The Outhouse - The Greatest Comic Book Forum

[Spidey-Man]

But that was the whole idea of launching additional Spider titles. Marvel was well aware that it might lead to a drop off in sales for the original comic, but this was to be more than compensated for by the sales of the new comics. It really matters little that many of the readers of Spectacular Spider-Man, Marvel Team-Up etc would be also buying Amazing. Overall, comic sales would (and did) increase.

No, i dont think they dropped Amazing for web. I think web buyers were already Amazing buyers.

It is better to have more readers buying a book than the same reader buying multiple books

for advertising rates

and because if that reader gets upset, and he;s buying 3 Spider-Mans, he drops all the spidermans and you lose 3 sales. Under the other way, you'd have to lose 3 readers to lose 3 sales

In any event, i dont think there is any evidence that the highs and lows of Amazing had anything to do with multiple spider-man books being available. Amazing is almost always, from the 60s to today, there top one, two, or three seller.

[Punchy]

Crap, I have been out of the loop! Constantine is married?

In Hellblazer yes, but I'm willing to bet that the Constantine who's appearing in the DCU and who is going to be in Justice League Dark won't be married and will be a lot younger.

[skywatcher]

No, i dont think they dropped Amazing for web

That isn't what I was implying. Web didn't début until years later, anyhow. The point was that, with far more choice, there would inevitably be a drop off in sales for the original even though total sales of comics featuring the character continued to grow.

i dont think there is any evidence that the highs and lows of Amazing had anything to do with multiple spider-man books being available. Amazing is almost always, from the 60s to today, there top one, two, or three seller.

You posted the evidence yourself. The peak of Amazing was 1967 when only one Spider-Man book was being published. By 1973 there was already Marvel Team Up featuring Spidey and 1976 saw the launch of Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man. Even Marvel Tales (reprints of old Amazing) sold very well for 28 years!
1990, when there was a huge spike in Amazing sales coincided with (and I believe was helped by) Todd McFarlane's version of Spider-Man the first issue of which was a record sales breaker.

[S.F. Jude Terror]

Actually, you're wrong. For two reasons

(1) Time passed on a year to year basis more or less in real time for the first few yrs. Pete graduates high school on time. then it was verrry slow. He stays in college for yearrrrrs. and then by the mid to late 70s it had basically stopped. FF #1 was 7 yrs ago. By the late 80s it was 10, and in the 90s or so 13 for some breathing room, but for the most part there was not much of a change in age for the characters once Johnny and Pete got post college age.

(2) That's not what happened to sales. Sales increased from 1961 through 1968, uniformly at Marvel. Everyone else was rapidly going down hill. 1968 marvel expands and all split books get their own titles. From 68 to 72 they held steady or slowed, leading to cancellations -submariner, nick fury, etc. But they passed DC in sales in 1972 ish. Stan steps down. Goodman steps down. Mission Accomplished.


From 72 to the late 70s, sales do a nosedive as the newstand is decimated.

In the 80s sales rebound with the direct market. From 86 to 96 sales explode

The speculator bubble bursts and sales decrease from 96 to 2000 or so as Marvel enters bankruptcy.

Sales then increase under Q for a time, hitting the peak during the Civil War era.

Then post civil war, sales decrease again, like a balloon was punctured.

You're wrong.

Hab

[Benderbrau]

The problem is that they do in fact already age their characters. The problem is they don't age them physically. Peter got married, the X-Men graduated, Fury got promoted. But none of them got any older. How is that possible? The big two need to understand that you can't have it both ways. You can't say Cyclops graduated from Xavier Institute but not admit that he's four years older. If they don't want the characters to age then they need to tell their writers to stay the fuck away from certain topics. Which is fine with me because I'm more interested in stories about Spider-Man beating the shit out of the Juggernaut then I am about what he wore to his damn wedding or the birth of Cyclop's son which immediately means 9 months must have passed.

[john lewis hawk]

Yes, absolutely.

[Jubilee]

Actually, I'm surprised by how many voted "yes". (But it's pertinent to point out that the poll question actually asks if the characters should "significantly grow" rather than the "start ageing" of the thread title)

If you consider that most people who voted yes, would no longer read comics, and perhaps not come to this site, I imagine it's a very big percentage of people who feel the way I do. Telling the same old shite over and over, is something very few people want.

[ReturnoftheMack]

The same old shite has been successful for 75 years.

[Punchy]

Of course, Marvel and DC have got around this by having so many characters who don't age or are immortal.

Superman
Wonder Woman
Wolverine and anyone else with a healing factor
Martian Manhunter
Nick Fury
Thor
Hercules (well, he's mortal now)
Namor
Black Widow
Hulk can live forever if he doesn't turn back into Bruce Banner
Robots like the Vision and Red Tornado and Robotman
Gorilla Man

And didn't Magneto make himself immortal or something? So even if they do have ageing, there are still loads of characters who this won't effect, and who will stay around forever, and all that happens is that supporting characters will be killed off by old age instead of for shock value. And stuff like that poses problems, how can Superman maintain a secret identity if Clark Kent isn't getting older alongside his co-workers?

[Jubilee]

The same old shite has been successful for 75 years.

Very successful?? Really?

[ReturnoftheMack]

Very successful?? Really?

No I'm lying.

[Jubilee]

I don't think selling all comics less than 100k per month as massively successful. I think it's a relatively dying business model tbh.

[ReturnoftheMack]

I don't think selling all comics less than 100k per month as massively successful. I think it's a relatively dying business model tbh.

It has it's ups and downs but if you think comics haven't been massively successful in their history then you know nothing.

[Jubilee]

It has it's ups and downs but if you think comics haven't been massively successful in their history then you know nothing.

I really don't think they have. For how well they're known, and how many shops specify in selling them, they're relatively small sellers.

[Punchy]

It has it's ups and downs but if you think comics haven't been massively successful in their history then you know nothing.

... Jon Snow