Marvel Cinematic Universe, Phase Three and BEYOOOOONND

[Scott Ruggels]

Bingo!  The 16 year old probably buys Manga at Barnes & Nobles

[Spence]

3 hours ago, Scott Ruggels said:

Sweet cast on YouTube has a good analysis of why Superhero Films don’t translate to comic book sales. 

 

He made a lot of good points, but ignored one of the tweets that nailed one of the biggest reasons.  To be fair it wasn't a planned video so he probably didn't even notice it.

 

"I think there are too many options.  If you are new to it & go to a CB store, there are 30 different series for one character. you have no idea which is good & then you have to buy 3-10 books to find out the ending. With chess you buy a board & find strategies online for free."

 

Manga avoids this because they do not have reboots unlike comics which seem to reboot every 35 seconds.

 

The other issue is that if a person watches one of the movies, it is virtually impossible for a non-comic reader to actually find a comic that actually reflects the movie.  Sweetcast hit the nail on the head when he mentioned a person trying to find a Daredevil comic after watching the movie. He mentioned a dozen names for writer's runs of which 90% were meaningless to me.  I actually wanted to find the Captain America I remembered after seeing First Avenger.  The books on the shelf at the local comic shop had the name, but they weren't anything near the superhero.  And when I tried to find out if I could order the storyline from the movie, they spent all their time trying to impress me with all the various versions and runs they knew.  

If I ask to buy/order something there are only three possible answers.  

 

1) Yes, we can order it and it will be $XX.XX

2) No, it is not available for order through our distributors.

3) Well, the movie doesn't follow the comic exactly but XX is as close as it gets.  

 

I left and never went back.

 

If I watch an anime and want to read the manga, I simply go find the Manga with the same title and start at volume #1.  

 

You cannot do that with movies because each comic character or team has 50 bizzilion different simultaneous comics as well as 75 bizzilion reboots and alternate timelines. 

Not to mention the stuff on the shelf is issue #10082447278 with #1 nowhere to be seen unless you wish to buy the super duper snazzy ultra collectors collection for mere cost of a small countries GDP.  Or for far too much money for anyone to spend just to see if they like something.  

 

When they release a movie, the comic label should release a TPB that contains the same characters (the same feel, not the usual blood splatter version that has replaced the superhero these days) and storyline.  And then continue to release the rest of the line in reasonably priced TPB's.  

 

Most, not all but most, of the successful supers movies have heroes being actual heroes.  Most of the comics I have seen in the few times I bothered to look in the last 10 years do not, have heroes being heroes.  Instead they portray the characters as anything but heroic. 

 

If you want new people to read comics, then they must be accessible.  Requiring a potential new reader to have to research decades of what if's just to have a guess of where to start simply means you do not want new readers.

[slikmar]

15 minutes ago, Spence said:

I actually wanted to find the Captain America I remembered after seeing First Avenger.  The books on the shelf at the local comic shop had the name, but they weren't anything near the superhero.

IIRC, at the point the 3 CA movies were coming out was the point when either Sam had taken over being CA OR it was the Hail Hydra one. Both of which are not what was being shown, especially the Hail Hydra, where Steve was willing to take down SHIELD to stop HYDRA.

[Spence]

28 minutes ago, slikmar said:

IIRC, at the point the 3 CA movies were coming out was the point when either Sam had taken over being CA OR it was the Hail Hydra one. Both of which are not what was being shown, especially the Hail Hydra, where Steve was willing to take down SHIELD to stop HYDRA.

 

Well, this is actually the perfect example of why comics are failing. 

 

The First Avenger fit right in with I and many others remember about Captain America the HERO and took place in WW2.  

And it was the version that could not be found on the shelf.

 

The rest of your post blew right past me.  I am guessing it is because I failed to understand your cryptic reference to California and Oregon.  I simply don't remember the other movies very well. 

 

I can clearly remember the first Captain America, the first Iron Man, Doctor Strange, Black Panther and Wonder Woman.  The rest of the movies I can remember them being OK at the time, but none of them stuck.  They simply didn't nail the character.  It may have been one of the many reboot/re-visioning of the various characters, just not the actual heroic version that made you anticipate the next issue. 

 

I had never read comics for real life, I get enough of that everyday.

I read comics for awesome and heroic adventures.

 

When comics abandoned that for being "gritty", "edgy" and "dark" I had to go find something else to read.  So I read Manga, Light Novels and RPGLit for my casual non-serious reads.  I have found a few graphic novels as well, but most of what I see here in the US have been infected by the Edgy/Gritty/Dark plague as well.  

 

 

[Old Man]

2 hours ago, Scott Ruggels said:

Bingo!  The 16 year old probably buys Manga at Barnes & Nobles

 

Ironically, there are three times as many FLCSes here as Barnes & Nobleses, as all but one of the latter have closed.  Either way, though, it's not super easy for kids to get hold of either type of media anymore. 

[Pattern Ghost]

I remember comic book racks in grocery stores, convenience stores, Stuckey's, gas stations, department stores . . . pretty much everywhere my parents drug me to shop, I had a spinning rack of four-color goodness to pester them to buy me. These days, not so much.

[Starlord]

I think it has far less to do with various business and marketing strategies and/or the quality and quantity of the comics and more to do with the Q and Q of everything else available to young boys and girls nowadays.  Video games (particularly online multiplayer), social media, and targeted streaming shows are more entertaining, more easily accessed and provide more bang for the buck IMO.  Unfortunately, I would never have touched a comic if these things were available back in my day.

[BoloOfEarth]

9 hours ago, slikmar said:

IIRC, at the point the 3 CA movies were coming out was the point when either Sam had taken over being CA OR it was the Hail Hydra one. Both of which are not what was being shown, especially the Hail Hydra, where Steve was willing to take down SHIELD to stop HYDRA.

 

9 hours ago, Spence said:

The rest of your post blew right past me.  I am guessing it is because I failed to understand your cryptic reference to California and Oregon.

 

I don't think he's referring to California and Oregon.  I believe he's using CA as shorthand for Captain America, and the OR was the word "or" but stressed (either that, or just accidentally capitalized).  In other words, I think he was trying to say "either Sam had taken over being Captain America or it was the Hail Hydra one."

 

[Spence]

Thanks.

 

But I think I am a perfect example of why comics are failing.  I read them in the past still find it far too confusing to try and find an entry point. 

 

I totally understand why people think comic store staff are messing with them.  You cannot get a simple answer to a simple question. 

 

Cover art no longer has anything to do with what is in the actual book.

 

There are no coherent accessible in one fricking place stories.

 

Heroes are no longer the subject, instead we have Bob the drunk/druggie/abuser/insert issue of choice that is denying/crying/whining/insert reaction of choice. 

 

I find it almost amusing in a sad way that the movies with the heroes being heroic are blockbusters but the current comic writers insist on focusing on non-heroic scumbaggery and then wonder why sales keep falling.

 

People don't buy comics because they are comics.  They buy them for the same reason they buy books and movies.  Entertainment.  Heroes overcoming great odds are entertaining.  Endlessly repeated scumbaggery is not. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[slikmar]

13 hours ago, Spence said:

I am guessing it is because I failed to understand your cryptic reference to California and Oregon.

not California or Oregon. left caps on to much. meant CA as Captain American and then the conjunctive "or".

[zslane]

That video was mostly trying to dissect why comic books don't benefit from something equivalent to the "Netflix Effect" which benefitted chess (in terms of renewed interest and popularity among the general public) after the success of Queen's Gambit. The central thesis is that it mainly comes down to the fact that the core activity in Queen's Gambit is playing chess, and you can easily come away from that with an interest in that activity. The central activity in superhero movies is, well, superheroics (if the movies did things right). Now, it is extremely common for people to walk out of the theater after an Avengers movie feeling a bit juiced up and ready to fight crime, or at least drive home more assertively. But neither reading nor making comic books is the central activity of superhero movies, and so you're not going to get a Queen's Gambit-like "Netflix Effect" that boosts the popularity of comic books from them.

 

However, along these lines, I don't quite understood why superhero RPGs have failed to find new popularity with the success of franchises like the MCU. An RPG is the closest thing you're going to get to being able to do what you see in those movies, and so if anything is going to benefit from a "Netflix Effect" it would be games like Champions. But that hasn't happened.

[Old Man]

1 hour ago, Spence said:

There are no coherent accessible in one fricking place stories.

 

This was the major stumbling block when I tried to get back into comics a few years back (when my kids were appropriately aged).  It was literally impossible to follow a story when it's smeared across four titles and comes out every week, or sometimes every other week. 

 

And I understand the constant complaining about grimdark non-heroic stories.  But my experience was that the heroic stories are in there, it's just a question of finding them in that fragmented landscape, when they get mixed in with characters that ought not to be in grimdark stories.

 

[Matt the Bruins]

Decompression of narrative is a big thing. It used to be, one issue had one complete story (and maybe a back-up story to fill a few extra pages), with maybe a few subplots continuing through multiple issues. Epic stories were told through maybe three issues. Now a lot of comics tell stories of basically the same essential import over six issues to fill out a trade paperback, with lots of filler pages of talking heads spewing multi-paragraph soliloquies. It's not as good a balance of content (though some character moments and dialog are needed to balance the action scenes and make the stories good, as Stan Lee famously proved in the 60s), and it grows boring. Particularly when you have to wait another month for the next couple of action scenes padded with page after page of monologues. I don't think it's coincidence that the trade market appears to be overtaking the single issue sales, since when packaged in that form readers can speed up the pace and skip over the dull bits if they want.

[Lord Liaden]

18 minutes ago, zslane said:

However, along these lines, I don't quite understood why superhero RPGs have failed to find new popularity with the success of franchises like the MCU. An RPG is the closest thing you're going to get to being able to do what you see in those movies, and so if anything is going to benefit from a "Netflix Effect" it would be games like Champions. But that hasn't happened.

 

My own theory as to part of the cause, is that movies and television shows are essentially a passive entertainment medium. All the story, the characters, the conflicts, the emotions, are laid out in advance and handed to us. At the end of it the entertainment is done, and we're left waiting for the next installment, if there will be one. We aren't really encouraged to use our imaginations to put ourselves into those situations and that world.

 

Granted, comics also hand us stories and characters. But IMHO the inherent limitations of a two-dimensional static medium encourages us to add the sounds, the feel, to interpret the subtext. We can also take as much time as we want to read a story, linger on a passage of dialogue or a panel to take it in and think of its implications, pick up an earlier issue and read how it relates to the one we just read. We participate more in the journey, which I believe encourages us to take up our own journeys.

[Spence]

47 minutes ago, slikmar said:

not California or Oregon. left caps on to much. meant CA as Captain American and then the conjunctive "or".

 

Yep... it was clear after BoloOfEarth pointed out the obvious to me

 

I had my head wrapped around the comic axel and it sputtered out .....

38 minutes ago, Old Man said:

  But my experience was that the heroic stories are in there, it's just a question of finding them in that fragmented landscape, when they get mixed in with characters that ought not to be in grimdark stories.

That is something that I am glad to hear.  The part were heroic stories are still there.  Somewhere, and apparently very well hidden.  But at least they still exist even if I haven't found them. 

[zslane]

37 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

We aren't really encouraged to use our imaginations to put ourselves into those situations

 

Do you feel that it is the need to actively engage our imaginations that serves as the barrier here? Because we aren't really encouraged to use our analytical minds to learn and master chess either, and yet Queen's Gambit nevertheless has driven countless people to try, or at least explore the possibility.

[Spence]

From my viewpoint here are the differences.

 

Person watches Queens Gambit and thinks "chess looks fun, maybe I should try it."

Looks for and finds chess set that has the same prices and board layout like the show. Finds rules that are just like the ones described in show. Discovers other people playing chess that is played just like game in show.

 

Person watches Supers show and thinks "this was based on a comic, I wonder if they are good too."

Goes online and gets thoroughly overwhelmed by the chaotic mess.

Goes to comic store "I just watched "Super Show" can you show me which comic that it is based on?"  and then flees the shop after their brains have turned to mush as the comic geeks argue over their favorite writers version of the story liberally salted with advice on what they should read instead. Without anything that answers the actual question, mostly because no one has any idea.

 

RPGs are worse because the few available are not ready to actually play.  You cannot buy Champs, M&M or Cypher at 3pm and have it at the table playing by the next day. 

 

 

[Starlord]

....or, again, they just play video games, some of which even feature the heroes they've just seen and nearly all of which provide instantaneous heroic and superheroic wish fulfillment.

[Ternaugh]

13 minutes ago, Spence said:

From my viewpoint here are the differences.

 

Person watches Queens Gambit and thinks "chess looks fun, maybe I should try it."

Looks for and finds chess set that has the same prices and board layout like the show. Finds rules that are just like the ones described in show. Discovers other people playing chess that is played just like game in show.

 

Person watches Supers show and thinks "this was based on a comic, I wonder if they are good too."

Goes online and gets thoroughly overwhelmed by the chaotic mess.

Goes to comic store "I just watched "Super Show" can you show me which comic that it is based on?"  and then flees the shop after their brains have turned to mush as the comic geeks argue over their favorite writers version of the story liberally salted with advice on what they should read instead. Without anything that answers the actual question, mostly because no one has any idea.

 

RPGs are worse because the few available are not ready to actually play.  You cannot buy Champs, M&M or Cypher at 3pm and have it at the table playing by the next day. 

 

 

 

When the distribution model changed from spinner racks everywhere to comic book stores, it all but guaranteed a reduction in circulation numbers. I've been involved in various parts of fandom for almost 4 decades, and I can't stand the "gatekeeper" nature of the denizens of comic book stores.

[zslane]

29 minutes ago, Spence said:

RPGs are worse because the few available are not ready to actually play.

 

True. But that doesn't seem to stop newcomers from watching Critical Role and then going out and buying some D&D books.

 

Maybe it would work if a binge-able superhero series showed up in which the superhero drama/action was framed by people playing a supers TTRPG, where perhaps the action you see is a live-action depiction of what is going on in the (ongoing) game. Viewers would see what playing a TTRPG looks like, ala Critical Role, while simultaneously seeing what TTRPG game action "looks like" in the imagination.

 

I dunno, I'm just brainstorming.

[Old Man]

1 hour ago, Spence said:

From my viewpoint here are the differences.

 

Person watches Queens Gambit and thinks "chess looks fun, maybe I should try it."

Looks for and finds chess set that has the same prices and board layout like the show. Finds rules that are just like the ones described in show. Discovers other people playing chess that is played just like game in show.

 

I can't be the only person who occasionally checks to see if his latent telekinetic powers have finally manifested. 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

 

When the distribution model changed from spinner racks everywhere to comic book stores, it all but guaranteed a reduction in circulation numbers.

 

 

Chuck Dixon explained this well.  He noted that almost every little kid who started reading comics did so because he saw the covers at a store or a spinner rack or on a magazine rack.  He also pointed out that NOBODY goes into a comic shop except people already very interested in and already reading comics.  You don't get new buyers there.  Going direct distribution only cut comic book company throats.

[Bazza]

15 minutes ago, Old Man said:

 

I can't be the only person who occasionally checks to see if his latent telekinetic powers have finally manifested. 

 

Try jumping from the roof. if you still can't fly, call 911. 

[Lord Liaden]

3 hours ago, zslane said:

 

Do you feel that it is the need to actively engage our imaginations that serves as the barrier here? Because we aren't really encouraged to use our analytical minds to learn and master chess either, and yet Queen's Gambit nevertheless has driven countless people to try, or at least explore the possibility.

 

As I indicated, I believe it's one barrier. Other posters have already ably delineated others. Like most real-world issues it doesn't render to one readily-definable cause.

 

Queen's Gambit illustrates (and glamorizes) playing chess. Superhero movies don't illustrate role-playing superheroes.

 

BTW I remember a big surge in interest in chess after the high-profile Cold War-ish televised Bobby Fischer/Boris Spassky match. Cultural fads come and go, but surrounding them in drama will pique the public's fickle attention for a while.

[Spence]

5 hours ago, Starlord said:

....or, again, they just play video games, some of which even feature the heroes they've just seen and nearly all of which provide instantaneous heroic and superheroic wish fulfillment.

 

Very very possible.  I may not be a video player, but I know an awful lot of them.

 

5 hours ago, Ternaugh said:

 

When the distribution model changed from spinner racks everywhere to comic book stores, it all but guaranteed a reduction in circulation numbers. I've been involved in various parts of fandom for almost 4 decades, and I can't stand the "gatekeeper" nature of the denizens of comic book stores.

 

I have always held the personal belief that this is one of the truths. 

But I don't have the resources to prove it.

 

I can say that the business model for the last twenty years hasn't been the one that brings the industry back from life support.