DC, Marvel, and Disney

[HolyDraconus]

So with DC downsizing/in trouble, and the House of Mouse looking to expand its control, how would you think the landscape of DC's comics' change if they was bought out? We know that Marvel/DC has done crossovers, but if the Mouse buys DC, they would be able to make some that HAD to be acknowledged. Good? Bad? I'm just asking for thoughts and opinions.

[Rogar Demonblud]

DC is a subdivision of Warner, and I guarantee Disney is not looking to buy them. They're still spinning off bits of Fox.

[Tyrant]

DC is a subdivision of Warner, and I guarantee Disney is not looking to buy them. They're still spinning off bits of Fox.
Disney probably can't buy Warner. Or at least they probably can't if certain laws/regulations are actually enforced. But, they don't have to buy Warner if Warner/AT&T decides to cut DC loose. AT&T wants to make money, not watch it disappear down an endless hole. They, apparently (based on internet speculation mostly, I believe), expect DC to pull it's own weight since they don't have endless money like the Mouse seems to (even though they too are apparently in a not great situation). I don't think they will sell off DC, but these times are full of surprises so who knows.

[Kitten Champion]

It's not going to happen with Warner Media being there. Even if Disney could afford it at the moment I somewhat doubt the U.S. Government would allow it -- not that I'm terribly familiar with corporate law, but that would be one company owning an even more massive share of the media landscape in a market where there really aren't that many players already.

So, before saying anything, it's bad. Any corporate entity having that much power over their respective market is bad.

But... accepting the hypothetical on its face though, I doubt that much would happen to change DC Comics. Marvel being bought by Disney didn't really change the writers, artists, editors, or management within the company. Even Marvel Studios - the chief reason Disney bought Marvel - was left largely to its own devices until Age of Ultron when they put Feige in charge.

How would WB being owned by Disney change Superhero movies? I don't know. On the one hand they'd be diluting their Superhero brand by making movies outside of Marvel Studios. On the other, DC has properties who have and can definitely make money and shelving them would undermine the value of buying WB in the first place. I doubt Disney itself would know without substantial analysis.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

My impression has been that Disney can't afford to buy anything right now. That said, I'd love to see a Captain America/Wonder Woman crossover. Maybe set during World War II. And they have to do the shield trick together at least once.

[Ramza00]

Disney is not going to try to buy out its competition, for you can't "own" the means of production of something that is not material but instead idea based.

As soon as Disney owned more DC superheroes you would not see a greater marketshare of superheroes owned by Disney for you will get more other comic book companies producing superhero content for there are dozens of comic production companies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_comics_publishing_companies

Dozens upon dozens if you look at the wikipedia link.

-----

So in the past you had production bottlenecks with creating and printing the content, and then had production bottlenecks for even if you could make the comics you have distribution issues where you need to gain shelf space in comicbook stores, supermarkets, etc.

*The mob was literally involved in both comics and other type of books because of this, who gets counter space was something you could influence in legal and illegal means.
*This is why we have things like "mass market" novels and "trade" paperback novels. Mass Market was sold in supermarkets and thus you did not have to go through a specialized bookstore to get it. This is a big deal decades ago when people were reading a whole lot and "pulp" was a thing. Mass Market paperback were often distributed by the same companies that did supermarket magazines, and the nature of these books were "impulse buys." There were other differences besides the size of book, the paper used, but also other things like a UPC instead of a EAN (European Article Number, now often called an IAN for International Accounting Number for EANs and IANs have country codes as part of the barcode.)

-----





But the world is different now with internet, mobile, tablets, etc. There are no more bottlenecks in production with comics. Creating comics is a cheap activity and is often used to "farm ideas" that are later produced into tv or movies if they are ideas someone in Hollywood thinks will have a dedicated fan or the premise is good.

We are living in a world of abundance with "ideas medium" and thus you need other ways to stand out. Owning more IP when you already have an abundance of IP like Disney / Marvel has is not going to be a comparative advantage.

What value does own Superman and Batman when Disney owns several thousand superheroes and with the exception of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman being famous the rest of the DC characters are famous not because they are household names people are already familiar with, but instead they are "superheroes."

How many people are more familiar with the Green Arrow vs Midnighter*? How about Green Arrow vs Angela*?

Can you identify which of those superheroes are from decade old properties, which is a new 90s Big Two character, and which is the 90s Big Two character who was from a rival comic company and was later sold and incorporated into the Big Two? I guarantee less than 30% of people could identify who Green Arrow, Midnighter, and Angela are.


That said, I'd love to see a Captain America/Wonder Woman crossover.
I would prefer Wonder Woman and Storm. Let these two Goddess hang out and repair this world one stone at a time.

[oxybe]

Out of curiosity how is marvel's comic arm actually doing? I know their movies are doing gangbusters but I don't pay much attention to the comics.

I'm an outsider in that I haven't really buy/read comics since the late 90s. I remember hearing some gloom and doom on a few peeps' part in random bits of the net, but I'm also wary of their biases.

As far as DC is concerned, I wouldn't put it past Disney to go "DC characters as a brand are worth more then DC as a comic company". Shelve the comics and just churn out movies and animations they can sell toys of or license out instead of comics.

Batman the character could be infinitely more valuable as a marketing tool for cartoons, movies and Fortnite DLC then Batman the comic, for example.

[Ramza00]

Out of curiosity how is marvel's comic arm actually doing? I know their movies are doing gangbusters but I don't pay much attention to the comics.

I haven't seen that information broken down, regardless I stand by my earlier comment Marvel Comics is now a place to farm talent and stories for the greater Disney Empire. Especially since some of the older people in Marvel Comics have left the industry (not naming names for I will not be nice.) In Oct 2019 there was a restructuring of Marvel Entertainment (Comics, Toys, dozen other subsidiaries) and Marvel Studios (aka the movies.)

A little more than a year ago we did a thread about Comic Con and the Phase 4 timeline for the MCU here

https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?593253-Marvel-Cinematic-Universe-at-Comic-Con-(SDCC-2019)

That same week Disney announced they had made $18.2 billion global box office from the various MCU films, 10 years after buying MarvelAnd its 5000+ characters as of 2009 for $4 billion.

Seriously 4x+ returns and a still growing assets in only 10 years. (Note this figure is global office, so their movie profits is less, but it also does not count other ways they make money such as toys, theme parks, etc.)

-----

Edit: Another way to look at it to give people a sense of scales, ALL comic books and graphic novels sale north america wide is only $1.21 billion in 2019, this number does not come from Disney or ATT / Warner Brothers / DC but instead is a wall street analyst estimate of the market. Now that doesn't include sales in other locations like Europe and Asia. It also does not break down how much Marvel makes, and what their cost structure is.

Regardless it demonstrates to you we are talking a difference of magnitude, size wise, how Marvel is important to Disney from a comics vs movies standpoint.

[HolyDraconus]

I mean, Bats and Supes alone added to the Disney House would allow them to make a killing on merch, toys and such. Look at how many Batman movies we had, and Superman for that matter, compared to, say, Thor? Hell, look at games for Bats and Supes. Those two from DC would be more than enough reason to take over DC. Everything else would be icing on the top of that. Add in that if they fell under Disney, Disney could use its BS powers that kept Mickey Mouse off the free market and apply it to them and its just snow balls.

Normally I would say that the U.S. has laws against this very thing, but then, look at T-Mobile. Even after all the stuff they said they would do after the merger, they are walking each part of it back and trying to petition that it wasn't right for them to be held to it. IF this was the era still where Southwestern Bell was broken up, I probably wouldn't have had this thought. But those times are gone.

[Rogar Demonblud]

That changes with the regulatory environment. Which changes with each election in this country. That said, Disney had a lot of trouble pushing through the last copyright extension and has had to fight hard to get the last couple mergers approved, so they're probably hitting a limit on costs and benefits.

[GentlemanVoodoo]

Doubtful Warner would want to sell DC since they can still make money on merchandizing alone on that. Best case we could see is perhaps some sort of cross over movie or TV series. But it would't be out of the question. After all, Warner and Disney did one already with the Who Framed Roger Rabbit movie so history could repeat itself. Disney is hurting for money now and Warner's track record has been real hit or miss as of late. So it could be a profitable endeavor for both.

[Tyndmyr]

Out of curiosity how is marvel's comic arm actually doing? I know their movies are doing gangbusters but I don't pay much attention to the comics.


Marvel's still a big player, but the comics industry in general is dwarfed by movies. It was falling, but the MCU's popularity has helped it substantially, dragging it north of the 1bil line. Approximately 50% of that number is represented by local game and comic shops, about 10% online, and the remainder via other channels.

In perspective, Endgame made nearly 3 bil, and that's a single movie, albeit a very large one.

I'm not sure of what percentage of the comics take is spinoffs from movies, but it seems to be not trivial. Movies get tie-in comics and novelizations, and in the case of some properties, such as GotG, they would probably have pretty much nothing if not for the movies. So, some decent share of the market exists only because of film at this point. It's hard to quantify how much, given the use of it as an idea testbed, etc, but 25% or so is probably a very conservative estimate.

[Man on Fire]

So with DC downsizing/in trouble, and the House of Mouse looking to expand its control, how would you think the landscape of DC's comics' change if they was bought out? We know that Marvel/DC has done crossovers, but if the Mouse buys DC, they would be able to make some that HAD to be acknowledged. Good? Bad? I'm just asking for thoughts and opinions.

DC Comics
Owned by Warner Bros, Dosney's biggest rival in movies
Owned by AT&T, one of big megacorporations to rival Disney
Bought off by Marvel.

Won't happen. Same way Marvel will never get ROM, G.I.joe and Transformers back - they are owned by another Disney rival, Hasbro and it is not in its interest to advertize material published by competition. Same way we will never have crossovers between Marvel and DC because Disney and Warner do not like advertizing movies/shows made by other company. Comcis are small division in the grand landscape of popculture and intellectual property and corporate fights for dominance.

[darkdragoon]

Supposedly they want several billion just for WB games.

[Ramza00]

Won't happen. Same way Marvel will never get ROM, G.I.joe and Transformers back - they are owned by another Disney rival, Hasbro and it is not in its interest to advertize material published by competition. Same way we will never have crossovers between Marvel and DC because Disney and Warner do not like advertizing movies/shows made by other company. Comcis are small division in the grand landscape of popculture and intellectual property and corporate fights for dominance.

I will never not marvel about the fact that Marvel made the GI Joe and Transformer cartoons and the success of those shows lead to the later X-Men tv shows.

[Dilvish]

My impression has been that Disney can't afford to buy anything right now. That said, I'd love to see a Captain America/Wonder Woman crossover. Maybe set during World War II. And they have to do the shield trick together at least once.

That could be awesome.

We could also have the Captains Marvel movie.

[Callos_DeTerran]

As a whole? Comic book sales have been dwindling more and more for Marvel AND DC from what I've heard. DC for constant reboots cause the reboots they've been doing haven't been super popular and Marvel for trying to phase out older heroes for replacements of varying quality or just new heroes that people aren't really interested in. Its already been said, by a single MCU movie (Endgame) made more than the entire western comic book industry in an entire year and that number is still shrinking. I wouldn't doubt if multiple movies accomplished that same feat just because the movies have been more popular than the comic books for awhile now.

As for Disney acquiring DC..well..there's some heroes I'd like to see them acquire. Superman for one, but others I wouldn't...like Batman or Wonder Woman. That said..really doubt Warner Bros. would sell them to DC at any point.

[dps]

I can't see a Disney/Warner merger or one buying the other happening.

I can see Warner wanting to sell DC, but certainly Disney would not be their preferred buyer, so that won't happen unless Warner gets into a situation where they really need some quick case and Disney happens to have a lot funds available (both of which AFAIK isn't true at the present time.

Another problem is that if Warner does look to sell DC, they probably would try to sell of the comic books but keep the movie and merchandise rights, and nobody in their right mind would want to be on the other side of that deal.

[Lemmy]

Disney can't buy a hot dog stand right now, nevermind DC Comics.

Even before the pandemic, the other shoe on their absurd spendings was already starting to drop... After the pandemic... Well... Suffice to say they lost nearly 5 Billion dollars in the last 3 months alone.

If anything, Disney will probably want to *sell* some of their properties.

[JadedDM]

Suffice to say they lost nearly 5 Billion dollars in the last 3 months alone
Oh, no! At that rate of loss, that means the Walt Disney company will be completely broke in just over 6.5 years!!!

[GloatingSwine]

As a whole? Comic book sales have been dwindling more and more for Marvel AND DC from what I've heard. DC for constant reboots cause the reboots they've been doing haven't been super popular and Marvel for trying to phase out older heroes for replacements of varying quality or just new heroes that people aren't really interested in. Its already been said, by a single MCU movie (Endgame) made more than the entire western comic book industry in an entire year and that number is still shrinking. I wouldn't doubt if multiple movies accomplished that same feat just because the movies have been more popular than the comic books for awhile now.

As for Disney acquiring DC..well..there's some heroes I'd like to see them acquire. Superman for one, but others I wouldn't...like Batman or Wonder Woman. That said..really doubt Warner Bros. would sell them to DC at any point.

The business model is the problem. Because the industry fell into the individual issue as collectible market, individual comic issues are pretty expensive. High quality print process on premium grade paper. It means that the average cover price of an individual issue ends up pretty high.

Along with that, they're primarily sold in specialist retailers that are, in many cases, actually set up to sell secondary merchandising.

So the market is just structured in a way that it's really difficult to start buying comics.

[snowblizz]

Its already been said, by a single MCU movie (Endgame) made more than the entire western comic book industry in an entire year and that number is still shrinking.


So the entirety of the western comic book industry according to you consists of Marvel+Disney and DC and I guess some randoms like OOTS?

I went looking for some numbers but it seems hard to find, but the French+Belgian comics were 580M according to some NYT article. That's 50% added and only represents comics sold in French. Italy has a huge Disney comics scene, as does Scandinavia (e.g. if the numbers given hold 20% of my countrymen read the weekly local Donald Duck comic). Germany provides another large language area. I tried to unpack some of the numbers but the ownership is too concentrated into massive publishing houses with large interrests and they don't report publicly in enough detail. Obviosuly trying to find numbers runs into a language issue, searching in English only gets me so far.

Just ballparking it but the European comics market outweighs the of the US one by at least 2:1 in sales dollars I'd. Entirety of the comic industry indeed.

The movie industry is much larger yes, and yes you can get a much bigger slice of pie making a movie than lots of fringe comics. It is rather ironic that those comics no one wants to read can be leverage into huge movies.

[Eldan]

The last numbers I can find for German publisher Ehapa (actually owned by a Scandinavian publisher that also does comics) is about 50 million euroes a year. They mainly do children's comics: the entire Disney stable (from their Scandinavian owners, mostly) and translations of Franco-Belgian stuff. There's other German publishers too, but I Think they are the largest for comics only.

Carlsen has almost 80 million revenue a year, but they do books, too and I can't find out how much of that is comics.

[Lemmy]

Oh, no! At that rate of loss, that means the Walt Disney company will be completely broke in just over 6.5 years!!!
People really overestimate how much money Disney has... And how much they can afford to lose... Losing 1.5 Billion a month is definitely not something they can afford.

[Tyndmyr]

So the entirety of the western comic book industry according to you consists of Marvel+Disney and DC and I guess some randoms like OOTS?

The numbers I cited were for the US in general.

There are certainly also both comics and movies produced in other countries as well. It is likely that the movie/comic relationship is a little more one sided in the US because Hollywood is particularly large. Most countries don't have the sheer movie industry the US does, and since that gets exported a lot, I would expect the state of comics in the US to at least impact entertainment in other countries.


The business model is the problem. Because the industry fell into the individual issue as collectible market, individual comic issues are pretty expensive. High quality print process on premium grade paper. It means that the average cover price of an individual issue ends up pretty high.

Along with that, they're primarily sold in specialist retailers that are, in many cases, actually set up to sell secondary merchandising.

So the market is just structured in a way that it's really difficult to start buying comics.

I would agree that it is very difficult to start collecting. In addition to the issues you noted, points of entry are often unclear. If a reader wishes to begin reading most books, it is easy. Many books are standalone, and when series exist, there is almost always a #1 book that is still in print and generally at most retailers who carry the series. For comics, additional complexity exists. There's the trade/individual issue split, and many alternate versions exist. Someone buying a gift for another would perhaps only know that they "like spiderman" or similar. Now they're looking at an entire shelf of options, and it isn't terribly clear what is best. Good staff can give advice, but that's mostly attempting to patch up an existing problem.

Worse, it is even fairly hard to sell comics properly. There is one wholesaler for nearly all comics, Diamond. If they do not have the issue you need to restock on, you cannot generally get it. If they misship your order, and leave an anticipated and preordered issue out, you are, bluntly, without much recourse. They are fairly notorious for doing this. In addition, preorders often happen fairly far in advance. You may be making orders based only on a title and a sku number, with little way to judge quality. There has also been a proliferaton of titles, so picking the winner from among the dross is more challenging. Overorders are extremely common, and go to back issue longboxes to hopefully be sold eventually, probably fairly cheaply. Most stores have a LOT of back issues.

Even if you do pick absolutely correctly, the industry is not that large. The *top* selling title for a quarter is generally going to hit around 150k copies. As noted above, only about half of sales come from game shops. So, if you live in an average sized state, every comic book store in your entire state is sharing about 1,500 issues sold. Thus, even the best selling title may translate to...not an immense amount of sales locally.

All of these factors strongly reduce the ability of the customer and store to provide meaningful feedback.

The industry is a mess.

[Rogar Demonblud]

So the entirety of the western comic book industry according to you consists of Marvel+Disney and DC and I guess some randoms like OOTS?

I went looking for some numbers but it seems hard to find, but the French+Belgian comics were 580M according to some NYT article. That's 50% added and only represents comics sold in French. Italy has a huge Disney comics scene, as does Scandinavia (e.g. if the numbers given hold 20% of my countrymen read the weekly local Donald Duck comic). Germany provides another large language area. I tried to unpack some of the numbers but the ownership is too concentrated into massive publishing houses with large interrests and they don't report publicly in enough detail. Obviosuly trying to find numbers runs into a language issue, searching in English only gets me so far.

Just ballparking it but the European comics market outweighs the of the US one by at least 2:1 in sales dollars I'd. Entirety of the comic industry indeed.

The movie industry is much larger yes, and yes you can get a much bigger slice of pie making a movie than lots of fringe comics. It is rather ironic that those comics no one wants to read can be leverage into huge movies.
Even tripling the American comics numbers still leaves the field making less than Endgame did in the box office, before PPV, VOD and home media sales. Oh, and let's not forget video games. I'm fairly certain Arkham Assault made more profit than any Batman movie has.

[Yora]

An important factor is that the American comic market isn't just superhero comics. Those are actually a minority now, I believe. Comic market growth is due to a big increase in popularity for Japanese comics. American superhero comics are going down significantly.
Recent numbers I've seen had print runs of 30 to 40 thousand issues for most Marvel and DC series. That's not a large audience in a country with ten thousand times the population.

[Ramza00]

An important factor is that the American comic market isn't just superhero comics. Those are actually a minority now, I believe. Comic market growth is due to a big increase in popularity for Japanese comics. American superhero comics are going down significantly.
Recent numbers I've seen had print runs of 30 to 40 thousand issues for most Marvel and DC series. That's not a large audience in a country with ten thousand times the population.

I agree with you but disagree with your numbers. The most popular titles get 80 to 120k sales per month, furthermore comic fans often buy multiple issues (or do a subscription.)

So while the median title may only get 30 to 40k issues per month (and popular titles get more) I am trying to say there are hundreds of thousands of comic fans, yet definitely not a million comic fans who buy a new comic each month.

I 100% agree with your general logic just having a quibi (yes I am doing a pun) about numbers. For comparison Captain Marvel in 2019 (I am picking a non avenger movie and one during non peak months aka not summer and not Christmas, CM was released in March) in the US only during its first week made $196.9 million. US ticket average prices were between 9 and $9.50 for the US in 2019 so we are talking roughly 20 million interested fans who saw the movie in the first week.

Comic books are just less popular by an order of magnitude EASILY than comic movies (and then we quibi about the first digit of a 2 digit number for 20x vs 90x more popular is a large difference in scale.)

[Lemmy]

I agree with you but disagree with your numbers. The most popular titles get 80 to 120k sales per month, furthermore comic fans often buy multiple issues (or do a subscription.)

So while the median title may only get 30 to 40k issues per month (and popular titles get more) I am trying to say there are hundreds of thousands of comic fans, yet definitely not a million comic fans who buy a new comic each month.

I 100% agree with your general logic just having a quibi (yes I am doing a pun) about numbers. For comparison Captain Marvel in 2019 (I am picking a non avenger movie and one during non peak months aka not summer and not Christmas, CM was released in March) in the US only during its first week made $196.9 million. US ticket average prices were between 9 and $9.50 for the US in 2019 so we are talking roughly 20 million interested fans who saw the movie in the first week.

Comic books are just less popular by an order of magnitude EASILY than comic movies (and then we quibi about the first digit of a 2 digit number for 20x vs 90x more popular is a large difference in scale.)
TBF, Captain Marvel movie owes much of its success due to it being released sandwiched between the two final Avengers movies And many people thinking it was "required reading" for Endgame... So it wasn't exactly an underdog by any means,

That said, you're right that movies are clearly far more popular than comics. The comic book market most successful products now seem to be graphic novels and indie comics... In no small part because DC and Mavel spent the last 5 years making awful decision after awful decision...

[ebarde]

Marvel Comics is doing currently way better than DC's comic department, although the comics industry is still probably amongst the least lucrative avenues of their respective parent companies. Also, a lot of manga manages to consistently sell way better than superhero comics. That being said Warner and especially Disney have an interest of keeping the comics side of thing running, considering how lucrative comic book related stuff is when it comes to movies, games and merchandise. That being said, the comics not turning that much of a profit means that the higher ups of Disney and Warner have a lot more say when it comes to decision making.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

We could also have the Captains Marvel movie.

Ooo, yes! Carol's a bit stuffy, having Shazam! Marvel there would lighten things up. Though since Shazam! ends with

all of Billy's foster siblings getting super powers too

I'd keep some of Carol's supporting cast around, so she isn't outnumbered.

[Psyren]

Out of curiosity how is marvel's comic arm actually doing? I know their movies are doing gangbusters but I don't pay much attention to the comics.

Financially, the short answer is "doesn't matter." Speaking purely from a revenue standpoint, the primary role of the comics is test lab for stories, characters, and above all writers that can succeed in far, far more profitable media. Actively publishing various comics also allows them to maintain the rights to various characters, as well as link their new ones that resonate with audiences to this or that existing property.

This is not to say that the comics and those who prefer them to other media don't matter - just that they can serve as loss leaders for the overall brand without any true risk of outright cancellation. If the comics do poorly enough/lose enough money, at worst Disney may shake up their leadership or put certain titles on ice for a while, but Marvel Comics themselves will never stop publishing.

[Rogar Demonblud]

At least DC is bringing back Milestone. Be nice to read Icon again.

[trust]

I don't really understand the ongoing "fight" between these three.. they are all a bit different and there is something for everybody...

[HolyDraconus]

Can this be considered a necro?

[Rogar Demonblud]

No. Only 44 days.

[Precure]

It's funny how much comics are there.