It's walmart idea all over again https://desuarchive.org/co/thread/141157771/#141157771>The Batman edition, priced at $14.99, features three notable stories by acclaimed creators: Batman #1 by Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo, Batman #1 by Tom King and David Finch, and Batman: The Long Halloween #1 by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale. While these are celebrated tales, the collection contains stories that might better suit new readers. The cover art by Dan Mora.>This Batman anthology is published by McClatchy Media Company, now a subsidiary of Chatham Asset Management following its 2020 bankruptcy, and merged with A360media in 2024. As of this week, McClatchy has taken over as publisher for these newsstandcomic collections, which have been spotted at Target and various newsstands. Copies are already fetching around $20 on eBay. >The release follows a similarly sized Superman anthology, DC Comics Presents Superman, selling for $9.99. That magazine included All-Star Superman #1 by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely, *Superman: For All Seasons #1 by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale, and Lex Luthor: Man of Steel #1 by Brian Azzarello and Lee Bermejo, with cover art by Dan Mora adapted from a variant for Action Comics #1. >Questions remain over whether either anthology will see future issues, further price increases, or if these formats can succeed in the struggling newsstand comic market.
>>150692311Why would anyone wanna buy these if it's just three first issues? Child me would be so pissed off if I picked that up.
>>150692356Who do you think is buying the "special collectors edition" magazines on the stands at CVS and Walgreens?this is paid marketing previews placed in prominent spots in very common retail spots with high foot traffic.This is for catching the eye of people who never think about comics but liked the movies and giving them previews of very accessible "book shelf" comics which are available in multiple formats at Amazon and B&N
Superman has no good anthologies
>>1506923961990s Action Comics? 1950s-1960s Adventure Comics?
>All three of the iconic Superman stories are non canonSome things never change.
So when drawing the most recognizable movie Batman, Mora drew Nolan bats? Oof.
>>150692311>Tom King againWasn't Tom King's story in the old walmart ones part of why those were shut down
>>150692311These never work because $15 is too fucking expensive for a collection of one off issues.
>>150692311>Batman #1 by Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo, Batman #1 by Tom King and David Finch, and Batman: The Long Halloween #1 by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale.That's a weird collection of stories to make this anthology.
>>150692629The Long Halloween is also non-canon now tho...
>>150692311bump
>>150692390I feel like the people complaining about these magazines or their price, really haven't paid attention to magazines sold at drug stores or grocery stores or bookstores or whatever lately. Reminds me of the people who insist comics need to ditch the direct market and go back to grocery stores but don't sound like they've paid attention or know how that market works
>>150692311>anthologiesGood>15 fucking dollars for what, 100 pages?BAD BAD BAD WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOINGTHEY ARE SUPPOSED TO BE CHEAP YOU RETARDS>#1 issues onlyFucking worthless unless you follow it up with #2's, 3's and so on.They don't get it. They don't get the idea.The idea is that you can follow the series all the way from beginning to end just with the anthologies, but the cost is you have to buy them as a package deal so you get exposed to other series as well. They're not supposed to be just fucking adverts or expensive previews. That's not what they're fucking for.
>>150694236>BAD BAD BAD WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING>THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO BE CHEAP YOU RETARDS$15 is the average price of a magazine now.
>>150694274That's because they're dying and it's contributing to their death.
>>150694327Yes and somehow there are people still insistent that comics need to sell to that market
>>150694488It's infinitely better than selling to a tiny selection of autists in tiny, well hidden specialty stores that are 500 miles apart from each other.
>>150694558The last time they tried magazines they sold like shit, so no, objectively, it's not better
>>150694558So they need to get in that magazine market because they're infinitely better than the direct market... even though you say the magazine market is dying because the newsstand distribution prefers $15 bookazines?
>>150694488Magazines are where people actually are not just specialty shops you have to go out of your way to even find let alone visit, that’s the point the other anon was making dipshit
>>150694712Reality is making the point that more people buy comics in comic stores kek
Are these good?
>>150694729There's about 3 stories worth reading in that selection but you need to buy both to get them
>>150694584Like you've been told several times before, their last try was set up to fail. It wasn't even in the magazine section, it was hidden under Pokemon cards in the "collectible" aisle.
>>150694729For the Batman one It's basically just the three comics, plus a page having a brief blurb about each comic (ie Long Halloween's blurb talks about how the Nolan Trilogy and Reeves' The Batman was inspired by it), and a page advertising which comics to get after reading each comic
>>150694721That's only true because they're not sold anywhere else you disingenuous fuck.The current model cannot continue and the fact that everyone with a store hangs onto it for dear life is a part of why the comic industry is 1% the size it could be.
>>150694773>>150694795>One reporter once saw the magazines tucked away, that means they never ever had a chancePeople don't want to buy magazines, they tried, they ended up hidden because they weren't touching them. >The current model cannot continueYou've been yelling this since 1968, two more weeks until the industry dies!
>>150694842>You've been yelling this since 1968, two more weeks until the industry dies!Yeah, lord knows the industry is super healthy what with its over dependence on variant covers and price gouging
>>150694981Two more weeks bro!
>>150694721>more people buy the thing at the only place they’re available!Yeah, no shit anon
>>150694236>BAD BAD BAD WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING>THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO BE CHEAP YOU RETARDSThe stores that sell these magazines prefer higher-priced magazines. That's why DC did 100 page giants for Walmart instead of regular comics
>>150695001They were available at magazine stores a few years ago and nobody bought them bro
>>150694989I’ve been buying comics for more than three decades and there’s never been a time where comics relied this heavily on variant covers or printed the actual comic on paper this cheap while also charging up to $10 for one issue. It’s been a slow decline through the 2010s but post-Covid has accelerated that decline and if you can’t see the signs you’re literally burying your head in the sand
>>150695018People did buy them until retailers bitched about them having exclusive stories and DC bowed to the retailers and stopped putting exclusive stories in them
>>150695057Comic book retailers seem to be the cause of a lot of the issues within the American comicbook industry
>>150695036I agree bro, two more weeks! >>150695057So the argument is that there's an untapped 99% of the population who needs to be exposed to magazines stands but they're also so knowledgeable they won't buy any magazines if they read in insiders news outlets that they only have reprints?
>>150695081It’s a symbiotic thing, really. Retailers don’t want Marvel or DC to do anything that could mean other places sell comics, like digital is treated like a red-headed step child being forced to sell comics at the same (ridiculous) price as retail and have zero advertisement that it’s even a thing, the Marvel and DC apps are heavily kneecapped by being several months behind the release schedule with a stupid high monthly price tag for what you get, all to appease the local comic shop retailer. But in exchange Marvel and DC can continue to be lazy fucks putting out 75% garbage without actually have to count -sales-, just how much was distributed since comic stores don’t return unsold comics they just throw them in a quarter bin. So Marvel and DC can report to their corporate overlords “we sold 100,000 copies of x comic!” and keep them happy when in reality they only -distributed- 100,000 copies of x, not necessarily sold. And those numbers can be goosed by Marvel or DC going “if you buy 100 copies of this comic we’ll send you this ultra rare variant cover that you can sell for twice what you’d spend on those 100 copies”
>>150695098>thank you for telling it like it is, that everything is just fine and there’s no need for anyone to worry!
>>150694236>>150694274You can get DC compact for like 10 or a finest for 20 to 30 for so much more content. Even a basic tpb doesn't usually run that high. Way to have a good idea than fuck it all up.
>>150695729How? They're still doing the Compact Comics. The magazine is not replacing Compact Comics, and the price is deliberately priced at what grocery/drug/etc stores want magazines priced at.
>>150695729>>150694236Again, magazines are sold at $15, particularly the kind that those Batman and Superman specials are formatted like. Magazines are also larger in size compared to a regular comic and a compact comic. A Compact comic can get away with being $10 because it's not just smaller than a regular comic, the paper quality is also probably cheaper than both. They are not going to put the Compact Comics in the checkout lane unless DC pays way more.$15 is also a price point for a 96 page magazine, which limits how many stories you can actually put in itThen there's the fact the Superman one has to get the people who might've seen the movie, so they picked the first issues (rather than entire storyarcs) of stuff that had some kind of influence on the 2025 film.
>>150693941There's at least one anon still arguing that comic books should cost a dollar, even though the paper and ink alone would cost the publishers that much.>insist comics need to ditch the direct market and go back to grocery storesThis is a given if comic books are going to survive. Sales are so fucked nobody's even publishing their sales figures any more and the LCS market doesn't get footfall from random chance, it's a destination-only market. General retail is the only way to reach enough audience to make those numbers go up again, but it means cutting the line, or running two lines where one is for pubbie readers and one is a hardcore Jeff Albertson line, which is just duplicating costs and would tempt publishers to slip one or the other's stories into the line they weren't made for. The truth is you'd never get X-Men back into general retail because nobody wants to buy 40 fucking titles a month just to know what the latest aggravating bullshit from Clan Racist is and how it will change everything forever until next month. Event comics are dead in that market too. Variants are dead in that market.Getting back into it isn't impossible, and shouldn't be particularly hard, but the only things the Big 2 ever seem to put in there are licensed media produced by third parties and aimed at children under 10. Meanwhile the LCS is selling sub-porn titles with increasingly terrible art and ludicrously poor writing where the alleged stories require chopping and changing between minimum $15 of comics a month just to follow what's happening, and the obvious defects of these products is handwaved away as "canon" or "deconstruction" or "decompression" or whatever the latest bullshit excuse is for a failure to actually edit work and send it back for rewrites/redraws, or god forbid actually fire someone who's a "big name" in goddamn comic books that sell like 4000 copies each.
>>150692311$15 for four shitty little stories?
>>150697776>The truth is you'd never get X-Men back into general retail because nobody wants to buy 40 fucking titles a month just to know what the latest aggravating bullshit from Clan Racist is and how it will change everything forever until next month. Event comics are dead in that market too. Variants are dead in that market.This anon gets it. It’s not just that Marvel and DC books aren’t available anywhere it’s that they’re also aimed solely at the Wednesday Warrior crowd who will follow fifteen comics they don’t actually want just because they’re tangentially related to a character they like or will buy ten variant covers to the same comic. If Marvel and DC Comics are ever gonna get a normie audience they need a top-to-bottom overhaul where each individual issue is worth the money and doesn’t require buying a completely unrelated comic to get the full story
>>150692311>Superman and Batman anthologies like the walmart ones from years agoWhat?
>>150701191Read it again, hombre.
>>150697776>This is a given if comic books are going to survive.I agree that they need to get to places outside of comic shops, I don't agree with abandoning the direct market completely in favor of grocery shops and other kinds of shops that use newsstand distribution. Because the reality is, if you want them to sell in grocery stores you're gonna get more things like those Superman and Batman specials, 96-page magazines with reprints. People point to Archie and their digests but Archie has been having occasional problems selling in grocery stores and the like since the late 00s. There was that point in time where they needed to do a Kickstarter to fund getting their digests back into the checkout lane. And recently they changed their digests to reduce the number of pages, like it's $9.99 for 86 pages or something like that, and going to be released seasonally.Heidi talked about it and Archie's new magazine newsstand distributor a360 (which is the same distributor putting out those Superman and Batman special)https://www.comicsbeat.com/more-on-the-end-of-archie-comics-digests/
>>150697300Again, MAGAZINES ARE STUPID! You're just justifying the format itself with excuses now. >They are not going to put the Compact Comics in the checkout lane unless DC pays way more.You know most stores have a section for books right? Like you can actually buy paper backs and shit at a grocery store. Additionally here's a thing. >>150697776>There's at least one anon still arguing that comic books should cost a dollar, even though the paper and ink alone would cost the publishers that much.A buck might be optimistic, they weren't even that when I was a kid some 30 odd years ago now but that doesn't mean they should be what they are now. They used to have a lot more third party ads for just this thing. Hell I was flipping through some old ass avengers books and I saw an ad for DC Action figures. And zit cream ads seemed to be a near constant.
>>150693907Why?!
Batman and Superman suck cock and are shitty characters
>>150692390>This is for catching the eye of people who never think about comics but liked the movies and giving them previews of very accessible "book shelf" comics which are available in multiple formats at Amazon and B&NI don't necessarily disagree with you that this is the PRIMARY motive of say WB Consumer Products, and I know the costs of things have gone up, most notably paper and printing costs, since that is often done in Canada and it wouldn't shock me that this is the case here, but this is excessive for what these are, as other anons have pointed out. >>150692603He's wrong but those are also not anthologies. Superman does have good "Superman in the 50s" and so forth collections and "Greatest Stories" collections and those are anthologies of a sort but not really proper, diverse ones.
>>150703931So they're like you then?
>>150692311We have Superman and Batman at home.
>>150704562Nah that’s you
>>150697776>>150702803>>150703069$15 is definitely over-priced for what this crap is, when you consider what DC sells their compact digests for and the number of pages in those, and when you consider what Archie sells their digests for and the number of pages in those. The original WalMart anthologies were fairly priced, but it would need to be something like that where you would get a complete story at the end of say 3-4 issues in total, for each of the stories in the anthologies. And then there are plenty of good, done in one, stories that DC can reprint. For example, for Superman from Adventures of Superman vol. 2
>>150705949>what Archie sells their digests for and the number of pages in thosethose are dead.
>>150692311>$14.99>features three notable stories by acclaimed creators: Batman #1 by Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo, Batman #1 by Tom King and David Finch, and Batman: The Long Halloween #1 by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale>Copies are already fetching around $20 on eBay.Grim.Then again I only think the more lucrative character should have a cheaper price to entice new readers to the format as an armchair salesman, but marketing probably know Batman sells a certain amount no matter the tag and it's better to cash in big with that group.>$9.99.>All-Star Superman #1 by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely, *Superman: For All Seasons #1 by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale, and Lex Luthor: Man of Steel #1 by Brian Azzarello and Lee BermejoNot the sort of thing I'd cut up and stitch together, but more reasonable price.>>150692356It says the collection contains "stories that might better suit new readers", so I assume it's not just those 3, they're just the most notable.
>>150692311Why are they using the Batman Begins suit on the cover? The Batman suit would make more sense as the most recent.
>>150692830They’re not even one off issues, all three issues are literally set ups for full trade stories.
>>150707225No it's just those stories mentioned. The Superman one makes sense because Gunn kept talking about All Star Superman and Superman For All Seasons and Nicholas Hoult talked about reading Lex Luthor: Man of Steel, and they used Mora's Action #1 homage but with Superman wearing the 2025 suit. That special was definitely done to tie-in with the movie. The Batman one is strange for the reason >>150708502 said and only one story actually had some kind of connection to The Batman and Dark Knight Trilogy, the Long Halloween (it's been cited as inspiration for both). It's also not a special made to tie-in to anything since The Batman 2 is years off.Supposedly the reason the Batman special was made was because the Superman special sold well
>>150708665>No it's just those stories mentionedOh that's dicey. 15 buckeroos to read a bit of the Long Halloween trade and two first issues that won't feel fulfilling.
>>150692311>Batman: The Long Halloween #1>only #1What's the point? Wouldn't it be cheaper to just buy the whole Long Halloween story in a hard cover?
>>150708891I know a lot of pessimism floats around these days, but honestly to me nickle & diming desperation seems the only fitting explanation.It is odd that they're doing Scott Snyder's main Batman instead of Absolute though.
>>150692311Fuck walmart
>>150708891At bare minimum a paper back anyways
>>150692311What retards.
>>150692311Huh. That happened.
>>150694729They're decent.
>>150694729No.
>>150706374Sure, trees are just being killed because they want to spite you.>>150707225>>Copies are already fetching around $20 on eBay.Idiot scalpers buy crap like this from their local Krogers and expect to make some money from other idiots but they will end up with those magazines with the rest of the other junk they are trying to get 'rich' off. EB prices are essentially meaningless since so many sellers are idiots.>>150694795>>150694842When Target was selling them, they didn't put them by even the collected editions and graphic novels they sold, near the LPs, DVD and electronics - they shoved them over by the toys. So that meant people scalping action figures ignored them since they aren't even comic readers to start with, and the young kids (and their parents) who aren't really main line comic book readers often ignored them. They would end up mistreated and crapped on, they weren't even polybagged, so of course, a lot of them got thrown out and then not reordered so the entire initiative was deemed a 'failure.'
>>150692311There are lots of story to be told here.
>>150717976How so?
>>150692311How abou that, eh.
>>150692396Says you, lol.
>>150692311Movie designs don't translate well
>>150722667It's because the details that work for a live-action movie feel like excess in a comic
>>150692396Based
>>150722712They feel excessive in the movies most of the time too.
