@Planeis I agree with you more than i don't but i suggest you dial down the agression knob just a bit. as a person whose mouth is also frequently bigger than his brain i emplore you to relax just a little bit. and any sentence that contains "you people" just doesn't need to be typed because it is designed to cause friction and is not condusive to proving any point at all.
Where did I say "you people". Ive looked and cant find it.
and there's going to be Two Ultimates and a Spider-Man coming as well.....I may not want to re-read it but I can probably find time while I'm sitting in the car to listen to someone act it out for me
I'll have to check out the novel. Maybe the audio, but I've never loved audio books, even elaborate ones.
This is the type of thing I like. But I'd also like to see a sort of "expanded universe" of novels that work on their own stories and not solely relying on the comics.
@Planeis I agree with you more than i don't but i suggest you dial down the agression knob just a bit. as a person whose mouth is also frequently bigger than his brain i emplore you to relax just a little bit. and any sentence that contains "you people" just doesn't need to be typed because it is designed to cause friction and is not condusive to proving any point at all.
Where did I say "you people". Ive looked and cant find it.
Hrm. Maybe this?
Its amazing to me that all of you think people dont read or buy books. Many people on these boards seem embarressed to be fans of super heroes. Nobody cares what you read people.
Good afternoon I noticed that. However, no where does it say "you people". If i said, "all of You People dont read"" id understand your point. But I didnt. I said "all of you think people dont read". The "you" being certain individuals on this topic. The "thinking" was those same individuals expressing an idea that "people" in america dont read. Several writers expressed opinions that the general public just doesnt buy or read as much as they use to.
The "you" was referring to certain posters, but the "people" was referring to the American population as a whole. I didnt say "you people" to anyone.
At the end of the day @Planeis, if people are consistently misunderstanding you, you may want to consider the tone or approach that is leading to that sort of misunderstanding.
I think if you are going to start a discussion, you need to be patient with the fact that not everyone will agree with your premise. I think what @Random73 is getting at with the comment about aggression.
Discussions will end up having a range of opinions, and people will bring various experiences, perspectives, and backgrounds to the topic. That is a compliment to the discussion you've started, that people are taking the idea seriously, and are interested enough to keep talking about it, even if they are not agreeing with you about what should or shouldn't happen. Because at the end of the day it is a discussion. And it would be a boring one if everyone only agreed.
And as for the original topic at hand, I think a big part of why novels based on the Marvel and DC characters haven't been as popular as things like Star Trek, Star Wars, or Dr. Who is partly a difference in scarcity: There is already a huge volume of material being produced every month about these characters for readers. The comics.
At the time that Star Wars, Star Trek, and Dr. Who novels were at their height, they were often the only thing of their property happening at that time. I can remember all the excitement around the Zahn Star Wars books because it was really the only narrative Star Wars thing happening at that time. There are eras of Star Trek where the only place those characters could be encountered again would be in the books. Ditto for many of the Doctors. And these licensed book lines built their following at a time when they got to have the benefit of being the only supply to that demand.
A Batman book will always have to compete with an overflowing supply of Batman stories coming out every month in the comics. Now is that the same thing as prose? No. But just how much effort should DC or Marvel as license holders put into competing for readers with all the other product they are already producing for readers? How much of a margin is there for that? Yes, I believe that there are some who want to read Batman but not see him. But I don't imagine that is a huge market that needs to be scratched. And is there not the potential downside that, say, if they could get a Scott Snyder to do a Batman novel, that someone might decide to spend time (and less money) reading that they might have spent on two dozen comics? I think that might be part of why so often the prose novels are novelizations of comics stories: they want to reinforce the idea that the comics are the primary place the stories of these characters, the real canon for those who care about such things, will move forward.
Of course, if there is money being left on the table there, then sure, they should have at it. But considering that they have done these before, some even recently, I would guess they found out there really wasn't that much money being left on the table.
I hear you that not everything has to have a huge audience. But at the same time there is a cost/ benefit analysis to everything an entertainment company produces, or licenses their property to. And it may be that prose books about superheroes are just not worth doing very often.
Comments
and there's going to be Two Ultimates and a Spider-Man coming as well.....I may not want to re-read it but I can probably find time while I'm sitting in the car to listen to someone act it out for me
This is the type of thing I like. But I'd also like to see a sort of "expanded universe" of novels that work on their own stories and not solely relying on the comics.
<:-P
The "you" was referring to certain posters, but the "people" was referring to the American population as a whole. I didnt say "you people" to anyone.
I think if you are going to start a discussion, you need to be patient with the fact that not everyone will agree with your premise. I think what @Random73 is getting at with the comment about aggression.
Discussions will end up having a range of opinions, and people will bring various experiences, perspectives, and backgrounds to the topic. That is a compliment to the discussion you've started, that people are taking the idea seriously, and are interested enough to keep talking about it, even if they are not agreeing with you about what should or shouldn't happen. Because at the end of the day it is a discussion. And it would be a boring one if everyone only agreed.
At the time that Star Wars, Star Trek, and Dr. Who novels were at their height, they were often the only thing of their property happening at that time. I can remember all the excitement around the Zahn Star Wars books because it was really the only narrative Star Wars thing happening at that time. There are eras of Star Trek where the only place those characters could be encountered again would be in the books. Ditto for many of the Doctors. And these licensed book lines built their following at a time when they got to have the benefit of being the only supply to that demand.
A Batman book will always have to compete with an overflowing supply of Batman stories coming out every month in the comics. Now is that the same thing as prose? No. But just how much effort should DC or Marvel as license holders put into competing for readers with all the other product they are already producing for readers? How much of a margin is there for that? Yes, I believe that there are some who want to read Batman but not see him. But I don't imagine that is a huge market that needs to be scratched. And is there not the potential downside that, say, if they could get a Scott Snyder to do a Batman novel, that someone might decide to spend time (and less money) reading that they might have spent on two dozen comics? I think that might be part of why so often the prose novels are novelizations of comics stories: they want to reinforce the idea that the comics are the primary place the stories of these characters, the real canon for those who care about such things, will move forward.
Of course, if there is money being left on the table there, then sure, they should have at it. But considering that they have done these before, some even recently, I would guess they found out there really wasn't that much money being left on the table.
I hear you that not everything has to have a huge audience. But at the same time there is a cost/ benefit analysis to everything an entertainment company produces, or licenses their property to. And it may be that prose books about superheroes are just not worth doing very often.