Default Bleeding Cool: "Marvel NOW! a bit of a Damp Squib"

[stephen wacker]

God, your buttons are easy to push.

Heh...can you imagine?

Seriously though , why do you hate kittens so much?

SW

[Desaad]

Default? This is the first time I've written this.

I didn't create the thread title; it was edited after.

[RDMacQ]

Nothing in entertainment lasts forever. Chasing the "sustainable" in pop culture is a loser's game.

SW

I like how your arguments basically amount to "saying the exact opposite of what the other person is saying, regardless of whether or not it contradicts something I've already said."

[Seresecros]

Also anti-Image, anti-Dark Horse, anti-IDW, anti-Caliant, anti-Avatar, anti-Zenescope, time and time again...

Really? Do they not know that you're owned by Avatar?

[USERNAME TAKEN]

Because of history... Remember what happened last time when the speculators switched hobbies?

This is the main difference now between Marvel and DC. DC is trying very hard to sell comics to readers. Marvel is focusing almostcompletely on selling comics to retailers with nary a though if anybody is ever even going to read them. And yes, I know that's a gross exaggeration.

I like how you put the caveat at the end because I was about to ask when you started work for DC.

[USERNAME TAKEN]

I think its up to the retailers and owners of LCS to understand the business and what their customers and shop can afford. If you believe you have to order 100 copies of a comic to get an incentive , then you better have it reflect your bottom line. Because its a business really.

My thoughts exactly.

When it comes to comic discussions, the cold hard logic of business reality seems to be ignored.

[stillanerd]

I think some of us may be overlooking something crucial here. Rich Johnson isn't saying that comic book retailers are calling Marvel NOW! "a bit of a damp squib" because of the excessive amount variants they're attaching to the titles (and let's not also forget pretty much all of the Marvel NOW! titles are double-shipped, as well, something which is not mentioned in the article). The retailers are apparently calling Marvel NOW! "a bit of a damp squib" because they're saying their customers are not that enthusiastic about the content of the Marvel NOW titles, or about the apparent content of upcoming Marvel NOW! titles. Sure, as the article says, there's been only five comics under the Marvel NOW! banner that have been released thus far, but let's forget that there are customers who have pull-lists and place orders ahead of time to comic book shops for them to reserve a copy. So taking that into consideration, it then makes sense when the article states:

...a private poll of around eighty retailers found that none have encountered an amazing response to the Marvel NOW books, a good chunk have seen existing customers interested in the books, but most have either encountered less than expected sales – or terrible sales on the books.

In short, if people are supposedly not all that enthusiastic about Marvel NOW! based upon what books have already come out and what Marvel have been telling about what the future Marvel NOW! titles will be about, then of course that's going to effect the sales of those titles, even though, as Rich Johnson explains, Marvel will probably not lose money on it.

[Paladin King]

I think some of us may be overlooking something crucial here. Rich Johnson isn't saying that comic book retailers are calling Marvel NOW! "a bit of a damp squib" because of the excessive amount variants they're attaching to the titles (and let's not also forget pretty much all of the Marvel NOW! titles are double-shipped, as well, something which is not mentioned in the article). The retailers are apparently calling Marvel NOW! "a bit of a damp squib" because they're saying their customers are not that enthusiastic about the content of the Marvel NOW titles, or about the apparent content of upcoming Marvel NOW! titles. Sure, as the article says, there's been only five comics under the Marvel NOW! banner that have been released thus far, but let's forget that there are customers who have pull-lists and place orders ahead of time to comic book shops for them to reserve a copy. So taking that into consideration, it then makes sense when the article states:



In short, if people are supposedly not all that enthusiastic about Marvel NOW! based upon what books have already come out and what Marvel have been telling about what the future Marvel NOW! titles will be about, then of course that's going to effect the sales of those titles, even though, as Rich Johnson explains, Marvel will probably not lose money on it.

but that's part of the problem, isn't it? "People".

Not only is this, as you say, months in advance and with little to go on, and largely speculative, but it's "people." We know nothing about Rich's "private poll" beyond its involving 80 retailers. Given how speculative and how far in advance this whole thing is already, the worth of that poll, particularly given my doubts about the methods with which Rich conducted it, is questionable. For instance, we don't know what questions Rich asked or how they were worded, nor do we know what that sample of 80 were like: how they were distributed geographically, how many of them were large or small in size, whatever.

As far as the whole variant thing though, I've never found myself sympathetic towards retailers in the matter. If you're ordering far more copies of a comic than you can reasonably expect to sell, all to get a Gangnam Style Deadpool variant or something...that's just extremely questionable business logic. Marvel may make guns available, but it's the retailers who are choosing to shoot themselves in the leg with it.

[Will.S]

I can only speak about my personal experiences talking to my LCS co-owner but I usually have pretty in depth talks with him about what Marvel or DC is doing business practice/creative wise.

I told him that I would be cutting a very large percentage of Marvel books due to the pricing, double shipping, and my problems with storage space and he understood although he seemed a little disappointed in losing me given that I usually buy a lot of Marvel books but I might continue buying the same amount of DC books although I'll be culling some soon. I also told him that Marvel's going a little too crazy with the $3.99 books and he agreed and said that he doesn't want Marvel to be pricing their people out of the hobby like the way I'm feeling.

I'm using Marvel Now! as a big jumping off point and obviously that's not something LCS owners want to hear so on some level I do hope the initiative fails since I think they're doing a lot of gouging with all the $3.99 books as well as putting out too much product at what I think are inflated prices but at the same time I do hope that the more acclaimed $2.99 books get good sales but it'll most likely be the opposite as usual.

[USERNAME TAKEN]

Then I got that wrong... I'd like to know which months though, because it's been a common pattern going back a while.

DC use variants as, for want of a better phrase "part of a balanced diet". They don't run 20 variants of commonly run tiered variants (!:200, 1:100, 1:50, and another four set to % of previous issue orders) for their ten top sellers. It's a big difference. If they stuck to DC levels, no one would have a problem.

Marvel have shown similar variant order structures for all the Marvel NOW launches, and all the second issues too. The thirds are still to come. This is a problem. It's worth highlighting now rather than only poiinting out problems after they have caused irreparable damage.

Immediately after the article ran, I found myself talking to a number of Marvel staffers. Some shared my concerns on this. It is very possible this article may have helped their stance within the company.

I agree it's unsustainable but isn't that the exact reason why Marvel are running the incentives only for the initial launch? If it causes so much damage and beyond the second issues retailers see a problem then will simply stop ordering so much.

The issues in 90s that caused the comic book crash of the 90s and Marvels bankruptcy go beyond variants and I'm pretty sure we all know this. Marvel publishing always remained competitive and were making money but the entire group went bankrupt because of some dubious financial engineering by Ron Perelman, not to mention the fact that the direct market was somewhat different to what you see now. Issues ranging from chronic lateness (especially from Image who were almost neck and neck with Marvel as the top selling publisher then), actual story content (a good number of people stopped reading comics), the video game boom amongst other things added to the attrition in the market. It wasn't due to variants alone even though the variants and other gimmicks added massively to it.

With or without variants, the earlier issues of most titles do tend to sell more. So, incentivizing the initial launch issues helps everyone as the retailer MIGHT be able to take advantage of the lower price and sell them for the speculators or casual fans trying out the initial issues. At least that will be the case until standard attrition sets in and the titles sales slowly begin to drop.

Now, if Marvel were running this for all their titles and for longer than a few months, then I might see where the doom and gloom and comes from but as it were, running a short term scheme for only a few months that might help retailers make money CAN NOT crash the market. That's somewhat of an exaggeration. Heck, one of the ideas behind the staggered launch was to give retailers a chance to find their order levels on time and NOT be stuck with unsaleable material as there is no returnability attached to the scheme.

While DC didn't have variant order levels for their top properties tied to sales of other titles, they did have for all the first Before Watchmen issues and I havent read any retailers complain about it. In addition to this, DC did have order levels for the variants (1:25, 1:50 etc) of their top properties for the last one year and it seemed to have actually helped the retailers. If the retailers can take advantage of incentives and sell these variants and make money, then they shouldn't have any excess issues lying around. At this point, I think most retailers should have a fair idea of their order levels and it falls on them to order reasonably.

While I understand to an extent where your point comes from, I think we will just agree to disagree about what effect these schemes will have on the market. I think we should take a wait and see approach to the whole thing and come back and discuss it after a two or three months.

[RDMacQ]

My thoughts exactly.

When it comes to comic discussions, the cold hard logic of business reality seems to be ignored.

Thing of it is, retailers don't know what will or will not sell. Sure, something may look good- like Uncanny Avengers- but that doesn't necessarily mean that it will translate into final sales. People might pick it up on a lark, or follow someone like Rick Remender, but it might not result in a lot of new business. But they HAVE to have a lot of titles just in CASE it becomes a hit, since they don't want to be caught unaware.

In addition, a lot of times Marvel will promote a title as being "important" and encourage the retailers to buy large quantities of the title since it will be "important." This happened to my retailer with copies of "Captain Marvel: The Return." He was told this was going to be a big book, something he NEEDED to have a lot of copies of because fans were going to be snatching it up big time. Then the comic dropped and months later he still had tons of unsold copies of CM: The Return on his shelf.

It's not an exact science, but it is something that can be easily manipulated.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

Thing of it is, retailers don't know what will or will not sell. Sure, something may look good- like Uncanny Avengers- but that doesn't necessarily mean that it will translate into final sales. People might pick it up on a lark, or follow someone like Rick Remender, but it might not result in a lot of new business. But they HAVE to have a lot of titles just in CASE it becomes a hit, since they don't want to be caught unaware.

In addition, a lot of times Marvel will promote a title as being "important" and encourage the retailers to buy large quantities of the title since it will be "important." This happened to my retailer with copies of "Captain Marvel: The Return." He was told this was going to be a big book, something he NEEDED to have a lot of copies of because fans were going to be snatching it up big time. Then the comic dropped and months later he still had tons of unsold copies of CM: The Return on his shelf.

It's not an exact science, but it is something that can be easily manipulated.

This is something LCS owners are gonna have to judge on who frequents the stores and just how much they are safe ordering above those who pull that book from the get go. If a retailer can't realize ording X amount of copies over a title is a bad move , then they obviously need help in the business. Because you have to exercise judgement on what your ordering. As my LCS guy told me , he will pull X amount of books for the stands and not try and go above it. Because the store profits rise and fall on what he orders.

At one point a year or 2 ago me and him was discussing a IDW series about zombies in the west. I knew that most of our crowd was into horror books and he asked me ...how many copies would you get if your pulling 1 copy. I talked him into 6 copies besides mine. Because we don't have a big strong subscription base. Our store is a minor chain store to the big one. So he agreed. Month or 2 later he tells me "All those issues moved quick , I re-ordered 2 more for people..." At the end all the issues sold and he increased orders to 10 for each issue.

When we were discussing the New 52...he asked me.. "Do I order a lot ? Or do I just go with normal few extra copies...?" So I thought and told him to roll the dice on the popular books like Flash , Superman , Action , Batman and Detective and double himself. " So he was like its a risk ...but I will do it. He sold out of them quick...which he loved.

[USERNAME TAKEN]

[QUOTE=RDMacQ;16106058]Thing of it is, retailers don't know what will or will not sell. Sure, something may look good- like Uncanny Avengers- but that doesn't necessarily mean that it will translate into final sales. People might pick it up on a lark, or follow someone like Rick Remender, but it might not result in a lot of new business. But they HAVE to have a lot of titles just in CASE it becomes a hit, since they don't want to be caught unaware.

In addition, a lot of times Marvel will promote a title as being "important" and encourage the retailers to buy large quantities of the title since it will be "important." This happened to my retailer with copies of "Captain Marvel: The Return." He was told this was going to be a big book, something he NEEDED to have a lot of copies of because fans were going to be snatching it up big time. Then the comic dropped and months later he still had tons of unsold copies of CM: The Return on his shelf.

It's not an exact science, but it is something that can be easily manipulated.[/QUOTE

It's one thing for consumers to fall for hype but retailers like any other business must always operate cautiously.

A retailer SHOULD have an idea of what he can sell, in fact he MUST have an idea or else he will quickly go out of business. All comic book companies come out and tell retailers that so and so book is important, be it DC, Image or even Boom (who even employ variants virtually every month and on all their titles) and it falls on the retailer to decide what he can sell.

Like I said earlier, it flies in the face of not just business but common sense to increase orders on Thor from 15 to 30 simply because "Marvel said so". That makes zero sense.

[USERNAME TAKEN]

This is something LCS owners are gonna have to judge on who frequents the stores and just how much they are safe ordering above those who pull that book from the get go. If a retailer can't realize ording X amount of copies over a title is a bad move , then they obviously need help in the business. Because you have to exercise judgement on what your ordering. As my LCS guy told me , he will pull X amount of books for the stands and not try and go above it. Because the store profits rise and fall on what he orders.

At one point a year or 2 ago me and him was discussing a IDW series about zombies in the west. I knew that most of our crowd was into horror books and he asked me ...how many copies would you get if your pulling 1 copy. I talked him into 6 copies besides mine. Because we don't have a big strong subscription base. Our store is a minor chain store to the big one. So he agreed. Month or 2 later he tells me "All those issues moved quick , I re-ordered 2 more for people..." At the end all the issues sold and he increased orders to 10 for each issue.

When we were discussing the New 52...he asked me.. "Do I order a lot ? Or do I just go with normal few extra copies...?" So I thought and told him to roll the dice on the popular books like Flash , Superman , Action , Batman and Detective and double himself. " So he was like its a risk ...but I will do it. He sold out of them quick...which he loved.

Exactly my point.

[Paladin King]

I can only speak about my personal experiences talking to my LCS co-owner but I usually have pretty in depth talks with him about what Marvel or DC is doing business practice/creative wise.

I told him that I would be cutting a very large percentage of Marvel books due to the pricing, double shipping, and my problems with storage space and he understood although he seemed a little disappointed in losing me given that I usually buy a lot of Marvel books but I might continue buying the same amount of DC books although I'll be culling some soon. I also told him that Marvel's going a little too crazy with the $3.99 books and he agreed and said that he doesn't want Marvel to be pricing their people out of the hobby like the way I'm feeling.

I'm using Marvel Now! as a big jumping off point and obviously that's not something LCS owners want to hear so on some level I do hope the initiative fails since I think they're doing a lot of gouging with all the $3.99 books as well as putting out too much product at what I think are inflated prices but at the same time I do hope that the more acclaimed $2.99 books get good sales but it'll most likely be the opposite as usual.

I can swallow the $3.99, but combining it with double-shipping is harsh. I've ended up buying a little less with Marvel NOW and that's largely because there are a lot of books I probably would try, were it not for the spectre of double-shipping. Avengers Arena, Deadpool, Cable and X-Force - all books I'd try, were it not for double-shipping.