D.C. layoffs

[Mr. X]

Blood bath?

Did D.C. dig its own grave? Are comics in general dying? Manga says no. Manga is thriving right now.

What's going to happen to the shows? The animated movies? Are they too broke and messed up to enforce copyrights?

[Visitor]

Print comic sales have been in decline for decades, so companies are shifting to other platforms for sales.Right now they can make more money using TV and movies instead.

Copyright enforcement is easy by just publishing a limited edition using characters to retain the rights and prosecute anyone that tries to get around it.If there is one thing the large companies have it's lawyers to fight for rights.Just look at Disney over its characters like Baby Yoda merchandise.

[Danorian]

I'm olde school, but I remember the days when comic books were hero(ine) vs. villain of the month, and seeing what scheme the hero(ine) has to overcome. In the last decade, it feels like DC has tried to make every series have a multi-issue "event". OK, storywise it's nice to have continuity, but every hero(ine) doesn't need a cosmos shaking event in their series. Also, we can live with a year or two between "mega" events.
DC has kept foisting these "events" upon us, and I'm bored of them. And some are so convoluted you need several score cards to find out what's happening to your favorite character. Example is my character of choice-Supergirl. In Supergirl 36, she gets corrupted by "The Bat Who Laughs". Ugh. More Batman shit?! He's DC's Wolverine, and I'm sick of it!
We get a couple of HER issues as corrupted SG, but a lot of her action is elsewhere! And she isn't even cured in her series. You have to go to another to see her get fixed? And for extra fun, she isn't fixed as she gets daydreams and nightmares of her corrupted form as her series crawls to an end.
As for her tv series, I have commented in another topic on that here.
DC has just painted them into a corner, and fucked themselves.
For movies, ask and I will give my diatribe on it.
Sigh.

My 2 cents.

[Dazzle1]

I'm olde school, but I remember the days when comic books were hero(ine) vs. villain of the month, and seeing what scheme the hero(ine) has to overcome. In the last decade, it feels like DC has tried to make every series have a multi-issue "event". OK, storywise it's nice to have continuity, but every hero(ine) doesn't need a cosmos shaking event in their series. Also, we can live with a year or two between "mega" events.
DC has kept foisting these "events" upon us, and I'm bored of them. And some are so convoluted you need several score cards to find out what's happening to your favorite character. Example is my character of choice-Supergirl. In Supergirl 36, she gets corrupted by "The Bat Who Laughs". Ugh. More Batman shit?! He's DC's Wolverine, and I'm sick of it!
We get a couple of HER issues as corrupted SG, but a lot of her action is elsewhere! And she isn't even cured in her series. You have to go to another to see her get fixed? And for extra fun, she isn't fixed as she gets daydreams and nightmares of her corrupted form as her series crawls to an end.
As for her tv series, I have commented in another topic on that here.
DC has just painted them into a corner, and fucked themselves.
For movies, ask and I will give my diatribe on it.
Sigh.

My 2 cents.

You are right about every series being a multi issue and going over several different franchises.

The New Teen Titans were able to do 3-5 issue series that worked.

[batgirl1969]

I have and share with my older Step-Brother his comic book collection, in part how I became who I am Today, and I can't believe how expensive each new issue has become and how confusing it is to follow a story, when I read the old issues when I was younger it was easier(and seemed cheaper) than Today....too bad for the current and future generations who could gain what we have gained from these comic books....sad

[tallyho]

I have and share with my older Step-Brother his comic book collection, in part how I became who I am Today, and I can't believe how expensive each new issue has become and how confusing it is to follow a story, when I read the old issues when I was younger it was easier(and seemed cheaper) than Today....too bad for the current and future generations who could gain what we have gained from these comic books....sad

I'm confused... You never mentioned anal beads ONCE.
Who are you and what have you done with the real BG1969?

[batgirl1969]

I have and share with my older Step-Brother his comic book collection, in part how I became who I am Today, and I can't believe how expensive each new issue has become and how confusing it is to follow a story, when I read the old issues when I was younger it was easier(and seemed cheaper) than Today....too bad for the current and future generations who could gain what we have gained from these comic books....sad

I'm confused... You never mentioned anal beads ONCE.
Who are you and what have you done with the real BG1969?

LOL...well Today is my 30th BDay and I have officially been a Doctor for over 6 months now so time to be a classy lady who speaks not of these naughty topics like anal beads, bitch taming strapons, stainless steel anal hooks, hogties fullheadharnessed ballgags.....naughty naughty

[Visitor]

Events force the sale of more issues because otherwise you miss out on what is happening to understand the story. It promotes the sale of other titles that contain chapters in the story that are part of a popular title.

It's part of why I stopped buying because it got too expensive to follow what was happening when it was occurring less than a year apart.

[Dazzle1]

Most forms of entertainment: books, comics, movies, tv go on too long and the endings are not usually that good.

Somebody mentioned Anime earlier: Dragon Ball z went way too long. Should have ended with Bui.

How many book series have people read where you feel the author is milking for the bucks and the series should have ended.

[theScribbler]

[ivandobsky]

People can advertise and sell comics effectively on the internet via social media, crowdfunding etc now. I imagine much of the big players' business drying up is due to that. If DC want comics made with their IP it might be cheaper now to just commission an artist, rather than retaining them as permanent staff.

[Visitor]

The industry has been in decline for decades with more money being made from TV shows and movies using existing characters. Disney made more from its movies than any other media version.

[Lurkndog]

The industry has been in decline for decades with more money being made from TV shows and movies using existing characters. Disney made more from its movies than any other media version.

Disney is an odd example, as they have traditionally been a movie company first, with TV as a secondary medium. Historically, they didn't even publish their own comics. Those were left to third party licensees like Gold Key.

Nowadays Disney are publishing their own comics, but they are essentially merchandise spun off of the movies.

[Mr. X]

People say this is due to declining comic book market but that's not true. Manga is doing great. Foreign markets are doing great. And people like Shriver are doing great.

And Comics had this issue in the past with slumped sales and it was again due to poor writing and poor material.

Maybe these big companies need to just break up into smaller dev houses for the internet. I'm glad the Diamond publishing monopoly has ended.

[Lurkndog]

The American comics market has also been hurt by the direct sales system, which emphasizes comic book shops over genuine mass marketing. There are a number of problems with direct sales:
1) They simply don't sell as many comics
2) Comic book shops tend to go out of business at the first sign of economic trouble or a crash in the comic book market
3) You end up with comics made solely for adult collectors, by people who only read comics. Deep inbreeding.
4) Most of the time, there is nothing there for kids. Or even mainstream adults.

[Mr. X]

#2 - I've read discussions that these business were on the brink of extinction anyway and all it took was one crisis to crash them. There is upset over the closing of businesses under COVID yet its quite possible these businesses were dying anyway and COVID was just a good excuse to close shop.

I don't agree with "get woke, go broke". I think its more "Going broke, got woke". Woke is the termite you see on your floor knowing your walls are already rotted out. When a company or industry starts getting really woke it means its internal management is wrecked and the company or industry is failing. We're seeing that with the NBA and Football. Woke is just a sign of bad management, loss of people with vision and the replacement of such people with management that has no care for the product they make.

Woke is a symptom not a cause.

[shevek]

#2 - I've read discussions that these business were on the brink of extinction anyway and all it took was one crisis to crash them. There is upset over the closing of businesses under COVID yet its quite possible these businesses were dying anyway and COVID was just a good excuse to close shop.

I don't agree with "get woke, go broke". I think its more "Going broke, got woke". Woke is the termite you see on your floor knowing your walls are already rotted out. When a company or industry starts getting really woke it means its internal management is wrecked and the company or industry is failing. We're seeing that with the NBA and Football. Woke is just a sign of bad management, loss of people with vision and the replacement of such people with management that has no care for the product they make.

Woke is a symptom not a cause.

I have to disagree. I know you like to think you have a original flip-the-script take on this, and that's fine. And it is certainly true that it's much easier for woke termites to take over a company when it doesn't have a clear idea of its own vision. But there are multiple reasons why the comics industry has collapsed, giving way to the takeover of Manga and Young Adult. I definitely think wokeness is among the *causes* of this, although just one of several, as has been stated above in this thread.

Evidence? The moment that wokeness ends on a title, sales come back. Sales doubled when James Tynion IV took over Batman from the self-inserting Tom King. Sales astounded for Blake Northcott and Sean Gordon Murphy's Catwoman, the best take on the character since the Jim Balent days. Sales skyrocketed for Geoff Johns and Jason Fabok with Three Jokers, tripling the numbers that Top 10 books have usually had since 2016 (instead of the usual anemic 100K, these books are selling in the 300K range, which is back to early 2000s numbers).

That's called populism.

[sugarcoater]

An interesting topic to analyze. My perspective is limited to my experiences, but I collected comics from back in the late 80s and it seems to me that the industry has gone through several changes, most of which were for the worse. As someone who was also collecting baseball cards, I see several parallels between the two industries. The most glaring one for me was the flood of product. The baseball card industry stared creating more and more variations of their respective brands--when I first started collecting, there were three lines of cards: Topps, Donruss and Fleer. A decade later, the market was flooded with multiple variations of each brand, and the cost of those variations was exorbitant. Comics started going that way when there were regular "collector's edition" issues, premium covers and high end paper and inks. A good comic book needs but a quality story and good artwork. The rest is merely expensive fluff designed for greater profit. While I have absolutely no issue with the industry trying to maximize profits, I do have an issue with their method of doing so. Both industries prioritized immediate profit over a long-term plan.
Over the next few years, I lost interest in baseball card collecting as there were just too many options. There was less commonality among collectors, and concept of having a good rookie card was lost by having all sorts of premium novelty cards. The comic book industry did something similar--as I see it--in expanding its titles. Whereas once a storyline was easy to consume or catch up on (12 issues would be a year's worth of story), the industry moved to shifting stories from one title to another. Major characters had too many titles to follow. The first Doomsday storyline ran through every Superman comic book, which was one of the first longterm crossovers in comics. The first major Bane storyline was the same. And most of the long crossovers could have been completed in half the issues, and the suspense was weakened by the fact that readers knew nothing would really happen until the penultimate and ultimate issue in the run.

In solving the issue in both industries, I would love to see both industries contract. For the comic book industry, hire the best 1/3 the writers and artists and reduce the number of titles. Make it easier for readers to jump on board. And as the medium involves visuals, make the characters look more vibrant. I am surprised by how many mediocre artists are hired by the industry to draw for quality titles. I would also move away from making so many female characters as visually unappealing as they are. This is not to say we need to return to the 90s version of seemingly every female character having some "bad girl" thong of a costume, but perhaps having more of a balance. A wife and mother like Ms. Marvel makes sense to have in a more proper outfit (though it was intriguing having her develop a bit of a bad girl aspect in the mid-90s), whereas a younger and more arrogant heroine could be given a more alluring outfit. The desexualization of all heroines in the mainstream has been a bit of a disappointment to see. It's not that the costume and look makes the character, but having a bland-looking heroine in a bland-looking outfit does not create the fantasy a super heroine should create. Which is not to say that all heroines and heroes must be attractive and have attractive outfits, but some should. This is, after all, the realm of fantasy. Some comics are grounded in as much reality as a comic book can be, but others are based on fantasy and exaggeration.

So in short, reduce the total amount of titles, hire the top 1/3 of writers and artists, limit crossovers and have most storylines within one title (with the ramifications perhaps reverberating to other titles on occasion), and allow for some fantasy and sexualization in the industry without making it crass.

Just a few thoughts on the subject matter. For anyone who read all this, thank you for your time.

[Lurkndog]

#2 - I've read discussions that these business were on the brink of extinction anyway and all it took was one crisis to crash them. There is upset over the closing of businesses under COVID yet its quite possible these businesses were dying anyway and COVID was just a good excuse to close shop.

That's the problem: Direct sales comic shops are ALWAYS on the brink of collapse, because their business model is marginal at best even in good economic times.

The only way they survive is to diversify into other markets like games, books, toys and collectables, so that if one market crashes they have others to keep them afloat.

And when the comic book stores go under, they generate a second shockwave through the market, because the business they were generating suddenly goes away.

[Lurkndog]

So in short, reduce the total amount of titles, hire the top 1/3 of writers and artists, limit crossovers and have most storylines within one title (with the ramifications perhaps reverberating to other titles on occasion), and allow for some fantasy and sexualization in the industry without making it crass.

I don't think that reducing titles by 2/3rds would help more than it hurts.

I think that the following are good ideas:

1) Make comics more episodic and self-contained. A comic that contains a single storyline within one issue is easier for new readers to jump onto, and attracting new readers is absolutely crucial.

2) Target the trade paperback/graphic novel market more. Mandate that long storylines must fit within a single volume trade paperback. Likewise, crossover events must fit inside a single trade paperback.

3) Don't let rogue creative teams destroy continuity. These days, everybody wants to be the next Alan Moore and remake a title in their own image. Tell them NO. If they really have a good idea, you can do it as an Elseworlds or What If storyline. But preserve the continuity in the main line titles. Maybe hire professionals who can work within continuity, instead of infants who want to break all the toys.

[sugarcoater]

For the sake of discussion, I think cutting titles consolidates talent at the top. As comics are such a visual representation of written text, having a quality writer and skilled artist creates a compelling read. But unfortunately it seems oftentimes only one (if any) is used. Granted, I am no longer buying comics as I found the art and stories not to be worth my money. I may buy four or five comics a year these days, but I bought comics in the 80s, 90s, 00s and early 10s. I did not want to stop enjoying the hobby, but the industry --with its weak storylines, high prices, mediocre art in the titles I read, social justice virtue-signaling--turned me off to the entire industry.

For a brief trip down memory lane, I miss the days of Todd McFarlane on Spiderman and Spawn, Dale Keown on The Hulk, Gary Frank on Supergirl, George Perez on Wonder Woman, Don Rosa on Scrooge McDuck titles, Joe Quesada on Daredevil, David Finch and Ed Benes and Jim Lee on a variety of titles, Marc Silvestri on X-Men, and several others whose work escapes me at the moment.