Why Marvel Sales are down - Per the VP of Sales

[Sighphi]

For Rocket Racoon to debut at 300K and 200K traditionally is mostly because of the movie.

RR sold that much cause the book was put in loot crates and things like that. Remember that those numbers are order numbers not sales to readers.

[ishikabe]

The 616 is gone.


And corporate Peter Parker isn't the real peter Parker anyways.


Let it burn

He's Peter Stark or Tony Parker. Take your pick.

[ishikabe]

One thing I saw on Twitter was that some people were misrepresenting Alonso's comment about artists a bit. He wasn't saying that without Wizard magazine there is no way for Marvel to find good artists. He's saying that Wizard was an outlet that helped call readers' attention to artists and let them know who the "hot" artists were in comics.

The internet doesn't really do that well. There are a lot of people posting their art, of course, but comics journalism online is heavily focused on storylines, which the writer and editor can talk about more authoritatively than the artists. Art is more likely to get a lot of coverage when there's a controversy about a sexy variant cover or something.

There's a guy out there named Gregbo Watson who can do anything, yet Marvel and DC have yet to grab him. Zenescope has been working with him for a while now.

I'm still amazed DC managed to snag Stjepan Sejic...

His style is pretty awesome. He's responded back to my questions numerous times. Seems like a nice guy.

[The Whovian]

"I don’t know if that’s a question for me. I think that’s a better question for retailers who are seeing all publishers. What we heard was that people didn’t want any more diversity. They didn’t want female characters out there. That’s what we heard, whether we believe that or not. I don’t know that that’s really true, but that’s what we saw in sales.

We saw the sales of any character that was diverse, any character that was new, our female characters, anything that was not a core Marvel character, people were turning their nose up against. That was difficult for us because we had a lot of fresh, new, exciting ideas that we were trying to get out and nothing new really worked.

It was the old things coming back in that time period, three books in particular, Spider-Man Renew Your Vows, that had Spider-Man and Mary Jane married, that worked. The Venom book worked and the Thanos book worked. You can take what you want out of who might be enjoying those three books, but it is definitely a specific type of comic book reader, comic book collector that really liked those three series."

No, sales are down because you guys are crapping on long time fans of the X-Men and the FF while trying to shove the Inhumans down our throats.

[LOSTie-chan]

Personally, I feel it would've been better to have titles like Moon Girl and Unstoppable Wasp in a separate imprint similar to Young Animal preferably with little crossover with the main Marvel Universe.

A hip indie imprint and a Mature M-rated imprint could do wonders for Marvel.

Wouldn't get so many people complaining about certain books being too kiddy or whatever. They'll see it's part of a certain imprint and automatically know whether or not its for them.

[TheStrongestOne]

RR sold that much cause the book was put in loot crates and things like that. Remember that those numbers are order numbers not sales to readers.

Axel Alonso reported 100K of the 300K was loot crate. So the traditional sales number is 200K, but hell even 100K is an amazing number for RR.

http://comicsalliance.com/one-third-...ption-service/

[Tiamatty]

A hip indie imprint and a Mature M-rated imprint could do wonders for Marvel.

Wouldn't get so many people complaining about certain books being too kiddy or whatever. They'll see it's part of a certain imprint and automatically know whether or not its for them.

They had the MAX imprint for mature comics, and they had the Marvel Adventures line for all-ages.



By the way, I keep seeing people saying that "bad stories" are driving readers away, and that Marvel needs to focus on "telling good stories." And I want to point out that this is one of the most idiotically clueless suggestions possible. It's meaningless drivel.

First: The people working at Marvel are already trying to tell good stories. They believe the stories they're telling are good. It's not like Bendis farts out an Invincible Iron Man script in 5 minutes and then goes, "Eh, whatever, good enough." When he sends the script to his editor, Bendis is confident he's written a good story. The same goes for every comic Marvel puts out. The people making these comics - the writers, the line artists, the inkers (when applicable), the colour artists, the letterers, and the editors - they are all trying to put out good comics.

Second: Readers don't agree on which comics are bad. You hate All-New X-Men? Well hey, guess what, plenty of people enjoy that book, too. In fact, it's been a well-made comic, telling interesting stories, and telling them well, with great work being done by the whole creative team. You don't enjoy it? That's fine! You don't have to enjoy it. But just because you don't like it, that doesn't mean it's bad. It just means, you know, that you don't like it. And that goes for basically every comic. With a very, very few exceptions, just about every book that gets blasted as being "bad" has at least as many people loving it as people hating it. Taste is subjective.

Even Nick Spencer's Captain America work, as controversial as it's been, has a lot of fans. It has people praising it from a quality perspective. Is it a story that should be getting told right now? Definitely something that can be debated. Is it a poorly-told story? Plenty of room for discussion there. But there are plenty of people who think Spencer, and his art teams and his editors, are crafting a well-made story. And there are people who love it and are deeply invested in it. Because, again, taste is subjective.

Third: "Make better comics" is just a remarkably stupid thing to say in general. If there was some kind of formula to making comics that are critically-praised and commercially successful, Marvel would sure as hell be using that formula. But it turns out, hey! Making a comic is really goddamn hard! Making a comic that's commercially successful is even tougher.

"Make better comics" is one of those nonsensical statements that can only come from people who have difficulty seeing beyond their own privilege. It's like the people who tell people with depression to "just cheer up." "Make better comics" is not a suggestion, it is a declaration of ignorance.

[Sunday]

it's not a diversity problem, and it's not a legacy problem. At least not primarily. We've had well received legacy characters in the past. It's a writing/editorial problem. There are very few books actually worth reading that Marvel has put out over the past few years, and the few good books they do have are eventually ruined by events. That all the old characters are being replaced by nobodies, as well as all the remaining characters being dicks is just icing on the cake. Marvel needs better writers/write better and cool it on the events

[classicgmer]

it's not a diversity problem, and it's not a legacy problem. At least not primarily. We've had well received legacy characters in the past. It's a writing/editorial problem. There are very few books actually worth reading that Marvel has put out over the past few years, and the few good books they do have are eventually ruined by events. That all the old characters are being replaced by nobodies, as well as all the remaining characters being dicks is just icing on the cake. Marvel needs better writers/write better and cool it on the events

I can kind of see your point about the constant infighting amongst heroes and too many events but the last time Marvel tried going back to the approach you seem to prefer we ended up with the "heroic age" which was not only boring as hell but the sales across the board seemed to suffer so i damn sure don't want a repeat of that.

[Lee Stone]

I can kind of see your point about the constant infighting amongst heroes and too many events but the last time Marvel tried going back to the approach you seem to prefer we ended up with the "heroic age" which was not only boring as hell but the sales across the board seemed to suffer so i damn sure don't want a repeat of that.

I think Resurrxion, especially X-Men Gold, is a step in the right direction.
Backpedal a bit to a more traditional approach, bring the fans back, and then work in the new stuff slowly and naturally.

[classicgmer]

I think Resurrxion, especially X-Men Gold, is a step in the right direction.
Backpedal a bit to a more traditional approach, bring the fans back, and then work in the new stuff slowly and naturally.

I'm not against books that have an approach of "heroes being heroes" but i personally find the stuff where there's interesting conflict between the heroes ( note the keyword here being interesting) to be the most interesting.

People on message boards can say they're tired o f heroes bickering amongst one another but the success of the early days of New Avengers, post Civil War I era, Dark Avengers and Hickman New Avengers/Illuminati says overall there's large demand for these types of stories.

[LordUltimus]

I'm not against books that have an approach of "heroes being heroes" but i personally find the stuff where there's interesting conflict between the heroes ( note the keyword here being interesting) to be the most interesting.

People on message boards can say they're tired o f heroes bickering amongst one another but the success of the early days of New Avengers, post Civil War I era, Dark Avengers and Hickman New Avengers/Illuminati says overall there's large demand for these types of stories.

Hickman New Avengers was successful?!

[crimsonspider89]

Yep. Hickman's Avengers books sold like wildfire.

[LordUltimus]

Huh. Shame on me for only paying attention to sales numbers recently, I guess.

[classicgmer]

Hickman New Avengers was successful?!

If you compare his sales on that book compared to what to what Bendis did at points in his run then i could see how some might see it as not successful but compared to the current crop of Avengers books? I'd say yeah it' was a definite success.


If the "meat and potatoes" approach direction drastically overhauls the Avengers line then i'm all for it becaue outside of Uncanny Avengers the line desperately needs it and even that books sales aren't as great as Marvel has typically seen from an Avengers book in the past 5-10 years.