>a continued effort by DC to reach new audiences outside of the direct market, with initiatives like DC Black Label, DC Zoom DC Ink and DC Super Hero Girls targeted for bookstores.
>We’re becoming a book publisher” DC co-publisher Jim Lee added. “We’re bringing in new talent with their own audiences to attract readers we haven’t had before.”
>We want to branch out. We know how to service our core market, the comics shop market,” Didio said. “But we see our numbers in the book market. We sell more graphic novels than periodicals and we want to produce books with a long shelf life.”
You know they're writing actual books now right? With words instead of any drawings?
Jaxson Jones
The post has nothing to do with that. Dc is expanding graphic novels (still with drawings) for all audiences
Carson Parker
It's definitely a good idea on paper, but what will really make or break this is if the books are actually good as well. If the stuff for the younger audience is as good as Marvel Adventures then I can really see it taking off.
DC Black Label just seems really redundant though. I can't see what the audience is when the mainline books are already made to appeal to an older audience. It just makes me think it's just going to be the "edgy" line that will be stuffed to the brim with shock value for no reason.
>expanding with sub labels >this means fuck lcs Explain yourself Fake News
Logan Taylor
3rd paragraph is just didio trying to say fuck the lcs is a polite way
Ethan Baker
Are they going to go back to selling books at the checkout of the supermarket? This seems like such a simple and obvious thing to do. Make comic books impulse buys again. Why is nobody doing this?
I'm guessing they don't want to tell the kind of stories that would be needed to fit in that format: Kid friendly and complete in one issue. Comics have an issue with their past.
Jeremiah Gomez
That would require distribution to those stores, which Diamond basically monopolizes, and the stores themselves would have to want to carry the product.
Sebastian Kelly
>FUCK the LCS
LCSes are the ONLY part of the comics industry that you should have ANY sympathy for. Aside from a few assholes here or there, their success is the only thing that matters in the industry.
Jackson Morris
The theory that that would help has been discredited time and time again
Owen Watson
In his same post they saw they know how to service their core market. Key word there being "Core".
Jaxon Stewart
>Mommy, Mmmy can I have this Batman comic?" >"Well of course dear anything for y...$3.99? Put that fucking shit back
Brayden Lopez
>BASED DC! Says FUCK the LCS That's now what he's saying at all, you tumblr guttertrash.
Andrew Myers
Wisest decision of the cenutry so far. Smelly-ass LCSs are killing the industry
Carter Smith
How do wednesday warriors even cope? Just admit defeat your floppies are dead. Trades/graphic novels are the future and dc knows it. Barnes and Noble 4 Life
Hudson Smith
Because the MAX line worked out so well.
Ethan Scott
I mean, it could've, if it wasn't carried solely by Ennis' Punisher.
Noah Mitchell
Siding with corporations over small businesses makes you a scumbag.
Jose Davis
Oh I freely admit that they're living on borrowed time. But I still prefer reading my comics that way.
Fortunately there are many thousands of back issues I can get long after new floppies really start dying off.
Kayden Gray
The small business should expand in it's trades and ditch floppies. Not who you were responding to and I buy all my trades from my LCS but I wont buy floppies again. Absolute suckers game
Sebastian Garcia
This. Why they so smelly?
Jordan Hernandez
Loyalty for any institution you don't have an actual stake in is childish.
Owen Torres
Why get them at your LCS when instocktrades is cheaper and you don't have to go into a store with smelly obese tranny faggot niggers?
Blake Rivera
Im a NEET and went to my LCS to pick up some one-shots. This obese asshole stood at the counter talking to the cashier bout absolute nonsense. I stood 20 minutes waiting for this smelly guy to stfu so i can pay. I fucking hate people that pretend like the LCS is some comfy place for geek culture. Its awkward and should die.
The businesses aren't the ones who make a product I want
Dominic Martin
Nah, LCSs need to die if the industry is going to grow.
John Miller
There's always one autistic fatass who will hang out at the shop for hours just trying to have conversations with the employees
Leo Gomez
Marvel did a good job accelerating the death of the comic book industry. DC is just doing all it can to save itself.
The future is going to be trades or at the least anthology magazines. Floppies are on their way out especially since the whole reason behind them was that they where cheap but now they're pretty expensive.
John Hill
They don't HAVE to die, the codependent relationship they have with the publishers just needs to end If all the shops closed tomorrow, Marvel and DC's comics divisions would close the same day
Which isn't inherently a bad thing since plenty of enthusiast-driven hobby businesses are doing just fine. It's just kind of embarrassing that the companies that spawned billion dollar movie franchises that are literally the biggest cultural touchstones of the entire century sell only to a dedicated group of a couple hundred thousand hardcore fans aged 18-34
Charles White
Second post literally said that you illiterate moron
Ian Peterson
Going to a LCS is like going to the DMV >you don't need to unless you have to
James Flores
>You know they're writing actual books now right?
Pretty sure they've been doing that already. Pretty sure I have a novel (as in a book where the only picture on it is on the front cover) that was based on/about one of the big cross over events from the mid-2000s.
Pretty sure I also once saw a novel in a book store about Krypton written by Kevin J. Anderson.
I've known and heard tales of people who would frequently have to be spoken to by managers asking them to tone it down, not bother customers as much, talk less loudly, even just to shower more I remember one time I was waiting to buy my shit and a sperg kept asking me questions and a manager warned him from across the room and he was just like "yes sorry..." like a child
Matthew Rodriguez
Elliot S! Maggin wrote a Superman novel that's supposed to be one of the best Superman stories ever
Blake Perry
For the industy to survive, these comic companies should have been saying fuck local comic shops for years now. Normie books are still successful even though bookstores are closing, it's because everyone buys books on kindle/other online apps. Catering to this audience will be better in the long run, instead of trying to save dying comic shops .
Cooper Green
Ebooks becoming viable took a very long time and there still is price equity in releases to this day The market for books is not comparable to comic books that release monthly, are printed once or maybe two or three times if it's a runaway success, and sell almost solely to a dedicated group of enthusiasts
Cooper Phillips
the price has risen so much they priced themselves out of that market. You would have to cheapen the printing quality to newsprint again and do it black and white. and do people actually WANT to write that kind of stuff? If they do it would probably not be Batman stories
Ethan Howard
DC has BEEN doing that Schoolastic (via Capstone) since at least the New 52.
The DC Superhero Girls line has been outselling a number of DC and Marble (and TWD/Star Wars, etc.) trades that get sold as GNs. DC has always made millions from their back catalogue so they always knew they could make money from their stuff from non-LCS sources.
They are now just going to attempt it with original material.
Diamond DOESN'T monopolize Supermarkets; they only have that with the LCSs. THIS is one reason why Marvel inked their deal last year to sell digest versions of Marble crap published by Archie, since Archie Publications DOES have that in-road via supermarkets and those few mom-and-pop soon to disappear drugstores that still have those metal racks for family friendly comic books.
>Floppies are on their way out especially since the whole reason behind them was that they where cheap but now they're pretty expensive.
ONLY really sensible thing anyone has said in this thread.
>Elliot S! Maggin wrote a Superman novel t
He wrote three. You are referring to Miracle Monday which is considered THAT good. He also wrote Last Son of Krypton and Luthor's Gift, not sure how those are considered.
Colton Brooks
If DC, Marvel, Image, and Darkhorse cut their contracts with Diamond and distributed more freely.- would that save LCS?
However, I would welcome an expanded traditional prose novel release schedule. Bring the older ones back in print (at least as ebooks) and tell stories that you can leave to the realm of imagination.
IMO the Knightfall book adaption was almost better than the comic run.
Easton Martin
>Giving a shit about the LCS >When they've done nothing but keep shitty floppies alive and promote elitist behavior in the fandom.
FUCK LCS.
Jack Miller
What is Black Label? is this 'mature readers' imprint?
Gabriel Rodriguez
I read the comics online for free. If I like, I buy HC or TPB. Also not much cape stuff anyway
Non-canon cape stories, pretty much not-elseworlds. Yeah, it's the 'mature readers' imprint.
Camden Thompson
The floppy comic business model is antiquated and no longer viable in today’s market.
Aiden Perry
Increasing business beyond the dying Diamond ghetto is a great idea.
Landon Sanchez
Ashamed to admit I've stayed an hour at a place before. To be fair it was the one time, and I was going through all the dollar and three dollar bins, so at least I was looking for things to buy.
Tyler Johnson
This will no longer work. Diamond has far to much control over the print market and would never allow it.
Also, the sheer time investment just doesn't work with the current market conditions. 20 pages with heavy ads once a month for 6 dollars is a terrible deal compared to many other forms of entertainment.
Easton Adams
>6 dollars is a terrible deal compared to many other forms of entertainment.
This is why floppies are ultimately doomed. Trades are absolutely the immediate future. (with digital coming up strong a decade after that)
Comixology and the massive push to put out digital books around 2012 wasn't just for show. The market is heavily trending towards digital on all book purchases outside science/academia.
These are about the only Big Two comics that I'm interested in anymore.
Adam Johnson
There was one store (closed now) that I used to do this. But it was always early in the day when there weren't many people and I didn't but into other peoples conversations. Just chatted with the owner when he wasn't helping the very few customers he got at that time of day.
at least I HOPE I wasn't THAT GUY. but I don't do that at the store I go to now anyway
Joshua Powell
>The market is heavily trending towards digital on all book purchases outside science/academia you have that a bit backwards. The trend the last couple years has been back towards print books as people enjoy the feeling of a physical book. Science is where it's really going full digital.
But there is room for both digital and physical. I only buy digital comics if it's REALLY fucking cheep, but traditionally they are the same price as physical and that's a fucking rip off.
Luis Perez
Enjoy your trash then.
Christian Young
being the same price that is no real incentive to buy digital
Nolan Jones
>The trend the last couple years has been back towards print books as people enjoy the feeling of a physical book.
This was latter debunked.
It's was determined to be the e reader market cooling off. (since most people now owned one)
Kinda like what happened after the HDTV boom of mid 00's cooled off for the TV market.
Gabriel Bennett
that's what I mean, it hit it's peak and dropped a bit. now both digital and physical is seeing modest growth
Henry Bell
>The trend the last couple years has been back towards print books as people enjoy the feeling of a physical book.
That was from a hit piece that was directly traced back to the big 6 publishing houses. They conflated books stores stabilizing a bit with a renewed interest in physical books.
Digital will be the norm within a decade. Physical books are basically going to become the new record. (aka collectors items and hipster show off pieces)
Christopher Fisher
Just publish everything in trades from now on. Shove about 4 issues worth of content into a book for every 2 months, move them to both LCS and bookstores and you've got a waterfall of cash.
Anthony Ward
or they could publish 4 or 5 titles together wraping them by "family": one batfamily book, one superfamily book, one for teams, one for lanterns... something like that. Thats how brazillian publishers were able to keep releasing titles with small fanbases. They would always wrap a small title or two together with the best selling books.
Cooper Edwards
>comics aren't selling because they're full of shitty liberal propaganda >better put them in normie stores where they'll shelfwarm alongside Rolling Stone and Time magazine
I kinda want a DC black label of Batman. Mainly like him having a filing cabinet or file on the Bat Computer of all the fucked up cases he worked on simply labeled The Black Folders.
Ryan Walker
Good. Floppies are a crap format and anyone that buys them really is a moron. More money, for an ad-riddled piece of paper. No thank you.
Lucas Bell
They're switching more to books, not just dumping comics in Barnes and Noble. You should read things before commenting, otherwise you risk looking like an idiot.
Caleb Ramirez
there is going to be one of him tagging on alongside Constantine....for some stupid fucking reason
Liam Myers
Is it going to be about dark magic and shit?
Landon Robinson
Constantine is one of the most popular magic superheroes.
Jace Myers
>DC is tired of pandering exclusively to manchildren and wants to make stories which stand well on their own and will last, rather than serving only to generate publicity and make nerds buy shitty disposable booklets which nobody will care about in a year's time I support this completely
>Comixology and the massive push to put out digital books around 2012 wasn't just for show. The market is heavily trending towards digital on all book purchases outside science/academia. Didio has said digital has stagnated and bookstores are where the growth is. Comichron does end of the year stuff and some guy did Tilting at Windmills that showed some bookstore sales and both lines up with what Didio said.
Charles Brooks
>We know how to service our core market, yeah right, they have been doing nothing but feminist shit for over 5 years now all they care about is remove anything remotely sexy or cool with batman basically being comic relive to some strong wyman in every comic
Isaac Morgan
fag
Jace Rodriguez
Marvel is struggling to figure out the best way to sell digital trades when they have unlimited. If DC had unlimited (which I wish they did), I think we'd see the same thing.
Parker Hughes
>implying anyone cares about 2000AD
Kevin Edwards
Um. Morrison did that? The Black Casebook.
Owen Perry
I don't think the market is trending towards digital, because the tablet market has plateaued. Sure, all of us like to read comics on our desktops, but I don't really want to pay for it. When I bought my 10 inch tablet is when I really started to pick up titles digitally.
>It's not Fake News, here's my Fake Interpretation
ok
Aaron Williams
That won't happen because you'd have to ANNIHILATE the TPB department to retrain your customers to buy their books on the newstand.
You'd have to make all the big A-List comics where major shit happen ONLY AVAILABLE at then newstand and then REFUSE TO COLLECT THEM IN HC OR TPB to create a situation where you have ZERO CHOICE but to buy them on newstand. Because if not, assholes will refuse to buy them and just wait for the TPB, killing the initiative outright.
