DC comics might be closing?

33rdCenturyCaveman 2020-02-27 07:13:46 UTC #22

Me object to bad writing, but there nothing wrong with diversity by itself.

Me actually wrote treatment for realistic timeline of combined Marvel-DC universe. The two settings always had slightly-different vibes but it still possible to blend them in interesting ways. For example, in my treatment, Weapon-X program am initiative of Lex Luthor to create rival to Superman. Obviously Captain America am far below him in power level but both have similar morals and this new backstory am create interesting dynamic.

Me less-worried about Disney owning everything. Independent comics, even superhero comics, am still going to exist. From standpoint of consumer it might even be good thing if DC characters get MCU movie treatment and Marvel characters get DC Animated Films treatment.

skicoak 2020-02-27 08:44:09 UTC #23

Everyone needs to pump the breaks on the rampant speculation for a bit.

DC's had some reoccurring problems with it's monthly sales for awhile and they're struggling to keep their print issues profitable but that doesn't mean that they're fiscally in a position Disney can buy them on the cheap. DC is still an IP farm for the massive Warner Brothers Company and rakes in billions through a variety of other streams. Everyone is reading the instability in the monthly print market and forcing unlikely conjecture on top of it.

DC does decent business in trades and they're trying out a distribution stream through DC Entertainment services well. I haven't gotten a chance to try it out but I understand the library is extensive and keeps growing. They distribute through Comixology as well.

So it's not that there resistant to 21st century marketing strategies as much WHO they keep marketing their print division to... which is a constantly shrinking market. Outside of that, they have marketed themselves in other ways to other demographics fairly well but they're new seeds...got to let them grow to see their viability at this stage. Stuff like DC Superhero Girls combined with new tech for distribution of stories could be new generation of fans on the hook.

I will say this...webcomics haven't been really welcoming to older superhero comic readers. The big sites practically wall off titles that could hook disgruntled Marvel/DC fans. Titles like Lavender Jack on Webtoons and new sites like Graphite could start doing the trick but it's gonna be gradual.

pencilinpain 2020-02-27 13:04:46 UTC #24

Johns stepped down as a co-publisher in 2018.

No way. That's not gonna happen. In order to own the DC catalogue Disney would need to buy AT&T altogether and that's not likely at the moment.

But at $4-5 issue, monthly comics look less and less sustainable. What DC have been doing is slowly drift away from comic shops and into bookstore chains. That means a bigger focus on trades, graphic novels, and young adult content ('cause apparently the YA market is doing well and everybody wants a piece of that cake).

Whatever it is, I don't think 5G will be a big hit. Sure, it will get a momentarily bump in sales, but It will cool over time much like the New 52 did back in 2012. Marvel seem to be in a better position, but they're facing a similar costs increase as DC. I wouldn't be surprised if we see a steep decline in the number of monthly series in the coming years. Page rates are going down industry wide in an attempt to cut down costs and comic shops will continue to shut down as the Direct Market struggles.

On the digital side, I don't think anybody knows what's going on. Comixology keeps putting out spades of content every week, charging the same amount of money for a digital comic as you'd pay for a printed one. It never made any sense. Their app looks exactly the same to me as it did back when they launched. But they seem to be... doing good? I guess? They're under the Amazon umbrella, so everything's fine, right? Who knows.

What I think we could see some day, in the mid-long term future, is Marvel or DC give up on their publishing branches and start licensing the rights to sell their comics. Then you'd have someone like IDW or Dark Horse producing -not owning- the Marvel or DC books. (In fact I think IDW is already publishing some Marvel and Star Wars stuff at the moment.)

So yes, much like the move from newstands to comic shops in the late 80's, it seems like we're going through a big turn in the industry. However I don't think the Marvel and DC characters are going anywhere. Truth is they're more popular now than ever before.

Shanny8 2020-02-27 14:09:41 UTC #25

The continuity in comics is a double edged sword; it cant stay the same forever, coz then they dont attract new readers...but if it changes, it runs the risk of this- older readers complaining as well. The industry CANNOT change its process & practices overnight from selling monthly individual issue to selling trade arcs- that would be very costly and would kill it faster than it's current rate.

I will say the price increase is not something I like either- especially when the price increased, but the page count decreased($4 for 20 pages; the standard used to be 24)...and yet the creative talents behind the books still dont get paid enough; so where does that money go? Shareholders' pockets...

By rights DC should be making money hand over fist with merchandising- between books & merch alone, Batman should be pulling in over a mil, with Superman & Harley Quinn right behind. I feel like over time the Time/Warner buyout didnt work well for DC, and now this AT&T acquisition isnt boding well for them either; if they want the talent behind the books to put out better quality, they need to invest in the talent and pay better(this is for all of comics). Marvel is in the same boat, but can hold off a little longer since their movie yields have bought the comics side a little more time.

I stopped buying comics by the early 2000s...I started back buying them around 2013, but I dont really heavily invest in one or the other anymore; I just try to find stuff that I like and read it. Also I'm more receptive & loyal to the creators on titles than I am to the IP...

indagold 2020-02-27 14:26:47 UTC #26

comics like those are a dead medium for years and dc hasn't put out any good content in a while, not surprised it's happening. More surprised it hasn't happened sooner. Thank god I made the right decision and made animation my major and not comics lol

darthmongoose 2020-02-27 15:09:28 UTC #27

I'm not surprised in the slightest. I've been warning people in the industry about this for over a decade now. You can't just cling to an ageing audience in ways that puts off potential new fans, with an outdated business model that doesn't work any more and just expect it to keep working out of some sense that because you've been around a long time, you're entitled to it. As far as I'm concerned, Batman and Superman should be in the public domain where they're long overdue!

For years now, American comics have been making awful decisions. The readers they had wanted all these dark, gritty stories and highly serialised, interconnected stories with deep continuity, and they provided that, even though it makes them totally inaccessible to new readers. They distributed them primarily through these niche interest shops that are often grubby, dark and unfriendly to people who don't "fit in". Fans insisted on higher and higher quality, more and more detailed art, and it looks incredible, but makes a comic into this high-quality luxury item with tons of effort put in and a big team behind it, but serially released monthly comics are a thing you read quickly, they should be pulpy, they should be cheap! I only read FOUR titles when I was into American comics about 12 years ago: Ultimate X-men, Ultimate Spidey, Buffy and Runaways. To keep up with those titles was costing me too much for me to afford; way more than say, my monthly Netflix sub, which gets me tons more content. Hell, you know what I get for the price of a cup of Starbucks tea a month? The entire Shounen jump back catalogue and new releases on my phone, now THAT'S value!

Nowadays, when I buy US comics, it's usually as digital trade paperbacks. The high quality art and very serialised stories are just so much better as graphic novels. I'm happy to pay £10 for a really nice 100 page graphic novel with great art! The other weekend, I dropped about thirty quid on a few volumes of the latest run of Runaways and had a wonderful time, poring over the gorgeous pages and getting wrapped up in the stories; I'll probably read them again! Same with my previous purchase of Spider-Geddon, which was absolutely worth the £13 cost of entry! Amazing! ... But for my fix of short weekly reading, I want something cheap; designed to be snacked on and devoured quickly, so I go for things like webcomics and shounen jump. A webcomic can BE cheap because people don't have such ridiculous expectations of the quality, or treat it with such reverence. They can be made by small teams or solo creators and you always get access to all the back issues so there are no continuity problems, they're just better for how modern audiences consume content.

AmazementComics 2020-02-27 15:55:46 UTC #28

He still works at DC, that's my point. He's been there since 1994 when he first started writing Green Lantern.

To that point, Doomsday Clock teased a possible crossover with DC and Marvel characters. It should be good if it happens, because the one back in 1996 was pretty good as well. Except when it got to the Amalgamation of the heroes.

Nature 2020-02-27 16:16:23 UTC #29

I didn't even know someone could major in comic art?

darthmongoose:

For years now, American comics have been making awful decisions. The readers they had wanted all these dark, gritty stories and highly serialised, interconnected stories with deep continuity, and they provided that, even though it makes them totally inaccessible to new readers. They distributed them primarily through these niche interest shops that are often grubby, dark and unfriendly to people who don't "fit in". Fans insisted on higher and higher quality, more and more detailed art, and it looks incredible, but makes a comic into this high-quality luxury item with tons of effort put in and a big team behind it, but serially released monthly comics are a thing you read quickly, they should be pulpy, they should be cheap! I only read FOUR titles when I was into American comics about 12 years ago: Ultimate X-men, Ultimate Spidey, Buffy and Runaways. To keep up with those titles was costing me too much for me to afford; way more than say, my monthly Netflix sub, which gets me tons more content. Hell, you know what I get for the price of a cup of Starbucks tea a month? The entire Shounen jump back catalogue and new releases on my phone, now THAT'S value!

I mean, you're not wrong. The only thing about it is, DC is gritty, Marvel is more light. Let's be honest, that's the point of comics. You get to pick and choose what stories you want to read. Nobody can read ALL of the comics in the world unless they have no life and are terrible spenders. Marvel and DC comics are so popular in demand, you naturally have to increase prices on comics so that the comic shops have enough money to keep the lights on and the writers can create original stories. Some work, some won't work. Also, it's easier to release single issues because trade paperbacks take at least a year to come out after a comic series has ended. I don't care what anyone says, but without comics, Marvel and DC have no outline on what they can base their tv shows or movies on, because characters personalities are based off of decades of continuity. So what's a little confusion in comics in the grand scheme of things? That's bound to happen when these companies get too big.

pencilinpain 2020-02-27 17:13:01 UTC #30

Never say never, but it seems unlikely. The landscape is completely different now that Disney and AT&T are involved. If you think about it, at the very least, they could be reprinting the old crossovers, but they're not even doing that.

Also DC is not based in New York anymore and one of the main reasons those collaborations came to be was the editors on both sides were long time friends and they somehow managed to keep interference under control.

BlueWorldComics 2020-02-27 17:45:43 UTC #31

The most exciting thing DC has been doing IMO is the Walmart exclusive 100-Page giants. Unfortunately, their execution of that has been pretty weak to say the least.

The idea is so sound. Selling 100-page anthologies for only $5? I was all over it and have since bought every single one... They should sell these at book stores and in the magazine aisles, not the collector's aisle (also known as the NERD aisle that hardly anybody goes to).

And also charging $4 or $5 for individual issues? There's so much easy fixes that can be done for the comic industry that the greedy people on top don't want to do... No one cares about paper quality. No one cares about glossy inks.

They should just flat out copy the Japanese market. Big anthology magazines that get collected in trades throughout the year. The biggest difference would be that American comic creators have huge machines behind them on a monthly basis as opposed to one guy and a few assistants working on whole chapters a week.

Freemints30 2020-02-27 17:46:57 UTC #32

Never cared much about western comics, especially western super hero comic. The art style rarely appeal to me and the thought of all the characters I would like having a reboot making everything that happened previously not mattering, and the crossovers(Oh god) with shit I don't know about just turns me of from ever picking up one. I only ever read and like a handful of batman one-shots. So the potential of DC closing just makes shrug my shoulders.

So this may not be my place judge but I could see this as a bit of the enviable consequence to being completely fixated on one product and expensive at that. Very rarely a horror comic is made, or a romance, which as we seen online and in manga have a very large audience but rarely are they made by the big three(mostly indie western publishers take the chance).I have never seen an original fantasy story featuring the original characters made by them. The market has the untapped wealth of consumers but they never try to successfully tap into it, resulting them going else where.

And the price for a physical copy if fuck ridiculous for the amount of pages you get. christ. thats just ridiculous.

KrispyKremeBits 2020-02-27 18:16:32 UTC #33

I'm sad to hear them potentially closing but not surprised. I don't read a lot of Marvel or DC since there content doesn't interest me like it used to but what I've seen comic twitter talk about constantly is how the culture of comics has changed. Web comics are a hot item because there's so many different stories to tell, same thing with manga. Whenever I visit a comic book shop yeah they've got there dc and marvel but they've also got there kids comics and independent books too. There's creators out there who are tapping into the newer younger generation and still making bank, DC and Marvel are too stuck in there ways sadly to get with the times.

spadedigsbutts 2020-02-27 22:31:53 UTC #34

You can major in comics but most the degree is usually called “sequential art” so people don’t realize what it is. Many schools are starting to add them to their lineups, heck even my old junior college offered a “sequential art” class

AmazementComics 2020-02-28 00:37:41 UTC #35

With all due respect, that is entirely false. Pick up a Batman comic or a Swamp Thing story and you'll see just how dark DC characters can get. You talk about fantasy? Marvel literally has Thor, the god of thunder, and DC has Wonder Woman, all of their stories are fantasy driven. So Marvel and DC have solid stories in everything you just mentioned. By the way, they are the only two big name comic companies.

Freemints30 2020-02-28 00:48:43 UTC #36

That's not exactly what I meant. Im aware they are made but they seem rather rare in the mainstream western market. Batman cult was a rather dark psychological thriller but that's not what I'm talking about. A fantasy not superhero related. Something along the lines lord of the rings fantasy world, when I meant horror the last I have seen original characters going thru spooky, paranormal shit were in only indie comics.

Focus on solely named superheroes is a double edge sword, yes they can potentially go into any genre but as a consequence you will be constantly alienating fans of how they are currently and neglecting fans who want something else.

TAMAnnoying 2020-02-28 01:14:23 UTC #37

Not surprised and kind of stopped caring tbh, I’ve known about this for over a year now and considering the lack luster stories that both marvel and DC have put out in the recent decade..... well there’s a reason why the movies are doing so good in comparison- and a reason why every old comic fan is >terrified< that the movies will go the way of the comics. Bad stories, forgettable characters, and Over all poor quality.

AmazementComics 2020-02-28 01:16:07 UTC #38

On the contrary, DC DOES have some form of mystical elements in their stories for non traditional fans: I present to you, Books of Magic. It's like a Harry Potter story:

indagold 2020-02-28 01:48:48 UTC #39

You can depending on the college though 99% of most art colleges are just fine art with extra fluff but some actually offer more defined majors like cartooning or traditional animation.

lanonym 2020-02-28 02:29:57 UTC #40

I'm not going to miss them. It sounds harsh but I'm not exaggerating when I say that superhero comics are the product of censorship (specifically The Comics Code). And superhero comics in particular have themselves are a far cry from what they used to be. They're just another sad reminded of what comics could have been in North America. Of course, this is not to say that a Marvel monopoly is a good thing. It's just a case of them making their bed and lying in it. A lot like the record industry in the '70s! Back in those days, the record execs were these aloof cigar chomping bigwigs who gave people a lot of freedom. They'd just toss a wad of cash at anyone who walked in with big hair and their instruments in tow (it was what the dumb kids wanted after all). The only sounds they liked was a cash register. Now whiny fanboys pretty run the show and they have a way they want things done. Creative experimentation is out the window because they can't take a loss. Even stuff from the old days that never did well commercially ended up being hidden gems.

rajillustration 2020-02-28 06:52:32 UTC #41

No, this is just the internet hysteria talking because Ethan Von Schriber went off on a soap box rant on a site that is...pretty clickbaity. Most people in the industry that know the guy, say that he likes to stir up drama. He was let off by DC a good while ago and is butthurt about it. DC makes less money than Marvel, but they are fine. They're cutting back, but their version of "cutting back" is still releasing like 52 comics in the month of February. That's a lot of comics.

So they're not closing, they're just changing what was clearly not working. Print comics are changing in the American market, but any change is welcome at this point. And if they DO close...they still have all the movies and merch and TV shows--they are like half of the programs on CW right now. I should know I was just catching up on Arrow before coming here.

Also, don't forget that they have a streaming service where they have a rolling backlog of over 1000 comics you can read digitally. Even if the print sales don't happen, they get plenty of money from the comics via the monthly streaming service.