MARVEL CAN'T SELL CHEAP TRADES FOR STUPID REASON

bleedingcool.com/2017/03/31/marvel-tells-retailers-cant-put-cheaper-collections-will-compete-expensive-ones/

>“The Paul Jenkins, Jae Lee Inhumans is $34.99. It’s a 304-page graphic novel. By comparison (it’s not entirely a fair comparison), Batman: The Long Halloween at 340-something pages is $24.99. Gabriel responded. Two things there, if those prices came down, we’re going to run the problem that people are going to jump from the comics just to the trades, because the trades are going to be 50 percent cheaper to buy than the comics,” he said.

>“In order to make sure that they made money, our trades had to be a little more expensive,” he said... “Now we’re in a fix, because do you want to have a $34.99 Inhumans edition out there as well as a $19.99 one? To me, that’s going to cause a lot of problems as well.

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>We can't sell cheap collections because people wouldn't buy the expensive ones.

and that's why they're #5 behind Image and fucking Dark Horse

Just more evidence that Marvel's collections department really has no idea what they're doing.

Maybe the fact that trades would cannibalize Comics sales is because they're a superior product that more people would be willing to buy. Maybe you should sell people what they want more.

No wonder DC makes 10 million dollars more than Marvel every year in trade sales.

DC has a better trade game and a better back catalog.

I don't know why they're saying this anyway unless something internally in their payment structure between them and creators is really off. How does DC pull it off and manage to much so much more in trades than them? Sure they don't have a Watchmen or a DKR, but fucking DC Super Hero Girls sold more than almost every Marvel book last year.

Death to floppies

>Comics are now 10 dollars
>Because people will buy graphic novels instead of the issues it will cost 35 dollars

So are they going to axe the individual volumes or raise the price? Either way this is utter bullshit.

Seriously. I bought single issues for something like 25 years, but in this day and age where virtually everything of worth gets collected as trade paperbacks anyway, I've made the jump to ONLY buying trade paperbacks, and happily so. They're more durable, they're more attractive, there's no ads, they're easier to loan to freinds, and a more satisfying reading experience. Unless you're impatient (which is fairness is a non-trivial issue) there's no reason not to prefer them.

>people would buy this
>therefore we're not going to make this, but instead force them to buy our inferior product that is struggling to sell
What the fucking fuck business move is this?

>Unless you're impatient (which is fairness is a non-trivial issue) there's no reason not to prefer them.

Gutter loss is the other reason, but even then waiting for digital sales might be better since the ads there are all at the end. A little debatable since you're technically paying for something you don't own, unless it's one of the publisher that lets you download a backup.

I think DC's been putting out a ton of good trades lately and I wonder what that's about.

This is Perlmutter's doing, isn't it?

they've always had higher quality trades and Rebirth was basically built around having higher trade turnaround

Not just him. Axel clearly has his head firmly up his own asshole.

>I want the American comics industry to become like the European comics 'industry'

do you not?

Do they not notice that they are losing to a company that charges less than them?

>comparing Inhumans to Long Halloween

What the fuck?

I trade wait, fuck single issues, they don't fit on my shelves I have to wait a 6 months for a arc to finish instead of just buying a whole arc. If I want to read a comic I'll just buy older trades.

DESU, I'd rather have comic writers write an entire arc and publish it together then have it come out in single issues.

They're retarded. What else is new? They thought they could just swap the X-Men with Inhumans and X-Cucks would just roll over and accept it.

This must be it.

It has to have something to do with how creators are compensated for their work on single-issue format stuff, no? That's all i can think of.

Like maybe the paychecks would be too spread out due to the longer wait times between releases if things went trade-only, due to the work for hire nature of most comics creators?

Marvel still lives in a magical fairyland where floppy sales are all that matters, instead of the real world where trades reign supreme

not in quality but in length and price. Long Halloween has more pages but costs less.

he even says it's not entirely a fair comparison

They are losing to EVERY major comic company that charges less than them.

While you do have a point
>DESU, I'd rather have comic writers write an entire arc and publish it together then have it come out in single issues.

We've seen that this doesn't quite work in reality at least in capeshit. You just get even more decompression.

They are not wrong tho. If I have to choose between a new TPB for25 dollars, and the same book, good condition, second hand, for 5, im gonna choose the cheap one.

Trade-only IS complicated for that reason, but it does not explain why Marvel does not sell their collections at market value. Nothing in that kind of scheduling would explain it.

My guess is that it's payscale related. Someone is probably taking too large of the cut of the sales along the way so they can't lower the costs.

Marvel barely has a fraction of DC's ICONIC stories.

Of course you are. Basic Supply and demand is there greatest enemy.

This is true, but why can't they get normies to buy some shitty Iron Man trade even despite that? A collection of Batman vs Superman fights sold more than any Marvel trade last year.

it's less that DC has more iconic stories and more DC just keeps their four or five most iconic stories constantly in print, and that their most iconic stories lend themselves extremely well to being reprinted in trade form.

Marvel has several stories that could be considered iconic, but they're longer runs like Miller Daredevil and Claremont X-men, and they can't be fucked to keep them in print.

and all of this is on top of DC just putting out higher-quality trades for cheaper

No excuses. "DC Super Hero Girls" was created just a year ago and is already outselling almost every Marvel book.

comicsbeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Bookscan-16-Top-750_sheet.htm

Why there are no Captain America's books in the Top 750? He really has no stories worth buying?

Meanwhile, digital DC series like "Injustice" and "DC Comics Bombshells" sell better than "Avengers".

>Why there are no Captain America's books in the Top 750? He really has no stories worth buying?
He's a fucking white male!

>Marvel has several stories that could be considered iconic

They really dont. They basically just have Miller's Daredevil. Claremont is good and all, but nothing in that run is as iconic or influential as Watchmen, Sandman, Kingdom Come, The Dark Knight Returns, The Killing Joke, etc.


Heck, even Shade the Changing Man has had a more widespread impact than Claremont's X-Men I'd say.


Yes, sure, Claremont's X-Men became the blueprint for team books in Marvel and in certain parts of DC, but there are very few ideas, themes, or even images that permeated the rest of the medium like DC's iconic stories do.

I only ever buy Marvel trades in bargain bins, and they end up there A LOT more than DC. Bargain bins are where you find some of the best stuff, so there is nothing wrong with that, but Marvel shouldn't be having to throw a ton of their stuff in bargin bins.

But for the few of us that just look for good priced trades, Marvel is the bottom of the barrel. I will pick up some, but am far more exicted when I found Jodorworsky or Negative Burn stuff there.

Marvel is pricing themselves out of the market, not just on floppies, but now on trades. At least DC lowered floppies and Image sells most 1st trades at $10.

Either Disney is telling them to fuck up their business or the top management has lost all grip of economics. Not just comic economics, but you would think Perlmutter would know a bit more about pricing than this....Unless now that he's joining Trump cabinet he is purposefully tanking Marvel

>I want good comics instead of shit
I do

But you don't really need iconic stories to make money in trades. Marvel should be able to capitalize on their movies like TWD has with its TV show.

They do.

"Civil War" and "Old Man Logan" sold a lot last year.

idk the marvel movies are pretty disposable and just get the most surface level bits from the comics.


TWD requires investment and is actually written as a serial, long format story like the comics, so I can see it being easier for fans to transition.

they really, really dont. They sold more than usual, sure, but no where near normal DC trade sales.

I think the problem is that someone, somewhere, is fixed with the idea they MUST get a living with the floppies and the trades shouldn't hurt them

At some point, I guess they'll understand floppies shouldn't be anything more than advertising for the trades...

This! There is a problem with their pay scale. Upper management is taking all of it and leaving nothing to anyone else. It wouldn't be a problem as much if upper management gave a shit ant actually helped out the little guys in the market, or hired editors that worked at doing that job. But there is no structure, just profits. So the whole thing is crumbling.

>Civil War and Logan
Just because of their respective movie hypes.

If Marvel has to make a blockbuster film every time they want to sell a trade a little bit above average, that's....that's not really too economical.

I think there's something to be said about DC keeping their iconic stories relevant

Name ten story arcs in DC. Not events, just stories. Easy! Okay, name ten that aren't Batman. You can still do it, I wager

Okay, now name ten Marvel stories that aren't events. Okay, now name ten that aren't X-men. It's a lot tougher

DC has been way better about making sure you know the most relevant stories they have and that you know them by name, Marvel's just good at making sure you know runs

Not everybody wants to invest in an entire run

Civil War trades have always sold pretty well

Neither did well
>39,446 CIVIL WAR: A MARVEL COMICS EVE MILLAR MARK MARVEL COMICS GROUP HACHETTE BOOK GROUP 4/1/07 CGN004080 Trade Paperback 9780785121794 $24.99 $985,756
>13,994 OLD MAN LOGAN MILLAR MARK MARVEL COMICS GROUP HACHETTE BOOK GROUP 9/1/10 CGN004080 Trade Paperback 9780785131724 $29.99 $419,680

Relative to the rest of Marvel's stuff but overall not good.

And for comparison, Image's top 3:

>71,741 THE WALKING DEAD COMPENDIUM, V KIRKMAN ROBERT IMAGE COMICS DIAMOND BOOK DISTRIBUTORS 10/1/15 CGN004040 Trade Paperback 9781632154569 $59.99 $4,303,743
>66,601 THE WALKING DEAD COMPENDIUM VO KIRKMAN ROBERT IMAGE COMICS DIAMOND BOOK DISTRIBUTORS 5/1/09 CGN004040 Trade Paperback 9781607060765 $59.99 $3,995,394
>50,558 THE WALKING DEAD COMPENDIUM VO KIRKMAN ROBERT IMAGE COMICS DIAMOND BOOK DISTRIBUTORS 10/1/12 CGN004040 Trade Paperback 9781607065968 $59.99 $3,032,974

Jesus you are blind. There are plenty of Iconic Marvel stories, they just tend to be longer. As you mentioned Claremont (and to these days that is far more influencial than Millar DD (Millar Dark Knight is still more influencial than X-men though)). But Marvel works better as Omni's. Unfortunatly they don't seem to advertise them. Simonson's Thor and Claremont X-men are 2 of the best superhero comic runs that were ever made. But I'm guessing Perlmutter is just interesting in getting share prices up high enough that he can sell and move somewhere else.

Does marvel still sell hardcover trades with 120 pages for 25 bucks? I barely buy DC or Marvel shit but that used to infuriate me when I would search for trades especially since they were cheaply made.

>Claremont Xmen more influential than Miller DD
"no"

>, they just tend to be longer.
And that, in the TPB Market, is a problem.

>DC has been way better about making sure you know the most relevant stories they have and that you know them by name, Marvel's just good at making sure you know runs

hit the nail on the head

Marvel doesn't want people to know about their older stories. Bot diverse enough and too problematic.

>No excuses. "DC Super Hero Girls" was created just a year ago and is already outselling almost every Marvel book.
The excuse for this is children actually buy comics, especially considering its a popular webseries and toy/clothing line.

Both DC and marvel need to try harder and promote more children's comics with characters they'd KNOW and not literally whos like Moon Girl and Hellcat. Though apparently Moon Girl is doing well with scholastic but imagine how much better an Avengers book would be doing.
TTG and other all ages comics are basically never promoted and just exist.

Truth.
Batman alone has more iconic stories than most of Marvel combined. Killing Joke, Dark Knight Returns, Long Halloween, Year One....Even fucking Hush, the low-tier abortion that it was, is more iconic than a lot of Marvel's shit.

Marvel is doing this and it's the problem. They turn off old fans and try for new fans but they are far less than they lose. Look at all the replacement heroes, does anyone really care abut Riri? Nah, there is nothing wrong with having kid books to encourage new readers, but at the sacrifice of old readers is the problem

>DC has been way better about making sure you know the most relevant stories they have and that you know them by name, Marvel's just good at making sure you know runs
Here we are.

DC tries hard to promote singular story arcs and not just runs.
Hell, Snyder's Batman may be known Snyder's Batman, but people also know the name of the arcs and DC makes sure people do. Court of Owls, Death of the Family, Zero Year, etc.

Ms Marvel and Black Panther are doing well now, so marvel should really try hammering in that it's not just Wilson or Coates, it's No Normal and Nation Under Our Feet.

Well you're forgetting the income from the movie itself here now.

There are very few Marvel comics that work well like that though. Lets take away some of the Iconic runs like Claremont, Simonson and Busiek. It is still the case that Marvel has always played a long game and the greatest stories are always moving from one to the next.

The greatest recent example was the cosmic marvel that STARTED with Giffen (people give too much credit to DnA, who are great, but giffen needs more love). Once you start that saga, you can't stop!

Marvel well never compete as well in trade, but they SHOULD in Omni's

Logan was not a Marvel Studios movie.

Movie income isn't going to guys like David Gabriel. They need to make COMICS sell.

All comics move into the next, it's the nature of the beast

But story arcs are meant to be relatively self contained

Future Imperfect is a small part of a very large run, but I can name it

The Dark Phoenix Saga is a small part of a very large run but I can name it

I love the fuck out of Runaways but I cannot tell you the name of a single arc, just that "this is Vaughan, this is Whedon, this is Immomen"

That is a problem

>Batman alone
that's the rub, though, isn't it? nearly all of DC's iconic stories are batman. then there's one or two flash stories, one or two GL stories, a couple superman stories, the archetypal justice league vs darkseid thing they retell every year,
and....it all rapidly evaporates any further removed from Batman than that.

also the kid loki epic which arguably started all the way back when Loki was running around in Sif's body, through dark reign and siege, hit its stride in JiM, then continued through Young Avengers and finally concluded in Agent of Asgard

>Sandman
>All-Star Superman
>Watchmen
>For All Seasons
>Swamp Thing
>Sinestro Corps War
>Red Son
>Secret Identity
>Hellblazer
>The Invisibles
>Animal Man

>DC Superhero Girls outsells every Marvel trade except for Civil War and a random Deadpool trade.
Still feels good.

the Kid Loki saga really needs a more unified reprint because right now it's split across
>JMS Thor trades
>Fraction Thor trades
>JiM complete collections
>Young Avengers trades
>Agent of Asgard trades
it would be a nightmare to collect if you're trying to get it now rather than as it happened, particularly those Fraction Thor trades

>The Dark Phoenix Saga is a small part of a very large run but I can name it
But Dark Pheonix sucks without the context of the other trades. This is why I saw Claremont made Marvel, for better or for worse, many of the writers took from him, Simonson and Busiek also played the long game too, just not in that scale or style. Simonson's Thor is probably the best Thor story ever, but can you name an arc? I can't by name even though I read it, cause the entire thing is one story.


>I love the fuck out of Runaways but I cannot tell you the name of a single arc, just that "this is Vaughan, this is Whedon, this is Immomen"
>That is a problem
Maybe, in trades, but IP is more valuable than all this discussion. As much as we bitch about movies that is the end game of all comics now... at least DC and Marvel.

Sandman, Swamp Thing, Hellblazer, Invisibles, and Animal Man have the Marvel thing going for them. Noteworthy runs but not specific arcs (of course there are the two noteworthy issues for Swamp Thing and Animal Man that stick out).

DC has the advantage of having both the long-ass iconic runs AND the shorter self-contained stories that can be reprinted forever. Marvel seems to have only focused on the longer runs, with events mostly filling the shorter stories niche.

Neil Gaiman talked a bit about that in an interview. He said that, at least during his youth, it felt like DC comics were so disconnected from one another that you needed a passport to go from one character to another. If you read a Marvel comic though, you could only read half a story in one comic then you'd have to go find the ending in some other comic.

Marvel is in 5th place in the trade market.

Sandman, at least, really lends itself to being able to pick it up basically anywhere in the run, except maybe the very last volume

and DC is in 2nd, and Image is in 3rd (or 4th, I can't remember if they're beating Simon and Schuster)

And even if we discount the ones that are full runs

>Man of Steel
>The Judas Contract
> Hard Traveling Heroes
>the Return of Barry Allen
>Rock of Ages
>New Frontier
>The Black Ring Saga
>The Hiketeia
>New Krypton
>Tower of Babel

Now ymmv on any of those stories but I bet you know them all save maybe one or two

They're more or less self-contained though. Since they're under the Vertigo imprint you can pretty much treat them as their own individual series.

>New Krypton

This can't count unless you're talking about something other than the 2 year, 4 book crossover

This is the problem with the American comics industry. It's stagnant and afraid of change.

I'm relatively new to comics, but I've heard that one of the reasons that the industry is so fixated on floppy sales is because of Diamond Publishing has a monopoly on distribution, can anybody break down what their hold over the industry is?

Bought Watchmen and X-Men Executioners Song trades a few weeks ago. Watchmen was $20 and XMen was $40. Watchmen had well over double the pages and was by far the superior book. Now I can't even fucking give away XMen, no one wants some obscure mediocre arc from 30 years ago. Fucking kicking myself over buying it. I will not buy another Marvel trade for as long as I live, I will only use Marvel Unlimited now. Which ends up being $6 a month, and completely kills my urge to buy any comics from them at all because everything I want to read is on it, while I'll happily buy DC trades. Marvel are absolutely shooting themselves in the foot. If I read three arcs over the course of a month, it'd cost easily $100+, but this way it only costs me $6. I mean, I'm grateful that MU is there, it's a good deal (and I'd be happy to fork over more if they offered higher quality scans of the comics), but as it is, there is absolutely no incentive to buy Marvel comics or trades.

the only thing Marvel's collections department is doing right right now is the complete collections. Those are pretty nice.

sorry to say but this board is mostly Marvel and DC. But you can find a eurocomic thread here usually, you just have to look in the catalogue. It's slow moving and will fall of the page lots. But eurocomics are were to start. Start with The Incal, Metabarons, Skydoll (just cause I read it) and (Aardvark)

*tips*

I haven't read every post in this thread. But I actually highly disagree with most of what I have read.

I love floppies. You fucking trade waiters are ruining the industry just as anyone. And he's absolutely right that it incentivizes trade waiting if you save that much money and get the shit like a month after the last issue in the trade is published.

Back issue collections I get, but fuck you losers that sit in story time threads leeching for months and then buy cheap ass trades from fucking amazon or newbury comics.

What is wrong with wanting to spend less money on a superior product?

Superior in terms of durability, appearance, physical quality, lack of advertisements, etc.,

>complaining about people being smart with their money
>complaining about people buying things

Do fuck off.

I love single issues too user. Marvel makes the most of their money on the single issues. That is their business model. People wanting them to shift to trades or digital as their focus don't realize this is a risk. They will lose some of those single issue buyers, but may not pick up enough trade or digital buyers to make up the difference.

It's easy for us to say they should do that, or whatever initiative, but as a business they need to make money and can't just take risks to transform the market because some user prefers trades.

>trades make more money than floppies except at Marvel who makes most of their money off endless variants and #1s
>trades are ruining the industry!
I see you, Marvel intern

A judge getting bribed to hell said diamond wasn't a monopoly because digital comic books exist.

Just do what i do and read them for free online instead of supporting that.

Industry looks fine to me.

comicsbeat.com/tilting-at-windmills-257-looking-at-bookscan-2016-more-than-10-million-sold/

Make better products or sabotage trades.
Free market wins, fag. We're not obligated to drain our wallet to hold up their shitty model and if they go under, I'll say the same thing I'm always told when I complain about modern marvel
ALL YOUR OLD COMICS STILL EXIST

When I said "break down" I meant "explain".

What's their excuse for having the cheapest binding/paper on the market? They're trying to compete with Charmin too?

k. prlmttr

>That 2015 growth

Hooo boy

It really is fucking insane how much more DC sells in trades/graphic novels than Marvel.
comicsbeat.com/tilting-at-windmills-257-looking-at-bookscan-2016-more-than-10-million-sold/
>DC was the second highest selling publisher with 1.2 million units sold worth $23 million
>Marvel was the fifth with 556k units sold worth $10.6 million
And it's not like this was a one off. DC has always completely dominated Marvel is trade sales and with stuff like Super Hero Girls raking it in the gap is only going to get bigger.

They have an exclusive contract to supply the direct market (comic stores) with Marvel and DC comics. This makes a competing distributor have a huge problem as they can't carry what sells the most, and most retailers only deal with Diamond anyway.

It's not a monopoly because someone could start their own, and competitors exist.

In addition, this agreement does not have anything to do with the newsstand market. Marvel and DC simply choose not to supply this market. Diamond has no say in the matter if the publishers chose to sell comics that way.

I was thinking of World of New Krypton, but you're right

Sub it for Up, Up, and Away, For the Man Who Has Everything, The Lightning Saga, The Contest, or The Human Race, Brainiac, Terminal Velocity, Emerald Twilight, Agent Orange (I just saw an Agent Orange namedrop in Space Ghost/Green Lantern of all things)