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  1. #1021
    Extraordinary Member Gaastra's Avatar
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    DC direct has been killed also and the dc universe streaming service has lost most of it's staff!

    Not a good day for dc comics.

  2. #1022
    Uncanny Member Digifiend's Avatar
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    Not a good day for the American comic book industry, PERIOD.

    https://twitter.com/gerryconway/stat...26593997873152

    Quote Originally Posted by Gerry Conway
    What happened at ⁦@DCComics yesterday was probably inevitable once ⁦@WarnerMedia became a subsidiary of a tech company uninterested in creating new creative content, and planning only to strip mine existing IP for streaming. It should have been clear when the incoming AT&T management told the management of the highly successful and profitable @HBO that they needed to upend their corporate culture in order to feed the AT&T cable pipeline with continuous streaming content a la Netflix. It should have been clear when AT&T replaced the successful management team at @HBO that AT&T didn’t see value in @HBO’s content— only value in @HBO’s *brand*.

    The content currently produced at @DCComicsor @dcuniverse is of no interest to the tech bros of AT&T— only the brand. Publishing comics is a low profit margin business— the value lies in the IP, and only the IP. Expect AT&T to do the absolute minimum necessary to keep the @DCComics brand alive for its IP value. Some of the decisions AT&T will make are probably long overdue for a business model that’s been marginal for decades; this will be brutal and bloody.

    This time next year, I predict @Marvel will own about 90% of the new monthly comic market— in which case, retail comic shops are done. @DCComics will probably publish reprints and a handful/dozen of new digital-only monthly series intended for graphic novel release. When the comic book retail market collapses, @Marvel too will have to turn to a digital monthly/print graphic novel format for a reduced number of titles. It’s simple economics. The business has relied too long on a fragile distribution model. COVID-19 and AT&T have broken it.

    In the long run, despite the tremendous personal loss of the people affected by this— and my heart breaks for them, it really does; these are good, worthy people who deserve better— this may be for the best, creatively. Storytelling in superhero comics has been in a creative, market-driven straitjacket for decades. Pandering to the tastes of a diminishing comic shop readership, relying on marketing gimmicks like variants, reboots and bi-annual “events” to temporarily boost sales—

    It’s all had a cost, creatively. A long time ago, in my naïf youth, I once argued with Marvel’s head of production at the time, Gentleman John Verpoorten, that some production decision he’d made would have a negative effect on the creative value of the book I was working on. At the time Marvel was publishing 40 titles or more a month. John gestured at the wall of covers behind him in his office. “Hell,” he said. “If you want to talk about creative value, from a creative point of view we can justify maybe six of these.”

    It was true then, and it’s true now. Maybe a diminished superhero comic book market would be a more creative one.

    Guess we’ll see in 2021. Till then...

    F**king 2020.
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  3. #1023
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    Here is my thing....

    The business has relied too long on a fragile distribution model.
    At the time Marvel was publishing 40 titles or more a month. John gestured at the wall of covers behind him in his office. “Hell,” he said. “If you want to talk about creative value, from a creative point of view we can justify maybe six of these.”
    WHOSE FAULT IS THAT?

    No one ask for 27 Batman books a month.
    Nor 50 covers for a Fantastic Four first issue.
    Nor 21 chapter X-Men event.

    When does SELF CONTROL come into play? For Marvel & DC & store owners & FANS.

    Storytelling in superhero comics has been in a creative, market-driven straitjacket for decades. Pandering to the tastes of a diminishing comic shop readership, relying on marketing gimmicks like variants, reboots and bi-annual “events” to temporarily boost sales—
    Marvel & DC were only doing what they were allowed to do.

    They can't help fans and store owners who hate kids book like Moon Girl or Squirrel Girl.
    They can't help it if fans are going to reject the majority of attempts to expand readership like we saw with the attacks on Wal-Mart's collected editions. Not to mention the push back to expand Black Panther, Aquaman & Dr Strange-after they had movies.

    Also whose fault is it 95% of the stuff in stores (Funko, figures and so on) can be found CHEAPER at Wal-Mart?

  4. #1024
    Astonishing Member Drops Of Venus's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ascended View Post
    This has nothing to do with DC or it's performance. This is just the economic collapse and AT&T trying to recover from investments like HBO Max that didn't do as well as expected. Everyone is in rough financial situations but AT&T happen to have a massive amount of debt, and they're trying to streamline their production, cut costs, and get ahead of that so their expenses don't sink them.

    Blaming DC for this is looking at it backwards, it has nothing to do with them leaving Diamond or anything else they've done wrong or right. DC is just getting caught up in the storm. Busiek actually wrote a thing like this on social media and the guy is totally right. This isn't on DC. Hell it's not even really on AT&T or WB; it's just a crap situation. I mean, AT&T sunk a ton of cash buying Warners, and it's not their fault the pandemic hit before they could start profiting from the purchase, but the bills are still coming due.

    Now here's why it matters to Marvel. If DC cuts their direct market offerings down, then it'll be up to other publishers to make up the difference or the LCS will fail. I want to say that, somewhere in the swirl of articles and news I saw last night, that DC is looking to cut it's floppies by 40%. I might be wrong on that, but we do know DC is going to offer fewer floppies. So if Marvel, Image, and the other publishers can't find a way to entice readers to buy more of their books (assuming DC doesn't funnel some OGN's and reprints into the hobby shop), the LCS will have lost a big chunk of their revenue stream and most shops won't be able to survive that, especially after the quarantine and all the money they've lost this year.
    Sorry, I wasn't trying to imply it was DC's fault (although leaving Diamond during a pandemic probably didn't help, if we are to believe BC's rumor that their sales took a hit due to the sudden change of distributors). Just pointing out the irony of where they stood a few months ago, and how everything came crashing down now. I understand the circumstances that led to this are way beyond just the comics scope, and it involved a lot of people in higher places.

    And yeah, whatever happens to DC now definitely will have a domino effect across the entire industry, which is why I said I'm curious to see how things will be looking like a year from now.

  5. #1025
    Ultimate Member Ascended's Avatar
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    No worries. It's been a crap year for everyone, definitely, but DC seems like they're just taking hit after hit. They lose Didio, okay cool Jim Lee takes over. His seat isn't even warm when BAM pandemic and quarantine and shut downs kick the crap out of all of us. Then drama with Diamond (who is not the victim and deserved to be dumped) and the struggle of getting new distribution working. Then just as things start to flow and we get a tiny glimpse of what Jim Lee's DCU will look like, this hits and everything is getting thrown into chaos again.

    I don't know if DC's sales crashed because of changing distributors. I know there were a lot of concerns among retailers, including what their costs would be like without the same kind of Diamond discounts, but all the concerns I heard of were apparently taken into account and aside from some fairly minor kinks in the new system (to be expected) things went off relatively well with the new guys. I'd suspect DC's sales are due to the chaos behind the scenes more than anything; we were on the verge of 5G when Didio left and have been treading water ever since, waiting for Lee's plans to reach the shelf. Many of DC's books have just been empty filler, and who wants to risk going out in public just so you can grab a meaningless issue where nothing important will happen, written by a fill-in with no legit name recognition? The whole company seems to be on fire, I doubt the new distributors are the problem.
    "We all know the truth: more connects us than separates us. But in times of crisis the wise build bridges, while the foolish build barriers. We must find a way to look after one another, as if we were one single tribe."

    ~ Black Panther.

  6. #1026
    Uncanny Member Digifiend's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Triniking1234 View Post
    Honestly, without the merger I feel Warner Media would've made enough from Crunchyroll and HBO Max to keep the weaker sections afloat.
    There's been a development - they're getting rid of Crunchyroll. It's up for sale!
    https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/ne...l-sale-1307157
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  7. #1027
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    DC was also hurt by years of editorial dereliction. Had they been more competent over the last decade, they might have been able to argue against the cuts on the basis of bring low-cost while creating value.

    Instead, the **** out comics like "Metal".

    No one ask for 27 Batman books a month.
    Nor 50 covers for a Fantastic Four first issue.
    Nor 21 chapter X-Men event.
    But, that stuff sells. You and I don't care about cover variants. But, someone does. Someone cares enough to cough up money.


    Conway is right to say that variants and multiple titles with the same character are short-term fixes. But, consecutive short- term fixes have worked well enough for years.

    He is probably right about where the industry is going. And, some of us will be buying fewer comics.
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  8. #1028
    Ultimate Member Holt's Avatar
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    Digital will be an increasing part of DC's new push.

    Where do you see DC in two years?

    You’ll definitely see more international content. You’re going to see more digital content. When you talk about growing our business, both physical and digital, to me the opportunities are global. That’s what we’ll be focusing on. Sometimes that takes the form of content that we take here and translate and sell in other marketplaces, but we want to partner with creatives in various territories and unlock stories that feel authentic to their marketplaces with characters that they can embrace as their own, and look for opportunities to take those characters and seed them throughout all our mythology.

    With digital, that’s more of a windowing issue, meaning we’ll go out there with digital content and the stuff that performs well in digital also performs well in print. A good example of that is Injustice, the digital comics that tied into the video game. When that came out, it was the best-selling digital comic of the year, it outsold Batman. And brought a lot of adjacent fans into our business. And when we took that content and reprinted it in physical form, we sold hundreds of thousands of units. It was as big of a hit in physical as in in digital.

    We’re using that as a model as we go out and do more digital content. We’ll take the most successful books and repackage it as physical books .I think there is definitely business to be had in physical periodicals. But that said, I think there’s greater upside in digital because we can go to a more global audiences and the barrier to entry, especially in this pandemic, is lower. It’s a lot easier to get digital content into the hands of consumers that want to read stories. We want to lean into that and think thoughtfully what digital content should be, what it should look like, the format.
    https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/he...comics-1307413

  9. #1029
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    Quote Originally Posted by CentralPower View Post
    DC was also hurt by years of editorial dereliction. Had they been more competent over the last decade, they might have been able to argue against the cuts on the basis of bring low-cost while creating value.

    Instead, the **** out comics like "Metal".

    But, that stuff sells. You and I don't care about cover variants. But, someone does. Someone cares enough to cough up money.

    Conway is right to say that variants and multiple titles with the same character are short-term fixes. But, consecutive short- term fixes have worked well enough for years.

    He is probably right about where the industry is going. And, some of us will be buying fewer comics.

    What happened at DC was due to AT &T buying too much stuff and needing to pay for it.

    It might not have helped if the staff that was more competent. Unless mean less Batman books as floppies and more are OGNS. Because some of those should have been OGNs.


    And yes I know about cover variants. One of the stores I visit actually talked about it.

    For Marvel & DC (Power Rangers & Red Sonja) it did not matter WHAT book it was-if there was a first issue with variants-a PACK of folks came in and bought them all. NO matter the price.
    Sometimes they would do the same with some of the books.

    Here is the FUNNY part-that same store did all books before a certain date priced below $7.99 (because Spawn 300 just came out) was a dollar.

    I spent a good few hours in that store during that week long sale. That store NEVER got crowd. Aside from a few folks buying movie variants from DC Deceased-NOBODY touched the books ESPECIALLY X-Men.
    And it wasn't like you weren't going to get complete or 95% arcs on the Dc & Marvel books (Legion's first issue just came out).
    I think I spent $30. Yes variant covers and to fill in gaps.

    But here was a jumping on point for folks and no one came in.

    My other store did 25 cent sales-Folks left with boxes. I know it's a 75 cent difference but STILL-the other store did everything. The 25 cent was certain stock.

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