Thor Ragnarok*

good one! almost feasible & believable these days...clip them balz...

 

Meanwhile, their comic book sales are in meltdown: Legacy Isn’t Going to Save Marvel Comics

 

Physical media thing affects everybody.

 

Maybe it has to do with the tiresome state of comics these days

 

interesting

the actual norse myth version of ragnarok is, in my opinion, so much more interesting than making Hela a villain (she was not in the myths... she was just there, an unmovable and inevitable spirit, with apparently no ambition other than to rule her underworld - unless I'm missing something).

Things like this... I dont know. Why couldnt they just create the story around Loki makes a dart out of mistletoe... and you know what happens next.

Maybe they thought that was too dull. To me, its pretty good stuff.

I might be wrong, I often am.

 

Aren't the films more lucrative than the comics ever were?

 

I read that article and it really seems to be a "physical media thing", but in different way: Marvel has the titles in the "Legacy" series, and they offer a limited number of them with lenticular covers, but the only way vendors can get them is if they also purchase several times more the amount of regular covers, and these books are not returnable if they do not sell. So in other words, you can't count on comic books to sell just because people want to read them and follow the story, the real draw is the limited, rare items that can be flipped in the future. The vendors expect that the lenticular covers will sell out but they'll lose money on the non-lenticular covers that nobody wants, so they're just not stocking the books.

So what I discern from this is, the comics market really isn't about just collecting these things to read and enjoy, it's about scoring collectible items. I expect that this also affects how they are written - the "death" stories (which are almost always reneged later), the reboots where the character switches to an entirely different person and usually a different sex, etc. The first issues of these innovations sell really well and then they taper off, because no one really wants to read this stuff, they just want six copies of Action Comics #1.

 

Nerdist has produced an '80's style Ragnarok trailer which is pretty funny (if you remember video cassettes and the 80's).

Taika Waititi tweeted his approval.

 

Looking forward to the official film.

 

This I beleive happened in the 90's too but this was before the internet got big..
I'm suprised though based on new titles new origins.. etc..
I have no interest in new comic books.. I prefer comic books from 70's
well written and drawn well...

 

I wonder why.

The prices of comic books over time are not that hard to dig up. In fact, more recently, any decent fanboy could recite the price increases of the past decade from memory. Though comic books were published for well a decade before, we will start in 1938, as the debut of Superman in Action Comics No. 1 is considered the birth of the superhero comics as we know them. It goes like this:

1938: 10¢
1962: 12¢
1969: 15¢
1971: 20¢
1974: 25¢
1976: 30¢
1977: 35¢
1979: 40¢
1980: 50¢
1982: 60¢
1985: 65¢
1986: 75¢
1988: $1.00
1992: $1.25
1995: $1.50
1996: $1.95
1997: $1.99
2000: $2.25
2005: $2.50
2006: $2.99
2009: $3.99

As mentioned previously, there are books from the Majors (as Marvel and DC are referred collectively) selling for $2.99, but the Iron Man and Avengers titles, and DC’s Action Comics and Justice League, they’re going for $3.99.

Now let’s just adjust those numbers for inflation, and, considering that the price held tight at ten cents for nearly 25 years, add in some dates in the 40s and 50s:

1938: $1.63
1943: $1.33
1948: $.95
1953: $.95
1958: $.86
1962: $.91
1969: $.94
1971: $1.13
1974: $.1.16
1976: $1.21
1977: $1.32
1979: $1.26
1980:: $1.39
1982: $1.43
1985: $1.39
1986: $1.57
1988: $1.94
1992: $2.04
1995: $2.26
1996: $2.85
1997: $2.94
2000: $3.00
2005: $2.94
2006: $3.40
2009: $4.27
2012: $3.99

Even at $3/issue, something that takes 10 minutes to read and is half-filled with ads is bad entertainment value.

 

Your right..

 

94cents were a better read/value.

 

Your figures seem to indicate that comics have kept pace with inflation or have been even cheaper? It seems to be though that they are far more expensive nowadays. I could go to a newsagent as a kid and buy several comics for 12p each, when that wouldn't have got me anywhere near buying an LP or something. Now though if I were to buy a few comics it would cost more than buying a CD.

I used to buy 30 or 40 titles a month but stopped completely as they got too expensive. It's insane as these things should be in corner shops for kids to spend their pocket money on not for middle age collectors to buy in specialised shops. Very sad.

 

Agree insane prices.

 

The other thing that happened with Marvel comics sometime in the early 2000s is that the stories became less dense. Back in the 70s/80s/90s you could pick up a comic and it would take you a while to get through it. And you may re-read it and pick out something else you didn't notice. Often quite a bit happened in each issue. And often you were left with a cliff hanger that made you want to get the next issue which would also be packed with story/words/thoughts/flashbacks/whatever.

In the 2000s and forward the stories became 'de-compressed.' Now it took you 4 issues to get the same content that used to be in 1 issue. So many splash pages. No dialogue or thought-bubbles. No back story. Nothing. Just giant pictures of generic action.

And they lost the spark of what made their characters interesting. They did too much reinvention. Not enough good story-telling. I understand that continuity was difficult for some readers to get 40+ years of stories. But why they couldn't just pick up and ignore some of that or introduce new characters to have the focus with the older characters as more support players, etc.

I don't know. They could have done much better.

 

The soul left the illustration.

 

For me, decompression began in the late 60s. If you check out early Steve Ditko Spider-Man comics, there are 20 pages, often with 9 panels per page. For someone used to DC comics that made early Marvel the comic equivalent of slow food. By the late 60s, however, Ditko had gone and we were often down to 4 panels or less per page and far less dialogue. What used to take up one comic in 1964 ended up as a 3 or 4 comic serial by 1969. Visuals had improved but content had diminished, IMHO.

Not all Marvel comics suffered in that way, but there was one in particular where it hit home - The Amazing Spider-Man 77 - "In The Blaze Of Battle" (October 1969). This was a John Buscema and Jim Mooney effort and most pages had only 3 or 4 panels. I read it extremely quickly and felt a bit cheated by the end.

 

Ragnarok 5-minute extended trailer (fan made) - looks to combine all the released trailer bits from various markets. Best bit: "the Revengers"..

 

To me, the mainstream decline started with the Todd McFarlane Amazing Spider Man run, where IMO artwork became 90% of the focus and the writing slipped to 10%.

 

@Jim B. That was your takeaway from what I'd posted? Weird.

 

In these modern times, it's long been established that the comic book divisions of DC and Marvel have been money losers. They exist to support the movies and tv shows. Over produced and under written, part of the reason they're so expensive is to suppport the ridiculous salaries, the original creator's were woefully underpaid but what's being produced today simply isn't worth it. Over at Marvel currently there's a female Thor, a female Iron man, a teenage Hulk (not his son, that's another Hulk to go along with the she-hulk, Red Hulk, and red she-hulk), a black Latin Spiderman (and Spider girl, and Spider Gwen), a teenage female wolverine. Over at DC it's no better with whole 'super' families; the Bat family, the Flash family, the Lantern Family, the Supers, the Aquas, with each family each having a 1/2 to a full dz. characters that are all derivatives of the originals. The lack of creativity is stunning! Add to this the fact that creators rarely want to create a new character due to the fact that their creations immediately become company property. The comic industry has a long history of ripping off the creators. The creators of Superman, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, all these guys should've been millionares based on the money their creations have made for the companies!

 

@Jim B. , before I forget, I wanted to give you the link the full article the figures were pulled from.

How Much More Do Comic Books Cost Today?

I haven't been a regular buyer since the late 80s/early 90s, but I was more struck by the recent spike than the steady pricing of earlier decades. As someone who was once a regular buyer, it might interest you.

 

Well your figures say they were cheaper in 2012 than in 2009. And what you haven't factored in is that up to the 90's very cheap paper was used. Comics would cost more that then did when they used the old process. You are getting a better quality product now.

Also since Image they have to pay creators more. I would recommend you watch Todd McFarlane's talk at the most recent Comic Con in NY, it's on Youtube and is very interesting. He says that the artists were earning maybe $30,000 a year working for Marvel and DC and when they went to Image he was giving these say people cheques for hundreds of thousands of dollars just for their first issues! Faced with that to be able to retain talent the 'majors' had to pay more.

So you have a more expensive product to print, more expensive product to write and draw and hugely decreased economies of scale. Take all that into account and your figures don't look bad at all.

I still think they are expensive, and as a fan I think there should be comics kids can buy in the corner shop for a dollar or whatever of Spider-Man, Batman and the X-Men, or else comics will become a niche market for wealthy middle-aged people which will be the death of it.