Marvel Comics blabbery

Also, both companies (esp. Didio's DC) have aggressively worked on reducing their core audience to middle-aged men who value the monthly paper ritual and the serial experience.

yeah the "late" part is relevant there, as well as the actual form - Marvel dropped cover stock well over a decade ago (and their TPB trade dress and layout templates remain hideous). When either of them try and diversify or reach out in terms of content, it's almost always crammed into a package that doesn't complement the content. DC's OEL was one-fifth-assed at best.

Interesting, I would've thought TPBs sell more (at least when you adjust the sales to the higher price) than floppies, because you don't need to go to a specialist comic store to get them ... What are the average global sales figures for, say, a Marvel TPB then?

I doubt even Marvel have global figures, but looking at the US bookstore-market sales for 2019:

#1 was a collection of 1991's The Infinity Gauntlet, moving 27k off the back of the plot being used for the previous five years of MCU movies.

#2, #3, #6 and #8 were digest-formatted or "Scholastic"-formatted Spider-Man books aimed at children, collecting material up to eight years old, two volumes of which were branded specifically as Spider-Verse tie-ins - those sold 19k and 14k, the other two 8k and 9k.

#4 was the first volume of Ms Marvel, from 2014. 11k sold.

#6 was the fourth volume of the Darth Vader comic, 9.6k sold.

#9 was a $60 hardcover (at 8700 sold, retail on this would have been $522,000. The average retail sales figure for a Marvel book was $7,110.) of House Of X, the big event crossover of that year.

#10 was the first Ta-Naheisi Coates Black Panther book from 2016; this sold 36,000 the year before when the movie was out, dropping to 7500 this year.

The Diamond sales figures for 2019 similarly show catalogue nearly completely dominating the top ten in books, and periodicals being 9 "events" and specials, plus one new Marvel #1 with 54 (FIFTY-FOUR) variant covers.

Also, Marvel are absolutely terrible at keeping TPBs in print, and haven't digital sales hit a ceiling that on its own would seem unprofitable to the big companies?

Marvel are absolutely terrible at keeping TPBs in print

This is incorrect: they simply do not keep material in print.

Thanks again for all you do, Ike.

For a while, I labored under the misapprehension that they were making an exception with the Epic collections. Because you figure, even if nothing else passed muster, at the very least their newish endeavor of issuing numbered volumes of their legacy material would be worth putting some extra effort into. But then I wound up scrambling to patch holes in my collection when I started noticing random volumes suddenly fetching exorbitant prices.

Also tbf, comics publishers in general are pretty terrible at keeping books in print. There's a proportionate number of smaller press collections that I gave up on because some edition or another was effectively unobtainable for non-thousandaires (RIP, Gasoline Alley).

Also weird about the Epic Collections - they decide they'll do a certain year, ignoring what's been published. So when they do even bother to print those, there are still enormous gaps in the timeline. Once I looked up the Spider-Man at the one point and it was nuts - they got 1-5, 7, 15, 17-22, etc...

They print them in a random sequence (the rationale escapes me), but they do go back and fill in the gaps. Unfortunately for them, I can think of at least one instance where they painted themselves into a 'there aren't nearly enough issues to fill this two-volume gap' corner.

Actually, tbf, the Epic collections are about as close as Marvel gets to keeping collections in print, as they've gotten much better about reprinting the older volumes (there's at least two new Epic printings in this month's Diamond solicitations). There's still sometimes a multi-year gap between the time a book falls out of print and when it's reprinted but, as sic notes, they don't reprint much (generally opting, at best, to issue OOP material in a whole new form), so this is about as good as it gets.

Thanks for the TPB sales info, Sic. Though I do feel global and online sales figures would be way more interesting than US bookstores sales only, because the "buying monthly floppies from your local comic book store" culture is still kinda prevalent in the US, I guess, whereas (as explained above) in many other countries getting floppies monthly might be prohibitevely expensive and/or difficult, and getting TPBs from the bookstore or an online retailer like Amazon is cheaper and easier, so I'm assuming TPBs sell better than floppies there (this is definitely the case in Finland).

AFAIK, Marvel still releases TPBs of almost new every series they publish? And some of the more popular ones get first printing in hardcover, and are later reissued in omnibus format, even if the TPBs themselves rarely reissued. So presumably there must be some profits to be made in TPBs and other collected editions, because why would they keep printing them so widely if there isn't? If the main point of publishing superhero comics were to keep the intellectual properties alive and to provide fodder for the movies and series, surely the floppies would be enough for that?

More profits to be made in TPBs than in the floppies, yes, because you've theoretically paid for the labour with the floppies, and spread that expense across several months while also recouping in sales and evaluating demand.

--

Good piece by Rob Salkowitz at ICV2 speculating on the reasons and benefits for Marvel to shift distributors: https://icv2.com/articles/columns/view/47974/whats-behind-marvels-move-prh

And if no one buys the floppies, they might not even publish the trade, in theory. Though as Tuomas said Marvel collects almost every new series now, in the first year.
I wonder if Marvel Unlimited makes pure profit or loses money.

And thx for that ICV2 article, sic

James Romberger on the R13sman Stan Lee bio, from a Kirbyist perspective.

More from ICV2: Griepp on PRPH's long-term plans.

I do think Marvel is probably leaving some cash on the table by not having some stuff that sells in continual print. Local shop stated that he about quit ordering back list trades from Diamond as they were shite for showing stuff in stock and never getting the stuff until like 13 weeks later.

Deal they SHOULD do is setup way that the guy can buy at the store and drop ship to their house and throw a few shillings to the local dude for making the order happen.

I think the smart idea that talking to my local shop owner is that he thinks the dudes in Image should put together their own indie distribution partnership, possibly tied to selling McFarlene's and others toy business and then become an indie distributor. Partner up with some people that know how to warehouse and ship stuff.

on point 2: that's kind of the bookshop.org model right now, i think. kinda wish my LCS got in on that

No one really wants to order comics from a bunch of different places - it's workable with trades but comics are a weekly order where subscriptions and special orders keep you alive. Too easy to miss ordering issue 3 because you got busy.

I just started reading the 2012 Matt Fraction / David Aja Hawkeye series, and hot damn it is good. (Bought Vol 1 waaaaaay back in 2013, never read it until now.) Surprisingly the trades seem to be out of print. Any chance or news that it'll be reprinted ahead of the Disney+ series coming out? Otherwise I'll just buy the omnibus for $25 digitally, but I'd rather own physical copies.

I recently bought a nice copy of Vol. 3 (L.A. Woman) for $4.95 on eBay. You could try picking up the individual volumes that way, if you don’t mind remainders etc.

good point... i'll look on eBay as well. weirdly, vol. 2 seems to be the most rare/expensive volume out of the four.

Surprisingly the trades seem to be out of print.

🤔

I'd guess that there's a good chance we get another reprint around when the show drops. Marvel is at least getting better at taking advantage of the release of big film and TV projects to push out related print material. We got two Black Widow Epic Collections last year, two Morbius Epics, they reprinted at least one of the old Vision and Scarlet Witch minis (it looks like the other collection might've been solicited and then either cancelled or delayed) plus a couple of related WCA Epics, and they have an omnibus of Rick Remender's Cap run (featuring Sam's first appearances as Cap) coming soon. You can generally expect a collection or two of something related, but given how closely related the Hawkeye show appears to be to Fraction's run, I'd be surprised if we didn't see a reprint of that specific material.

I wonder how much of an uptick in sales they see (in related print material) when these movies and shows come out.

#10 was the first Ta-Naheisi Coates Black Panther book from 2016; this sold 36,000 the year before when the movie was out, dropping to 7500 this year.

not the same female Captain Marvel so maybe unrelated

#4 was the first volume of Ms Marvel, from 2014. 11k sold.

Definitely unrelated. Kamala Khan seems to be one of the few legit breakout Marvel superstars of the 21st Century (see also: Miles Morales).

Got me curious so I glimpsed the Diamond Top 100 from 2019. Infinity Gauntlet is the the obvious standout, but nothing else I saw from Marvel was a classic reprint, mostly brand new collections of 2018 material (Spider-Geddon, Life of Captain Marvel, Cosmic Ghost Rider) or disconnected from the MCU (House/Powers of X, Immortal Hulk).

Non-Marvel media tie-ins of note that showed up: The Boys omnibus reprints (Amazon show), Umbrella Academy trades (Netflix show), Joker (Azzarello/Bermejo) reprint (film), Deadly Class (SyFy show). So I believe the strategy likely does work, maybe Marvel's doing a crappy job at embracing it?

(this doesn't include bookstore sales, since it's Diamond, i assume)

Marvel's reprint strategy seems haphazard at best, I will grant you. If you're anal like me and make sure that you preorder pretty much everything you want (and, perhaps more importantly, have a clear idea of what you want and how what you want is being collected), they do a pretty great job and seem serious about slowly reprinting as much of their material as possible. If you come at it from a more casual angle, I'm sure it's incredibly frustrating both to keep track of how things are being reprinted and to deal with the inevitable and ongoing OOP issue.

good to know they’re still living in opposite world where casual readers who’d want to pick up a TPB are out of luck

I’d hazard a guess that they sell a fair number of TPBs to libraries? those few that still have a budget

the Kamala Khan Ms. Marvel is definitely librarian bait! in a good way

Definitely unrelated.

Right, though looks like Black Panther barely was too: 28k in 2018 without a movie, 36k with a movie. the Kamala Khan book sold 13k in 2018 (and, because Marvel, no other volumes charted in either year).

xp Kamala K. was the first book I picked up when I got into nu-Marvel in the mid-2000s... it was getting significant mainstream / "general reader, check this out" press.

It was a pretty decent series but got derailed a lot by crossover events like Secret Wars and Civil War II

Yeah, I read few books and then hit the Secret Wars wall. (I also couldn't really get into the teenage-focused content, but that's just me.)

Lolz

Do I really live in a universe where Ta-Nehisi Coates has written a Captain America comic featuring a parody of my ideas as part of the philosophy of the arch villain Red Skull? https://t.co/waFsAvWlfd

— Dr Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) April 6, 2021

oh no, he found out

A guy published this blog post(I don’t get how he isolated the logos; did he redraw them?); Tom Orz popped into his Twitter, suggesting he credit the original designers.

it's not that hard to isolate text with solid borders using photoshop or any other software with a magnet selection tool

https://reaganray.com/img/blog/marvel-lettering/doctor-strange-3.jpg

From that post, this Doctor Strange logo from 1988 feels like it's homaging some TV show or movie logo from the same era, but I can't quite recall which one... Can anyone think of a logo similar to it?

no, but I'd bet $7 that logo is by Todd Klein

Hmm. Klein pegs the then-recently-revealed movie Strange logo as based on his 1988 logo in this 2014 blog, buuut the original logo he shows looks more '90s to me.

This 1988 Marvel Doctor Strange #1 has the logo posted above, and the next movie logo was just released the other day, and looks like a very close adaptation of the (real) 1988 one.

That one only lasted four issues before being replaced with a riff on the 1970s logo; Klein's (other?) one is indeed from 1992, and came in on issue 62 of the '88 series.

xxp Tuomas, I assume you're not thinking of the (current-day) Stranger Things logo(?)

i love that logo and that era of doctor strange

https://i.redd.it/ciex4a8ta1vz.png

I can see it.

Stranger Things titles are more of an homage to the typography of '80s horror paperback covers (and Stephen King specifically).

Right, I just wondered if the vague similarities (stacked script + "Strange") may have tripped T's neurons.

Heavily dipped serifs, the dramatic, swooping cross-bar on the A, the Stranger Things letterforms look closer in height to the actually-tall Doctor Strange bcz of the high crossbar on the H - a lot of casual similarities, intentionality completely aside.

Dr. Stranger

Stranger Docts

I think comics logos are underappreciated, but that blog post doesn’t really do them justice… I feel like you need to see them full-size, on the actual covers, to really get the impact; not abstracted and isolated in tiny squares.