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Canuck
I have no life
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Location: Alberta, Canada
Posts: 10685
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edgos2
Comic Guru
lifetime member Location: Copley, Ohio
Posts: 776
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- Posted: April 30, 2017 11:17:23 am
- I saw this article the other day, as David Campiti (owner of Glass House Graphics) shared it on Facebook. You are right, Canuck, lots of good points. Mostly everything I buy these days are older comics to fill in gaps and use for my blog, but I grew up loving Marvel comics, and this makes me sad. If I were buying lots of new comics these days, most of my money would be going to DC, because the Rebirth issues I've read give me more of the vibe comics gave me when I was a kid.
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junobeach
Wise Beyond the Years
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Location: Victoria, BC Canada
Posts: 2148
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- Posted: April 30, 2017 6:56:11 pm
- For me Marvel started to really go downhill when they diminished the role of the X-men (mutants) and tried to pump up the Inhumans.
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Abysslord
Wise Beyond the Years
lifetime member Location: Wentzville, MO
Posts: 1896
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- Posted: April 30, 2017 7:09:07 pm
- The reason people didn't buy into the books with minorities or females is because it was done JUST BECAUSE they were minorities or females. Kind of like the female Ghostbusters. When you purposely take a world and just flip the genders and THEN create a story around it people see through the bullshit.
If you just flat out start a good story and the character happens to be female, it could work if you get a good team/story. You can't just swap genders and say "Oh people didn't like it, back to males!"
This is what happens when you start making decisions based on money instead of the story. That's why I read nothing from the big 2 and only buy Spider-man because it's my collection. I can't even stand reading that title anymore since it's become Iron-Spider-Man.
Last edited April 30, 2017 7:09:33 pm
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fennrx
Grasshopper
Location: South of Heaven
Posts: 151
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- Posted: April 30, 2017 7:34:00 pm
- Too many events and crossovers.
Too many alternate universes (i.e. The 46483 spider characters)
Redoing iconic characters
Too many titles
Poor writing
Bad art
Fringe political agenda
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Rapha1978
Comic Guru
Location: North Carolina
Posts: 939
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atom
Wise Beyond the Years
Location: Utah
Posts: 1090
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- Posted: May 2, 2017 1:16:46 am
- I think all of the above are a factor, but my two cents worth is that I believe that there's a disconnect between the hugely-successful Marvel movies and Marvel comic books that is preventing them from nurturing new fans.
While the movies (for the most part) maintain the status quo of the characters. . .Captain America is a white guy from the WWII era, Thor is a burly Norse Thunder , Iron Man is a rich, handsome guy. . .so on and so forth, the comic books are not. So when a kid loves an Avenger movie and decides to check out some comic books, Thor isn't the Thor he likes from the movie. Captain America isn't the Captain America that he's been introduced to.
Just go to Wal-Mart and look around. The toys, the merchandise, the shirts, everything about Marvel Heroes that is easily accessed by people has the movie versions of the characters on it. There aren't any party balloons with Riri Iron "man" or Sam Wilson Captain America. The Thor the general public (AKA potential new comic fans) knows is a handsome, musclebound white guy. . .not a woman. THAT'S the Thor that's going to be on your 12 year old's birthday party plates.
I'd go so far as to say that the only characters in the Avengers that are represented in comics the same way they are presented in the movies are Nick Fury and Black Widow. . .and Fury was changed to fit the movies, so if a kid picks up a back issue before Marvel changed him, then THAT Nick Fury isn't going to be the one he knows.
As with the Nick Fury example, for a while Marvel was moving the comic characters closer to their movie versions, but it seems they've pretty much given up on that. Don't get me wrong. . .I wasn't a big fan of forcing the classic Marvel heroes into a new movie-inspired mold, but at least they were closer to the heroes I knew than they are now in the comics.
The solution? A return to moving the characters closer to their movie versions. It won't please the old-schoolers like me, but it would go a long way toward gaining new readers. And to tell the truth, like I said above, the movie versions are closer to the classic characters than what we have now.
Last edited May 2, 2017 1:27:06 amFavorite Characters: Lone Ranger, Green Hornet, Captain America, The Shadow, Zorro, The Rocketeer, Jonah Hex
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GCH91
Collector in Training
lifetime member
Posts: 61
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- Posted: May 7, 2017 7:45:43 pm
- Atom, you make a lot of good points.
I have a lot of issues with Marvel right now. I continue to read many of their titles without much enthusiasm. Perhaps I am in the minority, but I actually like a lot of their female characters. Laura Kinney, being my current favorite.
I just wish they could have found a way to introduce new characters without changing / eliminating the old ones. I am a huge Nick Fury (Sr.) fan and wish they could have developed Marcus Johnson into his own character, rather than eliminating his father.
I actually like the new added diversity in the MU, just wish these new characters would develop in their own right rather than take on the mantle of the established heroes. For that matter, I wish they would spend time developing the diverse characters they already have, rather than changing established characters in the name of diversity. Where is Shang Chi, Misty Knight, Niko Minoru, America Chavez, etc.?
The MU is a big place and there is plenty of room for new characters. It just seems like a lack of writing talent in that they are not adding new characters, they are simply rebranding existing ones and alienating their long time readers in the process.
I find it odd that the movies seem to have been tightly plotted out for decades into the future and the comics are an absolute mess. If they had really thought this out, they would have introduced Miles, Riri, etc. into the movies so that kids could have some link when they went and picked up the comics. (Riri could have replaced the little inventor kid in Iron Man 3, etc.). I'm sure it is complicated with licensing and ownership rights, but after the success of Avengers, Guardians, etc, I would think something could be worked out.
Another thing to consider is what happens when the actors portraying the major characters age out of the part? How long can Robert Downey Jr. play Tony Stark? When/If he leaves what do you do with the character? I can't see someone else ever playing that role, though I was pleasantly surprised with Mark Ruffalo's version of Bruce Banner, so who knows?
The problem is that while Peter Parker can stay a teenager for decades in print, actors actually age and have a finite interest in portraying the same characters. Maybe Marvel was thinking they could rebrand their characters with younger versions in an effort to recast for the films. If so, I don't think it was very successful.
Marvel has had a hard time creating new characters since the 1980's in my opinion. Fans like what they like and they don't care much for change. At the same time, without innovation or new story lines, people get tired of reading the same old story, so I'm sure it is very challenging to keep a series going.
Maybe the whole Marvel Legacy thing they are doing this Fall is an attempt to get things back on track. I fear that it will simply muck things up even further if they try some sort of "it was all a dream" reboot and bring everybody back as if nothing happened in the first place.
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Canuck
I have no life
moderator
Location: Alberta, Canada
Posts: 10685
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Mr.Grimm
Teacher
Location: British Columbia, Canada
Posts: 486
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- Posted: May 17, 2017 5:37:25 pm
Canuck said:Came across this and thought I would share...a lot of good points. By Brian Hibbs So, right now Marvel comics is in a little spot of trouble. In February 2017 Marvel’s best-selling ongoing superhero title barely passed 60k on the Diamond chart estimates. They ran three “event” style crossovers – “IvX”, which sold fewer copies than that, and “Clone Conspiracy” and “Monsters Unleashed”, neither of which cracked 50k. In fact, in what probably has to be a first for Marvel comics, other than “Amazing Spider-Man”, they don’t have any ongoing superhero titles selling over 50k in February. (DC meanwhile places fifteen superhero comics selling over 50k that month, so you have a reasonable comparative) This has led to Marvel taking several pretty unprecedented-for-them steps, the chief of which might be in holding a retailer summit in New York as well as building a “secret” Facebook group to discuss Marvel marketing with retailers. While it might be possible to argue the full value of these efforts (the Facebook group, in particular, only allows “positive” posts on Marvel, so is less of a valuable conversation between peers – Marvel does not openly participate in any other retailer-focused messaging boards or Facebook groups), it does represent some sort of move towards more open retailer communication that has been mostly absent in the decades since Marvel’s bankruptcy. But for all of these attempts, it appears from the outside that Marvel is receiving many of the “wrong” messages about what the market is saying. This is probably best-represented by this widely-spread interview with David Gabriel, SVP of Sales and Marketing. David was indelicate in some of his quotes, but I do think that most internet commentators willfully misread what David was attempting to say here. “I don’t know if that’s a question for me. I think that’s a better question for retailers who are seeing all publishers. What we heard was that people didn’t want any more diversity. They didn’t want female characters out there. That’s what we heard, whether we believe that or not. I don’t know that that’s really true, but that’s what we saw in sales. We saw the sales of any character that was diverse, any character that was new, our female characters, anything that was not a core Marvel character, people were turning their nose up against. That was difficult for us because we had a lot of fresh, new, exciting ideas that we were trying to get out and nothing new really worked.” Read full article with links here - http://www.comicsbeat.com/titling-at-windmillls-259-what-the--is-wrong-with-marvel-comics-anyway/
I think this is the start of the comic collapse. More and more collectors relize it's much more profitable to buy older comics. Old comics hold their value. The golden age to the copper age will be the ones to get. No one is going to pay big money for a 1:100 variant in the future, and Newsstands are the next wave of collecting Preferences, 
IMO
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