MAYO REPORT: Analyzing the Marvel NOW! Relaunches

[Oeil Ecarlate]

Before AvX, I was buying almost every Marvel books.

After AvX, I found myself buying only 3 ... and I'm down to 2 since Superior went back to Amazing.

To this day, I still don't know who won AvX but I can tell you who (in my case) lost it and it's Marvel.

I even did something I had never done before, I bought some DC books. That may not be a big deal for most of you but apart from one or two Spawn comics I bought when I was fifteen (it was new then), I never "had an affair" with any other comics publisher. I was a "Marvel guy".

I went on A..z.. (I'm unsure if I can use the name of the compagny here), saw Batman "the Court of Owls" TBP in a "special edition" with a mask and gave DC my money. I certainly will do the same with "Death of the Family".

If Marvel wants to sell me "Original Sins" TPB, I strongly encourage them to add the "Watcher's Eye" to the comics (I most likely won't buy it on a monthly basis).

Today, I buy more DC/Image/Boom/Top Cow ... 's comics than I do Marvel's. I feel sad about it though.

[CenturianSpy]

Prices are also an issue. The jump for 3 dollars to 4 dollars means that, if a customer was on a budget, he is now purchasing vastly fewer titles. For example, say someone has a budget of 50 dollars a month. At 3 dollars a comic, he was purchasing 16.6 comics. With the jump to 4 dollars, he is now purchasing 12.5. That is nearly 4 fewer issues a month.

I think it's the #1 issue. I've cut my titles by one quarter.

[id10tSavant]

Generally I agree that Marvel's insistence of continually relaunching books and the non-stop parade of #1s has diminished the specialness of a proper launch. I don't think it's fair to surmise that the Marvel NOW initiative is completely without merits. Particularly the ".1" issues do easily indicate good jumping on points for new readers. I can say from experience that it's daunting to try to jump into a series when the newest issue is beyond the 50 mark. That's a lot of catching up to do, and trying to find the best place to begin (aside from the very beginning) is tough - ultimately leading many to skip on the series all together.

That said, all these different volumes add to the confusion. It wouldn't be so bad if the volume # was included as well, as that would more specifically mark the issue's identity (instead of two issue #50s we would have #50 and volume 2 #50). I know that they are already separated into volumes (at least in some cases), but none of the books are marked as such.

Marvel needs to take some of the positive things that have come from the Marvel NOW initiative, and remove the negative. Slow down on the relaunches and the #1s parade.

Oh, and not so many damn $3.99 books. I like Moon Knight, Black Widow, Electra, etc.... But premium price for a non a-lister is a bit much.

[RobinFan4880]

I think it's the #1 issue. I've cut my titles by one quarter.

Same here, really. Thankfully Green Lantern books have stayed at 3 bucks a pop. I dread the day all of them get bumped to 4 dollars as I will have to cut other books I like to keep up with my favorite franchise.

To be fair, we have the one set of figures that do matter. Digital sales are irrelevant, as much as champions of that medium would have you think otherwise.

Price increases and the age old floppy v. trade argument are just business as usual bits of overhead.

We have one set of figures that matter for public perception, not the companies.

I think fans of digital greatly overestimate it's impact. Take a look at the 'pull list' number for Comicology... the top pulled titles are in the 3-4000 range... that's on 5%-10% of most Marvel and DC titles print sales. I find that most people that talk about digital purchase (away from CBR) are buying old stuff when it's .99 and things like that. They might get a new comic or two, but I don't think it's nearly as common as people think.

I do not use the pull list feature on ComiXology. I buy my issues through the app itself and avoid the main site in general. My purchases are thus not counted as apart of that total. I imagine I am not in the minority when it comes to this (although that may change now that many are being forced over onto the site to make purchases).*

*I believe that is the way the pull system works. If not then, I suppose digital is a tiny minority compared to print.

[Objectively Biased]

My problem with the faux #1/.NOW issues is how many of those were actually good jumping on points?

[strathcona]

I can say from experience that it's daunting to try to jump into a series when the newest issue is beyond the 50 mark. That's a lot of catching up to do, and trying to find the best place to begin (aside from the very beginning) is tough - ultimately leading many to skip on the series all together.

There is literally no difference except in your own head to jumping in on a #1 or a #362 (unless of course it's a brand new series, but that's not the point). In the past we had no option but to jump on at whatever number was on the stands that month, and guess what, we figured things out just fine... and that's without the benefit of recap pages or the internet. I really don't understand why people assume a #1 will be more accessible, it just boggles my mind.

Plus, the fact that there was so much back story to get caught up on was a HUGE part of the draw for me when I was first getting into comics. I wanted, NEEDED to know more. And that drove me to buy more back issues. Though I guess Marvel doesn't care about that, since they make no money off back issue sales.

[JasonTodd428]

I don't understand that either. Almost all the comics I started out reading back in the day were already pretty far along and I never found the large number on the front of the books I was reading back then to be off-putting. Comic readers nowadays have it so much easier. Now if you hop onto a series midstory all you need to do is look up the relevant info. online. When some of us started reading we didn't have that option. There's really no reason to let a large number on the cover stop someone from giving an interesting looking title a try.

Honestly all these "shiny new number 1s" are getting out of control at Marvel and they are, in the main, not even very good jumping on points for a new reader. I've tried a few and to be honest a part of me feels like I still need to backtrack to find out what's happened in the MU in the years since I had stopped reading.

[Groo Odyssey]

Same here, I went from buying nearly every title marvel published in the 90,to buying none now.

Same for me as well. I actually quit the industry altogether and I was the biggest comic book/Marvel fan ever in the late 90s. I recently got back into comics by chance when I picked up some amazing comics from Image and was intrigued and went out and tried to look for more of the same. I now have 30+ comics on my pull list and growing every month, none of them are from Marvel or DC. I didn't even pick up Amazing Spiderman 1 this week. May not be a big deal for some but for me this is absurd considering how big a fan of Marvel and Spiderman fan I was.

[hondobrode]

Marvel is practically dead to me now, though I've always followed the Ultimate line.

They've screwed fans and the industry too long with double shipping, bloated franchises, constant relaunches...

Vote with your dollars. I have, and Marvel's the lesser for it and lots of indies are happy to take that money as I'm happier with their product and attitude.

[Hariel0079]

The sales are trending downwards in most cases with or without relaunches.

A diminishing fanbase for superhero comics specifically, increased prices, double-shipping, decreased print quality, events and crossovers and a shift to more creator-centric publishing are probably doing much more damage than the relaunches themselves.

All of this and convulted stories.

[Kenozoic]

I have to say as an older reader that the new #1's make it a LOT easier to just dump a title, and not try out the relaunch.

A solution (not necessarily my preference): magazine-style numbering (for example, this month's "Amazing X-Men" would be Volume 1 Issue 6). This way, whether a title is 12 monthly issues, or double-shipped in the summer (or whenever), there would always be a new #1 issue each calendar (or publishing*) year. It would be both a great jumping-on point for new readers, and a mark of longevity for the long-time readers.

* The company could choose a kick-off month for the new system's 'publishing year', perhaps at the beginning of summer: "Start off your summer vacation with the new #1 issue of _________!"

[Emerald_616]

The solution proposed by the author of the article is probably the most apt. Quality storytelling/content=sustained sales. Hawkeye is a good example of this, and while it wasn't a top tier staple, it's sales actually went up! But apparently Marvel can't be bothered to do real quality control across the entire line. Too many fanboy egos in the creator and editorial kitchens.

[Groo Odyssey]

The sales are trending downwards in most cases with or without relaunches.

A diminishing fanbase for superhero comics specifically, increased prices, double-shipping, decreased print quality, events and crossovers and a shift to more creator-centric publishing are probably doing much more damage than the relaunches themselves.

All of this and convulted stories.

Don't forget all those variant covers. I think a lot fans are disgusted with how publishers (mainly the big 2) are more concerned about lining their pocketbooks rather than help sustain the industry. I was at a FanExpo last month and there was a Q&A with Mark Bagley. He talked about how back in the 90s when he was doing Venom, that it sold over a million copies. The creators were making a ton of money back then because every book sold very well and he's sadden that it's not happening anymore now.

Now correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't the advent of variant covers the reason it almost killed the industry back in the 90s and Marvel had to file for bankruptcy? I had quit reading comics by then but was stunned to learn that Marvel had to file for bankruptcy. From what I was told they were putting out so many variant/gimmick/hologram etc covers and the fans couldn't keep up/didn't have the money to buy everything. So instead of picking up every "rare" variant or were disgusted with how Marvel was running their business everyone just decided not to buy anything at all and left the industry. Thus creating the speculation crash.

So I just don't understand now why it's back to that again where we're seeing so many variants for every title. IMO it's actually worse now with all the variants than it was back in the 90s. At least some of the variants back in the 90s were actually rare. Now a lot of the titles have variants for every single issue. This is a very slippery slope that we're dealing with here.

[RobinFan4880]

Don't forget all those variant covers. I think a lot fans are disgusted with how publishers (mainly the big 2) are more concerned about lining their pocketbooks rather than help sustain the industry. I was at a FanExpo last month and there was a Q&A with Mark Bagley. He talked about how back in the 90s when he was doing Venom, that it sold over a million copies. The creators were making a ton of money back then because every book sold very well and he's sadden that it's not happening anymore now.

Now correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't the advent of variant covers the reason it almost killed the industry back in the 90s and Marvel had to file for bankruptcy? I had quit reading comics by then but was stunned to learn that Marvel had to file for bankruptcy. From what I was told they were putting out so many variant/gimmick/hologram etc covers and the fans couldn't keep up/didn't have the money to buy everything. So instead of picking up every "rare" variant or were disgusted with how Marvel was running their business everyone just decided not to buy anything at all and left the industry. Thus creating the speculation crash.

So I just don't understand now why it's back to that again where we're seeing so many variants for every title. IMO it's actually worse now with all the variants than it was back in the 90s. At least some of the variants back in the 90s were actually rare. Now a lot of the titles have variants for every single issue. This is a very slippery slope that we're dealing with here.

A lot of the variant covers today are actually targeted towards comic shops, as shop owners take those rare variants and sell them on eBay. Without variants, many smaller shops would struggle to survive as they would lose out on one of their most important and consistent revenue streams.

The 90's were defined by people who were not comic book readers getting into comic book collecting because they were watching their parents/grandparents find old copies of ancient comics and selling them off for wads of cash. People thought comics were a good investment for the future. However, the sudden arrival of so many new customers lead publishers to cater almost exclusively to that market. They made gigantic print runs, killed off major characters, and created a whole host of wildly different variant covers with vastly overpriced price tags. Once people put two-and-two together (in that, what made their parents' comics so valuable was rarity and that nothing they were buying were ever going to be rare, much less valuable) they stopped buying comics. As with all bubbles, when it burst it obliterated whole companies, up to and including, Marvel. The Variant covers were not the cause of the bubble bursting, it was merely a symptom of idiotic dunderheads flooding into the market.

[Groo Odyssey]

A lot of the variant covers today are actually targeted towards comic shops, as shop owners take those rare variants and sell them on eBay. Without variants, many smaller shops would struggle to survive as they would lose out on one of their most important and consistent revenue streams.

The 90's were defined by people who were not comic book readers getting into comic book collecting because they were watching their parents/grandparents find old copies of ancient comics and selling them off for wads of cash. People thought comics were a good investment for the future. However, the sudden arrival of so many new customers lead publishers to cater almost exclusively to that market. They made gigantic print runs, killed off major characters, and created a whole host of wildly different variant covers with vastly overpriced price tags. Once people put two-and-two together (in that, what made their parents' comics so valuable was rarity and that nothing they were buying were ever going to be rare, much less valuable) they stopped buying comics. As with all bubbles, when it burst it obliterated whole companies, up to and including, Marvel. The Variant covers were not the cause of the bubble bursting, it was merely a symptom of idiotic dunderheads flooding into the market.

Some good points, some I haven't considered. Although I'm highly skeptical that marvel putting out all these incentive variants have the sole purpose in mind to "help" the local shops. More likely they're doing it to inflate their sales numbers by having retailers order a whole lot more comics than they can sell to get these incentive variants. A lot of these unsold comics are going to the bargain bin one day.

Having new people flood into your market is a good thing. You can't be blaming them for the decline of the industry and the bubble bursting. Marvel has everything to blame for how they ran their business in the 90s. You tell me no one in their meeting rooms had the foresight to step up and say, "maybe we should take a closer look at our business model and make some changes"as they saw their numbers kept declining until they were driven to bankruptcy.

Take a look at Walking Dead. It's a monster sales juggernaut and brought in so many new fans. I walk into my Chapters bookstore (Barnes and Noble in the states?) and there are entire sections of nothing but walking dead trades and omnibuses. They sell like crazy and I'm sure most of the people were never comic book readers in the past. They saw the show and found out about these comics. Some of these people will be going to a comic book shop for the very first time and will pick up other titles.

You don't see Image have these constant relaunches of their walking dead title by slapping another #1 on the same book and have 6 walking dead titles, each selling biweekly. They are very careful with their new fan base and focus rather on making good comics and telling great stories. There's nothing stopping them from slapping a $4.99 price tag on the book. They could and people will still buy them but they don't, they're still $2.99.