Comic Book Resources ponders Marvel Editor in Chief, Joe Quesada recent musings on online distribution.
As with the shift to “exclusive distribution,” if Marvel leaps on the Internet distribution bandwagon virtually every other publisher in the business will as well, to “stay competitive,” and where that will leave comics shops, already battered by the steady growth of graphic novel sales in general bookstores, is anyone’s guess.
In the course of the last week, I’ve heard T laugh maniacally, run a blog rant that said all but, “man-up or get out,” and now he wants to bathe in the blood of comic shop owners.
I like this T.
From Hugh Macleod’s GapingVoid.com–
http://www.gapingvoid.com/zzzzzz7654298.jpg
Marvel should lead the way then, rather than sit in it’s own sewer. I could give them a thousand ways to make it work and bring the retailers with them. But I won’t. Because they’re not paying me.
Also, because they have not met my demands yet.
Clarification: the “visionary” stores are the ones that I tend to patronize. The others– the ones who complain about those damn kids and their damn Webby-Webs– will embrace a self-fulfilling prophecy of slow, certain failure or simply freeze their market perceptions in 1987 mode. I feel for these people the way that I feel for the unicorns who missed Noah’s Ark– it’s just too bad, but they decided the course of their own lives.
Because EVERY TIME ANYTHING CHANGES IN COMICS, IT HURTS THE PRECIOUS RETAILERS.
DAMN those graphic novels and manga and webcomics and comic-book-themed movies for generating interest in the form outside of the sales figures of ACTION COMICS #12,382!
I am saddened by the slow erosion of the periodical format, but six years ago none of the above-mentioned interest-builders were much of a force in the marketplace, and the periodical sales were actually eroding FASTER THAN THEY ARE NOW.
The comics retailers that can recognize the new opportunities coming in will have a place in the new order. Unfortunately, I expect those visionaries to be a pretty small percentage of all retail stores.
Among the rest… there will be blood. Oh, yes.
I do think comicbook stores will become extinct, but I don’t see this as a bad thing, merely a natural thing as time moves on. Although I have heard many people say how sad it is, then again, I never got into comics before webcomics, so I have no vested feelings in comicbook stores.