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House of Idea to SMASH Piracy

Monday, September 6th, 2010 at 8:00 am by Jamie

Hulk Smashes Abomination

It seems that Marvel is now taking an active role in shutting down pirate comic websites. Rumor has it that Marvel execs paid a visit to Google headquarters to ask them to block links to pirated comic books. Google reportedly denied the request forcing Marvel to seek out the pirate sites and issue Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notices themselves. The first site to go down was Comics Invasion, hosted on Blogspot which is owned by Google. Word has it that Marvel is now looking for similar sites to issue the DMCA notices.

The timing of this is especially interesting in light of Mark Waid’s recent words on copyright, piracy, and making the moneys.

Unfortunately for Marvel, this is an uphill battle that will probably cost a great deal of time and energy that could probably better be spent on figuring out how to revitalize the comics market.

Marvel will claim that piracy hurts their business which is certainly true. But it’s the high price of their single issues that motivates their otherwise paying customers to seek out pirated issues. $4 for a single issue that is dependent upon three other issues for anything of substance to occur plot-wise is not a sustainable practice, at least if you intend on selling single issues. $4 for a special 32 page one shot, maybe. But the $4 floppy is not an attractive price point for potential or legacy readers. Since “decompressed” storytelling has encouraged more and more comic fans to wait for the trade, why not just abandon the floppies altogether and just put out trades?

To revitalize the industry, Marvel needs to attract new readers. Single issues won’t cut it. You can no longer get a full story in one single comic. And since the trades have entire story arcs, they have the best chance at landing new readers. That’s why the manga was doing so well with young readers. For ten bucks and a couple hundred pages, you get an entire story.

Some think that comic apps will save the industry. I have no doubt that buying comics on the iPad is wicked easy and convenient. I’m certainly happy to see Marvel, DC, and the other comic companies putting their works on the iPad and similar devices. But until they become as ubiquitous as smart phones, I don’t think it’s terribly wise to rely on apps to save anything.

Marvel will never fully stamp out comic piracy, but they can do a lot to mitigate the practice. I think focusing more on trades than floppies would go a long way to attract new readers.

Source: Bleeding Cool

This entry was posted on Monday, September 6th, 2010 at 8:00 am and is filed under Comics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

  • asuka 24

    Very true indeed, it is a shame that a single comic book cost $4.00 and issue. I love the way IDW does their Transformers books. They sell the single issues, then after so many issues they print a graphic novel collecting them. I prefer to collect t6he graphic novels si9nce it is cheaper than buying the single issues.

    Marvel would make more money if they did the same, even though people get the books in cbr format and read on the computer, most people would also like to have a graphic novel book to actually read by hand.

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  • http://www.sparebrainsgames.com Wayne Zombie

    I do not pirate Marvel comics.

    I do not read Marvel comics.

    My reason?

    THEY SUCK.

    They rewrite the universe every 3-5 years, they have marginal to lousy stories, and I have no interest in them. And when I started abandoning them in job lots, their artwork (specifically their physiognomy), was horrible. I will not waste my time with a product that is consistently mediocre to bad. Life is too short to eat bad food and I try to apply that across the spectrum.

    I also do not read DC for largely the same reasons, though I find DC to be slightly less sucky than Marvel.

    What comics do I read, you ask? The Boys. Usagi Yojimbo. Astro City spin-offs. Knights of the Dinner Table. That’s about it. I used to read X-Men, Batman, Thor, Iron Man, Legion of Superheroes. Green Arrow. Sometimes Green Lantern. Never cared for Supes or Spidey. And one by one I dumped them all because of lousy art and stories. I think the common thing that you can say about what I’m reading now is that they’re all creator-controlled and drawn/written. Consistency.

    I do read probably 30-40 web comics a day, but that’s a much longer list. And I do sometimes buy collections of them, I was limiting my list to printed comics.

    So Marvel can take a nice long walk off a short pier as far as I’m concerned. They’re movies are good, but I don’t plan on buying any more of their comics.

  • http://www.fantastic-realities.com/studio_blog SamuraiArtGuy

    Well I may be revealing my age, but I do recall picking up the DC Kirby-fest [i]Forever People, New Gods[/i], and [i]Jimmy Olsen and The NEW Newsboy Legion[/i] for the ridonkulous price of something like [b]15 cents.[/b] I remember the HOWLING when prices went to 25 Cents, then swiftly after that, 35¢. Once the gates to fantasy land were breached, comic prices went up faster than NYC transit fare ( that’s a whole NOTHER rant, folks)

    So. 4.00 bucks? Skynet FRAK Me… especially when I have to buy issues from 4-8 related titles to follow the goddamn storyline. Curse and Fuck you with hot pokers [i]Secret Wars[/i] and [i]Crisis on Infinite Earths[/i] and all your misbegotten miserable abortion progeny for inventing this exploitative and cycnical business model… and in addition FUCKING THINGS UP FOR FANS FOREVER and KILLING THE AWESOME. And that whole horrible Chris Clermont period of the X-men where TWO YEARS of issues advanced the plot line by about an hour and a half had me finally drop the Xngst Ridden X-Men. Gods only know what the hell happened to Superman, they “reinvent” him every 5 years or so.

    Oh gods, the Movies. Don’t get me started with the fact that when whenever a crappy movie hits a franchise, or messes too much with the source material, it just about KILLS the comic along with the film franchise. But the film industry will ALWAYS, ALWAYS run a franchise into the ground till they fuck it up. Each sequel is a tick closer to the fucking END for a beloved character.

    No wonder I pretty much only read webcomics or graphic novels of contained storylines (many from the LIBRARY) these days. Marvel and DC have only themselves to blame for the fan response. I’ll save my money for useful stuff, like rent and food… and the next Mac Pro Upgrade

    Banzai, you asshats.

  • Jack T Robyn

    109 Dailies and 74 Weeklies (though the weeklies are more of a once-a-week-or-less, including a few that just don’t update). The only print comic I collected was Gold Digger, in TPB. Unfortunately the US Mail lost them all when I moved back to Michigan and only gave me half of what I insured them for. Lost my D&D Library too . . .

  • Kunoichi

    Let’s not forget that you pay $4 for a trade that contains ads. The only Marvel or DC floppies I’ve bought in the last 15 years were the ones for Tsutomu Nihei’s “Snickt!”, and it also contained ads, which infuriated me.

    These two companies do almost nothing right in their business model at this point. They refuse to change their content, believing that there is still a robust market for tired tales of the same damn characters. There is nothing fresh and new in their content; they’re no different from romance novels, which have a set formula of about 20 plots which the authors pick from and write slightly new characters to run through the story.

    They refuse to accept that no one wants to have ads in the things they pay for. People are perfectly happy to have ads in things they didn’t pay for (Hulu, Youtube, etc). But people generally don’t like ads in things they have paid for.

    They refuse to accept that people do not like their price point. I find the piracy issue an interesting one, because the companies whose materials get “stolen” cry about the inherent evil of what are, essentially fans but not customers, rather than face the reality that it may well be because people do not think their goods are worth the amount they are trying to sell it for, you know, the basic principle of “free markets”. Their nihilistic, whiny attitude just makes the potential market that much less inclined to purchase from them.

    They are industry waiting to die, and it is entirely their own fault.