The Energon Pub

I was visiting both my Barnes and Noble book sellers, and Mind's Eye Comics. While the news magazines in Barnes and Noble have become bare bones of their pre-internet selves. While in Mind's Eye Comics. I had to choose between 3 different Transformers comic books, and every other superhero seems to head line 5 comic books staring them? Are the comic book companies funneling that magic movie money into the print side of the franchise?

It boggles the mind.

Are you saying that printed comics still rock! Of course they do! Nothing beats reading a series of artistically presented sequential artwork.

I would call it more digital proof.

Magazines and newspapers aren't collectable but comics are.

So as long as there's a healthy base of collectors they will sell comics. They're still making money.

They'll come up with as many variations as they have audience for, and print them as long as people are buying.

Should have seen Free Comic Book day at our local store, people lined up the night before. All the hardcore and collectors.

But of you want to talk pure money? Comparing magazines and comic books isn't fair, magazines are more disposable and aren't read/sill sold years later like comics are. No one put out trade paperbacks or hrdcovers, no one merchandises off the content. Also, comic books are cheaper than most other forms of entertainment. So if the budget is tight, then yeah, they got the deal.

Relevant article: http://publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic ... -2015.html

Thank you everyone for the news article and for showing me how news magazines and comic books are apples and oranges.

Still if you want to talk comic value, like a car, as soon as you take it off the lot, it loses a lot of value. So if you are collecting, while there is tons to collect, when you buy it, there is not much value left in it other than you returning to it later to enjoy again, or to share with others.

See I originally thought that this was about he value of comics when I read the title... But anyway.

I'm sorry Tigertrack. What i intended by recession proof. Is how and why Comic books are able to still survive when even more financially solvent businesses like banks and auto companies require massive government bailouts or else we would really be hurting.

Some of it's the other media (movies, TV shows, video games, etc) but I wouldn't call them recession proof.

DC lost $20 million in sales last year and running scared so they are having to reboot their whole line again.

In my neck of the woods the number of comic book stores have gone down to from 20-25 in the 90s to about 3 in 2016.

Cyberstrike wrote:Some of it's the other media (movies, TV shows, video games, etc) but I wouldn't call them recession proof.

DC lost $20 million in sales last year and running scared so they are having to reboot their whole line again.

In my neck of the woods the number of comic book stores have gone down to from 20-25 in the 90s to about 3 in 2016.

Two things. Did you mean late 90s or early 90s? Because the late 80s/early 90s had that ENORMOUS comic book bubble that collapsed sometime in the early-mid 90s. At least some of those stores probably owed their existence to that bubble. Comparing the number of comic stores today to, I don't know, 2000 or 2006 would probably be a more interesting comparison.

As to DC rebooting... They are doing it AGAIN? Getting to the point they will have to reboot every three years. At some point the well will run dry and what fanbase is left will be sick of the reboots at some point.

Batman vs Superman being (probably) unable to hit the billion $ mark probably has them scared to death too.

One last thing, has Marvel been facing a decline as well? I assume that its facing a decline but a smaller one, but I don't know for sure.

Massinissa wrote:

Cyberstrike wrote:Some of it's the other media (movies, TV shows, video games, etc) but I wouldn't call them recession proof.

DC lost $20 million in sales last year and running scared so they are having to reboot their whole line again.

In my neck of the woods the number of comic book stores have gone down to from 20-25 in the 90s to about 3 in 2016.

Two things. Did you mean late 90s or early 90s? Because the late 80s/early 90s had that ENORMOUS comic book bubble that collapsed sometime in the early-mid 90s. At least some of those stores probably owed their existence to that bubble. Comparing the number of comic stores today to, I don't know, 2000 or 2006 would probably be a more interesting comparison.

Most but not all there were some LCS, that went under about 3-5 years ago.

As to DC rebooting... They are doing it AGAIN? Getting to the point they will have to reboot every three years. At some point the well will run dry and what fanbase is left will be sick of the reboots at some point.

Batman vs Superman being (probably) unable to hit the billion $ mark probably has them scared to death too. [/quote]

Nope this was last year mostly because their 2-month event Convergence was a massive sales failure, and a poor PR with the "DC YOU" motto and some weird creative directions for some of it's characters, etc. Some of the loss was blamed because DC Comics was moving it's corporate HQ from NYC to LA.

While the bad word-of-mouth, poor audience and critical reception has hurt BvS there is no doubt I do think it will get to 1 Billion dollar before it hits digital downloads, Blu-Ray, and DVDs. WB will get it's a billion out this turd but it's not going to as fast as they want.

One last thing, has Marvel been facing a decline as well? I assume that its facing a decline but a smaller one, but I don't know for sure.

I think some series like The Fantastic Four and the various X-Men titles have declined due to the stupid film rights war between Fox and Disney. Spider-Man seems to be on comeback due to Marvel getting the film rights back from Sony (or they're now sharing the rights).