Marvel and DC... "Classics Line" ?

[WannabeMego]

to be fair though, we're talking about 17 years ago when Marvel was in bankruptcy with no studio movie machine at the helm (and their Toy Company masters in a bad spot as well), rather than today under the Disney regime. I'd say the model back then at the turn of the century is diametrically opposite with a ridiculous amount of creative risk taking rather than how relatively "safe" they play it today with their constant Event repetition, rebooting and multiple darwinian character iterations.

Out of desperation to turn a ship that had already sunk, Jemas/Quesada made some pretty bold creative choices by plucking indy talent like Brian Bendis and David Mack, and raiding the Vertigo talent like Grant Morrison and Mark Millar, and editorial (current Marvel EIC was poached from there) as a hail mary pass (which worked against odds). Putting unproven TV and movie creatives like Joss Whedon on X-Men, JMS on Spider-Man or Kevin Smith on Daredevil. Warren veteran Bruce Jones getting a run on The Hulk. Many of these creators driving the content that they adapt into film and TV today.

Regardless...it was a successful book bringing in $$$ & Readership...ALL of the above does NOT explain why a Business would take a positive revenue book in a desperate financial period and cancel it...it makes NO Business sense whatsoever.

EGO...it explains A LOT about the state of the industry.

[samurainoir]

Regardless...it was a successful book bringing in $$$ & Readership...ALL of the above does NOT explain why a Business would take a positive revenue book in a desperate financial period and cancel it...it makes NO Business sense whatsoever.

EGO...it explains A LOT about the state of the industry.

Keep in mind, I would have loved to have seen X-Men The Hidden Years continue under Byrne. I'm totally an old school Byrne fan.
Putting aside my own reading habits, if I were to take a more dispassionate analysis of the numbers, with four other X-Men titles occupying the top four sales spots and Byrne's title selling only a quarter amount of the top title (Morrison's New X-Men), I can't exactly dispute their decision despite my own love of Byrne's stuff. It was clearly under performing for an X-Men title and given the limited resources of the company during that lean period, that effort, with the benefit of hindsight, turned out to be much better spent backing the new titles rather than trying to resuscitate Hidden Years in a fickle marketplace.

I'm also suspecting there might have been some Ego on Byrne's part too, given how creator friendly that editorial regime was (Quesada being a creator himself rather than coming up from editorial). I understand Byrne was offered other opportunities at Marvel, just like Claremont was when they cancelled Claremont's book out from under him. Rather than walk, Claremont played ball with the incoming editorial team and ended up getting his shot at writing X-Men again for another half decade (or more?), and his Extreme X-Men (which I wasn't personally a fan of) debuted in the top 4 along with the 3 other revamped X-Men titles. I have no doubt Byrne still had the juice back then to negotiate a similar deal, but chose the All or Nothing approach with Hidden Years, rather than relaunch a different title of his choosing.

Three other niche fan favourite titles that were announced as canceled at the same time with similar sales numbers to Hidden Years, were retooled/rebooted under the same creative teams, and Black Panther, Spider-Girl and Captain Marvel survived another couple of years. Two of the creators were actually highly critical of Marvel, just as Byrne was, but when push came to shove, they came to the table, worked it out with editorial, and the books were uncanceled.

taken from http://www.comichron.com/monthlycomicssales.html

sales numbers:
71 X-Men The Hidden Years 14 $2.50 Marvel 31,473
74 X-Men The Hidden Years 15 $2.50 Marvel 30,598
75 X-Men The Hidden Years 16 $2.50 Marvel 29,103
64 X-Men The Hidden Years 17 $2.50 Marvel 28,354
66 X-Men The Hidden Years 18 $2.50 Marvel 27,684
63 X-Men The Hidden Years 19 $2.50 Marvel 27,834
58 X-Men Hidden Years 20 $2.50 Marvel 27,650
66 X-Men The Hidden Years 21 $2.50 Marvel 27,663


by comparison:
1 New X-Men 114 $2.25 Marvel 144,835
2 Uncanny X-Men 394 $2.25 Marvel 136,081
3 X-Treme X-Men 1 $2.99 Marvel 135,219
4 Ultimate X-Men 6 $2.25 Marvel 106,962

1 New X-Men 115 $2.25 Marvel 142,308
2 Uncanny X-Men 395 $2.25 Marvel 139,359
3 X-Treme X-Men 2 $2.99 Marvel 122,269
4 Ultimate X-Men 7 $2.25 Marvel 107,741

1 New X-Men 116 $2.25 Marvel 136,249
2 Uncanny X-Men 396 $2.25 Marvel 132,705
3 Ultimate X-Men 8 $2.25 Marvel 112,348
4 X-Treme X-Men 3 $2.99 Marvel 110,746

1 New X-Men 117 $2.25 Marvel 136,919
2 Uncanny X-Men 397 $2.25 Marvel 132,181
3 Ultimate X-Men 9 $2.25 Marvel 113,831
4 X-Treme X-Men 4 $2.99 Marvel 108,527

[samurainoir]

What's actually most interesting to me about calling out the decisions of Marvel Editorial a decade and a half ago... history has proven that Joe Quesada's creative choices were extremely successful for Marvel overall. Looking back on everything he accomplished, he really has earned his right to have an Ego, since Marvel has experienced more growth under his leadership on the creative end of things than any other point in history (except for Stan's).

Under his editorial regime, the bankrupt Marvel which was just about to close up shop and sell off the pieces, not only crawled out of bankruptcy, but is now one of the biggest entertainment brands on the planet with billions in revenue. I don't think it's any coincidence either that he parlayed his job as EIC of Marvel over to creative consultant on the Marvel movies about a half decade back. His fingerprints are pretty much everywhere on the Marvel Cinematic universe and beyond, freely adapting the content that he oversaw throughout the decade of the 'noughts. From Adi Granovs' Iron Man designs, through to the heavy influence of the Ultimate titles, to Joss Whedon's involvement at Marvel, the version of the Marvel Knights Black Panther we're seeing onscreen, etc.

Even if cancelling X-Men Hidden Years was one BAD decision, he's made a hundred right ones as well to get to the point we're at today at Marvel given how hard it is to argue with their successes vs their failures. Weigh out the main branch of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and it's dozen plus awesome entries, against Fant4stic (Which was based on Ultimate FF, produced under Quesada's watch), and they still come out ahead in the wash.

[Blue Meanie]

My understanding about these, similar to the Free Comic Book Day comics, is that they serve as loss leaders to promote the trade collections. They are generally just the first issues of a comic series with a deep library of collected trades. They are hoping that $1 issue of Walking Dead #1 or Saga #1 or Sandman #1 or Fables #1 let's a potential reader samples that comic and enjoys it enough to invest the $10-$15 bucks for the first trade, and in turn the rest of the multi volume series. My understanding is that this strategy has been fairly successful, along with releasing the first issue free online as a digital download.

If it were a viable publishing model, they would reprint every issue at a $1 a piece instead of just the first one.

I disagree that the $1 books are loss leaders. I'll send you the link on the facebook discussion on this very topic I started. I know for a small press it would be very difficult to do something like this...but for the "Big 2" , especially NOW when they are owned by corporations like Disney and Warner, there is no such thing as a loss leader. Here's just one piece of the thread:

"Let's agree to disagree. So if you're numbers are correct and print runs are more than 100,000 copies per book...how come books cost $5 per book? If you double your cost to cover printing expenses...book should be about $1 each at a bare minimum and if they really want to be pigs about $$$ they can charge $2.50 or $3.00. At the 3.00 rate per book they are making a 600% markup right? Marvel and DC probably get a better rate than other companies when it comes to printing because Marvel does around 112 titles a month. If they don't then they have idiots that work in the financing department. I'm being generous with my numbers not including a bigger discount for quantity of books that are published. This is also not including how much Marvel and DC get paid by advertisers to literally offset the cost of the book completely so that there is almost no cost to them. Also, they probably have a deal set up with Diamond and are paid well by Diamond to distribute their books. I haven't included that into the pricing structure."

I think my numbers on the cost of books is actually conservative in regards to how much they pay to publish/print books. It may be as little as 25 cents each when ALL the factors are taken into consideration. So that $1 book that these companies are selling actually pay for themselves if you follow the the double markup of the retail world from publisher to to Diamond to ultimate consumer. Maybe they take a 10 - 12 cent loss...again, my 25 cent estimate may be high.

[samurainoir]

I'll send you the link on the facebook discussion on this very topic I started. I know for a small press it would be very difficult to do something like this...but for the "Big 2" , especially NOW when they are owned by corporations like Disney and Warner, there is no such thing as a loss leader.

Thanks Roberto, I'd love to read that if you did want to send me the link. Just off the top though, I'm not sure your source has a firm grasp of the business with this statement:

Also, they probably have a deal set up with Diamond and are paid well by Diamond to distribute their books. I haven't included that into the pricing structure."

Diamond doesn't get paid by Marvel to distribute the book. It's exactly the opposite, Diamond would take their cut out the wholesale cost of that $1 book. That's another fairly substantial chunk out of that pie that needs to get split between Marvel, Diamond and the retailer. And from a glance, your source isn't even taking into account all the costs those three businesses have as overhead beyond the printing costs and paying the talent to produce the book. All three businesses have hidden costs of rent, employee salaries, hydro, taxes, and all the other associated costs with running a business that needs to get further sliced down from their individual slices of the pie.

Loss leaders are inevitably taken on by the retail end. That is the retailers/comic shop owners, not Marvel/Disney. Retailers are paying not only a small amount for those FCBD and $1 "promo" books, they are generally eating that cost of shipping. Until transporter technology is invented, that weekly shipping cost is always absorbed into the retailer's end of the pie on the comics they sell.

I'm told by retailer friends that the increasing costs of shipping that are the big reason why Free Comic Book Day (and the $1 promo comics) are considered loss-leaders on their end. They bank on the promotional benefit of having free or low cost samples for their potential customer to try-out in hopes that it translates into "real" sales on product at the cash register with actual profit margins built in.

It's actually the retailers that are firmly resistant to lower priced non-promo comics because they really won't see any real benefit in net profit if their current margins shrink to 1/4th (I'm being arbitrary) of what they currently are getting per unit, and even if they make that up in increased volume, the shipping costs rises dramatically. So not only would they need to sell four times (again, arbitrary number) as much product to make up the difference in per-unit margins, their increased shipping costs for four times more product erode further into those shrunken margins. Add in the costs of the increased labour of unpacking and sorting through four times more product, and the real estate four times more product would take up, really makes that an untenable situation for a small business owner.

Also on the retail end, since it's non-returnable product for the most part, the cost of unsold copies is absorbed on their end as well. Which might have been fine in the old days where there was a healthy market and mark-up for back-issues, but in the age where collected edition trades become available almost immediately on the heels of the floppy single comic version, recent back issues have become mostly a liquidation business, with the exception of the small, rare percentages that become immediate "hot" collectors items because of sell-outs and demand outstripping availability. This is why variants have become such a crucial part of the equation, in order to offset the risk of getting stuck with product they over-ordered and will need to liquidate.

So if you're numbers are correct and print runs are more than 100,000 copies per book...how come books cost $5 per book? If you double your cost to cover printing expenses...book should be about $1 each at a bare minimum

ONLY the top ten or so books have print runts of more than 100,000 copies per book these days if you want to look at this month's sales figures. After that, there is a substantial drop off from that top tier, so if the source you are quoting is basing printing costs off of that, they need to even it out with the BOTTOM of the chart which would change those printing costs substantially, and there is no way they are viable as $1 comics. With the $1 model, we'd essentially be slicing out the bottom 3/4th's or more of the diversity of product available to us in favour of increasing volume sold on the top tier books, which are inevitably dominated by the same crossover and event books we've generally been complaining about that constantly perpetuate the need to kill off characters and replace them, to garner mainstream press coverage and sales.

http://www.comichron.com/monthlycomicssales/2016/2016-06.html

1 Civil War II 1 $5.99 Marvel 381,737
2 Batman 1* $2.99 DC 280,360
3 Batman Rebirth 1* $2.99 DC 199,807
4 Star Wars Han Solo 1 $3.99 Marvel 152,596
5 Civil War II 2 $4.99 Marvel 148,403
6 Dark Knight III Master Race 5 $5.99 DC 139,919
7 Dark Knight Returns The Last Crusade 1 $6.99 DC 122,305
8 Superman Rebirth 1* $2.99 DC 118,434
9 Wonder Woman 1* $2.99 DC 107,737
10 Superman 1* $2.99 DC 105,380
11 Flash 1* $2.99 DC 100,392
12 Green Lanterns Rebirth 1* $2.99 DC 99,504


Marvel and DC titles dominate the top 150 and start to thin out and give way to Dark Horse/Image/Boom/IDW/Valient books around here:

141 Web Warriors 8 $3.99 Marvel 15,953
142 Legend of Wonder Woman 7 $3.99 DC 15,820
143 Archie 9 $3.99 Archie 15,757
144 Constantine The Hellblazer 13 $2.99 DC 15,697
145 Agents of Shield 6 $3.99 Marvel 15,689
146 Timely Comics All New All Different Avengers 1 $3.00 Marvel 14,881
147 Unbeatable Squirrel Girl 9 $3.99 Marvel 14,692

lowest number on a DC title I've found on the chart (which breaks my heart because I think this is one of the best comics currently being published by the Big Two). I'd love for this to be adapted as a Netflix/AMC/HBO show like Walking Dead so that more folks can discover it as a comic.
296 Sheriff of Babylon 7 $3.99 DC 5,714

lowest number on a non reprint Marvel title I can see on the chart (again heartbreaking since it's a creator owned book by the same creative team who created the hit Netflix character Jessica Jones, and the writer also has the #1 title out this month with Civil War).
246 Scarlet 10 $3.95 Marvel 7,386

[Blue Meanie]

That was a quote from me. I wasn't saying that Marvel paid Diamond...I was stating that Diamond deal with Marvel and DC way back in the day for their exclusivity is probably still in affect. Not that Marvel and DC can go anywhere else (Diamond is a Monopoly that NOBODY has challenged successfully) Also, the numbers that you are putting here are probably for actual units sold...they don't tell the whole story of how much was actually printed. Those numbers of ACTUAL print runs will never be revealed by the Big 2. It defeats any purpose of getting any sort of monies from advertisers that may put ads in their books. So those numbers are probably for units sold. When I was in printing we would do 40 inch X 60 inch plates and they would last for at least 75 - 100 K pressings. So we would try to piggy back different jobs from the same companies onto those plates trying to save customers money. The same can be said for Marvel and DC's books. Back in those days you could get 24 different titles or pages on on 40 X 60 Plate. Saved the companies a lot of $$$ on top of the quantity discounts they were already getting. It's just a fact. I don't know what the price of FCBD books are, I thought I heard somewhere that they are less than $1 each...probably a lot less. Now what does that tell you about how much these books that Marvel and DC are printing really costing them to print?? Again, 50 cents a book is being really conservative when it comes to the cost of how much it is to print a comic book if you are the big 2. I think 25 cents a book is more likely when you figure all the variables. How many pages in a comic are Ad pages? 8 - 10 pages?? That's a whole lot of $$$ being paid to the publishers of the book. It's why the indy press books really get the shaft when it prints books. Out of every $5 that you pay for and indy I personally think that at bare minimum $1 goes to printing that book. One of the reasons we should all support indy press if it is a title you really like.

[MRP]

I disagree that the $1 books are loss leaders. I'll send you the link on the facebook discussion on this very topic I started. I know for a small press it would be very difficult to do something like this...but for the "Big 2" , especially NOW when they are owned by corporations like Disney and Warner, there is no such thing as a loss leader. Here's just one piece of the thread:

"Let's agree to disagree. So if you're numbers are correct and print runs are more than 100,000 copies per book...how come books cost $5 per book? If you double your cost to cover printing expenses...book should be about $1 each at a bare minimum and if they really want to be pigs about $$$ they can charge $2.50 or $3.00. At the 3.00 rate per book they are making a 600% markup right? Marvel and DC probably get a better rate than other companies when it comes to printing because Marvel does around 112 titles a month. If they don't then they have idiots that work in the financing department. I'm being generous with my numbers not including a bigger discount for quantity of books that are published. This is also not including how much Marvel and DC get paid by advertisers to literally offset the cost of the book completely so that there is almost no cost to them. Also, they probably have a deal set up with Diamond and are paid well by Diamond to distribute their books. I haven't included that into the pricing structure."

I think my numbers on the cost of books is actually conservative in regards to how much they pay to publish/print books. It may be as little as 25 cents each when ALL the factors are taken into consideration. So that $1 book that these companies are selling actually pay for themselves if you follow the the double markup of the retail world from publisher to to Diamond to ultimate consumer. Maybe they take a 10 - 12 cent loss...again, my 25 cent estimate may be high.

The thing to remember with the reprint books is that they are not paying creators page rates on the material-that was paid on the initial printing of the book. For trades and books likes the $1 intro books, they pay only royalties and only is x amount of copies/dollars are made for the minimum threshold on royalties to kick in.

Second, Marvel/DC only gats 25 cents per copy on that, Diamond 50 cents and the retailer $1, but the retailer is paying 50 cents plus shipping on those books which makes the margins on those thing non-existant, so for the small retailer that and stuff for FCBD (Which they pay 25 cents per issue plus shipping on average to give away to customers for free) it pretty much is a loss leader.

If you are talking about producing new material that you actually pay creators to produce, the $1 price point is not viable. Especially if there is not a huge market for the books as economy of scale for printing is killer. The less you print, the more the cost per unit increases dramatically.

Newsprint is out of the question too, I edited for a small self-publsihing comic company for a time, we looked at newsprint for our books. Newspritn costs 2-4X what plain white paper stock does, and many (if not most) printers have abandoned offset printing for digital, so there is not an infrastructure in place for printing much on newsprint. Those printing houses that do have offset printing are at full capacity in many cases and don't have room/time for small print runs.

Third, there is not as large a market for retro books as people think. And the primary focus of entertainment companies continues to be the "magic" demographic of 18-34 years old, and retro books are not going to be targeted to or do well with that demographic. It's is not a case of if you build it, they will come. Collections of classic material sell a fraction of what collections of contemporary material does, and because the print runs on those are smaller, the price points tend to be higher because of that economy of scale effect on cost per unit. If you split your line as a publisher, you could split your sales, meaning you might lose sales on your main line which would hurt your bottom line more than you would gain with an alternate line.

Diamond sales numbers do not measure sales to end customers, but what retailers buy. Many of those sit in shops unsold, never reaching someone who reads the book. Variants are there to up the number of copies retailers order by meeting minimum thresholds. They make publishers money not in the price point/sale of the variant, but in the additional copies of the books ordered for retailers to be eligible to buy the variant to sell on the secondary market. If a retailer sells 20 copies of Batman, but can sell a 1: 50 variant at more than the extra 30 copies will cost to get it, he orders 50 not 20. That's 30 copies the publisher would't have sold and gotten revenue on. For one extra page of art for an alt cover. Add in 1:100, 1:1000 etc. variants on that and the number of copies ordered by retailers becomes far more than is being sold to end customers and increases publisher profits dramatically. Multiply that by the number of shops that up their orders to get variants and the balloon effect is significant. It also increases the size of print runs, moving the needle on the economy of scale a bit and lowering the price per unit produced increasing their profits that way too. These are things that would not happen with a new line of retro books.

Second, publishers would be investing in a line that has zero growth potential long term. Readers interested in classic interpretations are now fewer than contemporary readers and would only get smaller over time through the natural attrition of the life cycle-i.e. the readers would be dying off in the long term and there is not going to be a recruiting of new readers into that customer base. The only smidgen of hope is that people outside the regular comic shop audience would buy this stuff, but how is that going to happen? There is no infrastructure in place to get books to customers who do not already frequent comic shops, and if you have to put money into advertising it will kill the project because there is not enough of a potential revenue stream to justify advertising expenses or to even remotely believe that the books could be profitable after marketing costs are figured in. Smaller print runs would already drive up the price point (these would be a niche product, not a mainstream one, even moreso than current comics, so their price point would have to start at a higher point than the main line of comics just to be viable, add in marketing costs and price points would jump even higher. Remember pre-orders determine print run size in comics because they are ordered 3 month in advance by retailers, Diamond gives those numbers to Marvel/DC/other publishers and print run size is set to orders. If retailers aren't on board before they launch, the orders will not be high enough to justify the line. The retailer is the one who would be shouldering all the risk on the line and what indication/incentive do they have to order big on these books?

Also producing more books that sell units per issue doesn't appeal to Diamond, as that is more work for less money for them, and since they currently hold a monopoly on distributing print comics and control the gateway of what can or cannot be printed through their decisions about what they will carry and what they won't, and they have a very high floor as to what the minimum is they expect to sell before they carry something. They also influence retailer orders based on how they discount something for wholesale to retailers and if they decide they don't want a line they can minimize retailer incentives and curtail orders on products. Diamond would much rather move more units of fewer products than less units on more products because it lowers their labor and warehousing costs and increases their profit margins. Diamond is the hub around which the comic industry revolves currently because of their position as the sole distributor for most of the product on the market.

I'd love to see this kind of stuff, I truly would, but the reality is it is not economically feasible in the current structure of the comic book marketplace. You would have to see something like you are seeing in the re-Mego field, smaller contractors licensing the characters to produce stuff that appeals to that smaller niche market. And with the cost of licences and the economics of scale working against these smaller contractors, I don't see it working as well as it has for toys.

-M

[Blue Meanie]

^^
I would love to see what Marvel and DC's "ACTUAL" number is to print a comic book with all the factors included. I know that it would never happen because then the "cat would be outta the bag" on how much they've gouged the ultimate consumer over the years. Again, it's my contention that when all is said and done, advertising in comics and other factors included, I wouldn't be surprised that Marvel and DC pay anything to have their books printed. Pure "gravy" for them if they sell and "no blood no foul" if they don't sell. And on the variants...I see more and more shops that just don't want to do it anymore because it's not feasible for them to HAVE to get other books they know they can't sell in order to get that 1:50/1:100. Also see that Diamond is now offering it that variants are "even up" where you can order either or...which defeats the purpose of having them if what you said is the reason variants are still being done. It will eventually come to a point where it will implode on itself AGAIN because readers/collectors will eventually be pushed out by speculators which only think short term and not long term. It's the same crap that happened in the 90's...and that will be a sad day because I don't think the industry will recover from a second collapse in my opinion.

[MRP]

Print advertising rates are dirt cheap in this era to begin with and are based on circulation numbers, companies aren't paying much to advertise in your books if you are only selling 20-25K copies. They can get much more bang for their buck buying one facebook ad and get far more exposure to it than an entire year's worth of advertising for an entire line of comics. Ad revenue is meager at best and wouldn't come close to covering printing costs. Pretty much the only reason to include ads at this point is o beef up the page count and hit the multiples of 8 on the folios you need with printing (products need to have 8 page portfolios so page counts are usually multiples of 8 not counting covers. If you only have 20 pages of content, you have to fill up the other pages with something that doens't cost you to produce it, like ads. House ads fill some, but those cost to produce, selling ads simply defrays the costs of bulking up the page count on the product to reach needed/desired levels.

-M

[Blue Meanie]

Print advertising rates are dirt cheap in this era to begin with and are based on circulation numbers, companies aren't paying much to advertise in your books if you are only selling 20-25K copies. They can get much more bang for their buck buying one facebook ad and get far more exposure to it than an entire year's worth of advertising for an entire line of comics. Ad revenue is meager at best and wouldn't come close to covering printing costs. Pretty much the only reason to include ads at this point is o beef up the page count and hit the multiples of 8 on the folios you need with printing (products need to have 8 page portfolios so page counts are usually multiples of 8 not counting covers. If you only have 20 pages of content, you have to fill up the other pages with something that doens't cost you to produce it, like ads. House ads fill some, but those cost to produce, selling ads simply defrays the costs of bulking up the page count on the product to reach needed/desired levels.

-M

Marvel and DC are doing 4 times or more those numbers of 25K that you mentioned. They aren't small indy press.