>>24909
>Initial sales from New 52 promising a reboot means little when things plummeted fast. A lot of New 52 titles got cancelled really quickly for a reason.
Cancelling things quickly is good. If they aren't selling, scrap them. I'm of the opinion that 52 titles per month is too much anyway. It's more than they have historically sold during periods of success. However, the fact remains that sales were up and remained up for several years, only dropping significantly with the SJW turn. That's not to say the SJW turn was the only reason things dropped again, but the New 52 clearly was at least a relatively successful marketing campaign. They told most writers to not rely as much on continuity, and then advertised that a bit. One month of that lead to years of increased sales. They should have done that every month.
>Later, idea of digital distribution was floated around in early 2000s. Both Marvel and DC dismissed it.
Note that one of the big reasons why is because they are so reliant on comic book shops that would be mad if they did too much to pivot away. Instead of ripping the band-aid, they're scared of making specialty shops get mad at them and do things that could hurt their physical media sales, while they're trying to shift to digital anyway. Clearly, the band-aid needs to be ripped, and it should have been decades ago.
>Now it's indies like Headlopper and crowdfunded comics that are trying out direct to TPB or European model of 45+ pages stories.
DC tried this with their Earth-One series, which was then completely half assed and made moot within like one year when New 52 took away half of the appeal, which was a jumping on point for new readers.
Clearly, individual issues of about 30 or less pages are a ridiculous prospect and should no longer be the major method of distribution, but companies are too afraid of change to do anything about it.
>>24915
Shooter didn't argue distribution wasn't the problem, he just pointed out more problems with distribution. Clearly, it's still a massive problem. He's just pointing out more things that must be navigated in order to solve it.
>>24932
>>24957
It depends on what you consider your market to be, the shops or the readers. The shops are indeed one of the main reasons they don't make their digital offerings actually good, as they see it as competition. However, clearly relying on the shops this much has not worked out for them, as has been discussed in this thread. Shops are dying and have been for decades. And yes, newsstands and magazines are dying and have been for decades. Digital subscription services are the future. No, they're the present. They're the past decade. But when you sign up for one, you can't read all their old issues. It's like signing up for some sort of Simpsons app but you can't watch Seasons 4, 6, and 8, and seasons 3 and 7 are missing random episodes. It's ridiculous. Actually it's even worse, because The Simpsons doesn't rely on autistic continuity.
Clearly what needs to be done, even if the transition is difficult, is to transition to digital and larger collections/graphic novels. Floppies are magazines and magazines are dead. Specialty shops are places you don't go unless you're already a fan, but even if that wasn't a problem, trying to sell magazines in the 21st century would be a massive problem. Floppies are essentially tv shows where you go to the store (a special, weird store) and buy the new episode one at a time whenever it comes out. Ridiculous. TV doesn't even work without on-demand online subscription models anymore. That's what comics need to do.
Physical comics should be collections and graphic novels for people who want them, but the fact is that most people want digital shit now. I don't. I hate digital shit and only want physical, but I understand that most people disagree, and they pay for subscription services instead. And frankly, for comics, digital subscriptions are a lot more helpful, because with the massive reams of paper to read through, it's incredibly impractical to ever buy it all. It's incredibly impractical to even ever buy all of a single series. And comics for decades have been written so that you need to read tons of other material to fully understand them. So give me a subscription service with all their shit, and I will read it. I understand if they're missing a few licensed things like the time Spider-Man met Bill Murray or The Transformers, but there is no excuse for missing just random regular issues. And there is no excuse for not having proper sorting methods by series, writer, artist, etc. In fact, for comics they should really have fan recommended reading orders right on the app, since that's an issue with modern shit, and it's not like they'd need to do much work to implement it. But everything they do is half assed.
But okay, we can put all the old floppies online. What about new floppies? New floppies, new magazines of almost any kind, are a ridiculous idea. Clearly there needs to be a shift to graphic novels as the primary form. Do some big New 52-esque event and bite the bullet. Instead of 12 issues of Batman per year, it's one graphic novel of Batman every six months. Instead of 52 issues per month, it's one graphic novel per week. Or two, if they insist on the same volume of output, but frankly, it's way too much output. They don't need that much. It's more than they did when they were successful. Variety is good, but you don't need 52 different options when they're almost all within the same genre, and are all within the same fictional universe, anyway. If a graphic novel is the same amount of content as six floppies, then successful series can get two per year. Others can get one, and then another can take their place in the other half of the year. Spinoffs can still happen, Batman can have his many spinoffs if they insist, but at least now they'd be easier to coordinate and figure out a reading order, since they come out one (or maybe two) per week, and can be organized so they are released in reading order, and can have their release dates (year and week number) printed on the spine and cover (so the final week of 2022 would be 2022.52).
Of course, that's a massive change and they won't do it. And frankly, I think it's too late. They've told their readers to fuck off, and their readers have obliged. I don't see people coming back, even if the distribution model was better. And for such a drastic change to happen, they'd need at least a degree of goodwill from the audience, which they don't have. Maybe if they invested a bunch into actual marketing on normalfag channels, like commercials and stuff, which directed them to the fact that these books were now sold in actual stores, and could be ordered online, and could be read digitally, then maybe they could make a dent. But even normalfags are somewhat aware of how SJW shit has gotten, given how its seeped into the movies and tv shows. They'd need to publicly apologize and promise to change course, and that will never happen.
But a proper digital subscription service for back-issues could happen. It would be trivially easy. They're fucking stupid for not doing it earlier. New stuff might be a lost cause, but there is no good excuse for not monetizing their old stuff.