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The current state of the comic book market
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Started by fastballspecial,

192 posts in this topic

Ride the Tiger

Ride the Tiger

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, 1Cool said:

I agree change and technology is at the root of the decline in a lot of things we use to take for granted.  But comics as a whole should still be in its hayday since there is a couple generations who grew up on comics and are now reaching middle age and have some cash to buy stuff they use to enjoy.  But comic sales numbers seem to be dropping year after year and the only thing propping them up is people chasing variants (the article mentions almost half of all products are variants).  If comics were reasonably priced and produced to keep their core buyers happy (middle aged men primarily) wouldn't you think comics would be one of the success stories in the sea of change?

It might help a bit but we are still missing a few key ingredients. There aren't very many kids involved in reading comics like there used to be. It was nice back in the 80s as you always had that young audience. I haven't even seen any kids when I go to my LCS. Not to mention the numbers from my age group have dwindled. I hung around with a large group of 20ish guys, some who owned comic shops in the Chicagoland area. I only know of 1 guy from that group besides myself that even looks at comics anymore. 

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dupont2005

dupont2005

Posted
Posted
8 minutes ago, Ride the Tiger said:

It might help a bit but we are still missing a few key ingredients. There aren't very many kids involved in reading comics like there used to be. It was nice back in the 80s as you always had that young audience. I haven't even seen any kids when I go to my LCS. Not to mention the numbers from my age group have dwindled. I hung around with a large group of 20ish guys, some who owned comic shops in the Chicagoland area. I only know of 1 guy from that group besides myself that even looks at comics anymore. 

Price is the main thing keeping them away but there are other factors too. Comixology on phones and tablets could bring them back if they had the right formula, which wouldn’t take much. Three-four all ages friendly (which doesn’t mean patronizing kid stuff, it means truly all ages, as in can entertain someone in their late 20’s just as well as a 10 year old) A list titles with top talent on them, subscription based, and with a successful promotion to get the kids to download the app and pay for the content on a monthly subscription. Next thing you know comics are as popular as Fortnite on the playgrounds and any kid who wants to be in the loop will be reading them

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exitmusicblue

exitmusicblue

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Posted (edited)

I think comics will survive the variant storm.  Folks will either continue buying enough to sustain variants, or will increasingly neglect them, leading to a drop in their production.  The market will resolve itself one way or the other. 

The comics industry always has evolved and will continue to.

Edited by exitmusicblue
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NP_Gresham

NP_Gresham

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Posted

Copyright laws and endless extensions are causing far more problems than most realize.

There is no downside (except to a tiny sliver of stake holders) to ending the copyright protection to characters and throwing them into the public domain as orginally intended.

Everytime a character gets close, there is a mind-numbing bill to extend the copyright.

Competiton works. Free market works.

The original copy right laws worked.

More and more extensions do not work.

 

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musicmeta

musicmeta

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Posted (edited)

Put out comics like the 70's.  Use the same type of paper. and...Real simple...put out a good story with good art and the books will sell...That article was spot on.  Cut down on all the variants and reboots.  Get creative and put out "new" interesting characters..i.e. we need another
Stan Lee type out here. 

Edited by musicmeta
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Mercury Man

Mercury Man

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Posted

Thanks for sharing.  Lots of good points in the article.  Definitely too much product. 

You know, variants mean nothing to me.  Zero, zip, zilch, nada.  I could have walked by a variant at some point in my collecting, that I could have picked up for say $25-$50 and it may be worth hundreds in today's secondary market, and guess what....I still sleep just fine.  

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dupont2005

dupont2005

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37 minutes ago, DavidTheDavid said:

https://www.cbr.com/january-2019-comic-sales-analysis-marvel-dc/

https://cosmicbook.news/disney-shutting-down-marvel-comics

More news item (the second speculative) on the topic.

I would be absolutely shocked if the industry leader were shut down. Marvel must still be profitable. If not it’s time for restructuring and a change of marketing but not closing up shop. There’s a ton of money to be made in Marvel comics still. I guess I could see them licensing the IP out, but the dip in quality (and I imagine there would have to be a dip in quality) may actually be the beginning of the end 

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mattn792

mattn792

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7 minutes ago, dupont2005 said:

I would be absolutely shocked if the industry leader were shut down. Marvel must still be profitable. If not it’s time for restructuring and a change of marketing but not closing up shop. There’s a ton of money to be made in Marvel comics still. I guess I could see them licensing the IP out, but the dip in quality (and I imagine there would have to be a dip in quality) may actually be the beginning of the end 

The question is will Disney do what it takes to turn Marvel’s publishing arm around?  I gave up on new releases in 2014 because the stories and art were terrible, and it doesn’t seem like things have changed in the slightest in the ensuing five years.  Will Disney man up and replace Quesada and the rest of the clown college at the top with some real innovators, or will they just shrug it off and say it’s too much work?

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dupont2005

dupont2005

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I doubt they’d shake things up too much at the executive level as long as they’re far enough in the green, but they could hire new executives to handle emerging markets and promoting the product to a younger audience. Right now it looks like a dozen Star Works books is their answer. The problem is people who love watching Star Wars movies aren’t going to go buy Star Wars comics unless you convince them these expensive floppies they’ve lived their whole lives without are something they need to get into, and that’s a hard sell with so many entertainment options around and a generation that doesn’t value hoarding possessions like ours have. That’s why I think digital is the savior of comics. You CAN get millennials to pay for digital content. They love Netflix and Pandora and all that. I’m thinking ad supported free to read Marvel comics optimized for mobile and a tie in with Fortnite or something may be the answer

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justafan

justafan

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Posted

I read and agree with everything mentioned in the article especially about the variants and new titles/reboots/one-shots.  However, I do not see the publishers or diamond agreeing to several of the key fixes that the speaker presents and that is where we will begin to see a breakdown in the medium.  As of right now, much of Marvel's sales and comic revenue tends to come from reboot/new titles and the 10+ variants they spawn and the control they wield over the distribution and ordering.  Eliminate that and things could get ugly for them.  They are basically doing all they can at this point to keep sales up. How long do you think Disney will keep the division open if it begins to be a draw on their bottom line?  If they were to get rid of the reboots/new titles/variants/incentives and lose the completists/speculators/investors/flippers, they would have to jack up the cover price on every comic to $15-25 to make the same revenue on a smaller market's print run.  This will further isolate the market's demographic to older men.  Can you imagine paying $20 for a 32 page comic every month simply because Marvel is only selling 10k issues of that title? Neither model is sustainable as those older men will eventually retire and die out. Would the reverse be true?  If they slashed prices back to $2/issue, used cheaper paper, lower cost coloring, cut rate art and stories (can't be much worse) would that draw in the younger readers and sell more comics?

Face it, the variant market is practically subsidizing the reader market.  Do you really think collectors that are buying 5+ variants of a title are actually sitting down and re-reading the same story 5 times each with a different cover each time? Maybe, but what they just did was pay 5x or more to read the same comic if they even read it at all.  So what's the difference in paying 5x the cover price for a no-variant title?  The hope/speculation that just one of those variant cover's value will be worth more in the future and the art is better, the secondary flipper market that buys out all the artificially low print run copies in 2 minutes and resells them on ebay for a profit, or just trying to squeeze another $4 from the completists.  But is Marvel even analyzing the data to identify which artist and covers are more popular?  Wouldn't it be better to produce just 1 really awesome cover a month with amazing art from the hot artist and simply charge more for that issue?  And wouldn't it be even better if the story in that issue was 5x better than the average dribble being pumped out?  Would that be worth paying $20/issue for?

The other problem with the direct market that lags behind other industries is the availability of big data on customer demographics.  Not sure if every Diamond customer has to report in the age, sex, ethnicity of all their customers but that is a huge source of market info the publishers are unable to take advantage of.  Last I checked, kids are not the primary or even secondary customer of comics.  Maybe it's just my area but I've only ever seen adults and older teens buying new modern comics in the LCS near me and it's mostly men.  The occassional women that do enter, most are picking up their husband's monthly pulls or buying Pops toys.  Most of the men I see shopping are not in the favored demographic of 18-24 year olds.  They are usually men 35-40 or older.

I think this article is more of an obituary.  I disagree with the optimism of the speaker's concluding remarks but I hope he is right and I am wrong.  The LCS B&M stores will be the canaries in the coal mine. 

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Ken Aldred

Ken Aldred

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Posted (edited)
23 hours ago, musicmeta said:

 

Put out comics like the 70's.  Use the same type of paper. and...Real simple...put out a good story with good art and the books will sell..

 

Despite being a kid in the 70s, I’m not convinced any longer that it’s so clear-cut, and much  less nostalgic about paper quality.

Digital remastering can often greatly enhance artwork that originally was obscured and negatively affected by thin-and-dull newsprint.

For me, forwards on a tablet reader is more promising than looking back to an old bus station newsstand.

 

Edited by Ken Aldred
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bc

bc

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Posted
1 hour ago, Ken Aldred said:

Despite being a kid in the 70s, I’m not convinced any longer that it’s so clear-cut, and much  less nostalgic about paper quality.

Digital remastering can often greatly enhance artwork that originally was obscured and negatively affected by thin-and-dull newsprint.

For me, forwards on a tablet reader is more promising than looking back to an old bus station newsstand.

 

As another kid around that time frame, you have some very valid points. I just don't see the new generation collecting anything of significant physical bulk like comics. There are some rare exceptions, but it's more about portability for the younger generations, hence the potential for digital readership to expand if priced properly and delivered in a quality format.

I once posted supporting lowering the paper quality and maybe even doing b&w reprints to further reduce the cost to expand the customer base. But I now think that won't fly because the quality expectations of today's consumer base would not be met as we watch the decline of almost every printed media compared to the lowering cost of a bigger and bigger 4K TV. Plus the continuity of most titles & content is not conducive to attracting and maintaining new readers.

Once 5G becomes the standard for wireless communications and high-speed fiber to the house becomes more prevalent, will kids ever even look at a static image and word balloons again since an infinite library of video content will be delivered nearly instantaneously to the remote masses? The holders of the IP are being pushed by their shareholders to create content for the next generation of content distribution methods rather than the "old bus station newsstand" model.

There will always be people with the resources and demand to reclaim the glory of their childhood possessions. But as each generation is weaned from the physical content delivery method, they will have less interest in spending their disposable income on things their parents and grandparents cherished which would doom it to become the next stamp collecting environment.

Hopefully,this ain't gonna happen for a long time and the IP owners, creators and distributors will address the potential of modern consumer habits with the plethora of quality content that is available from this medium.

-bc

 

 

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dupont2005

dupont2005

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Posted

I’ve never liked four color on newsprint. That’s really what got me into indies as a kid. Black and white was better than that muddy blotchy mess of colors that usually didn’t even line up correctly. And then you’d find indies with better color, Baxter paper, just higher quality materials. And not everyone was wearing green pants with a purple shirt. I prefer black and white reprints of EC comics over recreating the four color process 

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