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Post by adrini on Apr 22, 2015 17:57:16 GMT -5
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Post by ericthepilot on Apr 22, 2015 18:39:21 GMT -5
Interesting stuff. Of course I notice nearly half of Marvel's output in the top ten is Star Wars, which is getting a massive push in just about every facet of the media right now. I wonder if that coupled with DC more or less stuck treading water with meaningless time fillers while the audience awaits the next relaunch of the universe this summer has something to do with DC's sub par showing.
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Post by ericthepilot on Apr 29, 2015 15:53:05 GMT -5
An interesting companion to the piece Adrini linked to above, just stumbled onto this one from a retailer talking about his experience with the current Convergence placeholder event going on - seems people are specifically staying away from it altogether and awaiting the resumption of the universe that matters. Not sure upon the resumption of the New-ish 52 they'll be able to reclaim much of the market share from Marvel, but maybe it'll be a smidge closer to competitive than the absolute ass-handing it was shown to be above. www.bleedingcool.com/2015/04/23/convergence-a-comic-book-retailer-speaks/ |
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Post by adrini on Apr 29, 2015 18:26:23 GMT -5
It's one man, but so long as we're talking about comic shop owners.
Ours around the corner, great guy. But you can tell he's not doing great comic wise. When I moved here the comic area was 1/3 again as big - that was four years ago.
He told me that when convergence was announced there was a huge interest. Were they bringing back any of the old people? Was new-52 ending? Were they going 50/50? Keeping the good from both?
Orders poured in. Fans were excited. Most of them expected a compromise. It was unlikely the new-52 was going to go away but they HAD to being back at least some of the old stuff, right?
Then the new titles were announced. All new-52, albeit without the logo. No old characters were being carried over. 70% of the orders for both convergence and the books after were lessened or dropped completely.
Frankly, he can't afford that. Economic reality.
So now the Marvel section is 60% of the comic section. The Dark horse/indie companies are about 25% and what is left is DC. No more then two copies of each title and he's not ordering more. Even they just don't sell.
It's academic to say that the market share is down 20 points, almost 50% from pre-flashpoint days. But this this is what it actually looks like. And as much as I hate it for my own sake what's worse is it's hurting him. And he didn't do anything wrong, he's just trying to make a living.
New fans don't buy books. They come in, talk TV shows, hang out - but they don't buy books. He misses the ones that did. Helped him eat regularly.
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Post by ericthepilot on May 2, 2015 13:32:56 GMT -5
It really is a shame, but this is classic AOL Time Warner mismanagement. A friend and I were discussing just the other day how everything they're doing right now to DC is exactly what they did to WCW that caused the promotion to implode. It's really scary the parallels.
I can't blame any store owner for not carrying much of anything, old or new - we're just not getting anything to be excited about (and whatever there is to be excited about turns out to be a lie at worst or a poorly worded press release at best), I honestly can't figure out just who they think their market is.
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