aerischan

8 hours ago, Aweandlorder said:

Exhibit B

 

 

The Image boys are taking the p**s on SG and Marvel's endless reboot marketing ploys with this tongue in cheek "Gwinvincible" April Fools variant cover...

Oh I like it aloooooooot.. Prolly will buy 3 copies

The April Fools parody covers Plastic #1 and Black Science #29 are fun, too. The Plastic #1 variant might have some legs. 

1 hour ago, fastballspecial said:

 I don't like books that have lulls in them.

 

The Saga schedule of 6 months on then hiatus seems to be the new standard for a lot of Image books. Still, that's probably better than indefinite release schedules.

2 hours ago, kevhtx said:

Plus, he has incentive covers coming out too. X-men Gold and Secret Empire right?

Not sure about X-Men Gold but Secret Empire #1-3 all have 1:50 JSC. Haven't seen the April solicits yet.

On 3/7/2017 at 6:46 AM, Andahaion said:

I use these.  If you buy in bulk (I believe five or more) the seller will give you a discount.  

https://www.etsy.com/listing/400960861/comic-book-storage-and-display-box?ref=shop_home_feat_3

Can't stand long and short boxes.  I've run across a few websites with comic furniture that look really nice too.  I bet most here wouldn't pay for said furniture, but it looks worlds better than most alternative (ie, cheap) ideas.  

Oakman, your setup is righteous.

 

 

Thanks for the link. Reached out to the seller and they're willing to customize for a nominal fee. I love how mine turned out. 

I requested inner dimensions of 8" x 11.75" instead of the normal 7.5" x 11" so should fit E. Gerber Silver/Gold Archives 775R just fine. 

6 hours ago, ygogolak said:

Not many at all. It's not the hot variants that are the problem. It's the Venomized, Deadpool, and Mary Jane months that are.

So you're saying the market will correct itself. Which I agree for the most part with. That's why the desirable ones go up in value when retailers decided to stop ordering to reach those incentives.

 

Also, 755k for TWD #163.

I actually like some of Marvel's themed variants, the Young baby variants being a particular favorite.

The main gripe I have with Marvel's themed variants is the threshold in order to qualify. For example, for the Secret Empire #1 Skottie Young variant, "Meet or exceed 200% of orders for Civil War II #8 with orders for Secret Empire #1 regular cover, and this variant is order all you want". Easily reachable if the store ordered only one copy of CW2 #8. Maybe not so much if they ordered 100. I preorder from my LCS two months in advance but because of the gating on themed variants (more often, the LCS doesn't qualify for all the ones I like), I just order those from Midtown.

But yes, the themed variants could do with some trimming down, too.

1 hour ago, anstettoman said:

how about an issue like walking dead #163 how many of these books at .25 were distributed?? 1:250, 1:500, 1:1000 variants really but at .25 per book and easier book to overbuy i'm sure

I think 730K preordered has been mentioned. The thing is Image and Kirkman were probably losing money for each copy sold. 

Walking Dead #163 has 1:200 and 1:500 variants. There was an ebay seller who had those up for pre-orders up until FOC for $40 and $100 respectively, iirc. Honestly, this plus the $0.25 1:100 Red Sonja #0 and Vampirella #0 JSC variants are just blimps on the radar. These are fairly inexpensive to acquire and the $0.25 price point really encourages reader sampling. I've started adding Red Sonja and Vampirella to my pull list because of the teaser issues (I didn't get the 1:100 variants though, just the regular cover at $0.25). Besides, acquisition costs for these are probably similar to FCBD comics so retailers aren't losing $2 or so for each unsold copy.

2 hours ago, ygogolak said:

I think the variant craze of Star Wars was ridiculous. But what was more ridiculous was how many retailers ordered.

So, my point is, it doesn't matter what the perception is on here or anywhere else. A good businessman will only order what they know they can / will sell. The ones that order all the extra copies to get a variant will put themselves out of business eventually.

And therein lies the question of sustainability. It's not so much the variants themselves, rather it's the sheer volume being released every week that make people question the sustainability. For every hot variant fetching a nice premium, how many more are sitting unsold in dollar bins?

I think a bunch of brick and mortar shops have gotten burned and reached the point where if a regular customer isn't preordering incentive/ratio variants and paying at least cost for the extra copies needed of the regular cover, they just won't buy the variants anymore.

1 hour ago, ygogolak said:

Marvel makes their money from the retailers, not the consumers. Star Wars #1 was the largest selling direct market comic book in 20 years.

 

Yes, publishers make their money from retailers. Still, if the title has poor sell through and consumers don't buy the comics, then retailers are gonna start reducing their orders. Star Wars is Marvel's bestselling property but sales of Marvel Universe titles have been less than stellar. Sales on some of their titles are at DC levels from a year ago.

While Marvel's higher price tag has kept their dollar share higher than DC's, their single issue unit sales have been dropping. Moreso if you look purely at Marvel Universe titles and don't include Star Wars. There are actually Marvel Universe titles selling less than 10K and plenty more selling less than 20K.

December 2016, based on Comichron dollar rank, I estimate Marvel gave away ~400K+ free overship of select issues (IVX #1, Star Wars #26, Hulk #1, Invincible Iron Man #2, Avengers #2, Gamora #1, Hawkeye #1, Champions #3, GotG #15, etc). January 2017, with 10% linewide overship, estimated ~200K+ free overship. With no free overship in February 2017, Marvel's single issue sales are neck and neck with DC's. Mind, ~140K of their sales were from $1 True Believers reprints and ~260K from Star Wars.

Star Wars, events/crossovers and variants seem to be propping up Marvel unit sales at the moment. Still, gotta wonder, if variants are doing a good enough job of boosting sales, why would Marvel need to resort to giving hundreds of thousands of comics away for free?

Mind, I'm not preaching doom and gloom, and neither do I expect variants to go away. I just think we might see some eventual toning down on new variant releases.

5 hours ago, rjrjr said:

This post illustrated the problem I've been seeing with Marvel's Star Wars line.  The variants (along with #1s) are most definitely having a huge impact on how many units of an issue are ordered.  I'm doubtful there are more readers of Marvel's Star Wars line today than there were of Dark Horse's line towards the end, the difference being the variants sold to the same individual collectors.

In either case, I think this have been some good discussion with some good arguments on either side.

I know others have been prophesying doom and gloom.  While I'm optimistic about the end result, it really does feel like this trend is accelerating towards some conclusion in the next year or so.  DC has scaled back on variants tremendously and Marvel has to be thinking what they need to do to recapture the sales they once had without having to constantly over-ship to maintain dominance on the charts.  (It looks like over-shipping is their plan in April again.)  Several small retailers are following (or rather initiated) the path that DC comics is taking.  Clearly, someone is paying attention and realizing the path the industry has been taking is not healthy and needs to be corrected.

You know, I do wonder if Marvel's overproduction of variants is creating negative public perception of titles before they're even released. I know whenever I see a new Marvel #1 with 5+ variants particularly high ratio incentives, my thought process goes "Is the title so bad that the only way Marvel thinks the series will sell is through 1:1000 variants?" 

After Black Widow ends, I'm pretty much done buying Marvel single issues for reading. I would've sampled more Marvel  but priority goes to NM Skottie Young Baby variants and they seem to have ramped up production on those from 1-2 to seemingly 5+ every month. 

1 hour ago, SquareChaos said:

I didn't realize, but Tradd Moore is actually drawing (at least part of) this issue. I didn't care about this book at all, but now I'll at least take a look between the covers. The only question is, will I bother to read it? 

It's got a Skottie Young Baby variant which is an automatic purchase for me. I usually read those before putting them in storage. Too bad Marvel got rid of the digital copy. That was my preferred method of reading so I didn't damage the comic too much due to handling. 

2 hours ago, Martin Sinescu said:

There is a huge difference between the discussion on the CGC Boards and the Comic Book Resources boards. Go to CBR and hang out in the DC and Marvel sections for a bit and you will see a lively community of people who actually read between the covers. You rarely see mention of variants, it's mostly about plots and characters and the discussion certainly gets heated because the members there genuinely care about the stories. The nature of these boards is most certainly going to attract more "collectors" and flippers, but its disingenuous to paint the entire comics community with such a broad brush using the Modern section as your sample.

I dunno. I think Marvel's been suffering an over-reliance on variants and events to boost Diamond single issue unit sales. That said, I think their efforts at expansion away from the direct market is commendable.

It'll be interesting to see what happens to Marvel's marketshare if they stop printing all these variants and doing stuff like 50-100% free overship on select titles or 10% free overship linewide. Although I personally think a temporary moratorium on events would do Marvel some good.

USAvengers #1 - 110,729 (50 state variants, Jan 10% linewide free overship)

USAvengers #2 - 29,523  (Jan 10% linewide free overship)

Champions #1 - 334,937 (Scholastic deal, variants - 1:1000, retailer exclusives, etc)

Champions #2 - 49,733

Champions #3 - 47,481 (est. 7K free overship based on $ rank)

Champions #4 - 34,969 (Jan 10% linewide free overship)

Champions #5 - 31,344

And Champions happens to be one of Marvel's higher selling titles that's not an event or a #1.

7 minutes ago, ComicConnoisseur said:

I just think comics are like most hobbies markets now with variants

All the above have had variants much longer than comics. So good or bad I would expect variants to stay in comics.

We know they have short term value.

The question will be then will these variants have long-term value?

 

I expect the answer will be the same as comics in general. Some will. Most won't.

14 minutes ago, NamesJay said:

Just curious what was the buy ratio on this issue? Was it a 1:1000 or was it distributed some other way?

Some other way:

RRP - Retailer Roundtable Program

22 hours ago, Emezy360 said:

Glass half empty kida guy i guess 

3 outta 4 ain't bad.

He was referring to his store exclusive variant so that was a plug, not a critique.  

1 hour ago, crassus said:

This brings it back to the issue of sustainability. What is the market base? I am not great with money, so likely not the best person to comment, but my common sense tells me a pricing history stretching over a long period of time based on a large market base is going to be more sustainable than a short pricing history based on a small (albeit highly motivated) number of collectors. It also speaks to the basis of demand. If only a small number want something, granted they may pummel each other in price to get it, what does that say about its long term prospects?

Its sometimes easy I think to believe that because so many are crazy nostalgia driven collectors (yes, guilty as charged) that finally values are based on caprice and the collector's irrational impulses to have this or that. I was reading recently that as far as current sales of trades, graphic novels are concerned, the bulk of DCs sales are Batman related titles. If its Batman, it sells. The objective empirical fact is that there is a correlation between crazy Gold, Silver or Bronze collectors throwing big bucks at Batman books and the enduring popularity of the character. People are actually reading new Batman stories and that is part of the foundation that supports the overall market in Batman back issues, which in turn supports, for the more elite collectors with more money, the 10k Joker covers.

That may not be sustainable either, to be honest, but it is a numbers game, and the %s favour the books with deep cultural resonance and a track record of sales. Its not all relative.

And on the Marvel side, it's the Spidey books.  

14 minutes ago, 1Cool said:

It just seems like everyone wants a story and art that is specific to them.  They want a female Thor or they don't want it or they want a male Thor or they won't buy it.  Better add a female Iron Man since the female audience is going elsewhere.  Some people only want blocky art some people only like computer generated art.  Use to be there was a universal consensus on what was good art and what a good story line but now everyone wants what they want or it's not worth the money.  Maybe it's because of the price tag on books being so high.  I can see why the industry is throwing every idea at once to hopefully appease enough people at once.

Mind, both Thors are actually doing pretty well sales wise. Jason Aaron is on writing duty on both, I believe. Iirc, Jane!Thor sells better than Nick Spencer's Captain America: Steve Rogers.

Per Steve Jobs:  “A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them.”

I reckon people just want good comics. Marvel's made a huge push for diversity but to me, most of their attempts just feel condescending. More like, "Look at me, I'm diverse!" without any actual substance.

2 minutes ago, ygogolak said:

What would be sustainable, IMO, would be good stories. Not 72 Avengers titles every month. Marvel has moved to quantity over quality, and from what I read, a lot of people just blindly add these books to their pull list.

Marvel's problem is partly people have stopped blindly adding the new books to their pull list (likely also due to the massive volume Marvel releases every month). New #1s, rather than being jumping on points, have become jumping off points.

There are collectors who still pay a premium for variant covers (or really any cover that catch their fancy) but if these books are not being read in order to keep them in NM/MT condition, chances are the cover collectors are not buying the next issues.

Marvel has been appealing to collectors when they should be appealing to readers. And can we get better interior art please? Jim Zub's writing was okay but Jon Malin's art on Thunderbolts was an eyesore.

45 minutes ago, 1Cool said:

But is the process sustainable?  The comic companies obviously need the variants to get more sales since I'd guess the additional expenses required to print the small number of 1:25 to 1:100 variants must be loss leaders.  If they stopped printing the variants would the number of books sold tumble even more and would series be cancelled? 

Marvel is relying on incentive variants quite heavily. Just look at their slew of #1s (variants galore) and compare unit sales of those to their #2s.

Meanwhile, DC has switched to open to order variants on all issues for their regular ongoing series. Based on comiXology pull lists, I'd estimate the open to order variants add around 5-10% to their sales.

Marvel's already seeing some push back on all their #1s. In general, their new #1s seem to debut at lower unit sales compared to the previous volume and #2s onwards sell less than the last issue of the previous volume. Even their events, while still being one of their best selling issues, draw less and less sales compared to before.

I think Marvel ratio variants have been overused at this point that even as they're providing life support to new titles, they're probably not generating the sales numbers they used to. That's likely partly why we're seeing higher and higher ratios. Paraphrasing the Incredibles animated feature, "when everyone's special, then no one is."

10 minutes ago, Lazyboy said:

Yes, comic publishers (generally) don't make any claims about the numbers, so they're in no danger of facing that kind of lawsuit.

Publishers, no. Retailer exclusives, yes.

50 minutes ago, Broke as a Joke said:

I do hope the actual quality of what the Big 2 is putting out improves, because that will be what makes people care about content and not covers. 

Yup, quality of stories, not just pretty covers.

In fairness, I'm really enjoying DC Rebirth at the moment particularly the Superman titles. Meanwhile, Marvel's top talent all seem to have fled to Image. Honestly, there are very few Marvel titles that I feel are worth $3 (my discounted cost) for 20 pages of story. I think it's kinda sad that majority of my new Marvel preorders are solely for the Skottie Young baby variants.

2 hours ago, SquareChaos said:

Lots of people would likely pick one up if it were an impulse buy sort of price. 

Full-color version at impulse buy price.

http://www.midtowncomics.com/store/dp.asp?PRID=All-New+Wolverine+%2318+Cov_1607853

Preordered this and Gamora #4 (CA Stephanie Hans).

47 minutes ago, 1Cool said:

I've not been to an actual LCS is quite awhile so I assumed they went back wall for the higher price variants.  Regardless, the bag and board with a price sticker gives the variant an air of superiority compared to the regular issues.  And I can't imagine some store owners are not further hyping their big money makers.

Interestingly enough, to me the bag and board just signifies I probably won't be interested in the price tag. I'll stick to the lowly plebeian regular covers and open to order variants at normal cover price.  

The store clerks are busy talking Magic or whatever TCG is en vogue with store regulars so no upsell here. Actually, it's hard to get a clerk to pay attention to you at the payment counter if you're not a regular.  

Got to say, having multiple covers for all issues of DC Rebirth and some Image titles can be confusing when buying back issues (I got into Rebirth kinda late). I would constantly need to look at the issue numbers to make sure I'm not getting multiples of the same issue.

26 minutes ago, 1Cool said:

I don't think there will ever be a problem with people paying $13 for a variant since they like the cover better and they know the book is probably going to not appreciate and it's just a cool book for their collection.  But how many people get "suckered" into buying the $15 copy since the store owner has the book on the back wall with big "1:25 variant" on the bag.  They buy a short box of these type of books over a year and then gripe on Facebook when they go to sell a few.  Would they gripe less if they had paid $5 each for the regular cover?  Maybe but 3 times as quietly.

Interesting. My LCS's backwall is full of high priced statues and action figures, not comics. Ratio variants, if they carry them, sit on the shelves along with regular copies difference being the variants are bagged and boarded and have a price sticker.

1 hour ago, 1Cool said:

There will always be people debating if this or that modern variant book is $1,500 but those books are a drop in the bucket in the grand scheme of things.  The avalanche of 1:5, 1:10, 1:20 etc variants are what worry more.  Each of these was produced as an incentive that theorically were initially sold to someone at a premium due to it being a limited edition of the book and now almost all are $1 bin material.  Most of the regular issues are also $1 bin books but people probably bought those for a lesser price and the expectation was different.  It all just feel like those infomercials where the guy screamed about limited edition gem mint cards that all turned out to be garbage.

In fairness, 1:25 or less is typically $12-15 tops so around the cost of movie tickets in my area. I buy them if I like the cover enough to waste money. Otherwise, they're something I ignore. Anything 1:50 or higher is an automatic ignore since those tend to be at least $40 on the outset.

The open to order variants are actually harder for me to ignore since they're "just" $1.80-3.50 after discount.  

1 hour ago, Doktor said:

It's a rare instance when I'll say "nope" to a Campbell variant without even seeing it, even if it's a book I don't read, but my utter disdain for Nick Spencer as a writer & person & my desire to do my part in never buying anything with his name attached to it in hopes that he never gets another Marvel gig again prevents me from supporting even a Campbell variant for this title. Maybe if it was a JSC store exclusive.

The retailer exclusives also get added to Diamond sales numbers. That's how Batman #1 and Harley Quinn #1 got 300+K unit sales.

For something with 3 cover variations like JSC frequently does, that's an extra 5,500 copies sold (Cvr A 3000, Cvr B 1500, Cvr C 1000). Granted, that's a lot less than if 1,000 people were to pay a premium for a copy of the JSC 1:50 (51K minimum sales).

DC
JAN17 0239    BATMAN #19     $2.99
JAN17 0246    BATWOMAN #1     $2.99
JAN17 0305    SUPER SONS #2     $2.99
JAN17 0224    SUPERMAN #19     $2.99
JAN17 0314    TRINITY #7     $2.99
JAN17 0320    WILD STORM #2     $3.99

Marvel
JAN17 0914    MONSTERS UNLEASHED #5 (OF 5)     $4.99

Image
JAN17 0693    I HATE FAIRYLAND #11 CVR A YOUNG (MR)     $3.99
JAN17 0737    KILL OR BE KILLED #7 (MR)     $3.99

Dynamite
JAN17 1674    RED SONJA #3 CVR B CAMPBELL     $3.99

Manga
JAN17 2183    SKIP BEAT GN VOL 38     $9.99

8 hours ago, crassus said:

I agree this is a good comparison. Both are fundamentally artist-creator driven and keeping creative flow is what generates new talent which (hopefully) generates new creations and grows the market for the art form. In that sense it seems reasonable to interpret the data in that report (and it is worth reading through to the end) as fundamentally positive for comics as art form.

The thing is that's how the normal book market works. Publishers have relied on bestsellers such as Stephen King, James Patterson, Michael Crichton, etc. to find the Dan Browns and J.K. Rowlings.