CBR: Cup O' Joe - May 13, 2011

[CBR News]

Tom Brevoort speaks on the current state of Spider-Man from the FCBD special kicking off "Spider-Island" to the difference between today and Brand New Day, while addressing current concerns over Marvel Comics page counts and more!


Full article here.

[U-Foe]

I see sex everywhere!!

SEX!!!!!!


lol

[TheAmazingSpidey]

I find that Spider-Girl cover with Kingpin in the web kinda creepy.

[Sabrewulf]

I think its time to be honest about the page count.

You cant hype an extra sized book and then steal pages away from the next issue.

it just seems incredibly underhanded.

Plus it seems the Spiderman extra pages are coming to an end. This shit should really be anounced. Again you cant go on record saying that at $3.99 you will get extra story and then just sneak them away.

Seriously Tom, value a page. When books are only selling between 20k and 60k max, just value a page and charge a price for 22 pages and another for additonal pages. Let the readers know where they stand. Stop trying to trick us. This is why you are constantly at war with you customer base.

You want Bendis on a book and pay him more fine. But don't put that on us. Drop the price of Avengers to $2.99 and put Gage on it. Stop making us pay for you to pay what you think your golden boy is worth. its fucking tiresome now.

Do we have to pay more to see Thor than we do to see say 500 days of summer. No! Stop treating comics as its the only industry in the world that gets to make it up as it goes along. It's no wonder that FCB does nothing in terms of increasing sales. As a new reader id be at a loss to explain why I pay a dollar more for some books when I have no idea who the hell Bendis and Fraction are.

Do you really think thats not offputting.

[Alex6166]

I will say this, Ramos is great artist for the series. Though sometimes he goes a little too far with the crazy hands and small heads.

[Sighphi]

So he explained the page count of ONE book.....what about the rest?

[BrotherUnitNo_4]

This has to be said - Caselli is definitely going to be one of the next big artists at Marvel. The biggest downside is probably the way he renders hair (a little too spiky), but everything else is beautiful.

Also Ramos does a pretty good Jackal.

Also, Marvel needs to stop throwing jabs at DC while they're asking themselves "why didn't we think of that?"

[Sabrewulf]

It makes me laugh. Any other industry would have a prepared answer and solution to appease the customer base. Not comicbooks though. Their attitude is if you dont like it dont buy it. Thats why its a sinking bloody ship. I respect DC for the most part because they actually listen to fans and dont throw out half assed excuses.

Marvel really need to hire a PR company. Seriously.

The giys are churning out massive blockbusters yearly now, this talk down to the fans shit isn't good enough. Really.

[jmacleodpc19]

Isn't it about time CBR stop calling this a Cup O' Joe?

Or is this like "Stan Lee Presents" long after he was involved with day-to-day activities.

[Zombie Uatu]

I think its time to be honest about the page count.

You cant hype an extra sized book and then steal pages away from the next issue.

it just seems incredibly underhanded.

Plus it seems the Spiderman extra pages are coming to an end. This shit should really be anounced. Again you cant go on record saying that at $3.99 you will get extra story and then just sneak them away.

Seriously Tom, value a page. When books are only selling between 20k and 60k max, just value a page and charge a price for 22 pages and another for additonal pages. Let the readers know where they stand. Stop trying to trick us. This is why you are constantly at war with you customer base.

You want Bendis on a book and pay him more fine. But don't put that on us. Drop the price of Avengers to $2.99 and put Gage on it. Stop making us pay for you to pay what you think your golden boy is worth. its fucking tiresome now.

Do we have to pay more to see Thor than we do to see say 500 days of summer. No! Stop treating comics as its the only industry in the world that gets to make it up as it goes along. It's no wonder that FCB does nothing in terms of increasing sales. As a new reader id be at a loss to explain why I pay a dollar more for some books when I have no idea who the hell Bendis and Fraction are.

Do you really think thats not offputting.

To be honest, while I do understand people having problems with price increases of an entire dollar all of a sudden, the thing about the page counts is really not something that disturbs my enjoyment of a comic at all except where I feel the book's lacking on content. I've not felt that with any of DCs books since the price drop, nor with Marvel's. Where I do have a problem with lack of content it's normally to do with too much decompression and a stretched thin (for the trade) story rather than the actual number of pages in an issue. The proper writer and artist team can make 20 pages feel like a novel (the old Lee and Kirby books for example) or it can go by in a couple of minutes. To be honest, given what Brevoort just said about the page count in Avengers comics, which I've never noticed, I can't help but think that if the number of pages in an issue really bothers you that much you should take up bean-counting rather than comic collecting.

Avengers is a top-selling premium book which has the best writer and artist teams. It's simple marketing to charge more for it. There is greater price elasticity with it. If you don't want to pay $3.99 for a comic by all means don't buy it, but that really is the only thing that'll change that elasticity.

[Mark_S]

But everybody going into that run knew from the start that we'd be operating to some degree under the dark cloud of fan outcry over "One More Day." The "One More Day" guys were going to do their story and get out of Dodge, and then we were going to be the guys there, month in, month out. I don't remember who it was, but there was a guy online who was outraged about "One More Day" and "the massive part that Dan Slott played in it." He harassed Dan for months, despite the fact that Dan didn't write that story. [Laughs] That was the guys before us.

Yea, I guess that was always the plan, don't blame us. The White House should hire the marvel writing staff, they spin better than anyone I know.

They like it or don't like it, but either way, they're ready to move forward and read some cool Spider-Man comics again.

Not all of us, I root for the bad guys.

Mark_S

[Mark_S]

To be honest, while I do understand people having problems with price increases of an entire dollar all of a sudden, the thing about the page counts is really not something that disturbs my enjoyment of a comic at all except where I feel the book's lacking on content. I've not felt that with any of DCs books since the price drop, nor with Marvel's. Where I do have a problem with lack of content it's normally to do with too much decompression and a stretched thin (for the trade) story rather than the actual number of pages in an issue. The proper writer and artist team can make 20 pages feel like a novel (the old Lee and Kirby books for example) or it can go by in a couple of minutes. To be honest, given what Brevoort just said about the page count in Avengers comics, which I've never noticed, I can't help but think that if the number of pages in an issue really bothers you that much you should take up bean-counting rather than comic collecting.

Avengers is a top-selling premium book which has the best writer and artist teams. It's simple marketing to charge more for it. There is greater price elasticity with it. If you don't want to pay $3.99 for a comic by all means don't buy it, but that really is the only thing that'll change that elasticity.

I think if sales suddenly nose dived they wouldn't think about the price as much as they would think about changing the writer or artist. I think that marvel is too wedded by corporate structure to change the price.

Mark_S

[stephen wacker]

Yea, I guess that was always the plan, don't blame us. The White House should hire the marvel writing staff, they spin better than anyone I know.

Mark_S

interesting...so what do you think REALLY happened?

SW

[Mark_S]

interesting...so what do you think REALLY happened?

SW

I think they deliberately planned to get rid of Mary Jane and switch writers so that the new writers could claim that they had nothing to do with it and it wouldn't be fair to pre-judge their stories without buying them first. Bait and switch, let the departing writers take the heat.

Give them credit, if I am right, it worked.

Mark_S

[Minerboh]

If ''Spider-island'' is such a big deal why Marvel didn't assigned the drawing duties to a better artist?
Ramos surely has improved over the years but he has a loooong way ahead of him for big projects!