Is DC going to be relegated as a comicbook company?

[Hound of UIster]

Dude, Red Sonja has recently run 135 issues, its one of the top comics now

It's not. Red Sonja barely cracks the 10K mark . The numbers it pulls would be numbers for cancellation if it was a Big 2 book (outside of the oddballs like All Star Western/Jonah Hex). To call it a success would be very premature imo. The same for most indie titles. Outside of the Walking Dead, they can't compete with DC/Marvel titles.

 

[BillJ]

DC is in no danger.

The worst thing Time-Warner can do is slap together films to compete with Marvel.

 

[Dream]

The worst thing Time-Warner can do is slap together films to compete with Marvel.

WB already did that when they made Green Lantern.

 

[Nerys Myk]

I actually see the day when DC moves away from film and comics completely, making films is an expensive process and when it goes wrong you have massive flops on your hands like Green Lantern. This year 2013 has seen some terrible box office flop

It's much easier for these companies to make money selling Batman baseball caps and Spider-Man mugs, merchandizing is an easier way to bring home the cash

Warner Bros. and their production partners are the making the movies and footing the bill. DC Comic ( as opposed to DC Entertainment) doesn't really have to worry about taking a hit.

Dynamite and Image and others, they seem to be some of the few left who are serious about running a comic book business.

Dynamite is using licensed properties and public domain properties for the most part. let me know when they create something original. A lot Image's best books are creator owned. I'm willing to bet they'd jump at a movie or TV deal.

DC Comics had little or nothing to do with the decision not to go ahead with Whedon's take on WW. Whedon's been in Hollywood for a while and understands how it works. I doubt he holds the DC Comics responsible for the decisions of the Warner Bros movie division.

So it was the decision of WB execs? You don't think it was a mistake for them to trash Wonder Woman projects?

I don't know,I didn't see the proposal. I'd rather a bad WW film or TV show not get made.

 

[Nerys Myk]

The worst thing Time-Warner can do is slap together films to compete with Marvel.

WB already did that when they made Green Lantern.

Lesson learned.

 

[Mike Farley]

Dude, Red Sonja has recently run 135 issues, its one of the top comics now

It's not. Red Sonja barely cracks the 10K mark . The numbers it pulls would be numbers for cancellation if it was a Big 2 book (outside of the oddballs like All Star Western/Jonah Hex). To call it a success would be very premature imo. The same for most indie titles. Outside of the Walking Dead, they can't compete with DC/Marvel titles.

A quick glance at sales numbers (for February the first month the google popped up) shows Red Sonja at just over 5,500. They would have to triple their sales just to get cancelled at DC or Marvel.

 

[TheMasterOfOrion]

I still believe the comic industry is dying, especially from the big two and especially from DC this industry is dying. Comics used to sell in numbers like 320,500 easily breaking 300 K. If a book does this today its major, major news. Some the 40s, 50s and 60s DC comics would sell number in the 7 million each month. In the 80s sales drop and 1990s drop but the books still sell high, like Byrne's, McFarlane's, Busieks, the Jim Lee's the Waids they were all very big books,Xmen, Spider-Man, Superman they would selling in the millions. You would see figures of 2 MILLION and 8 MILLION etc. DC and Marvel might hold onto the top 5 and top10s thanks to cashcows like Spider-Man, Batman, Superman, Xmen....these things are big brands and fanboys and kids will be this stuff no matter how crap the writing gets.
However a lot of DC books today are being kept alive only because of sales from their big brands. The Independent comics come in and books like Walking Dead, East of West, Saga...they come sometimes in beating the big two and trash sales of Flash, Fantastic Four, some Deadpool title, some Hawkman title, Green Lantern....a lot of DC's B-list stars are being beat down by Independent companies. They are beat by Independent companies and defeated easily. Hellblazer was no where near the top ten, in the past years it ranked in at 195, the Spirit was around 284 or something, Smallville the comic does very bad and Green Lantern the animated comic can't even reach the top 300, can't even stay in the top three hundred!!
Some of you guys can complain that Image, Dynamite, IDW and other independent titles sell low but clearly there are a lot of DC comics go to those shops dead on arrival and are being kept on life support.
I see a future day when titles like Mars Attacks, Star Wars, Star Trek, Godzilla, Buffy, TombRaider or video game characters and possibly Japanese manga comic in and regularly start to challenge Marvel and DC for the top40. The DC company is spread too thin today and possibly a little over exposed. Is Marvel making DC's mistakes? sure it is but it doesn't seem to suffer from the same in-fighting and office politics. DC is bleeding writers, bleeding off writers like no tomorrow and some Nu-52 sales have been falling like a rock.
Marvel is at least keeping writers or buying in new writers and artists. If you look at their movie investments, its crazy. With a big company like Disney behind them their movie studio is now buying in the top producers, writers, actors and directors of Hollywood. You look at their movies in production and its like the who is who of top Hollywood movies and directors, and each year they have new visions and new phase planned.

The whole Batman-Superman seems rushed, Cavil was blindsided by the news and Bale is finished with the franchise. Warner Bros and DC need to stop snoozing, without Nolan and Batman they wouldn't have a comic book movie business

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

From 2009 to 2012 revenue from graphic novel sales went from $370 million to $335 million. Revenue from comic books went from $310 million to $345 million. Revenue from digital sales went from $1 million to $70 million. The industry is doing a lot better than most other sectors of publishing. Marvel and DC are in no danger of losing their position as market leaders, especially to manga, sales of which have gone down dramatically over the last few years.

 

[CaptainCanada]

The proliferation of tablets, etc. is potentially going to revolutionize the industry in the next ten years, offering a way out of the distribution problems that have plagued the industry since the comic shop bust in the mid 1990s.

 

[Icemizer]

So you look at two comics, Smallville and Green Lantern the Animated version and use those as examples that DC comics is crumbling to the ground. Bwahahahahahaha!!!
Comics in the 40's 50's and 60's sold in the millions??? Really?? In 1960 the top selling book according to publishers paid circulation was Uncle Scrooge with just over 1 million books. Superman was number 3 at 800,000. Your claim of millions is just so much hot air.
Many of DC's nu52 didnt fair very well but they at least attempted to find new audiences with titles off the beaten path instead of throwing out multiple X, Avenger, and Wolverine titles.
The comic industry is down as whole as is the entire print industry. People are finding other ways to get their information and entertainment.

 

[Ovation]

I had abandoned collecting comics about 10 years ago as I moved away from a convenient shop. I've picked TPB collections on and off in the interim but that remained sporadic. In the past year, though, I've gotten back into collecting digitally. My spending on comics is a lot more than it used to be and I very much like the digital format (no ads), even on my iPhone. When I get an iPad, they will truly come into their own. And 90% of my titles are DC. I'm not worried they'll disappear anytime soon.

 

[Gotham Central]

The entire premise of this thread is so narrowly focused as to be silly. It's totally ignored the fact that DC has trounced Marvel on television. From animation to live action, DC has continuously been on TV while marvel has struggled. How about video games...DC has had more success there as well.

 

[Nerys Myk]

With a big company like Disney behind them their movie studio is now buying in the top producers, writers, actors and directors of Hollywood. You look at their movies in production and its like the who is who of top Hollywood movies and directors, and each year they have new visions and new phase planned.

You don't think guys like Snyder and Nolan are top talent? You don't think getting actors like Bale, Oldman, Caine, Costner and Adams ( or even Reynolds) means something?

 

[TheMasterOfOrion]

I've picked TPB collections on and off in the interim but that remained sporadic.

Top Selling Graphic Novels, DC places 7 behind Image, Darkhorse and Marvel
1
Marvel Comics Hawkeye
2
DarkHorse Avatar last Airbender
3
Image Comics Studios Saga Vol II
4
Image Comics Studios Saga Vol I
5
Marvel Comics Blackbolt
6
Icon and Marvel Comics Kickass
7
DC Fairest Kingdom
8
DC Before Watchmen Comedian
9
Image Comics Studios Invincible
10
DC Before Watchmen Nite OwL

As for Watchmen's creator?
“When DC Comics did the recent Watchmen prequel comics I said all of sorts of deeply offensive things about the modern entertainment industry clearly having no ideas of its own and having to go through dust bins and spittoons in the dead of night to recycle things. … The announcement that there is a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen television series hasn’t caused me to drastically alter my opinions. Now it seems they are recycling things that have already proven not to work.”

It's totally ignored the fact that DC has trounced Marvel on television.

The biggest comic book thing on tv is not DC its Walking Dead, Image comics

You don't think guys like Snyder and Nolan are top talent?

I think Nolan is wonderful, amazing Nolan is exactly what Batman needed, he brought new life to the brand and built a fantastic trilogy of box office movies
but Snyder is just a humanist photographer, hes' too focused on the visual, the Roman, the Schoolgirl, he's a guy who made it big by bringing Miller's work to screen directing very averagely, doing it paint by numbers style. It could be argued Snyder has little talent compared to other top directors and might be called something of a hack.


savagecritic hates their retail shipping policy
http://www.savagecritic.com/retailing/the-staggeringly-epic-incompetence-of-dc-entertainment/
comics beat dot com says creatively DC is a mess but financially its doing just well

DC is in a weird place right now.

You can practically watch the publisher's retail and talent relations take a nose-dive on the Internet. Just last week, retailers Brian Hibbs and Leo McGovern DC Called out on its handling of a line-wide publishing stunt in August: a "head of DC Comics" was quoted as admitting that His target audience are "45-year-olds"; popular artist Kevin Maguire announced on Twitter that he'd been "just fired" from an upcoming DC title, asked for work - and was hired, lickety-split, by a gleeful Marvel editor in chief a few hours later: and the brave souls who read the actual comics that somehow still get made, published and sold in this environment conclude that everything kinda reads the same and DC.

And last week was not an anomaly in the almost two years since DC relaunched its line of superhero titles. If anything, things seem to be deteriorating. Comparisons with the state of Marvel 1998 are being made, not least because I Bob Harras, who was Marvel's editor in chief from 1995 through 2000, has held the same position and DC Comics since September 2010.

There are obvious similarities, after all. Much like and Marvel in the late 1990s, a standardized "house style" now Takes precedence over the individual styles of most of the creators working for DC, as Tim O'Neil points out, Which has caused a whole bunch of those creators to leave , Often very publicly: and rather than to try and win over new readers with attractive content, the publisher is gaming the market with storylines, gimmicks and variant editions aimed at hardcore collectors.

But there is another factor that tends to be overlooked.

Harras's Marvel produced some sales spikes in the late 1990s with publishing events like "Heroes Return" and "Revolution," but did not stop the general downward trend the company's numbers (as everybody else's) was caught in since 1995 - and, more importantly, failed to capitalize on early successes like movie Blade (1998) or X-Men (2000).

Harras's DC, on the other hand, has managed to hang on to much-improved sales figures in the wake of the September 2011 "New 52" relaunch. In the 22 months from September 2011 through June 2013, the average DC Universe comic book sold an estimated 39,500 units per month, and the monthly total number of DC Universe comic books sold was, on average, 2.54 million, for a monthly $ 8.38 million; In the 22 months before that, from November 2009 through August 2011, it was an estimated 31,700 units on average per month, and total 1.78 million units and $ 5.95 million per month on average.

In other words: Since the "New 52" relaunch, there have been increases of 25% in average DC Universe unit sales, 43% in total DC Universe unit sales and 41% in total DC Universe dollar sales per month versus the same pre- relaunch period. When Harras was brought on as editor in chief in September 2010, it was presumably to prepare and carry out the "New 52" relaunch. So it's fair to say that this is His success.

Further, Harras has not repeated the mistake that cost him allegedly His job and Marvel back in 2000. Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo's Batman Continues to be the most consistently best-seller Successful the direct market has seen in decades, and it has spawned Several commercially Successful crossovers. And in June 2013, the debut issues of the new Unchained Superman and Batman / Superman titles topped the charts direct market, with estimated sales of 256 792 (including the "Combo Pack" variant edition) and 143,457 units, respectively.

Clearly Harras has managed to Create a Synergy Between Warner's movie successes and DC's comics successes. Ever since the "New 52" relaunch, DC has been Producing best-selling Batman comics, and now, with Warner's Man of Steel movie renewing interest in that franchise, there seems a good chance They MIGHT be able to pull off the same with Superman .

To date, Harras's books are Successful in the way that presumably counts for DC Entertainment and Warner and large: They sell. These sales have be in large part driven by hardcore fans, gimmicks, volumes and no more than a handful of genuinely strong titles; Harras's Directives and not be popular with our retailers, creators, critics or fans on the Internet.

Looks like DC won't be relegated afterall

 

[Mike Farley]

DC took the overall market share in July and had 6 of the top ten books.

link

 

[Shaka Zulu]

.
I see a future day when titles like Mars Attacks, Star Wars, Star Trek, Godzilla, Buffy, TombRaider or video game characters and possibly Japanese manga comics

Japanese manga is having problems; it suffered a blow because of Borders closing, and because of factors mentioned in the article I've posted.

If in 2007, manga was like a foreign movie star who had arrived on American shores to make it big, the last four years have been like watching that star run out of roles, run out of money, sell their house, go into rehab, and end up barely limping along in infomercials.

Dropping Sales

Manga sales in America have dropped 43% since 2007, an even bigger drop than domestically produced comics and graphic novels, suggesting that more than the bad economy is to blame. A few doomsayers like Toren Smith had claimed for years that the market was headed for a bust since publishers were glutting the market with too much junk.

Maybe the reduction in the amount of anime shown on American TV from the heights of 2003-2005 was another factor; licensed shows like Sailor Moon, DBZ and Pokémon planted the seeds of fandom in millions of minds, but as American TV producers saw all the money they were making, they decided it was more profitable in the long run to create their own anime-esque TV series like Voltron Force and Speed Racer: The Next Generation, so they get all the rights and don't have to censor panty shots.

Certainly the collapse of Borders didn't help, since Borders made up between 1/3rd and 1/5th of manga market dollar sales; Borders graphic novel buyer and manga fan Kurt Hassler, who later left the bookstore business to co-found Yen Press, was the trend-setter who turned chain bookstores into the #1 manga destination (as opposed to traditional comic shops, many of which never sold manga anyway). The past four years have seen company after company go out of business: Central Park Media, Go! Comi, DC's manga imprint CMX, Tokyopop, and recently the manga arm of Bandai Entertainment.

But the problem isn't just about fickle Americans — the Japanese manga market is hurting too. Sales of manga magazines, the traditional delivery medium for manga in Japan, peaked in 1995, and have been falling ever since. Graphic novel sales remained steady longer, but have also declined.

Manga is hurting the way that all print media is hurting — but in some ways it's worse, because manga is ill-equipped to adapt to New Media. Like American comic books, manga started out as cheap entertainment for kids, but while American comics faced their dwindling readership by turning into an adult collector's item with color, thicker paper and higher production values, manga magazines (and to a lesser extent, graphic novel collections) still use cheap ink and cheap paper to cram in as much pages-per-yen value possible.

: Why Manga Publishing Is Dying (And How It Could Get Better)