The Great Marvel Discourse of 2023
Nothing is really going wrong, but is anything really going right?
This one meanders. I’m sorry.
There’s always been a lot of talk about the state of Marvel Comics, but in the past two weeks, a lot of people have been struggling to pin down the answer to one very specific question regarding the company: why?
Some of my readers will know how important I think that question is. I’ll talk about it occasionally in my posts, and how a compelling answer to the question why? does wonders for a book, or a line, or a publisher. The answer is there to provide direction and purpose. Without it, no matter how high quality an idea might be, the outcome will always be lesser than what could have been.
Take Dog Man for example. That’s a juggernaut in our industry, working in tandem with the spin off Cat Kid Comic Club to bring a lot of joy to this industry. On the surface level, these are books that exist to be fun. A closer look betrays something far more interesting: these books might feel random, but they are incredibly deliberate.
At the core of nearly all of Dav Pilkey’s biggest projects is the idea that creating things can be fun and wonderful. Within the series, the world of Dog Man is created by two children who build stories with imagination and heart. They’re goofy, but extremely well intentioned, and contain a facsimile of the off-the-rails thinking that generally only comes from the curiosity of children. Cat Kid Comic Club is about characters from that world, making comics of their own. You have books in the line with titles such as “Perspective”, “Collaborations” and “On Purpose” - which specifically starts with a quote from Dolly Parton: “Find out who you are, and do it on purpose”. The upcoming “Influencers” notes that the book intends to “shows the reader that the best way to influence people is to be open, gentle, and kind.”
These are books with a united purpose - to encourage the imagination of kids, and to foster those ideas with kindness and care. Without this purpose, I have no doubt that his books would be successful, but there’s a reason why Pilkey is currently at the top of the industry.1
As noted in an article by David Harper on his website SKTCHD, Marvel seems to be adrift at the moment. That article is behind a paywall,2 and while I recommend reading the whole thing, there’s some bits that are very important to note for our purposes today. Specifically the line’s lack of cohesion and energy, and the appearance of a “brain drain” of sorts over to DC.
In the article, Harper isn’t just reflecting his own opinions on the line, but the mindset of folks in many corners of the industry, both on and off the record. The article also doesn’t just focus on what doesn’t seem to be working, and notes that many things Marvel have put together are working… they just don’t seem to be working together. Here’s a quote from Harper that particularly spoke to me:
If there’s one person that seems to be viewed as the main character in this tough time, it’s C.B. Cebulski. Marvel’s Editor-in-Chief is entering his sixth year at the head of the publishing line, and while he has faced major headwinds — the pandemic, distribution changes, the Isaac Perlmutter/Disney drama, etc. — and certainly isn’t alone in guiding the ship, it’s undeniable that his time leading the way for Marvel editorial has been uneven, at best. That’s reflected in the fact that if you asked me for a defining characteristic to his reign, it’s that there is no defining characteristic.
This, I believe, is at the molten core of Marvel’s “issues” right now, such as they exist. I don’t think there’s anything particularly wrong with what the company is putting out, but the curation and cohesion is leaving a lot to be desired. Some of that could be mitigated by a more intentional marketing strategy, as Marvel seems to have fallen into the same tired pattern that all of the comic companies are stuck in these days.
You announce the book just ahead of the solicitation information dropping. You do a little shine during the initial ordering window, and then you completely forget about the book until final orders are due. After that, there isn’t much follow up from the companies themselves, with the creators doing a lot of the hustling to market their books on their own.
At a guess, this is a matter of resources, with companies like Marvel running thinner than they probably should for the amount of content that they need to put out. This isn’t doing them any favours.
Harper isn’t the only one noting a bit of malaise in the Marvel line up at the moment, with Heidi MacDonald providing a follow-up of sorts over at The Beat. Her issues don’t just focus on the current single issue publishing line up like Harper’s does, but dips out a bit into the larger book market where Marvel is struggling to find traction, and into other forms of media where the bloom seems to be off the rose in a post Endgame world.
Because I’m a retailer, I’m going to focus down on the aspects of publishing that effect me more directly, but there’s a lot to be said about the malaise coating all aspects of the company right now, and those ideas potentially bleeding inward to the comics.
I can say this one thing for certain: in my 8 years of running my own comic shop, I have never been selling more Marvel Comics than I am today. Now, that’s an easier trick to pull of than someone who has been in business for 30, but I don’t think that is insignificant. That said, I know that I could be doing much better than I am today.
The feeling in the air is palpable. There are few projects that are actively driving folks into the comic book shops. This isn’t a new issue by any means - the industry wide jolt that was felt during the heights of the House of X/Powers of X summer was quite the exception to the rule. There are a myriad of reasons for this, ranging from (I believe) a lack of staffing resources, a yowling need for volume, and the viability of the single issue format itself (which is a topic for another post).
That said, I don’t think a lot of these problems are going to be solved anytime soon - especially when folks are talking about a glut of comics hitting the stands.
This is from Tom Brevoort’s Substack from earlier this year:
I agree in general that the periodical business is a tough business to be in at the moment, there’s no getting around that. What folks fail to take into account, though, is that the periodical model is still necessary in order to cover the cost of the material in question. Put simply, while not every Marvel title is profitable to the degree that we need it to be in order to cover our operating costs—the “margin”—there really isn’t a Marvel comic that loses money once you factor in collected editions. That’s because the revenue generated for the collection doesn’t need to cover the cost of the material being printed—it only needs to accommodate the agreed-upon incentive payments due to the creators. And with that, the number of titles that we publish is predicated on the number we need to remain operational.
From:
A little while after this, came this look into the kind of wacky things that have happened when Marvel didn’t have enough comics in their line to cover their overhead:
To roll back events a little bit, one of the things that Bill had been doing increasingly over the course of the preceding year had been cancelling titles across the Marvel line that he didn’t care for. He was doing so based on his interpretation of quality, but the end result was that Marvel’s line had shrunk almost to the point where it could no longer cover the overhead costs for the operation. You needed to publish a certain number of titles every month in order to cover your operational nut, and at its lowest point, Marvel was down to something like 38 releases. (And half of those came from my editorial office.) So there was an immediate need to ramp up and launch some new projects.
From:3
Simply put, Marvel needs to put out a certain amount of books, or else the company (such as it is) won’t exist. And if that amount of single issues can’t be hit, then their graphic novels just won’t come out.
Given this need, and the sheer amount of content that has produced, it would seem as though Marvel doesn’t have the time to really focus down. Volume almost dictates that cohesion might be impossible at this point. That makes focusing down on building a why for the line all that more difficult.
Now, that’s not to say such a thing would be impossible… it’s just far harder to do in the current era of media.
You did see Marvel Studios output suffer when they couldn’t clearly define why projects were coming out - and you saw them suffer a little with the need to be something more than a specific point of focus. For instance, the Ms. Marvel tv show and Hawkeye hit incredibly well for folks. More than any other series, those had folks coming into our stores, looking for more content - and the content we had was deliberate enough to hook those folks onto good stories.
The end of Ms Marvel was a bit of a sticking point though. We were hearing from folks that the stinger just took the air out of everything for them. It took a well formed, distinct idea, and pulled it out of focus - a needless thing when the upcoming Marvels movie seems to use what happened as a plot point they’d need to explain within its own structure anyway.
This is the same mistake Marvel and DC make over and over and over again with their lines. Books are subsumed by bigger ideas, and in the end, those books lose the life that they had. I can’t count how many times I’ve watched graphic novel sales poof in front of my very eyes when the companies take books that have a solid insular logic and break it open for the sake of a big event. They take a perfectly good why and toss in the answer to another book’s own question. This never helps a series gain longevity, but it will often satisfy the company’s needs today.
This is also a problem.
When we say Marvel has a problem with presenting a solid front for their line, this is not an isolated problem - nor is it easy to solve. It is the result of the needs of the ever hungry capitalism machine that will not be shutting down any time soon. Barring some herculean efforts, you won’t see that shut down anytime soon.
Because there will always be a need for volume. There will always be a need for large intrusive ideas to disturb the line. There will always be a general lack of resources - and at the end of the day, there is not enough incentive for the creators involved to pick up the slack. To wander back to the idea about the “brain drain” that has been happening at the company, the current structure of corporate comics requires creators to be mercenary about their efforts in order to survive.
Marvel the company is not going to take care of them. Neither is DC. Folks like Ed Brubaker will see more money for his cameo appearance in The Winter Soldier than he will see benefit coming up with and executing the concept with Steve Epting. At the end of the day, these companies aren’t offering anything to these creators that would indenture a kindness past transaction - and when you have these types of situations, you get the work you deserve, in my opinion. It becomes harder to come across that magic formula because everyone involved is either trying to make their budgets, or living on a stagnant wage that doesn’t allow more time and effort to create the magic whole clothe.
As a retailer, I don’t expect publishers to hand me projects to meet my needs. I can’t. They have their own questions to answer, many of which have nothing to do with the art of the projects that make their way into comic shops. They have other, more powerful masters than myself and my fellow retailers. And that is fine.
Does the job get easier when these companies have all their ducks in a row? Absolutely. You can measure almost any length of this industry at any given point in time, and the data will show you that solid, communicable intent goes a long, long way.
When that intent is not there, it is up to the retailer to create their own. As I stated earlier, Marvel sales have never been better at my shop. The reason why? I am curating their content for them. I am communicating the hows and whys of their line with my orders, and the projects that I choose to handsell. This is more difficult to do than sitting back and let the line run loose without reins, but it is immensely beneficial to our business.
For instance: a book like Deadpool: Badder Blood comes out. This is a book that does not meld - it is it’s own, functioning idea. You want Deadpool and Rob Liefeld to make their deadly kisses all up one another? Guess what. Here’s your sweet spot. It exists to satisfy a very particular audience. Folks who like the whole “gun boy does an action” deal, steeped in the 90s aesthetic. That might sound a bit dismissive, but I assure you, it is not. It’s something solid and concrete. I know who this book is for. I ordered that book for those people, and no one else. Some might say that limits the audience, but I would say that was the intent of the project to begin with.
Now look at a book like Ryan North’s Fantastic Four. It’s a book featuring some of the longest running characters in the Marvel universe today. It’s baggage could easily be overwhelming, but it is not. North and his artists have built a wonderful series of stories, built from a point of optimism while hitting a Twilight Zone type of anthology style. The pieces build a whole, but almost every issue is a discovery point. I put my weight behind this series, because the why of it all looked outwards. I rewarded this behaviour with effort, and was met with positive results in kind.
But.
With that the series is now far into its run, my efforts are elsewhere to sell it are elsewhere. Specifically, behind the first graphic novel. What many retailers forget is the fact that the single issue is no longer the discovery point for the majority of comic book readers. That point comes from legal or creative means of reading digitally, and from grabbing graphic novels. We all know that single issue sales do not build beyond extremely rare circumstances and have not going on three decades now - and yet we wonder why comics are constantly pushing volume and seismic shifts in the land of “line always goes up” economics. Most books, no matter how much we love them, will not build - though most that do so are discovered through the availability of digital or the printed graphic novel. So there’s that.
And finally, what of lines like the X-Men? The easiest line to identify as having an identity at Marvel at the moment, the whole thing is deep into a long winding story that is near impossible for folks to get into at this point. The Fall of X storyline has re-ignited interest in the line, but there is absolutely no way was would market, or put my efforts behind getting the latest Hellfire Gala issue into the hands of new readers. That effort trickles back to House of X/Powers of X as a starter (albeit one with a steep price point that is only somewhat mitigated by positive word of mouth) and then building paths outward from there specific to the reader’s tastes. The Fall of X line itself, I’ve been marketing it to the base I have, with a lot more interest in the more ancillary titles than we’ve had in a long time.
Focusing your efforts will always do wonders for you as a retailer - and while we can always hope for something cool and specific to come down the line and grab people, we as readers and retailers can not count on that happening. We have to discover our own joy in the face of the needs of a corporation, even as we wish for them to be better. And as we do this, those corporations will slowly take notice. The numbers will show them, eventually, to be more deliberate, and to ignore such a message at their own peril.
Right now? Right now, Marvel know that the way forward, is through their current method. If they had actionable data to the contrary, they would act upon it. They’re not yet in a position where they need to think about the why of the art they are producing, as they are meeting the current needs of their why as a company. The inflection point - and the impetus for a creative spark - only comes when there is a need. So the solution?
If you want a company like Marvel to change, you demand it through your actions. As a retailer, you order with intent, and not with the marketing you are provided with. As a reader, you take a closer look at marketing and what it is trying to do. I can’t tell you how many events like the upcoming Gang War story Marvel is pushing that I’ve talked people out of going deep on. They want you to see their body language and think “I have to get this all to understand it”, but you rarely do. On the other side of the aisle, Knight Terrors was similar. If you’re interested in the concept, the main book is where you need to be, with other flavours sprinkled in as needed. With Gang War, if you just want to read Amazing Spider-Man, you can, and should do it. As with Dark Web, the story compartmentalizes itself for survival and doesn’t need a full buy in. Stop listening when companies say a thing is an event, and just engage with the art, such as it is.
Anyway, all this to say that Marvel is indeed in a weird spot these days, but on that doesn’t remain lucrative, for now. Change in this situation will come only from the all mighty dollar, so spend them wisely.
Now for a bit of due diligence on a previous article:
Last week, when I spoke about the whole Image going to Simon & Schuster thing, I included a section where I claimed a few companies had been dropped from S&S as distributors. Shortly afterwards, I discovered that things weren’t as simple as I had originally perceived them. I included an update in the article, but want to note it here for folks who get this mainly through the emails, which do not update.
Update - Aug 18th, 2023: A fellow retailer had pointed out that Simon & Schuster still had Ahoy, TKO Studios, Black Mask Studios, and Z2 listed under their distribution banner, and asked if this might be a disconnect between the company’s American and Canadian operations instead. I started digging into this, and contacted Bookmanager (the system upcoming books from these companies had been missing from) and my rep at Simon & Schuster Canada (who was out at a big Canadian trade fair, and could not get back to me).
My current investigation shows that TKO Studios is no longer listing their upcoming titles in the book market, let alone at Simon & Schuster, and their e-mails implore retailers to nab through them directly, or through Diamond currently. A representative from Ahoy noted in the comment section that they are, in fact, still with Simon & Schuster, which suggests that Bookmanager’s potential answer for all this - improper meta data of some kind that is in need of correction - might be the culprit. Similar situations might be in play for Black Mask and Z2 - at Black Mask, most of the company’s upcoming books aren’t listed for the book market, and Z2… well, they have some listed, some not, and fistfuls of long past release dates that vary from source to source. They are extremely frustrating.
As I know more, this article, and subsequent posts will be updated.
Which is to say, as I know more, you will know more.
Thanks for reading. Talk with you soon.
-B.
Sidenote: one of the comics the characters will create in the upcoming Influencers volume is called “I Am Dr. Fredric Wertham” and I am incredibly intrigued by this.
I always highly recommend a subscription to SKTCHD if you’re interested in deep dives into various corners of the comics industry.
This particular quote comes from when Bill Jemas was writing Marville and decided to build his own line of cheap, outsourced content for Marvel by running a contest. Go to the Substack link to read the whole thing, it is wild.
What's your definition of "brain drain" in this context?
(Long time reader, first time caller, big fan of your content)