{"id":267,"date":"2017-08-08T19:19:58","date_gmt":"2017-08-08T19:19:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.solitairerose.com\/?p=267"},"modified":"2017-08-08T19:19:58","modified_gmt":"2017-08-08T19:19:58","slug":"in-which-our-hero-discusses-comics-and-milkshakes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.solitairerose.com\/?p=267","title":{"rendered":"In Which Our Hero Discusses Comics and Milkshakes"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a Facebook comics discussion group, someone posted a picture of a Marvel publishing employee and her friends with milkshakes and said, \u201cThis is the problem with comics\u201d as if we all immediately understood what he meant.\u00a0 Others joined in and said yes, and I asked what he meant\u2026and was met with snotty responses and name calling.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

I replied by saying, and I will admit I was being snotty, \u201cI was just trying to determine if you were ageist or sexist.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Which, of course, upset this snowflake, who felt he should be able to hate on women without anyone calling him on it.\u00a0 They then went on and on about these KIDS are ruining Marvel, these WOMEN don\u2019t know anything about comics and the like.<\/span><\/p>\n

Never mind that Marvel was pretty much run by people in their 20\u2019s through the 70s and into the 80\u2019s.\u00a0 Never mind that Marvel has expanded into libraries and schools over the last decade.\u00a0 Never mind that ALL of publishing has fallen apart, with even major publishers like Gold Eagle and Harlequin having to shutter due to poor sales.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nope, it\u2019s women.\u00a0 Young women.\u00a0 They\u2019ve ruined everything.<\/span><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know how to break it to people, but physical media has fallen on hard time.\u00a0 Borders used to be a multi billion dollar company before people quit buying books.\u00a0 Blockbuster, Media Play, Musicland, Tower Records, Hastings, your local mall and on and on and on, all of them have been killed by the \u201cnew economy.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The comics industry is trying to diversify, not just its content, but its revenue streams.\u00a0 Tell me all you want about those icky girls are killing comics and I will gently point at Saga, which has a primarily female audience is making money hand over fist.\u00a0 Tell me about how kids don\u2019t read comics and I will point you toward the Scholastic book sales and how Marvel makes a LOT of money from them.\u00a0 As well as library sales.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m betting these He Man Woman Haters read a few comics edited by Karen Berger over the years, who expanded comics in the 80\u2019s and 90\u2019s in a way that grew the audience and made everyone in comics a lot of money.<\/span><\/p>\n

Blockbuster had a chance to buy into Netflix early on, and passed as it didn\u2019t fit their business model.\u00a0 For all of the belly aching about Marvel, DC, who has kept a lot of the \u201cold school\u201d way of creating comics, has seen its sales drop as well.\u00a0 Comic shops are part of a last ditch distribution network, and in many ways, if THEY don\u2019t diversify their product lines and customers, they tend to go under as well.\u00a0 We talk on the podcast I do all the time that if you shop JUST sells comics, you probably are doomed, since that market is shrinking as digital, Amazon and people abandoning physical media continues to grow.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

I guess those milkshake drinking young women are destroying them as well, which shows just how powerful they are, I guess.<\/span><\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"reddit\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a Facebook comics discussion group, someone posted a picture of a Marvel publishing employee and her friends with milkshakes and said, \u201cThis is the problem with comics\u201d as if we all immediately understood what he meant.\u00a0 Others joined in and said yes, and I asked what he meant\u2026and was met with snotty responses and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comic-books","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.solitairerose.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.solitairerose.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.solitairerose.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.solitairerose.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.solitairerose.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=267"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.solitairerose.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":268,"href":"https:\/\/blog.solitairerose.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267\/revisions\/268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.solitairerose.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.solitairerose.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.solitairerose.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}