Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
The movie-to-comic conveyor belt isn't as effective as you might expect. The quality of the movies entirely aside, there's just too much for new readers, too many series and crossovers an reboots for anybody to make sense of. Even the periodic universe-resets don't help when you're putting out eighty constantly-intersecting book a month. Prospective readers rarely know where to start, and if they did, there's no guarantee that whatever they liked about the films will be their in the comics. Compared to a non-superhero series like The Walking Dead, or even a quasi-superhero series like Hellboy, chasing up the source material is less of an opportunity than a chore. From what I understand, the only Marvel film to direct substantial readership back to the source material has been Guardians of the Galaxy, and that wasn't really new readers so much as existing Marvel (or at least comics) fans trying out a previously C-list title. All the movie have really done is artificially-extend the appearance of relevance.I don't understand how those films could make people read more comics. Most of them are badly written formulaic garbage.
The entire business model of Marvel and DC was built in an era in which comics were essentially disposable. They were never built for the era of trade paperbacks and graphic novels, and I think the proof of this is found in every comic shop, in which you'll see that their share of the trades is, while substantial, altogether more modest than their share of the monthlies. Beyond a select few landmark series like The Dark Knight Returns or, I don't know, Planet Hulk?, the Big Two trades are for collectors and completionists, and that's a dying market. The future of the comics industry falls in large part to how well Marvel and DC can maintain a loyal monthly following, and they haven't really succeeded in leveraging the superhero boom as you might expect.
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