The "big 3" and the third position.....

[Manga4life]

Okay, so we all know that Marvel and DC are the top 2 companies in comic books and that will probably never change since they publish 90% of the top 100 comics ordered each and every month and their characters are more recognizable these days than Mickey Mouse, but what about that coveted #3 position? Image is usually always sitting pretty in that #3 slot and I've read articles of Dark Horse outselling Image during certain months but for the most part it's usually Image and I'm thinking that as a comic book company they could be totally removed from that spot if a number of smaller press companies decided to take charge and make the right moves. Take Dynamite Entertainment or BOOM Studios for instance, both publishers have really stepped up their game recently and both companies are publishing some great comics that are selling really well within the industry. Dynamite usually has 2-3 comics in the lower half of the top 100 ordered comics each month with Green Hornet and The Boys constantly selling really well, and their Project Superpowers, Last Phantom, Red Sonja, and Vampirella comics have all reached respectible sales figures and with Kirby: Genesis on the horizon I think DE could take over that #3 spot if they grabbed a couple big name creators and a couple more giant licenses.

BOOM Studio's is doing really well these days with Soldier Zero, Starborn and The Traveler, the Stan Lee books have really become quite good and the fans are starting to look at these books as something quite special, not to mention the company's other heavy hitters like Irredeemable and Incorruptible. The company went from almost non-existant to finding themselves heavy in the top 150-170 ordered comics each month and sales for them seem to be getting better and better, with some more big names to accompany Mark Waid, Paul Cornell, and Dan Abnett and some more big titles on store shelves I'm thinking that BOOM could make a run at the #3 publisher spot.

Of course this all relies on consumers purchasing the comics and other merchandise that these companies put on store shelves, something that's hard to do when Marvel-heads float to the stores to shell out every red cent they have on some massive crossover spanning every single book the publisher puts out, but there are people willing to try something new and those people are the ones who can make either one of these 2 publishers #3. It's possible, but not probable....

Comments?

[BrianT]

Don't forget IDW with the Transformers and G.I. Joe licenses. GODZILLA was the #1 non-DC/Marvel book in March. IDW is the closest behind Image and Dark Horse.

Hard to believe in March there were only 3 "Indy" books in the Top 100. GODZILLA and two issues of THE WALKING DEAD.

[Dr. Cheesesteak]

As much I'd LOVE to see BOOM! rise to #3, it's a long shot it'll even climb in the top 5.

http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/19837.html

Hellraiser is it's #1 seller of March at ~14,000 sold. Irredeemable (it's marquee title) sold less than 10,000. Now, I love me some BOOM!. The Waid IPs, the Stan Lee IPs, even the Disney stuff. But no matter what creators they hire, they'll probably always be a ways behind IDW and Dynamite (who have great 3rd-party IPs and IPs that have been established at other publishers) and Dark Horse and Image (established publishers for decades).

That'd put BOOM! at #7 at best. As of right now. But who knows, I hope they do catapult to top 5. It'd be tough and would take a while, but they're definitely on the right track. I actually am a bit surprised the Stan Lee IP's aren't selling as well as they should be, given the creators involved and Stan's name staring at you. And Irredeemable is arguably the best book around, but...few seem to care or realize that.

I still firmly believe Image is the most "deserving" of the #3 spot. A lot of great books, writers, and artists. And they don't rely on 3rd-party IPs as much as Dynamite, IDW, or even Dark Horse.

edit:
and by "3rd-party" I mean "originally non-comic medium" IPs - cartoons, movies, novels i.e. Transformers, Star Wars, Red Sonja, etc. Obviously it's actually all kind of "3rd-party" since it's independent/creator-owned, right?

[dupont2005]

Secret to success = buying licenses. Based on the success of the Big Two alone it has nothing to do with quality or value. I wouldn't worry about it unless I was a stockholder.




Make mine Fantagraphics!

[Dr. Shouts]

Dark Horse had to fire they're staff. They're losing money. Image doesn't make as much money as people like to believe. If Image hadn't signed on Kirkman so they could profit from his books, then they'd be making way less than they already do.

[Paul Render]

Image and Dark Horse will probably always be that #3/4 spot because of their cred and properties. Everyone is losing money right now comics wise so we shouldn't really pay too much attention to that.

Quality wise though it's subjective. Archaia and IDW are turning out some great great stuff in my opinion and of all the "other" publishers those two are getting most of my money.

[adamac1]

I'm rooting for Dark Horse to take the number 1 spot!
I always say Dark Horse held out till the very end to go digital, which is pretty loyal to comic shops,
if you think about it they could have years and years ago.
Do they still make ALIENS or Predator comics? I just looked at their site and didn't see any Aliens.
I mainly remember the days of Kelly Jones Aliens books, and also Monkeyman, or HardBoiled.

[Steward Ace]

I'm prety sure Archie comes in #3.

[Manga4life]

I'm prety sure Archie comes in #3.

A few months back when I checked market share they were like #8 or #9, Archie isn't really a massive company and never has been and aside from it's 1 or two properties that it relies on it's not much of a powerhouse within the industry.

[Brandon Hanvey]

A few months back when I checked market share they were like #8 or #9, Archie isn't really a massive company and never has been and aside from it's 1 or two properties that it relies on it's not much of a powerhouse within the industry.

While in the direct market Archie isn't a huge seller, you have to take in account that Archie is sold in a lot of other places such as newstands and grocery checkouts. The digest are very good sellers.

http://comicsworthreading.com/2011/03/08/archie-sales-figures-for-2010/

[BeastieRunner]

If I had to guess it would be:


Marvel
DC
IDW
Image
Dark Horse
Archie
The rest ...

[Julian Fine]

I'm always depressed that the only way indie publishers survive is through licensed media. I understand making your money off of reprints, that at least has historical preservation value in addition to capitalizing on nostalgia. What I don't understand is dedicating so much new talent to stale properties. How many Green Hornet comics do you really need? The Anchor was a very promising series but it took The Muppets (and I loved what they did with that licence but did you see how instead of rejoicing at the prospect of new original work from Langridge the nerdonet just was entirely focused on not getting new Muppet comics?) and Stan Lee to get the Wednesday crowd to even pay attention to Boom. There's something broken with our culture when you still need the name of promoter from the sixties to keep your company afloat. At least all these companies use the licence money to publish awesome books like Bulletproof Coffin, King City, Orc Stain, Beasts of Burden, Citizen Rex, Age of Reptiles, I Kill Giants, and more... but these books are fried gold quality and should be keeping publishers profitable on their own. It's not that I don't like a good Batman story, or hate watching the Avengers battle Kang and Devil Dinosaur in anachronistic New York, but I just can't feel good about how vehemently comics culture lionizes corporately owned mascots over comics as their own art.

[Dr. Shouts]

Julian Fine, I agree. I've always felt the U.S. comics industry has failed when it comes to innovation. It has not been able to successfully push comic books into a wide audience like manga. The demographics for comics has always been dominated by one group: young males. There is a greater variety of comics in the U.S. today than any time before, yet comic readership is decreasing. Pathetic. Even the indies lack innovation. It's always, "Let's rehash the junk that's sold well in the past".

If this wasn't bad enough, the majority of people (readers and creators) don't see this as a big deal. As a result, I lost interest in it. I talk about it every once and a while, but what's the point? No one cares for innovation. Everybody says digital will change things, but I've yet to hear them give a decent argument how. It looks like everyone's crossing their fingers, hoping digital will somehow change comics for the better. Why hope for something that's not gonna happen?

[Parch]

Even some of the licensed titles are really good compared to some of that supehero soap opera crap.
Innovation is out there, but the independent gold can be hard to find when marketing is non-existent. That's where sites like this are invaluable at finding those indy gems in a market flooded with supehero mediocrity.

[Dr. Cheesesteak]

I've always felt the U.S. comics industry has failed when it comes to innovation. It has not been able to successfully push comic books into a wide audience like manga. The demographics for comics has always been dominated by one group: young males.

Pretty sure that has almost nothing to do w/ lack of innovation in the industry as much as it simply does our culture.

[Kaim]

While in the direct market Archie isn't a huge seller, you have to take in account that Archie is sold in a lot of other places such as newstands and grocery checkouts. The digest are very good sellers.

http://comicsworthreading.com/2011/03/08/archie-sales-figures-for-2010/

This... their digests sell into the hundreds of thousands fairly regularly.

[Dr. Shouts]

Pretty sure that has almost nothing to do w/ lack of innovation in the industry as much as it simply does our culture.

I'm pretty sure there once was a time when comics reached a wider audience, and there was the possibility of comic books being a respectable medium.


The first issue of Young Romance was cover-dated September-October 1947, and beneath the title bore the tagline "Designed For The More ADULT Readers of Comics". The title sold 92% of its print run. With the third issue, Crestwood increased the print run to triple the initial number of copies.[3] Circulation jumped to 1,000,000 copies s month. Initially published bimonthly, Young Romance quickly became a monthly and generated the spin-off, Young Love — together the two sold two million copies a month.[2] Kirby noted the books "made millions."[1] The two titles were later joined by Young Brides and In Love, the latter "featuring full-length romance stories".[3]

I knew someone would come in and say, "It's our culture". Typical argument on the subject. There's a female demographic that hasn't been touched. The Big Two failed to see that.

[Julian Fine]

Complaining that Marvel and DC don't publish a varied enough line instead of supporting publishers who do is part of the problem.

[Dr. Shouts]

Complaining that Marvel and DC don't publish a varied enough line instead of supporting publishers who do is part of the problem.

I hope yer not referring to me. Cuz in my original statement I said "U.S. publishers" which includes indies like Image, Dark Horse, Fantagraphics, Drawn and Quarterly, etc. I buy a huge variety of comics, from various publishers and creators. However, I don't think U.S. publishers, indie or corporate, are nearly as creative as manga.

Stories like Bulletproof Coffin are all right. I got the TPB. But Anchor looks like a boring rip-off of Hellboy. Hardly what I'd call innovative.

[Julian Fine]

It was a heavy Hellboy and Goon riff and it didn't pretend to be otherwise, but it had potential to go somewhere. I don't think it was innovative by any means but at the time it was one of Boom's main original titles as I recall.

I'm wary of lumping up manga together for a few reasons. The first is because I'm never exactly sure what we're talking about when manga comes up. Is it strictly the Japanese anthology magazines? Are we including the Korean market? It gets brought up as a monolithic entity when it has its own markets, genres, and creative movements and countermovements.

I think there is some pretty strong variety in the North American publishers. Fantagraphics has kind of solidified its asthetics in the 80's art comics crew, but the Ignatz line has offered up a diverse set of comics even if all the creators are established names and they are still in the business of collecting minis so while you might not be seeing much new out of them if you are attending small press cons they are getting that stuff into shops beyond Brooklyn and L.A. D&Q is pretty international at this point, their showcases are often worldwide anthologies. PictureBox is pretty much Fort Thunder but that niche itself was hugely innovative and is still pushing the form in lots of interesting directions, they also bring over work from Yuichi Yokoyama in a similar way to D&Q championing Yoshihiro Tatsumi. AdHouse published Johnny Hiro, Skyscrapers of the Midwest, and Duncan the Wonder Dog that's pretty good variety and they distribute Koyama and NoBrow in the U.S. so they have a very diverse selection. Secret Acres and CCS put out lots of hot new cartoonists like Joe Lambert and Theo Ellsworth.

My main problem is that outside of Fantagraphics and D&Q, getting these publishers' books from brick and mortar shops is almost impossible. If I go into the city I can track down Adhouse books but if I want Koyama or NoBrow books I've got to go to the website. I've given up on finding any of the others outside of conventions and order most of them directly from the publishers. There's one or two shops I still need to check out that I think might carry these books but it's ridiculous how out of the way you have to go to track this stuff down. I'd like to support good shops because ideally they are the venues where new creators can get some shelf space on local artists racks and selling your self published work on consignment but very few shops outside of New York seem seriously interested in that if they aren't flat out antagonistic to the idea.

[Dr. Shouts]

Julian Fine, thanks for putting out those extreme indie publishers. I've been pretty elitist, thinking I know most indie publishers. I never heard of Koyama or Adhouse. I just bought Dustin Harbin's Diary. Looks like I'll hold off on judging U.S. comics as a whole til I read the indie of the indies.:smile:

[SUPERECWFAN1]

I just wanna say something. According to that article about Dark Horse laying off some staff...well the big 2 have done it at times . Its a recession that the comics world is crawling back from after all. Plus DH according to what Shooter's assistant wrote had problems with Classic Media and the money/direction plans they wanted for the charactors.

In terms after the big #2...

3# Image and Dark Horse in a battle for this. Dark Horse has the Star Wars , Conan , Creepy and other rights to publish. They also have Concrete and Hellboy to.

Image meanwhile has Robert Kirkman and his Skyline imprint. They also have books like Chew , Morning Glories and others that are catching on. Image has the edge over Dark Horse for the fact..a lot of thier comics isn't properties and can be snatched away at some point.

4# Dynamite and IDW - Both 2 are heavy into established properties and trying to be that 4th one. Pretty even right now.