#Comicsgate - The Culture Wars Hit The Funny Books!

  • Want to keep track of this thread?
    Accounts can bookmark posts, watch threads for updates, and jump back to where you stopped reading.
    Create account
Stab You in the Back said:
The problem is not declining sales, but a lack of a sales bump resulting from all the free promotion the movies are giving Marvel. Avengers books should be flying off the shelves. Black Panther books should be flying off the shelves. Captain Marvel books should be flying off the shelves. But they're not. Their sales figures are all flat or declining. Why? Why can you get 75 million Americans to watch Black Panther in theaters, but you can't get more than 20k to buy his comic?

Somebody dropped the ball. Somebody fucked up.
Click to expand...

This isn't a new problem. I remember reading that DC also had close to no bump for their ongoing series after Batman movies despite them being mega hits. What gets a bump is collected editions and they sell a lot of them outside of Diamond system so we don't even know for sure how many collected editions of Avengers or other shit they sell.

Besides, first Iron Man movie that was a huge hit, and like other movies, did close to nothing for ongoing series happened 11 years ago.

I think that you are all overthinking this a bit. Simplest explanation is that he saw certain trends in sales that he didn't like and decided that he needs to step in to fix it.
 
AnOminous said:
This is why I find it hard to believe Perlmutter just suddenly found his balls and/or just now realized things in comicsland are going badly. The explanation that he is literally out of the loop and has been bypassed makes more sense, or that he's somehow back in power by some behind the scenes machinations with his own enemies.

Ultimately we're like Kremlinologists trying to make up scenarios to explain vague out of context shit that publicly happens in terms of internal politics we don't really know.
Click to expand...

I suspect it's pretty simple, it's all about the money.
I can see why Ike likes Trump, they have a similar negotiating strategy, either I get my taste and a slice of the pie or I piss on the whole pie and nobody gets nothing. You can see this in how he witholds support for any IP he isn't making a percentage on from Marvel's TV and theatrical output.
With sales in decline, Ike want's to know where his fuckin' shekel are. And if he suspects that the likes of Waid and his crew of exceptionals are costing him money, they're going to get a taste of his shiv.

elkinbub said:
I don't know what it is with Marvel, and there is definitely room for improvement, but somehow it seems like no matter what they do there are precious few crossovers from moviegoers to comic readers.

Guardians of the Galaxy completely cratered in sales during the years when the GOTG movies were flying high. The characters were more prominent than ever, but the comics sold worse than they did under Abnett and Lanning a decade ago.

Then again, GOTG had a reboot a year before the movie came out, just like Black Panther had a new #1 a year before the movie. And those new reboot #1s sold like 200,000-350,000 copies. Of course it was all hype and padded numbers, but Marvel COULD get those kinds of orders (if not exactly "sales") a year PRIOR to hit movies. But once the movies actually come out, once the properties are established as mainstream pop culture juggernauts? No one wants the comics. Some of that has to do with the fairly lackluster content of the contemporary comics, but not everything is down to that.

You say Coates' second Black Panter series was better than his first? Okay, but the second series starts in space ffs. Hard to see how "Black Panther in space" is better synergy... And for what it's worth the Bendis GOTG comics at least had pretty great art for the most part. They cratered in sales, and the Duggan run was better in terms of writing but sold even worse. It's like there's just no way for the comics to win at this point. The whole system is broken.
Click to expand...

Ya Boi was theorizing that the glut of MCU content is actually bad for comics sales.
I think there may be something to that. When comic book movies were rare events, then the only place you could consume that content was in the books.
When there's a glut easily consumable capeshit content available across multiple platforms you're already subscribed to, you're simply not going to bother to put down your remote control and go all the way out to your LCS to buy the books.
So the MCU might be killing comics in the way that streaming is killing theatres. You'd need a special reason to bother buying the books and there's not much special about what Marvel comics are producing lately.
 
AnOminous said:
t must be pretty shitty for the women who have worked their asses off to get where they are who now can't do any networking because men stay away from them like they're radioactive poisonous snakes. All because of a bunch of fucking whores bitter that their attempts to get somewhere just by sucking dick failed.
Click to expand...

Lol what? I have no idea where this idea comes from, but it's bull. If anything there is two levels to it - twitter level, where all the lulzy shithappenings are taking place and normies level, where people are as much flabbergasted as you all are here. Twitter speds are at best a tiny percent of the pro populations and the best artists don't really bother with social media engagement outside of sometimes posting their art to remind their fans they're not dead yet.

The normie pros stay out of it altogether, the pros that are hardworking and talented keep doing what they're doing. People are still networking as normal. I know plenty of really talented women in European scene who stay silent on social media and just facepalm in private. If anything those shenanigans are in majority contained to a) social media b) United States and in the end just give idea whom to avoid - both those women AND men. And life goes on with the rest just snorting at another man thinking with his dick first to the point of sticking it into crazy.

The general consensus is - if a human has solid character they have solid life and avoid drama altogether. You need a special kind of idiotic man to get metooed by a special kind of woman, they just attract each other. Can you see Sarah Pichelli metooing Kieron Gillen? No, because none of them sits on twitter 24/7 and have integrity that shines through their interaction with people and this is why I have hard time with showing empathy towards those men, so far what I've seen if they weren't shitty people in the first place (like by cheating), they wouldn't be in the gutter. And when someone is toxic bitch it shows in real life too- whisper networks go both ways, you know and people are warned against those bitches too, not only "predatory" men. And if a man behaves like you're suggesting- this is a human not worth networking with in the first place, as he doesn't see those women as equals and people are warned that he is hella weird and better to avoid.

The thing that pisses more is preferential treatment based on gender when hiring. All they want is to be hired for their experience and quality of work, not genetic make up.
 
5t3n0g0ph3r said:
I still haven't forgotten Perlmutter's shitty stance regarding the film franchises that are not under the MCU umbrella.
The "Well, if we don't have direct control over the IP, we'll just take our ball and go home" stance.
The stance that tells the rest of Marvel, from the comics to video game development, to exclude certain characters like the X-Men and the Fantastic Four from being featured in those other venues.
It's why I said it's "cutting off the nose to spite the face."
All it does is ruin good faith with long-time consumers and pisses off the fans (like what happened in Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite).
Click to expand...

Are you sure Perlmutter (or whomever) wasn't ordered by Disney to do it this way? Dropping XMen and F4 comics does next to nothing to Disney's bottom line, but it sure as hell hurts the Marvel Comics division.
 
My computer speakers have broken again - according to EVS' recent vids, what was his win and what does he have to say to the makers of Green Latern Corps show?
 
Elwood P. Dowd said:
Are you sure Perlmutter (or whomever) wasn't ordered by Disney to do it this way? Dropping XMen and F4 comics does next to nothing to Disney's bottom line, but it sure as hell hurts the Marvel Comics division.
Click to expand...

Well, Perlmutter has been known to make choices for interesting reasons:
www.hollywoodreporter.com

How Marvel Became the Envy (and Scourge) of Hollywood

Ike Perlmutter has become one of the town's most feared (and frugal) moguls. Now, as "Guardians of the Galaxy" takes the $6 billion-grossing brand in a new and risky direction, insiders open up about the never-seen executive's ironfisted style and the underside of a superhero empire.
www.hollywoodreporter.com www.hollywoodreporter.com
Perlmutter.PNG
 
Comicsgeist said:
I suspect it's pretty simple, it's all about the money.
I can see why Ike likes Trump, they have a similar negotiating strategy, either I get my taste and a slice of the pie or I piss on the whole pie and nobody gets nothing. You can see this in how he witholds support for any IP he isn't making a percentage on from Marvel's TV and theatrical output.
With sales in decline, Ike want's to know where his fuckin' shekel are. And if he suspects that the likes of Waid and his crew of exceptionals are costing him money, they're going to get a taste of his shiv.



Ya Boi was theorizing that the glut of MCU content is actually bad for comics sales.
I think there may be something to that. When comic book movies were rare events, then the only place you could consume that content was in the books.
When there's a glut easily consumable capeshit content available across multiple platforms you're already subscribed to, you're simply not going to bother to put down your remote control and go all the way out to your LCS to buy the books.
So the MCU might be killing comics in the way that streaming is killing theatres. You'd need a special reason to bother buying the books and there's not much special about what Marvel comics are producing lately.
Click to expand...
What happened to make Perlmutter step in is that one of his employees fucked with the competition by meddling in a contract and got sued. I really believe some turn of events in Meyer v. Waid is what brought this on.

I can totally buy capeshit oversaturation lowering comics sales. Me and a few of my friends all bought the DC streaming service, and after 2 months, we had all cancelled it. I honestly just got tired of watching DC shows. I got tired of seeing Cyborg and Darkseid pop up in everything I watched. And we were basically the target audience for that.

There’s so much capeshit out there now that I don’t know anybody who keeps up with all of it. Add in the fact that the comics are actually more expensive than the flashy and well-produced movies and tv shows, and why would a newbie ever choose the comics over the other media?
 
Rebis said:
There’s so much capeshit out there now that I don’t know anybody who keeps up with all of it. Add in the fact that the comics are actually more expensive than the flashy and well-produced movies and tv shows, and why would a newbie ever choose the comics over the other media?
Click to expand...

Not to mention some comics have major, major continuity lockout issues. The X-Men is a running joke when it comes to this subject, but it's true: you think someone who liked the X-Men movies or the cartoons (either the 90's one, Evolution, or Wolverine and the X-Men) will want to pick up a book where nothing makes sense and you have to read wiki page after wiki page (with a dash of TV Tropes) just to figure out what's going on? The average joe will say "Fuck that!" and then go back to rewatching their movies or their cartoons. Say what you will about 80's Marvel, but all of those books are timeless and accessible in some spots, mainly because the stories/runs have been collected into trades and, as creative teams didn't change every other month, they felt more coherent.

Not to mention with manga and some graphic novels, you get more pages that justify the prices for those. There's a reason why someone like Raina Telegmeyer manages to beat out capeshit when it comes to sales in actual book stores. Same thing with manga, too.

tbbh, I think companies like Alterna are the future of the industry, whether anyone currently in it wants to acknowledge it or not. Someone like Peter Simeti knows where the industry is failing, and he's taking advantage of that: the Alternaween IGG managed to break $8k. That's going to be a lot of all-ages, accessible comic books given to kids at Halloween this year, and some donated to hospitals and libraries, too. I do think part of the reason why some of these buffoons lash out at Peter is because they don't want people disrupting the status quo.

When you really get down to it, I think that's where the root of a lot of the industries' issues lie: the inability to challenge or change the status quo. But that's better saved for people who understand that better than I to explain/get into.
 
GranDuke said:
This isn't a new problem. I remember reading that DC also had close to no bump for their ongoing series after Batman movies despite them being mega hits. What gets a bump is collected editions and they sell a lot of them outside of Diamond system so we don't even know for sure how many collected editions of Avengers or other shit they sell.

Besides, first Iron Man movie that was a huge hit, and like other movies, did close to nothing for ongoing series happened 11 years ago.

I think that you are all overthinking this a bit. Simplest explanation is that he saw certain trends in sales that he didn't like and decided that he needs to step in to fix it.
Click to expand...

Batman Begins was a dumpster fire and The Dark Knight didn't get any bump because DC had committed themselves to a multi-year arc by Grant Morrison which had Bruce Wayne lost in time and presumed dead and Dick Grayson as Batman. The New 52 hit around the time that the last Nolan film came out and it cut short a planned storyline to tie into it (Bane and the Secret Six were going to kidnap all of Batman's allies and then go after Bruce, in a plot that would have highlighted the international Batman brigade in Morrison's Batman Inc).

Also SJW anti-life logic has severely crippled how they can counter program books to cash in on the movies. Only a woman can write Carol Danvers anymore and only a black man can write Black Panther's ongoing. Had Marvel had any brains, they would have gotten Jim Starlin writing Captain Marvel and leveraged Starlin's massive fanbase and status as the grandfather of Marvel Cosmic to make Carol finally click with readers. Or gone with Chris Claremont, who's also got a loyal fanbase and would fill the book with fetish fuel and X-Men guest spots and actually fucking mine Carol's past pre-DeConnick rape of Carol to remind people why they used to like Carol.

annnanovichova said:
TBH he's tried to cheat on his pregnant wife, but dude could at least have some taste to not do it with Tess Fowler, who has skin so thin she's offended when a man even looks at her. Though her recollection of the events reads more like poorly written Harlequin with narcissistic protagonist who thinks so highly of herself that men are falling at her feet.

Centre square in the bingo card should be 'Zoe Quinn is mentioned/butts in'. Aaaaand Bingo! She's there.
Click to expand...

Brian Wood only has a career these days because DeConnick, Gillen, Ellis, Fraction, Khouri, and the rest of the Ellis forum clique like him enough to keep any major lynch mob from gaining traction. It also helps that Wood probably knows where a lot of the skeletons are buried for said clique, who ever since Gunn got briefly fired from Guardians 3, have been trying to hide their shitposting from the 00s from public view (case in point, getting the owner of the forum that the Ellis clique moved to when Ellis shut down his forum, the V-Hive, deleted because DeConnick, Gillen, and Khouri had a case of the vapors thinking some of the sick shit they said there would be weaponized against them by Comicsgate).
 
MirrorNoir said:
Batman Begins was a dumpster fire and The Dark Knight didn't get any bump because DC had committed themselves to a multi-year arc by Grant Morrison which had Bruce Wayne lost in time and presumed dead and Dick Grayson as Batman. The New 52 hit around the time that the last Nolan film came out and it cut short a planned storyline to tie into it (Bane and the Secret Six were going to kidnap all of Batman's allies and then go after Bruce, in a plot that would have highlighted the international Batman brigade in Morrison's Batman Inc).
Click to expand...

This implies that comics should mirror movies if they want to have better sales. Marvel did try that, and to some extent are still trying, and it didn't result in any bumps either. By the way, same thing was observed with Burton's Batman as well.
 
Debrotherized Luigi said:
Not to mention some comics have major, major continuity lockout issues. The X-Men is a running joke when it comes to this subject, but it's true: you think someone who liked the X-Men movies or the cartoons (either the 90's one, Evolution, or Wolverine and the X-Men) will want to pick up a book where nothing makes sense and you have to read wiki page after wiki page (with a dash of TV Tropes) just to figure out what's going on? The average joe will say "Fuck that!" and then go back to rewatching their movies or their cartoons. Say what you will about 80's Marvel, but all of those books are timeless and accessible in some spots, mainly because the stories/runs have been collected into trades and, as creative teams didn't change every other month, they felt more coherent.
Click to expand...
That isn't completely on Marvel and DC's heads though. Comic books fans are typically violently opposed to anything that disrupts the status quo.
 
Debrotherized Luigi said:
True, very true. That's also a large part of why capeshit has remained pretty stagnant throughout the years, sadly.
Click to expand...
Yup and Marvel and DC have tried to reboot things a couple of times to fix the continuity lock out problem.

Heroes Reborn and New 52 being the more drastic examples.
 
annnanovichova said:
DC has finally awaken. DC women of action!

“50+ profiles of female characters and women behind the scenes, plus lots of new art and interviews from women and non-binary creators”.

View attachment 910436

View attachment 910439
View attachment 910440
View attachment 910443
archive.fo

Twitter

archived 28 Aug 2019 07:59:12 UTC
archive.fo archive.fo
twitter.com

Shea Fontana 🐝 on Twitter

“So excited to announce that my latest book, DC Women of Action, will be out this fall! Featuring 50+ profiles of female characters and women behind the scenes, plus lots of new art and interviews from women and non-binary creators. DC: Women of Action https://t.co/fMJKW7FuYJ”
twitter.com twitter.com

Because we all know how great are Marvel's all women initiatives....

BTW, can anyone of you explain, what is it about Jen Bartel's art that is so well liked? I can't look at it without cringe, because IMO she's prime example of an artist who has little observational and analytical skills, but a lot of perseverance- which only means the more detailed her work gets, it looks that tiny bit off that makes it stiff and makes it look uncomfortable or wrong. Prime example of uncanney valley of art skills.

Eta.
I haven't seen anything feom my fave Let's Unionize comics statistician and oh, geez, 🤣🤣🤣
View attachment 910464
I swear. I can't. Please, somebody donate, so she can work on her pet project.
Click to expand...

It is blowing my mind how DC is trying to depict Harley Quinn as some strong female character. Her entire back story should be kryptonite to these idiots. An intelligent and well educated woman falls into the power of a psychotic man who turns her into an insane slut who will fuck on command and has some serious PTSD issues and battered wife syndrome. Admittedly, much of that is addition to the kids TV show she debuted in, but how on earth do you retcon all of it?

What is doubly infuriating about the lack of self awareness from these mongs is that the character is tailor made to explore the life of actual real life women who are trapped in shitty abusive relationships, who know they are shit, but stick with them anyway. A fact of life that is real, tragic, and capable of making profound stories. But nah. Fuck it. She's a happy go lucky bitch with a baseball bat who is proud, PROUD to march in the local slut walk parade.
 
mindlessobserver said:
It is blowing my mind how DC is trying to depict Harley Quinn as some strong female character. Her entire back story should be kryptonite to these idiots. An intelligent and well educated woman falls into the power of a psychotic man who turns her into an insane slut who will fuck on command and has some serious PTSD issues and battered wife syndrome. Admittedly, much of that is addition to the kids TV show she debuted in, but how on earth do you retcon all of it?

What is doubly infuriating about the lack of self awareness from these mongs is that the character is tailor made to explore the life of actual real life women who are trapped in shitty abusive relationships, who know they are shit, but stick with them anyway. A fact of life that is real, tragic, and capable of making profound stories. But nah. Fuck it. She's a happy go lucky bitch with a baseball bat who is proud, PROUD to march in the local slut walk parade.
Click to expand...
Yes but she looks cool and you can buy her costume easily for conventions which will give you social media asspats....


that's all that matters...
 
The only good to come of DC’s desperate attempts to make Harley Quinn into their version of Deadpool are Frank Cho’s recent covers he’s been drawing for her books. Even those are probably more tame than they would have been if Frank Cho hadn’t been mobbed by the SJW comic brigade a few years ago.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom