The hilarious thing is that editors often claim things like, "I wish we could do ongoing runs, but that isn't possible in the current market." Why not? They're the ones that created the current model. DC seems to be doing okay with Batman, Catwoman and Nightwing not relaunching. There's also an argument for Action Comics and Detective Comics. There are many ways to get people into ongoing titles without the need to relaunch. For example, like they did with Giant Size X-Men. That was a #1 that basically continued into X-Men #94. They got a big #1 and they didn't need to hard reset the ongoing series. Too many suits in charge of creative projects think people are stupid and have to be guided through everything.
Joe Quesada explained it once as talent management. He didn't want great artists to get lost in long runs of a book. The artist is better switching up titles, getting new number ones and attention/publicity for new assignments, etc. I remember artists from long runs where they made their name, but I'm also old now. I can't keep track of all the lookalike artists hopping from title to title. ;-)
In an old video you said you would be surprised if Jeremy Adams made it to 24 issues on Green Lantern. He’s getting close with issue 19 coming out this month. I would love to hear your thoughts on his run now.
I personally dropped it last month. I thought the last two issues were way too fast pacing wise and I was getting sick of having to buy another title to follow the rest of the story
I've often wondered that too. I'd say it's low sales and while that might be true in some cases, I wonder if it's something else entirely. I mean, everyone and their mom hated Zeb Wells's Spider-man, but they didn't relaunch the book when he left, they just simply kept going into this new arc with the 8 Deaths of Spider-man. That's probably because people were hate-reading (I guess...?), but I digress. I wonder if it's a problem with upper management thinking that every book they put out needs to be in the top fifty consistently, when that's never been the case. Some character just don't sell as well as others and that's okay. Not everything needs to be a #1 best-seller to be considered investing in.
Great video. This is something that I noticed a while back and I saw a pattern on what Marvel & DC has done. Marvel gets an artist to superstar status then pushes them to doing covers, variants and events. This takes them out of the place that made them famous and know. DC keeps the artist but gives them blocks of issues at a time on mostly random books. Making it hard to follow their work. It sucks not to have at least a modicum of stability to these books. 🤦🏾♂️
Because of their page rate increases dramatically over time & after a "prestige" project. It's easier to pay Alex Ross 5 figures for a single prestige variant cover than it is to pay him a 3-5 thousand per page for a 22 page comic month in & month out.
I think the reason why we don't have superstar artists anymore is because we no longer have a house style at the Big Two. Byrne and Perez were masters of the house style: basic anatomy, followed basic Kirby/Romita principles. McFarlane, Lee, etc. were radical because they were specifically beyond the house style. Well, now everyone does that, so there's no radical departure from a recognizable median. Who's the last artist who really reshaped things? Joe Bennett? He's unpersoned anyway.
Do we mean superstar as in revolutionary or just really good? I think DC has the better artists now. Dan Mora is fantastic! Smallwood too! And the new artist for Absolute Wonder Woman and Batman Dark Patterns has a great style in my opinion. I wouldn’t call any of them “superstars” except for Dan Mora. That guy can SELL a comic just with his art alone. Marvel has Capullo and Gleason. Gleason needs a Spider-Man title full time!
"Revolutionary" as in "fundamentally shifted comics art." Like, McFarlane was a massive shift and we had a few years of cheap McFarlane imitations to put up with.
@ Jim Lee is the last one I can recall. Maybe Jason Fabok? There was also another guy with a similar style to him. The hyper realistic thing was also a feature of New Avengers by Bendis but it wasn’t as refined as Fabok’s work. It really permeated through the mid to late 2000s. Then the 2010s happened and I don’t know why but it went back to more cartoonish and exaggerated features.
I don't think that is actually true. There was a nearly fifteen year long heyday of "superstar" writers & artists since the turn of the millennium. No one jumped ship. No new publishers popped up. though a couple of the Image spin off did get larger. The rise of Image happened at a unique intersection of time. As a traditional superhero publisher, they almost failed. Their pivot to copying Vertigo's niche in fiction saved them.
Just from watching some of your sales analysis videos, it seems clear that every modern title spikes with issue 1 and consistently declines. I just don't quite understand the late drop off in defined limited series. If you have a series that is known to be a self contained story of 12 issues from the start, I can understand early drop-off where people try a few and decide it's not for them, but who sticks it out for 11 issues and doesn't buy 12?
Maybe you're looking at it the wrong way - treat a comic run like a season of a TV show. A ten-issue run, with creative staff locked in, followed by a two month break to evaluate performance. If sales permit another season, announce it, announce any changes to the creative team and bang out a trade of the last season to get latecomers up to speed. No catchup pages, no 'Previously on Perch's angels,' just let them them try and keep up with what's happening.
The more i research business the more i realise. If there was incentive to do it they would. Incentive is usually a competetor doing different and better because ofbthat difference Also if an industry isnt disrupted its problems just get worse over time
In terms of creative teams that can bump sales I’m not sure there is any rocket fuel out there at all anymore. I think that has to do with a lack of true superstars but also a lack of customers as the consumer base shrinks more and more the sales ceiling regresses as well. What are the baseline sales numbers for Batman? Let’s just say it’s 100,000 an issue. Jim Lee’s first issue back will obviously be way above that number just because of the variants and because it is a glorified #1 issue in spite of the 158 on the cover. I mean, they are offering autographed line art variant covers signed by Lee or Loeb for $1,500. My question though is how does issue #160 sell. Is it also above baseline sales on that book. I’m honestly not so sure about that.
This was one of the things that turned me off comics, all the mini series. Having a long run & allowing a plot to build from sub plots is just so good, allowing to build up tension over a long period is just so much better than all these annoying 6 issue stories. It’s one of the best selling points of manga, we have one long story, it’s just so much better.
The consistency of manga release and its amount of chapters is a huge boon for me. A series in shonen jump magazine getting 18 chapters is the bottom of the barrel low. But in American comics every creator would kill to get a guaranteed 18 issues at least. The pacing is not the same but still having 18 entries is so much better than getting canceled at the 4th issue.
I definitely think that publishers are annoying for ending runs so early, but I also believe the audience has a tendency to drop any title that goes on for a long time if it’s not wowing them every issue. If a super hero book goes with the same creative team for 50 issues I don’t care if some issues aren’t that focused on the overall plot, or don’t have a lot of action. As long as it’s adding to the character and fun I’m along for it. I see people dropping books the moment they get to an issue that slows down or has a character they don’t like, they don’t understand something, or there’s new characters. If a title isn’t doing mind blowing stuff every issue people lose interest when paying $5 an issue. Personally, if I get mostly good and fun comics for 50 issues straight I don’t care if there’s some that aren’t great. Books I think have done well with this the last couple years, but aren’t at 50 are Superman, Miles Morales: Spider-Man, Green Lantern, and Immortal Thor. Only one I could see getting to 50 is Superman, but there’s also rumors it’s being rebooted later this year.
I finally got to chapter 1020 in One Piece. I’m almost done with the Wano arc. It’s so freaking long! (one Piece in general is long.) But I appreciate that good manga has long runs with different arcs.
Sorry for a completely off topic comment, but do you have any plans to review Skeleton Crew? I think its the best show disney+ has had in a while. Not without problems of course, but its a fun kids adventure story made by people who like kids and adventure stories.
I don't subscribe to the belief that new number 1's are a jumping off point. If the book is good, you will continue following the character. Just look at Moon Knight as the prime example, which if I'm not mistaken, is gaining readers with each new #1. It may be a jumping off point if it's a bad creative team, but if you like the character and you hear it's a new team, then it's again more likely a jumping on point for many people.
To me there are so many good books on the shelves right now if marvel reboots a book I'm reading with the same creative team I take that as them wanting a different crowed so I leave. I can only get 20 books a month and everytime I have to cut books I want so I don't play fuck fuck games with marvel and DC anymore. I drop books I'm reading if they tie into events or become an event storyline. I vote with my money.
Dc and marvel act as functional monopoly in that they have all the market share and dictate the market. I geuss a duopoly. Thats why they dont really make meaningful interesting change in distribution storytelling. Heck even personall stay relatively the same. And in monopolies product is always worse In reality short of an extreme executive reshuffle nothing is EVER going to change in these legacy companies. events and reboots are here to stay unless the top brass gets changed and even then its going to ve their subordinates whonare just as useless Do they even have to. Weve veen sayingbthey are gonna die and when they get close they make ultimate spiderman or absolute batman. Throwing a bone here and there. Like a larger version of their number one incentive. They have it down to a science at this point They are old and basically retired/checked the fck out
Number 1s? Really? You and Wes videos criticize about Marvel doing a Relaunch number 1 with the same writers. Daredevil and Chip Zdarksy. Moon Knight and Jed MacKay. Rainbow Rowell and She-Hulk. Ben Percy and Ghost Rider. I watch Jim’s weird science video he thinks it helps DC comics including PKJ’s Batman & Robin and Chris Condon’s Green Arrow, to get higher sales if DC comics relaunch their all their ongoing comics into issue 1 at beginning of All In. Do you agreed? 6:08 Everyone is fed up with Captain Carter after What if Season 3. I have to read TVA for Jimmy Hudson. He doesn’t have the Poison alien inside of him anymore. Which it’s good. 6:40 Zeb Wells and Nick Lowe’s Spider Man. Which is sad to everyone, including me. But you, Perch not knowing that makes me doubt that you are a comic expert. In knowledge and business sense. Batman. Yeah. His relaunch is back in 2016 and he didn’t get a relaunch since. It still going with different writers. Same with Nightwing. 8:34 Jokes on you. Daken as Hellverine got a 2nd printing which lead him getting his own ongoing series. Daken is a character created after Jubilee so I am not surprised that is your reaction.
That’s a fair assessment. This is not a new issue; long runs have always been the exception and not the rule since the 40s. But having superstar talent being brought on to keep the title invigorated is something we rarely get. I just think to whenever Jack Kirby was brought onto a project, that’s all you’ll hear about in the lead up.
Pfff we do get long runs, and then fans cry and bitch that the run Gets boring or stagnant or fans drop title as a result. We live in a binge culture where people are absolutely impatient and want story progression fast quick and in a hurry. Look no further than the ultimate line. A line that has started from the ground up and every month after the first two issues all I hear is that the stories move to slow, nothing happened this issue, it was boring, I’m dropping title. The ills and problems of fans are a direct result of themselves akways bitching and complaining.
DC and Marvel still utilize plenty of great artists -- what they are missing is great writers AND professional editors smh
The hilarious thing is that editors often claim things like, "I wish we could do ongoing runs, but that isn't possible in the current market." Why not? They're the ones that created the current model.
DC seems to be doing okay with Batman, Catwoman and Nightwing not relaunching. There's also an argument for Action Comics and Detective Comics. There are many ways to get people into ongoing titles without the need to relaunch. For example, like they did with Giant Size X-Men. That was a #1 that basically continued into X-Men #94. They got a big #1 and they didn't need to hard reset the ongoing series.
Too many suits in charge of creative projects think people are stupid and have to be guided through everything.
Zubb just got a two year contract on Conan and now I want to start reading it so yeah
Meanwhile, One Piece has 100+ issues and counting. If you can't keep the reader's interest, that's on you DC/Marvel.
I’m up to chapter 1020. I’m hoping to catch up to the current story by Spring.
@AL-ws5yi Wow. That's impressive! Keep up the good work.
Joe Quesada explained it once as talent management. He didn't want great artists to get lost in long runs of a book. The artist is better switching up titles, getting new number ones and attention/publicity for new assignments, etc. I remember artists from long runs where they made their name, but I'm also old now. I can't keep track of all the lookalike artists hopping from title to title. ;-)
In an old video you said you would be surprised if Jeremy Adams made it to 24 issues on Green Lantern. He’s getting close with issue 19 coming out this month. I would love to hear your thoughts on his run now.
I personally dropped it last month. I thought the last two issues were way too fast pacing wise and I was getting sick of having to buy another title to follow the rest of the story
I've often wondered that too.
I'd say it's low sales and while that might be true in some cases, I wonder if it's something else entirely. I mean, everyone and their mom hated Zeb Wells's Spider-man, but they didn't relaunch the book when he left, they just simply kept going into this new arc with the 8 Deaths of Spider-man. That's probably because people were hate-reading (I guess...?), but I digress.
I wonder if it's a problem with upper management thinking that every book they put out needs to be in the top fifty consistently, when that's never been the case. Some character just don't sell as well as others and that's okay. Not everything needs to be a #1 best-seller to be considered investing in.
We literally just had a long run of Zeb Can't Write Wells and JRJR in ASM.
I was at my LCS and they had volume 34 of Ranma in the original Japanese for 6 bucks. I'm still debating getting it
You should have just got it. I have over 70 volumes in Japanese.
Percy's X-force went for a surprisingly long time
Its all relative. We just got 60 some issues of Zeb Wells AMS. Anybody want more?
Great video. This is something that I noticed a while back and I saw a pattern on what Marvel & DC has done. Marvel gets an artist to superstar status then pushes them to doing covers, variants and events. This takes them out of the place that made them famous and know. DC keeps the artist but gives them blocks of issues at a time on mostly random books. Making it hard to follow their work. It sucks not to have at least a modicum of stability to these books. 🤦🏾♂️
Because of their page rate increases dramatically over time & after a "prestige" project.
It's easier to pay Alex Ross 5 figures for a single prestige variant cover than it is to pay him a 3-5 thousand per page for a 22 page comic month in & month out.
I think the reason why we don't have superstar artists anymore is because we no longer have a house style at the Big Two. Byrne and Perez were masters of the house style: basic anatomy, followed basic Kirby/Romita principles. McFarlane, Lee, etc. were radical because they were specifically beyond the house style. Well, now everyone does that, so there's no radical departure from a recognizable median.
Who's the last artist who really reshaped things? Joe Bennett? He's unpersoned anyway.
Do we mean superstar as in revolutionary or just really good? I think DC has the better artists now. Dan Mora is fantastic! Smallwood too! And the new artist for Absolute Wonder Woman and Batman Dark Patterns has a great style in my opinion. I wouldn’t call any of them “superstars” except for Dan Mora. That guy can SELL a comic just with his art alone. Marvel has Capullo and Gleason. Gleason needs a Spider-Man title full time!
I forgot Samnee too
"Revolutionary" as in "fundamentally shifted comics art." Like, McFarlane was a massive shift and we had a few years of cheap McFarlane imitations to put up with.
@ Jim Lee is the last one I can recall. Maybe Jason Fabok? There was also another guy with a similar style to him. The hyper realistic thing was also a feature of New Avengers by Bendis but it wasn’t as refined as Fabok’s work. It really permeated through the mid to late 2000s. Then the 2010s happened and I don’t know why but it went back to more cartoonish and exaggerated features.
5:25 the publishers DO NOT want superstar artists for fear of sparking the next Image revolution!
I don't think that is actually true. There was a nearly fifteen year long heyday of "superstar" writers & artists since the turn of the millennium. No one jumped ship. No new publishers popped up. though a couple of the Image spin off did get larger.
The rise of Image happened at a unique intersection of time. As a traditional superhero publisher, they almost failed. Their pivot to copying Vertigo's niche in fiction saved them.
Just from watching some of your sales analysis videos, it seems clear that every modern title spikes with issue 1 and consistently declines. I just don't quite understand the late drop off in defined limited series. If you have a series that is known to be a self contained story of 12 issues from the start, I can understand early drop-off where people try a few and decide it's not for them, but who sticks it out for 11 issues and doesn't buy 12?
I would probally be that guy for the latter
They don't make series anymore. They just make a story in multiple chapters, then move on to the next story.
Maybe you're looking at it the wrong way - treat a comic run like a season of a TV show.
A ten-issue run, with creative staff locked in, followed by a two month break to evaluate performance. If sales permit another season, announce it, announce any changes to the creative team and bang out a trade of the last season to get latecomers up to speed. No catchup pages, no 'Previously on Perch's angels,' just let them them try and keep up with what's happening.
They would have to start offering years long contracts to creative talents and invest heavy the creators and promotions.
The more i research business the more i realise. If there was incentive to do it they would.
Incentive is usually a competetor doing different and better because ofbthat difference
Also if an industry isnt disrupted its problems just get worse over time
In terms of creative teams that can bump sales I’m not sure there is any rocket fuel out there at all anymore. I think that has to do with a lack of true superstars but also a lack of customers as the consumer base shrinks more and more the sales ceiling regresses as well. What are the baseline sales numbers for Batman? Let’s just say it’s 100,000 an issue. Jim Lee’s first issue back will obviously be way above that number just because of the variants and because it is a glorified #1 issue in spite of the 158 on the cover. I mean, they are offering autographed line art variant covers signed by Lee or Loeb for $1,500. My question though is how does issue #160 sell. Is it also above baseline sales on that book. I’m honestly not so sure about that.
This was one of the things that turned me off comics, all the mini series. Having a long run & allowing a plot to build from sub plots is just so good, allowing to build up tension over a long period is just so much better than all these annoying 6 issue stories.
It’s one of the best selling points of manga, we have one long story, it’s just so much better.
The consistency of manga release and its amount of chapters is a huge boon for me. A series in shonen jump magazine getting 18 chapters is the bottom of the barrel low. But in American comics every creator would kill to get a guaranteed 18 issues at least. The pacing is not the same but still having 18 entries is so much better than getting canceled at the 4th issue.
I definitely think that publishers are annoying for ending runs so early, but I also believe the audience has a tendency to drop any title that goes on for a long time if it’s not wowing them every issue. If a super hero book goes with the same creative team for 50 issues I don’t care if some issues aren’t that focused on the overall plot, or don’t have a lot of action. As long as it’s adding to the character and fun I’m along for it. I see people dropping books the moment they get to an issue that slows down or has a character they don’t like, they don’t understand something, or there’s new characters. If a title isn’t doing mind blowing stuff every issue people lose interest when paying $5 an issue. Personally, if I get mostly good and fun comics for 50 issues straight I don’t care if there’s some that aren’t great.
Books I think have done well with this the last couple years, but aren’t at 50 are Superman, Miles Morales: Spider-Man, Green Lantern, and Immortal Thor. Only one I could see getting to 50 is Superman, but there’s also rumors it’s being rebooted later this year.
Trades and only writing stories for 6 issues started that foolishness of changing creative teams every 6 issues
I finally got to chapter 1020 in One Piece. I’m almost done with the Wano arc. It’s so freaking long! (one Piece in general is long.) But I appreciate that good manga has long runs with different arcs.
Sorry for a completely off topic comment, but do you have any plans to review Skeleton Crew?
I think its the best show disney+ has had in a while. Not without problems of course, but its a fun kids adventure story made by people who like kids and adventure stories.
Its the expense mostly - people will drop a book quick nowadays
I can't handle long series unless they have standalone story arcs in their time frame.
I don't subscribe to the belief that new number 1's are a jumping off point. If the book is good, you will continue following the character. Just look at Moon Knight as the prime example, which if I'm not mistaken, is gaining readers with each new #1. It may be a jumping off point if it's a bad creative team, but if you like the character and you hear it's a new team, then it's again more likely a jumping on point for many people.
To me there are so many good books on the shelves right now if marvel reboots a book I'm reading with the same creative team I take that as them wanting a different crowed so I leave. I can only get 20 books a month and everytime I have to cut books I want so I don't play fuck fuck games with marvel and DC anymore. I drop books I'm reading if they tie into events or become an event storyline. I vote with my money.
I don't think Moon Knight is gaining readers though. It relaunched twice in one year. It's not a good business strategy
I'm still reading Incredible Hulk for 40 years now despite multiple new #1s. But I do hate the constant renumbering.
@adamfrey4920 Do you think you would have continued with it if it kept relaunching in the first decade you collected it?
@@clonegeek3317 Probably? I was 4-14 and stupid. And I'd been through the relaunches of Superman and X-Men.
Dc and marvel act as functional monopoly in that they have all the market share and dictate the market. I geuss a duopoly.
Thats why they dont really make meaningful interesting change in distribution storytelling. Heck even personall stay relatively the same.
And in monopolies product is always worse
In reality short of an extreme executive reshuffle nothing is EVER going to change in these legacy companies. events and reboots are here to stay unless the top brass gets changed and even then its going to ve their subordinates whonare just as useless
Do they even have to. Weve veen sayingbthey are gonna die and when they get close they make ultimate spiderman or absolute batman. Throwing a bone here and there. Like a larger version of their number one incentive. They have it down to a science at this point
They are old and basically retired/checked the fck out
Number 1s? Really? You and Wes videos criticize about Marvel doing a Relaunch number 1 with the same writers.
Daredevil and Chip Zdarksy. Moon Knight and Jed MacKay. Rainbow Rowell and She-Hulk. Ben Percy and Ghost Rider.
I watch Jim’s weird science video he thinks it helps DC comics including PKJ’s Batman & Robin and Chris Condon’s Green Arrow, to get higher sales if DC comics relaunch their all their ongoing comics into issue 1 at beginning of All In. Do you agreed?
6:08 Everyone is fed up with Captain Carter after What if Season 3. I have to read TVA for Jimmy Hudson. He doesn’t have the Poison alien inside of him anymore. Which it’s good.
6:40 Zeb Wells and Nick Lowe’s Spider Man. Which is sad to everyone, including me.
But you, Perch not knowing that makes me doubt that you are a comic expert. In knowledge and business sense.
Batman. Yeah. His relaunch is back in 2016 and he didn’t get a relaunch since. It still going with different writers.
Same with Nightwing.
8:34 Jokes on you. Daken as Hellverine got a 2nd printing which lead him getting his own ongoing series.
Daken is a character created after Jubilee so I am not surprised that is your reaction.
That’s a fair assessment. This is not a new issue; long runs have always been the exception and not the rule since the 40s. But having superstar talent being brought on to keep the title invigorated is something we rarely get. I just think to whenever Jack Kirby was brought onto a project, that’s all you’ll hear about in the lead up.
Pfff we do get long runs, and then fans cry and bitch that the run Gets boring or stagnant or fans drop title as a result.
We live in a binge culture where people are absolutely impatient and want story progression fast quick and in a hurry.
Look no further than the ultimate line. A line that has started from the ground up and every month after the first two issues all I hear is that the stories move to slow, nothing happened this issue, it was boring, I’m dropping title.
The ills and problems of fans are a direct result of themselves akways bitching and complaining.