Brock

I’ve seen the Legion book 5 or 6 times in the past year, but Flash only twice. The Warlord book seems to be particularly tough in high grade (at least to me). And (as always) I wonder what book DCCP 22 was bagged with...

There is absolutely nothing out there that matches the sheer insanity and glee of those early Ambush Bug stories...

Allow me to complicate matters... I believe that under the new NAFTA/USMCA terms, anything $40 or less crosses the border from the US with no duties. Above $40, it should be subject to a $10 handling fee, plus a GST/HST charge on the item value AND the handling fee. The addition of PST/QST surprises me, but, hey... Quebec (et je dis ca avec amour dans mon coeur). The distinction between books and periodicals is fuzzy, but the rule of thumb is whether or not it has staples. Thus, a graphic novel or squarebound book should not be subject to PST, but a floppy or magazine is. For those who are still awake, rest assured... it will all change again next week.

It has been a slow 6 weeks... My ebay sales have been way down, though it has picked up again in the past week. I've sold some modern books (Amazing Fantasy 10, Veronica 171) but nothing at a price to rush to the boards about. That being said, I always find the period leading up to Christmas is a great time to buy... auctions (at least on ebay) tend to end much lower than normal.

Well, I guess that reply says it all. Hopefully they let you out for some fresh air soon.

Thanks, Jaydog... I guess I interpret these same sentences pretty differently. Here's where I think we differ - the definition of "Book Market". I think this refers to sales in the non-LCS space. I think we can safely assume it doesn't refer to graphic novel sales only, because the release itself refers to these separately; in effect, it uses two different terms - "graphic novel business" and "book market", and thereby suggests that they are two different ideas. The release praises Diamond for tripling Marvel's sales in the book market, and infers that this is in large part because of a growing graphic novel business. It is, in fact, silent on the issue of what's going on with floppy sales in the book market. However, it states that all distribution to the book market will now be handled by Hachette. To me, this suggests that all Marvel product (including graphic novels, floppies, posters, etc.) going into the "book market" will be handled by Hachette. Ultimately, I think you and I are both working on interpretations here that are based on insufficient data (i.e. a single press release). Perhaps someone else on the boards has more direct knowledge?

I'm trying to quietly navigate the vitriol in all of this, but let me add a couple of thoughts... I've read the media release you linked to, and it isn't entirely clear to me exactly what the Hachette deal covers, but I suspect that what it covers is broad. It refers to "Marvel books" as the focus of the deal, but I suspect this is likely to include floppies going to to outlets other than the LCS. The release doesn't make this clear, and the release's explanation of the Hachette role could be interpreted either way, but the key takeaway (in my mind) is the release's suggestion that the Diamond distribution deal only relates to LCS's. This relates back to @Chuck Gower and his comment about Marvel floppies on international newsstands... I've worked in about 65 countries, and I continue to travel widely. Like Chuck, I see floppies on the newsstands reasonably frequently. This is especially true at newsstands in airports and train stations, and although this could be a sampling error (because, as a traveler, I'm frequently in airports and train stations), it's enough of a sample to suggest that the scope of distribution could be extensive (granted, it may be by distribution to sub-distributors). Taken globally, there must be literally thousands of these outlets. They don't have huge quantities of comics, but will often have 8 to 12 titles, with 2 to 5 copies of each title. These are often Marvel, DC or Archie books (for some reason, Disney books seem to always be more locally-sourced). Sometimes, these are Titan or Panini editions of the books in question, from the UK or Europe, so they don't really impact this present discussion, but it's not that unusual to find the North American editions. In my mind, it's likely that Hachette (or someone similar) is the distributor of these books. The release doesn't explicitly say this, but it does say that Diamond distributes only to LCS's, which suggest to me that they aren't shipping to airports in Ukraine or train stations in Japan.

So - bottom line - we’re saying there are at least 10,300 of these out there, right?

Please, sir... she can have the comic.

Help! We’re stick in a loophole!

I'm not so sure... my Bitter Root #1s just got bought on ebay, after sitting for months. Of course, I didn't pull a divad and sell them at $47 apiece...

I can double your money for you if want...

Only the ones with the 25 cent covers.

Simu Liu is Chinese, not Korean - born in Harbin, China.

Numeris (Canadian equivalent to Neilsen) estimates about 1,000,000 viewers weekly in Canada, plus it streams on Netflix.

Simu Liu is pretty well known in markets as diverse as Canada, Korea and Singapore. Don’t confuse the fact that you don’t know him with the idea that he’s unknown. In fact, in casting him, Marvel may be tipping its hand that the film’s marketing strategy is less about the US than it is about the international market, as many others have suggested here. Overall, it also seems that the approach here seems NOT to be to cast the next Robert Downey Jr., but to find the next Chris Pratt and turn him into a star.

I would guess that it’s an original drawing, meant to be an image of the reporter himself - same hat, similar glasses, etc. Maybe for a retirement or get well soon party?

Back then, everybody was Kung Fu fighting - those kids were fast as lightning! In fact, it was a little bit frightening, but they fought with expert timing.

I think that depends what you mean by fan base... For years, every time someone in these boards talked about great series of the past, MoKF would be mentioned by multiple boardies. It never registered that way with me - but I was bigger into obscure characters like Starlord and Rocket Raccoon. It wasn’t me that made GotG big, and MoKF’s fan base won’t make Shang Chi into a hit, but even these small groups of supporters suggest that the concepts could resonate more widely.

Kind of like Incredible Hulk 271, Marvel Preview 4 & 7, and Jungle Action 5?

Here's another to keep the thread alive...

Plus, one says NEWSSTAND and the other says DIRECT. It's pretty easy when you get the hang of it.

Marvel Action Universe #1 reprints Spider-Man ans His Amazing Friends... that could be worth a look too.

In my mind, it may not be quite that straightforward. To the best of my knowledge, Scholastic does not release any sales info for individual books, but we can infer a fair bit from existing sources. First, we know that Scholastic sales are huge. In 2016, comic blogger Ben Towle (benzilla.com) put together some reasonable estimates suggesting that as many as 19.5 million US youth participate annually in Scholastic book fairs. For accuracy's sake, about 115,000 book fairs are held in the US each year. Plus, for many schools, there are catalogues (think of a mini Previews) that are sent home with each student for independent orders on a monthly basis. Of course, Scholastic also distributes its books (using similar approaches) across the English-speaking world, including Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines and India (collectively a market that is as much as 5 times larger than the US). From this we can infer that the Scholastic market is exponentially larger than the direct market, or possibly even the US bookstore market. We can also see that the scope and scale of the marketing and distribution system are massive - so large that the company has 9,700 employees. So how does this affect comic sales? Again, we have few exact numbers, but there are some interesting indicators. In a 2014 interview with the Beat (comicsbeat.com), Ted Adams of IDW talked about the importance of Scholastic to IDW's publishing strategy. He said: The other place that I think is a great feeder system for comics but doesn’t get talked about much is the Scholastic book fairs and book clubs. We’ve had tremendous success with them over the years, most recently in the current Scholastic catalogue there are three IDW products, My Little Pony, Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. One each of those books in the current catalogue. I just got the sell through on those and it’s also extraordinary, it’s through the roof. Adams was then asked if the Scholastic system actually worked for comic publishers (which is basically your question, too). He replied: Oh it actually worked. We’ve been selling to them for years. When pressed for specific numbers, Adams said: They’re actually looking to be completely sold out by summer. So you’re talking about virtually 100% sell through in significant six figure quantities for all three of those books. This suggests that, in 2014 IDW was selling AT LEAST 100,000 copies of single My Little Pony, Transformers and TMNT collections through Scholastic, and possible many, many more ("significant six figure quantities" being hard to pin down). We can compare these numbers with IDW's bookstore sales, using Brian Hibb's annual BookScan summary, and it shows that in bookstores, IDW's 2014 top sellers were Skylanders: The Kaos Trap (almost 12,000 sold), Locke and Key (8,602 sold), and My Little Pony (7,753 sold). This suggests to me that for a book like My Little Pony, Scholastic sales were AT LEAST 13 times higher through Scholastic than through bookstores as a whole (using Adams' six-figure comment as a 100,000 unit baseline) and potentially much, much higher. It seems likely to me that we can apply similar multipliers to Marvel's books through Scholastic, though this is obviously an approximation. So if Ms. Marvel Vol. 1 sold 11,479 volumes for Marvel in bookstores in 2014 (as suggested in the posts above), it's not unreasonable to estimate that Scholastic could have sold AT LEAST another 149,000 copies through their distribution system. We can quibble about the exact number, but the scale of the sales is evident. In terms of how this impacts Marvel's publishing plans, it's important to keep in mind that Marvel has always underperformed in the bookstore and collected edition component of the market, where competitors like Image and DC have run circles around it. In part, this is because it lacks perennial sellers like Watchmen or Dark Knight Returns, and (IMHO) because its constant relaunches make it difficult to know which collected volumes of any given series to read next. Everyone knows what the next volume of Sandman or Walking Dead to read is, but it's hard to know what volume of Avengers is next... So, in an environment where Marvel struggles to succeed, a single buyer like Scholastic can definitely be the tail wagging the dog. Sales of 5,000 copies in BookScan or in the Direct Market can't tell the story about Scholastic. However, Marvel itself has suggested that these sales are strong (and they must have SOME rationale for continuing to publish these books), and the circumstantial evidence presented here helps to explain the wider context. Not necessarily proof positive, but I think this is pretty compelling.

I think this other market dwarfs the direct sales market... Rain Telgemeier is a legitimate comics superstar, and earns millions a year from her comics, but few on these boards have probably read any of her work. However, few people playing in that "other" market (served by Scholastic a range of specialist publishers) see any of their books rising in price in the back issue market (the thrust of this thread). It's interesting to see, though, how Ms. Marvel crosses these two solitudes - selling well in the "other" market, while her back issues continue to rise in "our" market. In that context, there are very few comparators - maybe Bone, Walking Dead and Saga? Perhaps Maus (with early editions/appearances being so pricy)?