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Avengers have assembled! (pretty much just the Marvel movie thread now with some comics)
amateurhour
One day I'll be professionalhourThe woods somewhere in TennesseeRegistered User regular
One day I'll be professionalhourThe woods somewhere in TennesseeRegistered User regular
This thread is here to discuss Marvel Comics
For those that don't know, Marvel Comics has been climbing like a rocket for the past three years. No longer wanting to be known as those guys who make those little books that nerds collect, they've expanded their empire to ginormous proportions.
First, about three years ago, they decided that they were tired of Fox and Sony royally fucking up their cherished franchises. They decided to take a step in the right direction and form Marvel Studios, a film company which they would use to produce feature films of their beloved comic characters with complete creative control (that's called alliteration kids, it's a comic book thing) without the suits standing in the way.
Their first outings were pretty damn successful. There was Iron Man, Then The Incredible Hulk, and Punisher: War Zone, which was their least profitable, but still better than anything Dolph Lundgren or Thomas Jane could ever cough out. Most recently, as in this week, they've signed master writer and director Joss Whedon to take the helm of their Avengers franchise. This will be a huge leap in the comic movie industry, as it will tie in all separate films while retaining most, if not all, of the principal cast.
Next, in a shocking move, Disney purchased Marvel for a pretty hefty sum. This caused a lot of stirrings in the comics industry and insiders from both sides of the field were "cautiously optimistic" to say the least.
Disney wasted no time in rattling the cages. Since taking ownership, they've made two strong moves. The first is to pull most of the off the shelf content and publication away from Diamond Comics, the ONLY printer and reseller of comic books (unless you're one of those indie books that sells less than 1000 copies a month) and turn it over to Hachette Press, a company with a long history of, well, history.
Second, they went all digital. That's the main thing I want to talk about. Two weeks ago, Marvel teamed up with ComiXology, a web/app based digital comics distribution controller, to provide an app for both the iPhone and the illustrious iPad.
Within this app, you can obtain Marvel comics, both free and paid, from an ever growing back catalogue. Now of course these look simply amazing on the ipad, but what's really amazing is how well they read on the iphone. They move panel to panel, auto adjusting for narrow or wide frames, with a unique and clever zoom feature that makes sure you can read all the text, and see every inch of the action in a film like storytelling format.
They've taken a lot of hell for their pricing, which currently stands at 1.99 a comic (USD) with no option for trade discounts or a season pass/subscription system. A blogger has written up a great view of this here
http://www.4thletter.net/2010/04/guest-post-andrew-bayer-on-digital-comics-pricing/
Basically, to summarize, he goes on to say that the $2 price point is a break even for Marvel Comics, while making sure the print industry doesn't suffer. As any collector knows, the entry point into comics, per issue, is around $3.50 currently, and back issues are getting more expensive every day. If Marvel released it's digital comics for, lets say $.99 a comic, there would be no reason to physically buy print comics anymore and they would lose money. By keeping the price at $2, they offer a very affordable alternative to the fan who isn't necessarily a collector, while making money and affording the cost of quality digital reprints with extensive formatting.
Okay, so the debate is this, are they groundbreaking and awesome, moving in a direction that will change the face of comics forever, or are they biting off more than they can chew, with an inevitable downfall to come?
Personally, I love the idea of the marvel online store. I love to collect, and have over 1000 comics currently bagged and boarded on my bookshelf, with dozens of accompanying hardcover and paperback trades, but it gets expensive, and I only collect because until now, it was my only legal means of acquiring comic books. I'm a huge fan of this new business model because it gives me the option to obtain entire runs of my favorite comics for pennies on the dollar compared to collecting the print format. For example, to obtain all 800 or so issues of Amazing Spider Man, starting with Amazing Fantasy 15, it would probably run me into the tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on the quality of the comics. But for the low price of roughly $1600, I can obtain all of them on a redistributable, multi platform digital format that I can read forever.
So what say you D&D
Is this the future of comics, something we can look forward to for years and share with our precious offspring down the road?
Care to weigh in on mistakes you think they've made along the road (not counting Marvel 2099, of course)?
Discuss.
For those that don't know, Marvel Comics has been climbing like a rocket for the past three years. No longer wanting to be known as those guys who make those little books that nerds collect, they've expanded their empire to ginormous proportions.
First, about three years ago, they decided that they were tired of Fox and Sony royally fucking up their cherished franchises. They decided to take a step in the right direction and form Marvel Studios, a film company which they would use to produce feature films of their beloved comic characters with complete creative control (that's called alliteration kids, it's a comic book thing) without the suits standing in the way.
Their first outings were pretty damn successful. There was Iron Man, Then The Incredible Hulk, and Punisher: War Zone, which was their least profitable, but still better than anything Dolph Lundgren or Thomas Jane could ever cough out. Most recently, as in this week, they've signed master writer and director Joss Whedon to take the helm of their Avengers franchise. This will be a huge leap in the comic movie industry, as it will tie in all separate films while retaining most, if not all, of the principal cast.
Next, in a shocking move, Disney purchased Marvel for a pretty hefty sum. This caused a lot of stirrings in the comics industry and insiders from both sides of the field were "cautiously optimistic" to say the least.
Disney wasted no time in rattling the cages. Since taking ownership, they've made two strong moves. The first is to pull most of the off the shelf content and publication away from Diamond Comics, the ONLY printer and reseller of comic books (unless you're one of those indie books that sells less than 1000 copies a month) and turn it over to Hachette Press, a company with a long history of, well, history.
Second, they went all digital. That's the main thing I want to talk about. Two weeks ago, Marvel teamed up with ComiXology, a web/app based digital comics distribution controller, to provide an app for both the iPhone and the illustrious iPad.
Within this app, you can obtain Marvel comics, both free and paid, from an ever growing back catalogue. Now of course these look simply amazing on the ipad, but what's really amazing is how well they read on the iphone. They move panel to panel, auto adjusting for narrow or wide frames, with a unique and clever zoom feature that makes sure you can read all the text, and see every inch of the action in a film like storytelling format.
They've taken a lot of hell for their pricing, which currently stands at 1.99 a comic (USD) with no option for trade discounts or a season pass/subscription system. A blogger has written up a great view of this here
http://www.4thletter.net/2010/04/guest-post-andrew-bayer-on-digital-comics-pricing/
Basically, to summarize, he goes on to say that the $2 price point is a break even for Marvel Comics, while making sure the print industry doesn't suffer. As any collector knows, the entry point into comics, per issue, is around $3.50 currently, and back issues are getting more expensive every day. If Marvel released it's digital comics for, lets say $.99 a comic, there would be no reason to physically buy print comics anymore and they would lose money. By keeping the price at $2, they offer a very affordable alternative to the fan who isn't necessarily a collector, while making money and affording the cost of quality digital reprints with extensive formatting.
Okay, so the debate is this, are they groundbreaking and awesome, moving in a direction that will change the face of comics forever, or are they biting off more than they can chew, with an inevitable downfall to come?
Personally, I love the idea of the marvel online store. I love to collect, and have over 1000 comics currently bagged and boarded on my bookshelf, with dozens of accompanying hardcover and paperback trades, but it gets expensive, and I only collect because until now, it was my only legal means of acquiring comic books. I'm a huge fan of this new business model because it gives me the option to obtain entire runs of my favorite comics for pennies on the dollar compared to collecting the print format. For example, to obtain all 800 or so issues of Amazing Spider Man, starting with Amazing Fantasy 15, it would probably run me into the tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on the quality of the comics. But for the low price of roughly $1600, I can obtain all of them on a redistributable, multi platform digital format that I can read forever.
So what say you D&D
Is this the future of comics, something we can look forward to for years and share with our precious offspring down the road?
Care to weigh in on mistakes you think they've made along the road (not counting Marvel 2099, of course)?
Discuss.
are YOU on the beer list?
amateurhour on
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This discussion has been closed.
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I'd prefer to see them filling out the online catalogue as it's often pretty outdated and I don't understand the reasoning behind not bringing it up to date.
I want to know more PA people on Twitter.
Yeah, I left that out of the OP because I was mainly focusing on their business dealings with the media, but Joe Quesada was pretty much the single reason that Marvel turned around so well. He was the one that got all of the writing and interweaving storylines on track, he signed Bendis and Bagley to do USM, and brought in heavy hitters like Kevin Smith and Joss Whedon.
Regarding the outdated store online, the way I understand it is that it's still a testing ground. Much like Netflix instant, which started crappy, it will slowly build into something great. The biggest reason is that they have to individually scan the comics, obviously, and then format them for proper reading on both devices, a process which takes a decent amount of time on the iphone
Another reason for the older comics in the store is because apparently they haven't ironed out all the details with payment to the original creators for the digital reprints, and this is making some of the bigger names in the industry pretty angry.
I hope they get their shit together and pony up the cash.
I'd be more inclined to start paying for them if I could get recent stuff. Also I'm not sure if they linked up their general online purchases with the iphone/ipad purchases so you can't browse on the go with the unlimited access subscription thing.
I want to know more PA people on Twitter.
the iphone app requires that you create a marvel ID through comiXology, so it should be interchangeable for on the go transfers
EDIT: yeah looks like the app's only allow you to buy individual comics and dont give access to the subscription stuff.
I want to know more PA people on Twitter.
I misunderstood you, I thought you were talking about transferring the comics from the iphone to the PC, which I think you can do, but I'm not sure.
Yeah, the app is pretty much a beta in my opinion, but it's got a lot of potential.
Man, I want to get into comics, but the logistics of it are just baffling sometimes.
Yeah, that's a very good point - single issues don't exist here in Sweden. It's TPBs or nothing.
The comic books are their market research plus a bit of their marketing.
I don't know if I agree with that.
I mean, they made a HUGE move starting Marvel Studios, but it's an entirely different entity from Marvel Inc.
Disney owns the whole thing, but comics are still big. I mean every month Marvel ships roughly 4 to 7 hundred thousand comics. You can't really call that just "market research"
How is the visual quality subpar?
I've had no problems with the iphone or the ipad when reading, and they both look better than the printed page, especially the older back issues.
It is worth noting that Marvel wasn't the first to try digital distribution. I believe that the late CrossGen (sniff) has that honor. I liked their viewer, you would see the entire page and could point to a word balloon and it would make the balloon larger so you could read it.
That's actually kind of surprising to me.
I can just walk into my local comic store and pick shit up.
Hrm.
I have to say, I don't enjoy the digital format as much as the actual issues. It just feels different to me, and in a bad way. Also, if it moves to digital I will have nothing to collect!
So, print comic books are probably less than 10% of Marvel's business these days, and likely less than 1% of Disney's.
Rigorous Scholarship
agreed, but would any of that be possible without roughly 70 years of universe building? I'm just saying, they're evolving with the times and going where the money is, which is the point of the discussion, but I wouldn't say that comics aren't still high on their priorities or anything.
Also, on a side note, I've quickly come to terms with the fact that print is dead, or at least dying. I was once a believer that you had to collect the issues because they gave you something tangible to hold onto and pass down to others, but I guess I just don't feel that way anymore.
Technology has swayed me so that I don't feel the need to have this massive collection of books that do nothing but take up space and have almost zero resale value.
I think Thanatos might be right.
I guess it depends on how much profit their making. Are there any comparisons between the movies and the comics? Accounting for production costs and devided by time, of course...
Because if Movies make a lot more money than comics themselves, then more and more of Marvel's effort will go into that. Kinda like how Blizzard used to make games you enjoyed on your own, then WoW came out and now everything is going to a subscription base (Diablo 3 is Subscription, Star Craft 2 is episodic).
I bet the temptation to become a movie studio is high. Especially with Disney involved. So much of the writing is already done which should lower the cost of movie production sigificantly. And so much of the movie-going population hasn't experienced the stories told in comic books. When they start to release classic tales told in comic form on the big screen:
1) They have a lot of the writing done
2) They have a fan-boy hype machine and
3) Most people haven't read the comic, which will make them curious
If the iPad does revolutionize print-content distribution, you might see a surge in indy comics. Which might crowd the market making traditional comic-books harder to turn a profit on.
Might as well down-load the risks/costs of making "iComics" to the indy crowd, and then buy the rights to turn their successes into 3D Movies.
Just a bunch of guesses.
Edit: JEEZ this thread is moving fast
You're right, Marvel Comics, and print comics in general, were a failing industry. After all of the Todd Macfarlane bullshit and the destruction of comics in the 90's with variant covers, the entire thing was set to crash and burn. Marvel was the one that turned it around with the Ultimate Universe and started boosting sales again.
When that stopped being profitable, they were the ones to step forward and bring X men and Spider Man to the big screen, and now they've made movies their primary breadwinner, enough so that it peaked the interest of Disney to refill the coffers after the split from Pixar (I might be wrong there, but I thought Pixar and disney were no longer exclusive)
So yeah, comics aren't as big of a medium anymore, which is why I love the digital distribution. It keeps on of the only true American art forms alive, and cheap, for a new generation to enjoy, without all of the social backlash that comes from being a "collector'
I love comics, but I really do hate collecting them.
Rigorous Scholarship
I wonder how much profit Marvel the Comic Book People would have made off those movies if Marvel the Movie Studio had to buy the rights to make a movie using the CBP's intellectual property?
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
that would be great
Somebody has to write the next issue of Spider Man. But in the Marvel boardroom the question might not be "what great new comic can we put out?" and instead be "what can we put out that'll be the next blockbuster movie?"
I think that'd be like rolling peanut butter into rosemary.
Both are delicious.
For a company like Marvel, whose only assets of any real value are the images associated with their characters, managing their own brand long-term is a very smart business decision.
Rigorous Scholarship
I don't mean on the iPhone or iPad or whatever, I'm sure that looks fine. But if you download an issue on the PC, they'll lose sharpness as soon as you go full screen.
Edit: Although, having just checked out a random issue, it's seems they've gotten a lot better.
I'm fairly sure that was still all Sony on that one.
I think the Ed Norton Hulk was Marvel Studios' first movie.
Spider Man 3 was all Sony. It was set in paper before Marvel Studios was formed
Iron Man was the first MS production, with IH following a few months later.
Also, I don't think the board meetings are necessarily an issue of "what can we make into a movie next?" because they don't need the specific stories. They have the core characters, and thousands of storylines to work with.
That's where the comic writers come into play. They can adapt the best of the stories into screenplays.
edit: I guess what I'm saying is that it will be a long time before we see any recent marvel characters in a movie.
Although, Avengers: Disassembled, House of M, then Civil War, would make for a great three movie series.
I agree but when you say like Than did above that the comic books earned X and movies earned Y, I wonder how much of Y would have been in X if the movie makers and comic book makers were separate entities.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Both Hulk Vs. and Planet Hulk are incredible. And Spectacular Spider-man/Wolverine and the X-Men are arguably the best animated adaptations of their respective series.
Although things aren't looking great for Spectacular Spider-Man.
Honestly, I can't think of a single thing I want to desperately see onscreen at this point that isn't already in production.
Most of the stories from the golden age and silver age were hopelessly corny.
Really, DC has the only properties I want to see movement on right now. If we could get a decent Superman flick or an adaptation of Darwyn Cooke's Catwoman or New Frontier work, I'd be right as rain.
Or a Bone movie. But none of that is Marvel.
Punisher: Warzone was completely terrible. I mean, it went beyond so-terrible-it's-now-a-comedy terrible. In fact, I voted for it to be best comedy of the year.
xbl - HowYouGetAnts
steam - WeAreAllGeth
Yeah, but compare P:W, which is agreeably the worst marvel studios release, to Hulk (not incredible), The Punisher (travolta), or Daredevil (which I honestly loved, but that's me)
I would give my right eyetooth for a Nextwave movie.
Hey! I kinda liked Thomas Jane's Punisher. It was nice and gritty, still kinda human. Ang Lee's Hulk wasn't...terrible. Daredevil. Well, lets just say that Daredevil was much better as a Rifftrax.
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
That being said, the fear for a company like Marvel isn't that a shitty movie comes out. The fear is that some whack-job director at an outside studio is going to make a movie that isn't true to the characters they own and harm their brand. Sure, you can try and retain final control over the final cut, but there's always going to be the fear that some other studio is going to use a contractual loophole to take Captain America in a "new direction" and turn him into a gay coke-head in order to make the movie "edgy."
Maybe Punisher:War Zone sucked, but that was due to the usual reasons a movie sucks (bad script etc.) not because the Punisher in that movie wasn't really the Punisher.
Rigorous Scholarship