Why does marvel relaunch like half of their books every 10 issues? Surely they end up getting diminishing results with each relaunch, outside of each #1?pic unrelated
>>152232204We just don't know
Why don't they just label all issues #1? Of course they could also ditch the comics and just sell variant covers.
>>152232866Don't give them any ideas
>>152232204>Why does marvel relaunch like half of their books every 10 issues?Because they only care about increasing their margins.>Surely they end up getting diminishing results with each relaunch, outside of each #1?Oh, they do lol. #1 sales can be inflated with blind bags or a thousand variant covers, but that 75% of the series Marvel publishes at any given moment only last 5-10 issues these days is ridiculous and they are burning out readers fast. That's not sustainable long term.
>>152232204They know their comics are shit, so they throw every gimmick they can at them. If only the fans realized this and all stopped buying Marvel comics for good.
I've been rereading older stuff and I think it's really funny how they would change older titles to a new one but keep the older numbering. Like there is no Captain America number 1 from the silver age. It was Tales of Suspense for 99 issues then became Captain America with issue 100. And you saw this all the time.
>>152232204Doing a #1 means they can get the money to hire more people to do variants and incentive variants and also have the money to hire a more in-demand creative team or still be able to afford a current creative team. It's a pretty bad long-term decision all around for the reason >>152234405 pointed out, and you're also right that they keep getting diminishing returns.When they first started doing relaunches with Heroes Reborn/Heroes Return at least they meant something, even if they could've just continued the numbering where they left off. Now there's been like what, 16 relaunches of Captain America and most of them have been in the 2010s and 2020s?
>>152232204Marvel plays the short game and mostly fails at it.Despite their constant number 1s and focus on variant covers to incentivize higher order numbers from retailers, and despite making 30 more comics a month, they have lost market lead to DC last quarter and aren't projected to retake it for the next one.A lot of what Marvel seems to do seems to be aiming for releases which could work better for the trade paper back market. But in the field of graphic novels, DC is dominating even more.
>>152235667>Now there's been like what, 16 relaunches of Captain America and most of them have been in the 2010s and 2020s?You know it's not that I'm absolutely against a renumber every so often but the fact that we had that many in the span of a decade, decade and a half is ludicrous. This is way too much. The worst part is that even fans have a hard time feel like this is worth investing into. Especially when you look at how bad decompression has gotten. A new volume of a given comic will spend half a year setting up it's board then then have to rush to a climax before the process repeats. I don't think we absolutely need to revert to a done in one format but we really need to have something that feels like a proper long term investment. Like things are going to matter.
>>152232204Because Marvel fans are stupid enough to buy them.
>>152232204All books relaunch when a new writer is added to the book. Been that way since 2014 or so. It makes things goddamn annoying to figure out what run an event happened since now it's Volume #6578? for anything.
>>152232204They seem to be getting strict with the cutoffs even Alonso let most books last a year. There was so many announced ongoings suddenly converted to minis. You would think they would at least wait until the preorder cutoff.
>>152232204Desperation. You don't have to read anything past 2003 anyway.
>>152236432Yeah this is way more annoying than just seeing a higher issue number. That at least let you know the order of things. Issue 1 of volume 746 isn't as helpful as they think.
>>152232204chasing after short term profits even though its going to fuck them over in the long term
>>152232204>>152236558
>>152232204It seems like Marvel has given up any sort of pretext on trying to attract new readers and are coasting on the Wednesday Warrior and the speculator. My theory is that Disney is unaware of how the industry actually works so all Marvel has to do is tell Disney “we sold five million units this month” without having to add the little detail that they didn’t actually sell those to consumers they sold them to comic stores where they’re going to rot in a quarter bin for the next fifteen years. It’d be like a movie studio bragging about how they distributed ten million of a dvd to stores. I mean it’s the only thing I can think of considering how goddamn lazy Marvel has been post-Covid and how they’ve gotten away with it. But like >>152235878 said they’ve lost the market share for the first time in almost 15 years so that might make Disney take notice about what’s actually going on
>>152237607What I just don't get is WHY? What are they hoping to gain by this constant mediocrity? If any of this shit was at all working I might understand it but it's not and yet they refuse to budge.
>>152232204I can’t imagine being Little Johnny Sonuvabitch who just saw the Venom movie and thought he was badass so he goes to a comic store to pick up the issues and has to navigate thru two different Venom #1s released in the last decade, an All New Venom, and then jumping to Venom #250
>>152237621Short answer laziness. They can sit at their desk and browse Grindr all day then shit something out at the end of the day to get something out the door. Long answer they’re fucking lazy and Disney is letting them get away with being lazy so their job is easy so as long as their bosses are letting them get away with it why work harder?
>>152237649Adding to this when Marvel wasn’t owned by a billion dollar corporation in the late 90s/early 2000s and the first X-Men came out the guy who owned Marvel was so pissed Marvel didn’t take advantage of the X-Men’s newfound popularity to sell more comics he shitcanned the sitting EiC Bob Harras and replaced him with Joe Quesada who in turn cleaned house on literally every book Marvel was publishing. Fifteen years later Disney owns Marvel and the MCU and is literally the hottest, most popular thing on the entire planet. Does it move the needle on Marvel comic sales at all? Not an inch. Does Disney care and clean house? Nope.
>>152237730Disney is kind of slow to react and I think what >>152237607 says kind of applies, but I think Disney probably knows and doesn't care that it's five million units sold to retailers rather than customers. I definitely think that market share change this quarter is probably going to make people take notice because it's rare to see DC overtake by that much. Even during the Rebirth years Marvel still had the lead in market share in both unit and dollars due to MCU hype from retailers, incentive variants, relaunches. But that was also when Marvel started to falter noticeably.
>>152238372>but I think Disney probably knows and doesn't care that it's five million units sold to retailers rather than customersI mean you’re probably right, corporations don’t think like regular people and all they see is “sale” but it’s still a really fucked up system, does literally anything else on the planet distribute that way? Just unload their product on stores with no way to send back unsold stock?
>>152232204Cause idiot collectors still think that #1 will be worth millions in 20 years
>>152239329I'd argue it's worse in that regard than ever. Even crappy non key issues can get a huge bump to their sale price because some retard stuck them in a plastic tomb with a stick that says 9.fuckyou on it.
>>152232893Give them ideas. It can't get worse.
>>152232893How about this: blank books. You open it and the pages are blank. You can then take them to cons or signings or whatever and get artists to do stuff in them. Why have only a sketch variant cover when the entire comic can be a sketch variant?
>>152241767I hope Marvel pays you for this idea when they inevitably use it
The current Marvel bullpen are fanboys-turned-professionals with no artistic ambition and got to coast on cheap speculator gimmicks while they rode the gravy train of being a small blip in the Disney empire and the MCU - of which they had *nothing* to do with its success. But socio-economic factors - covid, inflation, recession has made the entry price point unsustainable for the buying public and their rugpull tactics have been squeezed dry. And the Bullpen doesn't have any other ideas so they're just doing more of the same to diminishing returns. Losing to DC like this is new. Disney is not going to allow them keep losing like this. In the corporate world, they have the 3 months in between shareholder conference calls before the suits clean house.
>>152238372The big worry I have is that they just Absolute shit because Absolue is dog shit. The way to counter Absolute would be bringing back the old Ultimate universe but the faggoty redditors and xitter cunts will whine that it's not the Hickmanverse just like they whine about X-Men not being Cuckoa shit.They need to do some shuffling and housecleaning in editorial too. Brevoort, Lowe and White need to be given the boot as does Cebulski, but I have no idea who the hell you replace them with because Danny Khazem seems to be the only decent editor at Marvel.
>>152242468>but the faggoty redditors and xitter cunts will whine that it's not the Hickmanverse just like they whine about X-Men not being Cuckoa shit.And this is all while not buying a single issue and just scouring pirate sights for images to retweet. Which is really just the worst part of all of this. If they were actually buying and reading the books and not just taking pictures of wrapped omnibuses I would say fuck it and let them have it. I wouldn't like it but they'd have put their money where their mouth was. But they don't. So it's all for nothing.
>>152241919honestly marvel could use a house cleaning if there not going to actually change their business strategy or do anything meaningful to improve sales
>>152241919Fanboys-turned-professionals has basically been the M.O. of the industry since the early '70s and even before that you still had fans-turned-pros like Roy Thomas, Jim Shooter and Cary Bates.
>>152242468every title/team/character should be rebooted to just before bendis wherever he was involved
>>152243529I can't believe how one person can do so much damage
>>152243546It's not just one person, it's him plus editorial
>>152232204fan boys got deep pockets and they buy any marvel slop
>>152241862they don't even pay their own writers and artists well what makes you think this will be any different?
>>152232204Daredevil!! ... in a fat suit.
I think what I hate the most about all this is it seems like every hack writer now wants to be THE GUY. You know the one who defines and redefines the character for ages to come. But nothing ever sticks so it doesn't matter. It's good that some people want to reach high I'll grant but they often don't have the talent and there's nothing to reach for anymore. Nobody is interesting in writing the continuing adventures character XYZ so the characters have no definition to start with. For all people argue that comics are stuck in a status quo loop the real tragedy is we don't even HAVE a status quo to start with. Characters are too fluid now. Everyone is just whatever they need to be in any moment.
Nightwing being right now nearest of issue 150 than every Spyderman book since 2013 is sad >>152234655DC recently did It, Aquaman #15 is now Emperor Aquaman #15.>>152236432>All books relaunch when a new writer is added to the bookThe problem is Slott's spidey, Mackay Daredevil , current Hulk, moonknight and FF runs ,... All spam in different volumen.
They've been doing it for like 10 years now so it must be at least somewhat successful for them
>>152244184It's very clearly getting diminishing returns for them now.
>>152244216If they were starting to lose money they would stop and try something else
>>152244286The relaunches were already starting to get annoying in the 2010s but now they've started to cancel and relaunch books after just ten issues. It's one thing if they were doing this to lower-tier titles but now it's even happening to the characters who got popular through the MCU
>>152235667> they can get the money to hire more people to do variants and incentive variants and also have the money to hire a more in-demand creative team or still be able to afford a current creative team.From who? If I were the investor and they decided to do a number one every five seconds I'd just start telling them no you're doing it too often
>>152244320>From who?Disney.
>>152237607Can you imagine? > So, what have you been doing with our big name titles? Our boy Spider-Man must be saving Mary Jane from the Green Goblin in the regular. > Well, a-actually, Sir we had him sell her to the devil and get a magic abortion> You what!?> W-well this was before you bought us and we didn't realize we were supposed to be family friendly.> O.K. that was like 20 years ago. You've gotten them back together, right?> Well, actually we've been sort of openly exploring our cuckolding fetishes by having Mary Jane hook up with random guys and giving Peter girlfriends that think he's a loser and cheat on him all the time.> ....Why would you think you could do that?> Well, you see we did a study that showed when you get the customers angry THAT'S when they buy the most comics. It's why we've been openly antagonizing them on public internet forums telling them we know they don't like what we're doing and there's nothing they can do about it.> So that means we're at an all time high for sales?> Well, no, actually it immediately nosedived us to our all time record low sales and we've stayed there pretty consistently for over ten years now> May I see this study?> Well, you see, when we said study we meant more like that was an idea we all came up with just because we thought it would be funny....
>>152236023> I don't think we absolutely need to revert to a done in one formatWe certainly do.
>>152237730If only he had picked literally anyone else
>>152238372I think there's a good chance this might happen. They seem pretty terrified of the MCU drying up since they don't want to do original IPs and all of their other stuff (remakes, Star Wars) have pretty much flopped. They were able to take all of that on the chin knowing the MCU was the biggest thing in movies, but now they've screwed that up with Phase 3 & 4 being garbage. You can tell they're really hoping the new Avengers movie kick-starts things and seeing the comics suddenly fall behind DC (which itself is trailing far behind Manga) is going to make someone upstairs start sweating that folks are losing interest in superheroes. Eventually someone is going to want answers and the answer is going to be: "well, we ruined it on purpose because we're trying to social engineer."
>>152238952No, because eventually they'll either stop buying them or they'll go out of business when they can't afford to buy more because they aren't making their money back. Then they'll really be screwed because they don't have the infrastructure to sell them any other way and certainly won't have the funds to make any.
>>152241919> they have the 3 months in between shareholder conference calls before the suits clean house.You don't know how happy it would make me if they fired literally everyone. It's the only way the company has any hope at a future.
>>152243546Welcome to jews
>>152244286You would think, but no
>>152244327Well someone in accounting needs to look at how many #1's they have and say: "No. You can do a number one once every X months and if you want to do it more you're going to have to bring me a pitch." Then they can at least go: "Why would we do Captain America #1? We just did that a few months ago. If it didn't work then it won't work now." and eventually they'll tell them they just need to make a story work or abandon the character.
>>152244286The last Batman relaunch shown that is better to wait at least 5 years for a relaunch.Hell, they do that with Spiderman and Avengers and are their best selling titles so yeah, is not worthy the yearly relaunch
>>152244286>If they were starting to lose money they would stop and try something elsebefore sales stop being posted(for obvious reason) it showed that post-OMD and BND era ASM lost 60% of its sales in just 2 yearsso no, they would not try something else.
>the pendulum has swung back and people like DC more againNiceHow long before the pendulum swings back again and people like marvel more and what will be the cause of it?? Absolute starting to suck?
>>152245326As long as Brevoort stays at Marvel there will be nothing but good times for DC
>>152244507The Batman relaunch had a billion variants, that's why it sold so well.
>>152245326DC is shit right now too. Both companies are bad but one has a worse perception right now than the other. DC has greater issues with the fact their basic continuity is fucked at best and nonexistant at worst and their talent pool is even worse than Marvel's since it's a bunch of cast off Marvel writers and people who either draw blatant fetishbait (the Supergirl artist and their fat woman fetish) or homobait (everyone else).Marvel's biggest problems are bad editors, constant relaunches and not allowing books time to find an audience. Also allowing fucking Hickman to basically massacre everything.
>>152248211A good way to describe the situation is that DC Comics and Marvel Comics are both failing but DC is failing slower than Marvel is.
>>152248643Absolute will cool off once the novelty is gone just like Ultimate did 20+ years ago and they won't have more Batman #1s with dozens of variants to make up for it.
>>152248727I don't doubt that. Neither is likely to recover if they try to maintain their current situations.
>>152248727The problem with 00s Ultimate is more than just "novelty is gone"The setup on Millar's side was way less sustainable for starters. Bendis' USM did well but eventually dragged out a lotThen they had Ultimate X-Men tread water because they kept waiting for Bryan Singer to do a run and it had middling work by BKV and Kirkman who have both done better work elsewhere. People lost interest in Ultimate X-Men pretty fast as a resultThen Ultimates 3 and Ultimatum pretty much killed the line even though they still published Ultimate stuff after. Plus once Marvel put Bendis and Millar in charge of the mainline stuff people were less inclined to care about the Ultimate stuff. For that matter it meant they couldn't focus much on the Ultimate work as much as previously.
>>152248878Ultimate X-Men had the appeal of it gone by the time Bendis came onboard and brought back Beast negating one of the big differential points of the entire line. Ultimate Fantastic Four just never could figure out what it was actually supposed to be. Basically by 2005 the shine was gone.
