Marvel's Falling Sales 6 6

[Get Marwood & I]

33 minutes ago, chrisco37 said:

That's what they did with the Ultimate line.   And it was good for awhile.  The first 40 or so issues of Ultimate Spidey were fantastic.  After that, it was hit or miss depending on the arc.   But, heck, even the USM version of the "Clone Saga" was really good.  The Ultimates Vol 1 & 2 were great (and really the basis for the Avengers movies). 

Yup. Trouble is, the Ultimate line coexisted with regular continuity titles so, as good as it was in the early days, I could never take it as the long term 'proper' universe. I always felt I was reading a take on Spider-Man, not the Spider-Man. Maybe if they stopped all titles (some great winding up the universe death stories) and then relaunched our trusted loved heroes and villains in a new fresh take we would have no choice but to take them on as the new and only continuity.  Starting fresh would make movie tie ins easier too - new young readers would more or less get Spidey and the Avengers as they are on screen now. If the writers of Dr Who can make the "it's bigger in the inside" situation new and fresh, I'd like to see the same for Spider-Man etc.  

Let's face it, how can you keep 60 years of continuity going when the heroes involved are supposed to be in their twenties. It's nonsense. I'd prefer a new Peter Parker from age 16 and a 15 year arc of well plotted stories and continuity in one well drawn title. New readers would grow up with them.  Then do it all again with the future movie remakes. 

It works for Dr Who, James Bond, Sherlock Holmes. Imagine an advert for the new Amazing Spider-Man comic alongside the new movie trailer. New comic, relevant stories, great art. Available in your newsstand every month with no tinkering. And a letters page that played on brand loyalty like the old days to make you feel like you were part of a group. No variants.  Just one crackingly good Spidey / Hulk etc comic every week. 

Probably wouldn't increase sales though!

[ComicConnoisseur]

25 minutes ago, Ken Aldred said:

The early Ultimate books were very good.

Joe Quesada's Marvel of the 2000s is missed and there's much to be learned and, maybe, hopefully one day reapplied from his tenure back then.

Once again we go back to Joe Q as being a good editor in chief . Marvel was pretty good with him in charge.

Basically Marvel's downfall started in January 2011 when Axel Alonso became editor in chief of Marvel Comics.

In sports if the coach or manager does a mediocre or bad job they replace them.

[Ken Aldred]

2 hours ago, ComicConnoisseur said:

You should check Amazon from time to time, as they sell certain digital Marvel Masterworks between $2.99 to $9.99. I bought a whole bunch them around Black Friday. The Spider-Man and many other digital Masterworks are going for $8.50 on Amazon right now,normally these are $29.99 plus at LCS.

My Kindle Fire is loaded with copper,bronze and silver age goodness! Re-reading them showed me how cool Marvel Comics once was. 

Checking on Amazon UK , there are many digital SA and BA Masterworks going for £5 to £7.  Lots of great reading material.   

Edited April 18, 2017 by Ken Aldred

[Ken Aldred]

31 minutes ago, Marwood & I said:

Yup. Trouble is, the Ultimate line coexisted with regular continuity titles so, as good as it was in the early days, I could never take it as the long term 'proper' universe. I always felt I was reading a take on Spider-Man, not the Spider-Man.

Always going to be a problem with any parallel universe reinterpretation. 

[Prince Namor]

51 minutes ago, ComicConnoisseur said:

Once again we go back to Joe Q as being a good editor in chief . Marvel was pretty good with him in charge.

Basically Marvel's downfall started in January 2011 when Axel Alonso became editor in chief of Marvel Comics.

In sports if the coach or manager does a mediocre or bad job they replace them.

But you're saying that based upon STORIES in your OPINION. 

As far as SALES or PROFITS, which is what corporation head honchos are actually held up to for performance, Marvel just came off of two MONSTER years in sales, completely crushing DC (no one else was in the game), forcing DC to reboot their ENTIRE line up of comics yet again. 

[Prince Namor]

Having said that, I too, thought things were better, editorially, under Joe Q, BUT....

"One More Day" sucked. 

[Ken Aldred]

17 minutes ago, Chuck Gower said:

Having said that, I too, thought things were better, editorially, under Joe Q, BUT....

"One More Day" sucked. 

No-one's perfect.

[Gatsby77]

I thought Spider-Man couldn't get worse than the late '90s clone saga, or Maximum Carnage.

One More Day proved me mad wrong.

[ComicConnoisseur]

1 hour ago, Chuck Gower said:

But you're saying that based upon STORIES in your OPINION. 

As far as SALES or PROFITS, which is what corporation head honchos are actually held up to for performance, Marvel just came off of two MONSTER years in sales, completely crushing DC (no one else was in the game), forcing DC to reboot their ENTIRE line up of comics yet again. 

I think we all can agree though that Marvel 1961 to 2010 was much more interesting, iconic and and fun than 2011 and up than when Alonso took over.

 

 

 

 

Edited April 18, 2017 by ComicConnoisseur

[FineCollector]

Making Joe Q editor in chief was the beginning of the downfall for Marvel.  He flushed all the old readers by saying, who cares about continuity, just write an entertaining story.  He cemented that decision by annointing Brian Michael Bendis lord of everything, the guy who urinated on everything that came before him, and made every character's dialogue sound like Spider-Man's.  He pushed the Ultimate books, and left the classic titles to rot.

I don't know how other locations reacted, but at my local shop, Marvel readers jumped ship for DC in droves.  Geoff Johns' Green Lantern was the store's best seller, and DC was king for several years until Dan Didio ruined the ride.  The awful Countdown and Final Crisis series (and their spinoffs) was a major catalyst.

[Penultimate]

3 hours ago, Ken Aldred said:

The early Ultimate books were very good.

That's because they just took the classic stories from the 60s and 70s and updated them. The House of Recycled Ideas.

[Bird]

3 hours ago, chrisco37 said:

That's what they did with the Ultimate line.   And it was good for awhile.  The first 40 or so issues of Ultimate Spidey were fantastic.  After that, it was hit or miss depending on the arc.   But, heck, even the USM version of the "Clone Saga" was really good.  The Ultimates Vol 1 & 2 were great (and really the basis for the Avengers movies). 

I really enjoyed Ultimate X-Men for a while as it had many of the team members I enjoyed reading when I was in hs and college. Good books by BKV and others.

[Logan510]

4 hours ago, Ken Aldred said:

The early Ultimate books were very good.

Joe Quesada's Marvel of the 2000s is missed and there's much to be learned and, maybe, hopefully one day reapplied from his tenure back then.

Perspective is a funny thing. It was the Joe Q, Bill Jemas reign of terror that ultimately lead me to drop all my regular Marvel monthly series. Since then I've only bought stuff that favorite creators have worked on. This is coming from a guy whose peak was 30+ monthly titles.

[Logan510]

1 hour ago, Penultimate said:

That's because they just took the classic stories from the 60s and 70s and updated them. The House of Recycled Ideas.

Believe it or not but the original premise of the Ultimate Universe, as told to me back then by one of the creatives who had a hand in pre production, was that it was supposed to be "kid friendly" books based on the classic characters / concepts to try and draw in children who might otherwise be turned off collecting books that already had 30 years of history behind them.

[ComicConnoisseur]

13 minutes ago, Logan510 said:

Perspective is a funny thing. It was the Joe Q, Bill Jemas reign of terror that ultimately lead me to drop all my regular Marvel monthly series. Since then I've only bought stuff that favorite creators have worked on. This is coming from a guy whose peak was 30+ monthly titles.

I get your point that Joe Q was not the greatest editor in chief ,but his reign is certainly better compared to Alonso's.

Heck, the Bob Harras reign was better than the Alonso reign and that is saying something. 

 

Edited April 18, 2017 by ComicConnoisseur

[Readcomix]

I may have mentioned this waaaay early in this thread but another turn-off for me is the obsession with "quality" paper....I can't stand the slick pages, the glare when you try to read them, the unnecessary cost it adds....

I plan to support any Alterna Comics' titles that I enjoy as they launch their newsprint line. Gives me a reason to look at the this week shelf in my LCS.

[World Devourer]

11 hours ago, ComicConnoisseur said:

You should check Amazon from time to time, as they sell certain digital Marvel Masterworks between $2.99 to $9.99. I bought a whole bunch them around Black Friday. The Spider-Man and many other digital Masterworks are going for $8.50 on Amazon right now,normally these are $29.99 plus at LCS.

My Kindle Fire is loaded with copper,bronze and silver age goodness! Re-reading them showed me how cool Marvel Comics once was. 

Yes. There will never, ever, be another time like Marvel in the 60-70's.

[Ken Aldred]

6 hours ago, ComicConnoisseur said:

I get your point that Joe Q was not the greatest editor in chief ,but his reign is certainly better compared to Alonso's.

Heck, the Bob Harras reign was better than the Alonso reign and that is saying something. 

 

I wasn't buying much at all from Marvel in the late 90s.  I thought that Joe Q, at the very least, improved the quality in the early 2000s.  Which was something.

Edited April 19, 2017 by Ken Aldred

[Ken Aldred]

7 hours ago, Logan510 said:

Believe it or not but the original premise of the Ultimate Universe, as told to me back then by one of the creatives who had a hand in pre production, was that it was supposed to be "kid friendly" books based on the classic characters / concepts to try and draw in children who might otherwise be turned off collecting books that already had 30 years of history behind them.

Strange how that message didn’t filter down too well to some of the writers, even early on.

It’s over a decade since I’ve read Ultimate X-Men, but I recall it being quite dark and violent in places, especially the early Mark Millar issues. 

Not exactly Spidey Super Stories.

Edited April 19, 2017 by Ken Aldred

[Prince Namor]

24 minutes ago, World Devourer said:

Yes. There will never, ever, be another time like Marvel in the 60-70's.

Most likely not. Not for superheroes anyway.

But think about what made those characters popular - it was taking conventional story ideas and turning them inside out, using characters that were different than what comic book readers were used to. No, they didn't have a black female superhero, it would've never worked then - but they did have superheroes who argued, had flaws, weren't adults, and were at times full of self doubt.

The majority of the industry saw it as weird - these were the Muslim Ms. Marvel's and Riri Iron Man's of the day - going against popular convention and doing something different.

History likes to make us think these characters were an overnight sensation. For Marvel they were... In 1960 the highest selling book they had was Tales to Astonish, ranked at a paltry #43 with 163,000 average copies per issue (compared to Batman at #6 with 502,000 or Uncle Scrooge at #1 with over a million!). We have no publication data for those early Marvel Superhero books, so we don't know exactly how well they were doing.

We do know that 1964's numbers, with Giant Man in Tales to Astonish, Iron Man in Tales of Suspense and Thor anchoring Journey Into Mystery those books all jumped to just over 200,000 average copies per issue. Thor would be one of Marvel's top titles 3 titles by 1966, only beaten out by FF and ASM - were those two books selling just above 200,000 copies in 1964? We'll never know for sure, but if they were - that's only good for #35 on the charts!

By the time they DID show up with publication numbers, it was 1966 and ASM was at 340,00, FF at 329,000 and Thor at 296,000 - #16, 19, and 23 on the chart. They were NOT the most popular sellers - Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane out printed the ASM by 200,000 copies a month! Superman by more than 400,000 and Batman (thanks to the TV show) by over 500,000!

Spidey didn't crack the top ten until 1969, 6 years after it first began - and even then it was #7, still out printed by Superman (and Archie at #1) by 140,000.

 These characters were NOT runaway hits out of the box - the numbers might have been exciting for MARVEL, who only a few years earlier was on the brink of going out of business - but it took them a few years to really truly catch on - they had a smaller core following at first and that continued to grow as people started to accept the idea of a 'teenage superhero full of self doubt who doesn't always get the girl'.

Maybe Marvel, rather than recreate the same stories with the same heroes again - is actually trying to create something new and different again.