Is DC done?

>The comic division is the one in most danger.
That's putting it lightly. DC's bookscan numbers were cut in HALF from 2017 to 2018. The perennial tentpoles like Killing Joke and Watchmen just aren't the golden geese they used to be.

>*Sure, they haven’t always bigger than Marvel, but they were usually still somewhat sizeable/respectable

The IDW/Marvel is doing what DC zoom and Ink is doing.

Sold to Tencent for $1 billion in Chinese dong.

Yes, I understand that. I think you're missing the point of what I'm trying to say. DC doesn't have to publish DC comics for DC characters to still be in print.

>Batman is selling less than the Hulk
That means less than nothing though.

>Now sales are in the toilet and Batman is selling less than the Hulk
Stop. Go look at the top10 month to month, and add up all the numbers of titles that contain the word 'Batman'. Batman is still heads and shoulders the most popular comic book character.

But what would even be the point?

They don't want to be troubled with it. It's the same reason Mad Magazine is now only doing reprints. All they need to do is feel that it isn't worthwhile to publish new comics anymore.

Batman use to sell as much if it more than the Walking Dead. Now he is sinking.

Those are by Scott Snyder.
Tom King is on the main Batman book. The main Batman book use to be huge, a juggernaut. And now the main book is losing to an elseworld and a side book. Tom King’s Batman barely made it to the top 10.

Tom King's Batman comes out twice a month. Add those numbers up. Still the most popular hero.

Batman is still in the top 10.

It's also numbering in the 70s which means it has enough a loyal customer base to put it in the top 10s.

Barely

Yeah the "Hulk is outselling Batman!" meme fails under the slightest scrutiny. It's only brought up to fuel company wars. Best to ignore these people.

No one cares about Batman and Superman anymore grandpa

>The main Batman book use to be huge, a juggernaut

That was ONLY under Snyder. Morrison when he was on Batman couldn't even come close to that. King's Batman is basically selling at the pre-Snyder levels we saw under Morrison.

Probably in the filler content area.

>Their publishing rights can be sold.
They tried that in the 80s. It didn't work because everyone knew no one could relate to these overpowered one-dimensional mary sues

Then it would still be in the top 20.

almost 2 billion in a weekend? take that Endgame

They are more worried about their trade sales than sales of individual issues. Here are DC's trade sales in the top 750 trades sold every year.

2008 - $19,805,098
2009 - $24,061,834
2010 - $12,523,128
2011 - $13,083,378
2012 - $14,811,979
2013 - $15,620,981
2014 - $19,207,755
2015 - $21,701,088
2016 - $23,203,071
2017 - $15,234,525
2018 - $7,810,753

The whole top of DC's trade sales market has crashed in the last 2 years, which is when Rebirth started. Rebirth killed the trade sales of New 52 books, and Rebirth books aren't strong enough to out weigh it.

Not a weekend but a Friday

And not a billion but a million

Call this bullshit. This same rumor was used on Marvel comics just a few months ago.

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Batman has like 6+ books every month. Hulk has 1 (one). Could Hulk support 6+ books? No. Debate over. 1 issue of Hulk outselling 1 issue of Batman doesn't mean fuck all if you actually have a brain between your ears.

There's a big difference between Marvel and DC and Disney and AT&T

Someone needs to punch you in the face

That is dire.

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Yes, the Hulk absolutely could support more than one book. It all comes down to writing/the writer.

If you aren't going to engage honestly with me you can fuck off

AT&T is bigger than Disney

Just admit you have no argument and go and shove those 6+ Batman minis up your booty hole.

Fuck off

You do realize that King won't be on the main Bat book for much longer right?

How are the others doing on trade sales?

I thought Yea Forums said that DC was doing fine.

Congrats, you get a new She-Hulk book with all the Aaron changes on top of it!

Not much better. Bookscan is owned by Scholastic now. Comics will survive as literal kiddy crap.

With Ewing, Cates, Hickman, or Zdarsky writing? Sure. Give me the snu-snu.

Hibbs does a yearly article about the trade sales. It is an interesting read. comicsbeat.com/tilting-at-windmills-274-looking-at-bookscan-for-2018/

The only one that has taken a big knock other than DC would be Image. Since TWD's sales have plummeted. Marvel has never had really strong trade sales apparently.

Because Yea Forums likes to delete posts and ban anyone who says otherwise

And deeper in debt

Image has been losing ground for years, but is still ahead of how DC is now.
Marvel's never been super-strong, but was ahead of DC last year, mostly thanks to a fuck ton of Infinity Gauntlet sales

Yeah I always got a kick out of this. If you shit on DC too much you literally get pruned. Meanwhile you can say whatever you want about Marvel. It's hilarious.

No one is retarded enough to think AT&T will sell off the IPs. Could they stop spending money on new stories? Yeah. There's not enough money there for them to care.

IDW is losing money on comics now too. They're in a death race with Dark Horse to see which will close first.

How are Marvel numbers?

You think we'll get lucky and AT&T will fire Dan, Snyder, Bendis, and King?

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>Meanwhile you can say whatever you want about Marvel.
Bullshit, mods delete threads talking shit about Dr.Doom and F4 daily.

The comics industry occupies this weird space in media. It's highly unprofitable or if it is profitable, the amount of work that goes into it just doesn't make up for what little it provides. But ironically, it's also the spawning grounds for ideas that have become the most profitable franchises on the planet.

Have you been feeling this lucky lately?

2008 - 6,446,359
2009 - 5,019,216
2010 - 4,979,323
2011 - 3,303,496
2012 - 3,872,683
2013 - 4,229,242
2014 - 8,341,787
2015 - 10,611,981
2016 - 12,088,278
2017 - 7,840,198
2018 - 7,885,015

Actually, yeah. Got some cool comics from my LCS lately every time I visit.

Extremely trash numbers. Marvel's best year is slightly better than DC's worst.

Looks like those numbers are not relevant to the whole picture at all.

If you're feeling lucky enough that the creative directors of DC will be replaced, you should play Lottery.

No one would care if they cancelled all the Batman and Superman comics. It's everything else, movies, TV, cartoons, games, toys, that's the shit people actually give a fuck about.

If Zack Snyder is gone then everything is possible.

Nope. You see, DC has to sell at least 100 times as much as Marvel to be successful. For... reasons.

The American comic book industry is dying anyway. DC comics may die, but DC studios will be okay.

Snyder did an incredible amount of damage to WB/DC's momentum before finally shuffling off.
It was a lot of things, but lucky wasn't one of them.

I wasn't aware there was a "DC Studios". Just Warner Brothers indulging some comic book IPs.

>How to save DC comics
literally just find a better way to digitally distribute and lower the fucking prices on E-copies.
I'm not going to pay $2-$4 for a single issue 30 page issue of a story that might be complete shit that leaves me with a physical copy that I don't give a fuck about. Digital distribution that just let's you download a water-marked CBR or CBZ file would do wonders for the entire industry but they're all pussies worrying about muh piracy even though every single issue is immediately available to be pirated on a wide range of websites.
Paying $0.99 for a digital copy of an issue would suit me just fine.

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Nah. Lottery is just a waste of money. I'm not that lucky

To be fair that's usually the same person (Tommy) just spamming the shit incessantly. I'm glad he's being cleaned up.
That's a little different than having a post criticizing DC in a different thread get deleted.

Eh, who ever owns the movies and cartoon rights. I can't keep track of which part of the MegaCorp does what.

Look if you want to save DC you just got to get Geoff Johns off studio shit and back in the editorial seat. I haven't like all his decisions, but at least he could steer the damn boat.

I really do pray DC comics gets shitcanned just so all those fucking hacks will find themselves jobless because no other industry would accept their crap

They'll just get jobs at other comic companies. Maybe some will go independent.

Maybe I'm out of the loop, I thought Marvel was the shit show comic producer. What has DC done that's pissed people off?

Doomsday Clock.jpg

Why on God's green Earth would Geoff Johns, who just escaped from comics and made it huge in Hollywood, throw all that away to become an editor? Are you some kind of idiot?

Marvel and DC have both contributed to the downfall of comics.

Comics are going dinosaur. Just like radio did. The Internet has solved media. I don't know why anyone is pretending any other factor is at play.

That's not all on Johns though
>Huge in Holllywood
Hey I didn't say it be a better career move, merely wish he was back in the saddle

They just need to make the move to digital and say "fuck comic stores". Books are all digital now aside from collectors and are doing fine.

>merely wish he was back in the saddle
I'm sure most of us do, but that man has given his life to comics and he deserves all the Hollywood cheques that are coming his way. He will continue to write comics, such as he is with Doomsday Clock and Shazam, but that's it.

Their selling point was quality. Then they gave King Batman. Then they hired Bendis. And they gave him an exclusive contract. And they gave him Superman. Then they hired DeConnick. Then they hired Fraction. And they kept Didio around. And they kept Williamson around. And they kept the dogfucker around. They're in peak JUST mode right now and no one is trying to fix it, they just keep adding to the shitpile.

Well webcomics do exist, and many do well. Manga and other kinds of foriegn comic are doing quite well. It's really only Marvel and DC that are ready to give up on comics. The third party American comicbook companies aren't doing to hot either, but they're third parties in Marvel and DC's literal monopolies, so that's kind of expected. Marvel and DC have ran their comics into the ground, that's it.

Is this still Rebirth or have they moved on again?

Most of the posts deleted are from the faggot known as ladderfag(aka CaptainSalt and other names on comic vine) so is basically the same in both cases.

They won't because they're a bunch of greedy stupid old people. Consider the way the music industry reacted to Napster. Napster would have revolutionized music, but those old suits couldn't understand it. Even the iTunes store pissed them off, and that was actually a way for them to still make some money. They just couldn't fathom people NOT buying a 15 dollar record to get 1 or 2 good songs.

The legacy of Napster is Spotify and that is the new normal for music. In order to get to comics new normal, a lot of very egoistic men are going to have to accept the good old days of the 90s will never be back.

Johns hasn't been involved in the movies since Justice League bombed

Nah. It barely costs anything to make while being a neat source for future scripts. Shutting it down would create much more damage than letting it chug along as a small bit made for enthusiasts. Stock traders are despicable leeches who gamble with existences for a quick buck, but they aren't that dumb.

They keep making them, so they're raking in enough.

>Their selling point was quality.
Their selling point was nostalgia and sunk-cost fallacy. Bruce and Clark doing the same circular shit over and over and over, with new OC wards and tertiary characters.
DC had quality Elseworlds that ignored their status quo, and experimental Vertigo books (for a while).

He was involved in Aquaman and Shazam though. The hell are you talking about?

this is the post. Rebirth was a sham

>The Kitchen
Did anyone really expect that to succeed? The advertising was shit.
Maybe WB should take another look at their marketing department

>read the book and liked it when it came out
>all reviews say it's an utter piece of shit

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>Their selling point was nostalgia and sunk-cost fallacy
The exactly same can be said about Marvel.

Really, people still want comics, but not DC Super Hero comics. They've ran their characters into the ground, and they are impossible to make interesting anymore.
>New
>Interesting
>the DC Multiverse
Pick two, and only two.

>Really, people still want comics
No they don't, at least not western ones.

>MUH MARVEL
Why do you people do this? It's a thread about DC, we are talking about DC, who gives a shit if Marvel is also bad? Newsflash dickwad, if you really loved DC you would scrutinize them and hold them to high standards.

Yes, and they are putting more effort into the MCU than their comics, because the comics aren't selling. Marvel and DC have an equal part to play in the downfall of comic books.

Well, it's either this or the American market is going to be devoured by Manga and French stuff And German comics if the market chugs along like it does right now

This
I don't understand how the fuck Marvel and DC attract and then hire some of the worst writers out there, you'd probably find a better stock just going through fanfic sites

Yeah, because of Marvel and DC. Third party comics that do their own thing cover costs and have carved out a nice niche. Foriegn comics/Manga/whatever do well because they aren't under the crushing weight of the Big Two.

The American market will keep going on Scholastic alone. They're basically carrying it right now.

Well retard I know this will come as a surprise to you because like everyone on this site you have no fucking idea how movies work but those two along with Wonder Woman 2 were being worked on BEFORE Justice League bombed and he was kicked out.

The presence of Manga and European stuff in bookscan isn't that much actually. It's been overstated by Yea Forums. Bookscan is dominated by children's books, particular Scholastic. Comics will live on as children's books, which is fitting because as a child you're already reading picture books. Comics are just a more complex form of that.

DC sees this and has been ramping up their kiddie and young adult books. The Raven graphic novel was probably more successful than any other DC book that came out in the last couple years.

>why are people bringing up one of the big two when we're talking about one of the big two!?!

Basically because Marvel and DC combined are most western superhero comic sales, together they make the "standards" so using each other as examples is inevitable.

No, Marvel tried to sell themselves based on pandering and progressivism

>implying Yea Forums knows anything about quality

But he wasn't responsible for Justice League's failure? That was a collective fuckup done by Snyder, Whedon, and executive meddling. Do you have any source to back up your claim?

I hate both.

Ah, unlike DC, who has never tried, and failed, to be woke.

>But he wasn't responsible for Justice League's failure? That was a collective fuckup done by Snyder, Whedon, and executive meddling.
It might not have been his fault, but he did get fired as President and COO after it failed

My local comicbook shop is literally an antiques store. People just aren't reading much less buying current issues. AT&T and Disney should just stop printing floppies and go digital only. Also, fuck Didio and Bendis.

Again, source?

>Whedon
Lmao, people still blame Whedon even though his record is made up of sucessful and critically aclaimed movies while Snyder is always fucked by critics and underperforming in the box office?

Do you really think JL would be the first Zack Snyder movie in over 20 years of career to get an Oscar, a 90% on rotten tomatoes and 1 billion at box office? Even though what happened to sucker punch?Or Man of Steel? Or Batman vs Superman? Or basically every snyder movie?

I kinda hope DC does no longer publish newer content, if only so they can dip back into their older stuff and sell reprints. I've been on a huge Bob Oskner kick and would really love to see a reprinting of the Teen Gag series or something like Angel and the Ape for a couple of bucks in those Archie Comics style digests.

There's just really nothing DC's putting me out that makes me think "Damn, there's no where else to get something like this other than DC Comics". You know? I need Batman, take your pick of where you get it. New stuff? I can go to Manga or the thousands of webcomics? I'm also thirty-two so I might just be out of the target audience for this kind of stuff now a days.

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you're on the goddamn internet retard fucking google it

Here's the important thing: Marvel and DC are both owned by multimedia conglomerates.
Both were purchased, not because they were immensely profitable, but to supply IPs for movies and television and merchandising.

DC's status as the #2 comic book company doesn't matter. The fact that its on the cusp of becoming the #3 comic book movie company (behind Sony) is cause for worry.

The Board isn't going to be impressed with Shazam! coming behind Flopachu and Flopzilla: King of Underperforming Sequels. They read the trade journals and see Marvel Studios making big stacks on their IPs. They have to wonder how this Venom monster-guy can make over 800 million, but their superguy fighting monsters does a pathetic sub 400. They both had a 100m budget. What the fuck?

And they'll entertain low budget shit like Joker and Birds of Prey for a while (hoping for another Deadpool), but they want some MCU mojo. If Wonder Woman 84 and/or Aquaman 2 disappoint (as WB sequels are notorious for), then I dunno.

They certainly won't tolerate Sony beating them with Marvel scraps, Sony didn't even shell out for clunky, inefficient comic book publisher. Maybe selling them and renting the IPs is the answer.

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if Batman Shaman was cancelled then you can bet your ass Angel and the Ape win't getting reprinted

I'll never understand why anyone expects anything but shit from Snyder after Sucker Punch.

Are you fucking retarded or simply illiterate? I said a COLLECTIVE fuckup. I didn't single out anybody.

hey, at the end of the day DC has Batman. Detective Comics Comics

Or you can stop being a whiny bitch and just back up your claims. I'm not doing your work for you.

If only anyone cared about Batman

JL was going to be shit anyway, it was Snyder fuck up alone,the others simply failed to salvage it and shouldn't be blamed for his incompetence.

>hey, at the end of the day DC has Batman. Detective Comics Comics
Batman didn't save BvS, it sure as fuck didn't save JUSTice League.
Batman has earned another shot at the bigtime, but if the next Batman movie doesn't do Captain Marvel numbers it will be a turning point.

Neither of those were straight up Batman movies though, and carried a ton of baggage. The new movie coming up is a fresh start, with a very talented a popular actor as Batman. It can't make less than 1 b

No DC movie is ever going to do Captain Marvel numbers not even Batman

Aquaman was a smash success

Nothing is more annoying than Yea Forums pretending they understand business.

I don't think Dark Knight/Batman 89 style Batman really benefits from what made the recent super hero movies blow up - the whole over the top spectacle of special effects action mixed with comedy and drama.

It certainly will beat Shazam, but I could see it failing to make one billion even if it's not a bad movie.

>Neither of those were straight up Batman movies though
BATMAN vs Superman. It's a Batman movie with him in the "greatest gladiator match of all time. It opens with Batman, and ends with Batman. It is a Batman movie because WB had read the press on Man of Steel and felt there was trouble a brewin'.

You might as well claim Batman and Robin wasn't a "straight up Batman movie".

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>with a very talented a popular actor as Batman. It can't make less than 1 b
You're going to be in for a shock in 2021

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Challenge accepted: Yea Forums pretending they understand women.

WAS being the operative word

Now that Disney has claimed December there's literally nothing DC can do to get close to those numbers again.

It was literally a sequel to the Superman movie. It barely touched on anything Batman or Gotham city. And BvS actually made a decent amount of money so I dunno what we're arguing about in the first place.

They are going to literally put the King of Atlantis against the Undersea King, aren't they?

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When they were expecting Avengers level numbers?

Source?

Well it was a pretty bad movie. 900M for one of the worst movies I've ever seen ain't so bad

>And BvS actually made a decent amount of money
because it was the first entry into this god awful cinematic universe

>It barely touched on anything Batman or Gotham city.
Did you even watch the movie?
Gordon and crew worried Batman is losing it.
Clark wanting to write about the Bat.
Batman's "victims" being murdered in prison
Big action set-pieces in Gotham
Clark does nothing but stand around like a dope while Batman goes off and investigates Luthor, meets Diana, and essentially drives the entire story, including rescuing the damsel in distress.

Stop being a retard on my internets.

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Given our luck, Dan will be named the new CEO of Warner.

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Wow. So Jap comics are doing better.

Nobody reads comics anymore, senior citizens of this thread. Most people's first interaction with any comic book characters is through vidya, movies or TV shows. It's not 1990 anymore.

Remember the whole
>needing 800m to break even
As much as people tried to mock the figures, WB ended up spending a stupid amount of money on marketing that they needed a shitload in return to cover their losses. And then by the end of it it turned out they had barely done so.

Everyone on Yea Forums expected BvS to rival Civil War. Some of the pie-in-the-sky types thought it could beat Avengers, but the consistent expectation was that a Batman/Superman/Wonder Woman movie could easily match or beat a movie based on a meh comic story. No one was predicting BvS making 30% less than Civil War. Fuck this revisionism.

Those numbers are peanuts for juggernauts like AT&T and Disney. They could shut down the comics divisions, milk the capes in movies, TV and merch and it wouldn't even hit their bottom lines.

It's because long form storytelling is ripe for creative stories and characters.
Imagine if soap operas suddenly became hip, or professional wrestling, uhh, actually nevermind on that last one hehe

>The comics industry occupies this weird space in media. It's highly unprofitable or if it is profitable, the amount of work that goes into it just doesn't make up for what little it provides. But ironically, it's also the spawning grounds for ideas that have become the most profitable franchises on the planet.
WAS. Nothing they're releasing right now is recent stuff. Rather, they're adapting decades-old storylines. Again, there would be zero loss if they shut down the comics.

Marvel comics are shit.

>The Raven graphic novel was probably more successful than any other DC book that came out in the last couple years.
Which one?

But no one mentioned the other guys until you did, this is a DC thread, it has nothing to do with the competition

If I were in charge of AT&T or Disney I'd cancel the comics lines. There's no excuse for trillion dollar corporations to sink millions of dollars each year into a medium that no one buys anymore.

Batman and Superman aren't popular characters anymore. Harley Quinn is BY FAR the most popular DC character (and realistically their ONLY character that has any real mainstream presence anymore). Even The Joker is more popular than Batman at this point. And Superman is a glorified b-lister.

Why do you think they would care?

The Nolan movies were BIGGER than that.

Heath Ledger built a level of expectation for DC movies that they've never been able to match again. Aquaman rode a Chinese director to massive Chinabux in an empty month.
Not saying that it's not worth repeating that strategy again, but Aquaman didn't even scratch TDK's domestic numbers.

King’s Batman chased away readers
If Batman readers don’t want to come in and pick up Batman, they aren’t going to want to pick up anything else DC.

Not to mention making shit like Heroes in Crisis and trying to make Wally West a serial killer (and no, chickening out at the last second doesn’t fix it) and just antagonizing Fans in general.

Didio even blamed fans for buying old comics instead of their current shitty comics for their failures.

It also doesn’t help that no one knows what is even going on in the DC universe (not even the people in charge). You got JL vs Luthor and LoD, Leviathan, and Bane taking over Gotham all happening at the same time. And it just confuses everyone. Why should readers care that Leviathan is destroying organizations when Lex is trying to fuck over the universe? It feels like everyone is ignoring each other and most stuff just isn’t important.

And really, what is there to be excited about in the Future of DC? Bendis on Batman? DeConnick giving Barry Allen amnesia? Tom King taking random character and giving them PTSD?

>DeConnick giving Barry Allen amnesia
Is she taking over? Cause Williamson has been an utter shitshow in basically redoing rainbow lanterns but with forces but I'll still rather keep him around than giving KSD the book.

AMNESIA!?!?!

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They are, but someone at AT&T is going to look at those trade sales numbers and wonder why they less than 1/3rd of what they were two years ago. DC letting people go the last year makes sense now.

as does them shutting down MAD and Vertigo

The guy who does month-to-month sales charts for DC books recently said that Nightwing is at the lowest numbers he's ever seen since he started keeping track.
I didn't believe him, because I remember how shitty Bruce Jones and Devin Grayson was at writing the book.
So I just spent the last hour plugging in all available numbers on comichron, and found that
>The lowest sales the 1996-2009 Nightwing series ever got were 28,333 with Nightwing #137. Marv Wolfman was writing it
>The lowest sales that the 2011 New 52 Nightwing series got were 36,814 with Nightwing #29, the second to last issue
>The lowest sales that Grayson (2016) ever got was with the final issue, Annual #3, with 20,972 sales. King and Seeley had moved on, and Kelly/Lanzing wrote the last four issues
>Nightwing #61, the most recent issue of the current volume, has sold the worst out of all books titled "Nightwing." Nightwing #61 has hit 22,621, and it looks like "Ric Grayson" will be here through to October 2019. Bravo Didio

Except MCU is destroying the film industry AND the comics industry. Why articles and Yea Forums like to paint DC as the big bad demon in this is beyond me

The Marvel CINEMATIC Universe isn't a comic series. Marvel's comics have been selling like crap lately.

>implying Didio didn’t intend for that to happen
He hated Dick Grayson, remember?
He probably wants to use that poor sales as an excuse to kill him off permanently.

They need to just rush to a relaunch already. Mix up some of these creative teams.

Yeah it's done.

>Except MCU is destroying the film industry AND the comics industry.
You mean Hollywood and Marvel Entertainment actually, the former at trying to rush into cinematic universe without proper production and the latter for the retarded synergy thing

Good
fuck Dickfags

I hope DC goes just the entire market crashes

Yes, but thats not the point. The point is the AT&T shareholders would look at these numbers and point out that this division has lost half it's value in less than a year. That sort of performance is completely unnacceptable in a big merger deal.

That's like thinking no one would care if a fictional superhero got killed off in a fictional story.

>Is DC dead
We were unironically having these threads about Marvel comics a couple of years ago when they were in their relaunch cycle. Everything will be fine. A shake up in some way or another is likely coming though

Who cares about comic books anyway? Comic book readers are literally just 0,1% of the movie going audience.

If that

part of why these numbers are sinking so fast is because the market is saturated with trades. Anything you can find for sale at barnes and noble you can typically find sitting on Ebay, used, for 5-15 dollars.

unlike floppies,which have a very limited print run that never occurs again- trades are the same thing over and over again, they are also marketed for people who by their very nature care less about the condition of the book and more about the content within.

they've tried that too many times, we know from previous attempts it would just make things worse.

Well this isn’t the 80’s anymore.

no one cares about funny books. there will still be Superman and Batman cartoons and movies

This

The CONSTANT FUCKING REBOOTS is what got them in this problem in the first place.

>2016 - $23,203,071
>2017 - $15,234,525
>2018 - $7,810,753
fucking how?

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rebirth trades slaughtered all sales of the new 52 trades, and never picked up the slack

It’s amazing how stubborn DC and Marvel are. If they just stopped putting feminist and social justice propaganda into everything and allowed cheesecake again sales would increase. But here we are in the 3th straight year of declining sales and they continue with the same far leftwing course.

If DC dies doesn't Marvel and the other comic companies go down as well? Don't the rights to WW revert back to the Marstons?

If Marvel survives I am sure Bendis will juat go back and King will hop on board to the Marvel train as well.

>And really, what is there to be excited about in the Future of DC?
More white male characters either getting replaced by women or minorities or getting the King emasculation treatment.

Johns worked in Hollywood before he got involved in comics, he worked with Donner. He startes working for DC through his Hollywood connections.

Did so good that now Namor is the new fishman punch-bag and laughingstock.

In the 80s, this almost happened. Marvel EIC Jim Shooter took a meeting with the heads of DC and discussed possibly licensing the DC characters to Marvel. Shooter was confident they could turn a profit, DC would keep their characters in print and wouldn't have to bother actually making the books, just getting a piece of whatever Marvel made. It fell through because Marvel was being sued by First Comics at the time for allegedly monopolizing the market -- think Shooter mentioned they had something like 75% of sales, and publishing Superman and Batman would make that number even higher, so the heads at Marvel passed on the deal.

Also John Byrne caught wind of the meeting and showed up at the Marvel office with a cover to Marvel's Superman #1, even though they had exactly one meeting. He really, really likes Superman.

People were completists with their trades and used Rebirth as a jumping off point.

Notice how trade sales don't actually crater until they abandoned Rebirth.

It's more likely that ending Rebirth was what killed their sales.

>DC might go away before Doomsday Clock is finished

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Lol cape shit is garbage. Burn them all.

to be fair that was probably going to happen anyway

>comics
Oh no, this going to be terrible.

Also. If DC comics died, Marvel will follow soon after because they can't exist without each others.

Full article for those who hate to click:

>Earlier this month at San Diego Comic-Con, returning attendees noticed a major change on the show’s massive exhibit floor. The booth for DC Comics, which had been a massive standalone pavilion in the center of the publishers’ area in the center of the hall, was gone. America’s oldest and second-largest comic book publisher had retreated to the far back corner of the hall, where it was incorporated into the multi-level WarnerMedia exhibit, in the shadow of banks of giant monitors previewing upcoming shows and cast appearances.

>The subtext of this move could not have been clearer. AT&T—now the parent company of WarnerMedia and its divisions, including DC Comics (previously known as DC Entertainment), HBO, Turner, and Warner Bros.—does not seem terribly interested in being in the comic book publishing business. It’s telling that in a long profile of AT&T CEO John Stankey this morning in Variety, DC was one of the only WarnerMedia brands that was not mentioned. To the extent that DC matters at all in the company’s future, it’s as a source of owned IP for other media channels and as a lifestyle brand to serve as an ambassador to geek culture.

>In terms of pure economics, this makes sense. The entire comics publishing business in the U.S., including periodicals, digital and trade, adds up to around $1.1 billion, according to 2018 estimates by industry analyst ICv2. On a good month, about 35% of the revenue from the direct market goes to DC, along with a chunk of trade book sales for perennial titles like Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns. That wasn’t ever very much in the Time Warner days, and it’s a smaller drop in an even bigger ocean following the AT&T acquisition.

>There’s another ocean in play as well: an ocean of red ink. AT&T’s debt following the $85.4 billion WarnerMedia acquisition stands at $164 billion. The company obviously believes it can monetize the WarnerMedia assets to make that back quickly, but that’s a huge sword hanging over management’s head, and the kind of thing that gets division chiefs thinking about short-term wins rather than long-term strategy.

>One place that AT&T does not seem to see any value is in sub-brands. One of the company’s first moves following the acquisition was to shutter several of WarnerMedia’s niche streaming services, including the beloved cinephile outlet Filmstruck, seen by many as a prelude to rolling as much of the company’s media artillery as possible into a mega-streamer to compete with Disney, Netflix and the rest—a move that seems essential given the precipitous drop in subscribers to AT&T’s satellite TV service DirecTV.

>But that sentiment has also crept into the publishing side. In recent months, DC has dropped the axe on its prestige imprint Vertigo, the creative engine behind hits like Sandman, Preacher, Swamp Thing, Doom Patrol and Fables. On the eve of Comic-Con, the company announced the cancellation of MAD, the venerable humor magazine that changed the face of American satire and has been continuously published since the mid-1950s. Neither of these was a big moneymaker in terms of month-to-month sales, but both brands occupy some valuable real estate in the psyche of fans. Even if the properties built on that land are in disrepair, it seems shortsighted to vacate the premises entirely.

>Alan Moore will get the rights to the unfinished Doomsday Clock

>In place of a robust and differentiated publishing enterprise, AT&T appears more interested in boosting DC as a consumer lifestyle brand. Warner Bros’ efforts to bring DC superheroes to the big screen have been hit-or-miss, and suffer especially in comparison to the gleaming, chrome-plated juggernaut that is Disney’s MCU, but producer Greg Berlanti and his team have developed a creatively and commercially satisfying empire on television with the Arrowverse family of shows (Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, and Legends of Tomorrow, plus Black Lightning). That success has bled over into several surprisingly great original series like Doom Patrol, Titans and Swamp Thing on the DC Universe OTT service, a legacy project from the last days of Time Warner that has managed to cling to life – so far – in the AT&T era.

>DC Universe also features a chat show, DC Daily, in which a gaggle of media-friendly young people enthuse over the latest comics and comic-culture offerings from the company. It’s here that the lifestyle brand goals come through most clearly. The hosts and their over-the-top squeeing about the latest merch represent WarnerMedia’s highest aspirations for its audience – younger, hipper, more ethnically and gender-diverse than the traditional DC comics readership (which is old and male even by the standards of the comics industry), and dedicated to omnivorously consuming everything even loosely affiliated with geek culture as part of their hip, socially-mediated, comics-defined lives.

>It’s a well-conceived strategy to combat the encroaching hegemony of the Disney-Marvel-Lucasfilm-Pixar pop culture machine. For all its market might, Disney seems wedded to a very clear vision of market segmentation where the Marvel comics brand (including its animated TV components) must first and foremost deliver Disney the teen male fanbase, even as the separately-managed MCU wipes the floor with all categories at the box office.

>DC also has an edge that few people talk about in terms of logo design and iconography. Superman’s “S,” the Bat signal, Flash’s lightning bolt, and the other distinctive marks associated with DC characters dwarf almost everything that Marvel has on offer with the possible exception of Spider-Man’s insignia, and even gives main Disney a run for its money. This gives DC a permanent structural advantage in the lucrative fields of licensed merchandise and apparel that the company has never fully exploited.

>So where does all that branding leave the publishing business? A generation ago, faced with a similar situation, DC’s then co-President and Publisher Jenette Kahn appealed to Time Warner management that wanted to dramatically cut back on DC’s current publishing in favor of reprints, saying that the company’s new material was the lifeblood of the company, a source of new fans and new IP without which the characters and related merchandise would decline into obscurity. She won that argument and DC, under her stewardship, ended up minting many of the golden coins in which it still trades, including The Dark Knight, Watchmen and Sandman, despite never being a gigantic engine of revenue within the Time Warner corporate umbrella.

>Today, DC Comics is in a similar situation. Following a demoralizing mid-decade move from its traditional home in New York to Warner Bros’ headquarters in Burbank, CA, the company has stumbled through various events and line reboots, milking assets like Frank Miller’s once-fresh take on Batman and post-Alan Moore Watchmen for the last dregs of fan appeal and relevance, and relying on high priced milestone thousandth issues of long-running titles like Action Comics and Detective Comics to make up in dollar share what they are losing in unit share of an increasingly crowded comics market.

>Recently, DC co-President Dan DiDio publicly fumed that reissues of comics 30 and 40 years old were outselling current stories featuring the same characters, calling that a “failure on us.” Echoing his predecessor’s warning from years past, he added, “We should be focused on moving things forward, always pushing the boundaries and finding new stories to tell. That’s how we’ll survive and grow this industry.”

>Looking to the future of comics publishing, DC had a booth at the recent Book Expo trade show for the first time in more than a decade, touting its new line of teen and young adult material, much of which is published direct to trade rather than sold through comic shops. It’s not the most visible part of the company, nor the most directly tied to the familiar DC brand of superheroes, but it could represent the kind of revenues necessary to keep the business alive under the looming corporate axe.

>Faced with a cash-starved corporate master with an unsentimental, “what have you done for me lately” approach to legacy sub-brands and an urgent need to monetize its new media empire through streaming and licensing, it’s not unreasonable to wonder if even Superman himself is capable of rescuing DC Comics as we’ve known it for the past 80 years.

Can anyone provide a relevant list of A. B. C-listers?

>Their publishing rights can be sold.
*laughing Mouse in the distance*

>2017 - $15,234,525
>2018 - $7,810,753
t-thanks DiDio.

Yes.
Both marvel and dc are fucked.
Comics have been dead for over a decade and they've just been flinging shit angrily at their caretakers the fanboys.

The big two are absolutely fucked and all of the IP has been absolutely ruined by both.
IMHO, the most famous comic names like Jim Lee, and McFarland and a few writers should just get together and start shooting story ideas directly to the comic fans on patreon and indiegogo.

Jim is rumored to be buying stormwatch back so he can create a story.

>Jim is rumored to be buying stormwatch back so he can create a story.
Is he walking away from DC?

Aparently so.

He's the most famous comic man in the entire damned company and his name and word is gold. He can damn near do whatever the fuck he wants.
He can put out a magazine of comics jump style and sell it DIRECTLY to comic fans through direct marketing.

>DC fucked up so hard they're causing Image 2.0 to happen

I don't think dc messed up as big as you are making it out to be. They have been really trying hard to create variety in their line and tried to appeal to all kind of people, but they are simply not interested because there are alternative ways to enjoy superheroes.

>They have been really trying hard to create variety in their line and tried to appeal to all kind of people

They can just release a comic line that bring in the shitty arrowverse people and digitally sell that or put it on the shelves.

Nevermind it's over.

user, DC isn't the only one that's fucked up. Marvel is getting fucked harder then a fat ass blonde dyke in a black frat.

There's no business reason for comics to even exist. They are ALL vanity publishers at this point.

>They can just release a comic line that bring in the shitty arrowverse people and digitally sell that or put it on the shelves
They did...

They have been trying so hard, but they aren't getting any results. Comic is dying medium and it's not necessarily because of the quality.

user, Comics aren't dying.
The big two and the comic industry as we know it are both already dead.
New comics from the big 2 do not sell.
Period.

However, Independent stuff made by comic geeks for comic geeks and normie stuff like the walking dead and manga ;sells extremely well.

MCU and DC?
They are both unbelievably fucked.

Good, kill all capeshit.

>Do you really think AT&T want to go down in history as the company that cancelled Batman and Superman?
This is a common mistake. You're thinking of AT&T (and corporations in general) like it's some individual person who personally cares about his long term future and reputation.
In reality, decisions are made by people working at corporations, and they make decisions based on their *own* interests, which usually mean doing whatever's necessary for keeping the next quarterly earnings call from sounding bad. Nobody is putting serious care or attention into making sure the business they're working for doesn't go down in history years later as having killed superhero comics. John Smith working for AT&T isn't going to be in the history books for doing that, AT&T is.
Same reason why 99% of the cases anons think are fast food social media advertisers on /ck/ are really just regular anons shitposting for fun. It might be beneficial for the restaurant chain itself to have covert advertising on an anonymous website, but it wouldn't be beneficial at all to anyone working at the restaurant chain since they would never have any way to take credit for it that didn't make them look retarded for bringing Yea Forums up in a meeting with their business executives.

>DCeased
Interesting foreshadowing

DC bought out the Marston estate like, a decade ago

>Just like radio did.
Radio owes its survival to cars.