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I feel the exact same way he does about the Big 2 and superhero fatigue. It’s the same old thing and characters aren’t allowed to grow or progress. Luckily there are a lot of great books from indie publishers, and that’s mostly what I read now.

heeeeeeeeeeeelllllllllllllllllllllooooooooooooooo everybody how are you doing today.

Mkay bye

hi im naruto uzimaki i no taijutsu

A lot of fun looking new titles here! Exciting!!

RIP Marvel/DC

So many of these sound/look great – fantastic concepts, proven creative teams. I think a lot of it’s all going to come down to cover price when it’s time to decide what gets picked up first run and what gets trade-waited.

This is a thoughtful take on what’s going on in the industry. I really think the mid-majors will survive all this comics-movie madness hanging over the industry but I cannot say the same for Marvel and DC; ship’s sailed. Once the well runs dry on TV and movie viability those characters will be vaulted and only used for marketing and toy sales.

Eric Stephenson said: “So we’ve gone back to gimmicks, to variant covers and relaunches and reboots and more of the same old stunts disguised as events, when really all our readers want are good stories.”

I wonder how much of this comes from corporate owners seeking profits for a certain quarter. Relaunching a line usually helps sales as fans rush to buy first issues. Then sales slump again. But maybe a good quarter is enough to satisfy the owners and shareholders. As he says: short-term thinking.

CVS said: “Once the well runs dry on TV and movie viability those characters will be vaulted and only used for marketing and toy sales.”

The joke used to be that if Ike Perlmutter had his way, Marvel would consist of one guy with a telephone, licensing the characters for movies, TV shows and toys. Maybe that day is actually coming.

“I’ve been turning down zombie pitches for years, but now, I’m turning down sci-fi pitches. I’m turning down horror pitches. Crime pitches. Anything we already have in abundance. Unless there’s something truly remarkable about those kinds of comics, the market is filled with them already. There are other seams to work. Now is the time to start digging deeper.”

err…but for my friends and people like me who are important who have cool X-men or Hunger Games like ideas, I’ve greenlighted my kind of folk who I can hang with or comforted because I know they’ve worked for Marvel or DC…,

America’s Got Powers
Story By: Jonathan Ross
Art By: Bryan Hitch
18 years ago, a strange crystal touched down in San Francisco and every pregnant woman in the area gave birth. These were no ordinary children, though, as each but one was gifted an extraordinary power. Used by society for entertainment, these special children live in a form of slavery with no rights, except the ability to compete in the Games. –

THEY’RE NOT LIKE US
Eric Stephenson
Simon Gane
Eisner-nominated NOWHERE MEN writer ERIC STEPHENSON teams up with red-hot artist SIMON GANE for an all-new ongoing series! We all have advantages over one another, but what if you were capable of things most of us can only imagine? What would you do – and who would you be? A doctor? An athlete? A soldier? A hero? Everyone has to make a choice about how to use the abilities they’re born with… but they’re not like us.

REVENGE #1
Story By: Jonathan Ross
Art By: Ian Churchill
Cover By: Ian Churchill
Published: February 26, 2014
Diamond ID: DEC130487

Griffin Franks was a joke in Hollywood. A washed up action-hero. Over the hill. Past it. A has-been. A barely-was. But now he IS The Revenger. He’s a star. His movie’s a hit. His latest wife is hot. He finally has everything he wants. Just in time for someone to take it all away. Forever. Starting with his face.

(speech continues….)
For the rest of you chicks , latinos, people of color, keep trying till you send me something fresh if you want to ride with Image, but for now I’ve nixed more major comics categories so send me something like Manga Pop Golf Comic instead because we need to keep it fresh. And if its superheroes, unless you’re Liefeld, Larson, Kirkman or McFalrane, the best of the best there is (who hired or helped me) you guys are the worst , buzz off and don’t fill up my inbox.

The light shines from me and only me.

Does anyone think that variants build “lasting readership”? Publishers do them to boost sales. Feels like half of his speech misses the point, on purpose, in order to garner more support from people that dislike big two.

Interesting that he leaves Image out of his potted history. I don’t know if that’s a positive or a negative, it’s just a thing I noticed.

Governments in Central, and South America are dependent on the USA -only consumer “anti-“culture like the USA can consume cocaine at a ‘government sustaining’ level. India loves us for the synthetic heroin we all love to import from them -Oxy, anyone? I love this article, but we are dealing with people here that will shock another person repeatedly, and for increasing amounts of time w/each shock just because someone in a lab coat says to, and you think foreign entities like Disney/Marvel, or Time/Warner are going change their profit making machine? Is this article a “the Millennials are coming!” type of warning that multinational corps will be branding towards? Can Generation 911-snitch be capable of caring about this article -you see documentaries about teens going from Oxy to cheaper heroin (that sill is making it over her from Afghanistan), and they all say there is nothing to do where they live. Avoiding acknowledging others while staring at iPhones, and living along asphalt, and strip malls, and traffic, and no journalism for accountability -insightful sequential that instigates awareness in this type of stuff would be nice, more sequential journalism as well, please… The current early 21Century ‘former-USA’ environment does not enable or perpetuate the sale of the type of sequential Eric Stephenson is promoting. What is going on today, please, that realistically would make us think things are going to ‘get better’?

“Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
-Yet, is it not the purpose of an ‘American’, regardless of salary, education, or sense of cooperation, or work ethic, that the majority of adult life be grueling traffic, asphalt, outsourcing, the same regurgitated shows/advertisements, only news no journalism, someone’s corporate policy, more grueling traffic, and over priced flimsy pamphlets that rarely give sequential the respect it deserves, especially while said pamphlets are called “comic books”? If it is not broken for the multinationals foreign entities / corporations, then why would sequential ever not be referred to as “comic books”?

Stephenson’s argument seems to assume a major factor that just isn’t true…that all of these publishers can be run in the same way because they have the same, or very similar business models. This is just not the fact. Image, while likely having the best creator owned model in the industry, also sets it self up with risk factor and overhead that is very very different from other publishers. So Stephenson here boils things down much more simply than the actual factors of publishing comics as any one company allow for. I think he has some great points and many different things, but they, in many cases, don;t cover for the intricacies that not only ignore the specifics of the big two like Marvel and DC, but don’t account for the specificity of companies like Book, Dark Horse, or Oni either.

He’s wrong about one thing: Marvel didn’t go bankrupt because of foil covers, or indeed anything Marvel was doing at all. Marvel went bankrupt because of reckless and foolish investments by its corporate parent.

That said, there are plenty of publishers that DID go bankrupt in the 1990’s because of foil covers. I totally agree with his overall point; it’s just that the Marvel bankruptcy doesn’t illustrate it in the way he thinks it does.

I said, when the New 52 was first announced, that it would lead to a temporary boost in sales but that, in the long term, sales would drop. I’ll admit to being wrong about just how big that sales boost was and how long it took for it to slide, but it appears that it’s finally happened. And DC’s solution is…a bunch of fucking new #1’s.

It’s not that DC hasn’t been willing to try new and different things, but it’s too ready to pull the plug when they’re not immediate successes. Marvel seems to be doing much better on that score, but is still beholden to the Big Event/New #1’s pattern.

Image, meanwhile, is putting out the absolute best books in its history. I’d say the same for IDW, despite its overabundance of licensed titles. Dark Horse, Fantagraphics, Boom, and many others are doing mighty fine work too.

Overall, I’d say things are looking pretty good; there are a hell of a lot of options out there for readers, and, anecdotally, my LCS is doing good business and a lot more specialty stores have opened up in the past couple of years, which is not what I was expecting after Atomic was shut down and the writing seemed to be on the wall.

I sure wish DC and Marvel would get their shit together, though. They’re putting out some great books, but they can’t seem to settle on a strategy that’s sustainable in the long term. Oh hey, another bunch of new #1’s; THAT always works.

Likewise, if you are a publisher putting out too many comics: Stop.
———————————————————————————–

Check out the Image Comics section in any recent issue of Previews.

Hey, Eric, ever heard the old saying, something about a pot calling a kettle black?

What I’ve taken from this speech is that comics have got boring. When I was younger I used
To read comics. At my age I can easily afford hardcover graphic novels.

Why not market your wares more in bookstores.

My final point is to learn French and see how much charm and fantasy there is in reading
French or Belgian comics. Maybe some of that can be brought back into American comics.

Nice!

Brilliant, love this bundling. Now, how about making this bundle all available online, iin addition to print.

The Marvel insert is a pain in the ass. It always falls out. Its only good for people who only buy Marvel. I don’t know of anyone who only buys Image.

Why couldn’t they just put info on their website and leave Previews as is? Why do they need a dead tree version of what I get from here and other news sites?

As someone who grew up on Warren magazines and Marvel’s black-and-white mags (like Bizarre Adventures), I’d love to see the return of b&w anthology comics magazines. Alas, looks like this will be mostly company hype. Isn’t that what the Internet is for?

[…] Movie Ever Martin Freeman’s Character in Captain America: Civil War Has Been Confirmed Image Comics Partners with PREVIEWS to Announce IMAGE+ Magazine The Spider-Man/Machinery Sequence Sana Takeda on the Beauty and Darkness of Monstress   […]

What you said made a bunch of sense. However, what about this?

what if you composed a catchier title? I mean, I don’t want to tell you how
to run your website, however what if you added a post title to maybe get people’s attention? I mean MATT CHATS: Otis Frampton on ‘Oddly Normal’ and its Atypical Journey to Publication — The Beat
is a little plain. You might look at Yahoo’s front page and see how
they create article titles to get people to click.
You might add a related video or a related picture or
two to get readers excited about everything’ve got to say.
In my opinion, it might bring your blog a little livelier.

A great series that has a lot of emotion and surprises.

Be interesting to see how a film adaptation plays out.

Lots of truth bombs here.
Make mine image.

I have to disagree with him about all the new indie titles at Comixology. I love looking through the Submit section every week. There’s always 5 or 6 books in that category that I know I have to read.

Easy to poke other companies when your company is built on hundred’s of artists doing spec work to pay your salary with many of them not seeing a cent. Imagine your position if you were paying reasonable rates and you were hiring editors.

Comparing Image to Marvel and DC is comparing apples to oranges and criticizing them is childish. Just promote and pay your creators on time, take their calls when they need you, and get your head out of your ass. I know your shit doesn’t smell of roses.

Stevenson’s endless shit-talking about Marvel and DC would have more impact if it weren’t for the fact that almost every single successful creative who works for Image – or who has ever worked for them, going right back to the founders – is successful because they built up their reputation and fanbase at Marvel and/or DC first. Just about the only person Image has that they can point to and say ‘their success is all ours’ is Robert Kirkman… *maybe*. And if you want to talk about ‘bland’ and ‘same-as-it-ever-was’, my god, how long have Invincible and The Walking Dead been going? How long has it been since either book had a reason to exist beyond ‘people will still buy this’?

Does Stephenson believe everything that he says? Maybe, maybe not. Clearly he understands that by taking a big jab at the Big 2 he can get people talking and maybe even have someone at the Big 2 reassess on a small scale how they do things. the more vocal he is the more likely it is going to work. It’s sort of like how rappers dis other rappers. It’s mostly for attention and get people talking about them.

It’s also good marketing for Image who position themselves as being edgy and the major alternative to Marvel and DC, especially in an age where there’s reboot/relaunch/event/variant cover fatigue.

Yeah, come on, Image. Why would you want to publish books that have three digits in their issue numbers? Because they consistently sell? You gotta Rehash/Reboot/Relaunch/Rebirth that shit to bring in some big numbers and instant cash so when no one cares about it six months later, you can do it all over again. I mean, what are trying to do…tell a story?! Idiots.

I don’t agree with everything he’s said, but he really does have a point about certain things. I was reading some of the trade solicitations for Marvel and came across this little byline for the Howard the Duck, Vol. 1: Duck Hunt TPB.

“Collecting HOWARD THE DUCK (2015B) #1-6 and UNBEATABLE SQUIRREL GIRL (2015B) #6.”

Literally seeing that Marvel needs to add a ‘B’ to clarify WHICH Howard the Duck and Unbeatable Squirrel Girl ongoing series they launched last year makes me think maybe they need to take a step back and rethink how they roll new/relaunched series out. It appears that at least Silk, Spider-Gwen and Uncanny Avengers have also gotten the same treatment. Though it seems only UA is the only one of this group that at least has a different creative team and roster. Otherwise the credits, title and everything is superficially indistinguishable from one another.

At least when Ed Brubaker had two #1 for Captain America years ago, they were with different artists and about a half a decade apart. Jason Aaron’s Thor has had different titles along the way (God of Thunder -> Thor -> Thors -> Mighty), which at least gives all of those various Thor #1’s some type of distinction from one another.

For a few years I had been working on a blog focused on spotlighting comics on Marvel’s Unlimited service, though I haven’t updated it in a few years. Seeing this kind of stuff makes me feel like I should get back to working on it, since the relaunches are happening so frequently now, if for no other reason than to make a reading order for everyone else.

It would just be nice if they left these series alone long enough for them to even attempt to form an audience.

(Not sure what’s happening on the DC side of things, so I couldn’t even attempt to comment)

Agreed with Paul. There are a lot of Image titles I enjoy, but there are also a lot of Submit indie titles that give them a run for their money — Heathen, Meteora, Exlibrium, Hex11, Past the Last Mountain, Center for Otherworld Science, Blue Hand Mojo, the Rosy Press offerings, etc. — and they cover some genres that Image is pretty light on, like romance.

Suzenne! Yes, Heathen and Hex11 are two of my favorite comics of this past year! Heathen in particular is groundbreaking if you ask me. Meteora, Past the Last Mountain were also super amazing! The rest on your list, I will now have to make a bee line towards putting in my collection!

Well, I think the market wants fewer $4 comics. But, yeah, I’d be very curious to see Marvel’s market share broken out when you take all the Star Wars books out of the equation…

There’s talent at Marvel and DC, that’s never an issue. People’s tastes are just diverging right now. Ebbs and flows. Spider-Man and Batman respectively will always be popular to some degree. The Big Two will be fine.

I’m a Boomer, in my early 60s. I read more Image comics than from any other company. Saga, Lazarus, Velvet, Black Magick, Descender, Shutter, and Copperhead are amazing comics and they don’t force me to read crossovers with titles I don’t have any interest in. From Marvel, I read Ms. Marvel and am looking forward to the return of Captain Marvel and Black Widow. From DC, I read Red Hood Arsenal (but only because Roy Harper is my favorite character; the book kinda sucks right now), Harley Quinn, and Black Canary. Astro City continues to amaze and delight.

I like diversity and variety. I grew up a DC reader, getting 30-40 titles a month, but I got tired of reboots and being made to feel like I don’t matter. I got tired of endless crossovers and the unrelenting lack of fun in most DC books. It was the New 52 reboot that drove me to find new comics to read and inspired me to sample Image titles.

I can’t help buy wonder if DC and Marvel even know who their readers are or what readers they want to encourage. It seems that every time I get to like a character or comic, they’re rebooted or canceled. It’s too frustrating for me.

Marvel and DC have done amazingly well for two companies that, to most normal people, sell the same product, and have been repackaging that same product for 60 years.
I doubt any of the major film studios or prose publishing house would have survived this long on that model.

I think you missed the nut graf in the Rising Son piece!

“If publishers could keep trades available at Distributors, trades like Bee & Puppycat, Lumberjanes Vol One, Rick & Morty, Steven Universe, Lady Mechanika, Afterlife With Archie Vol One, Amazing Gumball and Bob’s Burgers would be selling like Saga. I don’t understand why they let these books go out of stock ever for any reason ever. Get it together guys!”

This is a significant problem, not only because it disappoints customers, but ALSO because it dramatically, drastically and completely undercuts the efforts that RETAILERS have put into promoting these titles. We only have so much “promotional bandwidth”, and “flaky indies” is why a lot of stores evolved into Marvel/DC dominance.

What kills even worse is these are not artistic problems (which I think some of use would sympathize with), but basic organizational ones of not predicting supply in the face of what I would argue is pretty clear evidence.

And I also hear very very similar to Shelly’s above comments in the store ALL the time from 40+ customers, so it is definitely not just the “new customer”.

-B

Maybe the graphs aren’t indexed clearly because they’re explained in the context of the article…

I was also under the impression that Marvel and DC don’t need to be profitable publishers, since they operate as r&d for Disney and Warner Bros.

Not that that’s any comfort for the retailers.

David: yes the context makes them easier to understand but not to gank for another article! I’m amazed at all the work you’ve put into this! Great job. I can only steal from you and add my own slogans.

DC is making products for people who don’t read DC Comics because someone on Tumblr told them to.

Meanwhile the New 52 was the best “jumping off point” a reader could ask for. The post 52 resurgence was based on taking badic tennants of casual fan knowledge and telling New stories that took into account 75 years of storytelling. Lose the history; lose the fan interest.

Now DC is this weird mess of overly decompressed 90s extreme storytelling and borderline pandering “quirky” books that at $4 a pop aren’t econical to experiment with even if you had entertained the thought of checking out a millenial reboot of “Prez”