why you're dying, part XVII

[davemerrill]

Here's a cheery ad that's bound to get people to quit reading that stupid "manga" and back where they belong, reading superhero comics!!



Not only do we have Cyborg now called "Robama" - because he's a black guy, and the President is a black guy, and they all look the same, you know - but they have this amazing deal where you can trade in a volume of manga that you paid $10 or $15 for in exchange for a $2.99 DC comic starring AMERICAN superheroes! SUCH A BARGAIN! Better hurry though, because they are already cancelling some of those "New 52" titles which were going to revitalize the comic book industry and get those sales figures back up to ten percent of where they were when things were healthy, as opposed to the one percent they're at now.

Apparently this ad was approved and 75% paid for by a tone-deaf DC Comics.

I realize this is only one comic shop behind this stroke of advertising genius (thousands of people otherwise ignorant of this comic shop's existence have now been introduced to it) but this is indicative of the attitude that is helping to put these businesses into the ground. Enjoy your failing industry, guys! (Top comic book sold in December 2011 sold 142,000 copies. That's about a sixth of what Superboy used to sell when it starred the Space Canine Patrol Agency. TIME TO DOUBLE DOWN ON THE STUPID, FELLAS)

Comments

[tochiro998.livejournal.com]

What bothers me, and this is going to sound really dumb:

DC is generally very protective of their brand and trademarks and content...errr, sorry, more friendly, they protect their comic book characters, and I find it hard to understand why they would allow the 'Robama' tagging, because I'm pretty sure they're not so tone-deaf as to see how that looks like "all black people look alike" and.... um...

(not to mention the sad obvious pandering of "hey, the hip kids all love Obama, so let's ride that horse because it's cool! and maybe we even get some of that sweet 'urban youth' money!" I mean, really? )

Wait, this is the company that started the 'dead woman stuffed in a fridge' thing, right?

Never mind.

Thing is, as I understand it, this store wants to get into the used manga market and is doing this to gain stock for free. the deal is a #1 volume of manga in exchange for a #1 of NuDC, which I would bet they've got a few hundred copies sitting in the back room waiting to turn into gold. hurm. Anyway the intent is to 'flip' that manga by selling it for a buck.

I assume the hope is that they'll then be able to sell a #2 vol. of used manga for $$$. But where will they get THAT stock?

[warpig1979.livejournal.com]

Thing is, as I understand it, this store wants to get into the used manga market and is doing this to gain stock for free.

Yeh, that was my immediate assumption. Used bookstores can usually flip manga v.1s in decent condition for five-six bucks or so.

[childings.livejournal.com]

not to mention the sad obvious pandering of "hey, the hip kids all love Obama, so let's ride that horse because it's cool! and maybe we even get some of that sweet 'urban youth' money!" I mean, really?

Well, there's this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_in_comics):

In November 2008, two things led to an explosion in popularity of the Obama comic book character. One of Obama's advisers gave an interview to journalist Jon Swaine of The Daily Telegraph titled, “Barack Obama: The 50 facts you might not know.” In the interview, it emerged that Obama collects “Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian.”

So yeah, part of it is the whole FIRST BLACK PRESIDENT hype marketing, but another big contributor to whole trend of putting Obama in comics was this perception of him as a "comic book fan" (when it all actuality he's probably like the other hordes of people his age who enjoyed reading these comics at some point in time, but isn't really a "comic book fan" in the true sense of the word)

[dave-iii.livejournal.com]

It also has to be said, during and about the election, there were a LOT of Obama comics being published, some as propaganda, some as satire, some as bandwagon drivel. I shit you not: "Barack the Barbarian".

http://www.newsarama.com/comics/030931-DDP-Obama.html

[frustratedpilot]

Plus there's the whole thing that most of the manga product currently on the shelves is marketed to GIRLS. There is a major gender gap in comics now, and both DC and Marvel are apparently blind to that.

[dave-iii.livejournal.com]

Loathe as I am to admit the writing is on the wall, the writing is on the wall. I've spent the bulk of my afternoon sorting through more comics than I can read, all free and legal, from the internet. Granted, 70% of them are crap, but they're my kind of crap, and-- and this is the point-- they're not three bucks worth of crap. Comic books (as an entertainment periodical magazine) are dying, and there's nothing that'll stop that, outside of the internet becoming sentient and moving to Mars.

Trade editions will still be around, but monthlies? These are the twilight times.

[davemerrill.livejournal.com]

The periodical magazine market is drying up across the boards, from "Cat Fancy" on down. Comics are just part of the trend. If not for the direct market they would have all vanished in 1981, except for Archie.

[tochiro998.livejournal.com]

but again, as I devil's advocate all over the place, how much of this decline is "everybody reads the internet" and how much is the one-two punch of increasing prices and declining locations to buy?

We're down to one, ONE national bookstore chain. B. Dalton died some time back, Waldenbooks got absorbed by Borders and THEY died, Barnes and Noble is IT, baby!

Now, supermarkets still have a magazine rack (and usually POP racks at checkout) but that's a limited number of SKUs.

bah.

[davemerrill.livejournal.com]

Why aren't people buying books? You said it yourself, "everybody reads the internet". They buy their books from Amazon, if they buy physical books at all. (and they rent their films from Netflix so bye-bye Blockbuster.) We no longer live in a world where print media was the only game in town for news and entertainment, so the economy of scale is gone, the per-unit price goes up, people see paperbacks are eight and nine dollars and they turn around and go home.

People still gotta eat, though, which is why Archie carved out its supermarket digest space in the 70s, and why they're still a money-making proposition.

[dave-iii.livejournal.com]

but again, as I devil's advocate all over the place, how much of this decline is "everybody reads the internet" and how much is the one-two punch of increasing prices and declining locations to buy?

I'd call that a one-two-tree punch, if we're going to use those terms. There's also 'What's being published is increasingly pandering to the dwindling niche market, which dried up for original ideas ages ago and is only churning out crap now'. At least the crap that is webcomics is DIFFERENT crap; Yes, without editors but at least with different approaches to the old ideas, and ideas culled from places that have nothing to do with what's been done to death. I lurves me a good superhero but I'd say webcomics have maybe 20% superheroes as traditionally defined. Less, probably.


Sorry, got a bit tangential there. I was originally headed with that was there's no single silver bullet that "killed comics"; it's been a long, steady decline with attacks from many fronts, the internet and economics only being two. One of the reasons prices have been going up is because printing costs have skyrocketed, and the cost gets passed to the consumer, just like always.

[childings.livejournal.com]

Not only do we have Cyborg now called "Robama" - because he's a black guy, and the President is a black guy, and they all look the same, you know

Oh wow, I thought that was supposed to BE Obama as a cyborg. But it's not?

[davemerrill.livejournal.com]

Nope, it's the Teen Titans character Cyborg, who's been around since, what, the 70s? The 80s certainly.

[footyfoot.livejournal.com]

Damn shame, too- I might have actually bought a copy of 'ROBAMA', if only for the novelty of it.

[childings.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah. DUH. Now I feel stupid. I guess in my mind I can't recognize him unless it's the character design from the vaguely anime-style Teen Titans cartoon.