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[Sibersk Esto]

Does Duckroll or anyone else familiar with the manga industry internal workings have examples of the "compartmentalization" of a weekly or monthly manga via the assistants?

Taking out coloring because it's not applicable, does that industry really have the same "assembly line" of writer, penciler, inker, letterer behind the scenes? Obviously the common idea is of the singular mangaka creating the work, Kishimoto or Araki sitting down and drawing the narrative he came up with, and going over his sketches in ink, and writing (typing) in his dialogue that he came up with.

Is it viable in the US to hire artists who can come up with the plots and draw them, and color, etc.

Also, in the digital era, how much pen inking and coloring still occurs?

Could costs be cut by giving artists the writer position, and setting them up with drawing tablet + Photoshop to put out fully produced issues?

Most manga authors/artists do as much as they possibly can themselves. So writing, sketching, inking, layouts, colors for special occasions, and lettering. Assistants are used for things like the backgrounds.

 

[MC_Hify]

How is Archie Comics doing nowadays? I remember seeing the occasional Archie digest in the supermarket lines long after Marvel and DC comics weren't being carried in supermarkets.

I don't know how they are doing sales-wise but Archie has gotten some pretty good talent for some of its books. I've been meaning to check some of it out.

 

[Tatsumaki Senpuukyaku!]

snip

The direct market was 50% of the market in 1985, not 6-10. Also, you are picking out a time when DC was pretty much cratering. You can look below and see that Marvel's average comic book sales 74,000 copies. In a normal month, 74k is enough to get your comic in the top 10 in 2016 and that's what Marvel was AVERAGING in 1985 not even counting half of their sales.

 

[Messi]

I just wish comics could be more like manga. Like right now anyone could just go grab the latest volume of Naruto and totally understand what's going on with the plot, but if I want to start reading the new Ms Marvel I need to catch up on the past 60 years of stories!

This isn't true in the slightest.

 

[Hierophant]

in australia i don't think ive seen a single person buy those floppy ones, 8 AUD for 30 pages of content i mean cmon

 

[Khezu]

Grocery stores won't save comics.

Honestly, I don't think anything will.

I don't think they are going to die anytime soon either, just very slowly become more and more niche.

Also another problem that I don't think many will agree with me on, but I think there are just too many comics releasing every month, it can be very overwhelming for new people trying to get into the "superhero genre" of comics. People will always tell them to choose 2 or 3 books they like and stick with those, but it's never that easy IMO.

 

[Hades Hotgun]

I just wish comics could be more like manga. Like right now anyone could just go grab the latest volume of Naruto and totally understand what's going on with the plot, but if I want to start reading the new Ms Marvel I need to catch up on the past 60 years of stories!

Judging from the responses to this post, grasping the author's intent in a text based format is the real problem with comics.

 

[Manmademan]

The direct market was 50% of the market in 1985, not 6-10.

I'll give you that, on checking that figure was from 79, not 85. "about half" sounds about right given the expansion going on at that time.

Also, you are picking out a time when DC was pretty much cratering. You can look below and see that Marvel's average comic book sales 74,000 copies. In a normal month, 74k is enough to get your comic in the top 10 in 2016 and that's what Marvel was AVERAGING in 1985 not even counting half of their sales.

Doesn't really matter. as I mentioned before, single issues sales represent the totality of the market in 1985- and there was a significant and substantial destruction of 70% of the print run to hit those news stand figures. That wasn't sustainable and without the shift to the direct market the comic industry would likely have struggled and died.

Single issue sales are currently less than half of market revenue for the current market, as revenue from trades has eclipsed that of single issue sales.

There is also digital sales to consider:

In 2014, digital comics revenues excluding unlimited subscriptions reached $100 million, according to ICv2, an online trade magazine that tracks comic sales and other trends. That was up from just $1 million seven years ago, when ICv2 started collecting data.

Meanwhile, the North American market for print comics grew from an estimated range of $650 to $700 million in 2009 to $835 million in 2014, according to ICv2 and the Comics Chronicle. That includes sales of single issues at comic shops and newsstands, as well as book channel sales of trade paperbacks, or collected volumes of comics.

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/05/comic-books-buck-trend-as-print-and-digital-sales-flourish.html


so looking at 2014, The comics industry as a whole was bringing in $835m in print sales, and an estimated $100m in digital- not including unlimited subscriptions.

In the 80s?

As recently as 1986, only about $130 million worth of comics were sold in the United States. By 1989 sales had tripled to an estimated $400 million

http://articles.latimes.com/1991-01-06/business/fi-10869_1_comic-book

edit: DC appeared to be in even more dire straits in 1985:

DC now gets about a third of its approximately $70 million in revenues from comics, with the other two-thirds fairly equally split between licensing and other products. Superman and his heroic colleagues now are commonplace on clothing and toys, and are spreading into foods.

http://www.nytimes.com/1985/01/06/business/turning-superheroes-into-super-sales.html?pagewanted=all

DC was bringing in maybe $23m a year in comic sales in 85. They were valuable to warner mostly for licensing purposes at that point.

Even adjusting for inflation, revenue is nowhere close. The industry is selling far more than it did even in 1989 as the boom escalated, and the avenues they're using are more stable and profitable. There is literally no reason to go back to the "newsstand and grocery store" model, since trades and digital are more than acceptable substitutes without all of the waste.

 

[Tatsumaki Senpuukyaku!]

I'll give you that, on checking that figure was from 79, not 85. "about half" sounds about right given the expansion going on at that time.



Doesn't really matter. as I mentioned before, single issues sales represent the totality of the market in 1985- and there was a significant and substantial destruction of 70% of the print run to hit those news stand figures. That wasn't sustainable and without the shift to the direct market the comic industry would likely have struggled and died.

Single issue sales are currently less than half of market revenue for the current market, as revenue from trades has eclipsed that of single issue sales.

There is also digital sales to consider:



http://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/05/comic-books-buck-trend-as-print-and-digital-sales-flourish.html


so looking at 2014, The comics industry as a whole was bringing in $835m in print sales, and an estimated $100m in digital- not including unlimited subscriptions.

In the 80s?



http://articles.latimes.com/1991-01-06/business/fi-10869_1_comic-book

edit: DC appeared to be in even more dire straits in 1985:



http://www.nytimes.com/1985/01/06/business/turning-superheroes-into-super-sales.html?pagewanted=all

DC was bringing in maybe $23m a year in comic sales in 85. They were valuable to warner mostly for licensing purposes at that point.

Even adjusting for inflation, revenue is nowhere close. The industry is selling far more than it did even in 1989 as the boom escalated, and the avenues they're using are more stable and profitable. There is literally no reason to go back to the "newsstand and grocery store" model, since trades and digital are more than acceptable substitutes without all of the waste.

The problem is that you aren't comparing apples to apples. It's true that a lot of newsstand comics were returned. The problem is different now, the problem is that the burden of unsold comics is placed on the comic book stores, not the comic book companies because the comics are nonreturnable. The figures that comichron and everybody else reports are comics sold to retailers, not the number of comics that are sold to people and Marvel and DC have developed a number of sleazy was of grossly inflating these statistics. When they say that Civil War 2 sold 381k copies it doesn't mean that anywhere close to 381k people bought and read the comic. So comparing the number of comics sold to comic shops to the number of newsstand only comics that were actually sold through in 1985 is not even remotely fair.

Revenues are up because the price of comic books has skyrocketed. If comic books were making less total revenue at $4 then they were at 60 cents then that would be a pretty alarming sign, don't you think?

Trades and digital comics are new revenue streams and it's a good thing that comic books are branching out, but the comic book market it still controlled by the sales of single issues, which is what Bendis was pointing out. The problem with comic book stores is that they attract a very specific type of comic book buyer (IE one that buys superhero comics) and it limits the kinds of comics that can be published. Comics like war comics, romance comics, horror comics etc were all extremely popular in the early 70s and before but were basically completely dead by the 80s because comics had moved almost exclusively into comic book stores and the average comic store reader didn't care about them. Variety is what will keep comic books alive and there is very little of it right now. There's stuff like image but that stuff is a drop in the bucket compared to what non superhero comics sell and it's almost all still made to appeal to the comic book store/geek crowd anyway.

I don't think going back into supermarkets would fix all of their problems, but the current system just isn't working.

 

[Lonewolf_92]

This was literally how I got into comics. Never would have gone to a comic book shop without first seeing them in a grocery store.

Same here. The Kroger my family used to shop at had two of those spinable magazine racks filled with comics in the magazine/stationary aisle when I was a kid, and the price meant I could get a Conan The Barbarian AND an X-Men comic a month (occasionally getting a Batman, Doctor Strange, or something off the wall like Madballs if I couldn't find one or the other) on the pittance my parents would give my 6 year old self when we did the big monthly shopping trip (I lived out in the boondocks, so we only came to town to shop like twice a month). They helped me on the path of learning to read.

How is Archie Comics doing nowadays? I remember seeing the occasional Archie digest in the supermarket lines long after Marvel and DC comics weren't being carried in supermarkets.

They still exist. Given the sedative subject matter that should tell you something.

 

[RoninChaos]

I still read comics but in trade form. And I have to agree with the jumping on issue. I've wanted to get back into X-men but all the cross overs and events, it's too much to keep up with and there's this giant barrier of entry for me because of it. So I just say fuck it and stick with what I know.

I'm still trying to get into current marvel stuff. I read secret wars but now I'm reading the old shit that lead up to it because it feels like I got half the story.

 

[RoninChaos]

Also, I think the industry would do better if every story wasn't six months long. I'm not suggesting shorter stories but instead less padding. I've read plenty of arcs over the year that could have been done in 3 months instead of 6. And it feels like that was only done to get the 3.99 a book for six months. And why would I pay that when I can get that trade for 15-20 after the fact?

The funny part is I wasn't a trade reader until I got Ito Blade of the Immortal. I could have bought the floppies but it just made more sense to buy the trades. Once I got used to waiting 6 months with those it made waiting for comics a lot more tolerable.

 

[Mudcrab]

I still read comics but in trade form. And I have to agree with the jumping on issue. I've wanted to get back into X-men but all the cross overs and events, it's too much to keep up with and there's this giant barrier of entry for me because of it. So I just say fuck it and stick with what I know.

I'm still trying to get into current marvel stuff. I read secret wars but now I'm reading the old shit that lead up to it because it feels like I got half the story.

If you didn't read the New Avengers stuff that lead into that event you definitely missed out on more than half the story.

 

[RoninChaos]

If you didn't read the New Avengers stuff that lead into that event you definitely missed out on more than half the story.

I actually started with his FF run. New avengers is next.

 

[Mulgrok]

Each issue needs a complete story arch. When i stopped reading comics in the 90's there were almost no books that completed a story arch within 1 series let alone 1 issue. All the fragmentation lead to a feeling that I was buying nothing but an ad for more nothings.

 

[BoosterDuck]

Each issue needs a complete story arch. When i stopped reading comics in the 90's there were almost no books that completed a story arch within 1 series let alone 1 issue. All the fragmentation lead to a feeling that I was buying nothing but an ad for more nothings.

good writers can make any comic issue easy to digest

Spoiler

based Soule and Lamire and Waid