any further than you already have. 

Lets agree that you will keep believing that Millar is a more successful and influential writer in comic book world and/or film, than Miller, Moore & Gaiman are and leave it at that ok?

[Wall-Crawler]

Never mind about there being "another Marvel"...

How about we "Make Marvel Great Again"?

Get a nicely stacked "bullpen" of new, young and established creators. Fix (many) of the problems with the actual comics.  Honour the tradition of existing characters while welcoming new characters and stories.  Focus on quality over quantity.

Oh and how about they advertise their freaking comic books ahead of all of your blockbuster movies. Tell kids where they can find stories to read about what they are about to watch. 

What do I know  though?

To me it is just crazy that Marvel Comics proper are floundering while Marvel is kind of flourishing every where else (toys, movies, Netflix, TV, theme parks)...I would like to see a "Marvel Comics Renaissance" to be honest.

[ComicConnoisseur]

5 hours ago, Wall-Crawler said:

Oh and how about they advertise their freaking comic books ahead of all of your blockbuster movies. Tell kids where they can find stories to read about what they are about to watch. 

That's a key right there. I was looking at sales figure over in Comics Beat,and I was shocked to see all the top comic books like Spider-Man,X-men,Avengers,IronMan,Batman,Superman and others are all way down in sales from 2007. This is after the superhero movie boom. You would think after billion dollar blockbuster movies and hype that comic sales would be up for the top comic books,but the opposite has happened in that most of the top sellers are down from 20% to 50% from a decade ago.

How does that happen? That's so 

Here is one of many links over there about sales continuing to fall.

Diamond: no sign of a sales rebound in July numbers.

http://www.comicsbeat.com/diamond-no-sign-of-a-sales-rebound-in-july-numbers/

 

 

 

Edited August 12, 2017 by ComicConnoisseur

[Fan Boy]

To recreate the same success what Marvel had done in the 1960s? Specifically on comic books. 

No, because the 1960s is a different temporal era with its own unique identities/factors. We cannot duplicate the same success like that. 

I'm not sure I will see them success at the same level as they did back then.  I mean, I have seen them did well throughout with mini successes over the years. Now? I doubt that... as someone here had said the comic books are dying slowly as the digital comics era grew more. I do see more new comics published but in much smaller numbers.

I mean, I'm in my last 40s and I am not buying new Marvel comic books. The young new generation are buying comic books - yes, but are also buying digital comics as well. At $3.99 per book doesn't offer me much in reading. When I was a kid, 25 cents to 50 cents per book did offer me more in reading. Pre-internet era.

Again, different temporal time eras. To success the same type, you need to adjust with different unique identities/factors to match present time.

And, yes ... about the movies in comic book theme are doing well and are in their own time era (the 1990s-2010s). Movies in 1960s were nearly nonexistent with the same theme. Batman TV series is another story.

[Aweandlorder]

10 hours ago, ComicConnoisseur said:

That's a key right there. I was looking at sales figure over in Comics Beat,and I was shocked to see all the top comic books like Spider-Man,X-men,Avengers,IronMan,Batman,Superman and others are all way down in sales from 2007. This is after the superhero movie boom. You would think after billion dollar blockbuster movies and hype that comic sales would be up for the top comic books,but the opposite has happened in that most of the top sellers are down from 20% to 50% from a decade ago.

How does that happen? That's so 

Here is one of many links over there about sales continuing to fall.

Diamond: no sign of a sales rebound in July numbers.

http://www.comicsbeat.com/diamond-no-sign-of-a-sales-rebound-in-july-numbers/

 

 

 

Well the printed media era as a whole is slowly phasing out. But the collectible market is still very very healthy. So as long as there is a strong secondary market hunger there should always be hard copies of books 

[shadroch]

I'd like to sell sales figures to show Watchmen has sold even a million copies, let alone millions.  Unless you want to argue each monthly copy should count . In which case, Youngblood has also sold millions of copies. While a critical success, it was by no means a sales sensation when it  came out.  In my shop, I'd say less than half the people that bought the first issue stuck around for the twelfth one.  Even TPB sales weren't that great for the first year or two.  While it is a perennial  best seller, it doesn't sell millions of copies.

[Aweandlorder]

1 hour ago, shadroch said:

I'd like to sell sales figures to show Watchmen has sold even a million copies

1 million in 2008 only

[Aweandlorder]

Again. Please, lets stay on topic. Thanks

[Lazyboy]

16 hours ago, Aweandlorder said:

Marvel is just such a dominant force in the field, they know every trick in the book and will fight aggressively to beat any competition.

Marvel has only ever had one trick, and they had it long before they were known as Marvel: flooding the market.

Is it coincidence that they had their best growth phase and became the Marvel we know when they were prevented from using that one trick? I doubt it.

4 minutes ago, Aweandlorder said:

Again. Please, lets stay on topic. Thanks

There will never be a "new Marvel" in the comic industry because the conditions no longer exist for it to happen. The game has changed, for many reasons.

Creators and publishers can still achieve success, but creators have learned from the history of the industry. [/thread]