LOL - Those were funny jokes, heavy on insensitivity. Is only sensitive joking about fictional characters preferred if you want to make a point? I apologize if you were offended by those. I cannot take credit for either of them. You'd likely have hated Martin & Lewis or Sammy Davis Jr's classic acts.
For what it's worth, my issue is with the spoilery way these changes are rolled out and the point that this is becoming a trope. Not whether I'm against anything but straight white male characters as you've inferred.
I admit that I skipped the sensitivity training course required to talk about comics in the 21st century.
Humor is, of course, subjective. I'll just leave it at that.
I like surprises in my reading too. It worked for comics in the old days because comics were an impulse buy. They were something parents picked up for their kids while shopping at the drug store, or picking up their morning paper at the newsstand. That went out in the ’80s. Today's reality is that in order to reach potential readers who aren't purposefully going out of their way to find comics, publishers have to blow their trumpets as loudly and in as many places as possible. Otherwise, they're just preaching to the ever-dwindling choir.
For what it's worth, my issue is with the spoilery way these changes are rolled out and the point that this is becoming a trope. Not whether I'm against anything but straight white male characters as you've inferred. .
ALL of media does this now, simply because they have to get eyeballs. TV shows have “The most shocking twist ever!”, music is built up with tons of leaks and sightings and announcements and such. I know a lot about pro wrestling production, and they are constantly being told to hype what is coming up, they have to keep people watching. In comics, it’s even MORE crucial, as they have to get shops to order the books sight unseen. You really can’t do much in the way of a shock, because if it is a BIG deal and shops don’t know and don’t order it, they won’ have the supply for that shock to matter in the sales arena.
Look at the “deaths” in Uncanny Avengers. Shops are FURIORS that these characters have died without them being told it would happens, and they are quietly being told by sales reps (wait until the story is over”.
Maybe I missed the press releases and news stories of the Latino all-new Ghost Rider? Maybe they should've made a huge deal - cause if you aren't reading it, you're missing something special.
Also I understand that admitting you were amused by non-pc humor is really frowned upon these days.
I really could not care less what the biggest comic book publisher in the world thinks they have to do to try to match the sales figures they got back in the golden years of comics when titles regularly sold over a half a million copies (and books cost less than a quarter). I'm betting these "stunts" will become even more common once all their books are $5 an issue. Doesn't mean I have to applaud something that is very easily understandable and, again, becoming a trope / stunt / gimmick of diminishing returns.
There's the relaunch #1 title, killing a main character, changing the race-gender-orientation of a main character, etc. These are the most common devices in this era. The foil covers are long gone, but now it's the variant covers. I long for the false advertising covers where what is depicted on the front never happens inside. Can a fanboy not grumble about these cliches anymore?
Again, my preference is to be shocked when I discover that this panel just heralded a change in the status quo, I'm not shocked at all that they're heralding well in advance that they're going to return to the well again. There must be better ways to sell books.
The EW says "Tony Stark heads to San Francisco with ambitious plans and an iPod-white suit." Whether or not that is regular Tony or time travel one I guess we'll see.
I'll check this out. I'm curious to see how this new Thor comes to be. Will it be something where this female Thor is a time-traveling Thor? Is she from the future or another Universe? I'll hold judgement until the issue comes out. Again, I think her design is really cool and I'm curious to see how the 616 Universe will react to this new Thor.
Maybe I missed the press releases and news stories of the Latino all-new Ghost Rider? Maybe they should've made a huge deal - cause if you aren't reading it, you're missing something special.
This is just anecdotal, but I saw just as much promotion for Ghost Rider as I've seen for pretty much everything else. That may be because I know Tradd and really like his artwork, so I saw it in my Facebook feed along with the previews on CBR and the interviews on CBR (the only press release-heavy news site I frequent). Publishers can't control how often their press releases get reposted—as much as they would like to.
Also I understand that admitting you were amused by non-pc humor is really frowned upon these days.
I thought the frying pan was simply a weak joke. The other one, however, literally made me cringe. But, then, I didn’t find Andrew “Dice” Clay funny either. Again, humor is subjective.
I really could not care less what the biggest comic book publisher in the world thinks they have to do to try to match the sales figures they got back in the golden years of comics when titles regularly sold over a half a million copies (and books cost less than a quarter). I'm betting these "stunts" will become even more common once all their books are $5 an issue. Doesn't mean I have to applaud something that is very easily understandable and, again, becoming a trope / stunt / gimmick of diminishing returns.
I don't think even in their wildest dreams that they are hoping to match Golden Age sales. At this point, the Big Two are just trying to make enough money to justify their existence to the Disney/Time-Warner shareholders.
In my opinion, the best way to sell books is through word of mouth. The problem for comic book publishers is that there are far more mouths talking about movies, video games, television shows, etc., than there are mouths talking about funny books (and the people who talk about funny books tend to talk about them amongst themselves). It doesn’t matter how good your book is if only a relatively small number of people knows it exists.
These gimmicks aren't the only thing Marvel is doing to try to sell their books. They've tried kids’ comics, manga, digest-sized books aimed at teens, bookstore penetration, library penetration—the list goes on and on. You can argue about how they went about these attempts, but the simple truth is that comics just don't matter to most people, and they most likely never will.
I've only read the first issue of Original Sins so I'm not sure about this Deathlok's backstory...what I do know is that he doesn't even know that he's Deathlok..he looks normal until someone remotely tells him who to go kill...sort of like the clairvoyant angle in AoS...after the mission he doesn't remember a thing.
...........
iMan..and he gets a new villain..The Dreaded Droid
Hmm. I'm not reading Original Sins. Will I be lost with this new Avengers team if I haven't read it? If so, I'll just do the Matt thing and read it on Wikipedia.
@nweathington - Everything you've just taken the time to type in your detailed response is very clear and makes perfect sense. There is very little that I would disagree with in your post. But my original point was never why do they do these gimmicks, it was that I just don't like these types of gimmicks.
Going on the (Disney owned) View to announce that Thor's gonna be a girl... going on Colbert to announce the new Captain America is going to be black... doing an interview with USA today to declare...
For instance: I never liked bagged books with trading cards in them. You can easily explain why they did it. How they increased book sales. Hooked the speculators. How people that were into trading cards might now be more interested in comics. And so on, but I hated it. It overlooked the point of funny books by keeping people from actually reading the books and enjoying them. Of course not everyone kept theirs in the bag (much to Liefeld's chagrin when folks discovered he wasn't up to the hype...), but all that aside.
This week's campaign contain the initial announcements, they aren't interview requests. These books haven't even been solicited yet. How many people that have never been into comics went to the comic store or the mall and discovered that the female Thor wasn't even out yet? Or that Captain America is still an old white dude? The books being promoted on the boob tube are still several months away. Are the books that came out this week going to see a spike? Who knows? Will those whose interest was piqued going to pre-order Thor? It's not even being solicited yet.
I'm not in the business of marketing or making comics, but I do know that when a book is well-done and suddenly turns out to be popular and is organically discovered that the publisher often will do a second and third printing. How many reprints did Hawkeye's first few issues do? That wasn't based on a bunch of national media promotions, it was based on the quality of the book.
Maybe I don't like the current crop of editors at Marvel. One such editor, Wil Moss, when asked about the inscription on Thor’s hammer reading ‘Whosoever holds this hammer, if HE be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor’ responded, "well it’s time to update that inscription.” Are they doing their research after coming up with another sensational cliche? And don't get me started on Joe Quesada's ideas...
Bottom line is that I simply miss the time when reveals actually happened within the story, and weren't used as sales pitches before the book was even out. My joking is merely meant to have a little fun. Clearly Mr. Quesada isn't taking it very seriously if you saw what he wore to the show last night. Does the guy not have a suit?
Oh well... maybe they'll retcon "Snap" Wilson back into continuity and this time will be different...
Hmm. I'm not reading Original Sins. Will I be lost with this new Avengers team if I haven't read it? If so, I'll just do the Matt thing and read it on Wikipedia.
I don't think so. The fire guy is from Inhumanity too...I doubt we'll have to read those issues to get who these people are.
Hmm. I'm not reading Original Sins. Will I be lost with this new Avengers team if I haven't read it? If so, I'll just do the Matt thing and read it on Wikipedia.
Saves time on drivel you need to extract info from!
Hmm. I'm not reading Original Sins. Will I be lost with this new Avengers team if I haven't read it? If so, I'll just do the Matt thing and read it on Wikipedia.
Saves time on drivel you need to extract info from!
11 members? I miss the days when the plot revolved around picking exactly the right 6th member. What happened to Stan Lee's idea that 4 is the best number of team members?
I dropped Cap because JRJR made it suck, not because of a Falcon. I may actually pick up the new Cap when this happens. I'm currently reading Thor and will continue - unless it sucks. So yep - no one forces me to buy them, what does that have to do with it?
First let me say it is nice you are going to read the books. This seemed to be a repeat of your obsession with seeing the failure of Ms. Marvel. It seemed you just wanted to find the negative in that title. It just seemed like it was a waste of energy. Let the titles rise and fall based on the quality of the art and the writing not the marketing. Screw the marketing and press releases and the reasons why the change was made. Is it good? Comics have been running the hype machine since at least back to the 70's when people started to realize what was on the cover was not in the book.
@bralinator, So, in other words, you miss being a kid. Or the ’80s. Or both. Fair enough. ;)
But, seriously, the industry has been this way since the early days of the direct market. We just see it more now because the Internet has become embedded in our lives, making it easier for publishers to get that information in front of our eyes. I mean, this kind of thing isn't really any different than movie trailers, and movie trailers have been around since 1913. And it's not like they're giving everything away. We don't know who or how or why. I understand your sentiment, and I can even empathize with it to an extent, but I've spent more of my comic-reading life with the teasers than without. And there's still plenty of mystery to journey into, as far as I'm concerned.
I suppose instead of just posting "pass" in response to this thread (as others have done), I preferred to back up my sentiment and make a few jibes. I see just posting "pass" apparently means no one challenges you or tries to correct you or make you see how you're mistaken.
Here it is. I'm saying I will read probably these... not based on the overblown hype, which I still loathe. And yes, I think this is being done mostly for sensational diversity's sake, and I insist that Quesada was dressed like a slob on Colbert last night.
I suppose instead of just posting "pass" in response to this thread (as others have done), I preferred to back up my sentiment and make a few jibes. I see just posting "pass" apparently means no one challenges you or tries to correct you or make you see how you're mistaken.
Here it is. I'm saying I will read probably these... not based on the overblown hype, which I still loathe. And yes, I think this is being done mostly for sensational diversity's sake, and I insist that Quesada was dressed like a slob on Colbert last night.
Anyone that wants to disagree, have at it.
Simply posting “pass” just means, to me at least, that you aren't interested in discussing anything. What's the point of having a thread if not to discuss? It has not been my intent to challenge you or correct you. In fact, as you said yourself, we're mostly in agreement. I'm just trying to further the discussion, and you seemed to be one of the people willing to engage in the type of discussion I’m more interested in having.
I haven't been reading Aaron’s Thor. I have the first trade on my overly large to-be-read pile, and if I like it, I'll get the next trade and so on. Eventually I may get this upcoming storyline if I like everything leading up to it.
Do I enjoy the incessant hype machine of DC and Marvel? Nope. I see the necessity of it, and sometimes an interesting interview comes out of it, and I do like to see a few preview pages of a book if it has an artist I'm not familiar with, but for the most part I ignore the press release regurgitations that litter the comic book “news” sites. That's the reason I don't frequent those sites regularly.
Do I like the gimmicks employed to provide temporary bumps in comic book sales? Nope. I don't buy variant covers (or I should say, I won’t buy multiple copies of a book just to get a variant cover. If a book has multiple covers, and they all cost the same, I'll pick the one with the cover I like best, whether that be a variant or the regular cover). I don't read event books. Etc., etc.
Is this Thor story being done for sensationalism? I’m sure that’s at least part of it. Is it being done for the sake of diversity? Well, it's only a temporary change, so that's somewhat debatable, but there's at least an element of diversity at work here.
All that being said, as someone who used to work at a comic shop many years ago, I also have a certain amount of appreciation for the early and constant promotions. Comic shops want pre-orders. They want sales any way they can get them, but they especially want pre-orders. Believe me, they make a world of difference to a comic shop owner. If I was running a shop today, I’d be ecstatic to see anything that might get my customers (or potential customers) to order a book before the Previews deadline.
Call it a grudging appreciation if you will, but the hype machine doesn't really affect the enjoyment I get from reading my comics.
(And I didn't see Colbert last night, so I can't comment on Quesada’s wardrobe.)
Comments
I like surprises in my reading too. It worked for comics in the old days because comics were an impulse buy. They were something parents picked up for their kids while shopping at the drug store, or picking up their morning paper at the newsstand. That went out in the ’80s. Today's reality is that in order to reach potential readers who aren't purposefully going out of their way to find comics, publishers have to blow their trumpets as loudly and in as many places as possible. Otherwise, they're just preaching to the ever-dwindling choir.
Look at the “deaths” in Uncanny Avengers. Shops are FURIORS that these characters have died without them being told it would happens, and they are quietly being told by sales reps (wait until the story is over”.
Also I understand that admitting you were amused by non-pc humor is really frowned upon these days.
I really could not care less what the biggest comic book publisher in the world thinks they have to do to try to match the sales figures they got back in the golden years of comics when titles regularly sold over a half a million copies (and books cost less than a quarter). I'm betting these "stunts" will become even more common once all their books are $5 an issue. Doesn't mean I have to applaud something that is very easily understandable and, again, becoming a trope / stunt / gimmick of diminishing returns.
There's the relaunch #1 title, killing a main character, changing the race-gender-orientation of a main character, etc. These are the most common devices in this era. The foil covers are long gone, but now it's the variant covers. I long for the false advertising covers where what is depicted on the front never happens inside. Can a fanboy not grumble about these cliches anymore?
Again, my preference is to be shocked when I discover that this panel just heralded a change in the status quo, I'm not shocked at all that they're heralding well in advance that they're going to return to the well again. There must be better ways to sell books.
Back to the Thorette mystery!
In my opinion, the best way to sell books is through word of mouth. The problem for comic book publishers is that there are far more mouths talking about movies, video games, television shows, etc., than there are mouths talking about funny books (and the people who talk about funny books tend to talk about them amongst themselves). It doesn’t matter how good your book is if only a relatively small number of people knows it exists.
These gimmicks aren't the only thing Marvel is doing to try to sell their books. They've tried kids’ comics, manga, digest-sized books aimed at teens, bookstore penetration, library penetration—the list goes on and on. You can argue about how they went about these attempts, but the simple truth is that comics just don't matter to most people, and they most likely never will.
...........
iMan..and he gets a new villain..The Dreaded Droid
And look at all these new Avengers ladies for him to hit on!?!
This week's campaign contain the initial announcements, they aren't interview requests. These books haven't even been solicited yet. How many people that have never been into comics went to the comic store or the mall and discovered that the female Thor wasn't even out yet? Or that Captain America is still an old white dude? The books being promoted on the boob tube are still several months away. Are the books that came out this week going to see a spike? Who knows? Will those whose interest was piqued going to pre-order Thor? It's not even being solicited yet.
I'm not in the business of marketing or making comics, but I do know that when a book is well-done and suddenly turns out to be popular and is organically discovered that the publisher often will do a second and third printing. How many reprints did Hawkeye's first few issues do? That wasn't based on a bunch of national media promotions, it was based on the quality of the book.
Maybe I don't like the current crop of editors at Marvel. One such editor, Wil Moss, when asked about the inscription on Thor’s hammer reading ‘Whosoever holds this hammer, if HE be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor’ responded, "well it’s time to update that inscription.” Are they doing their research after coming up with another sensational cliche? And don't get me started on Joe Quesada's ideas...
Bottom line is that I simply miss the time when reveals actually happened within the story, and weren't used as sales pitches before the book was even out. My joking is merely meant to have a little fun. Clearly Mr. Quesada isn't taking it very seriously if you saw what he wore to the show last night. Does the guy not have a suit?
Oh well... maybe they'll retcon "Snap" Wilson back into continuity and this time will be different...
I've never been a fan of photo comics..but damn if I wouldn't pay $3.99 for a book like this.
M
M
But, seriously, the industry has been this way since the early days of the direct market. We just see it more now because the Internet has become embedded in our lives, making it easier for publishers to get that information in front of our eyes. I mean, this kind of thing isn't really any different than movie trailers, and movie trailers have been around since 1913. And it's not like they're giving everything away. We don't know who or how or why. I understand your sentiment, and I can even empathize with it to an extent, but I've spent more of my comic-reading life with the teasers than without. And there's still plenty of mystery to journey into, as far as I'm concerned.
Here it is. I'm saying I will read probably these... not based on the overblown hype, which I still loathe. And yes, I think this is being done mostly for sensational diversity's sake, and I insist that Quesada was dressed like a slob on Colbert last night.
Anyone that wants to disagree, have at it.
I haven't been reading Aaron’s Thor. I have the first trade on my overly large to-be-read pile, and if I like it, I'll get the next trade and so on. Eventually I may get this upcoming storyline if I like everything leading up to it.
Do I enjoy the incessant hype machine of DC and Marvel? Nope. I see the necessity of it, and sometimes an interesting interview comes out of it, and I do like to see a few preview pages of a book if it has an artist I'm not familiar with, but for the most part I ignore the press release regurgitations that litter the comic book “news” sites. That's the reason I don't frequent those sites regularly.
Do I like the gimmicks employed to provide temporary bumps in comic book sales? Nope. I don't buy variant covers (or I should say, I won’t buy multiple copies of a book just to get a variant cover. If a book has multiple covers, and they all cost the same, I'll pick the one with the cover I like best, whether that be a variant or the regular cover). I don't read event books. Etc., etc.
Is this Thor story being done for sensationalism? I’m sure that’s at least part of it. Is it being done for the sake of diversity? Well, it's only a temporary change, so that's somewhat debatable, but there's at least an element of diversity at work here.
All that being said, as someone who used to work at a comic shop many years ago, I also have a certain amount of appreciation for the early and constant promotions. Comic shops want pre-orders. They want sales any way they can get them, but they especially want pre-orders. Believe me, they make a world of difference to a comic shop owner. If I was running a shop today, I’d be ecstatic to see anything that might get my customers (or potential customers) to order a book before the Previews deadline.
Call it a grudging appreciation if you will, but the hype machine doesn't really affect the enjoyment I get from reading my comics.
(And I didn't see Colbert last night, so I can't comment on Quesada’s wardrobe.)