Even the normies are noticing. Is Marvel cooked?
I don't know. I'm enjoying the Absoluteverse, but I know DC will somehow mess it up later so I'm enjoying it while I can.
>>153703132>normies>youtubers>13000 viewsfirst of allsecondly normies don't buy comics OP, that's why you don't see them in normal stores
>Comicdrake>NormieBelieve it or not, he's one of those 4chan oldfags who neutered himself to fit with the wider world
>>153703132Absolute Batman is the only Absolute book that's really noteworthy. The others get sales purely from curious Absolute Batman readers.It's a meme, that's it's whole draw. The logo is ridiculous, the premise is ridiculous. It's so absurd you just have to see it.If they wanted to make the Absolute Superman a meme they'd have to make him literally a gooey slime blob, emphasizing the alien aspect of him, but then have him still become the beloved superhero despite his appearance.Beyond absurdity, it's approachable. It's obvious to even a non-comic reader that it's a break from any existing continuity.It's its own little pocket world, and you know for a fact that #1 is #1.Which is the biggest thing that stops people from reading comics.People pick this up with no intention to read other Batman books. It's a standalone product.But DC isn't smart, this isn't a work of genius on their part. It's a fluke. Mark my words, they will fuck it up, and they will fuck it up in exactly this way:>They will merge the storyline into the other Absolute books>They will then merge the Absolute line as a whole into the main DC continuity>They'll then find ways to rationalise the story, making it complicated and boring, it will lose it's meme appeal>They'll change artists and writers so many times that the art direction of it will be lost and it'll be just a regular Batman with a slightly bulkier logo
>>153703221pls read my post. I know it looks really AI but it's not I promise, I just write like this.
>>153703132>youtube e-celeb shill threadI ain't watching that shit.
>>153703132Normies don't read or care about comics.
>>153703132I like this sudden "DC IS FIXED AND SAVED!" narrative when it really only applies to normalfags liking Absolute because the're suckes for mindless edgeslop i.e. Invincible or The Boys so it's one line that's hiting on a particular zeitgeist, no diferent than big guns and pouches from the early '90s. The mainline DCU, the actual bread and butter of the company, is doing worse than ever because their big writers are people like Tom Taylor and shitty Marvel cast offs like Leah Williams so the writing is bad, the continuity has been mangled for a long time so nothing feels like it matters and all the art is terrible and drawn explicitly for fujos, shotacons and in the case of Supergirl fat fetishists which isn't what 99% of people wantMarvel's doing bad but take away Absolute and DC would be in the gutter.
>>153703440The lesson to take is that DC should just completely scrap their mainline.
>>153704108Why do you think marvel editorial nuked the ultimate universe?A DC comic magazine for normies with its own universe with multiple charactets and stories is needed. Then collect the ones people like in their own volumes. Keep the floppies for yhe paypigs though. Simple. A parent buys their kid the latest dogman comic and a dc/marvel magazine.
>>153703132>Is Marvel cooked?as long as breevort, nothingburger shogun celbuski and a couple other feudal tier editors keep fucking the company up, yeseditor offices are pretty much holding the company hostage at this point. they either don't know how to sell their books (paul, krakoa imploding) or are incredibly autistic about things that don't matter
>>153704322I swear it's like marvel is trying to fail
>>153704108Absolute's popularity won't last forever, doing that would be suicidally stupid. They just need a real editor with real vision, dedication to fixing the continuity and the ability to get rid of the creative flotsam on the books.
>>153704456Which is why scrapping the mainline would be best. Throw it all and try a hard restart like Absolute did. Keep the lines as separate as possible for as long as possible.
>>153704490Or, just fix the characters the fubar'd, regardless of what xitards have to say. Starting by un'faggifying all the originally not gay characters.
>>153704490Never scrap your mainline is what killed marvel
>>153704322>Pushes Captain Marvel for 10 years>audiences see Carol on cover>dont by book>Marvel restarts book but with Carol still in it>still sells like shitTime is a flat circle, they should just kill Carol and move on already
>>153704456>Absolute's popularity won't last foreverThe novelty will probably wear thin sooner rather than later but unless they completely fuck it up they should still be able to let it coast at a normal rate for a good long while. the original ultimate marvel lasted almost a decade.
>>153704543Unfagging characters is a lost Sisyphean task. It's to the point and the amount of backlog the casual audience will never bother to put up with.
>>153704612Iceman is a lost cause but I want to see where DC goes with this.
>>153703219I believe it, the guy gives off really bad vibes.
>Watch video>Dude just bring back anthologies lmao, it works for JapanThe problem is that we're NOT Japan you dumbass
>>153704865What we need to bring back is the newstand. We need a place where little Billy can wonder away while his parents grocery shop and pick up some books, with ads to help lower the cover price, on cheaper paper, that people can just grab.
>>153704108yeah man! They could focus totally on this new universe, with no baggage of history or characterization that came before! Spin off a bunch of new comics featuring characters in this universe, a great jumping on point for new readers! We could call it the New... 52!
>>153704896We need to sell in more places but newsstands won't save anyone. Newspapers and newstands are dying themselves, how much would that help comics? The reason comics turned to the direct market in the 70s and 80s was because the newsstand was increasingly less viable. Is there data on how well other magazines and such are doing these days? Can't imagine it's too good.
>>153703132Get back to me when they've fixed their cinematic universes and Superman is making a billion plus dollars at the box office again.
>>153704932Yes. Exactly that. A new New 52.
>>153704896Have you been following how magazines are displayed at grocery stores and drug stores and such? Bringing back the newsstand won't help that>>153704962>The reason comics turned to the direct market in the 70s and 80s was because the newsstand was increasingly less viable.Not just that but the places that use newsstand distribution (grocery stores, drug stores, etc) didn't want to stock comics because they don't get much of a profit from them>Is there data on how well other magazines and such are doing these days? Can't imagine it's too good.A lot of magazines I've seen at grocery stores and the like are basically bookazines, specials that they release or rerelease every season. Weirdly the Superman 2025 one, that collected several Superman comics to promote the film, did so well that DC was asked to put out more so we ended up getting a Batman special, a Teen Titans Go special, a Justice League special, and another Superman special.By contrast Marvel had a similar special in 2025 for Fantastic Four, but didn't do any others after
>>153704990Absolute is pretty different from N52, not just the zeitgeist.
>>153705150I think the difference is that there's still more goodwill toward the Absolute line a year and a half in, than there was for New 52 a year and a half in
>>153704865What annoys me about the ANTHOLOGY idea is that even when comics were selling well the anthology format was long out of date.
>>153705234No one talks about them
>>153705623It was because of the single stories model.
>>153705644even then, comics had single stories outside of anthologies since the silver age.
>>153703132Cute clickbait.
>>153704762I will not be surprised at all if the answer is full gay shotacon given how their current artists draw young/teenage boys and they will somehow be hailed as being groudbreaking and daring for it.
>>153705637They don't talk about the New 52 because it's been over for years
i've been buying more physical comics because of the compact comic line. i wish they did more niche stories with them. if they made a Batman Cult compact comic, I would buy it up right away. now that I have a 1 year card for B&N, I might buy even more compact comics in bulk
>wow the absoluteverse seems so cool, will the heroes finally stop being goy cuck retards that let villains live?>no
>>153705150The most interesting thing to me is that DC and it's fanbase will do the exact same shit, over and over and over again, constantly pacing the same circle, and seemingly convince "this time, it's different!"I think it's the definition of insanity.
>>153704322This
>>153707032Not really in this case, the insanity will come with Joker wank.
>>153707494Is that still going on? Would it be Paramount or Netflix next?
>>153703237i read it but i didn't like it and it wasn't worth my time
>>153703132The only comic youtuber I found I liked is strange brain parts. Any recs /co/?
I'd take Comcast taking over DC over Paramount, Netflix, and Amazon.
>>153707905What about Universal?
>>153704962I dunno how do gooks buy their mangas?
You can already tell absolute is about fall off, editorial can't help themselves from chasing a small bit of success so they're forcing out books with D listers like green arrow.
>>153706675Of course they are not gonna kill these popular villains dumbass
>>153709311>you can already tell absolute is about fall off>absolute green arrow received 300K preorders
>>153709204aren't they in the same bag?
>>153705055>>153709278The way you save comics is simple.Create a political movement that both modernizes and creates a ton of high speed rail crossing the the continental US but on the macro and local scale.Then penalize people heavily for using cars to break them of the habit.That way you can set up a stand near the now crowded stations and draw in readership which will read on the train that way.Sacrifice the Car for the Train and comics will be saved in the process.
>>153703132Marvel has a built-in advantage of being the number 1 brand for so long that most comic readers, who are legacy fans from decades prior, still prefer them.So should DC start fucking up, which given enough decades they probably will; Marvel will retake the market share lead.But for Marvel to actually compete and start doing well again they would have to completely upend their decades of retarded creative decisions — and that doesn't seem likely. The constant renumbering, the focus on miniseries, these fuck Marvel over massively. They kill any interest in following any new series, since it likely will go away in five months and won't be able to do jack shit. DC is the opposite where even an underperforming title like Aquaman not only can get over 20 issues, but also can make huge changes in the DC universe. Just in the last issue Aquaman was taken over by Jarro to exterminate the race of alien Starfish of Starro the conqueror; the first Justice League villain.Marvel is also fucking up their biggest brands. Both Spider-Man and X-Men have been shit for over a decade and have no one excited to read the next issue.In comparison Batman, Superman, and even Wonder Woman have interesting stories that people care about and grab attention
>>153703221>Absolute Batman is the only Absolute book that's really noteworthy.Absolute Wonder Woman is top tier, one of the best comics coming out.Absolute Martian Manhunter is also super interesting and, like Abs WW, has won many awards.Absolute Superman has also improved.>>153703237I read your post, and it was retarded
>>153709450So what spawn was selling a million in 1995. You really trying to make an argument that a green arrow what if from ewing outselling batman isn't a bubble, come the fuck on.
Absolute is just Ultimate again.
>>153709569hey man why not just tax people an extra 4$ from their paycheck and mail them an issue of harley quinn every month.
>>153703132Oh goody another high-pitched nerd on the internet trying to act tough like a big strong man with his little pitching man voice. He's going to tell me that they're woke and then he's on complain for 4 hours about everything and then for some reason a randomly bring up AI, and then changes all view when thinking he was complaining about was successful. All these guys do is say this thing is woke, it's going to fail go woke go broke and then as soon as the thing is successful boy howdy do they change their whole goddamn opinion they did that with the Mario movie and then all of a sudden oh my God it wasn't woke at all it was based give me a break you spent like 6 months complaining about princess peach being a female boss lady boss or whatever it's called girl boss. And then all the sudden it's successful and oh yes Nintendo is based that's what them Japs say bull crap you lying piece of tomato paste may your penis smell of lindbergher
>>153709691I think Absolute benefits from being pretty topical.The idea of a world where everything is skewed, slanted towards evil is one which resonates with people today.The world seems dark and unjust, and so reading the stories of America's favorite heroes fighting against that, it feels resonant.Also the sheer amount of creative control the artists and writers are given allows for such interesting and quality stories.
>>153704108That would be pretty cool actually. Imagine they pare down the main universe to just the bare essential titles, then start spinning up these completely new, isolated worlds branded with the dc logo. You could have a dark fantasy, Heavy Metal style series, a more slice of life, character study series, a sports series. They could actually follow the manga formula, but take advantage of the style and coloring of Western comics. Genuinely that could save comic books.
>>153709734Woke is a real problem that really is dragging down this (and many others) industry. There are a lot of lower IQ people who see woke under their bed at night and overprescribe it and help to make authentic discussion impossible unfortunately. Both are true.
>>153709741>I think Absolute benefits from being pretty topical.So was Ultimates in its time. People hate it now but it was a serious darling in it's time, at least before the massive Ultimates 2 delays. USM launched the (now baleful) career of Bendis. The whole idea was being more modern and typical, a very long-running what if sort of story. DC just did it again.
>>153709781Ah, alright.I'm too young to remember the OG Ultimate Universe. Plus I only got into comics like two years ago.But doing the Ultimate universe again properly is not a bad idea.Marvel fucked it up when they rebooted their own Ultimate Universe with the one-issue-equals-one-month bullshit and also ending it in just 2 years.
>>153709890>I only got into comics like two years ago.Honestly had no idea this was still possible, it feels like such a dead medium now.
>>153709983NTA but i got into comics like 3 years ago with Scott Pilgrim and started reading big 2 last year with Absolute Batman
>>153709983You can get into comics at pretty much any time with the internet. I only started reading them this year because of a random monster/demon hunting comics thread here that I thought looked cool.
>>153709753It was true for a while but now they literally make their living off fake outrage like that Doom clock fella
>>153709311>>153709670I can't stand cynics like you
>>153709983RCO makes it pretty easy for newer people to get into older comics.
>>153704108LOLLMAOROFLMAO
>>153709983This has been pointed out multiple times before but if you look past /co/, you could find a surprisingly young global audience for comics that emerged out of COVID thanks to mass piracy and a decades worth of scanning/ripping making a backlog of material easily accessible When RCO temporarily shut down you had all these teenagers from South America to West Asia to South East Asia freaking the fuck out on twitter
>>153704456>fixing the continuityThis doesn’t mean anything when it’s just nerds whining about muh personal headcanon
>>153704896Who buys anything at newsstands today? When was the last time you bought anything printed on paper there?
>>153704932>>153704990Shin New 52
>>153712612I bought a copy of Absolute Martian Manhunter on a newsstand like 3 days ago, theres no comic shops anywhere close of where i live
>>153703132>DC Learned their lessonWhen in doubt Batman?That's not a lesson, that's the standard answer.>But WW/MMYou enjoy it, and that's great, but you know it's not what's keeping the ship buoyant.
>>153703132Brevoort has no idea what he's doing with the X-line he initially said he wanted "disunity and chaos" post-Krakoa but now he's bitching that "X-Men fans aren't unified" as an excuse for his incompetence as he throws rehashed disruptive nostalgia-baiting events from decades prior.ASM, Venom & Carnage have been a shitshow for the past 4 years, Death Spiral was a nothingburger event and dull as dishwater with the Maximum Carnage problem where it easily could have been reduced by 1/3rd the number of issues on top of the Spider-Office shitting on Venom, Eddie and turned Gen Z & A against Mary Jane before trying to solicit a 60th Anniversary one-shot comic of her after all of the Paul / NTR bullshit while teasing the second verse, same as the first with Flash, a secret cousin plot for ASM #1,000 that will just be a rehash of Trouble and making it 616 canon but for REAL this time after they can't even commit to Theresa being Peter's long-lost sister or not.Nu-Ultimate was axed out of petty, vindictive spite and stubborn pride over USM outselling ASM within 2 years, Imperial was axed almost right out of the gate because corporate panicked over abysmal initial sales, the honeymoon phase / recency bias over Krakoa is ending so readers have lost faith in both Hickman AND Editorial (rightfully so) regarding the Midnight announcement that is blatantly a desperate attempt to capture some of Absolute's success but rehashing tired ideas like vampire X-Men (Jubilee), Man-Spider and The Maker / Josh Trank's Fant4stic when everyone knows not to get emotionally nor financially invested given the axing of Nu-Ultimate proved voting with your wallets means jack shit.Then there is the announcement over the blind covers that has further alienated LCSs after they've been fucked over with blind bag gimmicks damaging collectability for Ultimate Endgame and Daredevil #1 where they have to destroy and ship products back at a loss on their own dime.Brevoort's pro-AI stance.
>>153709983If you hang out only on here then sure it looks like a "dead" medium because the usual suspects do the same posts over and over. Like >>153712577 pointed out RCO and the like suddenly caused an influx of international fans getting into comics so Twitter is suddenly full of people in their 20s debating whether Pre-COIE is better than Byrne, which is more than 2000s era /co/ was ever able to manage
>>153712887What was comics piracy like before 2016 (which was the year RCO "took off" even though it was around since IIRC 2012)? I know scan groups were already a thing (and unfortunately have diminished over time)
>>153712887Im one of them. To be honest it probably had more to do with me being sick and tired of manga and wanting to read something new, RCO helped a fuck ton tho, i would never actually buy comics ever if it wasnt for it.Same shit happened with a friend of mine, which im grateful for because being able to talk about comics with someone i actually know irl is way better than just social media and 4chan.
>>153712915Comics piracy was already around in the 2000s (and even before that, in newsgroups where people posted one page at a time), I know that a large amount of old comics had already been scanned by the late 00s, and /co/ still had the win-o threads. I almost want to say late 00s/early 10s there were way more sites to upload comics to for download.Scans Daily was one of the popular livejournals that fans went to but the downside is a lot of people got their talking points from there without questioning. It was great for providing pages to comics that people had not otherwise heard of but is one of the precursors to a lot of tumblr/social media self-righteousness
>>153712634Hi grandpa.
>>153712887That reminds me of how I was looking up Days of Our Lives clips and there was one comment from a fan of the show and the person was this teenage Muslim girl from the Middle East
>>153712860>nostalgia-baitWhat? There's nothing "nostalgic" about current X-Men unless you fucking love the Schism era because that's what it's harkening back to more than anything.>split teams that are at odds with one another and Scott is being treated as more of the outcast for some reason>Rogue getting a giant push (leading Gail's team now, Avengers Unity Squad then)>Cyclops and Wolverine being on different teams>shitty "next gen" charcters that nobody cares about and will be abandoned as soon as their writers move on to different books>Quire, Idie and Glob being major charactersThe problem with the X-Men fanbase is that it's filled with retards who only jumped on during Krakoa after all the old fans had been slowly driven away going back to House of M and accelerating during Schism and the 2010s. Many of those Krakoa fans want X-Men to be a hedonistic socialist utopian cultists who mercilessly beat up and kill all the bad guys (who represent heterosexual white capitalists in their eyes) that the readers hate and lord their sex cult hippie commune paradise over all the normies because they all unironically hate Xavier and his integrationist dream while worshipping Magneot because he wanted to kill all the flatscans (people who they think are oppressing them IRL).Anything that's not a power fantasy for mentally ill LGBT socialists on r/xmen is unacceptable to them which is why they use "nostalgia" and "throwback" in a pejorative way while also getting wrong what era it's acting as a throwback for. Because they mostly never touched an X-Men comic prior to Krakoa.
>>153712972Another thing I forgot to mention is that something I noticed in the 00s was the prevailing attitude from fans and even some people in the industry of not needing people to go read any comics made before the 00s except for the obvious classics (usually stuff by Moore and Miller). I honestly think this was a way more damaging time for comics because people wanted to act like they were creating a new path for comics by discarding the past and all it ended up doing was creating a bunch of comics-illiterate people who think all comics need to be decompressed and be like a storyboard for a movie, or wanting comics to be like Watchmen without truly understanding Watchmen
>>153712972Huh neat, were there any arguments or shitflinging over what stuff to prioritize or anything that was considered elusive back when scanning communities were active?
>>153712993Im 21 lmao>>153712972Its a miracle that Marvel and DC are chill with piracy, i would not be able to have any access to this hobby at all if it wasnt for it
>>153703132>winning againAt losing? Both DC and Marvel are selling MUCH LESS than 10 years ago. The curve hasn't turned up for either. It's just that Marvel's has plummeted harder the last 2 years.
>>153713069>At losing? Both DC and Marvel are selling MUCH LESS than 10 years ago.10 years ago was.....Rebirth and ANADThe former I can see be slightly more or about even with Next Level but not as big as Absolute and the latter is....ANAD
>>153713035Decompression happened because of trade paperbacks needing everything to be 5-6 issues long instead of 3-4 issues. 00s widescreen storytelling happened due to the massive popularity of comics like Ultimates and the Authority that sold tons of comics in the blockbuster mold. Like always the publishers just followed what trend was selling well.
>>153713025I mean they're right that the current X-Books are mostly nostalgic throwbacks to bad eras they're just wrong about which bad X-Men era it is. and I mostly like the McKay and Ewing stuff
>>153713094I know, I was there to see that. And they did follow the trend (and push TPBs because they were trying to get into bookstores), but it led to way too many people thinking that this is how comics should be and over time it ended up having disastrous consequences, like a lot of people no longer knowing how to pace a story to keep the reader's interest up.
>>153713035>I honestly think this was a way more damaging time for comics because people wanted to act like they were creating a new path for comics by discarding the past and all it ended up doing was creating a bunch of comics-illiterate peopleIt's been said before and I'll say it again, the fact the youngest people who are diehard fans of cape comics these days (regardless of where they are from or if they have the resources to even buy these works) generally are massive fans of the older material and dislike the "modernization" changes is eye-opening.It's the ultimate example of failure toward the misguided (but half-hearted) attempts at trying to keep comics palpable to a "younger audience"If they were around when Wizard was a thing with the knowledge and enthusiasm they have now, they'd be going around calling the people on the magazine "larpers" (I fucking hate modern internet slang) for whomever they chose for Mort of the Month.Hell, it's funny how almost every time you bring up their distaste for Byrne Superman, someone who was actually there pops up and repeatedly reiterates on how they weren't there and are incapable of comprehending why it HAD to happen.
>>153713069Not only was 10 years ago Rebirth and ANAD as >>153713080 pointed out, it was also when Hastings stores shut down. Hastings probably accounted for a lot of the comic orders during the early to mid 2010s.
>>153713129>diehard fansThey’re just the new generation of obnoxious fanboys who obsess over their favourite runs and don’t care to understand why changes are not only mandatory but also inevitable
>>153713129>Hell, it's funny how almost every time you bring up their distaste for Byrne Superman, someone who was actually there pops up and repeatedly reiterates on how they weren't there and are incapable of comprehending why it HAD to happen.>incapable of comprehending why it HAD to happen.I do think it's really funny when people talk about how good Silver Age Superman is and how bad and pointless the reboot was, ignoring the like 15ish years of (bad) comics in between
>>153713210If you're talking about Bronze Age Superman, they genuinely like that
>>153713174Oh no I'm not calling them perfectThey're tribalistic, they're whiny over things not made for them or popular artists whose appeal isn't for them, they're very insistent on personal headcanons and interpretation, etcBut that's every generation like you pointed outThe benefit they have is that they're born with an archive at their finger tipsThey don't have to wait for hundreds of issues to be scanned if they wanted to get into *insert superhero* Sure they won't be able to grasp why J. Scott Campbell still has a job and their tastes are largely limited but they're arguably more passionate and informed about comics than the average /co/ Anon from 2014 to today>>153713265Netflix or Paramount pulling the plug depending on who owns WB?
>>153712915Torrenting and before that filesharing shit like Kazaa and Limewire were how I did it.>>153713035Yeah, the 2000s was basically when the Gen Xers who came of age on the British Invasion DC stuff and things like Dark Knight Returns and Cerebus were now either entering the industry as creatives themselves or were the loud fans and thus could push the industry to what they saw as their version of maturing it and pushing back against what they felt were the embarassing excesses of the '90s and the hokey childishness of everything before the 1980s. Guys like Millar and Ellis and Bendis were so big because they captured the zeitgeist of the era more or less. Even Johns did to an extent by adding dark twists of classic shit (remember Mirror Master being a cokehead... BECAUSE YOU SNORT COKE OFF OF MIRRORS GET IT!?) and love of violence and gore.But I also do still have nostalgia for that era because I was in high school and that's when I started regularly buying my own comics so now that I'm starting to hit old man territory by internet standards I'm looking back on it and especially the comics I liked back then. I was really into Marvel's teen/younger heroes from that decade so I'm going through and collecting various series (from RCO granted because I'm kind of lazy in that aspect) to do a long storytime series on Marvel's younger 616 heroes from that era, starting with Sentinel and ending with Avengers Acadmey.I do kind of lament that it feels like reading on RCO has replaced storytimes as a meas for finding or re-reading comics but whatever, I'm mostly just trying to recapture my youth like a fag with some stuff I liked even if all of it isn't necessarily good.
Isn’t marvel comics openly not even trying to be profitable and sell comics any more?They outright said they only exist to keep the copyright fresh on characters and to make potential storylines or characters that can be adapted by Disney in the future
>>153713310>British InvastionThat actually got me thinkingAssuming the industry even survives, what do you think are the odds we see a British Invasion style surge but beyond the Anglosphere given the expansion of readers globally through mass piracy?We already have plenty of foreign artists (some even do a bit of writing) beyond it who were scouted for talent Hell, Ram V recently mentioned during piracy discourse #190301413 that he grew up pirating comics before being able to buy them since he grew up in India.Devmalya Pramanik said something similar.I wouldn't be surprised if the "next Grant Morrison" was from a place like Turkey or Brazil
>>153713344It will depend how willing marvel and DC are of letting brand new fresh talent have a chance like they did in the 80s.With the way things are going, if shit starts getting really bad for marvel i think they are the most likely to let that happen.
>>153713315They still limit themselves to 5# issues from 10#. The words are kept if the issues are limited to long oneshots.
>>153703132The Absolute imprint is somewhat popular within its very specific niche of edgyslop, but DC is still circling the gutter alongside Marvel.
>>153703132I was with him when he was talking about how DC is doing well with Absolute and their cheaper book collections, but he lost me when he was saying that comics should fully abandon monthly issues and be more like Manga with big Shonen-Jump style magazines that have multiple series. Just because it works in Japan doesn't mean it will work in America.
Fine. Once more against my better judgement, I'll give DC a fifteenth chance. Which recent run should I read.
>>153713407Absolute Batman, Absolute Martian Manhunter and Absolute Wonder Woman. The rest of the Absolutes are give it or take if you like it or not, i think they are decent.
>>153713397He wasnt talking about making a shonen jump, he was saying to turn the single issues in anthologies of stories of the character and characters related to that characterSo you could have a monthly Superman anthology that also featured Superboy and Supergirl stories
>>153713411Thank you. I'll start with Martian Manhunter.
>>153713428Thats the best one imo so good choice
>winning
I said it before and I'll say it againAbsolute Batman's (and Absolute DC as a whole to a lesser extent) success is a welcomed one but is a lateral improvement to comics at best.We're back to early late 2000's, early 2010's level of sustainable "health"Putting all your eggs in one basket that is the Absolute line risks everything going back to square one the second a bad event happens or if the big corporate bigwigs pull the plug.inb4 it's a rising tideRising tide is a jokeKirkman's anecdote that people who got into Absolute Batman also pick up Image comics is an optimistic one that I'd love to be true but Rucka's own experience contradicts it citing that creator-owned works are struggling more than they were a few years ago. Sure you can make the case that Kirkman and Rucka's observations were done for different titles and the former had more appeal to the crowd that'd even pick up Absolute Batman while the latter wouldn't but arguing that Absolute's worth to the wider world of comics is it being a rising tide is questionable after similar cases of comics being called "rising tides" have happened.Saga and The Walking Dead were considered rising tides to other comics and that tide ceased when the former entered a years long hiatus and the latter endedRebirth was briefly called a rising tide to the industry and than they screwed the pooch on the optimism that broughtOkay you're gonna fucking hate me for this, but I'm just reminded on how the Nostalgia Critic's sudden initial retirement screwed over everyone else on the site because he was carrying them and how their traffic was more or less a side appeal to Doug being the star attractionThe most valuable things stuff like Absolute DC, the Energon Universe, Invincible' animated series actually getting people buying compendiums on a consistent basis, etc is timei.e. more time for people to figure out a longer lasting, reliable solution and/or create other things to add up more time period
>>153713094The 6 issue story arcs, at least at Marvel, was pretty much an order from Jemas because TPBs turned out to be moneymakers so writers now needed to write six issues so they could churn out more TPBs. Also, it allowed books to be paced more like a TV show which Jemas loved because he thought that that was the easiest way to get people in and specifically he thought the perfect encapsulation of what he wanted Marvel's comics to be was Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Gail Simone had a xeet a year or two back saying that one of her first Marvel projects was going to be a Night Nurse series that she wound up abandoning because Jemas kept insisting that she make it a Buffy clone which she didn't want to do. BKV was very obviously trying his hardes to ape Buffy's style with Runaways. Elsa Bloodstone was created to be a Buffy ripoff. On and on.Yeah, decompression comes from the popularity of Ellis and Millar but it also fit with what Jemas wanted from the comics and because it worked for Marvel everyone else copied it and because that was when the industry recovered from the crash it's something they largely kept up for way too long.
>>153713344I think that's going to be hard because a lot of the British Invasion guys weren't writing comics because they just wanted to write superheroes but a lot of them wanted to be novelists and shit or use the medium to tell truly unique stories and push it forward as much they could. They were given low selling books or books with obscure characters, given a relatively long leash and most importantly were given time to allow their books to find audiences.It's mean but I just cannot see a bunch of guys from developing world countries having the same spark that a bunch of middle class Brits growing up in a specific cultural milieu who read voraciously and did lots of drugs had. And even if they did it's pointless when their books will be cancelled in 5-10 issues.
>>153713419How many more times do DC and Marvel have to put out anthologies only for the market not giving a shit before this dumb talking point finally dies? It’s been done countless times and it doesn’t make more people rush in to buy comics
>>153713450Early 2010s was a very strange time looking back because of how comics could've gotten bigger but didn't because of so many different factorsThe common thread for DC fumbling the ball was Didio (for comics) and WB (for the movies). People go "we need to go back to New 52" but forget how badly DC started to do two or three years inImage had Walking Dead and Saga and the only thing I can say is that at least they kept the momentum going for longer than I expected. This was also a time when people were trying to go indie because of how much success Kirkman and Millar were doing and Marvel and DC were having issues. Maybe getting a comic optioned into a movie or TV show was part of it too. Remember East of West? Remember Bitch Planet? Remember Nonplayer? Marvel you'd think would've rode the momentum from the popularity of the MCU, especially since they did AvX and Marvel Now in response to the New 52, which really did give Marvel a boost (despite how shit a lot of it was looking back), but somehow chose the worst possible decisions to make (probably stemming from the same kind of mentality that thinks OMD was a necessity) and they lost that momentum by the mid-2010s.
>>153713491Dude people also can write good stories in developing countries too, no one is saying it will be as good as what happened in the 80s but just that its a possibility of something that could happen in the future
>>153703221Not reading that shite
>>153713572>The common thread for DC fumbling the ball was Didio (for comics) and WB (for the movies). People go "we need to go back to New 52" but forget how badly DC started to do two or three years inNot even the people who are supposed to be nostalgic for the New 52 and were supposed to get into comics during it think it was a good idea and all the books they do like from it didn't even need a reboot to work to begin wiht>but somehow chose the worst possible decisions to make I'd argue it was a three-way between Ike Perlmutter's pettiness, the new leadership at the time wanting to expand their audience past the usual aging demographic (which IS good in theory, but actions like getting more "acclaimed" novelists proved to just be alienating and that's being nice), and the editorial mentality that we're still stuck with today>Remember East of West?There was a live-action (should've been animated) show in development, it's why Hickman took a short break from comics (IIRC he was approached to do Superman) but it failed to take off>Bitch Planet?How many people got tattoos again?I know KSD repeatedly apologizes for its hiatus>Nonplayer?.....okay you lost meAnyways, the 2010's "Image Renaissance" had good titles but none of them came close to Saga's success and none of them made it the same way The Walking Dead didEven Kirkman couldn't recreate his success with Outcast and as much as I want to get my hopes up that the slew of animation related announcements plus Invincible's own success in animation boosting sales of its collected editions to the point where Ottley and Kirkman have repeatedly discussed, I don't want to set myself up for disappointment.
>>153713635>>Nonplayer?>.....okay you lost meIt was a comic that got a lot of praise and hype leading up to its release, not just from comic reviewers but even industry people like Warren Ellis and Scott McCloud. It was intended to be six issues, but the first was released in 2011 and the second was released in 2015, and then nothing else.
>>153713635>I'd argue it was a three-way between Ike Perlmutter's pettiness, the new leadership at the time wanting to expand their audience past the usual aging demographic (which IS good in theory, but actions like getting more "acclaimed" novelists proved to just be alienating and that's being nice), and the editorial mentality that we're still stuck with todayI'll also add War Between Marvel Studios (Feige, the movie people) and Marvel Entertainment (Ike, Loeb, Creative Committee) to that list, too, along with Marvel Studios likely "suggesting" what the comics need to introduce>Even Kirkman couldn't recreate his success with Outcast and as much as I want to get my hopes up that the slew of animation related announcements plus Invincible's own success in animation boosting sales of its collected editions to the point where Ottley and Kirkman have repeatedly discussed, I don't want to set myself up for disappointment.Outcast was probably the closest Kirkman got to having people hyped up for something since Walking Dead and Invincible, I think. I remember Skybound putting out Thief of Thieves (IIRC Kirkman and Spencer wrote it, I forget who drew it) which had that one page everyone and their mom made fun of
>>153713657Yeah I did some digging, the creator's Deviantart uploaded in 2025 and in 2019 he said the comic is still being worked on, just very slowly since he has a day job and a family.I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubtI get it's more of a passion project for him rather than something to make end's meet like say, Rocketo Going by LOCG he's not credited on any other comic unless the database is missing other stuff he's done and/or hasn't filled out his credits on books that are on the database
>>153713678>which had that one page everyone and their mom made fun ofWhat page?Does it involve cuckoldry?I really enjoyed this conversation and there were a couple of bullet points I wanted to address but again, I need sleepThanks
>>153713572>Early 2010s was a very strange time looking back because of how comics could've gotten bigger but didn't because of so many different factorsBiggest issue being how fucking gay they actually were. Look at saga. Starts off normal enough and gets a good audience but then quickly becomes tumblr garbage. Stuff like that happened to too many comics fans liked in the 2010s and comics didn't maintain that momentum because of how faggy these writers and series ultimately were. This was all made worse post 2016 when the industry almost went out its way to make shitty convos for political reasons
>>153713699This oneArtist is Shawn Martinbrough but I don't blame him for this because this is the kind of setup Kirkman or Spencer might've requested
>>153713713Yet Saga keeps selling well to this day while nobody gives a shit about all the chud comics being shilled here for years
>>153713448>Jarvis, remove India and Brazil from the statistics
>>153713756That's just one comic used an example to show what type of comics were popular when the industry could've still saved itself. You need multiple good comics to keep people interested and they couldn't do that because basically all of them are too gay. Saga was also on hiatus due jg peak woke so who knows bad it really could've gotten >Chud comics Only relevant to trannies who need a boogeyman. Real comic fans just want normal non woke comics
>>153713713Saga doing the stuff it did is okay to the audience that buys it mainly because it was an all-new "universe". Where I think the problem is, is people looking at it and trying to emulate it without understanding it worked for that comic and not everything else, so you end up with way too many comics that just read tumblr-like
>>153713792Yeah basically the "modern audience" problem again. Trying to appeal to way too specific of a demographic
>>153713787You mean the same comic being used as an example to show success in the 2010s? The comic that is then used as a prime example of quickly going too “gay” (and that’s why nobody reads comics anymore) even though Saga keeps being popular even today?
>>153713792>No see Saga could do it because um it was a “new universe”Holy cope
>>153713808Yes what don't you understand? Saga starts normal enough and quickly becomes a gay tumblr comic. Too many people think making gay tumblr comics will lead to success. This leads to years if writers of making shitty woke comics nobody wants. Bottom line is that comics from the mid 2010s on are just too gay to be successful
>>153713814It could. If going tumblr was the kiss of death the sales would've dropped way moreYou can't go tumblr with established characters
>>153713820Saga’s popularity proves this whole argument to be bullshit. If it “became too gay tumblr” then why did it kept getting more popular instead of losing readers?
>>153713850>More popular Source? I doubt it's selling as well as it did in the mid 2010s. And no it's success doesn't prove that otherwise the industry would be in better shape. It's an exception people tried to treat as a rule and it failed miserably. You need to accept the fact that comics got too woke and gay to maintain readers
>>153713865>I doubt it's selling as well as it did in the mid 2010s.I thought you said the book quickly became a gay tumblr comic during the 2010s.
>>153713865The comic has been published since 2012, with regular hiatuses. At one point according to you did it become “tumblr”? In 2013 when they had gay oral sex on the page? Or was that not gay and not quick enough according to you to drive away readers? So at what exact point did it happen then? Because Saga throughout its publication has consistently been one of Image’s biggest sellers, especially in collected format.>And no it's success doesn't prove that otherwise the industry would be in better shape.Hey asshole, you keep saying comics got too “gay” in 2010s and then used Saga as a prime example of getting that way. Do you not understand how stupid it makes you look when you then try to argue that achtually Saga’s undeniable success can’t be a sign of anything about the state of comics because something something it was all the other gay stuff that drove people away but Saga’s gayness didn’t because ummmmm new universe gay is okay but in old universe it’s not even though gay characters have been part of franchise comics for decades at this point and by your logic all the “gay tumblr” indy comics should have been fine since “it’s new and in-universe.”
>>153714024Okay youre fucking retarded.Let me put it another way. There is a pizza place. They sell the usual stuff of pepperoni, sausage, cheese pizza, veg pizza etc. But one day they decided to sell pineapple and anchovi pizza. It started selling well. Not nearly as well as the other pizzas but it had its fans.Another pizza place decides to open and sells nothing but pineapple and anchovi pizza. A huge expensive place that needs a lot of customers to survive. It sells a few pizzas but not enough. It folds relatively quickly.Another pizza place decides to open and sells the same kinds of pizza as the first pizza place. But one day the decided to add pineapple and anchovie onto to the pepperoni, sausage, cheese etc orders or just make anchovi and pineapple pizzas and g8ve them that insteadThis leads to anger and outrage of the paying customer and indignation of the owners.The pizza place shuts down.Do you understand?
>>153714441Yeah your analogy is dogshit and makes no sense whatsoever because Saga sold incredibly well.
>>153714511I was only insulting you before. But now I know you actually are retarded. Post the sales data of saga
>>153714525It was outselling the Walking Dead, you stupid cunt
>>153703132We go through this every cycle.DC or Marvel hits gold, and then through executive meddling, or backroom politics, it goes to shit.Nothing good lasts forever.
>>153714566Sales numbers.Post them.
>>153704589>unless they completely fuck it up they should still be able to let it coast at a normal rate for a good long whiledesu I'm expecting the Absolute event that Aaron is writing to be a complete disaster. If DC does anything beyond Absolute and mainline counterparts meeting to beat Darkseid's ass or the Absolute heroes facing off against their Injustice League, it'll probably be too confusing for the casual readers and they'll drop it. Especially if there are multiple tie ins.
>>153713953It did. I said it was successful, became too gay, and made the industry think woke shit would sale. Seriously what do t you understand? Or do you truly think the quality of comics has nothing to do with the mediums decline?
>>153714024>You can't use a gay comic being successful as evidence that comics got too gay, anon. Yes I can anon. Saga gave people the impression of how gay American comics can get and drove people away as the 2010s went on. Seriously look at the comics being made in the past ten years. You really think that shit deserves to be read and praised? How can comic fags always be discussing the end of the industry but can never admit it's because comics were fucking too gay for the average dude to check out.
>>153714566>Outselling Yes a gay ass comic was too successful and made Tumblr comics more likely to get published leading to the industry dying from the excess of shitty comics that no one wanted
I for one am happy that Batgirl finally gets a good book.
>>153714928If it was successful then obviously it could sell, dummy. Obviously that can’t be what killed comics if Saga went “woke” (lmao) and still sold like hotcakes. But you can’t acknowledge that because you have an agenda to push
>>153714954How did Saga drive people away when Saga never stopped being popular?>gay gay gay gay gay gaySee, you just have weird obsession with homosexuals
>>153715104It did.But the sexless foids and queers flocked to it. However, the queer and twitter bubbke delusional people conned and strongarmed their way into popular media spaces and proceeded to brute force change things and serve up things the majority and male audience dont want.
>>153709431Are you being retarded intentionally?There are various ways to keep the villain alive without needing to make your heroes have the moral depth of a manchild.>Can write it so the villains escape death, even though the heroes are willing to kill them>Can at least write a better reason why the hero can't kill the villain, like... he's the only one that has the power to deal with a radioactive monster that dropped on the city years ago and we have to keep him alive in case it escapes, but he's scum otherwise.>In fact, you can literally do anything, because you can draw anythingThe only reason this is a problem is because the current writers are bad.
>>153715177>it’s better writing if they just come back from being dead lol
>>153715188>Yeah I'm being retarded intentionallyGlad we cleared that up.
>>153715177Villains live to make money. There is no real reason any villain should live in mainstream comics. Its pure money making decision fuck the story. Story does not matter.How the audience feels duesnt matter.Selling comics does.
>>153715224This is why anime is winning btw
This guy isn't a fucking normie. Dude's seen as a loser dork by real normies. Why are you retards like this?
>>153715717A lot of shonentard writers don't have any writing ability either and they still sell. MHA had a goddamn arc where the hero goes>Uhhh, should I save this kid from getting killed?>It would be against the law to save this child since I can't use my superpowers legally right now>Guess I'll do it>Wow I got a stern talking to by the police chief, but I got off scot free because of a technicality in the law!and its one of the most popular anime out there.
>>153715224How does turning MCU into another Mephistowank medium help selling Ironheart comics again?
>>153715717Anime goes out of its way to save villains now. The infamous "coolest guy" thing from shippuden is endlessly mocked. There is no real story excuse for 99% of big two villains to live. Espescially batman villains other then money. >>153715780Deku as a character was so shit on after that that they created multiple arcs to save and protect her. >>153715969Anon. Satan is cool edgy good guy/corpo-oligarchs are dindu nuffins is forced into litteralky every piece of media now. Espescially netflix. Look at the gross destruction if source material and themes in DMC cartoon. Its base elitist propoganda. Im not pro mephisto wank or whatever. But if you want a long running show with returning villains you have to write for it. Not have the villain cross lines or be the living embodiment of evil then jet them go. That's tacit approval of them and crushes the marketability of the hero vs villain thing.
>>153703132>>153703164Can't wait for another 90s-esque Dark Age.Not that it'll be any worse than the garbage capeshit has been outputting since the 90s.
>>153709431Why not? The Absoluteverse isn't meant to sustain convoluted, decades long storytelling, it's an experiment with an expiration date. They can, and should, allow major villains to die.
>>153709741>The idea of a world where everything is skewed, slanted towards evil is one which resonates with people today.Holy fucking zoomer.Spoiler warning, every generation hates the time they live in. The 2000s fucking sucked, post-9/11 culture was fucking awful. The 90s fucking sucked, anger against the establishment and police was arguably even louder back then than it is now. Everybody throughout history has felt like their current problems dwarf those of the prior generation despite having no reason to assume so. You are not special.
>>153716216All you're telling me is that the comics should be reduced to a long running oneshots because they do not exist to sell anymore.
>>153716422Im not giving you a solution I am stating objective facts. They already are long running one shots.Loosely commenting on other storylines or characters doesnt change that fact. But the constant attempt to pretend it all makes sense and works together as a cohesive whole is the height of delusion. DC just started having regular reboots that many times fuck up and carry over or redo things that font work. And marvel just totally ignored it most times and occassionally have in universe mini reboots that oft never really land.
>>153716506>They already are long running one shotsNo they're not all packaged and marketed as a blind bags only.
>>153716422I believe they have distribution problems as newstands have been steadily dying and comicbook stores are hard to deliver for
I'll elaborate because is important, at some point there was asyndicate and is normally was of those old syndicates of press boys who delivered newspapers, they made them available in every corner and store you just paid one person and it distributed your comic all over townWith the death of newspapers, comics who are still massively popular have no distribution
>>153716422>All you're telling me is that the comics should be reduced to a long running oneshotsYes. NTA but continuity autism and how fucking bizarre and convoluted the stories have to get to accommodate the constant timeline fuckery and retconning is by far the largest barrier of entry for potential readers.Manga has been mogging the fuck out of American comics for decades because the former is creator driven and the later is IP driven. The later pushes merch, the former makes for stories people will actually want to consume.
>>153716689>Manga has been mogging the fuck out of American comics for decades because the former is creator driven and the later is IP driven. The later pushes merch, the former makes for stories people will actually want to consume.Manga is IP driven too, dude. Merch is a huge part of it. What are you talking about?
>>153716794>Manga is IP driven too, dude.Not in the same way. Obviously Manga IPs get big, get adapted into other mediums, get merch, etc etc. But, there's always respect for the creator. Dragon Ball ended when Akira Toriyama was finished with it, and the manga only started back up when he declared a successor (and even then you can argue Super is a separate continuity). If manga worked like the capeshit industry, the Dragon Ball manga would have been handed off to whatever Manga Joe was next in line at Shueisha. Manga are designed to tell a story that will eventually end, as determined by the creator, and IPs are allowed to cycle in and out. Capeshit is designed to be milked forever, and it creates massive issues within the stories themselves.
>>153716794Part of the (media that sells mercandise os bad) crowd.
>>153716873>Dragon Ball ended when Akira Toriyama was finished with itGT says hi.>even then you can argue Super is a separate continuityExcept the movies written by Toriyama.
>>153716929>GTNot a manga continuation >Super movieswhat I specifically mean is that the original Dragon Ball manga works as a self contained story with or without the extended Super continuity.
>>153716929>GTa big fat mistake that if manga ever makes a habit of, manga will become as irrelevant as comics
>>153703132Gunn, for all his fuckups,managed to spell out to normies that unlike Marvel, DC isn't our Earth with superheroes' so it's resulted in a bit more interest since now they realize it's not Marvel with different heros. Still have a long way to go though.
>>153716232Brother the dark age never ended
>>153718359It did, only to be succeeded by something worse
It's exhausting seeing /co/ being contrarian over Absolute. We've reached self-parody. Hell, there's solid evidence that a percentage of people bitching actually haven't read/know what's going on in these books in the first place.
>>153718438>/co/>we'veIt's your own fault for not spotting blatant Marvel shills and Youtube grifter hanger-ons trying to tear down Absolute
>>153718438I don't like them, but I'm glad teenagers/young adults have comic books they can be excited about again. Maybe it'll subsidize something I'll actually want to read.
>>153716873Really explains how many of Tezuka’s works have been given entirely new spinoffs, reimaginings or remakes by other people. How many different Fate shit there is. How Golgo13 keeps being made after the death of Saito. How they keep churning out new Doraemon shit almost every year. How Lupin III barely had any involvement from Monkey Punch for decades and evolved to be something very different. How GitS has become almost unrecognisable from its source material.
>>153718619I’m not excited by people throwing their money at garbage, especially when there is high likelihood it won’t convert people to regular comic readers that will read and buy other works
>>153715177Doesnt matterThese villains are popular and will always sell copies, so they gonna keep them alive, just like how they not going to kill Batman forever they are not going to kill the Joker, plus just going "oh but they revived" or "oh but they somehow managed to escape this insane life and death situation" every couple of years is dumb and retardedIts not like this is something insane for other shit like anime either, extremely popular villains like Frieza are always coming back somehow >>153716258Im talking about mainline not Absolute
>>153714911>desu I'm expecting the Absolute event that Aaron is writing to be a complete disaster.Well yes, Osama, because Aaron is writing it. Events are bad in general but letting Aaron write your event is going to ensure it'll be shit.
DC movies sell like shit so they dont need to make their comics adverts for movies.
>>153713776
>>153703132> absolute batman selling like crack in the 90snah. you people forgot the cycle. every single time Marvel looks washed one autistic architect drags the company out of the grave. Claremont in the 80s. Bendis in the 00s. Hickman in the 10s. now it’s happening again.DC’s Absolute line is all sugar rush hype. edgy redesigns, manga pacing, “what if batman but more traumatized” slop built to dominate social media doomscrolling for 8 seconds at a time. it’s HOT right now because DC finally remembered comics are supposed to look cool. congrats. meanwhile Marvel has been wandering around aimlessly post-Hickman like a Skyrim NPC.but the difference is DC’s line is a branding gimmick while Hickman is building an actual cosmology again. You can already SEE the outlines of Midnight Universe if you stop consuming comics like a raccoon digging through fast food wrappers. this isn’t another cape reboot. Hickman doesn’t do reboots. he builds operating systems. the man writes like he intercepted military transmissions from a parallel universe where Marvel Comics replaced religion after the bronze age collapse.you already know the pattern:> people complain Hickman books are “too cold”> 6 months later everyone realizes he planted seeds everywhere> 2 years later reddit and youtube essayists calling it peak cape fiction> 5 years later DC copies the structureAbsolute line is basically DC doing Ultimate Universe aesthetics with Vertigo seasoning. meanwhile Hickman is about to turn Marvel into SCP Foundation by way of Jack Kirby schizophrenia. Midnight Universe is the first Marvel thing in years that actually sounds like it has direction instead of “NEW #1!!! PLEASE CARE!!!”bookmark this post for 2027 when /co/ pretends they always believed.
>>153719268Get artists that can do dynamic action scenes rather than pin up art. And make it palatable to dudes instead of nerds and white girls.
>>153718376Underdark Age?
>>153719280Peak chatgpt post
>>153719373you think people won’t eat that up? /co/ is literally populated by sleep-deprived pattern recognition addicts who spent 15 years turning Grant Morrison interviews into Dead Sea Scrolls. Hickman is the last mainstream writer who understands comics should occasionally feel like forbidden documents discovered in a flooded archive. i’m talking about cosmic infrastructure horror. machine theology. superhero stories written like suppressed NASA reports.
>>153719422Remender had his number years ago. He's always been this and always will be.
>>153719268>wide varietyThis is true but the popular manga is actionslop that is basically just cape comics for zoomies and LatAms.
>>153704973>againlollmao, even
>>153703132They're literally doing the same thing they did with Metal.
>>153719268greatyou'll never reach it
>>153719280>Midnight Universe is the first Marvel thing in years that actually sounds like it has direction instead of “NEW #1!!! PLEASE CARE!!!”Really? Because Hickman Ultimate was more that. And we know how that ended up.
>>153716929Toriyama is dead and gone
>>153703132>What if Superheroes but Snyder and not Faggotry?>What it makes money?!
doubt it
>>153719516Little on the nose there
>>153714969You said it didn't sell.
>>153719280>very single time Marvel looks washed one autistic architect drags the company out of the grave. Claremont in the 80s.You have a complete lack of understanding of how well Marvel was doing in the late 70s and early 80s compared with DC, even before Dark Phoenix turned Claremont and X-Men into big names.The early 00s can't really be blamed on one single person, and as bad as the 2010s were, the company wasn't "in the grave" to be pulled out by Hickman's books and his repeated failures to stick the landing or even pay off on all of the seeds he planted.
>>153719280Not gonna lie, the one thing makes me think the cycle is broken is simpleDidio is goneMarvel can't rebound unless something similar happened to them with their leadership
>>153722728And well-deserved.
I think DC books are generally better than Marvel's these days, but ultimately it's all about converting stories to other more lucrative forms of media which DC is behind on
meh
>>153719280>nah. you people forgot the cycle. every single time Marvel looks washed one autistic architect drags the company out of the grave. Claremont in the 80sMarvel was absolutely dominating the industry because of the efforts of Jim Shooter, who ran a tight ship.
>>153725743Even before then they were doing great through the years when the EiC position was a revolving door. Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Steve Ditko were the guys who carried Marvel into the kind of success that kept going even after all three had left.
>>153703132>ear knives>spikesCringe tryhard bullshit.
>>153703221Superman turns his cape into a sword. It's shit an 8yr old would think is cool and edgy.
>>153713397
>>153726734You've grown out of superhero comics, that's all.
>>153713419If people aren't buying the books with the characters logo on it they're not going to suddenly buy a watered down shared book they only occasionally appear in.
>>153727407No but if you read superman regularly and theres a superboy comic inside of it you are more likely to start caring about superboy than if you never read it in your life
>>153727350but not animation.
>>153727418Or you'll just get pissed off he's eating into page time.
>>153727418Or you just skip it entirely.
>>153704322>. they either don't know how to sell their books (paul, krakoa imploding) or are incredibly autistic about things that don't matterIt's both.
>>153727564>>153727989You have zero idea how most people work
>>153703132Absolute is a return to form. Superheroes are supposed to be first and foremost cool. I’m sick of people acting like total faggots and holding characters to x and y with moral responsibility and other arbitrary bullshit.
>>153703132>google does Absolute Batman kill>”Absolute Batman strictly adheres to a no-kill rule, despite his incredibly brutal and ruthless fighting style. While he severely maims, breaks bones, and dismembers opponents, he intentionally avoids striking vital organs to ensure no one dies”What the actual fuck
>>153729233Yeah he severes some dudes arm in the first chapter i think
Is Absolute the start of a second Bronze Age?
>>153729112One of the most common complaints about anthologies is always how people don’t like all the strips so it feels like being ripped off when you only want to read one or two stories but have to pay full price.
>>153719280No one gives a fuck about Hackman after Ultimate slop
>>153713572>>153713635>>153713678best posts itt. READ THEM.>>153713713tumblr is a buzzword that doens't even exist outside 4chansaga is just all style no substance and it never went anywhere with the eisner dicksuckers ORtv people exactly because of that.
>>153728451yeah its both but I mean it in the sense that there's roughly two independent causes for why things suck so solving one will not magically solved the other
>>153719422>Hickman is the last mainstream writ-FUCK YOUR CHARTS TONY
>>153726758Why did you reply with that image? I don't get it.
>>153719280>Hickman is building an actual cosmology again>Midnight Universe is the first Marvel thing in years that actually sounds like it has directionI don't believe a real person wrote this post, whatever intern Marvel has posting on this board sorely needs replacing.
