BBretall
Name: Bob Bretall
Bio: Bob has been a comics reader/fan since 1972, and owns over 50,000 comics, reading >120 new comics every month.Bob is also co-host of the ComicBookPage family of podcasts that can be found at http://www.comicbookpage.com
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@Wood: Re the entirety of the Diamond 300, I agree that Marvel has a LOT of $3.99 books on there, but since I can easily look at the Diamond sales data thanks to the magic of John Mayo, I will point out that (& I'm looking at March sales here) sales get kind of low for a lot of the $3.99 minis
Rank 116/120/121 for the Realm of Kings minis (Inhumans, Imp Guard, Son of Hulk) all about 18,000
Rank 124 for Avengers vs. Atlas #3 @ 16,482
Rank 152 for Torch #6 @11,896. Wow! That's low for this book!
Rank 173 for X-Men Noir: Mark of Cain #4 @ 10,070
Rank 190 for Marvel Boy, THe Uranian #3 @ 8,817
No telling how much (or if) these would be selling @ $2.99, but I'm guessing more folks would give them a try if they cost less. My point is that these are selling pretty low, and would be getting cancelled if not minis. Anyway, my point is that I agree that fans are (in general) swallowing the $3.99 price tag, but not for EVERYTHING Marvel slaps it on.
@wallythegreenmonster: Wally, "normal" comics have 22 pages of story. In many cases, primarily with DC, they raised the story page content to 30 pages with the increase to $3.99, so you get an extra 8 pages for the extra $1. For many other books (New Avengers, Thor, Hulk, to name a few), the price went to $3.99 for the same old 22 pages of content. $1 extra price for no extra content.
Preview pages & in-house ads do not count as "content"
While I may still get "New Avengers" or "Thor" for $3.99, I have time & again declined to buy "crappy Marvel mini-series X" for $3.99....... (like all the "Dark Reign" minis, Lethal Legion, Zodiac, Mr. Negative, etc.)
I would have absolutely bought those had they been $2.99
Re: Bringing your own paper.....
I was referring ONLY to using it for paid sketches. I tend to mostly get paid commissions.
By the way, My tip #1 above comes from experience. I once paid a fairly well know artist $150 for a sketch, assuming that for this price it would be tight pencils or inked. What I got was really loose/rough pencils. This would occasion me to add another tip, which I wish I would have done at the time, and that is to not be afraid to say so if you are unhappy with a sketch.
Just so I'm not all negative here, let me say I have gotten well over 100 artists alley sketches over the years and that was my only really negative experience.
Great tips, Jason! I'd add some for getting sketches/commissions: * Don't be afraid to ask questions. If it is not specified, make sure you know if you're getting rough pencils, finished pencils, an inked drawing, etc. * I like to bring my own pad of 11x17 Bristol pape. Not all artists have paper, and some have poor quality or small paper. Usually if you ask for your commission on paper you provide they are happy to use it.
Can Marvel do anything to leverage the HUGE movie & DVD audiences and let those millions of people specifically know that comics exists and that they can be bought in comic shops?
For instance, I bought the iron Man DVD and there was no mention in the packaging that there is an Iron Man comic or that it can be bouught in comics shops. There were many million of these DVDs shipped the first week it came out vs. 60-70k of the comic that sell each month, this gives you exposure to an audience for the comic that is probably 10x the comics audience that having a simple insert sheet in the DVD box telling about Marvel comics that have been movies an having the comics shop locator phone # & web-site.