2 Spideys in the name of Diversity or the gradual decline of Marvel Comics?

[ChrisInBaltimore]

Maybe you should look again. In each list you'll see that there are other Ultimate books surrounding Ultimate Spider-man on the sales charts, suggesting that it was the Ultimate line in general that was popular. Who was in the Spider-man costume doesn't seem to have as much of an effect on where Ultimate Spider-man sales were compared to the popularity of the Ultimate line in general.

 

It was the popularity of Ultimate Spider-man that led to the other Ultimate titles getting created, not the other way around. It was a breakout hit from the beginning. And the amount of popular competition is actually a point in it's favor as it continued to sell throughout the competitions rise and even after the competitions fall.

 

And both Spider-Gwen and Silk have managed to hold their own titles with respectable numbers (Gwen averaging over 100,000 for #2, 3 and 4 - Silk averaging 50,000+ for #2, 3, and 4) while Miles Morales on multiple occasions has not.

I am not contending that Ultimate Spider-man was a popular title at one point. The point of contention is whether the popularity of the title was due to the identity of the character in the costume, and I think the available data show that it was not. Yes, the title was very popular at first, and Peter Parker was in the costume. But I think that was because the concept of the Ultimate line was very popular (and speculation on the part of some that it might end up replacing the regular Marvel Universe probably helped with sales to a point). But, the popularity of the line fell, and the sales data show that. That's the entire line, including Spider-man which still featured Peter Parker. The numbers continued to fall for all titles by the time Miles Morales took over as Spider-man. So if someone wants to cling to the idea that the problem was Miles Morales vs. Peter Parker, I think the point needs to be addressed why the sales of *every other Ultimate title* fell as well.

 

Why'd it sell 86,000 copies when it got rebooted (after the 'end' of the Ultimate Universe) and outsell regular Spider-man again?

 

 

Whereas when it got rebooted with Miles, it barely registered?

 

 

By the time the title changed to Miles Morales, Miles had been Spider-Man for a while. The interest in the line, as noted in other places, dropped prior to that relaunch. That relaunch was also odd and there wasn't any buzz for it.

 

If memory serves me correctly too, wasn't Ultimate Comics Spider-Man 1 in a plastic wrap? I bet a lot of people picked up two or more.

[ChrisInBaltimore]

Maybe you should look again. In each list you'll see that there are other Ultimate books surrounding Ultimate Spider-man on the sales charts, suggesting that it was the Ultimate line in general that was popular. Who was in the Spider-man costume doesn't seem to have as much of an effect on where Ultimate Spider-man sales were compared to the popularity of the Ultimate line in general.

 

It was the popularity of Ultimate Spider-man that led to the other Ultimate titles getting created, not the other way around. It was a breakout hit from the beginning. And the amount of popular competition is actually a point in it's favor as it continued to sell throughout the competitions rise and even after the competitions fall.

 

And both Spider-Gwen and Silk have managed to hold their own titles with respectable numbers (Gwen averaging over 100,000 for #2, 3 and 4 - Silk averaging 50,000+ for #2, 3, and 4) while Miles Morales on multiple occasions has not.

 

I don't think comparing Gwen and Silk is fair. That is like Apples and Oranges. Those titles haven't been running for more than a few months as evidence by the fact they haven't even gotten past issues 5 or 6.

 

Ultimate Spider-Man has been running for over 10 years.

[Doktor]

I was done with the Ultimate books long before Ultimatum. But yeah, people were fed up with the stupidity of Ultimates 3 and Ultimatum. I'm all for diversity in books if there are going to be good stories behind it. Doing it just to pander to a group of people in order to bring more readers in is just sad.

 

aren't 95-99% of decisions made by companies designed to bring in more customers?

 

This is accurate, but I'd rephrase his statement as "doing it to pander to a statistically smaller group of people that this character could potentially resonate with in order to bring in potential new readers while potentially alienating an even greater number of existing readers is just sad".

 

You can look at it as pure statistics. Roughly 30% of the population identifies as either black and/or Hispanic. The Caucasian population is roughly 62%. The other 8% is a mix of other non-white, non-Hispanic, non-black racial identifications. I don't think anyone is arguing that targeting the black/Hispanic demographic as an under-served portion of the population is a NOT good idea. But targeting 1/3 of the population for a new product while subtracting a product that has existing appeal to the other 2/3 of the population is a risky endeavor. The potential gains have a risk of being outweighed by potential losses, statistically speaking.

 

The thought process that Bendis mentioned essentially boils down to "the likelihood of this 30% of the population buying increases if the star character has the same skin color as them". It however ignores the converse of this thought process, that the same increased likelihood is already applied to the 62% of the population that is presently targeted by the book. And therefore, for every 1 person to start buying a book because of that thought process, 2 people are likely to stop buying a book because that thought process no longer applies to them. If the reason the new person buys is because of similar racial identification, wouldn't there necessarily be the risk that someone 2 people are already buying it because of the similar racial identification in a population twice the size? I believe so.

 

Targeting an underserved demographic with high-profile characters is a smart business decision from a statistical POV. But doing so at the expense of a demographic 2x the size is not smart business IMO.

 

I definitely see the logic in your argument, and I agree that it is risky, and may very well not work out.

 

But at the same time, we can only see what is happening right now with what's been revealed by Marvel. We don't know what their long term plans are.

 

I don't think it would unreasonable to think that the following scenario is what they're hoping for:

 

1. RIght now, ASM sells about 100,000 per month. Over a whole year, lets be conservative and call it a million per year.

2. If they change to miles, they estimate they might lose 30,000 asm readers (very significant) who were previously buying monthly. But guess what, I'd say at least 5,000 of those readers will move their money to another Marvel title. Although certainly some might stop buying comics all together and some might put their money with competitors

3. And they might estimate to gain about 10,000 NEW COMIC READERS, and about 5,000 previous comic readers who weren't reading ASM but now want to see what the hype is about.

4. Here's the thing with the 10,000 NEW COMIC READERS, most comic readers don't buy just one comic, and those comic readers will most likely come from an untapped market, who will hopefully tell there friends, who will most likely become NEW COMIC READERS, etc, etc.

5. You KNOW the 1st issue will sell well at least, they can make an event out of it

6. YOU KNOW when peter comes back that. the first issue will sell well and they can make an event out of it.

 

I'm not saying they aren't using 'diversity' as a strategy, they are. But the strategy isn't a liberal agenda, its a well-thought out, researched, vetted way to ATTEMPT to grab hold of a relatively untapped market. Does that mean it will work? Who knows? Are there good arguments against doing so? Of course. But ultimately, I'm pretty sure there's plenty of good reasons (and bad reasons) for this strategy, and while race is probably a major factor in the strategy, its not the driving force behind the strategy, which is the same as always...creating financial opportunities.

 

I generally agree with all of what you're saying. There's definitely a lot of math and variables & risks with something like this. I would assume Marvel has done enough of their homework to predict the likely result ending up with more money in their pockets. We'll see what happens. It may be a case of hurting ASM's sales brings up the sales of other books that compensate or even outweigh the losses sustained to the ASM title. But I don't know. Strictly on the issue of statistics relating to Miles vs Pete with the logic Bendis used? I think it's risky. Using the additional variables you mentioned? Maybe less so? Maybe more so? I don't really know. I'm guessing it doesn't really matter much though because it's probably just another Superior Spider-Man thing where it's an excuse to re-launch Pete in the NEW Marvel U a little bit down the line once the first few waves of relaunches start losing their shine & sales normalize a little bit.

 

Though I would say that the positive PR for making a movie like this aligning with the social-media/media liberal sensibilities would be a mistake to completely disregard. Getting lauded by the progressive/liberal voices that are the loudest in the mainstream tv/internet media & social media for replacing another straight white male with a more "diverse" character can't be entirely disregarded. It is obviously NOT their primary motivation for this move, but that it falls in line with the rest of their decision making is more like icing on the cake to Marvel. They get to make a move that their predictions lead them to believe will make them more $$ and the positive PR from media & social media is likely to add even more sales as well. A bonus, if you will.

[Jaydogrules]

Miles Morales is already enough of an established character to ball park what his sales in (yet another attempt at) a solo title will yield:

 

Issue 1 will get the requisite "issue 1" bump. It will sell around 100k, which would be a record for him, but a fraction of what the last ASM reboot did.

 

Issue 2 will experience a significant drop off, probably down into the 58-68k range.

 

Issues 3-5 will find it in would would be its natural "average" range of about 40-50k per month, which would be great for Miles but only half of Peter. And it will only be that high because Marvel is pulling the chair (likely only temporarily) on the ASM title. Once Peter's back, Miles is a 30-35k seller again.

 

If these numbers pan out (which are actually much closer to Miles' historical numbers), Marvel gives up about half of its Spider sales, for pretty much the sole purpose of trying to "make" this character popular, even if its at the (temporary) expense of their actually popular character.

 

This once again speaks to the immense popularity of Peter Parker, and the faith they have in being able to cash in (again) when they do bring him back, that Marvel even believes that they can pull this off.

 

-J.

 

[Prince Namor]

Maybe you should look again. In each list you'll see that there are other Ultimate books surrounding Ultimate Spider-man on the sales charts, suggesting that it was the Ultimate line in general that was popular. Who was in the Spider-man costume doesn't seem to have as much of an effect on where Ultimate Spider-man sales were compared to the popularity of the Ultimate line in general.

 

It was the popularity of Ultimate Spider-man that led to the other Ultimate titles getting created, not the other way around. It was a breakout hit from the beginning. And the amount of popular competition is actually a point in it's favor as it continued to sell throughout the competitions rise and even after the competitions fall.

 

And both Spider-Gwen and Silk have managed to hold their own titles with respectable numbers (Gwen averaging over 100,000 for #2, 3 and 4 - Silk averaging 50,000+ for #2, 3, and 4) while Miles Morales on multiple occasions has not.

 

I don't think comparing Gwen and Silk is fair. That is like Apples and Oranges. Those titles haven't been running for more than a few months as evidence by the fact they haven't even gotten past issues 5 or 6.

 

Ultimate Spider-Man has been running for over 10 years.

 

I wasn't comparing it to that, I was comparing it to Miles.

 

Miles Morales Ultimate Spider-man (the latest one that just ended) had been running for 7 issues. If the character is good or liked, sales go UP when they reboot. It didn't. It went down.

 

I guarantee you when they reboot Spider-Gwen the numbers will go UP.

[revat]

I was done with the Ultimate books long before Ultimatum. But yeah, people were fed up with the stupidity of Ultimates 3 and Ultimatum. I'm all for diversity in books if there are going to be good stories behind it. Doing it just to pander to a group of people in order to bring more readers in is just sad.

 

aren't 95-99% of decisions made by companies designed to bring in more customers?

 

This is accurate, but I'd rephrase his statement as "doing it to pander to a statistically smaller group of people that this character could potentially resonate with in order to bring in potential new readers while potentially alienating an even greater number of existing readers is just sad".

 

You can look at it as pure statistics. Roughly 30% of the population identifies as either black and/or Hispanic. The Caucasian population is roughly 62%. The other 8% is a mix of other non-white, non-Hispanic, non-black racial identifications. I don't think anyone is arguing that targeting the black/Hispanic demographic as an under-served portion of the population is a NOT good idea. But targeting 1/3 of the population for a new product while subtracting a product that has existing appeal to the other 2/3 of the population is a risky endeavor. The potential gains have a risk of being outweighed by potential losses, statistically speaking.

 

The thought process that Bendis mentioned essentially boils down to "the likelihood of this 30% of the population buying increases if the star character has the same skin color as them". It however ignores the converse of this thought process, that the same increased likelihood is already applied to the 62% of the population that is presently targeted by the book. And therefore, for every 1 person to start buying a book because of that thought process, 2 people are likely to stop buying a book because that thought process no longer applies to them. If the reason the new person buys is because of similar racial identification, wouldn't there necessarily be the risk that someone 2 people are already buying it because of the similar racial identification in a population twice the size? I believe so.

 

Targeting an underserved demographic with high-profile characters is a smart business decision from a statistical POV. But doing so at the expense of a demographic 2x the size is not smart business IMO.

 

I definitely see the logic in your argument, and I agree that it is risky, and may very well not work out.

 

But at the same time, we can only see what is happening right now with what's been revealed by Marvel. We don't know what their long term plans are.

 

I don't think it would unreasonable to think that the following scenario is what they're hoping for:

 

1. RIght now, ASM sells about 100,000 per month. Over a whole year, lets be conservative and call it a million per year.

2. If they change to miles, they estimate they might lose 30,000 asm readers (very significant) who were previously buying monthly. But guess what, I'd say at least 5,000 of those readers will move their money to another Marvel title. Although certainly some might stop buying comics all together and some might put their money with competitors

3. And they might estimate to gain about 10,000 NEW COMIC READERS, and about 5,000 previous comic readers who weren't reading ASM but now want to see what the hype is about.

4. Here's the thing with the 10,000 NEW COMIC READERS, most comic readers don't buy just one comic, and those comic readers will most likely come from an untapped market, who will hopefully tell there friends, who will most likely become NEW COMIC READERS, etc, etc.

5. You KNOW the 1st issue will sell well at least, they can make an event out of it

6. YOU KNOW when peter comes back that. the first issue will sell well and they can make an event out of it.

 

I'm not saying they aren't using 'diversity' as a strategy, they are. But the strategy isn't a liberal agenda, its a well-thought out, researched, vetted way to ATTEMPT to grab hold of a relatively untapped market. Does that mean it will work? Who knows? Are there good arguments against doing so? Of course. But ultimately, I'm pretty sure there's plenty of good reasons (and bad reasons) for this strategy, and while race is probably a major factor in the strategy, its not the driving force behind the strategy, which is the same as always...creating financial opportunities.

 

I generally agree with all of what you're saying. There's definitely a lot of math and variables & risks with something like this. I would assume Marvel has done enough of their homework to predict the likely result ending up with more money in their pockets. We'll see what happens. It may be a case of hurting ASM's sales brings up the sales of other books that compensate or even outweigh the losses sustained to the ASM title. But I don't know. Strictly on the issue of statistics relating to Miles vs Pete with the logic Bendis used? I think it's risky. Using the additional variables you mentioned? Maybe less so? Maybe more so? I don't really know. I'm guessing it doesn't really matter much though because it's probably just another Superior Spider-Man thing where it's an excuse to re-launch Pete in the NEW Marvel U a little bit down the line once the first few waves of relaunches start losing their shine & sales normalize a little bit.

 

Though I would say that the positive PR for making a movie like this aligning with the social-media/media liberal sensibilities would be a mistake to completely disregard. Getting lauded by the progressive/liberal voices that are the loudest in the mainstream tv/internet media & social media for replacing another straight white male with a more "diverse" character can't be entirely disregarded. It is obviously NOT their primary motivation for this move, but that it falls in line with the rest of their decision making is more like icing on the cake to Marvel. They get to make a move that their predictions lead them to believe will make them more $$ and the positive PR from media & social media is likely to add even more sales as well. A bonus, if you will.

 

I'm in accordance with this. Its a numbers game, it always was and always will be. And you're right, how the media portrays this and the fact that insufficiently_thoughtful_persons like us are talking about is a factor they've considered too, and I'm sure it plays into their numbers projections.

 

If you're hiring a club promoter who is dumb but loves to party and is very attractive has tons of connections, some other workers/investors/customers might have questions about your motives. But for the most part, the truth is you hired them because they can connect you to a market that you're looking for, and yes, those connections may exist because of some the characteristics of that promoter, and you think your goals will have a better chance to be achieved this way...sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

 

This is even more true for a large corporation where the stock price is way more important than pretty much anything else.

 

[ChrisInBaltimore]

Maybe you should look again. In each list you'll see that there are other Ultimate books surrounding Ultimate Spider-man on the sales charts, suggesting that it was the Ultimate line in general that was popular. Who was in the Spider-man costume doesn't seem to have as much of an effect on where Ultimate Spider-man sales were compared to the popularity of the Ultimate line in general.

 

It was the popularity of Ultimate Spider-man that led to the other Ultimate titles getting created, not the other way around. It was a breakout hit from the beginning. And the amount of popular competition is actually a point in it's favor as it continued to sell throughout the competitions rise and even after the competitions fall.

 

And both Spider-Gwen and Silk have managed to hold their own titles with respectable numbers (Gwen averaging over 100,000 for #2, 3 and 4 - Silk averaging 50,000+ for #2, 3, and 4) while Miles Morales on multiple occasions has not.

 

I don't think comparing Gwen and Silk is fair. That is like Apples and Oranges. Those titles haven't been running for more than a few months as evidence by the fact they haven't even gotten past issues 5 or 6.

 

Ultimate Spider-Man has been running for over 10 years.

 

I wasn't comparing it to that, I was comparing it to Miles.

 

Miles Morales Ultimate Spider-man (the latest one that just ended) had been running for 7 issues. If the character is good or liked, sales go UP when they reboot. It didn't. It went down.

 

I guarantee you when they reboot Spider-Gwen the numbers will go UP.

 

I don't disagree with you about Miles.

 

I will say that the Miles USM was good though. It took a bit to get rolling though and I could see why people dropped it. I even started a ranting thread on CBR about how much I disliked it around the issue 11 or 12 mark. It got better (it was a slow burn like way too many of Bendis' titles) but it had already lost people. Then the Ultimate Universe really started stinking and people just kept bailing. Factor on top of that the success of Superior and people were probably leaving in spades..

 

Having said all that, I don't think the comparison to Spider-Gwen is fair. They took a well established character and seemingly brought her back from the dead. Then they put her in a pretty cool costume all in the middle of a fairly large Spider-Man event. Then they tacked her on the front of just about every cover. Marvel really helped create the buzz.

 

I'd put money on it that if Gwen isn't in the main universe after Secret Wars that her book doesn't last long term. It isn't all that intriguing of a read and alternate universe characters traditionally don't do that well. Silk has been the stronger title, IMO- it probably helps she's in the 616 sandbox.