CBR: Tilting at Windmills - Dec 16, 2010

[CBR News]

Brian Hibbs is at it again this month with a look at 2010 sales figures, an examination of "deconstructed" storytelling, the effect of event comics and rising prices on periodical sales and more.


Full article here.

[bluetyson]

I think you pretty much nailed it exactly.

Heaps of rubbish rump titles for one character/team.
New number 1's as stunts, then back to 600 etc.
Deconstructed stories so the comics take 2 minutes to read.

A gratuitous example of the latter - the spousal unit picked up an issue of 'Secret Warriors'. There is a splash page near the end - one whole page - of Nick Fury sitting at a table talking to a couple of no-name spies and not even saying anything of interest. What an absolute and utter waste of money.

And in Australia, comics often are double, even those almost equal to the US dollar now.

Occasionally you see comics in a newsagent - a couple of months ago a garden variety JLA comic was 8.95 that I saw.

Can actually order a novel or anthology from The Book Depository for 25% less than that.

The digital thing - for someone reason they are too paranoid to let you buy comics to download. Which makes no sense as the possible expansion 'save the industry/growth' markets outside the USA in general don't have all you can eat always on mobile bandwidth to enable people to afford internet connections and expensive devices to just read a comic - paying for bandwidth by the megabyte is bad if you want to do something rash like read your new comic twice on your phone. Not to mention for desktops flash is pretty horrible compared to the actual image files in a CBR - and much less flexible as far as bigger/smaller zoom etc.

[Charles Knight]

The thing is, during the last couple of economic downturns, comics did reasonably well (at least in my store). The conventional wisdom has been “comics are a low cost, high entertainment item, and that’s attractive in bad economic times”

I just think times have changed, even without the recent price increases comic represent very poor value for money. Let's say I buy five comics in week, those comics might take me 30 minutes to read, maybe 40 if I stop to go to the toilet. For the same money, I can have a Bluray rental subscription that allows me to have two disks at home and unlimited access to the stream service provided by the company - it's far better value and it's value that I can share around, my nieces when they visit can watch something, the missus can put films on my list - comics just don't provide that level of added value.

The other issue is that a lot of services are complimentary - if you take Spotify (which I know is not currently available in the US) for the cost of my five comics I can have unlimited streaming music at home and on my phone - and as I already pay for unlimited internet, the two services go together nicely (and that also makes the streaming service provided by bluray rental subscription more attractive).

I honestly the situation can be turned around because there is no economic way to make comics represent better value for money.

[Steve Broome]

^^ By that argument people wouldn't be paying close to $20.00 for 2 hour Imax/3d movies, or $.99 for a song that's 3 minutes long. The minute by minute comparison of entertainment doesn't work all that well. I also take issue with people talking about the subscription costs of things like Netflix as if they exist in a vacuum. For the $10.00 people are paying for that, you'll usually need to add in the cost of high-speed internet access required to get good streaming service from those places. That's another $40.00. The streaming on your phone requires a data plan, which costs you another $30.00 or whatever, as well as the cost of the device you're viewing it on. And we can't make the argument that the two aren't tied together with the latest numbers on Netflix's service accounting for such a large amount of internet traffic (and this will only get more costly with tiered data plans).

It's arguable whether or not hand-crafted art already makes comics better value for the money(for me it does) although I agree $4 is just too much for a single issue - it drove me to trade waiting unfortunately.

FWIW every form of entertainment seems to be having issues. They can't even get another Bond movie funded.

[Charles Knight]

^^ By that argument people wouldn't be paying close to $20.00 for 2 hour Imax/3d movies, or $.99 for a song that's 3 minutes long. The minute by minute comparison of entertainment doesn't work all that well. It's arguable whether or not hand-crafted art already makes comics better value for the money(for me it does) although I agree $4 is just too much for a single issue - it drove me to trade waiting unfortunately.

FWIW every form of entertainment seems to be having issues. They can't even get another Bond movie funded.

I wouldn't dispute any of that, but I'd say there are two types of consumer spends, there is the regular weekly disposable income spends (comics, subscription services, music) and then there are more discretionary items that come up and are a case by case basis (Imax, concerts etc). I think comics for most people are bad value when considered as part of their regularly weekly DI. Having said that, singles are an odd one because at $.99, it's throwaway, I think comics are at that price point that makes them seem bad value.

[Jude]

The trend of “deconstructed” storytelling, where writers aren’t as focused on writing jam-packed single issues, but, rather stories paced for the “inevitable” collection....

I think the word is "episodic."

[CALuke]

I think you pretty much nailed it exactly.

Heaps of rubbish rump titles for one character/team.
New number 1's as stunts, then back to 600 etc.
Deconstructed stories so the comics take 2 minutes to read.

A gratuitous example of the latter - the spousal unit picked up an issue of 'Secret Warriors'. There is a splash page near the end - one whole page - of Nick Fury sitting at a table talking to a couple of no-name spies and not even saying anything of interest. What an absolute and utter waste of money.

And in Australia, comics often are double, even those almost equal to the US dollar now.

Occasionally you see comics in a newsagent - a couple of months ago a garden variety JLA comic was 8.95 that I saw.

Can actually order a novel or anthology from The Book Depository for 25% less than that.

The digital thing - for someone reason they are too paranoid to let you buy comics to download. Which makes no sense as the possible expansion 'save the industry/growth' markets outside the USA in general don't have all you can eat always on mobile bandwidth to enable people to afford internet connections and expensive devices to just read a comic - paying for bandwidth by the megabyte is bad if you want to do something rash like read your new comic twice on your phone. Not to mention for desktops flash is pretty horrible compared to the actual image files in a CBR - and much less flexible as far as bigger/smaller zoom etc.

Don't buy comics from newsagents in Australia, get them from Comics shop like mind where where we get them 2 mouths before the newsagents do and only cost $6.80AUD($3.99USD) or $5.10($2.99USD).
And I'm sorry today as a Ausisse Comic Shop, I can't help but agreed with BH, things are not looking good right now.
But I do like the fact DC pieces are going down, that can only help a shop like mind where we have more DC fans then Marvel.

[bluetyson]

Don't buy comics from newsagents in Australia, get them from Comics shop like mind where where we get them 2 mouths before the newsagents do and only cost $6.80AUD($3.99USD) or $5.10($2.99USD).
And I'm sorry today as a Ausisse Comic Shop, I can't help but agreed with BH, things are not looking good right now.
But I do like the fact DC pieces are going down, that can only help a shop like mind where we have more DC fans then Marvel.

Yes, I realise that - but this was just an extreme example of price.

Of course, the comic shop I used to go to regularly closed a while ago.

And given the dollar, cheaper to get from overseas - especially when you can get free shipping from The Book Depository on eventual trades etc.

[CALuke]

Yes, I realise that - but this was just an extreme example of price.

Of course, the comic shop I used to go to regularly closed a while ago.

And given the dollar, cheaper to get from overseas - especially when you can get free shipping from The Book Depository on eventual trades etc.

Well how you get your comic is up to you, but being a comic shop owner I can't agreed with order them from overseas.
After all it's not a easy business and us comics shop need all the buyers we can get.
I don't know if we can do free postage, but we do ship orders all over Australia of up to 10 comics for only $5.00 P&H