Couldn't it be in the altered timeline, Data did not die?
Star Trek: Countdown #1 early review - MASSIVE SPOILERS!
- Thread starter JD
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One more time: The comic is not set in an altered timeline. It's set in the existing ST timeline in the future. The timeline is not altered until after the events of the comic, when Nero goes back in time to change history and set the movie in motion. The purpose of the comic is to show Nero's backstory, the events that led him to try to change history. It's also to explain how the Trek timeline we know is connected to the new timeline created in the movie.
I vehemently disagree. It's abusive to comics retailers for publishers to do this. There's no incentive to the customer to buy the floppies, if they can get the trade paperback either simultaneous or nearly-so, especially if they can get a generous discount on the trade through an outlet like Amazon. And if there's no reason for the customer to buy the floppies, there's no incentive for the comics retailer to order the floppies. If I were a retailer, I'd order extremely tight on IDW's product, because I wouldn't want to be left with extras on any of their product; it would be virtually unsellable in a few months time. Why piss the money away?
Yes, there's value to having trades as a revenue stream, but not at the expense of destroying the revenue streams that lead into the trade.
There's not much incentive to buy the floppies (is this the standard way to call them?) anyway. I'm of the opinion that this format is on its way out, and I've no problem with those who don't wish to keep them on life-support indefinetely and/or want to get ahead of the curve when in comes to trades.
Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman
Well, suit yourself - buy the floppies and not the trade, if that's how you feel. No one at IDW is forcing people to buy the trade instead of the individual issues, after all.
But given that TPBs are becoming more popular and "floppies" less so, wouldn't it be sensible at this point for the comics retailers to reorient their business model so that it isn't so dependent on the monthly issues? And for publishers to do the equivalent, so that the decision to publish a title isn't dependent on whether it sells enough in monthly "floppy" form? It seems to me we're heading for a market where TPBs are the primary rather than the secondary format for comics, so maybe the industry -- at both the production and retail ends -- should be working to adapt to that change and get ahead of the curve rather than resisting it.
While I don't share Allyn's vehemence, I do see his point. Unfortunately, the comics industry is in a bit of a catch-22....
Trades are becoming more popular because, bluntly, comic shops aren't places that people want to go into. People are more likely to find the comics they're interested in the same B&N superstore where they get their books, magazines, toys, DVDs, CDs, and coffee and pastries. Far too mahy comic book stores are dank little holes run by people who are the reason why Comic Book Guy on The Simpsons works as a stereotype.
The flip side of that, though, is that the comics need the periodical issues in order to make the business model viable. Nobody's figured out a way to actually make money publishing trades -- they only work as reprints, with the stapled periodicals being where they make back the (considerable) production costs and the trades providing the profit.
I don't know what the answer is, honestly. And neither does anybody else, because they'd have tried it by now.
Trades are becoming more popular because, bluntly, comic shops aren't places that people want to go into. People are more likely to find the comics they're interested in the same B&N superstore where they get their books, magazines, toys, DVDs, CDs, and coffee and pastries. Far too mahy comic book stores are dank little holes run by people who are the reason why Comic Book Guy on The Simpsons works as a stereotype.
The flip side of that, though, is that the comics need the periodical issues in order to make the business model viable. Nobody's figured out a way to actually make money publishing trades -- they only work as reprints, with the stapled periodicals being where they make back the (considerable) production costs and the trades providing the profit.
I don't know what the answer is, honestly. And neither does anybody else, because they'd have tried it by now.
Well, that's a little reactionary. There hasn't even been an explanation of it yet. Do you boycott Pocket Books because they brought Trip back? Undoing his death, and undoing Data's fix the two most moronic and worthless deaths in Trek history.
Heh. I would hope so. It's just that I've heard several others in various places have that same reaction, in a serious sense, which just left me shaking my head. An emoticon would have helped. 
woulda ruined the deadpan.
i am seriously annoyed they brought him back though. i'm not enraged enough to boycott IDW though.
i am seriously annoyed they brought him back though. i'm not enraged enough to boycott IDW though.
In fact that's happened with almost all IDW ST issues, and it's gotten worse since it's become clear that each mini-series has been getting its trade omnibus, including all variant art covers, eventually.
Hmm. I remembering seeing, a while back, a Hellblazer trade that was never previously serialized: the entire thing was written and produced with the trade in mind. I wonder how that experiment fared, whether it proved profitable on its own or did indeed lose out.
Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman
The other problem is that the small (and new) publishing houses need to figure out an alternative to floppies sooner rather than later, given that Diamond is about to completely cut them out. Someone really needs to put together an alternative to Diamond anyways; they've been slowly choking the comics market since they took over all distribution.
Diamond didn't "take over," they were the last distributor standing after Marvel's disastrous decision to become their own distributor. After that, DC went exclusive with Diamond, which killed every other distributor in the business. Then Marvel's distribution collapsed, and Diamond was all that was left.....
I'm buying the floppies of Countdown because it seemed interesting and I wanted to read it before the movie came out, I didn't realize the trade and #4 were going to be released in the same day. But the rest of the IDW stuff I'm waiting until the trades come out. Since I'm not a big comic guy it's just annoying to me to have to flip through a zillion of the same comic because they have 3 different covers for each issue.
The final straw for me for buying the floppies of the other IDW stuff was when I was late one month and all they had out was a version of one of them that had a photo of an actor instead of artwork. I asked the guy at the counter, who I believed to be the owner, if he had a different version of this respond with something along the lines of "Dude, if I had one it would be out there". OK, maybe he was having a bad day but I was in the middle of buying about $25 worth of stuff, I wasn't buying just the one comic.
I switched to another store where the people don't seem to mind answering questions but I'm forced to ask questions like "How come Fringe and Farscape are on opposite sides of the store? I was looking for things alphabetically and that doesn't seem to be working." They said something like there were alphabetical within groupings of different kinds of publishers and IDW and Boom! don't go together. Not sure why but what ever. Also not sure why I found Countdown on the opposite side of the store than the rest of the IDW stuff. I'm just going with the flow there.
That's just a long winded way of saying KRAD has a point when he talks about comic book stores aren't the funnest places to go to. At least for the casual buyer.
The final straw for me for buying the floppies of the other IDW stuff was when I was late one month and all they had out was a version of one of them that had a photo of an actor instead of artwork. I asked the guy at the counter, who I believed to be the owner, if he had a different version of this respond with something along the lines of "Dude, if I had one it would be out there". OK, maybe he was having a bad day but I was in the middle of buying about $25 worth of stuff, I wasn't buying just the one comic.
I switched to another store where the people don't seem to mind answering questions but I'm forced to ask questions like "How come Fringe and Farscape are on opposite sides of the store? I was looking for things alphabetically and that doesn't seem to be working." They said something like there were alphabetical within groupings of different kinds of publishers and IDW and Boom! don't go together. Not sure why but what ever. Also not sure why I found Countdown on the opposite side of the store than the rest of the IDW stuff. I'm just going with the flow there.
That's just a long winded way of saying KRAD has a point when he talks about comic book stores aren't the funnest places to go to. At least for the casual buyer.
Comic books are often sorted by publisher, which has never made any kind of sense to me -- books aren't separated by publisher, CDs aren't separated by record label, DVDs aren't separated by production company -- but there you go. I do appreciate that my local comic store, as well two of the bigger NYC stores (Jim Hanley's Universe and Midtown Comics) shelve alphabetically.
I figure the "sorting by publisher" practice would've started when there was basically just Marvel, DC, and other. Heck, it's always struck me as natural to break it down that way. My own non-Trek comics shelf is like that -- DC, Marvel, everybody else -- and I used the same principle when organizing the graphic novels shelf at a bookstore I once briefly worked at. Breaking it down by smaller publishers seems a bit excessive, though.
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