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Dear God - did I just buy a modern foil cover book?? 1990s lessons not learned!

Started by 1Cool,

65 posts in this topic

Jaydogrules

Jaydogrules

Posted
Posted
They drove away a lot of the readership in the 90's with the gimmicks.

 

I was under the impression it was the gimmicks that was keeping their dwindling fanbase around these days.

 

Comic sales are trending up... not dwindling :gossip:

 

Estimated OVERALL North American Market size, including both print and digital estimates by Comichron and ICV2.com:

 

2011 $715 million

2012 $805 million

2013 $870 million

2014 $935 million

2015 $1.03 billion

 

http://www.comichron.com/yearlycomicssales.html

 

Facts and all...

 

Worth bumping this post since it went entirely ignored....

 

-J.

 

Probably because it had nothing to do with what I said (shrug)

 

 

 

"Gimmicks keeping their DWINDLING fan base around"........Uh, it has everything to do with what you said.....Some people just HATE being wrong lol........

 

You're right, for each copy sold I'm sure that represents 1 reader.

 

 

:eyeroll:

 

Your point ?

 

-J.

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SquareChaos

SquareChaos

Posted
Posted
They drove away a lot of the readership in the 90's with the gimmicks.

 

I was under the impression it was the gimmicks that was keeping their dwindling fanbase around these days.

 

Comic sales are trending up... not dwindling :gossip:

 

Estimated OVERALL North American Market size, including both print and digital estimates by Comichron and ICV2.com:

 

2011 $715 million

2012 $805 million

2013 $870 million

2014 $935 million

2015 $1.03 billion

 

http://www.comichron.com/yearlycomicssales.html

 

Facts and all...

 

Worth bumping this post since it went entirely ignored....

 

-J.

 

Not to be that guy, but these numbers don't exactly mean there are more people reading comic books either. So... yes, there's more money flowing, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's healthier.

 

There is really no way to prove that, but I would agree speculation is increasing sales overall, but LCS's say their sales are up from readers as well.

 

 

I'm not making a call one way or the other - that point is that there's no way to know what such a flat statistic means. It's just a number, it doesn't say much else.

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RockMyAmadeus

RockMyAmadeus

Posted
Posted
They drove away a lot of the readership in the 90's with the gimmicks.

 

I was under the impression it was the gimmicks that was keeping their dwindling fanbase around these days.

 

Comic sales are trending up... not dwindling :gossip:

 

Estimated OVERALL North American Market size, including both print and digital estimates by Comichron and ICV2.com:

 

2011 $715 million

2012 $805 million

2013 $870 million

2014 $935 million

2015 $1.03 billion

 

http://www.comichron.com/yearlycomicssales.html

 

Facts and all...

 

Worth bumping this post since it went entirely ignored....

 

-J.

 

Probably because it had nothing to do with what I said (shrug)

 

 

 

"Gimmicks keeping their DWINDLING fan base around"........Uh, it has everything to do with what you said.....Some people just HATE being wrong lol........

 

 

WTTB. You'll fit right in.

 

 

 

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thehumantorch

thehumantorch

Posted
Posted
We saw a similar situation in the 90s. The big difference is the trend away from print yowards electronic devices

 

http://blog.comichron.com/2016/07/comics-and-graphic-novel-sales-top-1.html

 

That trend just isn't happening though. Across the board, electronic sales are down for books, magazines, and comics.

 

They must also be down for print versions. Bookstores are getting hard to find.

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Gatchaman

Gatchaman

Posted
Posted
I agree with aardvark88. There are just too many variants being put out for every issue, not including reprints. This makes collecting very frustrating. IDW now puts out upwards of 7+ covers for some TMNT issues. What happened to just having one great cover, and spending the rest of the time on great interior art work?

 

The SDCC Batman Rebirth Foil does look good IMO. But I don't know that it's value is going anywhere.

The only people recouping their money on those are the people selling them directly from SDCC. They retail for $5 and are being sold on the boards anywhere from $18-$25 and they can't even keep them in stock. I don't see anyone paying $30 for them in a years time allowing the collectors to get their money back.

 

Exactly.

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mattn792

mattn792

Posted
Posted

I was dwelling on the 1990s vs now thing earlier today, and one thing that stuck out in my mind was this -- Marvel went bankrupt in the '90s helped largely by stupid acquisitions (the Fleer purchase, right before the strike tanked the baseball card market) and too much debt.

 

But now in 2016, the company is a gold mine. It's media arm is practically printing money, and they're backed by Disney's bank account on top of that. I agree with the sentiment that their current print product is worse than low grade toilet paper, but as long as the bottom line is in the black (and the numbers from comichron seem to suggest that), I don't think Marvel's suits really care what the little guy thinks. As long as all 939 Death of Wolverine variant covers sell out, and the money train keeps chugging along, who cares if the storyline seems like it was written by an illiterate 5 year old?

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1Cool

1Cool

Posted
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Its my memory that the 90s crash was also facilitated by the rise of E-Bay and the global competition rather then the local comic shop having control over prices. The fact that companies like Image, Valiant and Malibu were cranking out millions of copies of books that were borderline garbage probably didn't help any. The product now seems a lot better then what we had back in the 90s.

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Shadow Images

Shadow Images

Posted
Posted

The crash in the 90's was like every crash of any other hobbies. I have seen it numerous times in the car market( ie tri five chevys). Speculators ramp up the market and eventually crash the market when they leave.

 

The comic market is going through the a similar time as before. A lot of people have entered the market on the believe that they will make a fortune of of it. The manufacturers are pushing out larger and larger numbers of books.

 

At some point when people relize they are not going to make a fortune.The winds of change will happen and comic characters will not be the flavor of the month with the masses.

 

 

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Ken Aldred

Ken Aldred

Posted
Posted
I care. I refuse to buy any Marvels from 2000 and up

 

I was the same and then I met uncanny xforce 1-35.

 

For Marvel, the ten years after 2000 were much better than the ten that preceded it.

 

IMHO 2c:D

 

 

 

 

They did seem to start putting quite a bit more effort in, for a while.

 

The two X-Force series by Milligan / Allred and by Kyle / Yost / Crain were also high quality, as well as Remender's excellent run.

 

 

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SquareChaos

SquareChaos

Posted
Posted

"There's a crash coming."

 

"When?"

 

"... soon."

 

I mean, I get it, those of us that were around in the 90s see a lot of similar behavior, but the hobby is also a very, very different place. Am I saying a crash is not on it's way? No, of course not, in fact, I believe bubbles are inevitable in human economic systems, but I don't know what will trigger one. Is it tons of variants? Tons of retailer incentive variants? The speculators in the after market? The collectors that snatch something up for re-sell when they see it listed with meat still on the bone? The dangers of over saturating the medium thanks to movies? All of the above? :shrug:

 

 

Classically, you feel nervous when the market stops responding in a predictable manner, and as far as I can see, that hasn't happened yet. Our blue chips seem to sell just fine, there do not seem to be wildly fluctuating prices (outside of modern books - same as it ever was?), and in general the secondary market appears pretty damn healthy. None of which means it couldn't all start tomorrow of course, but... Probably not.

 

Sometimes I think we fall to the temptation to say the things we dislike in the hobby is going to cause the most damage.

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STORMSHADOW_80

STORMSHADOW_80

Posted
Posted
I care. I refuse to buy any Marvels from 2000 and up

 

I was the same and then I met uncanny xforce 1-35.

 

For Marvel, the ten years after 2000 were much better than the ten that preceded it.

 

IMHO 2c:D

 

 

 

 

They did seem to start putting quite a bit more effort in, for a while.

 

The two X-Force series by Milligan / Allred and by Kyle / Yost / Crain were also high quality, as well as Remender's excellent run.

 

+1 Both of those X-Force series got me back to collecting. I loved Wolverine as a black ops leader that did what needed to be done. NYX3 and X-Factor 24 were also the first 9.8s books I bought..... Glad I did
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1Cool

1Cool

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Nope :cry: Bought the stupid Justice League one.

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