I can’t fucking believe that M@rvel comics just publicly blamed DC and their lower prices for M@rvel’s sales dropping.
Like, could you imagine if literally any other company did that? If any other company was like “our competitor is doing something that appeals more to consumers so it’s their fault that we’re not doing as well!!”
do you have a link? I didn’t see anything on Google and I’m at work so Facebook and Twitter are blocked
From my year working in a shop here’s what I can tell you from my experiences:
- Marvel readers were exhausted by the constant restarts and events. They couldn’t get a foothold. If the reader was newer it was even more of a challenge.
- The Civil War II banner wasn’t visually appealing and slaughtered a lot of titles. Readers skipped issues if they tied in or completely dropped the series. Even if the book didn’t really tie into the main story, customers opted out.
- At our shop, Marvel readers were far more likely to abandon their books. I processed delinquent customer boxes and would find a couple hundred bucks in books that one customer never picked up. Now imagine that but happening with like 20 customers. I cringed when I tallied a spreadsheet.
- Marvel expects retailers to order books blind. Frequently titles have been CLASSIFIED and it eats up calendar time retailers could have been promoting and generating interest instead it is a mystery and when it does get revealed final order cut off are due.
- There’s LOT OF TITLES for readers to choose from and often as much as it kills me, they’ll wait and see until reviews are in if they should pick it up rather than taking a chance and pre-ordering/committing.
- Marvel burdens retailers with variants - and they’re linked with other titles. Like “order %150 of Title blah issues grrr and qualify for up to 5 variants.” Not to mention because you order so few variants the likelihood of them being damaged skyrockets.
- Oh Marvel was having print issues with things being cut crooked or a roller catching and gouging books. So we’d have to decide how many we report as damaged or deal with it and sell it. Because the chances of getting a replacement were slim.
- One Marvel title was printer damaged three months in a row and basically died because customers couldn’t get it in a timely manner. I mention this because print issues/quality checks are on Marvel. Not on Diamond.
- The direction of Captain America results in people dropping Marvel titles.
- Retailers have no incentive to gamble on something new from Marvel because books can’t be returned. DC understood that a shop shouldn’t be a bank and let retailers return books. We took a chance on some of the Rebirth titles and ordered high and it paid off. When it came time to return books we didn’t have anything left.
- I used to be staunchly Marvel and lately have pretty much switched over to DC because I’ve really loved the creative teams on the titles. It’s been a quality shift.
Anyways, used to be a comic shop employee. Ask me anything, I’ll probably answer it.