Comic floppies are literally to expensive for today's entertainment landscape

4 bucks for 10-15 minutes of entertainment is not worth it.

With 10 bucks you can watch a 90 minutes to 2 hour movie with infinitely bigger production value than a mere floppy comic. With 60 bucks you can play vidyas, up to 20 hour of solid single player or countless hours online. This is minus some Steam discount where you can get a lot of old classics like RE4 for 10 bucks. With 8 bucks per month you get Netflix and countless hours of entertainment. With 0 bucks there are countless hours of LP, Youtube videos and shows you can watch.

On the other side, for the artist it doesn't make any sense to work for 5 bucks a page while you can get 100-200 bucks per page drawing on Patreon. That's where a lot of top talent of the generation goes, straight to Patreon.

At least with anime/manga industry when you hit a jackpot like Toriyama or Oda, you get full creative ownership of a million dollar franchise. Being comic writer/artist at Marvel/DC, the megacorps own all rights to the character you invented. The Western comic industry has no place in today's entertainment landscape, especially the weekly floppy subs and pull model. It is a novelty hobby for aging middle aged and old man just like making model trains. This is why comics are dying

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Ok

See, now this is the type of dialogue I actually want followed through with. The fuck are people supposed to do?

Moreover, these problems are very likely solvable but risk taking is so averse in an industry where you can just “retcon” any mistake or whatever at any moment. It’s built on non-commitment.

>4 dollars is too expensive for a hobby
>artists are better off working on a site that lets sjws fund tranny artists than for the biggest names in comics
>"top talent"

Your shits all fucked m8

Read Box Office Poison, its all about artists getting swindled for their characters

>On the other side, for the artist it doesn't make any sense to work for 5 bucks a page while you can get 100-200 bucks per page drawing on Patreon. That's where a lot of top talent of the generation goes, straight to Patreon.

>fairpagerates.com
>Line art $200-300(Mainstream) $100-250(Indie)

>with infinitely bigger production value
You can't do with crappy cgi what you can do with a drawing by a talented artist. You have a point with everything else but big budget blockbusters look like crap visually.

Starting off with a 20% Off sale isn't the wisest of ideas, especially with floppy comics where the margins not great to begin with.

Grand Opening? Grand Closing.

so all western comics, US and european should just shutdown and let manga do it's thing?

>The fuck are people supposed to do?
Move to digital with lower prices or move to subscription based models

>10 bucks you can watch a 90 minutes to 2 hour movie
Maybe if you don't have a job and can watch movies on a Tuesday at ten o'clock in the morning

Would using news print and no color ala manga help? I've always liked pencil/inked version of comic panels over the colored ones. Plus manga proved its doable.

do you eat your comics or something?
Movies are a rip off because you pay for a single use. books last a life

I just wish the Murican comic industry could move more towards the European system. Sell larger volumes/trades instead of floppies. Publish the story in increments in journals that contain several stories. I dunno, something.

And then maybe indie creators would get screwed over less too. Can you imagine the audience someone like Mignola or Sakai could reach in the Euro-system?

and this is why Based Marvel wins and DShit is weeks from shutting it's doors forever

Sorry my bad, I stand corrected with my 5 bucks per page claim

Still you have to take into account that one page of actual pencil work requires like half a dozen or so panel and like what 5-6 hours to do? 200 bucks comission on Patreon plus if you stream your drawing and take shekels donation for comments can be a better moneymaker.

Moviepass is $10 a month for 30 movies

You never fail to make people cringe ladderbro

Who in the fuck spends 10-15 minutes reading a modern comic?

That shit only applies to shit like Metal, Doomsday Clock, etc. Most shit like X-Men: Red takes about 2 minutes with the amount of nothing that happens. And that's an alright book.

>selling your information to watch shitty movies
No thanks.

Thats why I only buy floppies with single issue storylines like that time Superman went to the carnival with Lois and Jon and the Batman one with Swamp Thing.

People should do more single issue stuff like those. Probably why I was excited about Multiversity.

Why do you care if other people know what movies you watched?

>European comics

I’m still mad that I can’t read Baguette. Or at least not fluidly without any looking up- visiting there they had all sorts of fucking original and new comics and stuff totally and completely unrelated to capes- something that just looks NEW not only in art but in story. But shit, it’s been out there for years and here we only get trickled in the few. Who know how many fucking hidden gems they have just sitting forgotten in some French corner.

Also your email address, your shipping address, what kind of credit card you have.

Maybe its too expensive? Do euro artist hold the rights to the comics? Or does erope also have its marvel dc like heroes? All of the euro comics i've seen look more like original IPs made by the artist..well besides tintin. Would be big guys even aford montly droughts in their public financial portfolios in wall street? Investors would move on.

There's a small publisher called Alterna Comics that does all newsprint creator owned stuff. None of their books cost more than $2 and most are $1.50. Also no one reads it.

and who cares?

Just wait for Based Disney's awesome streaming site

You're right. It is a totally unsustainable business model. TPBs are a slightly better deal but that means a large gap between when the artist starts work on something and when they actually start getting income.
Manga has the problem sorted with their cheaper aggregate magazines with economically printed pages, and then small TPBs that come out later. But American comics never had the sales to pull something like that, and its too costly to print that volume in full color

good goy.

If they can release 1.50 comics then they proved its posible no? Well the big 2 release in bigger bulks so maybe not. But OP has a good point. IF i had a following i would go for patreon, hell the top illustrators are going for it and they dont do comics.

Not really. It's more like a vanity publisher. I don't think you have to pay to have your book published, but they don't have a page rate and just send the creators some copies of the books to sell themselves or give royalties. Not having to pay upfront lets them cut costs.

Everyone had a mindsed that muh LCS is the health of the industry.

I know it is heartbreaking for a lot of people, but physical LCS needs to go and comics had to go digital to reduce their price. Marvel/DC cannot survive paying a team of editor, writer, penciler, inker, then print the comics, pay diamond to digitally distribute the physical prints all over the countries, and sell 15,000 units on average on $2.99 or $3.99 and a couple of cents worth of profit margin while still maintain a main headquarter in Manhattan, NY, paying rents and keep the lights on.

LCS is just a distributor, like your local Blockbuster that went away because of Netflix and digital streaming service.

People that don't want to be a currency?

The justification for the price of comic books comes more from their collectibility. Comic books have been like glorified trading cards since the early nineties.

SHUT UP SHUT UP YOU GOTTA BUY THE FLOPPIES ANTHOLOGIES DON'T WORK, SELLING THEM BEYOND THE COMIC SHOPS DON'T WORK, JUST SELLING TRADES DOESN'T WORK, FLOPPIES, FLOPPIES PAY FOUR DOLLARS FOR UNDER 30 PAGES BUYTHE FLOPPIES ALL HAIL FLOPPIES, NO ANTHOLOGY, NO LONGER BOOKS, CAN'T CHANGE THE PRINTING PAPER, GOTTA HAVE HIGH GLOSSY FLOPPIES!

The average normie sees no calue in something you cannot touch. They want to feel in control. Its what keeps people away from digi comics and pc gaming...that and the fucking miners.

Japan does the same thing with manga.

yeah its too fukken expensive compared to manga in japan. im not talking about importing or shipping costs but its just expensive in itself.

digital coloring is shit and the cause imo. they should stop engaging in that unreasoned work and draw comics with black and white or 3 colors. manga proves everybody fucking reads anything in black and white as long as its fun. digital coloring is aesthetically just ugly on paper and only wastes time and money, and comics even cant take any advantage of it. ive never felt its class or easy to read. nobody really wants it except for old comics fans and ive never seen someone saying "omg this digital coloring is so awesome" yet why do they still do that shit? it doesnt even make sense.

the coloring style is only half-decent when you see it on display with back lights and basically it only works decent for video games or some clip arts like flyers, posters.

See also Commando Comics; they put out three to four comics every fortnight and they run about 60 pages to 70 pages. They're a fair bit smaller than other floppies and they're black and white apart from the covers, but they still sell very well for what are very old fashioned war comics of the sort you'd see back in the 50s,60s and 70s.

>pc gaming
Steam is incredibly successful though. PC gaming is nowhere near in a dire strait as comic industry is. Also digital purchases on vidya has made a dent on physical sales.

Japan has a commuter culture with the vast majority of workers needing something to read on the train or bus ride to and from work. Even now with plenty of entertainment alternatives it's become ingrained, the equivalent of those cheap novels sold in airports for people to read on the flight and leave in their seats when they leave.

As much as I hate to admit it, you’re right.

>move to subscription based models
This. 10 bucks for literally all new releases. Maybe 10 bucks for 20 new release titles and 15 bucks for full access straight to your phone/app/internet browser.

What's the point of buying digital floppy if it's the same price as LCS.

Could it be that comic stores maybe aren't the best venue to sell these? I feel like I haven't seen a comic book on the magazine rack of a mini-mart in ages and there's no reason the big names shouldn't be there. Maybe the comics aren't being distributed effectively. I really can't see the industry surviving on digital without taking a major hit in quality and physical is simply better anyways.

And? Most Americans shop from supermarkets and there's tons of cities out there. Put vending machines near schools, sell 'em in coffee shops, just get them out into society at large.

>Could it be that comic stores maybe aren't the best venue to sell these?
Yes and no. With hundreds of titles and random crossovers you need that "comic book guy" locally to let you know what's happening in the industry and get some recs. Otherwise you have to sieve through literal hundreds of garbage titles to find half a dozen or so actual gems. It is even impossible to follow a story arc for one character, because he/she will appear in multiple runs of different titles concurrently.

For example if you like 616 Old Man Logan he now has his own Old Man Logan title, he's part of Weapon X team, he's part of X-Men Gold, he's in Astonishing X-Men. It is a giant clusterfuck to follow what's happening in comics these days and this is why YT channel like Comicsexplained are so successful.

Grabbing a single floppy of Venom #161 on 711 would give you absolutely no context at all.

>The average normie sees no value in something you cannot touch.

You've got it backwards. The purists and long-timers want physical material. Casual folk want ease of use.

this was pointed out in another discussion that comics just don't get much profit from newstands or at least accurate sales figures.

someone more knowledgeable would probably correct me on this though.

while newstands/non direct market expand the potential territory for buyers, direct market sales has much more profit.

The point of the newstands is to find new readers. It wouldn't even have to be a main product; just make an anthology with a few stand alone, or short serials, make it it's own universe, whatever and publish it monthly.

>Don't get much profit.

But they don't sell their comics on newstands or see it as a direct revenue stream; it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

You completely missed the point. Commuting comes with built in time to to read. Built in time to read creates the demand, not the venue of sales.

Except Japan also had these good sales of comics back before commuting was a thing; same with the US, etc.

Why can't Marvel/DC just have a package deal for comics that are suitable to be sold in those locations and just advertise the other comics through those titles or their website?

I play Persona 5 and you get a seat once in a blue moon while commuting. Same deal with the couple of month I did working in NYC. During rush hours it is near impossible to find a seat on the metro and read something.

The reading material for commuter is a meme market

iirc it's more of the vendor's part that they find comics to be hardsells outside of probably the big selling titles from DC and Marvel.

again, someone more knowledgeable would tell how distribution differs between stands and stores (newstands tend to lose more on unsold copies compared to stores).

well some regular mangas sell 500,000 copies by volume (yep, the sales for mangas are by vol) but the real big ones 1 or 2 millions but those are really lucky. Classic mangas however sell permanently

You should consider how certain artist are valued more for their work, and pages more if they're well known. They can also make money others ways such as in the after market by selling the original art to the comic if they don't do digital, or at least do commission list at conventions.

Shhhhhhh! we have to keep pretending floppies are viable or they will shutdown all the comics forever!?!?!!!

That only works for hand drawers. A lot of artists these days are hack tracer doing 3D models or worse straight up tracing stuff from google images

I stopped buying floppies a few years ago. I wait on trades, buy HC collected editions and focus more on Euro/not Big 2 type stuff. Still buy from LCS. Am I part of the problem?

That explains blockbuster an Netflix for sure.

>mfw can watch movies for $5-7 at local theatre on weekends
>only reason it is ever $7 is for opening nights or scummy practices from other companies like with star wars
>has dollar movie night on tuesdays

I can only imagine a price higher than $10 is in a cuck state or a city.

If I was asked to fix the comic book industry and grow sales, I'd do the following; note this is not going to be respecting fans of the comics and it'll likely cause a lot of initial upset but I think these steps would be healthier.

Knock it off with the dozens and dozens of comics; simplify the line, end the books that aren't selling well, or combine them into a single anthology thing. Move into other genres than just superheroes if you're DC and Marvel; contemporary stories, historical stories, traditional sci-fi/fantasy/horror, etc.

2. Market Research

Find out what people want and pander the fuck out of it. Stop pushing anything that doesn't sell and start selling it. 14 to 20 year old men want violent and tits? Put that out. 30-50 year olds want stories about detectives and drama and crap? Put that out. Make it so people know precisely what comics are for them, and while not saying 'don't buy it' tailor it to markets that will be interested. However if it doesn't sell well don't be afraid to pull concepts, stories, characters or the people writing/drawing them off. This doesn't matter regardless of politics, or anything like that. If stories about disabled hippy lesbian Asians sell well in a specific demographic to the extent it's profitable, then Wheelchair Cis-Basher is hitting the shelves. If it don't, it goes.

3. Different grades of granularity.

At the same time, one of the core demographics is the comic grognard and they're a very stable consumer base; slowly shrinking, but still stable. So continue the lines that would appeal to them (condensed down and rationalised, of course) but also create a layer above that that's more straightforward and easy to follow. Ignore canon or universe nonsense if you must to do this. Publish these in anthologies, print them as cheap as possible and push them out in supermarkets, cafes, grocery stores, petrol stations,etc. Only three or so anthologies, each catering to a different demographic.

>Moreover, these problems are very likely solvable
Not really. How do you feel if you pour your heart and soul into an Iron Man run, say you got paid some decent amount, like you make 10k from that gig and everyone loved it.

Then Disney came to adapt your comic into a movie script, pay the movie scriptwriter 6 digits to just steal your idea, pay Robert Downey Jr 80 million bucks to play the character and make millions of dollars through Ironman merchandise while you got cucked and only had 10k in your pocket, despite the millions of dollars that Disney made being some derivative of your creative work.

The incentive structure is incredibly fucked up. Writer and artist should get royalties if their stuff is adapted to big screen, is their creative work. How come JK Rowling made billions from royalty but Chris Claremont doesn't from X-Men movie adaptation?

If properly done, what do you have?

You have a line of more broader appealed comics readily available to the public that are easy to get into and accessible that don't come out very often and are cheapish to produce.

You have a shrunk but more reasonable to manage and higher quality in the existing lines that are still available to the hobbyist but also easier to access for the beginner.

You have comics now visible in the public again while retaining the and by only having a monthly sale on these larger anthologies, it's less of a risk for you and the shops/businesses selling them (they have a month to shift inventory, they don't have to buy so much, there's only a few they have to buy and they're cheap to produce.

You have stories and characters that are tailored and popular hitting right demographics and priced accordingly.

Now this isn't going to happen in a million years and if they did try it, I'm sure fan backlash and media outcry would water it down, but this would work and if it doesn't, then US comics are basically living on life support and will end up just being sold as trades in bookshops.

locally a publisher did just that (printed dc and marvel comics with similar styles (DC's animated comics for example) in a smaller format).

great if you're just going to read them, not so much if you're going to resell them.

This is true. When's the last time you saw a lcs that made not if their profit from magic and other card games? If like to see how much profit comes from comics these days

This is another thing; the secondary resell market and collector market is artificially sustained and largely based on fake speculation based on the prices of classic comics. This is a crutch and it's saved the industry in the past but it can't be relied on. The collectors will still have the comic shop tier comics to rely on though but the industry needs to wean itself off catering to this market as it's basically an artificial bubble that hardly ever works out.

You could also argue that by making the comics more disposable, you increase the collector value down the line, but really you need to focus on the product itself, not a secondary collector value based mainly on false speculation.

Man, even in my hometown of 100,000 in one of the poorest states in the union it was still $12-$15!

Digital is the only realistic way to go.

With digital only, you cut all the costs of printing and manufacturing as well distribution/shipping. Furthermore, you don't have to worry about using space to hold physical copies. I have over a dozen longboxes and I'm quickly running out of space in my studio apartment. Pretty soon I won't have any choice but to purchase exclusively via digital means.

We already have digital distribution, but the next step has to be to fully embrace it and almost completely cut out physical copies. At best, they can maybe still release severely limited-edition/alternate covers physically that you can only get in store. Perhaps with a bonus like the artist or writer's autograph.

This way, comic shops can focus far more on merchandising like apparel, card games, and similar things of that nature. You can also further incentivise still going to comic stores by forging some sort of bonus deal where you get a discount on digital purchases if you're a member of your LCS.

oh hey, fellow flip user. These comics were the shit, but they only lasted a few years before being canned sadly.

You're right, but there is something about having a physical copy versus the digital issue.
It's in a similar light to how I miss older TV, I miss being curated the content and not watching at random.

I've seen walmart attempt to sell comic bundle packs in the card/merch section near the front. I've never seen them sell.

Enjoy that one benefit of living somewhere shitty.

They need to bring back pulp runs.
Cheap paper, cheap ink, republished story-lines from 6+ months back, all for just .99-1.99
The speculator boom has ruined comics pricing, and normies don't want to spend 20 bucks just to keep up with a few comic book issues. Make'em cheap and priced to move

>the comics more disposable, you increase the collector value down the line,
hilariously the reason why this was reported to be big $$$ by wizard when they featured it.

>kids who bought it never knew the term 'mylar snug' so pristine copies saw a massive price surge.

they ran out of stories to tell or publisher closed?

not sure which is which because i bought them on sale at booksale XP

>fellow flip user
I'm part powerful race but we don't even have a reliable comic here. One's closing probably because no one really bothers buying, apart from the few older fans. I agree with some of OP's sentiment: The price is too much.

They need to print on newspaper stock with the covers they use on events, the thick ones.

AH it's a Sup Forums tries to fix the comic industry well golly let's talk about it.

1. While Digital sales are growing there is also now a trend backlash of people who hate digital reading. Mostly it's the guided view because hey isn't reading a comic one panel at a time fucking great?

2. Comics just nee to be fucking returnable so that way stores can get low overhead and not fucking die.

3. Community is important in buying things, as much as it pains neck beards going out and having a place that knows you gives a lot of value to people. Having things to sell that people want.

4. The Indie scene needs Marvel and DC. Because while if the direct Market goes down it's going to take all the smaller press stuff with it. Marvel and DC would probably be okay. Any Indie book not named the Walking dead uhhh.

5. There actually is a good book on the subject of how the direct market ended up where it is. Comic Shop: The Retail Mavericks Who Gave Us a New Geek Culture is the book that might help show a broader picture.

6. Make trades cheaper. Fuck magazine paper. Make the nice hardcovers expensive ones but only if it makes sense.

That's what they done though. The hundreds or so titles is because they're throwing the whole kitchen sink at the target demographic. It's like one of the garbage chinese food joint that starts selling chicken wings, pizzas and subs because they're so shit and cannot survive on selling General Gao's chicken. When your shit doesn't sell you have to diversify.

You got variety of Spiderman titled, from cucked neurotic Slott Spiderman, to slightly better less cucked Peter in Spectacular, to Black/Hispanic Miles, to solo Venom run for people who like edgy antihero, to white girl Spider man in Spider Gwen, asian girl Spider Man in Silk, and even down to the bottom barrel of pregger fetishist and the single digit demographic of pregnant woman comic reader in pregnant woman spider man.

This is why I think the anti-diversity vs. SJW war doesn't make any sense. There's a title for everyone, you just have to find it. If a title isn't made for you specifically, there is no reason to screech autistically. Even Sup Forums can find a Legacy character they kinda like, in anime drawn IRL NEET comic reader 4th wall breaker Gwenpool

>Digital is the only realistic way to go.
No. Maybe I'm just an old fogey but the fact that digital means the thing I paid for can be revoked if a) the company goes under or b) they decided I'm not allowed to use their service anymore makes me incredibly wary of going full digital. That said, I'm not Amish, I've got a lot of stuff owned digitally for space reasons, but I also have several bookshelves of physical media too.

Again because you don't know what you're getting. You may be getting a ton of different stories that don't connect, are set anywhere in the run with characters you don't like.

The stories in this proposed anthology thing don't have to be simple, but they have to run for an issue, maybe two or three. Once the line itself is popular then you can start experimenting with longer running storylines, but also keeping most of the comics in the book there as one and done.

>This is why comics are dying
Comics are dying because of publishers "writing for the trade". Imagine all the new readers if they published comics with 1 complete story form page 1 to 22.

nah, just rural.

Man, I miss when comics could do decent one shot stories. I like multiparters but there was something about one and dones

Doesn't digital cost the same as a physical issue? That's even less reasonable

Not that user, but rural and shitty are almost always the same thing

People read manga on their phones now.

That's the other thing that pisses me off. Digital should be a dollar or more cheaper because they don't have to worry about physical printing or issues rotting on shelves. But instead they price it the same as physical copies in what I can only call price gouging. This is why I pirate most of my comics now or wait for storytimes

he's arguing that without having to print actual comics, manufacturing costs can go waaaay down.

bonus environmental points as well.

cute. just means you're delusional.

I hate Magic the Gathering players. They stink up my LCS.

>Find out what people want and pander the fuck out of it

You honestly think they aren't already diing this?

Except they're not doing this correctly or sensibly. They're not looking at the market and they're trying to do too much at once. They also over-identified the, for-lack-of-better-term 'tumblr' (don't get hung up on this, you collectively know what I audience as a major buyer of comics (due to age, democgraphics, expenditure of disposable income, etc) and they double down on it.They've pinned their hopes on this demographic and it's hit them hard because while they do spend a lot, it seems it's not on comics.

>The fuck are people supposed to do?

Stop printing floppies. Just literally stop printing any comic shorter than 150 pages.

It should be a dollar period. I'd be tempted to buy a dollar digital comic a week; I won't be buying one for three dollars.

Moreover a storytime scan is of legit better quality than digital sub given by marvel

Because you're not paying for cliff-hangers with one shots. I mainly buy great fillers, like Batman 666 stories, the entire Multiversity, that Batman one with the kid and his Bruce Wayne fetish. Just recently I got the Swamp Thing winter special.

They've done a very poor job of it if they have.