[DogFashionDisco]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Boba Fettuccini

I hope. I'd love a decent MU scale Batman, Joker, Harley Quinn... making customs for all that is just a pain sometimes.

Mattel is a naive company, but I'm sure they realize there is still a demand for this scale. Who knows, maybe they're working on something right now? Sales figures for their current product (Green Lantern) and the previous failure of the Infinite Crisis line does leave some room for doubt. I think if they stepped up their game and released some higher quality sculpts with decent articulation, they would match Hasbro's MU line in sales if not even give them steady competition. It would generate more money for them, and the competition between companies would hopefully mean increasingly more intricate characters for us as consumers/collectors.

[CLASSIFIED]

Quote:

Originally Posted by KingLouie731

Where did you get a photo of me?

Quote:

Originally Posted by DogFashionDisco

I think if they stepped up their game and released some higher quality sculpts with decent articulation, they would match Hasbro's MU line in sales if not even give them steady competition. It would generate more money for them, and the competition between companies would hopefully mean increasingly more intricate characters for us as consumers/collectors.

I agree.

The comic book guy at my shop says DC books actually outsell Marvel books so I think the main reason why the toys don't do well is because they suck by comparison.

[Good Stuff]

Quote:

Originally Posted by CLASSIFIED

Where did you get a photo of me?



I agree.

The comic book guy at my shop says DC books actually outsell Marvel books so I think the main reason why the toys don't do well is because they suck by comparison.

DC outselling Marvel? Only because of the new 52 right?

I think Marvel has a ton of way cooler characters than DC. However, when it comes to the animated shorts/films/shows, DC completely destroys anything that Marvel has.

[CLASSIFIED]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Good Stuff

DC outselling Marvel? Only because of the new 52 right?

I think Marvel has a ton of way cooler characters than DC. However, when it comes to the animated shorts/films/shows, DC completely destroys anything that Marvel has.

I was surprised too, but no, he said even before the new 52.

Keep in mind that he was talking only about his shop and that Marvel still brought in more money (their comics are a buck more), but yeah, DC sold more actual books.

[Boba Fettuccini]

Well, DC is more serious and dark. More teen/adult readers. Marvel still has more kid appeal.

[CLASSIFIED]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Boba Fettuccini

Well, DC is more serious and dark. More teen/adult readers. Marvel still has more kid appeal.

I always thought of it as the other way around, but I can see that with the racy books DC is putting out now.

[Boba Fettuccini]

Look at the way the Joker has been lately. One of the last Batman comics I read had Harley posing as a stripper. Then minutes later the club owner got skinned alive.

Marvel has hammers. DC has genuine psychos.

[CLASSIFIED]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Boba Fettuccini

Look at the way the Joker has been lately. One of the last Batman comics I read had Harley posing as a stripper. Then minutes later the club owner got skinned alive.

Marvel has hammers. DC has genuine psychos.

Fear Itself blows.

Lately, yes, DC isn't very kid friendly, I agree.

Previously, though, I always considered DC to be more kid friendly. Of course, it's always possible my perception is off.

[DogFashionDisco]

Quote:

Originally Posted by CLASSIFIED

Fear Itself blows.

Lately, yes, DC isn't very kid friendly, I agree.

Previously, though, I always considered DC to be more kid friendly. Of course, it's always possible my perception is off.

Things change. It seems like DC has been improving the quality of their comics for a while, hence characters like Red Hood who step in and do what other other characters have been known to avoid.

[roshan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Boba Fettuccini

16 years on shelves. 16. And I've been buying it since it first hit stores.

Even better, Transformers has been going for 27-28 years now in some form or another. 3 3/4" Joe only took a three year break so they've been going 27 of 30 years.

If Toybiz never gave up the license Marvel Legends might be going on 10 years now too instead of having a year of nothin.

Quote:

Originally Posted by CLASSIFIED

Fear Itself blows.

There's only so many universe spanning concepts you can have before you run out of steam. I thought civil war, skrulls, world war hulk and dark reign were a very well put together series of events building upon years of back story. But Chaos War and Fear Itself are forced with very little back story to stand on. They just need another summer crossover.

[MeLikeJinx]

Not too much longer IMO... once they release the most popular characters in their most popular uniforms then the casual collector will probably stop buying MU figs, or they will just buy one fig per wave. Then MU will probably have to start making more obscure characters to appeal to the remaining hardcore collectors and those will eventually peg warm the MU line to death.

[Do Boy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by MeLikeJinx

Not too much longer IMO... once they release the most popular characters in their most popular uniforms then the casual collector will probably stop buying MU figs, or they will just buy one fig per wave. Then MU will probably have to start making more obscure characters to appeal to the remaining hardcore collectors and those will eventually peg warm the MU line to death.

Speak for yourself, I'll buy any and all that they release!!! It's a sickness I know

[Boba Fettuccini]

I've bought at least two from every wave since I started... a character really needs to make an impression on me for me to buy it. So what I buy is spotty. But I've been getting at least 2 from every wave for awhile, so I'm helping a bit... sorta... the Storm wave is gonna have to be a pass though, there's nothing worth it for me there. if they used a new female body then maybe, but no.

[Snowflakian]

Quote:

Originally Posted by gpmartin414

I think it's got two more years as is before they rebrand it somehow.

Odds are it'll be rebranded again next year. We should see the new packaging at NYCC. Every year they've changed it so far. Fury the first year, osborn the second, rogers the third, no clue for the fourth. Maybe something cosmic or X-Men inspired?

Quote:

Originally Posted by omega145

How do you know this? I find it hard to believe.

They release the quarterly profits every quarter for shareholders and the news picks it up. As stated above, it's a publicly traded company.

Treble covered the rest about cost to R & D to new bucks that then turn around and see the process continue. You can see it in the line too. Compare the first year bucks to the second year, and now the third year. They keep improving because of how well they sell.

DarkHawk for example, uses a first year buck, with new head and additional parts to make him look like the character. He's a mold re-use for a new character.

As for ToyBiz, they would have died out if they hadn't unloaded the license. Marvel Legends sales were down, X-Men sales were down. Toybiz was finding marvel less and less profitable for toys. This is why Toybiz went bankrupt briefly after the surge they had that allowed them to bail marvel out of trouble. Then it happened in reverse and marvel had to bail them out. They are now called Marvel Toys, and no clue if they even still exist. Toybiz tried the scale shift, but it just didn't take off or work that well.

This was starting to be the trend for Hasbro too, until the temp hiatus of Legends. The MU line with it's scale change is what saved the property, especially with it being the same company that had GI Joe. It gave consumers a reason to rebuy all those characters they may have had already, and it gave new customers a reason to be interested as well as hype because again, this is the same company that did GI Joe. The Marvel Legends relaunch can go either way, but I'm not too sure it's going to last. I hope it does for legends collectors, but I have a feeling it'll share the same fate as toy biz and the initial hasbro legends. Legends are just too collector driven, so the sales aren't high enough as opposed to MU which is kid and collector friendly so it just flies off shevles in high volume.

You'll also notice with Hasbro, they keep certain designs and characters in the wings to keep the populars in check for more sales later. They try to balance the waves with these to keep product moving, and obscures on shelves. This is one of the main reasons we haven't seen a real 90s/modular ironman yet. They've gotta keep a few in the catalogue to use to balance waves. The same could be said to some of the engineering. People will buy for the character, but then rebuy for a better version of the character. Take Venom for example. Initial spidey release lacked articulation, but it was one of the few venoms on market at the time so it still sold. Then out comes the better articulated one with gargan venom influences, it sold again. They could do another straight up eddie brock venom, and so long as it had better articulation than the previous, people may buy it again. The same can be said to various versions or costumes of characters. You take the one you're unsure of first, release it. Then you come back around and do the iconic to catch people's attention, then you come back around again later to do the modern take. This makes the same character be resold 3 times. Since Marvel is an ever growing medium, this trend can keep repeating since the characters are always changing.

[Jason Abbadon]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Boba Fettuccini

Look at the way the Joker has been lately. One of the last Batman comics I read had Harley posing as a stripper. Then minutes later the club owner got skinned alive.

Marvel has hammers. DC has genuine psychos.

Yeah- the psychos still buy their Bat books! The DC Reboot says that batgirl was only "wounded" by the Joker shooting her point blank with a sawed off shotgun (not paralyzed) and that it hapened only three years ago.
DC also has said that aloll Green Lantern and Batman contunity remains as it was.....

Which means (as calculated by someone on CBR) that Gotham has a major riot, gang war, prison breakout or terrorist act on a weekly basis and roving serial killers are an everday fact of life. also that the Joker break out every other month, goes on a killspree and Batman just puts him back in Arkham or prison each time.

Terrible.

My LCS owner said that orders for the first issue of all DC's relaunch titles was huge but that orders for any #2 issues fell to only four or five titles- with almost no one wanting what was shown for stuff like Suicide Squad or Birds of Prey.

It's getting tough to own a comics shop between DC's bad decision and marvel's endless, unaffordable crossover nonsense.

Oh, and Do Boy can buy that sentinel from me when Iwin it.

[Snowflakian]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jason Abbadon

Yeah- the psychos still buy their Bat books! The DC Reboot says that batgirl was only "wounded" by the Joker shooting her point blank with a sawed off shotgun (not paralyzed) and that it hapened only three years ago.
DC also has said that aloll Green Lantern and Batman contunity remains as it was.....

Which means (as calculated by someone on CBR) that Gotham has a major riot, gang war, prison breakout or terrorist act on a weekly basis and roving serial killers are an everday fact of life. also that the Joker break out every other month, goes on a killspree and Batman just puts him back in Arkham or prison each time.

Terrible.

My LCS owner said that orders for the first issue of all DC's relaunch titles was huge but that orders for any #2 issues fell to only four or five titles- with almost no one wanting what was shown for stuff like Suicide Squad or Birds of Prey.

It's getting tough to own a comics shop between DC's bad decision and marvel's endless, unaffordable crossover nonsense.

Oh, and Do Boy can buy that sentinel from me when Iwin it.

DC lied then, because the Kyle Rayner book completely flubs up his origin and changes it to where Ganthet helped train him, which makes much of his backstory now different too.

DCnU is confusing. T_T I'll keep reading the new titans book though. Other than Superboy, that book is pure win.

[thechris]

Quote:

Originally Posted by CLASSIFIED

I was surprised too, but no, he said even before the new 52.

Keep in mind that he was talking only about his shop and that Marvel still brought in more money (their comics are a buck more), but yeah, DC sold more actual books.

This doesn't surprise me at all. If you compare the quality of storytelling and character consistency, DC definitely gets the nod. Identity Crisis could be one of the best stories I ever read and they're constantly putting out new material that's actually good. I can see DC comics generating a large loyal following, even after the soft reboot. They haven't really sabotaged any characters (aside from the stupid Red/Blue Superman thing) and their giant crossovers have been done extremely well unlike Marvel's, which now looking back, look like any 5 year old hanging out at the LCS could have slapped together. This was even admitted with Secret Wars which was nothing more than a marketing gimmick to sell their Secret Wars line of action figures.

I love Marvel comics, I've been reading for a long time, but storywise, DC definitely gets the win, I think. I loved the Chris Claremont X-Men era stories like the Mutant Massacre and Inferno. Squadron Supreme was awesome. Loved Maximum Carnage. This is by no means an anti-Marvel post. Heading into the 90s, though, even with Maximum Carnage and the Spectacular Spider-man comics, everything started getting kind of cheap and I started to question their inspiration for some of the stuff they were writing and heck, I wasn't even in my teens yet. It's pretty bad when an 11 year old thinks your comics lack substance. I'm not saying they sucked, but storywise, there wasn't anything that moved me from Marvel since finding out that Tom Thumb had cancer but still wouldn't betray Squadron Supreme for the cure to save Nuke's parents and himself.

I think there's a big illusion that Marvel COMICS are more popular than DC COMICS, because Marvel itself is clearly more popular on a casual level than DC. You ask anyone and they'll claim to be a HUUUGE Hulk fan, HUUUGE Spider-man fan or a HUUUGE Wolverine fan and that they LOOOVE the X-Men and as far as they're concerned, the only cool hero DC has is Batman. Then if you ask them if they have any comics, they'll say, "Nope." Do you read comics? "Nope." Wow. Big fan. One of my ex-girlfriends, who hated comics and anything geeky, I was able to get her to read the Killing Joke and she loved it and had a new found respect for comic books. I can name a handful of good Marvel stories, but I could go on and on with DC stories. Especially if we're looking at a post '90s comparison where Marvel resorts to "fashion make-overs" to sell their comics sticking teams in matching jackets and giving long time favourites like Dr. Strange a "bystander" look with a trenchcoat and khakis and calling it a day. I'm just saying, DC's big 7 (Aside from Aquaman) have changed very little over the years in terms of overall design and they still continued to be popular.

*EDIT* One last thing, DC is able to take a seemingly lame character like Elongated Man, Ted Kord's Blue Beetle or even Superman (a grown man in red and blue tights who wears underwear on top of his trousers) and make them cool, interesting and likable by telling great stories. The last time Marvel did that for me was with Squadron Supreme and they were sadly a rip off of DC's Justice League. The Marvel method? Comics aren't doing hot? Let's get put a few random characters together and give them matching leather jackets. Let's put Spiderman in a hoodie. Let's stick Thing in a mask. Let's put Doc Strange in a trenchcoat. Bring on the clooooooones!!!! Good start, but I need more than that.

[Primacron]

To my memory there has been a Spider-Man line more or less continuously since the mid-90's, back then there was just the comics and cartoon, and now with the films the character is more well known than ever.

I think Marvel has been very clever, they have now made decent films and cartoons of many more of their characters, Wolverine and Iron Man are now in the same league as Spider-Man, so I see no reason why they shouldn't continue in exactly the same way.

The other thing Marvel does very well is crossovers and cameos, fans of Iron Man will get to know the other Avengers, fans of Wolverine will get to know the other X-men characters, and then they will want toys of those characters.

I think Hasbro will continue to include those characters in every other wave, but for us collectors they will continue to put a few obscure characters in. I think they have found a winning formula.

Although the new Batman films have been awesome, I think DC just can't compete with their other characters, because of films like Blade, Iron Man and Ghost Rider I have toys of those characters. I've seen Superman, Green Lantern and Jonah Hex, but just don't feel the need to get toys of those characters.

[bmorr]

i can say im an avid marvel fan. the only thing keeping me from the dc reboot is the money aspect. i cant afford to pull both marvel AND dc. i just spent 35 yesterday on comics and 10/11 was marvel. imagine my expenses if that doubled.

[Fedup23]

DC outselling Marvel might be a LCS aberation here and there. (Not counting the New52 reboot..talk about genius marketing even if it lasts for only a few months) but Marvel consistantly outsells DC month to month.

.Top 20 comics over the course of a year..Marvel runs just over 12 average..DC clocks in at under 8.

[omega145]

This thread was originally about how long the Marvel toy lines will last and is now a discussion on DC vs. Marvel comic sales......

[Fedup23]

Quote:

Originally Posted by omega145

This thread was originally about how long the Marvel toy lines will last and is now a discussion on DC vs. Marvel comic sales......

And NOW its about how the subject has changed......

[Boba Fettuccini]

DC needs to offer an online subscription like Marvel. If they had an affordable yearly flat rate, I'd be on it. I did the Marvel one to get Archangel (and also read comics) and I've been slowly but surely picking my way through all teh major continuity events of the last 10 years. Once I'm done there, pick up on some of the individual series as-is, get through all the Deadpool and Runaways and such... it's genius. If DC did that, they'd get a lot more of my money (seriously, what college kid can afford comic books every month these days!?) and if they stepped up their toys, they'd get even more. STEP UP YOUR GAME, DC. FIGHT FOR MY MONEY!

[usagent27]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Boba Fettuccini

DC needs to offer an online subscription like Marvel. If they had an affordable yearly flat rate, I'd be on it. I did the Marvel one to get Archangel (and also read comics) and I've been slowly but surely picking my way through all teh major continuity events of the last 10 years. Once I'm done there, pick up on some of the individual series as-is, get through all the Deadpool and Runaways and such... it's genius. If DC did that, they'd get a lot more of my money (seriously, what college kid can afford comic books every month these days!?) and if they stepped up their toys, they'd get even more. STEP UP YOUR GAME, DC. FIGHT FOR MY MONEY!

can you still get the Archangel figure this way?

[trebleshot]

Keep it on topic, guys....