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The Real Reasons for Marvel Comics’ Woes (Comic Book Forums)

  • The Real Reasons for Marvel Comics’ Woes

Author Discussion
  • Posted: May 24, 2017 3:25:52 pm
  • A recent push for diversity has been blamed for weak print sales, but the company’s decades-old business practices are the true culprit.

    Marvel Comics has been having a rough time lately. Readers and critics met last year’s Civil War 2—a blockbuster crossover event (and a spiritual tie-in to the year’s big Marvel movie)—with disinterest and scorn. Two years of plummeting print comics sales culminated in a February during which only one series managed to sell over 50,000 copies. Three crossover events designed to pump up excitement came and went with little fanfare, while the lead-up to 2017’s blockbuster crossover Secret Empire—where a fascist Captain America subverts and conquers the United States—sparked such a negative response that the company later put out a statement imploring readers to buy the whole thing before judging it. On March 30, a battered Marvel decided to try and get to the bottom of the problem with a retailer summit—and promptly stuck its foot in its mouth.

    “What we heard was that people didn’t want any more diversity,” David Gabriel, the company’s senior vice president of sales and marketing, told an interviewer at the summit. “They didn’t want female characters out there. That’s what we heard, whether we believe that or not ... 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.”
    Read more - https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/05/the-real-reasons-for-marvel-comics-woes/527127/
    "Disliking everything is not the same thing as having an opinion"

  • Posted: May 24, 2017 4:04:24 pm
  • Marvel had gotten so prideful that they stop listening to their readers/fans. Their comics sector is in so much denial they don't even realize they're digging their own grave and that article just shows how out-of-touch they still are. How hard is it to figure out? Hire good artists and good writers that care about the characters. Publish strong stories and be consistent with continuity. It's like sports. Managers hire the best players to make a great team and everyone plays hard so they can have a successful season. Fans just want to see them win and they want to see their players having fun while winning. Nothing in Marvel Comics these days seems fun anymore. It all seems so forced, even this new Generations idea, and everybody knows it.

    Last edited May 24, 2017 4:08:41 pm
    We strike hard and fade away into the night
  • Posted: May 24, 2017 6:42:55 pm
  • They substituted shocking events for good storytelling a long time ago. People are tired of it.
  • Posted: May 24, 2017 10:15:46 pm
  • I still think it has a lot to do with the huge disconnect between their movie and comic franchises. The characters in comics are unrecognizable to fans of the movies. My daughter is a huge fan of movie Thor (She's a teenager, so. . .obvious), but there's no Thor comic with the adventures of THAT guy.
    Favorite Characters: Lone Ranger, Green Hornet, Captain America, The Shadow, Zorro, The Rocketeer, Jonah Hex
  • Posted: May 25, 2017 2:42:03 am
  • Far too many titles, too.
    Tenzil
  • Posted: June 7, 2017 9:20:35 pm
  • I remember emailing Marvel back when the titles jumped from $2.99 to $3.99 and shockingly getting a very candid response from Nick Lowe, even emailing back and forth a few times. Once the Inhumans started, I emailed him again and didn't expect him to respond, but his response was pretty short and brief, basically just telling me to hold on. I've been holding on for a while now.... but come on. How do you go 500+ issues of Uncanny X-Men, and then reboot it half a dozen time in five years? I am mainly an X-Fan, but the thing that actually frustrates me is a little bit more than simply the renumbering... it's the fact that I've actually kind of enjoyed some of the new stories, only to see them wiped and restarted just when things are getting interesting. I honestly really enjoyed the last X-wave (post Inhumans ) but now it's all over again, and here go all over again. Every single person other than the people who are actually making the titles knows what is wrong, but they refuse to do anything about it. I know we kind of live in a world where people don't want to listen to constructive criticism or possibly listen to negative feedback, so, even though people ARE actually showing their opinions with stepping away from titles, Marvel clearly doesn't care. It's very disappointing... I've probably been collecting longer than some and shorter than others (I'm 34 and started in 1992 after the cartoon), but it's really getting to teh point where it's just getting nearly impossible to be excited anymore when you know that every single thing you read, regardless of how good/bad it is, will not matter in the least and will just be rebooted soon anyway.

    You know what, I'm actually going to take a lot of what I just said and send it off to marvel. I'll let you guys know if I get any kind of response... but I'm not optimistic.
  • Posted: June 8, 2017 8:35:50 am
  • Another problem, and not just with Marvel is the comics are written for the TPB. So a lot of people now wait for the TPB to come out (usually the same week the final issue of the story is released) and buy it for less than they would have spent on the 5 or 6 issues.
    If publishers want to survive I think they need to stop doing this and wait at least a year or more before reprinting books in TPB.
    "Disliking everything is not the same thing as having an opinion"

  • Posted: June 8, 2017 3:41:14 pm
  • Canuck said:
    Another problem, and not just with Marvel is the comics are written for the TPB. So a lot of people now wait for the TPB to come out (usually the same week the final issue of the story is released) and buy it for less than they would have spent on the 5 or 6 issues.
    If publishers want to survive I think they need to stop doing this and wait at least a year or more before reprinting books in TPB.


    YES! TPBs really suck the out of the medium because it seems a lot of people don't buy the singles and instead wait for the trades, for the reason you give. However, sales of the single issues really help determine if a new series will continue because the trade isn't out yet.

    But the main reason I hate TPBs is because now every story has to be 5-6 issues long. I hate that. It would be one thing if the stories really demanded that many issues to be told, but they don't. They're needlessly padded just to fit the format. Then you have Scott Synder, who I love, but for the love of christ he cannot write a story for DC that is under 12 issues [and that's short].

    THEY'RE NOT NOVELS, THEY'RE SERIALS! A good serial needs to start and end on points where anyone can pick it up.

    I used to read 50+ titles a month and some of them I could never remember what happened or where the story was going, others I had NO trouble. That's the difference between writers who understand how to write serials and those who don't.

    [/soapbox]
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