I actually did a double take when I saw this article and made sure it was not the 1st of April...cause this seems like a bad joke. They are talking about killing a major character every quarter cause it bumps up sales on titles.,,nice creative vision JQ.
All I can see this doing if they actually go with it is driving real readers away on droves and leaving these event issues to be snatched up by speculators who have no interest in the characters from month to month...which is going to kill sales on the books that they are trying to boost.
A Death event every now and then is an interesting gimmick if the story is told well. Barry Allen, and Colossus were tales that meant something to the characters and their universes at the time. The other thing is that there will then be a slew of resurrections to go along with the deaths.
What is your thought on this development?
[ February 15, 2011, 08:28 PM: Message edited by: Dev Em ]
Posted by Blacula on :
Well I can't speak for whatever goes on at Marvel, but I can definitely tell you that the wholesale slaughter of DC heroes and villains over the last few years has made me lose all respect for that company's editors and writers, and has made me the least invested I've ever been in their characters or universe since I began buying comics 20 years ago.
For example, I used to buy everything with the name 'Titans' on it - and have way too many crappy 90s comics to prove it. But when every Titans storyline began to revolve around a member dying, just because Geoff Johns' graphic slaughter of three of them in Infinite Crisis had gotten everyone talking, I just thought "What's the point in caring about these characters when all they are is cannon fodder for the next 'event', or whenever they need to pick up sales?" So I dropped the franchise completely and have never looked back.
Similarly, I have ZERO respect for any writer who lacks the ability to tell a dramatic story without feeling the need to kill off a DC hero or villain just to try and make their story more 'important' than it would have been without it. Exhibit A - James Robinson and his whole pathetic return to DC. Talk about tarnishing a legacy. That guy must have killed off about 25 good characters since he came back to the company. And I would choose about 20 of those characters over any character he has ever created for DC (yes, that includes Jack Knight) any day!
I kinda doubt Marvel will actually do what that article says they will though. Assuming their plan to kill off a character ever quarter only includes big-name characters (because really, how many people are going to by an issue just because Stingray, for example, died in it) then that means in only three years they'll have killed 12 major characters! In 10 years there will be practically no one left in the Marvel Universe!
Even though it will never get that far, I actually kinda hope Marvel does go ahead with this plan. Nothing will make the fans more sick of death in comics than the oversaturation that this plan would provide. And then, when the companies realise how well and truly sick of the practice we are, maybe they'll hold back on deaths in comics until they actually become somehthing worth being interested in a story for again.
Posted by He Who LSHes on :
Ah, death as a sales gimmick! What, you mean blowing up a world (Titan) wasn't enough?
The comics industry doesn't learn from its own history. The article linked to above does shows how sales spikes from gimmicky events such as deaths are temporary and often don't even last a full month. Yet Marvel and DC seek short-term sales to the detriment of the long-term health of their titles and long-term interest of their readers.
I can't imagine such gimmicks building or sustaining good will among readers. But it's much harder to write good stories that don't involve death and cheap sales gimmicks.
The author of the article (I didn't see a byline) offers an interesting alternative: Rotate creators in and out of titles every three or four months so they can tell one good, tight story and then move on, letting the next team do the same. A radical concept? Yes, but I'm all in favor of better stories -- something that gets lost in today's story decompression and trade mentality.
There is one flaw in the author's plan. Rotating creators would not get a lot of media attention, as deaths of major characters do -- and it seems to be this media attention that Marvel and DC are truly after. This year's FF death is a previous year's Death of Captain America, which was a previous decade's Death of Superman. These events get media coverage and Joe Average gets psyched up about the character in question -- for all of about two seconds. Joe remembers reading the character as a kid and goes to check out what he thinks will be the character's final appearance. Joe probably doesn't stick around for the arc that follows, when all the supporting characters mourn the hero's passing. And he certainly isn't around for the character's return the following year.
All of these dead characters will return, of course. So even if, as Blacula suggests, Marvel kills off each of its 12 major character, in ten years some of them will have been brought back to start the cycle all over again.
Posted by Quislet, Esq on :
Actually I think it is pretty standard now for any character that has been killed will eventually be brought back. Has there been any character who has died who hasn't come back? The only one I can think of is Chemical King (and he kind of came back in the reboot as "C") Oh and Monstress. I expect that we will be seeing Human Torch and Nightcrawler coming back in the future.
Does any comic book reader really gets worked up and worried when a major character "dies"? Even speculators will stop buying into death issues if the market becomes saturated with them. I think that has already happened with number 1 issues.
Posted by Set on :
quote:Originally posted by He Who LSHes: The author of the article (I didn't see a byline) offers an interesting alternative: Rotate creators in and out of titles every three or four months so they can tell one good, tight story and then move on, letting the next team do the same. A radical concept? Yes, but I'm all in favor of better stories -- something that gets lost in today's story decompression and trade mentality.
I would much prefer this. I find that few creative teams seem to have more than two years worth of fresh ideas for a particular group of characters (and sometimes much less). After that, they seem to tread water.
I think I'd rather read six to twelve issue runs of stories about any specific character or team, than a five year run by a single author, with a new creative team and even, possibly, a new continuity.
The less said about the 'kill someone every quarter' approach, the better. That's just killing the goose for a few extra eggs now.
Posted by cleome on :
I would add to Blacula's excellent points that it would make much more sense to charge creative teams with revitalizing obscure or even mid-range-popular characters-- rather than killing them off in droves.
It's the sense of wastefulness, more than anything else, that bothers me about death-o-rama in most comics. Yeah, a cataclysmic story like the Death of Titan can have a great deal of power and meaning-- but NOT if every single week brings a brand new cataclysm on the same damn scale.
Posted by Cobalt Kid on :
Both death and resurrections have become meaningless in the DCU and Marvel U. They had been that way for awhile but the last 10 years took this to a new level. I honestly just don't take it seriously anymore (which subsequently makes me care less about the continuity of the universes than I ever did before). For example, I haven't mustered up any emotion over Nightcrawler's death simply because I don't believe it. On the flip side, I really don't care one way or another about Barry Allen returning. I'm numb to both things.
As Blacula mentions, the 'wholesale slaughter' of heroes is extreme, worst of the worst method used to make these 'events' so meaningless.
I also think the speculators (which, lets be honest, hardly exist) have realized death in comics is worthless. Like Quis correctly mentions, it's clear that people no longer see #1 issues as being something substantially special--especially when it's very likely the series will either (A) be cancelled in two years or (B) is just the relaunch of an older, pre-existing series that will return to its old numbering at some point. #1 issues, like death in comic books, is a gimmick that went to the well too many times.
Posted by Kent Shakespeare on :
Thomas and Martha Wayne are about the only characters that presumably won't come back to life. Even Uncle Ben, Jor-El and Lara are fair game.
I gave up in the 80s expecting company-owned characters to stay dead. Creator-owned characters, maybe; just maybe.
We are fans of a medium still tethered to print, yet we ourselves interact electronically. Print comics are in a state where gimmicks keep the raft afloat. The author in Dev's link says good stories will sell, and he is partially right. But this ain't films; committees (editors, publishers) need to take a step back and let creators tell good stories. And fans need to support creators over companies/characters. Otherwise, we get what we pay for.
Posted by Dev Em on :
There also seems to be a growing trand in comics with the Event books and tie ins. The latest DC one being Flashpoint with something like 14 three issue mini's attached to it, plus all the other books it'll cross into.
Time to expand the scope of this thread...
Do comics need events, whether it be death issues, Reborn mini's or massive companywide events like Civil War and Blackest Night to survive?
Posted by He Who LSHes on :
I don't know whether comics need company-wide events to survive, but one of the reasons I have not bought comics regularly since 2005 is because of such events.
Few crossovers result in meaningful stories or long-term consequences for the characters. And, after so many years of meta-cataclysmic events that need EVERY hero in universe to participate, they lose their bite after awhile.
The only company-wide crossover that really stands out in my memory was from neither Marvel nor DC. It was Valiant's "Unity" (1992). The Valiant universe was still brand new, so anything could happen; also, Jim Shooter was (whatever his alleged faults as a human being) a masterful story teller, and he assembled a wonderful crew to work on his books and develop the storyline from the perspective of each series' protagonists. Even his villains (an abused woman and her teenaged son) were unconventional for the time.
For all that, Valiant shot itself in the foot by withholding the conclusion from anyone who did not buy all previous chapters in each series. If you simply didn't care for Rai or Magnus Robot Fighter, for example, and did not shell out twelve bucks for two issues each (priced, then, at $2.99), you were not allowed to buy the finale -- a marketing blunder made even worse by Shooter's firing soon after.
So, even the *best* company-wide event was not worth the effort.
Posted by Dev Em on :
I tend to agree HWW, but the fact remains that these things do sell...and sell pretty well. They boosted the sales of several floundering titles during Blackest Night, and the issues of Adventure sold more than double of what it is selling now.
Death issues also sell well, as seen by the spikes given to all the major heroes that have died since Crisis pretty much.
New creative teams can bump up sales...but not generally like these things do.
The ring promotion from Blackest Night was, in my opinion, pretty cool, and in the case of my local shop, quite a boon for sales of those comics tied into the giveaway.
Posted by He Who LSHes on :
If company-wide crossovers sell, then more power to them.
They just won't be selling to me. Posted by Blacula on :
quote:Originally posted by He Who LSHes: For all that, Valiant shot itself in the foot by withholding the conclusion from anyone who did not buy all previous chapters in each series. If you simply didn't care for Rai or Magnus Robot Fighter, for example, and did not shell out twelve bucks for two issues each (priced, then, at $2.99), you were not allowed to buy the finale -- a marketing blunder made even worse by Shooter's firing soon after.
I don't get how that worked. So if I wanted to buy the finale, was there some security guard in the shop going through my receipts ready to snatch the issue out of my hand for not buying Rai (for example)?
What a strange, counter-productive system anyway. It's almost comics marketing by way of fascism.
Posted by MLLASH on :
An example of how crossovers/promotions boost sales. Here's the # 19 through # 30 selling comics from November 2009.
19 82.81 BOOSTER GOLD #26 $3.99 DC 57,122
20 81.49 DARK REIGN LIST AMAZING SPIDER-MAN ONE-SHOT $3.99 MAR 56,214
21 79.96 INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #20 $3.99 MAR 55,160
22 78.85 DETECTIVE COMICS #859 $3.99 DC 54,392
23 78.23 X-FORCE #21 $2.99 MAR 53,967
24 77.91 DOOM PATROL #4 $3.99 DC 53,748
25 77.65 THOR GIANT SIZE FINALE (BY JMS) #1 $3.99 MAR 53,566
26 76.33 HULK #17 $3.99 MAR 52,653
27 75.96 JUSTICE LEAGUE CRY FOR JUSTICE #5 $3.99 DC 52,400
28 75.95 DARK WOLVERINE #80 $2.99 MAR 52,394
29 75.59 SUPERMAN BATMAN #66 $2.99 DC 52,143
30 74.08 REBELS #10 $3.99 DC 51,100
REBELS and DOOM PATROL-- now cancelled-- benefitted massively, as did the currently hanging-in-there BOOSTER GOLD. I actually enjoyed the zombie-themed BLACKEST NIGHT titles. However, FLASHPOINT holds no interest for me. Posted by cleome on :
quote:Originally posted by He Who LSHes: If company-wide crossovers sell, then more power to them.
They just won't be selling to me.
Yup.
I get LASH's point about sales, but those presumably are all sales amongst readers that are already fans. How many potential new readers are lost to the genre because that's not how they care to jump into it-- buying a dozen different books to get a full story instead of just one book?
It's true that books are often serial, but even a brand-new full-price paperback in a series is a better out-of-pocket bargain in terms of money. You'll get a lot more story for your bucks than you will from three or four modern superhero books.
Posted by He Who LSHes on :
quote:Originally posted by Blacula:
quote:Originally posted by He Who LSHes: For all that, Valiant shot itself in the foot by withholding the conclusion from anyone who did not buy all previous chapters in each series. If you simply didn't care for Rai or Magnus Robot Fighter, for example, and did not shell out twelve bucks for two issues each (priced, then, at $2.99), you were not allowed to buy the finale -- a marketing blunder made even worse by Shooter's firing soon after.
I don't get how that worked. So if I wanted to buy the finale, was there some security guard in the shop going through my receipts ready to snatch the issue out of my hand for not buying Rai (for example)?
What a strange, counter-productive system anyway. It's almost comics marketing by way of fascism.
The final issue of Unity was not put on the stands. You had to bring all 18 or so issues to your CBS so they could verify that you were, indeed, a true fan, and then they would sell it to you from behind the counter.
It must have functioned on an honor system. All I know is that my CBS at the time wouldn't sell the issue to me.
Posted by MLLASH on :
That is the most ludicrous thing I have ever heard of. I never would have bought another book from that company again, had I been buying any.
Posted by He Who LSHes on :
The Unity experience definitely soured me on the company. Shooter's departure a short-time later provided the death knell. The stories under his reign were purposeful and energetic, and introduced a variety of non-super-hero characters such as Archer & Armstrong, the Eternal Warrior, and X-O Manowar. Even the super-hero titles, such as Dr. Solar and Harbinger, offered fresh takes with appealing characters and unexpected plot twists (including the early deaths of major characters in both Harbinger and Rai). Shooter was on the verge of revitalizing the super-hero genre, which, by the early '90s, had started to stagnate at Marvel and DC.
However, all of that promise was pushed out the window thanks to the Unity debacle and Shooter's leaving. Subsequent stories lacked any charm or sense of direction. Within months, I had dropped virtually every Valiant title. (I think I continued to buy H.A.R.D. Corps for awhile longer.)
To return to Dev's point about company-wide events being necessary to increase sales . . . I'm tempted to think that comics companies operate on a different plane of reality than fans do. They seem to assume--as Valiant did--that fans will buy anything to get a complete story or to complete their collections. Valiant's rationale was that "true fans" would buy every issue and, therefore, the last issue of Unity would not fall into the hands of speculators. However, common sense would dictate that the opposite scenario was more likely to happen.
Posted by Dev Em on :
REading Final Crisis, as well as Blackest Night has me thinking about another aspect of the last few years of crossovers...
The main mini is not enough to usually get everything needed to fully understand the story. The final Crisis collection includes at least three outside issues in it, which greatly help the narrative of the story and allow the reader to understand the bigger picture.
Marvel is not innmune to this thing either. They taken most of their line along with them in the last few crossovers as well...or had several mid sized crossovers happening at the same time.
This is somthing that annoys me about them, no matter how good a overall story is, you should be abole to get the full story that is needed for the understanding of the story in the main book. Side stories are fine, as DC did with the original Crisis...tales that tied in and enhanced the story, but were not necessary to unsderstand what was happening.
Posted by Power Boy on :
The world's greatest super hero! It says so on the cover.
on December 26th. BUT IT'S CHRISTMAS!
and apparently the only other Marvel U book that week wil be Avenging Spie Man. So if you were hoping to get a Marvel comic that week ... I hope you like Spider Man.
I would fact check this but I don't seem to be able to navigate Marvel's hip website.
Posted by Conjure Lass on :
quote:Originally posted by Power Boy:
Spider-Man ends with issue 700.
Why is this necessary!? This is like what DC is doing with Hellblazer. I don't understand why they feel the need to constantly fix what isn't broken. UUUUGGHH.
Posted by Dev - Em on :
Ah yeas...as seen with MArvel and DC (in a huge way)...relaunchses/reboots seem to be the newest thing.
Sales slagging a little...reboot the series with new creators and put out a new number one with 52 variant covers.
Posted by He Who Wanders on :
Why is it necessary? Because it gets media attention.
Posted by Dev - Em on :
Thing is, if they follow history, they'll revert back to the numbering at some point.
Posted by Cobalt Kid on :
The most annoying thing is this is like this fourth time this has happened to Spidey.
And Cap. And Thor. And every DC and Marvel comic.
Posted by Reboot on :
This is Thor v5 upcoming. And Avengers v5 (v6 if you count New Avengers v1, which had no corresponding adjectiveless series). Iron Man v6. And Cap v7 (v8 if you count GA Captain America Comics, although that had no numbering-overlap with the Tales of Suspense-continuing Cap v1. v9 if you also allow the three-issue "Dead Men Running" mini to count, since it was published between v3 & v4).
[Of course, LSH is on v7 as well. v9 if you count Lost v1 & Worlds.]
Posted by Invisible Brainiac on :
Even if there are fans excitedly buying the new series, I can't imagine that most of those same fans will stick around after more than a handful of "boots". I think most of us here are nowhere near as interested in the LSH as we used to be simply because of all the reboots and changes we've been through.
![[shrug]](graemlins/shrug.gif)
![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
![[Confused]](confused.gif)
So if I wanted to buy the finale, was there some security guard in the shop going through my receipts ready to snatch the issue out of my hand for not buying Rai (for example)? ![[LOL]](graemlins/lol.gif)