>DC is dead!
>Marvel is dead!
When will /co/ learn that the comics industry is all but immutable at this point? Things may fluctuate by a few percentage points, but overall everything stays the same
>>81648345
How come smaller publishers like Valiant exist when their books only sell a few thousand issues each and a book by DC/Marvel under ten thousand is considered a disaster?
>>81648531
>a book by DC/Marvel under ten thousand is considered a disaster?
That's because of opportunity cost. DC/Marvel can only publish a certain number of titles at a given time, and if a title is selling under 10,000, there's a really good chance that it could be replaced by something more profitable.
>>81648531
It could also be that Marvel/DC have higher operating costs compared to a place like Valiant.
Since the big two have a larger share of the marketplace, artists and writers may require more money to work with them. Or they may pay more money to get big name artists/writers.
>>81648531
amount of guaranteed pay especially for editorial and such
more data
>>81648531
Valiant also has dat chinese investment moneys
>>81648531
A book that sells 5k is still making a profit.
But a book that sells more than 5k will make a bigger profit.
Therefore, Marvel and DC will cancel any book that reaches [sales threshold], regardless of whether or not the story is finished, because really, Marvel and DC don't give a shit about their stories, just about their profits.
>>81649524
What happen in the 94?
>>81650190
All the records were stored on zip drives.
people just like to shitpost and get all /pol/ about marvel
>>81649524
>DC sales were improving until New 52 hapenned and then they started to fall
Good job, 10/10
>>81648531
Valiant also makes all their dosh on stupidly overpriced COLLECTORS issues and such
Maybe someday the market won't be dominated by DC and Marvel, but not today, sadly.
We have Image and whatnot in the meantime, at least.
>>81649524
Does Diamond ever publish the raw sales data, or just market share?
>>81649524
>>81648345
>It's all percentages
Yeah alright. Let's get some ACTUAL numbers in here.
>>81650615
Estimates are available at Comichron.
>>81650728
Comichron.
>>81650405
Not true, no publisher could survive on that money, even less a small publisher with small readership like Valiant.
>>81650190
The great comics crash.
Comics went niche in the 70's onward and moved from newsstands, gas stations, and grocery stores to dedicated comic shops- who had different agreements with comic book companies. If the grocery store didn't sell copies, they still got paid. If a comic book store didn't sell copies, they got stuck with useless product, but in exchange, they got favorable deals regarding access. High risk and high reward. And comic book shops were being opened by nerds because they loved comics, not by people with business sense in order to make money.
So comics were on their way out and it was a matter of time before the bad business practices of naive comic store owners caught up with them.
But by the 80's/90's, everyone had heard the story about some guy who got some old comics his grandpa bought in the 40's and was selling them for a gorillion dollars. So everyone and their mom started buying up every comic book they kid- all with the idea that in a couple of decades, they'll be worth many thousands. Sales skyrocketed.
But the reasons those old comics were rare is because nobody else had thought to save them, making Grandpa's one of the few remaining copies. But comic shops and collectors artifically inflated the market by buying lots of copies of the latest comic to resell/keep sealed away with the intention of selling it later. Artifically inflated demand, while making the comics worthless to the collectors because there just so many copies to be had.
So comic shops started going under and comics went even more niche and the system underwent a hard reboot.
>>81648531
They pay there employees next to nothing
>>81649524
Jesus what happened with that huge Marvel bump peaked at 2008 and dc drop valleyed at 2010?
>>81648345
When will all this shit go to /biz/, like with the same type of stuff that filled /v/?
>>81651207
Do you have a source for this?
>>81651257
Iron Man came out that year
>>81651325
And DC went to shit after final crisis except for Batman.
>>81651257
Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America happened for Marvel.
Green Lantern and soon after Man of Steel happened for DC.
>>81650190
From Comichron's website where the chart is from:
> There were no annual shares possible during the Exclusivity Wars of 1995-96, when it was no longer possible to obtain all comics from a single distributor. That coincided with Marvel's sales collapse and later bankruptcy. DC passed Marvel in the late 1990s due to its early and aggressive adoption of graphic novels and trade paperbacks.
>>81648345
How does all this look if we use sales instead of market share?
It seems that superhero comics rely on a loyal fanbase instead of amassing new fans, and pretty soon we will all be dead, so
>>81651417
Films have almost no effect on comics sales. Iron Man being big in cinemas doesn't sell any more of his mid-tier comic. And Green Lantern was a pretty hot comic at the time his film was bombing.
>>81649524
>IDW above Image in 2009
>but the next year Image's resurgence happened, eventually retaking the position of no. 3 US comic book publisher
>DC now falling close to 1997 market shares
>>81651325
>>81651417
Also Secret Invasion (a Bendis event) kept DC's market shares for that time low despite Final Crisis.
>>81651282
We had a thread a while back with data.
The long and short of it is its all too scale. Small.companies write small checks and thus can afford small sales. This means whats a low to cancelation number to the big 2 is wideful sucess to a smaller outfit.
Like American dollars in mexico
>>81651282
He does not.
https://fairpagerates.com/year-in-review-2015-survey-results/
>>81651417
>>81651325
Films have proven time and time again to not signficantly effect comic sales
>>81649524
Can someone annotate the key points with what was happening in comics at the time? I see Infinite Crisis and 52 as a peak for dc that dropped.off quick while Bendisvengrrs kept building up
>>81651571
If you mean >>81651575 then it shows Valiant paying the same amounts that everyone else pays.
>>81651538
>>81651605
>Films have almost no effect on comics sales.
>Films have proven time and time again to not signficantly effect comic sales
Source?
>>81648345
Man, losing Star Wars really left Dark Horse vulnerable to Image #1 spamming, huh?
Alan Moore was right, DC and Marvel were mistakes.
All this is just Diamond though? So it's presumably not showing direct market sales of Trades and such.
I wonder how much of the overall market Amazon, Comixolgy and such things are.
>>81651974
>In this installment,Fred van Lente, retailer and bloggerMike Sterling,ComiXology CEO David Steinberger, and podcasters John SiuntresandBryan Carranswer the question:If superhero movies are so successful, why aren’t people buying more comics?For context, here are some statistics: Since 2002, the year the firstSpider-Manmovie was released, at least one superhero movie has been in the top 10 highest-grossing films of the year each year except 2009, according toBoxOfficeMojo.com. In many of those years, multiple superhero movies cracked the top 10. In three — 2002, 2007 and 2008 — a superhero film was the top-grossing movie of the year. 2012’s looking to be no different. The only competitor to theAvengersjuggernaut could beThe Dark Knight Rises.
>In other words, superhero movies are part of our cultural DNA now. Anyone still harboring the notion that they’re a fad destined to go away should consider that this capes-and-tights kick is more than a decade strong. And yet, comics sales over that period have basically remained flat. InMay 2002, five of the comics published that month sold more than 100,000 copies — a fraction of the millions the top comics sold in the heyday of the early 1990s.In May 2012, five titles reached above 100,000 yet again.
http://comicsalliance.com/thought-bubble-2-movie-success-and-comic-sales/?trackback=tsmclip
To anyone questioning the creditional those guys literally wrote the book on the history of comics.
>>81652134
>not showing direct market sales of Trades
That's Diamond. Diamond is the direct market. The "direct market" means Diamond distributing to your local LCS shop.
Do you mean bookstores?
>>81652113
Like, from the 30s? What? DC literally invented the comic book.
>>81652134
Sadly I don't think Marvel or DC ever publish their sales data, so we can never get a good look at the actual industry status. Things like DCD reports are the best we've got.
>>81651999
That was in 2014, and as a result Dark Horse's market shares are now on their lowest since 1993. Image's current market shares are close to those during the time Wildstorm was sold to DC.
>>81652222
Yes, I don't know the Lingo. I thought direct sales were not through Diamond because I figured them to be a middleman.
>>81652268
What? Does Famous Funnies not exist in your universe?
>>81652353
FF was just reprinted newstrips. New Fun Comics was the actual first original book.
I apologize for not specifying.
>>81652268
Everybody look at this post and laugh.
>>81652434
>>81652429
Are we just gonna ignore Detective Dan, The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck and The Yellow Kid in McFadden's Flats?
>>81652479
>1935
Well, y'see
>Today the earliest known comic book is called The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck. Originally published in several languages in Europe in 1837, among them an English version designed for Britain in 1941. A year later it was that version reprinted in New York on Sept. 14, 1842 for Americans, making it the first comic book printed in America. Odadiah Oldbuck is 40 pages long and measured 8 ½" x 11". The book was side stitched, and inside there were 6 to 12 panels per page. No word balloons, but there is text under the panels to describe the story.
>>81652479
Bruh, The Funnies came out in 1929.
>>81650395
I think you're misinterpreting that info. Here's actually issue numbers
>>81652203
I think there's a difference between "movies don't affect how many comics get bought" and "movies don't affect *which* comics get bought." You can look through the comichron pages and easily see huge spikes in sales of books like Iron Man and GotG when they had movies come out.
>>81652563
>>81652591
>>81652434
>>81652268
>>81652353
>>81652429
>>81652538
We're getting into Missing Link style gradienting here.
>market shares
That doesn't prove comics aren't dying though? Post a graph showing total comic sales overtime.
>>81652429
>In the fall of 1934, having seen the emergence ofFamous Funniesand other oversize magazines reprinting comic strips, MajorMalcolm Wheeler-Nicholsonfounded National Allied Publications and publishedNew Fun#1 (Feb. 1935). A tabloid-sized, 10-inch by 15-inch, 36-page magazine with a card-stock, non-glossy cover, it was an anthology ofhumorfeatures, such as thefunny animalcomic "Pelion and Ossa" and the college-set "Jigger and Ginger", mixed with such dramatic fare as theWesternstrip "Jack Woods" and the "yellow peril" adventure "Barry O'Neill", featuring aFu Manchu-styled villain, Fang Gow.[1]
>Most significantly, however, whereas some of the existing publications had eventually included a small amount of original material, generally as filler,New Fun#1 was the first comic book containing all-original material.
Does anyone have current total numbers?
>>81652591
The historically significant Eastern Color Printing, the publisher of The Funnies, Funnies on Parade, and Famous Funnies, survived until 2002 (it stopped printing comic books in 1973).
>>81652350
Bookstore sales get reported via bookscan these days, there are spreadsheets going back to 2003 here: http://www.comicbookresources.com/article/tilting-at-windmills-bookscan-2015-analysis
>>81652734
So there was a huge spike for the #1s and then it immediately went right back to normal.
>>81652747
I dunno about the other stuff, but Detective Dan and The Funnies are comic books, no ifs ands or buts.
>>81652834
> In 1929,George T. Delacorte Jr.'sDell Publishing, founded eight years earlier, began publishingThe Funnies, described by theLibrary of Congressas "a short-lived newspapertabloidinsert".[2]Comics historianRon Goulartdescribes the 16-page,four-color,newsprintperiodical as "more a Sunday comic section without the rest of the newspaper than a true comic book. But it did offer all original material and was sold onnewsstands".[3]
>>81649524
What happened in 2000-2001 that made Marvel start climbing?
>>81652911
That's a comic book, yes.
>>81652747
Not really.
Just some DC apologist who probably got all their "facts" from other DC apologists like Morrison trying to inflate the impression of DC's historical value.
The Funnies>Famous Funnies>New Fun
It's a gradual evolution, like where does Red become orange?
>>81652750
anon already did here: >>81652734
It's remained pretty much steady since the comics crash in 96
>>81652959
Famous Funnies was the first comic book, New Fun was the first to not be newspaper reprints
>>81649524
Poor, poor DC.
They keep trying and trying and trying.
Meanwhile it feels like Marvel is barely trying and they're raking it in.
>>81653011
The Funnies was published in 1929, and that was all original stuff. Detective Dan, Secret Operative No. 48 was all original as well, and published in 1933.
>>81652920
The debut of the Ultimate line.
>>81652911
The actual printing of The Funnies was outsourced to Eastern Color Printing.
>>81652920
Basically a return to normalcy for them. Marvel has almost always been the biggest publisher, but the late 90s were a really bad time for them and they almost went bankrupt.
>>81652991
Well fuck you, you faggots have to ruin everything don't you? With your fucking graphs and numbers and shit.
Another perfectly fucking perfect opportunity to shout doom from the rooftops and you shit suckers fucking RUINED it.
RUINED.
U
I
N
E
D
FUCK YOU.
>>81653051
WHEN WILL DC GET THE CREDIT AND SALES WHICH IT (AND NOBODY ELSE) DESERVES?
>>81652959
The creation of the modern Americancomic bookcame in stages.Dell Publishingin 1929 published a 16-page,newsprintperiodical of original,comic strip-styled material titledThe Funniesand described by theLibrary of Congressas "a short-livednewspapertabloidinsert".[1](This is not to be confused with Dell's later same-name comic book, which began publication in 1936.) HistorianRon Goulartdescribes thefour-color,newsstandperiodical as "more a Sunday comic section without the rest of the newspaper than a true comic book".[2]
It was followed in 1933 byEastern Color Printing'sFunnies on Parade, a similarly newsprint tabloid but only eight pages[3]and composed of several comic strips licensed from theMcNaught Syndicateand reprinted in color. Neither sold nor available on newsstands, it was sent free as a promotional item to consumers who mailed in coupons clipped fromProcter & Gamblesoap and toiletries products.
That same year, Eastern Color salespersonMaxwell Gainesand sales managerHarry I. Wildenbergcollaborated with Dell to publish the 36-page one-shotFamous Funnies: A Carnival of Comics,[4]considered by historians the first true American comic book; Goulart, for example, calls it "the cornerstone for one of the most lucrative branches of magazine publishing".[5]It was distributed through theWoolworth'sdepartment storechain, though it is unclear whether it was sold or given away; the cover (see left) displays no price, but Goulart refers, either metaphorically or literally, to Gaines "sticking a ten-cent pricetag [sic] on the comic books".[6]
>>81653189
What's with all the missing spaces? Your posts are painful to read.
>>81653189
So Dell has nothing to do with Funnies on Parade.
>>81653216
>he's a mobilefag who copy-pasted from Wikipedia
>>81653075
The Funnies was a nespaper tabloid annex
See
>>81652911
>>81653189
This is like trying to argue whether Neanderthals count as human
At least this derail is about comics.
Possibly.
>>81653257
Even if we ignore The Funnies, we still have Detective Dan. This is sadly the only picture I can find of Secretive Operative No. 48, but that looks like a comic book to me.
>>81653189
>DC literally invented the comic book.
>Wait, did I say "comic book"? I meant "American comic book".
>Wait, did I say "American comic book"? I meant "American comic book which contains new material".
>Wait, did I say "American comic book which contains new material"? I meant "American comic book which contains only new material".
>Wait, did I say "American comic book which contains only new material"? I meant "American comic book which contains only new material and is distributed in a different manner than other previous American comic books which contained only new material".
Wew.
>>81653158
>Oni Press doesn't even have enough of a percent to be represented outside of other
They deserve better.
>>81653352
My research into this obscure and informative subject tells me Detective Dan was a tabloid not a comicbook, thus Famous Funnies getting that honor.
But like the guy said its a gradual evolution
>>81653390
Famous Funnies was the first comic book dude
>>81653624
Normally it was published in tabloids and whatnot, but Secret Operative No. 48 was published comic book style IIRC.
>>81653662
>Wait, did I say "comic book"? I meant "American comic book".
The world doesn't revolve around America.
>>81653798
Actually economically and culturally it kind of does.
Same as how the world once revolved around India.
>>81653861
Justify it however you want, "Famous Funnies was the first comic book" is still a factually incorrect statement.
>>81653798
The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck is a comicbook in the same way a Cynodont is a mammal
>>81653914
That depends on you define comic book.
>>81654037
I think thats a fair assessment
>>81654037
>>81654066
A book, with multiple panels per page, telling a story.
Does that count as a comic book?
>>81654181
In that case, The Egyptian Book of the dead
>>81654447
Sun God isn't Mary Sue, no matter how much you repeat it.
>>81654181
>>81654447
>"Book" of the Dead
>a scroll, not a book
Try again.
>>81654485
I have a copy with translation on the bottom I want to story time but its a huge book to scan
I am not joking when I say the ancinet Egyptian idea of heaven was topless white bitches
>>81654534
It'll always amaze me importance of lettuce in Egyptian mythology. Lettuce of all plants
>>81654534
>I am not joking when I say the ancinet Egyptian idea of heaven was topless white bitches
Sounds about right to me
>>81654725
It was considered a sex symbol because they thought it looked like a dick
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/when-lettuce-was-a-sacred-sex-symbol-12271795/?no-ist
>>81654521
Our word for "Book" actually comes from the old english "Boc", which literally just refers to a "Document or charter".
Really, it just means a gathering of information in a physical form. In that way, referring to a scroll as a book isn't incorrect
>>81654892
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/book
etymology =/= definition
>>81654875
Ha. I won't joke, this is first time I saw how lettuce looks like, now it makes sense. I usually see it like this.
>>81654960
The term "Book of the dead", used when referring to that specific object, predates the modern american english use of the word by a pretty significant margin.
>>81648345
DC a shit, fite me irl
>>81654892
We're talking about the first comic book.
Format counts. If we don't count newspaper comics then we don't count scroll comics.
Don't quibble over semantics, please.
>>81655095
Go home, Leth.
>>81654735
>>81654534
I guess that finally proves they were black
>>81654534
When I say white, I mean white. Like they had bright red nipples and everything . It was like 17 of them and they were all posed like in a dance I shit you not thats actally in there. All the other humans were that brownish color you see, but the topless white girls were white.
Like I have no idea what the historical signfiance of them are.
>>81648345
Could we always make our own comics though /co/?
>>81655121
Thats literally what we have been doing for the past few hours. Defintions by defintion are quibbling over semantics and shit.
>>81655061
You can't just grandfather in the Book of the Dead; even though its name reflects its legacy from a time when it did fit withing the category of "book," that doesn't mean it still meets today's definition of "book."
>>81655218
Except that nobody has a reason why Obadiah Oldbuck isn't a comic book except USA USA USA USA USA USA USA.
>>81654875
Didn't their perfumes smell of lettuce?
>>81655205
1, /co/ has already made its own comics in the past. Nobody cared.
2, The majority of /co/ doesn't care about any comics which aren't Marvel or DC, which might help to explain #1.
>>81655249
Is this a mammal?
>>81655249
Its a proto comic book, it has traits that would develop into true comics, but it itself is not one.
Like how Homo Ergaster isnt human
>>81655579
Did you know that a balloon is not a car? Yes, I can change the subject to something totally irrelevant too.
Explain to me why, in your opinion, Obadiah Oldbuck is not a comic book. Don't change the subject. Talk about Obadiah Oldbuck.
>>81655639
>Its a proto comic book, it has traits that would develop into true comics, but it itself is not one.
Why not?
Don't talk about hominids. Talk about comic books. What traits does it lack which disqualify it from being a comic book?
>>81655579
>>81655639
Assuming that there's some slow slide into being a comic book similar to how Hadrocodium/Homo Ergaster would eventually become mammals/humans*, what's the significant difference between what was being made in the 1830s vs. what was being made in the 1920s, and why does a work from the 1920s meet the 2016 definition of comic book?
*Yes, I know that's not how evolution works.
