Their monopoly is crushing the smaller stores. I know because I run one. We are less likely to get everything we order. Those go to the bigger stores and it really sucks when something big with low order #s come out. Like Batgirl 23. I had to beg my rep to make sure I got copies in NM condition. I did but that leads to another problem...damages. All 3 of my batgirl 23s came in NM condition but must have aggravated the warehouse because the rest of my comics were damaged. Damages are a huge problem. I'll call them in and most of the time they'll ship a couple of weeks later and by then my subscribers will have gotten them somewhere else and I'm stuck with them. Cool if it's a key but more often not and I'm out a chunk of money. This is an endless cycle and every Tuesday I'm left in a fit of anxiety. Are they all going to show? Will they be damaged? And the worse will any of them show? Several times I've gotten just one box with mostly packing paper and just a couple of books AND THERE IS NO ACCOUNTABILITY. I can't say hey you guys are not living up to your end so I'm going with the other guy. The best I can do is find a rep from Diamond that I have a report with, I have, and pray every week. I could go on and on. Great video.
Our family owned a couple of record stores growing up (yes, I'm that old) and we had similar problems. The final nail in our coffin came when, as the industry was dying, our own distributor decided to go into retail in competition with us. They were selling their records at retail prices lower than their wholesale price to us.
I'm really glad this video was put out because FAR TOO MANY so called "experts" blamed Image ALONE for the "comics crash of the 90s and not on the GLUT of mediocre comics that were cranked out by Marvel!
I first became aware of Diamond as an entity when the local comic book shop didn't get anything for 3 weeks, and explained this to customers via a large window sign reading "F*** DIAMOND (X-Men isn't in yet)." Until I asked them about that, I had no idea how narrow the pipeline to stores was.
@@raycearcher5794 I sincerely sympathetize with your LCS. As I mentioned in my reply it has happened to me. I hope bringing this to people's attention that they will understand what their LCS is going through and stick by them bc I have lost business over this. Maybe LCSs should unionize in sorts.
@@yourdad9928 And those issues ended up worthless and trashed. Some were bought back for pennies only to rot in the back room of comic shops. I know....I had to work a back room or basement. Comic shops owners will be buried in X-Men #1s in Hell.
It also is the perfect symbolism of the comicbook community in general... "Oh, all my precious weird interviews and variant covers burnt, just for what... Training firefighters..?? Siiin"
In the future, bookshops could become, basically, print-on-demand facilities. Customer chooses from a digital catalog (potentially containing every known book ever written) and the book is printed right there and then. Printing cost would be much higher, but there would be no need for distribution, no waste of paper or ink, no need of storing, and no unsold copies.
I don't see why that would be a viable option in the same world where digital books exist. It seems to me like people who want physical copies of books buy them for reasons other than "I just want a physical version of this Harry Potter book to hold in my hands."
Ooh, I like that idea! All the freedom of digital distribution, but you still get to visit a cool place and end up with a physical book. The closest thing to that is Print-on-demand stuff like IndyPlanet, but you still have to order it online and get it through the mail. I'd love to still go to a store that's full of comic-book paraphernalia, and probably still has shelves full of older comics and collectables, and have the option of selecting new titles from a digital device and watch them print and bind the book, right in front of me!
I could ask someone who I know who does printing and ask about pricing. I think this could be expensive. There also seems like there would be expensive licensing procedures.
Growing up, I didn't really read comics. I was born in '94, so by the time I could read, you had to go to a dedicated comic store to find anything, and growing up in the country and suburbs, there weren't any comic stores around. I knew about a lot of comic characters from the Batman and Justice League cartoons and the Sam Raimi Spider-man movies, but no chance to get ahold of comic books. I read a lot of manga, but pretty much every bookstore had a few shelves of that. My school had a subscription to Shonen Jump, so I could check it out from the library. I read like a grand total of three comics as a teenager, and that was just because the school library had copies of trade paperbacks of Watchmen, The Dark Knight Strikes Again, and the first few issues of the original Amazing Spider-Man. Even today, I would need to drive an hour away to get to the nearest comic store. It's crazy how we have so many super hero movies, but if you don't live in a big city comics are basically unavailable.
This is exactly how Hollywood maintains a stranglehold on the movies industry. The film distributors maintain a monopoly by locking out any theatre which shows any film other than theirs. This means independent films can't be shown in a theatre unless that theatre is willing to forgo _all_ Hollywood films, including all the big blockbusters. That's why you only find small, individually-owned art houses showing independent film, and they generally struggle to survive. "Distribution" really amounts to arbitrage, pure capitalist parasitism which turns the industry on its head, with films (or comics) being made to serve the profit of middle-men rather than serving the art itself or even the general public.
The theater I work and have been there for 12 years has independent films all the time, we even host our counties independent film festival once a year. We still get the big blockbusters movies. Theaters are not required to get every Hollywood movie. The only time they are is if it is stated like if you want movie A when it comes out in 2 months you must take movie B when it comes out next month and have it for at least 3 weeks. The reason art houses struggle to survive is cause they don't have enough screens to get enough movies and have to rely on the independent films because they can't have the same two Hollywood movies for 6 weeks if the contract states that. Big movie theater chains also all the time play non Hollywood movies too, so I really don't know where you got your info.
+Thomas Signer There have been hundreds of articles and books written about the monopolistic practices of Hollywood film distributors. I just did a web search and found dozens of newspaper and magazine articles about it, mostly in non-US publications. It's possible film distribution may work the way you describe in the US, but I know for a fact that in Canada, theatres are required to lock into a specific distributor, and that comes with the condition that they do not show any other films. It's been a long-standing problem dating back decades. And when you refer to "independent," don't mistake it with Hollywood's so-called "indie divisions" like Vantage and Miramax, which are still owned by the Hollywood studios. The distributors give theatres a Hobson's choice of more mainstream and "indie" films, but all of them originate from the same studios. Genuinely independent films are locked out. The distributors won't work with a theatre which screens independent films.
The entitled elite treating everyone else like lower functioning cogs.... this fits communism too. Regardless of what system wicked leaders use as a tool, whether it be a monarchy...etc... there will be the same spirit of oppression and tyranny behind all of them, if the authority figures that are running those systems are corrupt people.
Oh they have independent movie makers though. They are mostly shills for Hollywood like Michael Moore. If you make an anti trump movie I guarantee Hollywood will take it.
"The film distributors maintain a monopoly by locking out any theatre which shows any film other than theirs. This means independent films can't be shown in a theatre unless that theatre is willing to forgo all Hollywood films, including all the big blockbusters." Where did you see that? What are your sources? " "Distribution" really amounts to arbitrage, pure capitalist parasitism which turns the industry on its head, with films (or comics) being made to serve the profit of middle-men rather than serving the art itself or even the general public." You get that someone still has to get the movies from the studio to the theaters, don't you?
A good reference for the comic industry is SF Debris's miniseries "Rise and Fall of the Comic Empire". It is about 14 episodes or so and he goes into a lot of the 80s and 90s trends that drove the Comic Market. He doesn't really go into Distribution much, but it is a good watch.
He states that Mike Gruenwald after writing Capt America for ten years read the first Rob Liefeld Captain America comic, and despite being a healthy athletic man in his mid 50s who ran every day, he died of a heart attack after seeing Liefeld's first art and script. Yes Liefeld art was that bad.
Yeah, and it seems like he has such a backlog of reviews, that he can't get to newer Sci Fi like Stranger Things or the Expanse. I do enjoy his before the movie reviews too. His George Lucas making of the original trilogy review is also top notch.
You touched on something briefly here, Chris, that I think deserved follow-up: Distribution used to get in new readers because of the basic ubiquity of comics, as you said. They were available almost EVERYWHERE, and thereby gained new readers all the time. With the loss of newsstand/grocery store/drug store/convenience store distribution, almost no new readers come in today. Add to that the ridiculous current pricing, as you mentioned, and you have the currently moribund, if not downright terminal industry you have now. Comics need to do more than address the pricing, they HAVE to get wider distribution again somehow.
I agree...if i saw a comic at the grocery store I'd probably buy it like I used to, as a matter of fact, they had some small collection of books like Avengers and X men, Archie that had multiple issues spanning the years of each title in colour and I bought it , had about 6 or 7 issues in each , just for the read and then gave it to my kids ..it as about half the cover size of regular comic book like a digest
Comics are NOT struggling - if look at the numbers juvenile and/or manga are doing very well Its the "superhero" comic book publishers which are struggling
basically yess--- all that.Toss on a current predilection for the characters who are (to my knowledge) barely sparking interest as they are, the desperate attempt to update/grade/etc the characters; altering their ethnicity, their gender and god knows what else. I used to resist the notion that the mainstream publishers had gone 'woke' but I'm seeing mounting evidence that it seems to be the case. I can't confirm that it's true; all I know is that DC and Marvel's output currently simply doesn't appeal much to me at all.
I think it also doesn’t help that many of them are long running stories/characters with seemingly no easy path to begin at, where as at least in my generation (tho probably not exclusively), many of us are more anal about where to start off if we’re gonna get into a series. Like, why bother going into seemingly the first thousandth issue of Batman or Spider-Man from way back when when you can just start at their movie adaptations? I think it also explains why manga and graphic novels have gotten arguably more popular in recent years: Most manga series tend to have a more easy-to-follow beginning to end, with rarely any crazy off shoots or extra more that you now need to pay extra attention to. Graphic novels also tend to be either short length series themselves (like Maus) or even under one singular book (like Fun House). I also theorize that kids books alone have actually gotten so much better over the years that they’ve basically made comics less appealing as they might’ve been before. Like, what did kids read in the 50’s, Dick and Jane? Definitely not as interesting as what they’d probably rather read. My generation had stuff like Diary of a Wimpy Kid, American Girl, Goosebumps, Captain Underpants, Big Nate, etc,., books that are a lot more fun to read to kids, yet also don’t really entice them to find alternative reading material for them in the same way as comics were way back when (or at least the comics from Marvel & DC that come out nowadays).
I was buying them up to like 1980, and we used to go everywhere to try to find them. It was so easy to miss an issue you were collecting, because no one place ever seemed to stock the same comic all the way through. Then buying a direct subscription, from Marvel at least, always gave you the bent issue, which we all hated. I think my first and last subscription was to Marvel Team Up, and once I saw they were bent, it sure was a downer. But it was great actually getting something in the mail you looked forward to, even if it was damaged. Can you imagine being a really serious collector of several of them, if you didn't mind bent issues, and maybe getting a comic every week through the mail? Must had been heaven. Thing is, we were buying from stores all the time, so we probably were getting at least a comic a week. We used to hate grocery stores that didn't carry comics, and of course my Dad's main grocery store was one of those. He didn't mind us pigging out on comics, but being comic-centered, it was always a tragedy to go some place that didn't have any. I was always a big Marvel fan, though I would glance through DC like maybe at the barber shop. The closest Kroger to our house sold DC, but they had them all in packs of like four of five. So you could tell what the outer comics were, but not the inner ones. I bought one, only once, as the outer issues must had looked good. One of those I still have with me now, in very good condition. Why? because it's an issue of I think it's Teen Titans on the cover, but inside it is a Fantastic Four issue. I got rid of almost all my comics except for one small box, but I always kept that one special issue. I think it's the only DC, if you can call it that, which I have.
When I was a kid in the 2000s I was never able to purchase a comic book, I desperately wanted to read them but they were nowhere to be seen, I didn’t even know comic book stores were a thing, and when I found out, no way I was going to convince my mom to take me to one, and when I was actually able to go one time, i didn’t buy a single issue because they were too expensive. I’m amazed the industry is still alive tbh…
I would just hop on my bike & travel to the nearest grocery store or gas station. Comic book stores? That required getting on a bus to the next town, & my mom wasn't having that. To this day, comic book shops remain in inconvenient locations near nothing.
@@charles2241 my initial go-to locations to buy comics in the 60s were 'smoke shops' where cigarettes, magazines, and such were sold. Two in my hometown, and usually at most pharmacies there would often be a spinrack of comics, as well. By the early 70s comic shops were popping up everywhere and that was that.
@@chrisjuricichxl5 Sadly for me, if the comic shops were popping up, they sure weren't anywhere in the burbs anyway. They did get quite a few in the eighties, but that was too late for me. BTW, that Teen Titans I mentioned? Allegedly, there's only three of them like that in the world. I've seen one on the net which I think is phony, but mine is genuine.
I've wondered why some comic books had a wee square with a face or character on at the bottom of the front covers for YEARS. thank you for that bit of trivia!
The research is all mixed up and much of it is flat out wrong. His enthusiasm for his subject is there. Many dozens of facts presented are simply wrong
In other comments here I have already done a few examples. Scroll down a few comments and you will begin to find same. I have been posting comics business distribution history on my Facebook page for a decade now. Back in 1999 Jon B Cooke placed in Comic Book Artist #6 #7 25,000 word Secret Origins of The Direct Market via TwoMorrows.com which one can either find the issues and/or download the PDF of those issues. Plus LOTS of stuff else where for decades now. This fellow Chris Piers definitely has a lot of enthusiasm, but sadly, fails the factoid(s) test ie not doing proper homework research to tell the story properly I take it you never heard of me? (I am crushed)
@@RobertBeerbohm yes, he left out the epic Ike VS Icahn kaiju battle. From what i've read it seemed as if Diamond was always going to be the soul survivor because of Marvel's bankruptcy.
When I was a kid in the 60’s there were 3 stores in my home town with a total 8 of those comic racks you have in your videos. One store had 4 and the other 2 had 2 racks each. When I was 7 or 8 I talked to a guy that delivered comics to my home town. I saw him empty the comic racks at one store and refill it with new comics. I asked him what he did with the old ones. He told me that he rotated them to stores in other towns where issues that were left in my town had sold out. I noticed he had put some older comics in the racks with new ones he had to deliver. He kept a log of what sold where and to some extent how fast. Now I know why. The driver rotating the comics like that made it possible for me to get every issue of my favorite comics, Thor, The Incredible Hulk and Fantastic Four to name a few.
This is still one of my favorite episodes! It may seem like a boring topic, but it is really important how we get our comics. Thanks for breaking down this topic and making it interesting for all of us.
And still two years further along. Much like how streaming affects movies today (not that is can be directly compared). As boring as it is on the surface, logistics matters : )
Great Video. The anthology idea has merit. But with both Marvel and DC being owned by corporate overlords, I wonder if any modern creatives have seen the other risk. What we can call the Netflix risk. We know streaming is not simply strangling broadcast tv. It’s doing so for reasons that we don’t immediately think about. Current new shows aren’t just competing directly with other new shows. They are now competing in real time for viewers eyeballs with the full back catalog of every show ever filmed. The same potential exists for comics. Marvel and DC have VAST back catalogs. Say they were to put out a weekly anthology of Spider-Man. 5 stories on newsprint. Just reprints of classic books, and put them back into mass retailers. Put them in the checkout lines. Marvel and DC have vast back catalogs that they largely don’t get paid for. Back issues are third party sales. What happens when Dath Mickey figures out that it’s cheaper and easier to just reprint the vast amount of Spider-Man and X-Men stories for a new audience, then to keep dealing with the creepy creatives generating ever fewer sales of new Squirrel Girl every month? I think we are nearing that point. This is what DC’s recent Walmart anthologies were experimenting with. Marvel’s accounting year just ended (or ends soon) and rumors are it looks very very bad. Bad enough that they are already starting to trim sails and cut likely doomed projects like Chelsea Cain’s unreleased Vision book. A major shakeup is looming.
I know. Marvel and DC always have books where I notice creative is cutting corners. Marvel has many pages that are just shading and washed in a single color, or they don't have backgrounds. All comics need to work on dialogue and fight scenes though.
My introduction into comics was my first time in hospital. I was really into the Bill Bixby/Lou Ferrigno Hulk Tv show. My aunt worked in a drug store and she bought me an Incredible Hulk comic to read. I remember it took place in Israel and introduced Sabra. I was a comic book fan for life after that.
It should be note with Japanese comics (Manga) the series no matter how popular would end and then get collected into what is known as Tankōbon. What isn't popular is cancelled. It should also be pointed out that publishers like Jump may publish several of these cheep massive magazines and each one would be aimed at different group, Shonen for boys, Shojo for girls, Seinen for young man and Josei. It is one of the reasons I think they wounded up getting a hold in America and boomed in the nineties. Where American comic books were mostly full with superheros, sold in comic book stories were at least in the average american's eyes boys and sad stunted men bought them, manga had something for almost every body from ultra violent series like lone wolf and cub and Gantz to comic capers like Lupin the third and romance like Maison Ikkoku. Sadly now a days unless you are close to Barnes and Nobles you have to buy your manga on line, but such is life.
Stephen Nootens Most American comic book shops that I’ve seen have a Manga section of some sort, our local one Austin Books has about four shelves for different Manga books covering everything from Tezuka’s Astro Boy to Attack on Titan to Ito’s horror comics. Any shop that doesn’t have a Manga section is rather short sighted in this day and age.
Stephen Nootens The finite nature of most manga series outside of cash cows like DBZ (which I've long since stopped supporting), combined with the greater variety of manga created (which can span so many more genres than one would think) and distribution by demographic are all key differences in Japan's comic market vs the West. Manga magazines can also be found at convenience stores, train stations, you name it. And yes, it's amazingly socially acceptable to read them in Japan no matter your age or gender. There are some magazines only distributed at book stores, department stores and manga retailers, but there are so many such magazines there are probably many distributors as well.
Age and really gender is the big thing they need to crack in the west. You are just as likely to see a fifteen year old girl picking up Boys over Flowers or the latest hot yaoi title as you are to see see a teenage boy picking up Fairy Tail or the latest ho harem comedy and of course there's stuff like Ranma 1/2 that cuts cross gender. I also thing it doesn't help that their so few places for you to find comics in the use, and it should be noted how odd it feels in the places like a comic book shop. I'm a guy and I've been in a couple to pick up a comic for by brother used into a American comics and every time I feel like I don't belong. I can't imagine what it would feel like for a female who might be interested in comics going in for the first time.
Japan's anthology releases are actually screwing them over, because scanlators subscribe to them, translate them, & post them on sites where they can be read for free. Japan & South Korea do weekly comics fairly differently. Compare Weekly Shounen Jump & Monthly GFantasy to Lezhin & Line Webtoon. China & Korea have taken to webtoons recently, especially after the manhwa market crash brought on by libraries letting people read comics for free. They start comics off in long receipt-like pages & sell chapters individually online like microtransactions in a game. Only if a comic sells well enough will it ever get a reformatted physical release.
Great video Chris! Can't understand why digital comics aren't cheaper than full print comics. My only explanation would be that somehow diamond publishing has their hands in the pot and don't allow the comics to be cheaper. Little bit of a conspiracy theory, but it feels a lot like how console games are not cheaper digitally then they are in box. Either way another great comic tropes vid shinning some light on a subject that doesn't really come up often enough.
JMuise same issue with video game and as the price only temporally goes down during sales there are games from 5+ years ago still on sale for £30-£50 digitally which is annoying as by this point the physical copies are sold for about £5-£10 in video game stores even if they are "new" still
I seem to recall that when digital comics were first offered (at least from DC), the publisher purposely set the digital price the same as physical for the first 30 or 60 days in order to protect comic shops from a sales collapse. Because if sales collapsed and stores closed, the publishers would be in big trouble.
Why? Because they do not need to be. Publishers are making money at current prices, so the digital comics do not need to be cheaper... that market, mostly via Comixology, is successful. Amazon slashed prices on ebooks originally so that people would buy Kindles (AKA "Amazon terminals"). Once that market dominance was achieved, the prices became saner, and now Amazon uses Kindles to market directly to consumers. You browse on an Amazon computer, you buy on an Amazon computer. Apple did the same with iTunes. Sell the specially formatted songs cheaply, people with buy the iPods to listen to the music, and continue to buy from the Apple iTunes store.
I actually liked the difference of reading a comic on my phone/tablet... but then I saw most of the prices... lol no way am I paying retail for digital. For such a hands on medium it makes no sense. With an actual copy I can skip through go right to where I want it’s just so much better that I think digital should be 99c an issue and 4-8$ for GN’s . Until then I won’t bother. I mean I can get current as of last week/month comics for a buck each at my local.
The wall mart 100 pagers are usually kept by the sports and pokemon cards near the checkout lines. Not all stores are carrying them but I have noticed that over time they are showing up in more stores. One store I visited had them laying flat on the top shelf in huge stacks. Since no one can see what they are, people were not buying them. They do need to make these easier to find for this idea to work.
You sir are correct! I am a Wal-Mart associate and they really do need to make them more visible. And I do not buy them to resale for profit. There are times where I do work in the self check out and do see a few kids pick them up. Sad thing is not always does the parents buy it which sucks cause they denie the kids interest.
Nice that you mentioned comic shops allowing comics to age up, but this also prevents comics getting a new audience. A lot of comic collectors of a certain age received the first book from their moms buying them a funny book for being home sick from school or to keep busy on a long car trip. Those kids then were able to keep buying books off the comic spin racks with their allowance money. Now, no mom will go into a comic shop to spend a quick buck, and young kids are not welcome in the environment of middle-aged men, sullen gamers, and store owners protecting their valuable collectable figures and toys from sticky little hands. Besides, what eight-year-old had $4.00 for a comic book?
Plenty of kids could have $4.00 for entertainment. In 2018, kids have more than $4.00. A lot more. But no sane parent is going to give their kid $4.00 for a comic if money is tight. ... because video games are a lot better value. Video game consoles and video games are a much better value for the money spent. Yeah, an Xbox One is expensive at $250, but if the current generation of hardware lasts as long as the last, that's 7 years. That's literally less than 15 cents a day for ownership cost. On top of that, games are about $70 a title these days, if you get twenty hours of entertainment from it (pretty likely if it's a multiplayer title for a kid). It's pretty cheap per hour. A comic book? $4.00 for something full color glossy comic ... that he's done looking at (I'm not going to say "read" because these Marvel and DC "top shelf" titles are so vapid these days) in 15 minutes then becomes landfill or bagged in plastic likely to be never looked again? Those hideously overprice theater movies are a better value for entertainment time than a comic book.
On top of that, there just aren't many comics produced that are kid friendly. So, not only are kids only going to comic shops if taken by their comic-buying parents, but when they get there they are met with an entire wall of adult-themed comics and a tiny section for kids. I live in one of the biggest cities in the US and the largest comic shop in town has about six titles in their kid section.
HAHAHA! Go to your public library (or school library). You'll see numerous graphic novels suitable for kids. How many millions of copies has "Smile" sold? "American Born Chinese"? Actual comic books? Duck Tales, Marvel Super Heroes, Archie, Teen Titans Go, Scooby-Doo Team-Up (recommended for EVERYONE!), Star Wars Adventures, Ms. Marvel, Moon Girl, Marvel Digest, plus all the old Showcase and Essentials reprints that were aimed at kids originally decades ago. The good stores do market towards kids and parents. The Android Dungeons are dying out. And then there are webcomics, Comixology, Marvel's subscription service, Scholastic Book Fairs...
@@TorstenAdair Manga and anime have become much more popular and mainstream in the past 5 years, Shonen Jump will be more successful these days if they relaunch it today.
Those DC Giant collections are pretty good, but if they printed them as ashcans and made them a dollar I'd buy one every time I went to the grocery store.
@@derekbartonart7004 Out of curiosity, how much were the Archie digests and what year? I just saw Marvel now has sealed 3-packs for $9, and the DC Giants are still $5 apiece. DC is winning my interest on that front, but an ashcan digest would be even better. I don't care about color. They just need to put them in a hanging rack next to the tabloids in the checkout lane instead of hiding them on the kid's aisle. Had to stand next to some really weird guy and a bunch of 9-year-olds running in circles knowing everyone else was probably looking at me weird too.
I used to buy coverless comic books in the 80's at our mom and pop convenience store (this was in Chicago) -- they would package three to a pack so you never had any idea what would be contained between an issue of say, Superman, and Wonder Woman -- could be World's Finest or Sgt. Rock, always some lesser known title. Many times I would end up with duplicates, since there was no way of knowing what was packed between the visible comics. These always of course were sold for much less than cover price of the books.
If you go to the trading card section at the front of most Walmarts (where they sell baseball cards, Magic the Gathering cards, Pokemon cards, etc.), that's where those anthology comic books are now.
You are amazing not simply because your channel is pretty much one of a kind, but also because you tell this history with so little bias (barely any, and you even preface your opinions, separating them from the information you've historically documented). You are one of my favourite comic book channels, and I have learned so much watching so many of your videos. From your interviews with McFarlane and Remender, your studies of Ghost in the Shell, Moebius, and even Mignola's chiaroscuro, all towards the history of lettering and monopoly of comics. Fantastic, fantastic stuff, good sir.
that was pretty informative. it filled in some gaps in the comics history timeline for me. and thanks for showing off my comic book cover of you as Captain America Chris!
Excellent research! And well presented! About the margins of profit of drugstores and other retailers, all that is true, but I think that comics brought in clients (mostly kids) that also would grab some candy and/or soda. I know that, as a kid, when the nearest local convenience store stopped carrying comic books for a time, I stopped going there and went out of my way on my bike to get to another store that did carry comic books. I didn't mind as I was already doing a "round" of the local stores anyway to find issues that were either sold out or unavailable at some places. Anyway, I must not have been alone to do this as, after a few months, comics were back at the local store.
Dooood I found your channel 2 weeks ago and I absolutely love it!!!! Thank you for your thoughtful conversations about comics. I can't stop watching!!!!!!
Marvel attempted to do just that, but comic stores lost their minds when they announced it, so it was abandoned immediately. Marvel also played with the idea of running their own Marvel-brand comic stores, but that also fell through. It seems to me that there's no good answer for the comics industry's woes. Having only one distributor is good for publishers, they only have to print to meet Diamond's needs, but then Diamond holds all the chips and can screw the comic stores as they see fit because they're the only game in town. Going digital will kill both the stores and Diamond, but most readers like to collect, as well as support their store, which offers more than money can buy - a community of people with shared interests, where you can get together and make friends over comics. The bottom line is that print media as we knew it is dying, which means comic book stores are dying, and any attempt to try and save them is just treating the symptoms and not the illness. My town had 3 comic book stores for the longest time, and within the past 2 years, 2 of them have gone out of business. Yes, they sold other things, like most comic stores do nowadays, which just goes to show that the business model is strained, at best.
I really like 2000AD cause along with the epic length stuff like Apocalypse War or Necropolis they also contain a lot of single or double issue stories in between.
Dalvyn McBride I miss strong superhero heroines. Not this fake ask me about my feminism bs but in the 60s-70s they had great stories of female super heroes. What made them great? They were just like any male superhero and didn’t mention their gender once. They were in it to save innocent people or get revenge. I miss those great comics
You must have dream because There was not great super heroïne comics in the 60's, outside maybe Wonder Woman, all the female character in this book general dasmelles in distresse or jealous minx, look Invisible Woman in the first run of Kirby and Lee she barely do anything in the first year, even the reader complaining aboot her us uselessness! The 70's however.
My favourite story of Marvel trying to get around Nationals restriction on number of books was how they kept repurposing Moon Girl without changing the name; from a sci-fi, to a western, to a romance book (a MOON, a GIRL, a romance!)
I used to collect single issue comics, but about 15 years ago I started dropping out of that and moved slowly over the next few years into exclusively into trade paperbacks, and traded out my comic boxes for bookshelves. I kept my favorite books and made collections with binders, but I haven't bought a single issue comic in about 8 years. It forces me to be more selective, and they are definitely really expensive (bought the 6 trade paperbooks of the 60s Kirby Fantastic Four recently), but this is where I have landed in my love of comics.
If I were a comic publisher, I would publish as digital first at $.99 each. If readers wanted hard copy, they could wait for the print edition. Compilation of 6 issues could be an option through POD technology (Print On Demand).
Fantastic video. Very informative and very well researched. And yes, I think the distribution channels and their relationship with the big publishers is something most people don't know a whole lot about. I definitely learned a few things in this vid.
Richard McDowell the Code was the industry "regulating" itself. It applied mostly to the writers/publishers and served as a scapegoat to legally be able to blacklist writers and artists.
No, that is a myth. NOT because of the Code. Rather Goodman closed up his self distribution, went to American News Company. Then ANC closed up in 1957. Had NOTHING to do with the Code.
snakebitgoat The code put quite a few companies out of business ranging from Fiction House and the Simon & Kirby studio to Lev Gleason’s Crime titles among others and many writers and artists of that period cited the code as the main reason they decided to get out of comics altogether during that time, it by no means only affected EC as a company. The only comics company unaffected by the Comics Code at that time was Dell Comics.
cha5 Way too simplistic. Dell was over HALF the comics business in the USA all by itself. Fiction House gave up ghost late 1953. Same as Fawcett stopping super heroes in 1953 resurrecting with Dennis the Menace. Simon & Kirby's Mainline along with Andru & Esposito's MikeRoss plus LB Cole's Star Pubs, all self-publisher upstarts, distributed by Leader News, secretly owned by Harry Donenfeld, were yanked in 1955. S&K's stuff passed the Code confines. Lev Gleason's crime title was the only title affected. The word "crime" being made a bad word. It was the 1957 implosion of American News Company which was the nails in the coffin more so. All detailed in my forth-coming book Comic Book Store Wars.
Thank you for your video! It has now been cited as one of the sources used for research in my high school 12th grade economics project on Comic Book Market Survey.
dont forget the japanese anthologies have paper value, so in your local groccerie store, you can return 8 shonen jumps to get the new one for free. Since the shonen jump magazine has a paper value of 0.50, the same is not true for the manga volumes. Those are collectables you usually sell those in a local ''book off'' a gamestop type store that sells used books. They buy based on condition devided by 3. So a hypothetical 10 dollar book at a 8/10 condition will get you 2.40 dollars and the store is going to resell it around 7 dollars.
You just described Alterna Comics which put out new character driven limited series comics on newsprint which are then collected onto better quality trade paperback graphic novel format. The monthly issues are more affordable at about $1.50 each.
These are my suggestions for DC & Marvel (but mostly Marvel): 1) Pair down the comics you publish to no more than 10 of your top tier characters (Amazing Spider-Man, Iron-Man, Hulk, etc). Crossovers should be stopped as they are too confusing to fully follow. 2) Stop rebooting the franchises every 2 years with number #1 issues. This is just a sales gimmick to bump up sales. 3) Stop it with the variant comics. Its gotten to the point of stupid. Almost every issue regardless of a major plot point have multiple variants now. I think the latest DC Metal issues had over 20 variant covers. 4) Hire real writers who appreciate comics and who want to develop and perfect their craft. Most of the writers now just look at comics as something to add to their resume or a gateway to the studio business. 5) Find ways to distribute comics to kids directly. Give them away for free if you have to. Rebuilt the future fan base. Most of the kids and teens I know don't read comics. Obviously this is not an extensive list, just some of the things that come top of mind. You guys have any other suggestions?
Cody Wilson, great suggestion. Editor-in-chief Jim Shooter was on to something when he launched Epic. Some amazing creators like Frank Miller & Jim Starlin had some wonderful stuff published.
Slappysan it’s a matter of focus. Having dozens and dozens of published comics that nobody buys is pointless. Of course kids don’t drive comics. Old farts like me drive comic sells now. What’s going to happen to comics when we stop. Think of the long term sustainability of this art form we love so much.
You give the process at the ID level much more credit than it deserves. There was never much thought to it and often what they sold was almost random. Because comics were returnable (if they didn't sell, there was no cost to the sellers) and low-margin, they were just literally pounds of stuff that were sent out to retail locations. In the 1970s, month to month, I would often not see the same books show up in the same retail shops. It was the publishers who were really in control of things and the publishers who got the feedback in terms of the unsold/returns on particular comics. If the sell-through increased, they would increase what was sent out to distribution. The IDs were generally sleazy businesses which were unprofessional and untrustworthy. The other part of the system you didn't cover is that publishers could fight with each by increasing their distribution volume. In the early 1970s, Marvel and DC went to war with each other in distribution system. They both flooded the stands with as many titles as they could. The number of comics sold back then wasn't about the titles so much as it was about the proportion of the retail footprint that a publisher controlled. Often the larger percentage of the shelf a publisher had, the more they would sell. In the old days, (back to the 1930s), comics was as much about making money off volume as it was about selling hit titles. A publisher needed a hit like a superman, but the big money was in using a title like superman to leverage tens of lesser selling books into the newsstands. Almost everything you said about the 1990s is wrong. The financial problems at marvel had little to do with its business. Marvel was one component in a much bigger machine run by Ron Perleman that was all financed with massive levels of debt. Capital Cities got in trouble in part because they were investing in comics as well as filling orders for shops. As far as the comments at the end, retailing in *general* is in serious trouble. Retail book selling (stores) is in just as bad a trouble as comics shops. No matter what is done, comics shops are no longer a viable way to sell anything. Reforms could make things slightly better. Diamond, as a distributor, is taking a far higher percentage of the total sale price than the services they offer justify. Comixology is just bad all the way around. They take an obscene amount of money off the top and are in their own way worse than Diamond. There needs (badly) to be a better digital distribution system. But the other problem with digital is that the big companies refuse to undercut the comics shops through digital. In my opinion, the future is weekly manga-style comics either in anthology or digital form combined with colored trade paperbacks that follow on an individual title basis every six months.The key issue that forces the change is shipping. Nobody can afford to ship individual comics from an online retailer. But TPBs can be shipped as online products in a reasonable way. As well, anthologies could be shipped.
When you dropped that trivia about the UPC codes I immediately paused and looked over to the detective comics issues on my wall, sure enough there’s a little magnifying glass instead of a barcode Neat!
Wow I'm here early. Any plans to make a video about Frank Frazetta, or a Barry Windsor Smith video? Or even a video about Bernie Wrightson's Frankenstein (I know it's not a comic, but it seems like it'd be in your wheelhouse)
I've been reading and collecting since the fall of 1970, and I must say this was the BEST explanation of the history of direct distribution that I've ever seen! This is must see TV for all collectors and I thank you for the work you put into it sir.
I hope you reading this. I was thinking about your anthology idea, like Shonen Jump from Japan in the US. I think there is another alternative already on it's way. It's webcomics. people can read a lot great titles for free on the internet. and every so and so chapters the creators are selling high quality trades to their audience. with pages like webtoons and tapastic creators can get great deals for extra payments without giving any printing rights away. if you look at kickstarter, where a lot webcomics get funded there is already going a lot money though crowdfunding. some people are counting Kickstarter as a top publisher. the advantage for creators is that they can go around Diamond, have full control over their projects and get actually more money even with smaller printing numbers. Fans can read theirnfavorite titles for free and a lot are willing to pay for the printed versions. look at Sunstone from Top Cow. Sejic published his webcomic on deviantart and built there his audien e before he started printing it. Webtoons is already making exclusive deals with american creators. I think this is another possible model dor the future.
A good look at an aspect of comics a lot of fans may not understand. The Marvel / Heroes World debacle probably warrants a whole episode to itself. Nice job. An aside; I generally consider myself to be pretty educated when it comes to comics, and I had never heard the story about the fate of Capital's overstock before, so thanks for throwing that out there. I'm really starting to dig your channel.
Superb video. The research and effort you put into your videos shows in each and every one. They are professional produced, fun to watch, and I learn a gar darn lot from each of them, and I'm think I'm fairly knowledgeable about comics already. Yours is really the best channel on comics out there, and there are several very good ones out.
I think you left off the part where comic book shops held on to the unsold comics and sold them later at higher prices as out of print collectibles. But what is also missing here is the drop in comic book readers. My kids were more like to go to Game Spot and get a video game before they would consider a comic book. At one time top comics sold in the millions- those days are gone. Because those days are gone and the market is so much smaller, there is little likelyhood that anyone will challenge Diamond for distribution. The money is just not there like it used to be. Even a die hard comic book junkie like me now only reads them in Marvel Omnibus format which I can buy on Amazon. (I know the Amazon sellers probably get their merchandise from Diamond.) The world has changed and Marvel is now a successful movie company that can drop comics and no one will notice. P.S. Great Video. Taught me a lot. Thanks.
Back in the 70s & 80s, a comic that wasn't selling over 100,000 issues per month would be cancelled. And the top tier comics would be selling over 500,000 issues. Now 20,000 issues is considered a success. How did it come to this??
Of course not. The situation is a disaster. The bar for a successful comic is so low its laughable. It's actually a cultural tragedy. Comics were the cornerstone of pop-culture and this amazing legacy that took decades to perfect and refine has been pissed away.
The problems are manifold. I was born in 1982, and I'm often told that mine was the last generation likely to buy printed books. When I started reading comics, they were 75 cents. Then they went to a dollar. Then a buck 25. These increases were incremental and affordable. But then they started jumping a dollar or more, and those increases weren't very affordable. If you were pulling 15 titles a month at 1.50, but now they've gone up to 2.99, then you had to decide which 7 titles you were going to keep and which 8 titles you were going to drop. What killed the comics industry in the nineties was oversaturation and investment speculators. Golden age comics were selling at record highs, and you started seeing a bunch of articles in the Wall Street weeklies like "comics are a great investment". So a bunch of normal, non-readers were buying comics in droves hoping to make a fortune. And the industry responded in kind by printing as many comics as possible with as many gimmick covers they could muster. That's why when you print a million copies of Amazing Dumbass Number 1 with 20 different variant covers, you begin killing your industry. Comics also at this time ceased being very readable. Everything had to be dark, gritty and edgy or it didn't sell. People were tired of reading the same book being published under a billion different titles by a billion different publishers. Much like today, where every title has to be a PC, positive social justice message gayfest of trannies, people are reacting negatively and have stopped buying titles from certain companies (DC & Marvel). Another way the industry shot itself in the foot was by abandoning the kids market. 99% of the books being published by Marvel, Image and DC in the 90s were kid/young teen friendly. Toward the end of the decade, those same publishers decided to market to adult collector/readers and ignoring the millions of kids who bought the books. There's now been three or four generations of potential new readers that have been ignored in favor of adults, thereby killing the cycle of new readers that the industry relied on for a hundred years previous. The final nail in the coffin was when newsstands stopped carrying comics. Traditionally, it was where kids were introduced to the hobby. A kid now has no impetus to walk into a comic store unless already a reader, so again, no new readers entering the hobby. I doubt at this point the industry will survive in its present incarnation, so it will be sad to see DC and Marvel abandon their comics line. It will be like adults today when we say "remember when MTV used to play music videos?" In 10 years, we'll be saying "Remember when DC stood for "Detective Comics"?
Marvin Harrison Smith II Apparently you haven’t been reading because the books are nowhere near the level of bad they were in the 90’s. It’s not PC to have LGBTQ people and there are only a handful of title comics character that are.
Fantastic analysis. The seeds were planted back in the 90s. The industry never fully recovered. Don't forget, you also got a lot more story and art usually 28 pages for the $1.25 you paid back in the day. I don't see how Marvel and DC can currently make money from their publishing arm. I agree, at some point, Disney & WB will probably make a business decision and license out the writing, art and publishing of comics to a third party or completely stop publishing any new material. It was never that important to them anyway, all they ever wanted was the intellectual property rights to mine for their movie divisions.
it's pretty awesome that you're keeping up with the market because I think Comics like books are still here as literature where they were predicted they wouldn't be. And I think that reading is extremely important and yes even if it's from comic books. Good job. I like the fact that you pointed out the UPC Factor. The UPC is not really a difference in cost because it's just telling someone where they might have gotten it, but there's a subculture preference for no UPC and you can only get those at comic stores. Sometimes it come in what stores have to carry UPC because the publisher and so on.
Hey man, im from brasil and huge fan of your work. You have so much knowledge and a lot of charisma, you are by far the best american comics channel. Congrats and keep up with the amazing work.
I completely agree on your digital distribution comment. When publishers account for cost of delivery, this should be reflected in the price to consumer. I think there is some overlap with the music industry, and how they moved to this model of a $1 per song, or complete subscription service. Edit: Big fan of your channel, by the way. Great look into the logistics and supply chain behind comics - a change up from tropes, but relevant and very interesting!
Thanks for this video, Chris. It’s interesting to watch this as we are now just starting to get comics back into stores after Diamond shut its doors during the pandemic. Diamond FOR SURE is a monopoly, and their cutting off of product to stores has had its part in shutting the doors of some LCS permanently. The prices of comics are indeed insane. Before the pandemic, I was spending $20-30 a week on comics, and I was feeling the pinch, but wanted to read and support my LCS. Now, with everything I was getting not on release schedules and only a few making it to the store, I’m okay not spending the money. It’s a bitter pill we all keep taking, and it’s one I don’t think we’ll stop doing.
This is a solid essay ComicTropes, you filled in quite a few gaps in my understanding of the modern distribution model. Something that has been an issue for me recently is digital distribution which has remained quite overpriced. My theory is that this is so that digital sales don't undermine print sales at the LCS. Finally, consider the use of 'fewer' when referring to comics as opposed to 'less' Mr. Fancy-Pants Tulane graduate. *wink* *nudge*
Hey, you can find the Walmart Exclusive 100 page DC Comics at the trading card sections of Walmart. Usually they are at one of the check out lanes. I've got a couple and they are really neat. I hope you have good luck finding them!
Very said that in the early 90s when I got into comics, there was a ton of available comics everywhere. Even walmart had 5 pack vintages. Now it's a novelty item it seems. I miss grocery store comics
"Comic books are never gonna go away..." I'll take that bet! The product the big three are putting out are less than worthless. There are so many creative people, stories and character who have been kept out of the market by the monopolistic practices of Diamond... and for that reason, alone, they deserve to go bust. And they will.
This was such a great, informed video! You got across the distribution issues very well and very quickly. And you had some info I hadn't heard before, such as the variant covers being used as firefighter practice. That is absolutely hilarious and sad at the same time. And the big 2 are starting to go down that same path now. You also made a really great point about digital comics being cheaper that print comics, which should be obvious, but for some reason just hasn't been being done. And your ideas for newsprint, black and white, anthology books is great. Have you seen what Alterna Comics has been doing with their newsprint books and getting them in book stores and stuff? Oh, and the walmart comics are usually up towards the checkout line by the random toys and cards. They really aren't displayed at all. I don't know why they aren't in the magazine section.
Alterna Comics sells their books on newsprint because they believe that comics are over-priced too. Publishers in the 90's decided to move to high-gloss paper, and everyone has decided to stick with that type of paper for the most part. I think it makes comics look gaudy, but that's just my opinion. That type of paper has definitely driven prices up. I rarely go to the comic shops anymore. Most of my comic purchases are directly from the publisher's website, and only physical copies. I hate digital. It's not the same as owning a physical copy. Digital needs to die off, not be expanded upon, because digital comics are not good for the industry seeing how digital publishing is priced nearly the same as physical, which just shows the industry is greedy, and they're also hard to read. Comixology is owned by Amazon--another monopoly--so they can die off too. The majority of comic shops where I live only want to sell Marvel, DC, IDW, Dark Horse and Image. If it's from another publisher, like Dynamite, Zenescope, or one of the other dozen or so independent publishers, then they're relegated to a small portion, less than 2% I'd say, of the store or just not sold at all in the store. Perhaps some shops could start selling non-diamond distributed comics, but I don't know how they'd do in this current climate. If I had the capitol, and a savy business know-how, I would do it for sure. Something needs to change drastically because if this is the continued pathway, then comics will be dead soon because there's absolutely no competition at the moment.
Well, if you like paying 3.99 or more for comics, then you stick with high gloss paper. If you want cost to come down, then comics need to return to newsprint paper. It still looks great at a fraction of the cost. Last I saw, Alterna was charging $1.75 for their comics, and the books they have out are really good.
@@DoppelgangerShockwave They're $1.50 for regular issues. Double sized issues are $1.99 I just got 5 new Alterna books for less than $10 this past week. I've only read the number 1s. They were great! Ordered the back issues through Alterna and am waiting patiently for that package before I read the other titles I picked up.
You might argue that the items burned were just comics not books. And you might argue that they were not burned to stifle ideas. But doesn't the idea of any sort of creative content (even if it isn't that creative - which of course a lot of that stuff wasn't) being burned give you the chills?
No, because if you were around at that time then you would know that very little creative process went into those comics. Most were overproduced just for the speculation market and many kids bought multiple issues only to be left with unsellable collections. Also, they were awful.
@@makcity7850 I was around. And they were awful, just gimmicks to sell more books. But I'd rather there be some of them around as examples of what NOT to do.
Well I have a few long boxes in my attic full of them if you want to make me an offer and those examples are still being done today, so we didn't learn anything. 41 covers for issue # 1, anybody?
I noticed all this back in the day...but had absolutely no idea what was behind it so I just assumed it was normal. Knowing now what happened, I'm blown away.
look for the comment i made on this video. comicsgate is the new direct to consumer market. marvel refuses to hire creative people. they hire political science majors like sana amanat. that is what is actually killing comic books - well. at least the ones from the big publishers. let em burn.
I get the feeling that when you change peoples words NoJusticeNoPeace its because its projection and you feel only white people with beards can be creative. You are the only person here that presented this idea.
Very valuable information. Especially 4 any self- publisher's out there. Because with financing,writing,and drawing the comic, distribution is usually the last thing creators are thinking about.
Well there are new emerging comic book companies, that are going on indegogo to fund self published comics but Mark Waid at marvel intimidates publishers To not publish their comics, and would probably bully diamond into not distributing them either. Locked out by left wing political ideologues they will directly ship to the customer themselves and make their own network eventually. I just bought alterna comics off Etsy directly from alterna. Comic shops are dying through industry incompetence and politics taking precedent over business, so new models will emerge.
Look to how manga is distributed +Comic Tropes! They keep their comics where the readers are, the convenience store, grocery stores And they keep the product cheap on giant anthologies that cost a dollar more than a single issue of a western comic bit contains 5 times more content. I recommend reading Colin Spacetwinks' The Problem with Comics ;)
Hey Chris, after wandering around Walmart for half an hour waiting for an oil change, I accidentally found the DC anthology that you were speaking of. It was with the other magazines and a couple of other comic titles. I was confused at first because I thought it was one big Teen Titans comic (like the old "Giant Sized" books). But it had several reprinted stories, the Teen Titans book, a fun Super-Sons story and a few others. This is a great idea. I've been reading comics forever and I know what I like generally. But that anthology pulled me in because of the price and managed to turn me on to a couple of new titles(new to me) that I would have NEVER even looked twice at.
Here in the UK I actually came across a few comics in my collection as a kid that just had the title cut out, I just assumed when I was younger me or the previous owner just damaged them by accident.
I really appreciate your insights here. I've been self-publishing for a while and I'm considering distribution to, hopefully, extend my readership. Lots to consider.
Very prophetic considering the news of the day (Diamond will no longer distribute new comics until the Covid-19 crisis is over). Letting Diamond become the sole comic book distributor was a colossal mistake.
First of all, check out the views!! You posted this on the 16th (according to the time stamp above), I was late and only watched this today, the 17th, and there have already been almost 800 views. Fantastic, buddy!!! Oh, and if this has been discussed I apologize, but the DC 100 Page Giants that are in the Walmart stores are, at least in this area, are placed where the cards are set. So guys and gals, if you find yourself going into a Walmart, check their card section for a blue half box and grab at least one of the comics there to give to a young reader. Like Chris stated, we have to get the youth into comics. And heck, before passing the comic onto another reader, you can read the "exclusive" story inside each issue. Haha Anyway, great video!! Peace
NOT FIRST BUT EARLY! WOHOOO!thank you for shedding light into this period of comic book history. that explains why the first few copies of comics that I bought (around 1990) were old marvel issues with their front covers torn off. they were sold dirt cheap that's why I bought a lot of them over the intact ones. That happened here in the Philippines all those years ago. Did something illegal happen? I have no idea...
Thanks for the vid. I think you break down a lot of the history of distribution in a clear and concise manner. (Although leaving out the tentacles of organized crime in the old ID marketplace, which in itself would be a very interesting study.) You hit the nail on the head that the direct market saved Marvel and DC in the late 70s. It worked because it was a systemic solution to a systemic problem. Not just the usual industry fix of doing more of the same of what is already not working. It seems to me now that the direct market has painted itself into a corner for a variety of reasons - not just because there is only one distributor - but that the powers that be cannot seem to think their way out of the box of diminishing returns except by doubling down on the things that are already not working. (I would argue this is also the "let's reward failure" DC/Warner approach to their movie franchises... David Goyer and Zach Snyder, I am looking at you.) Sales of monthly traditional comics slipping? Double down on that failure! The solution must be to add more unnecessary titles with higher and higher cover prices and gee-gaw variants to offset fewer and fewer new customers. The marketing mantra seems to be sell more copies of the same books to the same customers. Like Batman? One book good book a month not enough? How about 10 crappy ones? One cover of an already too-expensive book not enough? How about 2, 3, 20, 50? How many will the same chump who buys my product swallow before he chokes to death? In my experience, the guy who chokes on buying his books does not usually scale back to a manageable level, he just stops buying comics completely and that customer is lost. (No sense of history in this business... Anyone remember the DC Explosion and Implosion, or the more recent 90s boom and bust cycle, Marvel Reborn, or New 52 even?) The traditional American comic format that has worked fairly well for a while looks to me like it is no longer an effective delivery system in the current media landscape. Factor in the diminishing buying power of middle class families, competition for time and money from other entertainment options, etc., and it looks like another perfect storm/bust cycle on the horizon. (I would argue that one of the reasons the monthly titles are floundering is that they do not deliver enough value for the price, especially since the reader no longer gets the satisfaction of a more or less complete story per issue, but maybe only a chapter of a larger story. As a kid in the 70s, it felt like I got enough of a story every issue to satisfy me - Spider-man beats The Vulture, for example - and then whet my appetite for more. It felt to me at the time that buying all the books from a publisher was like assembling a jig-saw puzzle and I did not want to miss any of the pieces. This certainly motivated me and my OCD leanings, anyway.) The current spiral of ever-increasing prices does not seem to offset the decrease in readership, and the publishers can't make up the difference with advertising. (This seems to be a problem across all magazines, not just comics.) It seems weird to me that comic characters are more present in the public consciousness than they have been since the Silver Age, but the traditional comics sell so poorly. (I wonder that if we looked at sales numbers from the end of the Seventies - at the time of the DC implosion, just before the direct market model was adopted - that they were actually averaging better sell through numbers across the whole line than now... Admittedly there are a lot more titles now with much higher prices, so maybe there are more dollars being generated on the whole, but I would guess that the individual books are less profitable, especially with a diminishing ad line. The pie has been cut too thinly.) I think a Japanese or European model of anthologies of Marvel and DC characters would be a good thing, if the companies could get those into newsstands and in front of kids again, but I'm not confident that is even possible in the current climate. I am interested to see what DC/Warner can pull off with their upcoming streaming platform. If DC/Warner can put together a platform that works like a cross between Amazon Prime and Hoopla and allows customers to not only stream DC's upcoming shows, and library of existing programming - but also gives subscribers access to a huge library of new and old digital comics for one affordable monthly subscription price - then DC/Warner may be on to something. This could be an even more efficient delivery system than print, and an easier way to grow the user base. (Theoretically this is a more profitable, and greener option, for publishers; as the bulk of printing costs would disappear and publishers would cut out the middle men and sell directly to the subscriber. It would also be a more affordable and customer-friendly option than paying for individual issues via Comixology, for example.) If projects were successful, publishers could then collect completed stories for print, which would give consumers at least the impression they are able to consume a whole story at a time. At least this would be some kind of systemic solution of a systemic problem, like the direct market was at the end of the 1970s and 1980s. (I don't know what comic shop owners think of the upcoming DC platform, but they may have reason to worry that if the DC platform is successful then they will loose out on monthly comic sales. However stores might benefit from increased exposure to the properties and books in general, and they could make it up in sales of collections and visibility via advertising. How would this kind of change affect the creative talent? No musicians seem to be happy with payments from streaming music platforms like Spotify and Pandora. Will Disney/Marvel and Warner/DC move to flat page rates and no royalties for digital content, and only royalties on printed collections? Who knows?) Thoughts?
This was very informative and so helpful. I am an independent comic book artist and writer. I published 2 books and working on my third. I'm using createspace with amazon to print and sell my books. They have matte covers and 7 by 10 so its a little different than normal comics. Thank you for the video, keep up the great work!
I loved how the direct market provided me a huge variety of comics and access to back issues found in comic stores, but the price jump that took place in late 80's to present day...
I put out a digest black and white comic Slam Bang the Explosive Comic Anthology from 1985-2008. In the late 80’s I had an investor and we put together 5 full size comic issues to start being distributed to comic stores. Unfortunately Diamond would not accept it as they did not take anthologies unless you were already putting out successful regular ongoing titles. We got a full page article on page 1 of Amazing Heroes Preview Special #170, 1989. Kim Thompson bashed the distributor for having the power to not distribute my comic series! (It was going to have some big name artists so quality was not the problem) Evidently my comic set off Kim and he let them have it with both barrels. My comic never came out on a larger scale but I continued to sell it directly, as a digest size comic, for many more years.
Their monopoly is crushing the smaller stores. I know because I run one. We are less likely to get everything we order. Those go to the bigger stores and it really sucks when something big with low order #s come out. Like Batgirl 23. I had to beg my rep to make sure I got copies in NM condition. I did but that leads to another problem...damages. All 3 of my batgirl 23s came in NM condition but must have aggravated the warehouse because the rest of my comics were damaged. Damages are a huge problem. I'll call them in and most of the time they'll ship a couple of weeks later and by then my subscribers will have gotten them somewhere else and I'm stuck with them. Cool if it's a key but more often not and I'm out a chunk of money. This is an endless cycle and every Tuesday I'm left in a fit of anxiety. Are they all going to show? Will they be damaged? And the worse will any of them show? Several times I've gotten just one box with mostly packing paper and just a couple of books AND THERE IS NO ACCOUNTABILITY. I can't say hey you guys are not living up to your end so I'm going with the other guy. The best I can do is find a rep from Diamond that I have a report with, I have, and pray every week. I could go on and on. Great video.
Our family owned a couple of record stores growing up (yes, I'm that old) and we had similar problems. The final nail in our coffin came when, as the industry was dying, our own distributor decided to go into retail in competition with us. They were selling their records at retail prices lower than their wholesale price to us.
That's why Diamond is a monopoly.
I'm really glad this video was put out because FAR TOO MANY so called "experts" blamed Image ALONE for the "comics crash of the 90s and not on the GLUT of mediocre comics that were cranked out by Marvel!
I first became aware of Diamond as an entity when the local comic book shop didn't get anything for 3 weeks, and explained this to customers via a large window sign reading "F*** DIAMOND (X-Men isn't in yet)." Until I asked them about that, I had no idea how narrow the pipeline to stores was.
@@raycearcher5794 I sincerely sympathetize with your LCS. As I mentioned in my reply it has happened to me. I hope bringing this to people's attention that they will understand what their LCS is going through and stick by them bc I have lost business over this. Maybe LCSs should unionize in sorts.
'Wow , the firefighter trivia is the perfect symbolism of the comic book industry in the 90's. It went up in flames.
Quiro the most sold single issue in comics ever was in the 90s lol
And it collapsed soon after, as a result of the speculator boom just falling apart
@@yourdad9928 And those issues ended up worthless and trashed. Some were bought back for pennies only to rot in the back room of comic shops. I know....I had to work a back room or basement. Comic shops owners will be buried in X-Men #1s in Hell.
It also is the perfect symbolism of the comicbook community in general... "Oh, all my precious weird interviews and variant covers burnt, just for what... Training firefighters..?? Siiin"
Fahrenheit 451 . Fireman buring books for real .
In the future, bookshops could become, basically, print-on-demand facilities.
Customer chooses from a digital catalog (potentially containing every known book ever written) and the book is printed right there and then.
Printing cost would be much higher, but there would be no need for distribution, no waste of paper or ink, no need of storing, and no unsold copies.
I like the idea of saving on paper
I don't see why that would be a viable option in the same world where digital books exist. It seems to me like people who want physical copies of books buy them for reasons other than "I just want a physical version of this Harry Potter book to hold in my hands."
Ooh, I like that idea! All the freedom of digital distribution, but you still get to visit a cool place and end up with a physical book.
The closest thing to that is Print-on-demand stuff like IndyPlanet, but you still have to order it online and get it through the mail.
I'd love to still go to a store that's full of comic-book paraphernalia, and probably still has shelves full of older comics and collectables, and have the option of selecting new titles from a digital device and watch them print and bind the book, right in front of me!
I could ask someone who I know who does printing and ask about pricing. I think this could be expensive. There also seems like there would be expensive licensing procedures.
@@qty1315 I like physicals because of a kind of control feeling that I have, digitals are weird and easy to loose where you are.
Growing up, I didn't really read comics. I was born in '94, so by the time I could read, you had to go to a dedicated comic store to find anything, and growing up in the country and suburbs, there weren't any comic stores around. I knew about a lot of comic characters from the Batman and Justice League cartoons and the Sam Raimi Spider-man movies, but no chance to get ahold of comic books.
I read a lot of manga, but pretty much every bookstore had a few shelves of that. My school had a subscription to Shonen Jump, so I could check it out from the library. I read like a grand total of three comics as a teenager, and that was just because the school library had copies of trade paperbacks of Watchmen, The Dark Knight Strikes Again, and the first few issues of the original Amazing Spider-Man.
Even today, I would need to drive an hour away to get to the nearest comic store. It's crazy how we have so many super hero movies, but if you don't live in a big city comics are basically unavailable.
This is exactly how Hollywood maintains a stranglehold on the movies industry. The film distributors maintain a monopoly by locking out any theatre which shows any film other than theirs. This means independent films can't be shown in a theatre unless that theatre is willing to forgo _all_ Hollywood films, including all the big blockbusters. That's why you only find small, individually-owned art houses showing independent film, and they generally struggle to survive. "Distribution" really amounts to arbitrage, pure capitalist parasitism which turns the industry on its head, with films (or comics) being made to serve the profit of middle-men rather than serving the art itself or even the general public.
The theater I work and have been there for 12 years has independent films all the time, we even host our counties independent film festival once a year. We still get the big blockbusters movies. Theaters are not required to get every Hollywood movie. The only time they are is if it is stated like if you want movie A when it comes out in 2 months you must take movie B when it comes out next month and have it for at least 3 weeks. The reason art houses struggle to survive is cause they don't have enough screens to get enough movies and have to rely on the independent films because they can't have the same two Hollywood movies for 6 weeks if the contract states that. Big movie theater chains also all the time play non Hollywood movies too, so I really don't know where you got your info.
+Thomas Signer There have been hundreds of articles and books written about the monopolistic practices of Hollywood film distributors. I just did a web search and found dozens of newspaper and magazine articles about it, mostly in non-US publications. It's possible film distribution may work the way you describe in the US, but I know for a fact that in Canada, theatres are required to lock into a specific distributor, and that comes with the condition that they do not show any other films. It's been a long-standing problem dating back decades.
And when you refer to "independent," don't mistake it with Hollywood's so-called "indie divisions" like Vantage and Miramax, which are still owned by the Hollywood studios. The distributors give theatres a Hobson's choice of more mainstream and "indie" films, but all of them originate from the same studios. Genuinely independent films are locked out. The distributors won't work with a theatre which screens independent films.
The entitled elite treating everyone else like lower functioning cogs.... this fits communism too. Regardless of what system wicked leaders use as a tool, whether it be a monarchy...etc... there will be the same spirit of oppression and tyranny behind all of them, if the authority figures that are running those systems are corrupt people.
Oh they have independent movie makers though. They are mostly shills for Hollywood like Michael Moore. If you make an anti trump movie I guarantee Hollywood will take it.
"The film distributors maintain a monopoly by locking out any theatre which shows any film other than theirs. This means independent films can't be shown in a theatre unless that theatre is willing to forgo all Hollywood films, including all the big blockbusters." Where did you see that? What are your sources? " "Distribution" really amounts to arbitrage, pure capitalist parasitism which turns the industry on its head, with films (or comics) being made to serve the profit of middle-men rather than serving the art itself or even the general public." You get that someone still has to get the movies from the studio to the theaters, don't you?
A good reference for the comic industry is SF Debris's miniseries "Rise and Fall of the Comic Empire". It is about 14 episodes or so and he goes into a lot of the 80s and 90s trends that drove the Comic Market. He doesn't really go into Distribution much, but it is a good watch.
Thanks LS Greger. Will definitely check it out.
He states that Mike Gruenwald after writing Capt America for ten years read the first Rob Liefeld Captain America comic, and despite being a healthy athletic man in his mid 50s who ran every day, he died of a heart attack after seeing Liefeld's first art and script. Yes Liefeld art was that bad.
I rewatched that series a couple weeks ago, good stuff.
Yeah, and it seems like he has such a backlog of reviews, that he can't get to newer Sci Fi like Stranger Things or the Expanse. I do enjoy his before the movie reviews too. His George Lucas making of the original trilogy review is also top notch.
He actually goes into distribution a lot if I recall correctly.
You touched on something briefly here, Chris, that I think deserved follow-up: Distribution used to get in new readers because of the basic ubiquity of comics, as you said. They were available almost EVERYWHERE, and thereby gained new readers all the time. With the loss of newsstand/grocery store/drug store/convenience store distribution, almost no new readers come in today. Add to that the ridiculous current pricing, as you mentioned, and you have the currently moribund, if not downright terminal industry you have now. Comics need to do more than address the pricing, they HAVE to get wider distribution again somehow.
I agree...if i saw a comic at the grocery store I'd probably buy it like I used to, as a matter of fact, they had some small collection of books like Avengers and X men, Archie that had multiple issues spanning the years of each title in colour and I bought it , had about 6 or 7 issues in each , just for the read and then gave it to my kids ..it as about half the cover size of regular comic book like a digest
Comics are NOT struggling - if look at the numbers juvenile and/or manga are doing very well
Its the "superhero" comic book publishers which are struggling
basically yess--- all that.Toss on a current predilection for the characters who are (to my knowledge) barely sparking interest as they are, the desperate attempt to update/grade/etc the characters; altering their ethnicity, their gender and god knows what else. I used to resist the notion that the mainstream publishers had gone 'woke' but I'm seeing mounting evidence that it seems to be the case. I can't confirm that it's true; all I know is that DC and Marvel's output currently simply doesn't appeal much to me at all.
I think it also doesn’t help that many of them are long running stories/characters with seemingly no easy path to begin at, where as at least in my generation (tho probably not exclusively), many of us are more anal about where to start off if we’re gonna get into a series.
Like, why bother going into seemingly the first thousandth issue of Batman or Spider-Man from way back when when you can just start at their movie adaptations?
I think it also explains why manga and graphic novels have gotten arguably more popular in recent years: Most manga series tend to have a more easy-to-follow beginning to end, with rarely any crazy off shoots or extra more that you now need to pay extra attention to. Graphic novels also tend to be either short length series themselves (like Maus) or even under one singular book (like Fun House).
I also theorize that kids books alone have actually gotten so much better over the years that they’ve basically made comics less appealing as they might’ve been before. Like, what did kids read in the 50’s, Dick and Jane? Definitely not as interesting as what they’d probably rather read. My generation had stuff like Diary of a Wimpy Kid, American Girl, Goosebumps, Captain Underpants, Big Nate, etc,., books that are a lot more fun to read to kids, yet also don’t really entice them to find alternative reading material for them in the same way as comics were way back when (or at least the comics from Marvel & DC that come out nowadays).
@@darkthorpocomicknight7891 yah, I think that's the bdest way to describe it--superhero books are on the fall...
When I was a kid, I bought all my comics at the Supermarket. I haven't seen a comic book at the Kroger in years.
I was buying them up to like 1980, and we used to go everywhere to try to find them. It was so easy to miss an issue you were collecting, because no one place ever seemed to stock the same comic all the way through. Then buying a direct subscription, from Marvel at least, always gave you the bent issue, which we all hated. I think my first and last subscription was to Marvel Team Up, and once I saw they were bent, it sure was a downer. But it was great actually getting something in the mail you looked forward to, even if it was damaged. Can you imagine being a really serious collector of several of them, if you didn't mind bent issues, and maybe getting a comic every week through the mail? Must had been heaven. Thing is, we were buying from stores all the time, so we probably were getting at least a comic a week.
We used to hate grocery stores that didn't carry comics, and of course my Dad's main grocery store was one of those. He didn't mind us pigging out on comics, but being comic-centered, it was always a tragedy to go some place that didn't have any.
I was always a big Marvel fan, though I would glance through DC like maybe at the barber shop. The closest Kroger to our house sold DC, but they had them all in packs of like four of five. So you could tell what the outer comics were, but not the inner ones. I bought one, only once, as the outer issues must had looked good. One of those I still have with me now, in very good condition. Why? because it's an issue of I think it's Teen Titans on the cover, but inside it is a Fantastic Four issue. I got rid of almost all my comics except for one small box, but I always kept that one special issue. I think it's the only DC, if you can call it that, which I have.
When I was a kid in the 2000s I was never able to purchase a comic book, I desperately wanted to read them but they were nowhere to be seen, I didn’t even know comic book stores were a thing, and when I found out, no way I was going to convince my mom to take me to one, and when I was actually able to go one time, i didn’t buy a single issue because they were too expensive. I’m amazed the industry is still alive tbh…
I would just hop on my bike & travel to the nearest grocery store or gas station. Comic book stores? That required getting on a bus to the next town, & my mom wasn't having that.
To this day, comic book shops remain in inconvenient locations near nothing.
@@charles2241 my initial go-to locations to buy comics in the 60s were 'smoke shops' where cigarettes, magazines, and such were sold. Two in my hometown, and usually at most pharmacies there would often be a spinrack of comics, as well. By the early 70s comic shops were popping up everywhere and that was that.
@@chrisjuricichxl5 Sadly for me, if the comic shops were popping up, they sure weren't anywhere in the burbs anyway. They did get quite a few in the eighties, but that was too late for me. BTW, that Teen Titans I mentioned? Allegedly, there's only three of them like that in the world. I've seen one on the net which I think is phony, but mine is genuine.
I've wondered why some comic books had a wee square with a face or character on at the bottom of the front covers for YEARS. thank you for that bit of trivia!
This was exceptional work and research. More content creators should look up to you.
The research is all mixed up and much of it is flat out wrong. His enthusiasm for his subject is there. Many dozens of facts presented are simply wrong
Robert Beerbohm Pray tell, like what? If you have examples, give them.
In other comments here I have already done a few examples. Scroll down a few comments and you will begin to find same. I have been posting comics business distribution history on my Facebook page for a decade now. Back in 1999 Jon B Cooke placed in Comic Book Artist #6 #7 25,000 word Secret Origins of The Direct Market via TwoMorrows.com which one can either find the issues and/or download the PDF of those issues. Plus LOTS of stuff else where for decades now.
This fellow Chris Piers definitely has a lot of enthusiasm, but sadly, fails the factoid(s) test ie not doing proper homework research to tell the story properly
I take it you never heard of me? (I am crushed)
@@RobertBeerbohm yes, he left out the epic Ike VS Icahn kaiju battle. From what i've read it seemed as if Diamond was always going to be the soul survivor because of Marvel's bankruptcy.
When I was a kid in the 60’s there were 3 stores in my home town with a total 8 of those comic racks you have in your videos. One store had 4 and the other 2 had 2 racks each.
When I was 7 or 8 I talked to a guy that delivered comics to my home town. I saw him empty the comic racks at one store and refill it with new comics. I asked him what he did with the old ones. He told me that he rotated them to stores in other towns where issues that were left in my town had sold out. I noticed he had put some older comics in the racks with new ones he had to deliver. He kept a log of what sold where and to some extent how fast.
Now I know why. The driver rotating the comics like that made it possible for me to get every issue of my favorite comics, Thor, The Incredible Hulk and Fantastic Four to name a few.
This is still one of my favorite episodes! It may seem like a boring topic, but it is really important how we get our comics. Thanks for breaking down this topic and making it interesting for all of us.
And still two years further along. Much like how streaming affects movies today (not that is can be directly compared). As boring as it is on the surface, logistics matters : )
Great Video. The anthology idea has merit. But with both Marvel and DC being owned by corporate overlords, I wonder if any modern creatives have seen the other risk. What we can call the Netflix risk. We know streaming is not simply strangling broadcast tv. It’s doing so for reasons that we don’t immediately think about. Current new shows aren’t just competing directly with other new shows. They are now competing in real time for viewers eyeballs with the full back catalog of every show ever filmed. The same potential exists for comics. Marvel and DC have VAST back catalogs. Say they were to put out a weekly anthology of Spider-Man. 5 stories on newsprint. Just reprints of classic books, and put them back into mass retailers. Put them in the checkout lines. Marvel and DC have vast back catalogs that they largely don’t get paid for. Back issues are third party sales. What happens when Dath Mickey figures out that it’s cheaper and easier to just reprint the vast amount of Spider-Man and X-Men stories for a new audience, then to keep dealing with the creepy creatives generating ever fewer sales of new Squirrel Girl every month? I think we are nearing that point. This is what DC’s recent Walmart anthologies were experimenting with. Marvel’s accounting year just ended (or ends soon) and rumors are it looks very very bad. Bad enough that they are already starting to trim sails and cut likely doomed projects like Chelsea Cain’s unreleased Vision book. A major shakeup is looming.
I know. Marvel and DC always have books where I notice creative is cutting corners. Marvel has many pages that are just shading and washed in a single color, or they don't have backgrounds. All comics need to work on dialogue and fight scenes though.
My introduction into comics was my first time in hospital. I was really into the Bill Bixby/Lou Ferrigno Hulk Tv show. My aunt worked in a drug store and she bought me an Incredible Hulk comic to read. I remember it took place in Israel and introduced Sabra. I was a comic book fan for life after that.
It should be note with Japanese comics (Manga) the series no matter how popular would end and then get collected into what is known as Tankōbon. What isn't popular is cancelled. It should also be pointed out that publishers like Jump may publish several of these cheep massive magazines and each one would be aimed at different group, Shonen for boys, Shojo for girls, Seinen for young man and Josei. It is one of the reasons I think they wounded up getting a hold in America and boomed in the nineties. Where American comic books were mostly full with superheros, sold in comic book stories were at least in the average american's eyes boys and sad stunted men bought them, manga had something for almost every body from ultra violent series like lone wolf and cub and Gantz to comic capers like Lupin the third and romance like Maison Ikkoku. Sadly now a days unless you are close to Barnes and Nobles you have to buy your manga on line, but such is life.
Stephen Nootens Most American comic book shops that I’ve seen have a Manga section of some sort, our local one Austin Books has about four shelves for different Manga books covering everything from Tezuka’s Astro Boy to Attack on Titan to Ito’s horror comics.
Any shop that doesn’t have a Manga section is rather short sighted in this day and age.
Sadly the closest comic shop by me is short sighted.
Stephen Nootens The finite nature of most manga series outside of cash cows like DBZ (which I've long since stopped supporting), combined with the greater variety of manga created (which can span so many more genres than one would think) and distribution by demographic are all key differences in Japan's comic market vs the West. Manga magazines can also be found at convenience stores, train stations, you name it. And yes, it's amazingly socially acceptable to read them in Japan no matter your age or gender. There are some magazines only distributed at book stores, department stores and manga retailers, but there are so many such magazines there are probably many distributors as well.
Age and really gender is the big thing they need to crack in the west. You are just as likely to see a fifteen year old girl picking up Boys over Flowers or the latest hot yaoi title as you are to see see a teenage boy picking up Fairy Tail or the latest ho harem comedy and of course there's stuff like Ranma 1/2 that cuts cross gender. I also thing it doesn't help that their so few places for you to find comics in the use, and it should be noted how odd it feels in the places like a comic book shop. I'm a guy and I've been in a couple to pick up a comic for by brother used into a American comics and every time I feel like I don't belong. I can't imagine what it would feel like for a female who might be interested in comics going in for the first time.
Japan's anthology releases are actually screwing them over, because scanlators subscribe to them, translate them, & post them on sites where they can be read for free. Japan & South Korea do weekly comics fairly differently. Compare Weekly Shounen Jump & Monthly GFantasy to Lezhin & Line Webtoon. China & Korea have taken to webtoons recently, especially after the manhwa market crash brought on by libraries letting people read comics for free. They start comics off in long receipt-like pages & sell chapters individually online like microtransactions in a game. Only if a comic sells well enough will it ever get a reformatted physical release.
Great video Chris! Can't understand why digital comics aren't cheaper than full print comics. My only explanation would be that somehow diamond publishing has their hands in the pot and don't allow the comics to be cheaper. Little bit of a conspiracy theory, but it feels a lot like how console games are not cheaper digitally then they are in box. Either way another great comic tropes vid shinning some light on a subject that doesn't really come up often enough.
JMuise same issue with video game and as the price only temporally goes down during sales there are games from 5+ years ago still on sale for £30-£50 digitally which is annoying as by this point the physical copies are sold for about £5-£10 in video game stores even if they are "new" still
I seem to recall that when digital comics were first offered (at least from DC), the publisher purposely set the digital price the same as physical for the first 30 or 60 days in order to protect comic shops from a sales collapse. Because if sales collapsed and stores closed, the publishers would be in big trouble.
Why? Because they do not need to be.
Publishers are making money at current prices, so the digital comics do not need to be cheaper... that market, mostly via Comixology, is successful.
Amazon slashed prices on ebooks originally so that people would buy Kindles (AKA "Amazon terminals"). Once that market dominance was achieved, the prices became saner, and now Amazon uses Kindles to market directly to consumers. You browse on an Amazon computer, you buy on an Amazon computer.
Apple did the same with iTunes. Sell the specially formatted songs cheaply, people with buy the iPods to listen to the music, and continue to buy from the Apple iTunes store.
I actually liked the difference of reading a comic on my phone/tablet... but then I saw most of the prices... lol no way am I paying retail for digital. For such a hands on medium it makes no sense. With an actual copy I can skip through go right to where I want it’s just so much better that I think digital should be 99c an issue and 4-8$ for GN’s . Until then I won’t bother. I mean I can get current as of last week/month comics for a buck each at my local.
Comics are too expensive nowadays. No interest in collecting anymore.
R Ww
Back in the 80’s I could but a 2000ad weekly. Now its just too pricey. Comics are meant to be cheap entertainment.
Behold, the internet. They need officially and I mean very officially tell people where to pay to read comics online, to have some more support.
internet changed distribution which empowered the reader
Worst value for money out there, esp. since publishers discovered the 5 issue storyline gambit.
@@bashsibda6289 Wondering. If a cheaper alternative of the same new comic, but printed on stock newsprint paper would you buy it?
The wall mart 100 pagers are usually kept by the sports and pokemon cards near the checkout lines. Not all stores are carrying them but I have noticed that over time they are showing up in more stores. One store I visited had them laying flat on the top shelf in huge stacks. Since no one can see what they are, people were not buying them. They do need to make these easier to find for this idea to work.
They also need to put text boxes back on the covers so people actually know what's in the comic instead of these movie-poster covers.
You sir are correct! I am a Wal-Mart associate and they really do need to make them more visible. And I do not buy them to resale for profit. There are times where I do work in the self check out and do see a few kids pick them up. Sad thing is not always does the parents buy it which sucks cause they denie the kids interest.
@@jesusuribe6527 Yeah, they need to put them in hanging racks next to the tabloids so every kid can see them.
Nice that you mentioned comic shops allowing comics to age up, but this also prevents comics getting a new audience. A lot of comic collectors of a certain age received the first book from their moms buying them a funny book for being home sick from school or to keep busy on a long car trip. Those kids then were able to keep buying books off the comic spin racks with their allowance money. Now, no mom will go into a comic shop to spend a quick buck, and young kids are not welcome in the environment of middle-aged men, sullen gamers, and store owners protecting their valuable collectable figures and toys from sticky little hands. Besides, what eight-year-old had $4.00 for a comic book?
Plenty of kids could have $4.00 for entertainment.
In 2018, kids have more than $4.00. A lot more.
But no sane parent is going to give their kid $4.00 for a comic if money is tight.
... because video games are a lot better value.
Video game consoles and video games are a much better value for the money spent. Yeah, an Xbox One is expensive at $250, but if the current generation of hardware lasts as long as the last, that's 7 years. That's literally less than 15 cents a day for ownership cost. On top of that, games are about $70 a title these days, if you get twenty hours of entertainment from it (pretty likely if it's a multiplayer title for a kid). It's pretty cheap per hour.
A comic book? $4.00 for something full color glossy comic ... that he's done looking at (I'm not going to say "read" because these Marvel and DC "top shelf" titles are so vapid these days) in 15 minutes then becomes landfill or bagged in plastic likely to be never looked again? Those hideously overprice theater movies are a better value for entertainment time than a comic book.
On top of that, there just aren't many comics produced that are kid friendly. So, not only are kids only going to comic shops if taken by their comic-buying parents, but when they get there they are met with an entire wall of adult-themed comics and a tiny section for kids.
I live in one of the biggest cities in the US and the largest comic shop in town has about six titles in their kid section.
I couldn’t agree more
Good observation. Then again, there's the 1 buck comics bin of old issues.
HAHAHA! Go to your public library (or school library). You'll see numerous graphic novels suitable for kids.
How many millions of copies has "Smile" sold? "American Born Chinese"?
Actual comic books? Duck Tales, Marvel Super Heroes, Archie, Teen Titans Go, Scooby-Doo Team-Up (recommended for EVERYONE!), Star Wars Adventures, Ms. Marvel, Moon Girl, Marvel Digest, plus all the old Showcase and Essentials reprints that were aimed at kids originally decades ago.
The good stores do market towards kids and parents. The Android Dungeons are dying out.
And then there are webcomics, Comixology, Marvel's subscription service, Scholastic Book Fairs...
You're right , if American comics used Shonen Jump as a business model it would be more successful.
You mean, like Shonen Jump?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shonen_Jump_(magazine)
That lasted ten years in the U.S., then Viz moved to a digital version.
@@TorstenAdair Manga and anime have become much more popular and mainstream in the past 5 years, Shonen Jump will be more successful these days if they relaunch it today.
Those DC Giant collections are pretty good, but if they printed them as ashcans and made them a dollar I'd buy one every time I went to the grocery store.
R M I always wondered if Marvel & DC published a double digest in the grocery store like Archie did, would it lead to more sales?
@@derekbartonart7004 Out of curiosity, how much were the Archie digests and what year? I just saw Marvel now has sealed 3-packs for $9, and the DC Giants are still $5 apiece. DC is winning my interest on that front, but an ashcan digest would be even better. I don't care about color. They just need to put them in a hanging rack next to the tabloids in the checkout lane instead of hiding them on the kid's aisle. Had to stand next to some really weird guy and a bunch of 9-year-olds running in circles knowing everyone else was probably looking at me weird too.
I used to buy coverless comic books in the 80's at our mom and pop convenience store (this was in Chicago) -- they would package three to a pack so you never had any idea what would be contained between an issue of say, Superman, and Wonder Woman -- could be World's Finest or Sgt. Rock, always some lesser known title. Many times I would end up with duplicates, since there was no way of knowing what was packed between the visible comics. These always of course were sold for much less than cover price of the books.
It actually sounds kinda fun, like when when you buy magic cards or something and don’t know what you’ll get
Hey, I cant help but notice you look quite a bit healthier, and thinner! Great job c:
The slabbing plastic coffin gig CGC has been around almost 20 years now. "Collectors" have forgotten to read the comics
I wish everybody could read this. We are having the same problem with action figures.
If you go to the trading card section at the front of most Walmarts (where they sell baseball cards, Magic the Gathering cards, Pokemon cards, etc.), that's where those anthology comic books are now.
I can't remember how I found this channel, but this is my favorite video yet. Great work!
You are amazing not simply because your channel is pretty much one of a kind, but also because you tell this history with so little bias (barely any, and you even preface your opinions, separating them from the information you've historically documented).
You are one of my favourite comic book channels, and I have learned so much watching so many of your videos.
From your interviews with McFarlane and Remender, your studies of Ghost in the Shell, Moebius, and even Mignola's chiaroscuro, all towards the history of lettering and monopoly of comics.
Fantastic, fantastic stuff, good sir.
that was pretty informative. it filled in some gaps in the comics history timeline for me. and thanks for showing off my comic book cover of you as Captain America Chris!
Excellent research! And well presented! About the margins of profit of drugstores and other retailers, all that is true, but I think that comics brought in clients (mostly kids) that also would grab some candy and/or soda. I know that, as a kid, when the nearest local convenience store stopped carrying comic books for a time, I stopped going there and went out of my way on my bike to get to another store that did carry comic books. I didn't mind as I was already doing a "round" of the local stores anyway to find issues that were either sold out or unavailable at some places. Anyway, I must not have been alone to do this as, after a few months, comics were back at the local store.
BS research, actually. This guy is NOT an historian who knows the comics business.
At the time Chuck from Mile High testified for Diamond(mid-90s), Diamond was renting space from Mile High Comics. Probable not a conflict of interest.
Dooood I found your channel 2 weeks ago and I absolutely love it!!!! Thank you for your thoughtful conversations about comics. I can't stop watching!!!!!!
Here’s an idea. How about being able to subscribe to your favorite titles directly from the publisher right to your home like a magazine?
Marvel attempted to do just that, but comic stores lost their minds when they announced it, so it was abandoned immediately. Marvel also played with the idea of running their own Marvel-brand comic stores, but that also fell through.
It seems to me that there's no good answer for the comics industry's woes. Having only one distributor is good for publishers, they only have to print to meet Diamond's needs, but then Diamond holds all the chips and can screw the comic stores as they see fit because they're the only game in town. Going digital will kill both the stores and Diamond, but most readers like to collect, as well as support their store, which offers more than money can buy - a community of people with shared interests, where you can get together and make friends over comics.
The bottom line is that print media as we knew it is dying, which means comic book stores are dying, and any attempt to try and save them is just treating the symptoms and not the illness. My town had 3 comic book stores for the longest time, and within the past 2 years, 2 of them have gone out of business. Yes, they sold other things, like most comic stores do nowadays, which just goes to show that the business model is strained, at best.
This is by far the most informative video on this topic I've ever seen.
I'll be honest I miss stories that only took one issue to resolve the problem. A one and done sort of speak.
I really like 2000AD cause along with the epic length stuff like Apocalypse War or Necropolis they also contain a lot of single or double issue stories in between.
Dalvyn McBride I miss strong superhero heroines. Not this fake ask me about my feminism bs but in the 60s-70s they had great stories of female super heroes. What made them great? They were just like any male superhero and didn’t mention their gender once. They were in it to save innocent people or get revenge. I miss those great comics
@@williehawaii9967 lol sure man.
You must have dream because There was not great super heroïne comics in the 60's, outside maybe Wonder Woman, all the female character in this book general dasmelles in distresse or jealous minx, look Invisible Woman in the first run of Kirby and Lee she barely do anything in the first year, even the reader complaining aboot her us uselessness!
The 70's however.
I hste how rushed they can feel thst way, but don't always have a chance to grab every issue. I prefer omnibus volumes.
man love your channel. you teach me about comics and comic history that no other comic channels do.
My favourite story of Marvel trying to get around Nationals restriction on number of books was how they kept repurposing Moon Girl without changing the name; from a sci-fi, to a western, to a romance book (a MOON, a GIRL, a romance!)
I used to collect single issue comics, but about 15 years ago I started dropping out of that and moved slowly over the next few years into exclusively into trade paperbacks, and traded out my comic boxes for bookshelves. I kept my favorite books and made collections with binders, but I haven't bought a single issue comic in about 8 years. It forces me to be more selective, and they are definitely really expensive (bought the 6 trade paperbooks of the 60s Kirby Fantastic Four recently), but this is where I have landed in my love of comics.
If I were a comic publisher, I would publish as digital first at $.99 each. If readers wanted hard copy, they could wait for the print edition. Compilation of 6 issues could be an option through POD technology (Print On Demand).
Fantastic video. Very informative and very well researched. And yes, I think the distribution channels and their relationship with the big publishers is something most people don't know a whole lot about. I definitely learned a few things in this vid.
You are forgetting the Comics Code Authority during the 50’s. Half the titles in 1955 vanished.
Richard McDowell the Code was the industry "regulating" itself. It applied mostly to the writers/publishers and served as a scapegoat to legally be able to blacklist writers and artists.
Marvel comics almost went out of business due to the code.
No, that is a myth. NOT because of the Code. Rather Goodman closed up his self distribution, went to American News Company. Then ANC closed up in 1957. Had NOTHING to do with the Code.
snakebitgoat The code put quite a few companies out of business ranging from Fiction House and the Simon & Kirby studio to Lev Gleason’s Crime titles among others and many writers and artists of that period cited the code as the main reason they decided to get out of comics altogether during that time, it by no means only affected EC as a company. The only comics company unaffected by the Comics Code at that time was Dell Comics.
cha5 Way too simplistic. Dell was over HALF the comics business in the USA all by itself. Fiction House gave up ghost late 1953. Same as Fawcett stopping super heroes in 1953 resurrecting with Dennis the Menace. Simon & Kirby's Mainline along with Andru & Esposito's MikeRoss plus LB Cole's Star Pubs, all self-publisher upstarts, distributed by Leader News, secretly owned by Harry Donenfeld, were yanked in 1955. S&K's stuff passed the Code confines. Lev Gleason's crime title was the only title affected. The word "crime" being made a bad word. It was the 1957 implosion of American News Company which was the nails in the coffin more so. All detailed in my forth-coming book Comic Book Store Wars.
Thank you for your video! It has now been cited as one of the sources used for research in my high school 12th grade economics project on Comic Book Market Survey.
dont forget the japanese anthologies have paper value, so in your local groccerie store, you can return 8 shonen jumps to get the new one for free. Since the shonen jump magazine has a paper value of 0.50, the same is not true for the manga volumes. Those are collectables you usually sell those in a local ''book off'' a gamestop type store that sells used books. They buy based on condition devided by 3. So a hypothetical 10 dollar book at a 8/10 condition will get you 2.40 dollars and the store is going to resell it around 7 dollars.
You just described Alterna Comics which put out new character driven limited series comics on newsprint which are then collected onto better quality trade paperback graphic novel format. The monthly issues are more affordable at about $1.50 each.
These are my suggestions for DC & Marvel (but mostly Marvel):
1) Pair down the comics you publish to no more than 10 of your top tier characters (Amazing Spider-Man, Iron-Man, Hulk, etc). Crossovers should be stopped as they are too confusing to fully follow.
2) Stop rebooting the franchises every 2 years with number #1 issues. This is just a sales gimmick to bump up sales.
3) Stop it with the variant comics. Its gotten to the point of stupid. Almost every issue regardless of a major plot point have multiple variants now. I think the latest DC Metal issues had over 20 variant covers.
4) Hire real writers who appreciate comics and who want to develop and perfect their craft. Most of the writers now just look at comics as something to add to their resume or a gateway to the studio business.
5) Find ways to distribute comics to kids directly. Give them away for free if you have to. Rebuilt the future fan base. Most of the kids and teens I know don't read comics.
Obviously this is not an extensive list, just some of the things that come top of mind. You guys have any other suggestions?
Cody Wilson, great suggestion. Editor-in-chief Jim Shooter was on to something when he launched Epic. Some amazing creators like Frank Miller & Jim Starlin had some wonderful stuff published.
Lack of variety is not a good idea. Thinking kids drive comics (in comic shops) is....just incorrect.
Slappysan it’s a matter of focus. Having dozens and dozens of published comics that nobody buys is pointless. Of course kids don’t drive comics. Old farts like me drive comic sells now. What’s going to happen to comics when we stop. Think of the long term sustainability of this art form we love so much.
I would say most of the writers are fine but otherwise I totally agree with most of your points.
My local comic store owner was having the same conversation about this last week.
Diamond comics is the devil, especially when it comes to small business. They nearly pulled my shop under with their shenanigans.
I love this guys introductions.
I really appreciate the concise description of this part of comics history. A fantastic video. Thanks for all the work
You give the process at the ID level much more credit than it deserves. There was never much thought to it and often what they sold was almost random. Because comics were returnable (if they didn't sell, there was no cost to the sellers) and low-margin, they were just literally pounds of stuff that were sent out to retail locations. In the 1970s, month to month, I would often not see the same books show up in the same retail shops. It was the publishers who were really in control of things and the publishers who got the feedback in terms of the unsold/returns on particular comics. If the sell-through increased, they would increase what was sent out to distribution.
The IDs were generally sleazy businesses which were unprofessional and untrustworthy.
The other part of the system you didn't cover is that publishers could fight with each by increasing their distribution volume. In the early 1970s, Marvel and DC went to war with each other in distribution system. They both flooded the stands with as many titles as they could. The number of comics sold back then wasn't about the titles so much as it was about the proportion of the retail footprint that a publisher controlled. Often the larger percentage of the shelf a publisher had, the more they would sell.
In the old days, (back to the 1930s), comics was as much about making money off volume as it was about selling hit titles. A publisher needed a hit like a superman, but the big money was in using a title like superman to leverage tens of lesser selling books into the newsstands.
Almost everything you said about the 1990s is wrong. The financial problems at marvel had little to do with its business. Marvel was one component in a much bigger machine run by Ron Perleman that was all financed with massive levels of debt. Capital Cities got in trouble in part because they were investing in comics as well as filling orders for shops.
As far as the comments at the end, retailing in *general* is in serious trouble. Retail book selling (stores) is in just as bad a trouble as comics shops. No matter what is done, comics shops are no longer a viable way to sell anything. Reforms could make things slightly better. Diamond, as a distributor, is taking a far higher percentage of the total sale price than the services they offer justify.
Comixology is just bad all the way around. They take an obscene amount of money off the top and are in their own way worse than Diamond. There needs (badly) to be a better digital distribution system. But the other problem with digital is that the big companies refuse to undercut the comics shops through digital.
In my opinion, the future is weekly manga-style comics either in anthology or digital form combined with colored trade paperbacks that follow on an individual title basis every six months.The key issue that forces the change is shipping. Nobody can afford to ship individual comics from an online retailer. But TPBs can be shipped as online products in a reasonable way. As well, anthologies could be shipped.
When you dropped that trivia about the UPC codes I immediately paused and looked over to the detective comics issues on my wall, sure enough there’s a little magnifying glass instead of a barcode
Neat!
This was an excellent episode! Loved the detail and enjoyed the history lesson!
I can't believe this channel only has 93k subscribers. It's so good. I have watched multiple videos multiple times.
Wow I'm here early. Any plans to make a video about Frank Frazetta, or a Barry Windsor Smith video? Or even a video about Bernie Wrightson's Frankenstein (I know it's not a comic, but it seems like it'd be in your wheelhouse)
I've been reading and collecting since the fall of 1970, and I must say this was the BEST explanation of the history of direct distribution that I've ever seen! This is must see TV for all collectors and I thank you for the work you put into it sir.
I hope you reading this. I was thinking about your anthology idea, like Shonen Jump from Japan in the US. I think there is another alternative already on it's way. It's webcomics. people can read a lot great titles for free on the internet. and every so and so chapters the creators are selling high quality trades to their audience. with pages like webtoons and tapastic creators can get great deals for extra payments without giving any printing rights away. if you look at kickstarter, where a lot webcomics get funded there is already going a lot money though crowdfunding. some people are counting Kickstarter as a top publisher. the advantage for creators is that they can go around Diamond, have full control over their projects and get actually more money even with smaller printing numbers. Fans can read theirnfavorite titles for free and a lot are willing to pay for the printed versions. look at Sunstone from Top Cow. Sejic published his webcomic on deviantart and built there his audien e before he started printing it. Webtoons is already making exclusive deals with american creators. I think this is another possible model dor the future.
A good look at an aspect of comics a lot of fans may not understand. The Marvel / Heroes World debacle probably warrants a whole episode to itself. Nice job. An aside; I generally consider myself to be pretty educated when it comes to comics, and I had never heard the story about the fate of Capital's overstock before, so thanks for throwing that out there. I'm really starting to dig your channel.
Superb video. The research and effort you put into your videos shows in each and every one. They are professional produced, fun to watch, and I learn a gar darn lot from each of them, and I'm think I'm fairly knowledgeable about comics already. Yours is really the best channel on comics out there, and there are several very good ones out.
This video guy means well, but his research is BS bogus. MANY major errors
That story about the fire department at 16:50 is awesome. Thanks for sharing.
No way that Marvel is currently making money on comic books. And if they are, its by extorting comic stores and that will eventually dry up.
Why did you leave cap
Cap, why'd you nuke the channel?
Because I don't have time to make videos.
Good luck with whatever you do.
it's over it's going to Wal-Mart..
I think you left off the part where comic book shops held on to the unsold comics and sold them later at higher prices as out of print collectibles.
But what is also missing here is the drop in comic book readers. My kids were more like to go to Game Spot and get a video game before they would consider a comic book. At one time top comics sold in the millions- those days are gone. Because those days are gone and the market is so much smaller, there is little likelyhood that anyone will challenge Diamond for distribution. The money is just not there like it used to be. Even a die hard comic book junkie like me now only reads them in Marvel Omnibus format which I can buy on Amazon. (I know the Amazon sellers probably get their merchandise from Diamond.) The world has changed and Marvel is now a successful movie company that can drop comics and no one will notice.
P.S. Great Video. Taught me a lot. Thanks.
Back in the 70s & 80s, a comic that wasn't selling over 100,000 issues per month would be cancelled. And the top tier comics would be selling over 500,000 issues. Now 20,000 issues is considered a success. How did it come to this??
Of course not. The situation is a disaster. The bar for a successful comic is so low its laughable. It's actually a cultural tragedy. Comics were the cornerstone of pop-culture and this amazing legacy that took decades to perfect and refine has been pissed away.
Caligula Pontifex you can thank the internet & social media along with video gaming for the comic downturn!
The problems are manifold. I was born in 1982, and I'm often told that mine was the last generation likely to buy printed books. When I started reading comics, they were 75 cents. Then they went to a dollar. Then a buck 25. These increases were incremental and affordable. But then they started jumping a dollar or more, and those increases weren't very affordable. If you were pulling 15 titles a month at 1.50, but now they've gone up to 2.99, then you had to decide which 7 titles you were going to keep and which 8 titles you were going to drop.
What killed the comics industry in the nineties was oversaturation and investment speculators. Golden age comics were selling at record highs, and you started seeing a bunch of articles in the Wall Street weeklies like "comics are a great investment". So a bunch of normal, non-readers were buying comics in droves hoping to make a fortune. And the industry responded in kind by printing as many comics as possible with as many gimmick covers they could muster. That's why when you print a million copies of Amazing Dumbass Number 1 with 20 different variant covers, you begin killing your industry.
Comics also at this time ceased being very readable. Everything had to be dark, gritty and edgy or it didn't sell. People were tired of reading the same book being published under a billion different titles by a billion different publishers. Much like today, where every title has to be a PC, positive social justice message gayfest of trannies, people are reacting negatively and have stopped buying titles from certain companies (DC & Marvel).
Another way the industry shot itself in the foot was by abandoning the kids market. 99% of the books being published by Marvel, Image and DC in the 90s were kid/young teen friendly. Toward the end of the decade, those same publishers decided to market to adult collector/readers and ignoring the millions of kids who bought the books. There's now been three or four generations of potential new readers that have been ignored in favor of adults, thereby killing the cycle of new readers that the industry relied on for a hundred years previous.
The final nail in the coffin was when newsstands stopped carrying comics. Traditionally, it was where kids were introduced to the hobby. A kid now has no impetus to walk into a comic store unless already a reader, so again, no new readers entering the hobby.
I doubt at this point the industry will survive in its present incarnation, so it will be sad to see DC and Marvel abandon their comics line. It will be like adults today when we say "remember when MTV used to play music videos?" In 10 years, we'll be saying "Remember when DC stood for "Detective Comics"?
Marvin Harrison Smith II
Apparently you haven’t been reading because the books are nowhere near the level of bad they were in the 90’s.
It’s not PC to have LGBTQ people and there are only a handful of title comics character that are.
Fantastic analysis. The seeds were planted back in the 90s. The industry never fully recovered. Don't forget, you also got a lot more story and art usually 28 pages for the $1.25 you paid back in the day.
I don't see how Marvel and DC can currently make money from their publishing arm. I agree, at some point, Disney & WB will probably make a business decision and license out the writing, art and publishing of comics to a third party or completely stop publishing any new material. It was never that important to them anyway, all they ever wanted was the intellectual property rights to mine for their movie divisions.
it's pretty awesome that you're keeping up with the market because I think Comics like books are still here as literature where they were predicted they wouldn't be. And I think that reading is extremely important and yes even if it's from comic books. Good job. I like the fact that you pointed out the UPC Factor. The UPC is not really a difference in cost because it's just telling someone where they might have gotten it, but there's a subculture preference for no UPC and you can only get those at comic stores. Sometimes it come in what stores have to carry UPC because the publisher and so on.
crazy how many coverless comics I bought as a kid, never knowing what I was buying
Seriously.
Hey man, im from brasil and huge fan of your work. You have so much knowledge and a lot of charisma, you are by far the best american comics channel. Congrats and keep up with the amazing work.
The changes in comics availability that I've seen in my life suddenly make a bit more sense.
I completely agree on your digital distribution comment. When publishers account for cost of delivery, this should be reflected in the price to consumer. I think there is some overlap with the music industry, and how they moved to this model of a $1 per song, or complete subscription service.
Edit: Big fan of your channel, by the way. Great look into the logistics and supply chain behind comics - a change up from tropes, but relevant and very interesting!
"Funky Boy Blue #1"
Also known as "Superboy".
Thanks for this video, Chris.
It’s interesting to watch this as we are now just starting to get comics back into stores after Diamond shut its doors during the pandemic. Diamond FOR SURE is a monopoly, and their cutting off of product to stores has had its part in shutting the doors of some LCS permanently.
The prices of comics are indeed insane. Before the pandemic, I was spending $20-30 a week on comics, and I was feeling the pinch, but wanted to read and support my LCS. Now, with everything I was getting not on release schedules and only a few making it to the store, I’m okay not spending the money.
It’s a bitter pill we all keep taking, and it’s one I don’t think we’ll stop doing.
Ok, now that you've shown an issue of Star Reach you should tell the kids about it
Well done. As comic reader from the 80s and 90s who left because of prices, I found this information very interesting. Keep up the good work.
I personally blame diamond and there really bad distribution
Agreed!
Yep
Amazing video Chris! One of my favorite channels. You have set such a high bar. Thanks for the content!
You would be perfect to do a great history of comics series from beginning to the modern age.
This video guy has a LOT to learn. This video is riddled with many major errors
@@RobertBeerbohm like what?
This is a solid essay ComicTropes, you filled in quite a few gaps in my understanding of the modern distribution model. Something that has been an issue for me recently is digital distribution which has remained quite overpriced. My theory is that this is so that digital sales don't undermine print sales at the LCS. Finally, consider the use of 'fewer' when referring to comics as opposed to 'less' Mr. Fancy-Pants Tulane graduate. *wink* *nudge*
Hey, you can find the Walmart Exclusive 100 page DC Comics at the trading card sections of Walmart. Usually they are at one of the check out lanes. I've got a couple and they are really neat. I hope you have good luck finding them!
They have Batman and justice league at my local Walmart but it's just the same book every month
Very said that in the early 90s when I got into comics, there was a ton of available comics everywhere. Even walmart had 5 pack vintages. Now it's a novelty item it seems. I miss grocery store comics
"Comic books are never gonna go away..." I'll take that bet! The product the big three are putting out are less than worthless. There are so many creative people, stories and character who have been kept out of the market by the monopolistic practices of Diamond... and for that reason, alone, they deserve to go bust. And they will.
Nah
This was such a great, informed video! You got across the distribution issues very well and very quickly. And you had some info I hadn't heard before, such as the variant covers being used as firefighter practice. That is absolutely hilarious and sad at the same time. And the big 2 are starting to go down that same path now. You also made a really great point about digital comics being cheaper that print comics, which should be obvious, but for some reason just hasn't been being done. And your ideas for newsprint, black and white, anthology books is great. Have you seen what Alterna Comics has been doing with their newsprint books and getting them in book stores and stuff? Oh, and the walmart comics are usually up towards the checkout line by the random toys and cards. They really aren't displayed at all. I don't know why they aren't in the magazine section.
Alterna Comics sells their books on newsprint because they believe that comics are over-priced too. Publishers in the 90's decided to move to high-gloss paper, and everyone has decided to stick with that type of paper for the most part. I think it makes comics look gaudy, but that's just my opinion. That type of paper has definitely driven prices up.
I rarely go to the comic shops anymore. Most of my comic purchases are directly from the publisher's website, and only physical copies. I hate digital. It's not the same as owning a physical copy. Digital needs to die off, not be expanded upon, because digital comics are not good for the industry seeing how digital publishing is priced nearly the same as physical, which just shows the industry is greedy, and they're also hard to read. Comixology is owned by Amazon--another monopoly--so they can die off too.
The majority of comic shops where I live only want to sell Marvel, DC, IDW, Dark Horse and Image. If it's from another publisher, like Dynamite, Zenescope, or one of the other dozen or so independent publishers, then they're relegated to a small portion, less than 2% I'd say, of the store or just not sold at all in the store. Perhaps some shops could start selling non-diamond distributed comics, but I don't know how they'd do in this current climate. If I had the capitol, and a savy business know-how, I would do it for sure. Something needs to change drastically because if this is the continued pathway, then comics will be dead soon because there's absolutely no competition at the moment.
Well, if you like paying 3.99 or more for comics, then you stick with high gloss paper. If you want cost to come down, then comics need to return to newsprint paper. It still looks great at a fraction of the cost. Last I saw, Alterna was charging $1.75 for their comics, and the books they have out are really good.
@@DoppelgangerShockwave They're $1.50 for regular issues. Double sized issues are $1.99
I just got 5 new Alterna books for less than $10 this past week. I've only read the number 1s. They were great! Ordered the back issues through Alterna and am waiting patiently for that package before I read the other titles I picked up.
Thanks for the correction, Matthew. Much appreciated. :)
The only thing that's rubbish is your ridiculous comment.
From 1988 to 2020, inflation in the US averaged about 2.5% per year. Comic book price increases have averaged over 5% per year in the same period.
Thank you Fire Dept for burning all those bad comics, the world owes you a great debt.
You might argue that the items burned were just comics not books. And you might argue that they were not burned to stifle ideas. But doesn't the idea of any sort of creative content (even if it isn't that creative - which of course a lot of that stuff wasn't) being burned give you the chills?
No, because if you were around at that time then you would know that very little creative process went into those comics. Most were overproduced just for the speculation market and many kids bought multiple issues only to be left with unsellable collections. Also, they were awful.
@@makcity7850
I was around. And they were awful, just gimmicks to sell more books. But I'd rather there be some of them around as examples of what NOT to do.
Well I have a few long boxes in my attic full of them if you want to make me an offer and those examples are still being done today, so we didn't learn anything. 41 covers for issue # 1, anybody?
@@makcity7850
Lol, yeah I guess some people never learn. I think I'll take a pass on the boxes.
I noticed all this back in the day...but had absolutely no idea what was behind it so I just assumed it was normal. Knowing now what happened, I'm blown away.
What do you think about comics gate
Blackleg Melloi lmao yes
look for the comment i made on this video. comicsgate is the new direct to consumer market. marvel refuses to hire creative people. they hire political science majors like sana amanat. that is what is actually killing comic books - well. at least the ones from the big publishers. let em burn.
+Bryan Why do I get the feeling that when you write "creative people" you really mean "white men with neckbeards"?
i am waiting for my cyberfrog to be delivered to pakistan. lets see what happens
I get the feeling that when you change peoples words NoJusticeNoPeace its because its projection and you feel only white people with beards can be creative. You are the only person here that presented this idea.
Very valuable information. Especially 4 any self- publisher's out there. Because with financing,writing,and drawing the comic, distribution is usually the last thing creators are thinking about.
Well there are new emerging comic book companies, that are going on indegogo to fund self published comics but Mark Waid at marvel intimidates publishers To not publish their comics, and would probably bully diamond into not distributing them either. Locked out by left wing political ideologues they will directly ship to the customer themselves and make their own network eventually. I just bought alterna comics off Etsy directly from alterna.
Comic shops are dying through industry incompetence and politics taking precedent over business, so new models will emerge.
I ordered all of Alterna's back issues but want to support my LCS and am adding all future Alterna titles to my pull list.
Look to how manga is distributed +Comic Tropes! They keep their comics where the readers are, the convenience store, grocery stores
And they keep the product cheap on giant anthologies that cost a dollar more than a single issue of a western comic bit contains 5 times more content.
I recommend reading Colin Spacetwinks' The Problem with Comics ;)
Sjw and changing characters gender and race drove me out..I have thousands of comic books and have not bought a single one in 2 years..
Why, were there not enough, white males in comics for ya?
jalderink . You are too dumb for a reply..buzz off
So why did you reply ?
Hey Chris, after wandering around Walmart for half an hour waiting for an oil change, I accidentally found the DC anthology that you were speaking of. It was with the other magazines and a couple of other comic titles. I was confused at first because I thought it was one big Teen Titans comic (like the old "Giant Sized" books). But it had several reprinted stories, the Teen Titans book, a fun Super-Sons story and a few others. This is a great idea. I've been reading comics forever and I know what I like generally. But that anthology pulled me in because of the price and managed to turn me on to a couple of new titles(new to me) that I would have NEVER even looked twice at.
Go green, go digital.
Digital can never replace the feeling of paper, plus only works if your online.
Clay3613 Nope digital might work offline, if you download/cache it. I think I can see a future were you are allow to print a digital copy if you want.
Great video. Super informative! FYI the 100-page comics at walmart are in their baseball card/pokemon/collectible area near the registers.
Holy sh*t! Your research is amazing. Best comics youtube channel by far. Always interesting.
This is a really good video. I really hope this video gets seen because it's actually pretty important of a topic.
Here in the UK I actually came across a few comics in my collection as a kid that just had the title cut out, I just assumed when I was younger me or the previous owner just damaged them by accident.
I really appreciate your insights here. I've been self-publishing for a while and I'm considering distribution to, hopefully, extend my readership. Lots to consider.
Very prophetic considering the news of the day (Diamond will no longer distribute new comics until the Covid-19 crisis is over). Letting Diamond become the sole comic book distributor was a colossal mistake.
First of all, check out the views!! You posted this on the 16th (according to the time stamp above), I was late and only watched this today, the 17th, and there have already been almost 800 views. Fantastic, buddy!!!
Oh, and if this has been discussed I apologize, but the DC 100 Page Giants that are in the Walmart stores are, at least in this area, are placed where the cards are set. So guys and gals, if you find yourself going into a Walmart, check their card section for a blue half box and grab at least one of the comics there to give to a young reader. Like Chris stated, we have to get the youth into comics. And heck, before passing the comic onto another reader, you can read the "exclusive" story inside each issue. Haha
Anyway, great video!! Peace
NOT FIRST BUT EARLY! WOHOOO!thank you for shedding light into this period of comic book history. that explains why the first few copies of comics that I bought (around 1990) were old marvel issues with their front covers torn off. they were sold dirt cheap that's why I bought a lot of them over the intact ones. That happened here in the Philippines all those years ago. Did something illegal happen? I have no idea...
Fascinating stuff. I like the trade paperback idea- I prefer them, generally (getting a whole story in one go does it for me). Loving your work!
Thanks for the vid. I think you break down a lot of the history of distribution in a clear and concise manner. (Although leaving out the tentacles of organized crime in the old ID marketplace, which in itself would be a very interesting study.) You hit the nail on the head that the direct market saved Marvel and DC in the late 70s. It worked because it was a systemic solution to a systemic problem. Not just the usual industry fix of doing more of the same of what is already not working.
It seems to me now that the direct market has painted itself into a corner for a variety of reasons - not just because there is only one distributor - but that the powers that be cannot seem to think their way out of the box of diminishing returns except by doubling down on the things that are already not working. (I would argue this is also the "let's reward failure" DC/Warner approach to their movie franchises... David Goyer and Zach Snyder, I am looking at you.)
Sales of monthly traditional comics slipping? Double down on that failure! The solution must be to add more unnecessary titles with higher and higher cover prices and gee-gaw variants to offset fewer and fewer new customers. The marketing mantra seems to be sell more copies of the same books to the same customers. Like Batman? One book good book a month not enough? How about 10 crappy ones? One cover of an already too-expensive book not enough? How about 2, 3, 20, 50? How many will the same chump who buys my product swallow before he chokes to death? In my experience, the guy who chokes on buying his books does not usually scale back to a manageable level, he just stops buying comics completely and that customer is lost. (No sense of history in this business... Anyone remember the DC Explosion and Implosion, or the more recent 90s boom and bust cycle, Marvel Reborn, or New 52 even?)
The traditional American comic format that has worked fairly well for a while looks to me like it is no longer an effective delivery system in the current media landscape. Factor in the diminishing buying power of middle class families, competition for time and money from other entertainment options, etc., and it looks like another perfect storm/bust cycle on the horizon. (I would argue that one of the reasons the monthly titles are floundering is that they do not deliver enough value for the price, especially since the reader no longer gets the satisfaction of a more or less complete story per issue, but maybe only a chapter of a larger story. As a kid in the 70s, it felt like I got enough of a story every issue to satisfy me - Spider-man beats The Vulture, for example - and then whet my appetite for more. It felt to me at the time that buying all the books from a publisher was like assembling a jig-saw puzzle and I did not want to miss any of the pieces. This certainly motivated me and my OCD leanings, anyway.)
The current spiral of ever-increasing prices does not seem to offset the decrease in readership, and the publishers can't make up the difference with advertising. (This seems to be a problem across all magazines, not just comics.)
It seems weird to me that comic characters are more present in the public consciousness than they have been since the Silver Age, but the traditional comics sell so poorly. (I wonder that if we looked at sales numbers from the end of the Seventies - at the time of the DC implosion, just before the direct market model was adopted - that they were actually averaging better sell through numbers across the whole line than now... Admittedly there are a lot more titles now with much higher prices, so maybe there are more dollars being generated on the whole, but I would guess that the individual books are less profitable, especially with a diminishing ad line. The pie has been cut too thinly.)
I think a Japanese or European model of anthologies of Marvel and DC characters would be a good thing, if the companies could get those into newsstands and in front of kids again, but I'm not confident that is even possible in the current climate.
I am interested to see what DC/Warner can pull off with their upcoming streaming platform. If DC/Warner can put together a platform that works like a cross between Amazon Prime and Hoopla and allows customers to not only stream DC's upcoming shows, and library of existing programming - but also gives subscribers access to a huge library of new and old digital comics for one affordable monthly subscription price - then DC/Warner may be on to something. This could be an even more efficient delivery system than print, and an easier way to grow the user base. (Theoretically this is a more profitable, and greener option, for publishers; as the bulk of printing costs would disappear and publishers would cut out the middle men and sell directly to the subscriber. It would also be a more affordable and customer-friendly option than paying for individual issues via Comixology, for example.)
If projects were successful, publishers could then collect completed stories for print, which would give consumers at least the impression they are able to consume a whole story at a time. At least this would be some kind of systemic solution of a systemic problem, like the direct market was at the end of the 1970s and 1980s.
(I don't know what comic shop owners think of the upcoming DC platform, but they may have reason to worry that if the DC platform is successful then they will loose out on monthly comic sales. However stores might benefit from increased exposure to the properties and books in general, and they could make it up in sales of collections and visibility via advertising. How would this kind of change affect the creative talent? No musicians seem to be happy with payments from streaming music platforms like Spotify and Pandora. Will Disney/Marvel and Warner/DC move to flat page rates and no royalties for digital content, and only royalties on printed collections? Who knows?)
Thoughts?
This was very informative and so helpful. I am an independent comic book artist and writer. I published 2 books and working on my third. I'm using createspace with amazon to print and sell my books. They have matte covers and 7 by 10 so its a little different than normal comics. Thank you for the video, keep up the great work!
I loved how the direct market provided me a huge variety of comics and access to back issues found in comic stores, but the price jump that took place in late 80's to present day...
I put out a digest black and white comic Slam Bang the Explosive Comic Anthology from 1985-2008. In the late 80’s I had an investor and we put together 5 full size comic issues to start being distributed to comic stores. Unfortunately Diamond would not accept it as they did not take anthologies unless you were already putting out successful regular ongoing titles. We got a full page article on page 1 of Amazing Heroes Preview Special #170, 1989. Kim Thompson bashed the distributor for having the power to not distribute my comic series! (It was going to have some big name artists so quality was not the problem) Evidently my comic set off Kim and he let them have it with both barrels. My comic never came out on a larger scale but I continued to sell it directly, as a digest size comic, for many more years.