Why comics compagny are doing it wrong.

This is the point of view of a French reader. (Sorry if it is like an Spanish cow trying to speak in English.)

After years of reading comics i came to the conclusion that this market will die soon if they remain with their prehistoric method.

Firstly with how they are managing their different titles.

I start reading comics some years ago but the Civil War in the Marvel universe was the thing which made me jump more importantly into those two company. Before i was reading more Image and Dark Horse comics but there were really few thing were i live. At first it was great. I mean, new story, new characters and a lot of things that i didn't know from this universe but with the years and with a really fast pace i found the way of reading Marvel Comic disgusting. For what reason ? Event. Event after event with more event in the event in order to create more event to change the change the face of Marvel for ever (before the next event). It was like reading one or two title lose all his pleasure because you couldn't understand what is going on if you don't have all the different point of view of an event.

But it is not enough for killing all my pleasure, even with this i was enjoying some title. What really made me mad was the fact that they only think "Profit, more profit !". Why would they let title like X-23, Doom and other interesting characters having their own title when they can have 234887865 avengers title (avengers, new avengers, secret avengers, avengers solo...) and 86748734 x-men title (uncanny, astonishing and all the mess with the schism...) ?

At this point i was really wondering why i would continue to give my money to a company that don't respect the people who are reading their products. What make me choose what i would buy or not finally ? The price. With no real reason it like they have fun putting a price of 3.99 (really funny this 3.99...). You can have more avengers and x-men title and for indecent price ? No thank.

The second part is about the way they are selling comics.

If you are an american or an England inhabitant you have the chance to know what a LCS is. But what about the rest of the world ? It is like we don't exist for this market. They are not even trying to expand this business to us. It is simple. Here in France there is only two way for someone to read comics. If you are lucky, living in Paris and have no financial problem then you can touch american issue of a few title weeks after they were out in the new continent, with no translation and for indecent price. The other way ? Wait years or even decade to have 1/100 of the trade selling in the USA translated and sold in soem shop equivalent to barnes and nobles.

So now we are in 2012. Maybe the Mayans were planning the end of the comics industry i don't know but one thing is sure, they were not planning a success for digital comics. I will take Comixology here. I agree this is a really good idea but they did a really bad job with this in real. A way of reading digital comics and even have them the same day with the new 52 ? Nice. I can understand that the LCS lobbying is strong but they must understand that this market must evolve and like everything they will disappear if they worked against the progress. So i find it nice you are telling me, but why are they doing it wrong here too ? For different reasons.

How can you hope that someone will buy a DIGITAL comic if they are priced like a REAL copy ? You can't sell them, trade them, you are renting a right to read them. If they really want this kind of thing to works then they should put the price to 0.99$ and with a decreasing price every month. But it is not all. You are reading them online ! You can't even download them and put them on your pc or portable device, you don't own the file. This is really dumb, if you are reading them online then that mean that you are actually downloading file in order to read them, why can't we use this download option ? And finally right now this service is like a deezer or spotify for comics. If you bought something yesterday then you could lose it today for no reason if the owner of the licence don't want it anymore on Comixology. Would you be okay if some lawyers where at your house stealing what you have bought because because some 70 years old who understand nothing to this world but who own the licence choose to make this ? I don't think. And this is really bad, because i deeply think that digital comics are the future.

I'm buying trade on amazon because this is the only way to reward people who made things i liked but i fear that younger generation will never enjoy this if comics company continue in this way.

Your English is excellent!

You made some really good points here! Thank you for sharing - it's interesting too how things are as well in Europe as opposed to here in North America.

Actually, you are expressing the growing disgruntlement with Marvel that many comic fans are feeling with this company.I live in what is known as the Southern Tier of New York State and we are serviced by 3 stores in our immediate area.This is a relatively small market but it has it's Marvel fans and increasingly there is growing dissatifaction with multiple core titles that survive by crossover storylines.In some cases local fans have cut back to one specific favorite core title or have dropped titles they have followed for years.The other bone of contention is the constant rebooting of titles back to #1 because the latest so called epic failed to maintain numbers high enough to avoid cancellation.The real problem with all of this ,however,is with Marvel fans in the larger markets who seem to follow whatever Marvel does no matter what.Axel Alonso was recently interviewed on CBR saying that fans are telling him more of the same. He has to be getting this from somebody.The individual recently hired by Valiant to canvas every retailer he can prior to Valiant's titles hitting the stands in a few months has indicated that crossover events are not a problem with retailers he has talked to. Of course this is a former retailer talking to other retailes not fans.Marvel fans, if Diamond's numbers are correct, are simply not following new concepts either as on goings or mini's prefering to stick to the samo-samo of Avenger/X-men/Spiderman.It's too bad the availability of Image/Dark Horse/Boom and others is spotty in your area because that is where my money has been going lately.

There is a reason Marvel went bankrupt.

For Comixology, they are in the very young market of cloud content. They leave the product on the internet and never on your computer to reduce the chances of people pirating it. Companies are starting to back this model of distribution because it is a preferable method to the huge download sizes of their products they stuffed full of DRM. Which was useless anyway, because people would just download programs to strip out the DRM and pirate away. Since Comixology is purposefully avoiding the download option, your best alternative is to printscreen every page and then convert it into some form of a compressed folder that a program like Comic Rack can read on your computer or some similar program can read on your portable device . A lot of pirated comics are now actually printscreens of Comixology digital comics so the cloud model is also flawed. The point is it is easier to buy it than steal it, which as Gary Whitta says on Tested's podcast "is the only way to combat piracy."

This very interesting to read

This is what happens here, Im also european and I can relate to that. ITs extremely hard to find comics anywhere

Marvel and DC could really expand heavily to europe and gain ground. They would make some cash

Constant events are what has killed my interest. "The world is changing...FOREVER! Until 6 months from now, if we decide to wait that long." They don't kill off heroes to show the gravity of the situation, they do it to set up another event.

Digital is the future of comics, but they're moving way slow in that direction. Why? Money, dear boy. If you sell a physical comic for 3.99, why not bilk the digital crowd while you can? Plus, once they decide to do away with physical media, they've already established the digital price point. They want to gouge early adopters as much as possible, so they can gouge everybody down the line.

Digital is hands down the most cost-efficient way of distribution, but people still want to hold that comic in their hands. Same goes for video games. That will pass as time goes by; eventually books/comics/newspapers/games will be available only via digital. Newspapers are getting really close to it now, books aren't far behind. If comics went all-digital, I bet they could cut the price in half and pick up a lot of new consumers, while increasing profit margins significantly. They'll figure it out sooner or later.