The Energon Pub

[waaaaghlord]

I can agree to a point that print to order is a good and a bad thing. It's good for Marvel who already have a dominant market position and bad for the indie publishers who are actually putting out decent comics. Aside from the pathetic TF/Avengers crossover the only Marvel books that have interested me for years now have had either the name Stratzinski or Ellis over the title. Everything else that I read is either Wildstorm, Green Arrow and Bat titles or smaller publishers. Take a look at Avatar to see the effect that print to order has on smaller publishers. Just to survive they have to avoid colour on the majority of their titles and still have a cover price of around a dollar more than a Marvel book. Worth paying for decent adult (not in the smutty way, then again with some of their books...) comics.

[partholon]

But what you said makes sense actually, it must have been profitable enough for Marvel to keep it going for so long. Don't know why I never thought of it from that point of wiev before.

What really makes me sad is that the book was cancelled because of low sales, however, it was was selling more copies during it's final issues than some of the top sellers for Marvel today. It just goes to show how much has changed with comic collecting today.

tell me about it. i still havent fogiven marvel for cancelling alpha flights relauched comic way back when because it wasnt making enough profit!

i mean FFS, if its not costing you money to produce and actually putting money in the bank what the hell is wrong with looking after the fans of the book? but no, it didnt make 10k profit an issue so it got canned, i swore off buying new titles from marvel for years after that. if thats the respect they have for me as a fan then i'll return it with no custom.

things have changed for the better there but it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth to know how little im regarded by the suits at marvel. thats why i like the IDW books so much . ryall and co have been very hands on from day one to make the fan feel involved not to mention appreciated.

still mad to think TF back then was selling batman numbers now