CBR has a poll on which other hero JMS should tackle over at DC. I voted Aquaman since he needs some serious help ooooh…
i wish joephisto and didio would get cancelled
Hey guys, just some random quick q’s as I really have no info on DC stuff.
What’s the best Wonder Woman stuff?
Is there anything new coming out, or currently out that’s good Wonder Woman stuff?
Just curious, cause I like female heroes, but some of the stuff I’ve been reading is junk.
Gail Simone’s current run on Wonder Woman is pretty tight. Heinberg’s run was cool but I’m not sure if the entire thing is collected properly in a TPB since his run had delays and he finished his story in an annual.
Blue Beetle was damn good after that first arc. Birds was great under Gail Simone- except for Misfit.
For Blue Beetle- check out his interactions with Guy Gardner- best stuff in the series.
I will admit I’m not a fan of enforced multiculturalism , but to me Blue Beetle was only about a .4 or .5 on the Captain Planet scale.
Birds of Prey was way too inconsistent under Simone. Every other arc seemed to be interesting, until about issue 100 when it all went downhill. Up to issue 100, even the uninteresting arcs were at least still readable, or you could see where she was going with her ideas. But after that Batman crossover where the clocktower was destroyed, the whole concept lost its luster. Right before that issue, it really felt like Simone was creating a new breed of superteam. The comic felt fresh and basically unlike any other team book out there despite the artwork. (I really don’t like Benes’ art.) After they became a team of traveling salesmen, I don’t know what happened. I just completely lost interest.
I read a few issues here and there when McKeever and Bedard wrote it. I was only impressed with how far the series had fallen. The craft was just so mediocre.
I can’t even think of an entertaining mainstream DC title right now outside of Green Lantern now that All-Star Superman is out. (It’s out, right?)
All this final infinite one year later zero crisis nonsense stuff has been KILLING the quality of their monthlies all across the board.
People still buy monthly comics?
In other sad news, the fables covers book is a huge disappointment.
Don’t buy it.
You can just go on James Jean’s site and get everything that is in the book. It’s just all the covers, and I thought there was going to be some creative insight on each picutre, but it’s just a little quote from the stories. Which is stupid.
Remember the days when we were all into comics loving them and shit? This crossover dick jerking contest between the two companies has ruined it for me.
You can’t even argue anymore if you wanted to - the industry trend is clearly and unequivocally moving towards TRADES, BABY. For the average comic book nerd, there’s just absolutely no incentive anymore for buying monthlies instead of just waiting to see if a book’s good (critically or through word of mouth) and just picking up the TRADE, BABY - a nice packaged installment at a discounted price.
This bums me out. I didn’t check it because…like, I FAAAAAAAAAABLES!!1111 month to month so I have all the covers already…but at the least, I’d thought there be some more stuff in it than JUST THE COVERS. Sketches, concepts, unreleased covers, notes? Nothing?
What a jew that guy is. Damn him for being the best cover artist in comic books so that I can’t hate him.
There is the sketch of the cover and the pencils he did, and then the flats of color process, but they are extra tiny.
They are already online on James Jeans site.
So it was extra disappointing. Basically that, with a quote from the actual issue, not a “This was a fun cover to do, blah blah blah”
Sadly he is done making covers, he is sticking to his own art right now.
I wonder how much Money marvel/dc makes off the monthly comic business and then by comparison THE TRADES BABY.
Yeah, I think I might invest in the TRADES BABY? Team. Kind of tired of having to wait 30 days for a book to come out and I’m reading a lot less comics now.
Monthly comics still make waaaay more money than trades (check any monthly sales listing from Diamond) and the success of monthly comics determines the future of any series, never trades. I know that Marvel looks at trade sales now according to JQ but it’s after the fact. If it doesn’t sell as a comic book it will be gone.
TPBs are in a different ballgame where comics can not compete with Harry Potter books or even Naruto. Yes, Naruto manga sales in bookstores are REALLY insane… Sure, there are spikes whenever there is movie talk like the Watchmen books or say Joker books going up when Dark Knight Returns is in the theaters. Still, these spikes have proven to not translate into droves of people walking into comic book shops and picking them up, so it doesn’t help the companies with regards to cancelling or renewing books.
They’ve got to come up with a better model, though. Issues are how Marvel and DC make most of their money, thanks to all the advertisements, but the price of a single issue is starting to get too high. Eventually, people are no longer gonna be able to afford to buy five or six books a week. (Unlike Sano, we don’t all make massive bank, and most of us are too reluctant to deal our souls to the devil.)
I have no statistics to back up any of this, but I’d bet that most comic book fans (the ones who still buy issues) probably collect more than one series. Once comics start hitting the $3.99 range, I’m sure they will have to start cutting back. And then there are those who may completely quit buying. (“What? The X-Men titles are $3.99 now? Well, if I can only buy four out of six of them now, I’ll just choose to buy none of them.”)
And new customers who happen to go into shops looking to buy the Watchmen TRADE, BABY or whatever has major movie-hype behind it will see the racks filled with issues that cost three to five bucks each. Now who the heck would want to pay about four bucks for a comic book that, in your hands, feels far less substantial than last week’s issue of Sports Illustrated. You see that recent issue of Astonishing X-Men: Ghost Boxes? That book was four bucks and had a TON of commercials. It only had sixteen pages of actual comic book storytelling. Can you imagine if THAT is the future of monthly comics?
Comic books feel cheap when you hold them, but they aren’t cheap when you hold your wallet, getting ready to buy them. They’re getting more and more expensive every year, and it’s debatable whether the quality of the content has actually been improving with the rising costs. I have a hard time imagining new customers getting interested and addicted to monthly comic books with today’s prices. Even TRADE, BABY prices have been rising, but at least you’re not getting any advertisements that jack up the flow of the story, and the TRADE, BABY has a better sense of permanence (you can place it on your bookshelf) than an inconsequential single issue (you roll it up in your back pocket and it somehow slips out and falls down a sewer gutter as you walk home).
So while I agree that monthlies determine the future of any series, I think it’s TRADES, BABY that will determine the future of any industry.
The difference is still really crazy though comparing how single comics perform to TPBs and the industry is flourishing right now, showing no signs of slowing down. If a lot of people drop off due to the one dollar price hike (doubt it, not the first time the price of comics has gone up and IDW’s been selling books at 3.99 for at least 5 years) or the current economic situation that is one thing, but their really isn’t anything on paper telling people to change their business models. Though chances are if there is a drop off in single issues, there will also be a drop off in TPBs.
I don’t think the current model advances growth in the industry so I agree with you about that. Those that are into comics now have been into them bear minimum for the last 10 years or so. I still think comics will always be around in some shape / size / form because there really is no equal, digital or what not to holding something in your hands. IMHO anyway, but who knows. Comics will eventually find a way to reinvent themselves I feel and TPBs may just be the way. So yeah, the current model does need work bringing in newer readers, no argument there.
People are still buying monthly issues so people who solely buy TPBs can continue to do so. It works for everybody for the time being.
Marvel and DC are RICH so if you only buy their TPBs, I myself will not shed a tear. However, if there’s an indy book you like, well I can not stress how important it is for you to pick up monthly issues for that series and pre-order them if you are able to. Marvel has a HUGE portion of the market share. DC’s is not as big but it’s gigantic too (plus, the WB owns them so they are loaded). It’s other companies that suffer the most in these situations.
Marvel’s rich, but I think it’s mostly thanks to their licensing division. I wouldn’t be surprised if they mode more money off one lousy movie (like X-Men 3) than all their comics sales in a single year. Again, I have no statistics or hard facts to make this bold claim. I’m simply talking out of my ass, as I am wont to do.
I read somewhere that Karen Berger said many of Vertigo’s titles sell poorly as monthlies. You can check the Diamond sales list to confirm. But their TRADES, BABY sell very strongly, so this is a case of the TPBs keeping the monthlies alive. Weird, huh?
The thing with $3.99 comics is that the people who buy them week in and week out (like the IDW books, Boom! Studios’ stuff, etc.) are really dedicated fans. They are either dedicated fans of the license the upon which the comics are based, or they are comics fans who are committed to trying alternative stuff. When Marvel and DC (and probably Dark Horse and Image) raise their prices to $3.99 across the board, it’s gonna be harder for the alternative publishers like IDW and Boom! to compete when their readers have to choose between, like, Hero Squared and Justice League for example.
It’s just annoying that comics cost so much now. Even TRADES, BABY are rising in price. I’ve noticed that now, even a six-issue TPB that would’ve cost $14.99 one or two years ago now is $15.99 or $16.99. (For example, The Last Defenders TRADE, BABY.) Yeah, it’s just a dollar or so, but it all adds up if you buy a lot of stuff. Two, three years ago, I used to go to the store once a week, every single Wednesday. Now I find I go about once a month, at the most. I think I’ve even gone two and a half straight months without stepping foot in a comic book store. And I’ve been buying most of my TRADES, BABY either off eBay, Amazon, or at a used bookstore. I wanna support my shop but I also want to maximize what I can purchase with my money.
It’s no wonder Painy downloads everything these days. How else is he supposed to feed his family and get his Deadpool fix?
2.99 for a comic is pretty fucking gross and is one of the major reasons why I stopped buying. A trade can collect about 8 issues for around 17 dollars at most. 24 dollars for those in monthly releases.
I was dropping maybe, 50 bucks a week at one point in time because I was reading a lot of unnecessary shit(which was good at the time when there was a boom of good writers in the industry), but since then, it’s started to slow down in regards to the writing. After that, I started buying less books.
The DC stuff was really the breaking point for me. I’m one for actually liking a character and probably buy a few bad stories because of my love for the character, but when Geoff Johns left and Mark Waid came back to write the book, I just stopped caring about the Flash. He’s not a good Flash writer, at all. Once you’re spoiled by a certain writing style that blows everyone else clearly out of the water, you just can’t go back to the same drivel of yesteryear.
Haha, yeah, there was a time when I would spend like 30-40 bucks a week. I will definitely admit that I bought a lot of stuff that I regretted back when I was addicted to continuity pornography. I think that whole experience soured me on buying comics based on the characters. Now I just buy stuff from the creators I enjoy. Save more money that way.
Yeah we will have to see how 3.99 pans out. The Vertigo example is interesting! Well good posts all around. 
“Continuity pornography.”
God…so apt. I feel so dirty. Just boxes and boxes of CONPORN in my room…I’m such a degenerate.