Marvel Confirms, No New Releases for April 29

Looks like it won't be until the 17th May (at the earliest) when Marvel starts releasing new comics again.

 

Making things worse.

Marvel Comics Halves Its Staff Due to COVID-19

I swear if this brings an end to Spider-Man, Immortal Hulk, Venom, Thor, Avengers, and X-Men I’m going to be pissed.

 

On the other hand comic shops just got the new dc books in!

DC Comics Arrive In Stores - In Bubble Wrap

 

The big books will survive. I’m sure Hickman’s X-men and Aaron’s Avengers in particular are staying in place. It’s the smaller books I could see being lost in the shuffle forever.

This is also so incredibly stupid. Publish the damn digital versions and pay people.

 

There's no clean solution to the current problem though. If Marvel publishes digital versions it hurts brick and mortar retailers because customers will ditch physical for digital and it'll also upset the readers who want to keep up with current books but don't want to buy digital versions.

I'm a 100% digital reader but I think Marvel should continue to pause on their publishing. It seems like it would create the least amount of damage and pain since it at least gives any surviving shops a chance to make some good money when they finally are able to reopen and get customers back inside.

 

You’re holding up the entire line and putting people out of work to support a dying branch of the industry. At this point most of the comic shops have diversified enough that comics aren’t even their main product.

Put out the product and let the folks that desperately want to buy physical wait. Or donate portions of the digital sales to support shops. Or incentivize the physical copies with digital redemption codes for future books. Just halting entirely is going to damage the industry too.

 

This probably the only industry willingly tying itself to an outdated and already dying distribution model. Comic shops =/= entire industry. Just saying. Comics exist for creators and readers, not for the middlemen.

 

Halting is damaging the industry but I'd argue that you hurt A LOT MORE PEOPLE by continuing to publish digitally and ignore the impact it has on thousands of shops.

Writers and artists can still get some income from royalties and continued sales of material that's been already published and available digitally or via mail-order (Amazon, etc). Artists can supplement their income with commissions and side jobs that are not asking them to stop working. Writers can get caught up on projects (creator-owned or work-for-hire). Basically writers and artists can find ways to NOT STOP working but shop owners don't have the luxury.

You can minimize the importance of the LCS all you want but it remains a large piece of monthly sales. And its also just plain f---ed up to toss them aside when its no longer convenient to have them around.

Furthermore, with digital-only publishing you suddenly split your customers into current readers and fallen-behind readers. It's an ugly look when the publisher seems to favor one group (digital readers) over the other (hard copy readers).

If you are craving for the closure of more LCS, then yeah, restart the digital publishing and ignore the hard copy stuff.

I have no clue what you mean by that. This isn't like a car dealership where independent businesses sell you a brand new Ford truck with their markup but Ford isn't allowed to open their own company store to sell directly to you.

Without the LCS, thousands of communities wouldn't have access to weekly books. You have a lot more alternatives to the LCS today (like Amazon or Comixology) but the LCS is still the only place that serves physically copies of new weekly books. The LCS serves a function, regardless of how much folks want to diminish that role.

I don't understand the logic of attacking the LCS for simply existing.

 

I worked in an LCS. There is really nothing like it.

This is not about attacking the LCS. It’s about how the industry has willingly crippled itself by tying itself to a single point of sale, to the point they’re willing to shoot themselves in the foot.

We’ve seen already on the Marvel side that there’s potential to grow the digital market. Ms Marvel, Squirrel Girl, and a lot of the books long time comic book readers love to sneer at turned out to be digital powerhouses. You still have the Scholastic Market available where Jeff Smith’s Bone cleaned up. You could do mail order books like they did throughout the 70’s and 80’s. You can push out to Newstands like they did in the 40’s through the early 90’s.

But the industry stubbornly refuses to grow or branch out. I don’t blame the LCS for that, but even they’ve diversified. I moved from a major metro area with multiple comic shops, to a smaller metro area with a single shop, and back to a major metro area with multiple shops. And the common theme from 30 years of shopping in those places is that all of them have a huge stock of gaming and memorabilia space on the retail floor. Maybe one to two in 20 shops I’ve been to even look like their main business is comics. Because it probably isn’t.

I recall in the height of the market in the 90’s working in the LCS and my manager telling me, point blank, the only reason we were open Sunday to Tuesday was because of sports cards and dungeons and dragons books. That meant for 3 out of the 7 days of the week, at the very height of the industry Pre crash, the comic book sales weren’t enough to justify being open almost half the week.

Look this whole industry is dead if it keeps on operating like it does. At this point I can easily imagine the only reason Marvel and DC are still around is because they’re IP farms for their corporate owners. Heck, Valiant’s relaunch explicitly roped in investors with the idea it could be an IP farm that grows past comic book sales.

Industries that survive are the ones that look at moments like this and change to meet the moment. Everything about the debate, including that there is a debate, about whether to go ahead with digital sales is the hallmark of a dying industry.

 

Lolwutwhat?

You never ordered a book sent to you?

LCS are the last vestige of a market that was. Except back then they weren't the only way to get comics... It's just they're the only way left now. But now people claim that they're necessary to get physical copies when, well... They simply arent. They're other venues.

Sorry, the entire industry held hostage of a single distributor and a single distribution model is charmingly stupid.

 

Iron Man Writer Dan Slott to Exit With Issue #25

AKA Iron Man 2020 #6

 

That didn’t last long.

Seems like Iron Man writers don’t last long these days.

 

By the way, if you haven’t seen it this exact same debate is playing out with the movie theaters and movie studios.

Trolls World Tour made serious money going straight past theaters. Even so Universal is considering going digital and theater same day on all movies in the future. AMC and other theaters are threatening to boycott Universal films, but honestly that will just mean their businesses will go under faster. This sounds a whole lot like the comic book debate.

 

Iron Man is the current face of Marvel. I'm sure creative freedom in his books is severely curtailed.

 

I was just thinking that was what might’ve happened to Strazynski on Spider-Man, but Thor was never finished either, was it?

 

When X-Men: The Animated Series Went Full Manga



Kawaii Rogue! Kawaii Jubilee!





Not-kawaii Wolverine.

 

Marvel Announces It Will Resume Shipping Comics to Comic Shops

May 27th.

 

That's a very long wait for those titles. But I'm hoping that the wait will be worth it.

There's a lot of missing titles though, that may be a part of that 15 - 20% where production is paused:

X-MEN, FANTASTIC FOUR, More NOT On MARVEL's Revised Release Slate

X-Men, Captain America, Fantastic Four, Wolverine, Spider-Woman, Gwen Stacy, Conan the Barbarian, and Star Wars are the highest-profile ongoing titles that are missing in action for the time being.

Two titles that would have dovetailed into the Black Widow movie - Black Widow and the Taskmaster limited series - are also absent. Given the rescheduled movie release date, it's easy to assume the reason why they would hold off on publication until closer to the film - to capitalize on the media attention.

In other notable absences, the entirety of the "Outlawed" sub-line of titles - Champions, Power Pack, and New Warriors - are not included.

Other titles M.I.A. (for now) include the Runaways and Strike Force ongoings, as well as limited series such as Punisher vs. Barracuda, Atlantis Attacks, and Force Works.

And while the pair of Empyre #0 issues are present, the main series itself and the various tie-in titles planned for April and subsequent months are unaccounted for through July 8.

 

I guess because of the their ties to Empyre is why they’re on pause(X-Men & Fantastic Four). Cause they have connections to the event.

 

Well fuck, everything I was going to put on my birthday list isn't coming out now until after my birthday.

Although, I don't see the OMnibuses for Black Widow, Cloak & Dagger, or Spider-Man by JMS2 on those lists whereas Morbius and Silver Surfer are on there. Does this mean they won't be out until July?