Jumping-On Points

Jumping-On Points

The argument for relaunches is that new readers won't pick up a comic book with high numbers, preferring to wait for the story to start over with a new #1.

"Of course [comic book publishers] should always be doing relaunches," said Jesse James, owner of Jesse James Comics in Glendale, Ariz. "New generations continue to flock to the comic book world. Old time collectors are going to collect regardless."

In fact, without relaunches, retailers would see a huge slowdown in new comic book sales, James aid. "Relaunches always work as long as we are partnering up with the publisher and making social marketing a must on each new project," the retailer said.

Believe it or not, they really do work in bringing new readers in," said Bret Parks, owner of Ssalefish Comics in Winston-Salem, N.C. "The downside is explaining to new readers the difference between volumes and also in organizing these book in our back issue bins. But that is really about it."

Customers who complain, Parks said, are usually "few and far between" and still continue to buy the books. "It is a minor inconvenience at worse for long time readers," Parks said, "but really terrific for new readers all around."

Other urls found in this thread:

bleedingcool.com/2016/09/16/dc-comics-humiliates-marvel-with-august-2016-marketshare-as-diamond-sets-a-record-month-of-sales/
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

Diminishing Returns

But several retailers we surveyed said the sales boost on #1 issues have been lower recently, and they attributed that reduction to the growing number of relaunches from (mainly) superhero publishers.

Ryan Seymore, owner/president of Comic Town in Columbus, Ohio, said relaunches have reached the point of being "an incredibly negative force of the medium."

"DC has had the most success with the reboot tactic," Seymore said, "but by changing from the New 52 to Rebirth within five years has gone through a cycle that has both lost and gained new and veteran fans.

"With Marvel's seemingly annual soft renumbering, they have pushed away more readers with each 'relaunch,'" Seymore added. "I feel that we have reached the end of this tactic's viability."

Some retailers compared the frequent relauches to the little boy who "cried wolf" — eventually, nobody listens or takes it seriously.

"The problem with the constant re-numbering is that each new re-start reduces reader and retailer confidence," said Joe Field, owner of Flying Colors Comics. "There really isn't anything special about a first issue anymore."

"I think it’s gotten pretty tough for relaunches to work as well as they once did," said Matthew Price, co-owner of Speeding Bullet comics in Norman, Okla.

DC vs. Marvel

Many retailers felt that DC's recent relaunches have done much better than Marvel's because they were concentrated around two events — New 52 in 2011 and "Rebirth" in 2016.

"New first issues used to be a big deal," said Charlie Harris, owner of Charlie's Comic Books in Tucson, Ariz. "Marvel has turned it into a gimmick that no longer works. In fact, my customers often tell me that a big number one on a Marvel title means a jumping off point rather than a jumping on one. Customers who were die-hard Marvel fans for decades have walked away altogether in the past few years, frustrated with the constant reboots and the lack of fan favorite characters or the dilution of the same with the countless Spider characters and Iron characters out there.

"On the other hand, DC has had much success with this as the New 52 and the Rebirth both brought lots of new readers," Harris said.

"Some relaunches work," Field said. "DC has done it with strong results twice in the last five years. But I doubt if that would work a third time. I'd love to see some kind of Rebirth initiative with Marvel where the company has a dozen or so 'tent-pole' titles featuring generally recognizable versions of their classic characters. From that, they can do their experimental takes on these characters, and those surely could start from issue #1."

Matthew Price, co-owner of Speeding Bullet Comics in Norman, Okla., agreed that Rebirth's new #1 issues worked well, possibly because there were so few relaunches in the five years since the New 52 reboot.

"I think fans are interested in new first issues, certainly," Price said. "But I think the odds of it working are better if it’s a character or project that’s had a rest for a certain amount of time, as opposed to one month’s #18 being followed by the next month’s #1.

Can't they just fucking take a hint from DC and learn that nostalgia sells? Bring everything back the fans like and return to original numbering.

"Comics like The Avengers and Amazing Spider-Man and Detective Comics," Price said, "would be better served, I think, by continuing for long periods of time without relaunching."

When was the last time we saw an issue 50 from marvel or an issue 100. I miss milestones

Nooo they have to appeal to an audience that isn't there!

MAKE MARVEL COMICS GREAT AGAIN

I second this. You can roll back Marvel 10 years and only Hickman's amazing run on FF will be lost. I cant think of a single other story I would miss.

I may generally be more of a Marvel fan (in that I grew up reading more of that), but hearing that they're doing badly these days just gives me a great sense of satisfaction. I'm just waiting for them to take a fucking hint.
Watch them start relaunches with #00 instead

How would you change Marvel's staff?
If you're going to get rid of someone, you have to find a replacement.

I'm genuinely having a hard time thinking of stuff I'd miss. Scarlet Spider is the only other thing that comes to mind. Other than that, yeah, there's nothing memorial about the last decade at Marvel.

Fucking this. I'm not hard on them because I hate Marvel and want them to fail. I want them to stop treating their audience like shit, so I get happy every time I see their sales fall because I think, "Maybe this time they learned their lesson", and they never do.

Tom King's Vision was pretty good

I liked Uncanny X-force though it felt like Remender was starting to phone it in at the end

Okay, that. Also the Carnage series was kinda cool. Honestly, I blame the MCU and Civil War I.

Civil War I is when Marvel went overboard with events, because they realized it sold. MCU made Marvel crave the normie audience, that really don't have any interest in reading their comics, which made them make a shit ton of bad choices.

I'm pretty sure normies aren't interested in political correctness

Readers don't want it
Casuals don't care

Relaunches are like antibiotics. Not inherently bad, but the more you take them the less effective they are.

Of course they are. The current cultural focus is all about political correctness because it's trendy. And Marvel, like any company, wants to follow the trend. However, most of their readers are finding it alienating.

>Scarlet Spider
>Agent Venom
>Immortal Iron Fist
>Superior Foes of Spider-Man
>Yost's X-Force
>Remender's X-Force
>DnA Guardians
>Vision
>Most of Ewing's books
There's quite a lot of stuff I like from the last ten years actually

They're like the bioware of comics.
Great recognizability, well known, popular even, but they just don't understand the concept of making and treating a product in a way that's for the consumer, not despite them or someone else instead of them. You don't fill your car with vegetable oil if the engine is gasoline only, even though /some/ engines might work with vegetable oil, just because you decide one that that's what you'd prefer to use. It doesn't work that way.
Marvel will learn their lesson when they lose enough readership and are forced to see enough feedback, just like with bioware, except hopefully it'll stick for them, unlike bioware.

I would only miss Uncanny X-Force and Rage of Ultron

>phone it in at the end
Otherworld felt like filler and there was the dumb alternate timeline at the end, but Final Execution was a great end

But how will they get the retweets and reblogs of pages and panels along with empty praise from people who don't actually bother to read or support the books?

It's all ego stroking. They enjoy that all these young people and 20-somethings go on twitter and tag them in tweets full of ball washing.

>Scarlet Boredom
>Yost's garbage in general
>no Ellis' Moon Knight

how about making new heroes and trying to find some new formula with little to no pandering instead?

huh, I forgot about Ellis' Moon Knight
Thanks for reminding me, add it to the list

>Introduce a minority legacy character
>Gets popular because she's actually handled well
>So popular that she was seen as important
>Part of her charm is accessibility and how she's a teenage street level superhero who aims to follow her idols
>Marvel decides to get her more involved and have her immediately become an Avenger
>Relaunches happen and she's tied to events more often because of her rise in popularity
>Events lower accessability
>Try to catch the same lightning with other titles
>Sales are now shit

This is honestly part of the reason that I feel Kamalah was such a success. Because when she was made there was virtually no recognition tied to the Ms. Marvel brand. And even so, she doesn't feel like a Carol Danverse replacement, she stood on her own merit and struggles.

>Yost's X-Force
Wait, did people even like it?
It read like an emo teen's angst-ridden fanfic most of the time and was very hard to take seriously.

That is because Civil War I was GOOD!

It was fucking trash.

honestly i agree

i agree as well

it was both. some issues were great, others werent. i actually really liked it because not only was it fun but it actually felt like the things happening mattered.

now change just happens for the sake of more change$$$

Drain the Spider swamp. There's 52 billion characters holding the Spider name in some variation, and like 5 of them are worthwhile.

Yes, this is a thinly veiled argument to get rid of Miles.

>Yes, this is a thinly veiled argument to get rid of Miles.

Nothing wrong with that, he overstayed his welcome.

It was a fun trainwreck.

New events had nothing redeeming about them at all.

They work if they're done every so often.

There was a 5 year gap between the New-52 and Rebirth. If DC did it yearly like Marvel is doing now Rebirth would not have been as successful. The law of diminishing returns.

>But I doubt if that would work a third time

It probably would because the key factor is the 5 year difference.

Ive been wanting to read ultimate spiderman. Does miles' introduction make it bad?

Axis was a funny trainwreck. There were so many goofy moments, like Evan spontaneously turning into literally Apocalypse.

You've got a good chunk of book until Pete dies so get to that bridge when you get to it.

There's no real reason for him to be Spider-Man in this universe. I hope they give him a new identity and give him to someone other than Bendis so he can develop his own personality

Which Spider-man, we have two Spider-man now.

>this is a thinly veiled argument to get rid of Miles.
Reading comprehension is sorely lacking

that Spider-man? The black one? that's racist isn't it? why not the white Spider-man.

Don't forget, she's also going to be on an inhuman special forces team. And she's in IvX. And Champions.

Kamala is such a sad story of a character with potential ruined because of greed and ego. She could have been bigger. Now she's not even the top 100 selling books.

Isn't it MORE racist that he's been running around in a black costume this entire time? That's some first season Power Rangers shit right there.

They're both shit for different reasons.

>so get to that bridge when you get to it.
Just like Ultimate Peter did so he could catch bullet

Out of curiosity, I wondered what some comic titles' current numberings would be without any re-numberings or #0s/decimations across title volumes.

By my count, excluding events and annuals:

Superman:781
Batman:780
Wonder Woman: 684
Flash:436
Green Lantern:531
Aquaman:289
Catwoman:236
Amazing Spider-Man:779
Uncanny X-Men:619
Avengers:588
Invincible Iron Man:581

Please tell me if you think I made any mistakes.

>Do relaunches work?
Clearly not

True, if they hold off on another reboot until like 6+ years from now then it might work.

>"With Marvel's seemingly annual soft renumbering, they have pushed away more readers with each 'relaunch,'" Seymore added. "I feel that we have reached the end of this tactic's viability."
>Some retailers compared the frequent relauches to the little boy who "cried wolf" — eventually, nobody listens or takes it seriously.
>"The problem with the constant re-numbering is that each new re-start reduces reader and retailer confidence," said Joe Field, owner of Flying Colors Comics. "There really isn't anything special about a first issue anymore."
>"I think it’s gotten pretty tough for relaunches to work as well as they once did," said Matthew Price, co-owner of Speeding Bullet comics in Norman, Okla.

See this is part of why I was against renumbering. People keep thinking that the high number is meaningless, but no, it became more meaningless after they kept fucking rebooting over and over. How many fucking Captain America #1s are there by this point? Or Captain Marvel #1s? Or Iron Man #1s? Or Hulk #1s?

The problem isn't the relaunches, it sucks but I can deal with it. The problem is that every time they relaunch more and more of the books are complete shit, literally who characters with a web comic artstyle and hipster writing style that the main comics audience isn't interested in, or both.

Did you purposely put wrong numbers so someone else would work it out for you? If not, use DC Wikia and a calculator.

>tfw your favourite Marvel NOW hero is too violent to get pushed and ruined like Kamala did

flash in the pan

Because he can be his own arachnid instead of simply being "Spider-Man Two".

The only way Bendis' stupid "why black Spider-Man why not just Spider-Man?" Bullshit could ever work and have a real point is if Miles was the original Spider-Man and Peter the knock off, but white normativity still resulted in people calling Peter Spider-Man and Miles black Spider-Man despite being the original.

holy shit THIS

She's basically Blue Beetle done wrong. You don't throw a new hero directly into the Avengers. I kinda miss when the Avengers was the book where all the C-listers who couldn't hold a book congregated.

His suit is black, so what else are they supposed to call him? Red Spider-man?
Normal Spidey is already mostly red, so that wouldn't even work.

His best hope is that they form a proper Spider-Men Corps out of the various spider-themed heroes. Then he can be legit like Sam as Nova.
Scarlet Spider had less red than Spider-Man.

God this pisses me off to no end. Robbie has good potential, and his new book is hijacked by team shit. Christ he was only in a third of the last issue

fuck. nostalgia.

you want nostalgia, read back issues. that's what i do.

you know why i read back issues? to be nostalgic. creating new shit by definition cannot be nostalgic.

that's why DC is shit.

Friendly neighborhood reminder on how to "fix" Miles:
>Drop the spider mantle/gimmick
>Ditch the web shooters, he doesnt even know how to make them or the fluid anyway
>Make him the all new Scorpion since hes known for the Venom Blast and Mac hasnt done shit
Either that or just send him to another universe, far future, or kill him for a good bit

>creating new shit by definition cannot be nostalgic.

That's not entirely true. Legacy characters can make you nostalgic for an older character that isn't around if done correctly.

>DC is shit
user, DC has actually had an improvement since Rebirth

Thats what happens you "artistically" rape your creations and passive-aggressively hate on your fan base.

Yeah he gets pushed out of his own book instead

Then why is Marvel shittier?

There are times when you /need/ nostalgia. Marvel is so off the deep end they need to pull everything back and start over. /That's/ why Marvel needs nostalgia.

>MCU stll going strong
>Games are getting a revitalization
>Cartoons are shit
>Comic quality has been rough for a decent chunk

Scorpion Lad

>no mention of Bendis being a shit that drives people away
>no mention of character assassinating Beast
>no mention of X-Men being stomped on because company wars
>no mention of idpol bullshit that pissed people off and was obviously contrived more than the usual comic book character

>
what improvement would that be? oh, superman got a new belt? constantly regurgitated "postmodern" hellenism? according to "bleeding cool" harley quinn took the #1 spot. is that really something the rest of Sup Forums should be worried about?

bleedingcool.com/2016/09/16/dc-comics-humiliates-marvel-with-august-2016-marketshare-as-diamond-sets-a-record-month-of-sales/

>legacy character
>literally a reiteration of some concept masquerading as something new, when it isn't

is that why some people don't like daken or x-23?

Comics should be top priority, fuck what everyone else says. Marvel is a comic company, not a movie company. Besides, the films will start to die off after Infinity War, modern audience will get tired of it by then and start asking. "Oh, is that /still/ going?" "Didn't it end?"

Nice double trips, Mr. President.

capeshit comics are an incredibly niche market

Or just kill off Mac I guess? Which I hate to even suggest it but the guys been a joke for decades with next to no progression. Actually I take it back, kill Miles, reboot Scorpion

That could literally change at any moment if Marvel stopped being such greedy whores.

>Lower the prices by a lot.

>Sell them in more convenient locations, like grocery stores, and gas stations

>Go back to "treat every comic like it's someone's first"

>Give away free books during events, like movies or game releases. Make them good too, not this Attack on Avengers crap.

Who would you do that? Scorpion is powerful, but a complete moron so he get trashed easily.

Oh, also, you have the most recognizable characters in existence. FUCKING. USE. THEM! I don't give a shit about whatever movie deal is going on, because to me your movie division can go to hell. Now bring us back our X-Men and Fantastic Four.

DELET THIS

Marvel can't compete with children's characters that get their own cartoon like "DC Superhero Girls". It's easier to sweep under the rug that joker beats harley quinn than it is to discuss oppressed minorities like the x-men or mutual aid and struggle amongst different species through time and space... and you can bet that they'll never put powergirl on a little girls' cartoon either.

marvel's x-men pushes the universe in a direction that becomes adult themed. DC is mostly simple for a younger audience that can be marketed to via friendly cartoons that aren't grimdark and serious.

That's a pretty bitchin suit, no lie

>legacy characters

you realize this is a thread about marvel not being as successful during a time when there are multiple spider-mans?

how many times doesn't something have to be rehashed before EVERYONE finally gets sick of it?

Mutants are unable to survive.

How does one man suck so bad

>marvel's x-men pushes the universe in a direction that becomes adult themed. DC is mostly simple for a younger audience that can be marketed to via friendly cartoons that aren't grimdark and serious.
Counterpoint: Power Pack.

I think the main reason people who don't like legacy characters, particularly Marvel ones, is because Marvel insists on the replacement being the true version of the character and relentlessly pushed them, while the original is left to rot.

>X-Men pushes the universe
>All their characters are being treated like shit and being pushed out by Inhumans
>Giant murder cloud that kills them is being waved off as "peanut allergy"
The X-Men are the redheaded stepchild of Marvel user. They all hate them but they keep them around for cash purposes.

I thought Peter was masturbating for a second on the bottom left.

that's a big penis for a teenager

It's an XL cancer blaster.

I mean, what do you do after you've drowned a scorpion man?

I said done correctly for a reason. Green Lantern became one of DCs biggest series for over 9 years because of legacy.

antibiotics literally make what they're fighting stronger. if your comparison is correct, the next time DC slopes off, it won't come back, which is probably a good thing.

Same reason nobody but 90s babbies likes Kyle Rayner.

>they all hate them

your bias is showing, user

>which is probably a good thing.
kill yourself

Also the article is about diminishing returns on rapid fire relaunches, not ones with five years in between like DC's