Listen, in a country the size of America, 300,00 copies is absolutely pathetic...

This. You don’t even know what’s coming out these days unless you specifically search for it

Early numbers can never be replicated due to the fall of print overall and fucked up distribution. Numbers from mid to late 80s to now remain largely stagnant

>You don’t even know what’s coming out these days unless you specifically search for it

How is it any different from not knowing what was coming out unless you had to go to the store/newsstand?

i blame people that don't know how to write a good stories

One problem with this article is that it assumes Lee did full script like Moore does. Most of the cool changes and concepts came from artists, namely Kirby and Ditko. At the end he talks about Missing Man and Captain Victory as if Kirby and Ditko just went to other publishers and said "please hire us to do something" instead of looking at them as Eternals and Dr Strange without third-party involvement.

All in all an irrelevant piece not without sheds of truth.

But what will happen when the numbers reach 0?

Yeah

>Where is he getting the 6 million number from?
Where indeed.

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Identity politics and Diamond killed comics. you can't argue with that anymore. I konw you will because you are leftists yourself, but I don't care anymore.

>since the late 60s.
fixed that for (you)

You know how I can tell you only started reading comics after the MCU got big?

Also, floppies are a horribly inefficient way to publish a story.

You can’t even find comics at the newsstand. You have to go into a fuckin comics shop, which is a speciality shop

And that’s why frank miller daredevil sold more. Oh wait, it didn’t

>meanwhile
>manga sells more now than ever before
How did the west fuck up so hard?

user, the MCU is a good reason to not read capes.

Isn’t manga sales stabilising also?

To answer your question, diamond

MCU is actually a good reason to read capes because all the adaptations, minus civil war, are worse than the source

>MCU is actually a good reason to read capes
No it's not.
>love the GotG movies
>read Annhilation
>who is this Nova guy? Where is the LE EBIN DANCE OFF XDDD ? Why can't we see Rocket Raccoon shoving things up his ass?

They need to go back to shitty paper, flat color and sell for a buck or two. fucking $600 US for a floppy with write-for-the-trade style story is murder

>rubbed with garlic and medium rare

For a convict he has patrician taste

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When the movies got big you had a flood of people reading the comics JUST so they can be hipsters and bitch how the comics are better. You see it every single time something gets a popular adaptation. Everyone wants to be the guy who goes "I was a fan BEFORE it was cool!" so they can look smart. It's fucking cancer and these fuckers gentrify every hobby and fandom in existence.

And it's your fault, Yea Forums.

How the fuck does Diamond have anything to do with it? Everyone who demonizes Diamond says it's bad because comics don't get sold in grocery stores or whatever other retarded nonsense. Guess where manga is sold in droves: bookstores and Amazon. Guess what are also sold in bookstores and Amazon: comics, in TPB form which is literally the exact same thing as tankobons.

Sales have declined because of stigmas and preconceptions about comics not being newcomer friendly as well as the content itself being really bad for the last 30 years and getting more bland, repetitive, and unambitious every month. There's a reason the big classic Batman and Superman comics and Alan Moore OGNs continue to outsell manga by a large margin while everything new languishes and achieves consistently middling or short lived success at the absolute best.

Kirkman pls

It's a dying medium.
Once it had to compete with radio shows , the cinema, and b/w tv with 3 channels.
Then it had to compete with video games and cable tv.
Then it was home consoles, home computers, satellite TV, and the internet.
Now it's online streaming, phone app games, virtual reality, and tons other stuff.

It's hard to see ALL OF THAT vs magazines of drawn stories that cost $3-7 for 15-30min of entertainment.

i blame the CCA
i blame cheap marketing ploys
i blame diamond
but the last thing i blame is sjws

I'm reading the essay and so far I agree with what Moore has written. Marvel Heroes are too grounded in reality and are total dicks to each other, which can make them feel dated.

DC heroes are timeless and can be enjoyed by any kid during the era.

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somebody should post the leaked memo Stan Lee wrote in the 80s.
He basically said that to sell comics you have to draw your male heroes cool and masculine looking and avoid using women all together. If you have to use women (he literally said that) at least make them look as attractive and pretty as possible.
Basically Marvel and DC started to do the exact opposite so it's only natural that sales went into the toilet.

>draw your male heroes cool and masculine looking and avoid using women all together
I guess he never went out of the closet?

by giving women who have no experience or even interested in comics one chance after another even through they already managed to fuck up 10 times previously while also discriminating against new upcoming talent for being white men or simply having the "wrong" political opinions.
there are several successful female manga artists and writers but they got there on their own merit and not thanks to the publishers obsession with "social justice" and "diversity"

Actually he scolded one of the artists in the same memo for drawing his Conan rip of character to feminine and weak looking

Even Gays and Lesbians want masculine looking Superheroes and Large Breasted, Wide Child bearing hips Women as the hero. Nobody wants ugly characters because their stories tend to go in a repetitive loop.

it's because
>get ready to see which of your favorite white male hero is going to be replaced by a black, Muslim woman next
is hard to market

my two little sisters only watch this ladybug cartoon because they think the blond boy is cute. they honestly would prefer it if the show just focused on him.
so much for girls wanting "strong female superheroes to identify with"

The problem with strong female heroes to identify with is that these shows keep making a teenage girl the protagonist, or an adult woman trying to act like an action movie star as protagonist based off shojo comics or movies without understanding what makes Sailor Moon, Inuyasha, or Card Captor Sakura work.

It's easy to market, make Muslim Heroes look and act like Piccolo from Dragonball

>The DC comics were always a lot more true blue. Very enjoyable, but they were big, brave uncles and aunties who probably insisted on a high standard of you know mental and physical hygiene. Whereas the Stan Lee stuff, the Marvel comics, he went from one dimensional characters whose only characteristic was they dressed up in costumes and did good. Whereas Stan Lee had this huge breakthrough of two-dimensional characters. So, they dress up in costumes and do good, but they've got a bad heart. Or a bad leg. I actually did think for a long while that having a bad leg was an actual character trait.

>People blaming SJWs
You dumb fucks, the numbers have been going down since before they became a thing.

The problem stems from the 1993 comic book crash and Diamond's monopoly over comic book distribution cutting off small non-LCS stores and other such outlets who might be interested in selling comic books. Remember the idea of going to the grocery store and buying your comics that way? Yeah, Diamond's the reason that doesn't happen anymore.

>act like Piccolo from Dragonball
Explain, please? I'm not much into manga or anime.

The real reason comics are dying (at leas ton the Marvel side) is too many cooks in the kitchen. Before writers knew and adhered to the canon; they grew up with the characters and stories and loved them. You also had writers who worked on titles for years, who grew to know the characters inside and out and gave them distinctive personalitys. Compare any Claremont X-men issue to any Bendis issue - You know who Storm was, her motivations, goals, and she had a consistent personality. Any character in a Bendis issue however could be interchangeable with any other character.

On top of that you now have diversity hires who have never read a comic in their life, or alter long term characters to serve their agenda or cause and aren't familiar with a title or characters history or personality in the slightest - but who cares, because in 6 months time some other moron who can't write for shit will come along and have their turn ignoring everything that's come before and writing their own 'magnum opus'.

tl;dr there's no consistency, quality control or expectation to follow history or tone.

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>I actually did think for a long while that having a bad leg was an actual character trait.

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>female Namekians
no way fag

Marvel and DC decided to implement the Gillette route before even Gillette tried to intentionally to spread their political and social message across at the cost of profits. Let Marvel and DC continue. If they honestly believe more women, minorities and LGBT people will replace the middle-aged straight Caucasian Men, even at the expense of losing the ladder by demonizing them, then let them. Sales figures prove that's not going to happen. Women and ethnic minorities were never interested in comics and were never the majority of comic audiences, and they're not going to buy their comic because films, video games, and movies are more appealing and have been doing the progressive model far longer and are more successful at it. Why would they care about comics? Only a fringe minority cares about political commentary, and most of them don't even buy comics. They just read them online via illegal sites or pirate them.

The problem is superheroes. They’re a niche, nerdy concept with zero mainstream appeal. Also the focus on crossovers and events is a disaster. You don’t see Hollywood doing “crossovers” and “events”; they know those things would flop.

>You dumb fucks, the numbers have been going down since before they became a thing.
sales had actually improved somewhat by 2007. The release of Iron Man and the start of the MCU also helped out a lot. Things honestly seemed promising until marvel and dc decided to go all woke.
Don't you ever get tired of having to come up with new excuses for why sjws are totally not to blame whenever another company goes woke and then broke?

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Piccolo tends to be more of a stern father figure who deeply cares about his son. It's a trait that carried over from his days as the Demon King.

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This article points out sales in the 80s were shit compared to the Golden age, long before your SJW shit came around. Shit it seems like comics books as a whole since the 50s have just been on a slow continuous decline aside from the bubble in the 90s.

>zero mainstream appeal
Wrongo.

you can go through the months at comichron.com
never bothered to make a pie chart or something like that but the numbers are there.

DC tends to use Superman or Batman as agents of social causes. It helps that Superman most famously fought against the Klan in a radio show back in the day, giving him clout to handle social issues.

The problem with Batman tends to be writers use him as a mouthpiece for his political views when they could've just use the Question or Mr.A to do those same issues.

I find that DC tends to make their black characters upstanding members of society or super scientists.

user, it's you that has to provide proof for your thesis.

I told you where you can find the truth.
If you are too lacy to do that I don't care enough to waste my time to convince some fat nerd who posts on Yea Forumsmblr about feminism

>Read Waid's OC Cape series called Ignited
>It involves a bunch of teenagers handed superpowers after a mass shooting, and then deciding to oppress other powerless teenagers because they happen to disagree with them on the gun control issue and wish to discuss the topic. The protagonists are supposed to be the heroes and are portrayed as right.
>Waid isn't some fringe writer that no one knows in the industry. He has significant clout. He works for Marvel and DC, known for Kingdom Come and his Flash run. This is the guy who writes your comics, and sees you as a villain if you happen to support the SA.

Fuck modern DC and Marvel for supporting this clown.

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>doesn't have proof
>cannot even spell "lazy" properly
I rest my case.

Waid is banned from DC.

I honestly find it hilarious that Objectivists like The Question and Rorschach are better political superheroes than anything DC produces today.

>The Question and Rorschach
>superheroes
I honestly find you hilarious.

Moore says the exact opposite, dumbass.

The Question and Rorschach speak with the gravitas of a political news pundit at best, or a Joe Rogan Podcast at worst.

Superman's desire to protect Metropolis is less political and more paternalistic.

In any case, they're not superheroes.

Costumed Vigilantes are the new Superheroes. For whatever reason, modern readers and modern storylines seem intimidated of giving an individual superpowers out of fear they'll become tyrants or something.

Proof?

The biggest problem for floppies (Marvel/DC/etc) is a lack of long term planning. They had a poor response to increasing paper prices and shrinking newstand space in the 70s. When the direct market showed profit they put all their eggs in that basket. The direct market took a major hit from the combination of the spectator bubble bursting and Marvel attempting to distribute themselves. A level of stability has been achieved in the last decade but the cost of that stability is creators not getting paid enough (outside of the top talent), many publishers acting as IP farms, and Marvel/DC being vanity publishers for movie studios.

The truth that many find hard to swallow though is that the comics industry is doing really well. Just not comics that most adults would be interested in. Look at the sales figures and print runs for Scholastic's graphic novels for kids or graphic novels aimed at YA audiences. Comics are selling a lot and kids are actually reading them. But they're of little interest to adults (myself included).

That's fine, there are plenty of comics aimed at adult audiences published in Europe and Asia. Maybe a generation of kids growing up on these kids graphic novels will create a demand for better comics as they get older. We'll just have to see.

And the funny thing is those kids comics (i.e. dog man) are SJW as fuck for kids

One of the funny things is that sheep that complain about sjws in comics don't realize that American culture is so toxic that America only produces right wing art. Even the so-called "SJW" work is right wing. The idea that republicans and democrats are competing parties and not two wings of the same empire is something they want to sell you and you bought it!

Imagine still paying attention to bitter-ass Alan Moore's industry talk in 2019.

America is so fucked up healthcare and gun control is apparently bipartisan lmao

>Imagine still paying attention to good writers, not me

Not a lot of people are going to pay $5 for a comic book these days.

Comic books used to be everywhere. You could buy them at gas stations, grocery stores, etc. Now you generally have to go to specialty stores that sell comic books or buy them online.

This is true, but if they sold, theyd be stocked.

The thing is they wouldn’t even know if it would sell because diamond refuses to distribute outside of the LCS

This is also true.

Diamond is much to blame for the limited distribution and exposure therefore ultimately responsible for the poor sales.