“Fleeing through the labyrinths with the hordes of the living dead fast upon them;
Once again they found themselves trapped in front of the abyss.”
Don't let anyone else hold the candle that lights the way to your future because only you can sustain the flame.
Number of People on my ignore list: 0
#conceptualthinking ^_^
#ByeMarvEN
Into the breach.
https://www.instagram.com/jartist27/
Josh Cassara:
https://twitter.com/joshuacassara/st...74565912428544
"Who are these two characters and what are they doing/saying?"
I feel like one of them could be Firestar.
"Danielle... I intend to do something rash and violent." - Betsy Braddock
Krakoa, Arakko, and Otherworld forever!
Don't know who they are, but the one on the right is holding a handheld that displays a small holographic figure.
Don't let anyone else hold the candle that lights the way to your future because only you can sustain the flame.
Number of People on my ignore list: 0
#conceptualthinking ^_^
#ByeMarvEN
Into the breach.
https://www.instagram.com/jartist27/
I agree the current readership is probably fine with this. I disagree that is a particularly good thing for Marvel, however.
The reason why the current readership wants this is because Marvel already had their Bud Light moment 10 or 15 years ago and this is what's left of what was once a much bigger fan base. Exactly the same as the Bud Light fiasco, Marvel & DC just didn't like the customers they had who loved the stories they'd been telling for decades. No, Marvel wanted different customers who wanted to read stories like Mrs. and Mr. Frost. And apparently they thought that was a good business model to stop catering to their current customers and cater to potential customers. But like Bud Light, Marvel (and Disney in general) seems to have miscalculated because they lost about half their readership over the last two decades, and the new fans who wanted more progressive content couldn't come close to replacing them. (Contrast with Nike, whose social stances cater to the customer base they already have and it made good business sense to really take on those culture war fights.)
Well, now Marvel has the readership it has and is painted into a corner that stories like these really won't expand the brand. And that seems to be a problem because all the insiders are saying the comic book industry is down even further and no one gets paid properly to make these things and all the other issues we hear all the time. So I see a big opportunity cost in telling stories that degrade and emasculate our traditional heroes. You can see it just in how they never turned the popularity of the MCU movies (back when they were actually really good) into comic book fans. And what is the reason for that? If you loved RDJ's Tony Stark, do you want to see him standing around holding Emma Frost (who you've probably never even heard of)'s purse?
From my perspective as someone who owns quite a bit of Disney stock that is in the toilet right now, I don't really care if they tell LGBT romances, pluck chickens or grow tangerines. I just want them to make a lot of money and restore their dividend. That means selling content, even if it is content I wouldn't go buy myself. I am coming at this from a business perspective...I think there are a lot of Iron Man and Spider Man and Punisher fans from the movies who would've been into stories about those characters if they weren't treated so poorly.
Just my 2 cents...
I'm not totally useless. I can always be used as a bad example...
Lmfao
Long time Marvel reader and I wouldn't be caught dead picking up a Tony Stark book who was at his best when he was head of SHIELD and as an antagonist.
I think you overestimate the comic medium in general and distribution model. Its actually pretty difficult to get hard copies. Hard copies are a bridge to digital but you're hardly going to buy a product you actually have never tried or thought of trying.
And as an Emma fan I don't want to see her holding Starks hand either. Generally because I was don't want to read an Iron Man book. It's also not in character this isn't amary Jane. She's more likely to hold his throat tune his hand
Whedons, Morrisons and Gillen X-men were the best selling books at marvel at their time
Marvel have done everything since the 00s to correlate with the movies hence Bendis reviving the Avengers franchise. Despite this there was a steady decline in sales across the board with each year
Last edited by ExodusCloak; 08-03-2023 at 10:02 AM.
Arguably the biggest loss in active comic reader and buyerships occured in the late 80's and early 90's when the american super hero comics, most prominently Marvel and DC, under the leadership and owners at the time changed their product from a mass market medium aimed primarily at an audience of young teens and older kids, sold in corner shops, super markets and newstands at a cheap price, to an audience of "young at heart" adult readers and/or collectors who were willing to pay increasingly higher prices way past the cost of production including for things like gimick and variant covers, which only specialized "comic book shops" were willing to order anymore.
Roughly speaking, after the baseball trading card bubble of the 80's had burst, super hero comics became the hot new collectors item, thanks to pristine versions of milestone comics like Action Comics #1 selling for hundred thousands of dollar at auctions at the time.
As if nobody had learned a lesson from the baseball cards situation, people flocked to super hero comics in the hope that special edition versions, variant covers, shocking storylines and first appearances of "hot new characters" like Bloodklaw, Ripklaw, Hyperklaw, Hyperblood, etc. who were promised to become super stars soon, would mean that those comics they bought at 3 times their previous cost would be worth thousands in just a few years.
This being a mainly an US american phenomena and would likely appear alien or odd to the majority of the european or japanese comic readership at the time and today. In part because the floppy system had less prevalence in their industry (europe publishers and artist being more focused on "graphic novel" style books, while japan had focused on magazine formats).
This shift in the US american industry caused a large majority of their original target audience to no longer being able access or pay for the comics anymore. This situation became even more problematic when the oversaturation from the collectors craze caused this bubble to burst aswell and around 2/3rds of the specialized comicbook shops had to close down while many publishers also went out of business.
Meanwhile in order to compensate for this sudden loss in profit, the publishers which managed to survive (Marvel had to file for bankruptcy but did manage to stay around), not only stuck with the inflated prices, but actualy increased them further essentialy banking on the smaller but dedicated reader- and collectorship being willing to roll with it thanks to their passion/stubborness.
So the american super hero comics remained too expensive for older kids and young teens, while the number of specialized stores where they could still be acquired had drastically shrunk, drastically shifting the landscape and sales/order numbers which the entire industry has still not recovered from.
As a result orders for super hero comics from shops (and by extension the numbers sold to a readership) across the US changed from being measured in the hundreds of thousands or nearly a million, down to barely one or two hundred thousands for big name characters and teams and far less for lesser properties.
However this did not actualy mean a decline in what an be called the "fanbase".
Many people have noticable remained fans of these super hero characters, their stories and most profitable their merchandise. Toys, action figures, T-shirts, bedcloths remained bought and in the rooms of children and teens.
It's just that since the decline of the super hero comicbook as accessible and affordable product for them, their connection to them then occured primarily via the new and old cartoon shows, merchandise and eventualy the big budget movies.
However this also means that their success is now stuck in the hands of a small, older, likely shrinking, dedicated group of buyers, who can't be easily replaced if the aren't appealed by the stories, art, characters or subject matter anymore.
This is all of course just a rough assessment of the situation and likely lacking in various important details.
Last edited by Grunty; 08-03-2023 at 11:24 AM.
Marvel Comics, with its digital yellowface EIC, all-white (and 99.9% male) X-Men office, history of chasing female and POC creatives away to DC, relegating any/all diverse hires to yearly rainbow annuals, and constant female character cheesecake variant covers that manage to hypersexualize even someone like Jean Grey with that Leggs Ave Marvel Girl drag, getting retconned into some “woke” Gen Z utopia… is truly the funniest bit of revisionist history I’ve read in ages.
Are you doing stealth PR for them, or something?