Comic Book Resources

Paul wrote: “This comic contains 23 pages of adverts between the first and last page of a 22 page story. Of those adverts, one is a double-page house ad for Incredible Hulk, one is a full-page house ad for newuniversal, one is a half-page house ad for Iron Fist, and one is a half-page house ad for Bullet Points. The half pagers may just about be forgivable, because they’re needed to fill out the page due to the dimensions of the paid advertisements. But three pages of house ads in the middle of a 22-page story already fit to burst with adverts? A full spread house ad in a story that already contains no less than three double-spread paid ads? Are they on crack?”

I wonder if they sold one ad page too many…

You can’t add one page to a book, you have to add four (one sheet, folded in the middle, printed on both sides = 4 pages.) To carry that extra page, they’d have to add four pages to the book, creating three additional pages to fill.

I remember the good old days, when comics were 32 pages. That’s right, 10 pages of ads, tops! Hell, we had letters pages too. And subscription forms. And Bullpen Bulletins. And, occasionally, a glossy insert, selling us membership to BAM! and hawking T-Shirts.

Oh well. I try not to buy these ad-laced Marvels, but sometimes, they infest the good stuff.

Scotland only has one ‘t’, but it’s _really_ pissed off that you didn’t know how to spell ‘haggis’.

Agree or disagree I find Mr. O’Brien’s comments inappropiate given his forum. He REVIEWS comics. Art, story, content, themes, meaning, importance, content, not the format in which it is packaged. I happen to agree with some of his critisms on Marvel, but I don’t watch a movie review show to hear about the softness of the seats or critism abut the number of Fandago adds before the film. OBrien should just review content in his review column, writers and artists work to damn hard to have their works glossed over because of some self important fan boy rant.

Are you a journalist Mr. O’Brien? Your reviews are quite good when you bother to write them.

avery, I think that you are far out of line saying that a reviewer has no place commenting on the packaging. As an art student, a quote that I hear tossed around a lot is “The medium is the message”. What it means is that how you say something is almost as important as what you are saying. A comic that has a page of adds separating every page of story reads differently that one that does not, and they has to be taken into account as part of the overall feel of the book in much the same way that many comics read differently as a trade than as a monthly instalment.

To go with your own movie analogy, if a reviewer went to a movie where they interrupted halfway though in order to show 20 minutes of adds and then went back to the movie, do you think it would be inappropriate for the reviewers to comment on how this affected their viewing experience? Have you ever noticed how TV shows flow differently seen on DVD instead of on live TV with adds? The medium plays a real part in conveying the message.

I disagree with you, avery. Even if Paul O’Brien had signed some sort of contract preventing him from reviewing the acts of the comic industry itself, or from placing on his own, ad-less website, this would still relevant.

The fact of the matter is, this has gotten to the point where scheduling IS affecting the stories. There certainly weren’t supposed to be eleven issues of Civil War: Front Lines before Civil War was delayed. NYX certainly wasn’t meant to last for a whole seven issues. We can only imagine Iron Man: The Inevitable would have been different if it had actually been Iron Man 7-12 like it was so clearly supposed to be. Creator delays and overcommitments gave us such quality products as Civil War – Young Avengers & Runaways.

Simply put, the habits of the industry affect the comics themselves. Comics do not exist in a vacuum, and it would be foolish to deny otherwise.

Re: avery

It’s his website. He can write on it whatever the hell he wants.

True, but one flaw is Paul seems to be implying that if they’re spending time & energy on getting ads they’d be able to focus more timeliness and quality, which isn’t really the case. And while overambundant ads, and ads that actually interrupt story flow, can be quite annoying, ads are what really pays the bills over there. They wouldn’t be making any content at all if it wasn’t for the ads.

I think it would be completely appropriate for Roger Ebert to discuss a new digital projection or sound system in his column (or the merits of the DVD vs. the theater experience, or yes even the recent influx of commercials before and even during movies). I’d be shocked to find out that he didn’t discuss this kind of thing.

I regularly read Paul and I’ve explored X-Axes of the past, and this is really no different from how he’s always written reviews. He’s talked to no end about a whole number of issues (pun intended!) outside of the books themselves. For example, there has always been a strong focus on how a book will play with a certain market of fans, such as with Peter Milligan writing X-Men.

The problem as I see it is that his reviews strongly feel like the moment in time in which they were written, making their relevance to today’s world more of a curio of one fan’s thoughts the moment they were released rather than a work of timeless criticism. This makes his reviews of books that came out years ago (the Indexes) read pretty oddly. (He also seemed to want to get through those old books really quickly.)

Still, he’s an entertaining and clear writer, and I don’t know where he gets the time or the money to review so many things nor the patience to deal with so much garbage.

I think Paul is completely correct to call Marvel out for the absurd amounts of ads they put in their product these days (and the sheer inappropriateness of those ads). There are many mediums where it is completely standard for reviewers to comment on ads within a purchased product. Movie reviewers complain about product placement, ads in video games are an extremely controversial topic, and truncating the run time of television programs to put in more ad time are all common critical topics of either praise or complaint.

I’m honestly surprised that Paul is the only major comics reviewer online I know of who’s pissed off about Marvel selling books that are more ad than product. It is a state of affairs completely unprecedented in any other periodical, and frankly, one readers of any other periodical would find unacceptable.

My guess is that Marvel’s print runs per comic are far too low to actually turn anything like a profit off of issue sales, so they have to sell a ton of ads to break even and then hope to turn their profit later off of licensing or perhaps TPBs. Right now Marvel’s top-selling books run around 300,000 copies, which is a rather low print run by the standards of just about any other periodical type. Their money has to be coming from somewhere else.

It’s “Scotland” and “haggis.”

However, just to address Avery’s point: I believe that packaging and scheduling are 100% relevant to reviewing a comic. I’m not buying a story as an abstract, free-standing thing. I’m buying a physical product. If the product is marred by inept packaging (or badly printed, or falls apart, or the ink comes off on your hands) then that goes directly to the quality of the product.

As for scheduling, if you’re going to work in a serial format, then scheduling becomes an aspect of the pacing. It’s a fundamental error – but a very common one – to believe that pacing is simply a matter of page count. It isn’t. A six-issue story shipping weekly is running at a totally different pace from a six-issue miniseries shipping over the course of a year and a half. It’s a different reading experience entirely and affects the way that audiences respond to the story. It’s sheer absurdity to pretend otherwise, but that doesn’t stop self-serving creators from trying.

This may also very well be why so many writers pace their stories for the trade–because there’s just no way to control the pacing in the singles if you’re going to get ads crammed in like this.

“I believe that packaging and scheduling are 100% relevant to reviewing a comic. I’m not buying a story as an abstract, free-standing thing. I’m buying a physical product. If the product is marred by inept packaging (or badly printed, or falls apart, or the ink comes off on your hands) then that goes directly to the quality of the product.”

100% true. i have an old batman series from the 90′s, and its a three part tale about some kid who can make characters from nintendo games come to life.

story – good.
art – decent.
covers – awesome.

but you know all i can think when i’m reading these comics?

“wow, the type of paper used for this three issue run makes these things smell real funny!”

I thought this back then, and after obtaining the issues on Ebay, it was the first thing that came to mind, above and beyond ANYTHING to do with the actual story. In my mind, it will forver be “that Batman story with the funny smell”.

Insane? Quite possibly. But true all the same.

The main point Paul makes, I think, goes beyond ads or schedules: It’s Marvel’s attitude. They admitted there was a problem with the ads last year and said they wouldn’t do it again, but then did the same thing this year and said “well, it happens.” Quesada et al’s statements on scheduling problems tend to be pretty much the same: “It happens, we’re making art, unexpected delays will happen”, as though no one has any idea how long it takes Bryan Hitch to draw an issue of Ultimates even after he’s been doing it for years, or the idea that maybe they should get a bunch of scripts done for any series written by a tv/movie type is entirely too radical.

They seem totally unwilling to learn from their mistakes. Of course, the one thing they probably have learned is that while many people will complain about this stuff, few will actually stop buying the books.

The “more ads than products” issue applies more to the books themselves, in some cases, than simply the amount of adverts within the pages of the books.
Mr. O’Brien seems to be making the point that, even with the ridiculous amount of advertisements in a given comic, a lot of Marvel’s other problems (scheduling, delays, etc) seem to stem from Marvel’s desire to ADVERTISE rather than actually CREATE their comics. How often have you heard report (sometimes even mentioned in major newpapers, internet websites, and TV shows) which advertise the newest big creator, epic storyline or hot artist, usually involving someone lifted from TV, novels, or movies? And how often do those books get shipped incredibly late because, as O’Brien states, Marvel can’t be bothered to ask them to hurry up so they can sell the darned things? How many of those series have more than two issues published in the first six months of publication? The initial buzz for Marvel seems to be in advertising the product that will not come to full fruition for a long time, if at all. Maybe they’re hoping the house ads in those books will draw readers in to other Marvel fare, and get the sales up, but the sad thing is that Marvel, in their attempts to make comics more mainstream by bringing in these primadonna creators that can (MAYBE) bring in fans from their movie, magazine or TV work, is that they’re pissing off dedicated fans like O’Brien who couldn’t care less and just want their monthly stories as scheduled.

With reference to that comment, I’d point out that there’s a difference between “late” and “slow.” My irritation stems more from the fact that Marvel simply must be either staggeringly incompetent in terms of its scheduling, or outright dishonest in announcing schedules that it has no serious intention of adhering to.

Oh, I think they always have the intention to adhere to the schedule. The problem is the penalties for not adhering to it are minor.

I mean, as a counter, in the television industry, quality really is something secondary. NBC needs to have something on at Monday at 8, and they really don’t care much what it is, as long as there’s something that’ll glue eyeballs to the screen while the ads run. They don’t want to hear the producers of one of their shows go, “Look, we haven’t quite got it done… can you push it back a week?” Because something has to air at 8pm.

With comics, delaying a week (or two or three) is just one less in the week’s shipment, and they know damn well it probably won’t adversely affect sales when it does come out.

I really don’t know if there is a remedy on the consumer end. One could try and organize a boycott of delayed books, but I don’t think you’ll ever get enough people to not buy a late book to make an impact.

“Oh, I think they always have the intention to adhere to the schedule.”

I genuinely don’t. They simply CAN’T be that incompetent. It happens too often.

I don’t necessarily see it as inpetitude on Marvel’s part, but arrogance. In Tom Beeovort’s interview right after the Civil war delays were announced, he pretty much stated that Marvel only publishes on a monthly schedule as a favor to the direct market. Their attitude seems to be “They’re going to buy whenever it comes out, so why care?” OR, as my retailer told me when I asked her why Marvel’s trades are always more expensive than DC’s, with less content “They’re just d**ks.”

Yeah, I am with Paul in that I do not believe they honestly believe these things will hit their target ship dates.

Marvel isn’t alone on this, as DC does it, too (No way they thought Jim Lee was going to be able to add a SECOND title without massive delays), but Marvel does seem to do it a bit more often.

I can get a little annoyed when reviewers stray from actual reviews. Particular Brian Hibbs and Jeff Lester in recent months / years have gotten further away from reviews and closer to stories about their children / books. This stuff upsets me only because I A) really enjoyed their analytical, critical reviews and B) feel that if they’d stop typing about things that aren’t review related they’d actually review comics more than once a month.

As for Paul, he goes on about scheduling etc but he still writes decent reviews so I have no complaints. I can scroll past it if I wanted (but I wont, because I agree with his scheduling / ad based complaints)

With reference to Cronin’s point about DC doing it (the dishonest scheduling thing) too:

DC shipped 1 issue of All*Star Batman And Robin this year. The series was originally scheduled and advertised as either a monthly or bimonthly series (I can’t remember which). I don’t think that they intended to make the book a yearly instead of a monthly, but I’m fairly certain that they knew that with Jim Lee and Frank Miller running the show, either monthly or bimonthly was a tad bit optimistic. Its not the only book that they’ve done this with (see Wildstorm relaunch), but it is probably the most notable.

On the advertising side of things, I’m thrilled that Marvel is selling more advertising. Now, if they’re going to play in the magazine advertising market they should be selling magazines. This means more content and a higher price on their individual issues – because the retailers need to recoup the cost of shipping on books with extra advertising and content. Marvel and DC both need a serious re-think in how their formats are working for their sales on individual issues, but since Marvel is the one insisting on making their advertising-to-content ratio larger, they’re the ones who need to take it upon themselves to address this for the benefit of their retailers.

Interesting points all around.

I wonder how the advertisers feel about having the “hot” (the ones with expensive advertising) books shipping weeks or months late? I would think the publishers would lose something, if only reputation, by continually putting the books out late.

Marshall Maresca said:

“Oh, I think they always have the intention to adhere to the schedule. The problem is the penalties for not adhering to it are minor.”

Actually, the penalties are major…they’re just unnoticed. The reason it seems like sales don’t dip much for late books, high ad content, books that are 20 pages of Tony Stark talking to his friends and 2 pages of plot, et cetera, et cetera, is that for the most part, the people who are sick of getting rooked have left years ago. The people who are left are the slim percentage of the original audience who are willing to put up with just about anything for their Marvel fix. There’s this huge, vast, insanely massive potential audience for comics out there, but Marvel and DC aren’t willing to make the effort to reach them. (Go to a bookstore sometime and see the manga section; it’s huge, and getting bigger. Kids still love comics just as much as they ever did, but since American comics are targeting a tiny 18-35 demographic and ignoring the huge 8-15 demo, that’s a spot wide open for manga to go after.)

In the magazine publishing industry, at least, delays and late shipping upsets… well, everyone in the retail chain. In particular it’s likely to run off advertisers and drains revenue (since the month you miss because of delays is a month of ads you can’t sell). Consistently late publications usually end up being bimonthly or quarterly out of necessity, but it is important to declare a schedule.

I have no idea how it works in comics, or specifically with Marvel. If they were turning a profit off of ads/sales you’d think they’d try to keep to a more consistent schedule.

“The people who are left are the slim percentage of the original audience who are willing to put up with just about anything for their Marvel fix. There’s this huge, vast, insanely massive potential audience for comics out there, but Marvel and DC aren’t willing to make the effort to reach them. ”

Maybe so, but I doubt those people are going, “You know, I’d like to get into comics, but… I hear there’s scheduling problems.”

“I’m honestly surprised that Paul is the only major comics reviewer online I know of who’s pissed off about Marvel selling books that are more ad than product. It is a state of affairs completely unprecedented in any other periodical, and frankly, one readers of any other periodical would find unacceptable.”

You’ve never looked at a fashion magazine, then?

(And no, that doesn’t make the situation in comics acceptaable.)

Scotland
Haggis

Born and bred

Over at Newsarama, a very recent column by another Brian (they call him Mr. Hibbs), offers some insights from a retailer’s perspective about Marvel’s bogus ad count:

http://www.newsarama.com/Tilting2_0/Tilting151.html

“You’ve never looked at a fashion magazine, then?”

Seriously. Or pick up an issue of Vanity Fair. You may go through 100 pages before you reach the table of contents.

Again, not excusing, but… it’s not like the rest of the industry is all lily-white.

“You’ve never looked at a fashion magazine, then?”
“Seriously. Or pick up an issue of Vanity Fair.”

Yes – and these magazines are not only ad heavy, they are also content heavy. And they cost a chunk of change so that the owners of the magazine vendors who sell them make a good deal of money on their sale. When the ad sales fuel content that’s a GOOD thing and should be encouraged – as many ads as you see in Vanity Fair, the amount of content you get in the magazine makes it worth it.

Glance through a $6 magazine at the newsstand and compare the amount of ads/content to what you get in a $3 comic book. There is no comparison. That’s part of the reason why the newssellers dumped comic books a long time ago – the money they can make by selling comics on their racks doesn’t come close to what they can make on magazines.

If Marvel had the level of content to match the level of ads in their books (and if they were a bit smarter about their placement), there wouldn’t be these complaints. But they don’t, so folks are going to complain. When you feel like you’re shelling out good money for advertising it can be more than a bit irritating.

I haven’t gone through and counted the ads in fashion mags, but I would be pretty surprised if they exceeded a 1:1 ratio for ads-to-content. I would be really surprised if they beat the 1.5:1 ratio that X-Axis railed against.

” I would be really surprised if they beat the 1.5:1 ratio that X-Axis railed against.”

Mental note to self – never play a WW2 videogame while reading the above sentence, because it does funny things to your brain.

“Tom Beeovort’s interview right after the Civil war delays were announced, he pretty much stated that Marvel only publishes on a monthly schedule as a favor to the direct market.”

It’s like Shooter said. F*** the little twerps.
———-
Are the people running Marvel that arrogant? If they can’t see that they have NOTHING without the girect market, then they are blind.

“I can get a little annoyed when reviewers stray from actual reviews. Particular Brian Hibbs and Jeff Lester in recent months / years have gotten further away from reviews and closer to stories about their children / books.”

I read all their reviews. The non-review content is minimal, therefore irrelevant.

When you buy a magazine, you get a ton of ads, but you also get a ton of editorial content.

An article in a magazine can sometimes take longer to read than a comic book. And there are many more articles in the mag, not just one chapter of a longer story.

I think that many of the above comments boil down to the fact that Marvel/DC/Comics-in-general need to decide if they are a book/comic publisher or a magazine publisher. The difference is rather large between the two. A Magazine publisher, much like TV, exists to sell adds. The content is a means of making people pick it up in order to make them look at said adds. In many cases, the way they go about this is by making really good content, but that is beside the point. Also, Magazines have very little emphasis on the specific creators and instead focus on a theme. They tend to target very specific demographics as well. Vogue don’t care if 8 year olds are reading their magazine.

Book publishers, including other ‘comic’ mediums like Manga, are about selling product. The product they make is what generates 90% of their money, so it is all about selling as much stuff to as many people as possible. While there is often a target audience, if people outside that like and buy the book, so much the better. They are selling content, and try to build a loyal following to the specific characters and creators.

Now, right now the Marvel/DC seems to be leaning towards thinking about themselves as a magazine, but not doing it well. Looks to me like they are trying to straddle the fence. They are trying to make their money off of adds like a magazine, but at the same time are ignoring any target demographic. Look at the adds in the last comic you bought. Who are they aimed at? 18-35 year olds or 10 year olds? They are selling their product as a book, pushing creators and characters and plots instead of a genre or theme. You don’t go to the store to buy a random superhero magazine or whatever is on the shelve this week, you go to buy the latest Green Lantern or Ultimate comic.

I think that things will run much better if they ever decide which they are.