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DC Comics in Wal-Mart!

Started by matewan1990,

73 posts in this topic

UnrulyAppendage

UnrulyAppendage

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Posted
I thought Wal-Marts were the bane of all existence and woe befalls the nearby community once the sprawling Giant sets up shop there?

 

As a consumer, I appreciate Wal-Marts ability to dictate terms and prices to the manufacturer. It reduces prices and it also makes other stores compete in the price war as well.

 

If I were looking for a job, I don't think I would work at Wal-Mart. If I had a mom and pop store, I would look to specialise in ways Wallyworld could not. The key is not competing against Wal-Mart, but doing something they can't.

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Hobgoblin

Hobgoblin

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I thought Wal-Marts were the bane of all existence and woe befalls the nearby community once the sprawling Giant sets up shop there?

 

Well, in the southern plains, Walmart is often the only store in town. In Oklahoma, a town of 1000 people can have a Walmart. If you don't have one, the town becomes non-existant.

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the blob

the blob

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"What better exposure can comics get than in Wal-Marts, where nearly everyone shops?"

 

Speak for yourself. The only time I've ever been inside a Walmart was when I was down in South Carolina for a golf junket and went there to buy some cheap golf balls at 10 p.m.

 

I'm perfectly happy that no Walmart exists on the sacred soil of New York City.

 

As for comics, is Walmart going to make DC tone down some of the sex and violence in the comics?

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the blob

the blob

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"Regretfully, the majority of mainstream comic books are not "worth it", even if it was priced at a quarter or a buck (which the stores won't carry anyway because of low profit margins)."

 

What a load of hooey. DC is putting out some good stuff right now. Darkhorse has some good titles. Marvel... well, some of it is ok.

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the blob

the blob

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"Manga got into that space and the kids devoured it and started to look for them at their local booksellers, even though they have a much higher price point than your average american comic book."

 

Are there any sales figures to back up the notion that Manga sells so great to American (or even Canadian) boys under 13 years old? Kids watch Manga cartoons, in understand, but are they really buying lots of manga comics? And I've read that girls buy up the manga. But boys?

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Kevin Boyd

Kevin Boyd

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"Regretfully, the majority of mainstream comic books are not "worth it", even if it was priced at a quarter or a buck (which the stores won't carry anyway because of low profit margins)."

 

What a load of hooey. DC is putting out some good stuff right now. Darkhorse has some good titles. Marvel... well, some of it is ok.

 

It's easy to make that sentence sound like hooey when taken out of context. Obviously I buy and support a lot of titles that I do think are "worth it". The sentence was prefaced with the issue of whether or not parents consider comic book "pamphlets" to be "worth it", and I don't think that they do, even at a low price.

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Kevin Boyd

Kevin Boyd

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"Manga got into that space and the kids devoured it and started to look for them at their local booksellers, even though they have a much higher price point than your average american comic book."

 

Are there any sales figures to back up the notion that Manga sells so great to American (or even Canadian) boys under 13 years old? Kids watch Manga cartoons, in understand, but are they really buying lots of manga comics? And I've read that girls buy up the manga. But boys?

 

Since the majority of manga trades are sold outside of comic shops I have no idea how to get that information at this time.

 

And since kids aren't buying comics, if they are buying any manga (or more importantly, having it bought for them) then it's more than comics, whether we are talking about boys or girls.

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the blob

the blob

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"with sales growing to a whopping $125 million"

 

and what were comic book and comic tpb sales in that same period? have comic sales gone down in the last 3 years? Everything I read says they're up, somewhat.

 

I'm making the girls vs. boys comparison because not that many girls were buying comics 10-20 years ago anyway. A new market has been created, not necessarily taking away from a pre-existing market. ("That's the audience that everyone said would never read comics")

 

Moreover, who says this is comic out of comic sales? Maybe fewer sci fi/fantasy paperbacks are getting sold to that age group?

 

Moreover, it can hardly be said the comics are just men in tights. The shop I go to, at least 1/3 of the titles on the stand are not superhero books.

 

Given your first article about wacky transgender oddities in manga, I can hardly see the typical american parent reaching into their pocket and think THAT'S good stuff for their kids. did parents think comics were good reading in the 60s - 80s? I don't think so. my father thought it was downright sad that i read comics, although it wasn't banned due to the collectability angle that he thought had upside.

 

OTOH, I suspect that kids nowadays probably don't have much excitement about the medium. I remember reading comics and thinking how cool John Byrne and Perez's lines were, looking at them as art. I'd try to emulate them and what not. With the slick computer generated animation nowadays, do kids even view these as products of cratsmenship and all that?

 

It doesn't help that some of the comics with the coolest covers have some of the most boring interior art! I'm talking to you DC!!

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joe_collector

joe_collector

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and what were comic book and comic tpb sales in that same period? have comic sales gone down in the last 3 years? Everything I read says they're up, somewhat.

 

Unit comic book sales are down, but due to higher prices, premium variants and other schlock, dollar sales are up.

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Comic Rush-migration

Comic Rush-migration

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Do you think a 9.6 or better comic book with a non-direct edition UPC label/bar code from like Wal-Mart, Barnes & Noble or Borders Books should have a higher value because it's out in front of the general public and handled by lots of grubby paws? Direct Edition bar codes are taken care of better. I was just curious.

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matewan1990

matewan1990

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"What better exposure can comics get than in Wal-Marts, where nearly everyone shops?"

 

Speak for yourself. The only time I've ever been inside a Walmart was when I was down in South Carolina for a golf junket and went there to buy some cheap golf balls at 10 p.m.

 

I'm perfectly happy that no Walmart exists on the sacred soil of New York City.

 

As for comics, is Walmart going to make DC tone down some of the sex and violence in the comics?

 

See, you prove my point. Nearly everyone shops at Wal-Mart, at least at one point or another.

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matewan1990

matewan1990

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"with sales growing to a whopping $125 million"

and what were comic book and comic tpb sales in that same period? have comic sales gone down in the last 3 years? Everything I read says they're up, somewhat

Moreover, it can hardly be said the comics are just men in tights. The shop I go to, at least 1/3 of the titles on the stand are not superhero books.

 

Comic sales are up, but the readership is growing older and older. I was talking with an Eisner-winning comic artist and writer recently and he said that when he goes into a comic shop mostly everyone in there is 40-years-old and male. He said that's a bad trend, because there aren't that many new readers coming into comics and those that have been here are getting older and older. There's an old song by George Jones that's called "Who's Going to Fill Their Shoes" and it's about the next generation of country music singers. In the last few years, the comics-reading community has gotten older and older. I've tried in vain to promote comics through my weekly newspaper columns, through promoting Free Comics Day for months before it happens each year and by buying comics for the kids in my family. My nephews know each birthday and Christmas they're getting the best comics on the stands. But, that's not enough. I first read comics because I saw the four-color heroes on the stands in the mid-1970s and thought "Hey, that Super-Team Family (No. 9) looks pretty cool. A guy all in flames flying up out of a volcano, four guys fighting for their lives... wow, this is cool." When I looked inside, I got one of the best Challengers of the Unknown stories and a great Doom Patrol reprint that made me a DP fan for life. Then, my dad took me to the local grocery store and I bought Ghost Rider 27 and Avengers 167, the first part of the Korvac saga. From that point on, I've been a comics readers and collector. But, nowadays, there are no outlets for kids to buy comics like we had when I was growing up. The nearest comic store is 100 miles away and, up until now, places where kids go with their parents — like Wal-Mart — have not carried comics. With Wal-Mart carrying even one comic, it exposes a whole new group to the wonders of our favorite entertainment and helps keep comic business up, which, in turn, helps to keep companies alive.

Do I think sex and violence needs to be toned down in comics. Yes. No doubt about it. There are plenty of comics out that I won't read myself because of the cursing, the violence and the sex and I surely wouldn't give them to kids.

Why would a parent ever want to give his or her kid a copy of All-Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder No. 2? There are 26 uses of profanity — in a BATMAN comic book.

And regardless of what the insufficiently_thoughtful_persons on these threads will say, yes, comics are for kids. Sure, there are adult comics lines like Vertigo and Marvel's Max, but those are low-selling comics for one group. Other comics, like Batman and Superman and Spider-Man... those are for kids. You never saw Jeff Smith's Bone curse at all. Only one curse word made it into the 1400 pages of that comic, because Smith knew the audience to which he was writing. He knew that he could make big bucks from Bone — just from the child readers his kid-friendly comic would get. Now, Scholastic, one of the leaders in children's book publishing, is selling Bone trade paperbacks and they're doing well. Wal-Mart had them and sold out in my area.

But, you have DC and Marvel still trying to sell to an aging readership and giving adult themes that make their characters unrecognizable from what kids see in the cartoons. You don't hear the cartoon characters using profanity.

I'll end this by echoing the thoughts of the same artist-writer I spoke of above: "It's sad when a company can't sell Scooby Doo comics to kids." He was commenting on how comic companies don't know how to market to kids. The artist-writer said that getting comics back into stores like Wal-Mart would be a step in the right direction. I think it's great that I could find Adventures of Superman and Scooby Doo in Wal-Mart and I think that DC has made a start to getting its comic back into the hands of the readers who matter most — the kids.

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