Finding a Natural Pace
I finally read House of M. Somewhat surprisingly, I liked it. Not so surprisingly, I think I would have hated it had I read it as it came out. We all know Marvel loves Bendis and Bendis writes for the trade. The question for me becomes, why weaken the material by forcing it into 22 page increments?
Money.
Right, good point. I would love to know if Marvel would've actually lost money, though, if they had released this initially as a hardcover instead of a mini-series. Maybe that's not feasible considering this was a massive universe changing event and what if someone didn't want to pay that much, but wouldn't the Marvel zombies have gotten it anyway? And then release the trade paperback now, not so long after the fact that its irrelevant but long enough that the hardcover has had a good window to sell through. Assuming decent price points (and doesn't $24.99 seem a bit high for the House of M trade?), isn't there as much or more potential to make money off of a strategy like this as there is off of a mini-series? Or is there not enough PR mileage out of a single release hardcover compared to a miniseries that can be stretched out for a few months? I could be way off here, but I'd like to see this strategy a bit more often. Hardcovers seem to have been relegated to almost exclusively reprinting previously published material that sold well, basically making them worthwhile almost solely as after the fact collectibles. Marvel has taken a half step towards changing this with their non-deluxe hardcover collections like New Avengers and Captain America, followed shortly by the paperbacks, but we're still talking about collecting material previously conceived for a different format.
I'm not calling for the end of monthly comics or anything like that, but if a story is better suited to being published as a whole rather than broken down into parts, why not publish it that way? It may cut down on some of the complaints we all have about reading materials that clearly seems paced for another format.
Money.
Right, good point. I would love to know if Marvel would've actually lost money, though, if they had released this initially as a hardcover instead of a mini-series. Maybe that's not feasible considering this was a massive universe changing event and what if someone didn't want to pay that much, but wouldn't the Marvel zombies have gotten it anyway? And then release the trade paperback now, not so long after the fact that its irrelevant but long enough that the hardcover has had a good window to sell through. Assuming decent price points (and doesn't $24.99 seem a bit high for the House of M trade?), isn't there as much or more potential to make money off of a strategy like this as there is off of a mini-series? Or is there not enough PR mileage out of a single release hardcover compared to a miniseries that can be stretched out for a few months? I could be way off here, but I'd like to see this strategy a bit more often. Hardcovers seem to have been relegated to almost exclusively reprinting previously published material that sold well, basically making them worthwhile almost solely as after the fact collectibles. Marvel has taken a half step towards changing this with their non-deluxe hardcover collections like New Avengers and Captain America, followed shortly by the paperbacks, but we're still talking about collecting material previously conceived for a different format.
I'm not calling for the end of monthly comics or anything like that, but if a story is better suited to being published as a whole rather than broken down into parts, why not publish it that way? It may cut down on some of the complaints we all have about reading materials that clearly seems paced for another format.
posted by Sam Hobart at 12:33 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home