http://www.bleedingcool.com/2009/09/...99-comic-book/
If true this is a serious game changer. Imagine if all Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony published games were $20. That's the equivalent of this.
10 cents for the comic, 10 cents for the Coke, and a nickel for the candy bar. Rot your mind and your teeth simultaneously for a quarter. Ahhhh, those were the days...
Not to mention if your mom didn't make you throw away the comics you bought then, they are worth a lot now.
Not that they won't move more issues but how many casual fans still buy comics as single issues? Their presence outside of direct market sales seems drastically reduced to me. And casual fans generally aren't going to set foot into a dedicated comic shop.
I would expect a move manga style publishing (more issues in collection for cheaper) would be likely to have more impact.
I'd like something like Shojo Beat. A monthly magazine with several titles published in it and articles about nerdgirl culture. If they could throw in the occasional serious analysis of comics that would be awesome.
Trade sales aren't as high as you'd think.
What this would do is drastically increase my revenue to them (right now I'm just getting FF) and I imagine would put them in a position to sell more to casuals. There's a lot of people who stick to the trades because they're cheaper. This would move them toward the issues.
Downside is possibly hurting the Direct Market. Retailers may not see the immediate results for a little while. Whereas my LCS would profit more from me (right now they're Marvel profit off of me is probably a $1.50 per month because I only get one non-Icon Marvel book whereas if this $2 thing was true I'd probably jump onto at least 4 book immediately.).
Comics cost more than $2!?!
That was my reactions. I just buy secondhand and TPBs.Originally Posted by Kael
Disney owns their own distribution network with access to grocery stores, convenience stores, bookstores-- all the old hot spots for "newsstand" comics sales. If Disney gives Marvel so much money they can cut their prices in half, Disney can also probably give Marvel so much money they are no longer dependent on the Direct Market whatsoever.
Who this would really fuck over would DC. Time-Warner doesn't have deep enough pockets to let them duplicate the massive drop to $1.99. It would also bone independents pretty hard.
How are they going to get the singles? I don't think most casuals are going to be caught dead in a LCS.
I do agree that cost cutting is going to reslut in higher sales of single issues but I don't think it will actually expand that market. The people who already collect will buy more. The people who don't still won't. But that doesn't really accomplish the stated goal of broadening the base to make it easier to sell other forms of media.
Maybe they would just do it on certain key titles that may get a more prominent presence on newstands but I suspect that such a move would also coincide with the sanitation of content that so many seemed concerned about when Disney bought Marvel.
Oh, yeah Independents would have to go digital. Maybe Dark Horse would survive in print. I think DC could survive by cutting to $2.50 or maybe even $3 if they have a good digital plan coming up.
You're assuming that Marvel intends to keep selling comics primarily through the LCS. The man who essentially devised the direct market system has stepped down from his role at DC. The nation now has multiple robust nationwide bookselling chains. That's where I expect comics to go.
Yes, this may result in content being softened as Marvel Adventures Spider-Man is suddenly a more commercially viable property than Punisher MAX. I have no problems with this. The independents will find a way to survive and Mark Millar, at the end of the day, did the best writing of his career on a G-rated Superman title.
No, I agree with you- if the $1.99 initiative is to have any effect, Marvel needs to dramatically push their way back into mainstream shops. But if that's their plan then I wouldn't expect an across the board price slash but instead just certain titles and probably under the Marvel Adventure banner, as you said. I'm not overly familiar with Marvel Adventures- is it its own continuity?
If Marvel drops all prices by half and then sells twice as much, they will if anything make more money than they do now. It's completely viable. Current high prices are necessitated by a need to put a high price on talent despite relatively low print runs (most books don't print more than 50K copies).
Marvel Adventures is its own continuity, yes, and not even a shared continuity. The stories are all written to Saturday morning S&P standards, so basically it's a line where Wolverine always attacks robots and the Hulk never hurts anyone.
Then what's to stop DC from following suit? The article in the OP seems to be arguing otherwise- their pure comic business would likely make less money (at least for a time) but that would be more than made up in additional revenue from other media forms that grow out of those titles.
Marvel's ability to do this is predicated on Disney's deep pockets letting them soak losses up front. What would be devastating for the publicly owned Marvel might be trivial for the Marvel that's owned by Disney.
Time-Warner is not nearly as healthy as Disney right now. The company has a lot of issues with debt stemming from bad business deals in the 90's and around the turn of the century. DC's comics line is not as healthy as Marvel's overall. It's hard for me to imagine Time-Warner letting DC incur any up-front losses.
(Of course, if Marvel did this and it worked right out of the gate, DC would probably find some way to me-too it eventually.)
Same here. I haven't bought a comic (other than trades) since 1987. How much were they before this drop to $2?
$3.99 for standard issues. Oversized issues and gimmick covers can get as high as $5.95.
It'd be nice to see Marvel/DC/Image/DH get their weekly books into WalMart or both of the bookseller chains. I don't think you'd see much selection beyond a certain point just to keep things manageable. I don't think the assistant manager at WalMart is going to sit down with a Previews and plan out his orders two months in advance.
Exactly. They actually have comics at a 7-11 near me. Well just two on their magazine rack. 3 if you count this 70th Anniversary Marvel thing. But they were Star Wars: Blue Harvest from DH and Marvel: Your Universe (sort of the equivalent to a Shonen Jump).
So I take it that Borders/Barnes & Noble don't have comics? Because all of the Books-A-Million's I've ever visited/worked at have a pretty sizeable comics section. Although, frustratingly, mine hasn't had both Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps in stock simultaneously in awhile, despite keeping other series 1-2 weeks past their release. Annoyance, but whatevskies.
borders typically has an old school spinner rack
dunno about B&N
Crazy. Easily the worst time/fun to money ratio out there.
As I said in the longbox thread, I've long been a fan of the idea of comics companies putting out books using black and white or halftone four color printing on the cheapest paper possible and then selling them for $.99. Print up books from six months or even twelve months back. Make them true impulse purchases, so that if a person decides they want to get in on it, they can go and snap up a bunch of back issues at once, or grab the trade. Cheap, truly disposable comics that can once again find a place in the magazine racks at convenience stores and newstands.
i wholly agree with this, and it's why i don't really buy singles anymore.
B&N stocks a lot of track paperbacks but not individual issues. Books-a-Million stocks a lot of issues but thanks to the current retarded direct market/newsstand shipping policies, everything you'll buy there is about two months behind. I also don't think BAM even tries to keep up with weeklies. Borders in the area either have a little spinner rack of two-months-behind issues or nothing at all but their manga/trades section.
Oh hey, I just read the link in the OP, and I think it's worth pointing out that it is complete conjecture on the part of some blogger, and not in any way fact-based.
Rich Johnston has broken pretty much every major comics news story of the past couple decades anywhere from months to days ahead of official releases.
If Johnston says that Marvel is seriously discussing it, then there's little reason to doubt that discussion of some scale is happening. That doesn't guarantee the price cut will happen but it's a big fucking deal that such a thing is even being discussed.
Okay.
So I could buy a year's worth of a comic for 12 x $4 = $48 or I could wait and buy two trades and get those same 12 issues in a more durable format with no ads for around $30.
Yes, that is seriously how fucked up the comics business model is right now. What is especially fucked up is that you probably won't even have to pay $30 to get the two trades thanks to retailer discounts.
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