[Fedup23]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Snowflakian

I read a heck of a lot, and pay attention to the business actions and why deals were made. The biggest thing that stands out that proves this true is that if disney was meddling, they would have their own people in charge with a new CEO, but that was never the intent anyway. The IPs were and rich story history to tap with regularly created new ones.

Lot of news outlets have covered this before. Bleeding cool themselves keep reiterating the point over and over too because everyone immediately blames marvel or disney in a splattershot assault that includes writers, artists, editors, and more instead of who is responsible.
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And yes, some of these titles were selling, some weren't, and some were even on an uptick. Others that don't sell are staying too(Avengers Academy, X-Factor, Generation Hope, among others). So sales really doesn't seem like that much of a factor. Well maybe for GR and Daken, they were plummeting fast in sales, but doom's book and the destroyers book weren't even solicited yet to comic shops. So sales can't be a factor for them at all.


The main sales problem is that the titles aren't reaching above 100k except for certain first issues. Most just stay between the 20,000-70,000 and 70,000 is being nice. Usually it's closer to 50,000.

This is why prices are going up. Titles sell less so price goes up to make up for it which drives more readers away. The thing is they need to learn better longterm plotting, planning, and start getting the stories to the point everyone wants to buy again at a decent price. They also need to stop with these loose hanging going nowhere plot threads. Like Daken hunting bucky, or Daken being the cause of ragnarok, Darkhawk's coma, and god knows how many more that are still in play or just outright forgotten left unresolved. They also need to plot their push of TPBs better. How they could screw up the first X-23 tpb by excluding issue 7 to end it on an artistic note to push the reader into buying the collision tpb is just wtf. Instead they left it on a point that many may feel like not bothering with the rest.

The canon is an issue. No canon and they lose fans, mis-use canon and they lose fans, overuse canon and you alienate new readers. They need to get back to a happy balance of that. Something that can please all, and to say otherwise is just being a lazy writer. They've done it for years before, and even moreso during the 90s boom, so this entire BS laziness excuse of "don't let silly things like canon or characterization get in the way of a good story" is just that. An excuse to be lazy and not bother to know the characters you are writing. (A good story and good character usage are not mutually exclusive.)

The other problem is they've started prepping a new generation audience, and yet have no titles on market that are accessible for them about the characters they've grown to like from SHS or Avengers. Wolverine and the X-Men was a good start though. It's amazing how much my cousin's 7 year old son knows about the characters and who's who just from those toons and some of the movies. WatX-Men so far is a book that his mom wouldn't object to either. This comes back to characterization though as DC just found out with the reactions to starfire and those checking out the book who were titans toon fans as a kid.

So yeah, the comics division has problems that need to be fixed, but at this point would they even listen or just keep using more event bandaids and re-numberings?

So does Marvel know what it's doing better than the rest of us? Some do, some don't. Marvel isn't your normal company though. Their educations vary almost as wildly as the fandoms do, and they have no R&D department like DC does. If it sounds good they do it, if it doesn't, they don't, if it's proven to make money in the past, they keep doing it over and over. It's scary, but it really is that simple with how they work. Okay, a little more complicated than that, but there is no creative oversight other than the editors, writers, and artist/colorist/inker. Which is part of another issue about quality assurance, but that's a whole other thing that involves going on rants about which writers are stretched thin among too many titles, who takes the care to put out the best product they can, and which authors you can tell prefer writing certain titles more than others. (Like Bendis, you can literally feel the love for ultimate spider-man, but avengers... Not so much lately at least. The same could be said with Gillen on X-Men lacking the care off and on while he does amazing work on Journey into Mystery.)

Well, besides the mainstays, but those are called mainstays for a reason.

You seem to know exactly how Marvel can run a better business..I dare say that it is very different than your "simple" solutions. I am not bagging on your ideas..you have said thing that I think are valid..but if running a publishing company was as easy as people in comic chat rooms seem to believe then I think a company that has been in business for 70+ years would have figured it out too. There are a ton of problems in the industry..from printers inflated costs to the evil monopoly that is Diamond distributing (they make more per issue sold than the publisher) to the fact that kids just don't read comics anymore. DC has been around for decades too and they went all in with an act of desperation. It has worked for them in the short run...but do you think that in 2 years 60% of "The New 52" will still be getting published..I don't. A LOT of that stuff is bad. But its selling because people are going to give it a few tries before dropping.

My point is that it is simple to point at marvel as the main problem..just like many people on this message board know exactly how Hasbro should run their company. In actuality none of us has a single clue about what it takes to run one of these huge corporations and be profitable. Not finishing a story about Nova being in a coma or Hasbro releasing another 3 spiderman figures next year are great places for us to chime in..but they are less significant to the big picture than we like to think.