News:

Welcome! Please pardon the dust as we work to set the site up again :)

Main Menu
Menu

Show posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.

Show posts Menu

Messages - Tuxedo Mark

#46
Through the Decades / Re: Alas, poor Jughead...
April 15, 2023, 02:58:26 PM
I've never liked Jughead. I found him rather one-note and annoying.

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on April 10, 2023, 02:12:32 PMBut there hasn't been a regular B&V title (unless you count those quarterly one-shots that are 75% reprint) since 2015 when their classic ongoing title ended. Only two miniseries, VIXENS and the Adam Hughes one, while ARCHIE had an ongoing title that ran for 47 issues, plus a number of miniseries. JUGHEAD's ongoing title at least managed 16 issues -- while what would presumably have been the start of an ongoing "New Riverdale" series (Adam Hughes') for B&V managed a mere 3 issues (released over a span of one-and-a-half years!)

You forgot the five-issue Senior Year that came after Vixens.

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on April 10, 2023, 02:12:32 PMHave you not kept track of what titles ACP has released as trade paperbacks? True enough that JUGHEAD comes in dead last of the Big Three with a bare few, but B&V trail, far, far, far behind the numerous trade collections released for ARCHIE.

That should debunk the theory that B&V is still ACP's biggest cash cow. It hasn't been for at least 10-15 years now.

You're making an assumption based on very little evidence (considering we have absolutely no sales data regarding digests).

According to Brian Hibbs' Bookscan column about comic sales in the bookstore market (including Amazon) in 2022, the biggest-selling Archie book in 2022 was 80 Years of Christmas, which sold a whopping 1,500 copies in the entire year. Obviously, this doesn't include digital comics, orders directly from Archie Comics, comic shop sales, etc. Still, that's pathetic.

Back in 2012 (the last year that we have circulation figures for the digests), the average sales for each title were:

Betty and Veronica Double Digest: 47600
Archie Double Digest: 45641
World of Archie Double Digest: 39936
Archie and Friends Double Digest: 38855
B&V Friends Double Digest: 38278
Jughead Double Digest: 37812
Archie: 15292
Betty and Veronica: 9095
Kevin Keller: 7274

Fast forward to 2023. All of the floppies are gone. Not only has Jughead lost his only digest title, but Archie has lost one as well. We have no idea whose digests are selling more nor, more importantly, at what level. No one is releasing sales figures. Not publishers, not distributors, not stores. Even the direct market has lacked all sales figures since the last ones were released for April of 2022. The general public is in the dark about the sales of the entire comics industry - except for what's revealed in Hibbs' Bookscan article (in which Archie Comics doesn't even garner a mention; I had to ask him for info).

What it reveals:

1) Manga rules.

2) Among Western comics, Dav Pilkey and his Dogman franchse rules.

3) You have to go far down the chart before you come to a Western title that's aimed at adults (and it's not from DC or Marvel).

4) DC sells better than Marvel.

5) Nearly every publisher that licenses and adapts Marvel characters sells better than Marvel.

6) Marvel managed to place only one book in the Top 750.

7) The comics business is hit-driven. 10% of all sales come from around two-dozen books.

So, in the comics market as a whole, kids' stuff rules. That's very different than the direct market, which caters to aging, superhero-gobbling fanboys.

And yet Archie Comics' trades sell horribly. Let's be super, super generous and say each trade copy of 80 Years of Christmas sold for $20 (yeah, an obvious overestimation, but it'll balance out a bit under the assumption that Archie Comics sold other trade collections last year, however few). That's $30,000 gross income for the year from the North American bookstore market. They couldn't afford to keep the lights on with that money. So the digests must be selling well enough for Archie Comics to survive, right?

Well, these days, with the price of digests being so high (and with the new stories being available to read for free), I find it hard to believe they would be selling anywhere near 2012 levels.

But let's say they are. Let's say the four remaining digests haven't dipped below 2012 sales levels in the ten years since. Again, it's an overestimation, but there are also two additional, more sporadic digest titles that I'm not accounting for. If each of these four digests published ten issues per year and sold at full retail price, Archie Comics is looking at, at best, $17,128,354.50 in gross annual income from the digests. There's no way that they're pulling in that much money. If they were, they could afford to publish much more than the sporadic reprint floppies and occasional horror one-shots. There hasn't been a new licensed novel since 2020, and there hasn't been an OGN since 2021. There has been zero expansion of the brand.

Riverdale, long since a punching bag, still in the beginning of its highly divisive final season, managed to pull in 220,000 live viewers for its latest episode, not much less than the entirety of the digest line did in monthly sales back in 2012 (and almost certainly more than the digests are selling monthly now).

Didn't Fernando say in another thread that Jughead's titles were selling the worst back when he was at the company, despite claims that he was people's favorite character?

Well, here's some trivia for you that bears this out a little. In the direct market only, with a handful of exceptions between the floppy and digest, Cheryl Blossom routinely outsold Jughead's titles during the entirety of its run. No idea if this was true for all sales across all channels, but there ya go.

I do see Archie Comics chart in some specific sales categories on Amazon. Mostly romance comics and licensed teen TV and movie comics. Mostly it's the digests, but sometimes a floppy will chart. It doesn't take much sales to chart in a specific sales category on Amazon, though, since those charts are updated hourly, I think.
#47
All About Archie / Re: Riverdale Reviewed
April 09, 2023, 07:47:14 PM
I review "A Night at the Opera" from Your Pal Archie #2.
#48
All About Archie / Re: Nobody here anymore?
April 08, 2023, 11:44:54 PM
So Brian Hibbs' NPD Bookscan chart column covering 2022 recently came out. I spent a few hours reading it. Archie wasn't mentioned. I asked him a few questions in a comment, and he confirmed the chart doesn't cover periodicals (such as digests). As in 2021, the top-selling Archie title in the bookstore market in 2022 was "80 Years of Christmas", and it sold "just over" 1,500 copies (basically around a 50% decrease from 2021).
#49
All About Archie / Re: Nobody here anymore?
March 19, 2023, 02:03:22 PM
Quote from: steveinthecity on March 17, 2023, 09:23:19 PMI was thinking about this recently when placing pre-orders.  The $9.99 Digest will still cost me $6.99 after discount, and that just doesn't seem worth it.  I haven't done any real study or drilled down the price per unit vs. inflation, etc., but the price point is off-putting to where I'm not really interested.  I don't see how the Digests can be any sort of impulse buy with such a high retail tag.

I recently flipped through some of the digests at my local Publix recently out of curiosity. They're no longer in the front checkout area; they're shoved back with the magazines in a certain aisle of the store.

Anyway, I decided to count the total number of story/puzzle/quiz/fashion pages to see what customers would actually be getting for their money. 177 pages was the total in each digest that I checked. That works out to $0.0564406779661017 per page at the full retail price of $9.99 (not including sales tax) and $0.0394915254237288 per page at the $6.99 price point that you mentioned.

I just decided to count the pages in World of Betty and Veronica Jumbo Comics Digest #1, which came out at the beginning of 2021. 177 pages. At $7.99, that works out to $0.0451412429378531 per page.

So Archie Comics has increased the price by $1 two years in a row but hasn't increased the content.

That's still better than the $0.1995 per page for a new $3.99 floppy or the $0.1495 per page for a $2.99 reprint floppy with one new 5-page story in it.
#50
All About Archie / Re: Riverdale Reviewed
March 14, 2023, 01:15:12 AM
I review "Rock Candi" from Betty and Veronica: Friends Forever #19 (Rock and Roll #1).
#51
All About Archie / Re: Riverdale Reviewed
March 10, 2023, 04:30:51 PM
I review "Yacht's Wrong With You?!" from World of Betty and Veronica Jumbo Comics Digest #23.
#52
All About Archie / Re: Riverdale Reviewed
March 04, 2023, 05:18:41 PM
I review "The Ultimate Test" from World of Betty and Veronica Jumbo Comics Digest #22.
#53
All About Archie / Re: Nobody here anymore?
March 03, 2023, 09:31:01 AM
Anyone else concerned that digest prices increased to $8.99 at the beginning of 2022 and $9.99 at the beginning of this year? I find it hard to believe that these would be attractive as impulse buys for parents to keep their kids entertained, particularly since they could just download the free samples from Amazon and get all of the new stories at no cost.

Based on the sales figures released through 2012 and the pattern of percentage increases and decreases in sales, I calculated the following projections for 2022 monthly digest sales:

Archie: 15,838
Betty and Veronica: 16,839
World of Archie: 4,146
World of Betty and Veronica: 9,029
#54
All About Archie / Re: Riverdale Reviewed
February 12, 2023, 11:02:46 PM
I review "A Winter's Tail" from Cheryl Blossom #37. I have now reviewed the entirety of Cheryl's solo series.
#55
All About Archie / Re: Riverdale Reviewed
February 12, 2023, 10:24:09 PM
I review "Artistic Differences" from Cheryl Blossom #37.
#56
All About Archie / Re: Riverdale Reviewed
February 12, 2023, 09:56:35 PM
I review "Rock 'n' Roll Film!" from Cheryl Blossom #37.
#57
All About Archie / Re: Riverdale Reviewed
February 11, 2023, 09:45:50 PM
I review "Party Crasher" from Cheryl Blossom #36.
#58
All About Archie / Re: Riverdale Reviewed
February 11, 2023, 09:26:39 PM
I review "Pup Quiz" from Cheryl Blossom #36.
#59
All About Archie / Re: Riverdale Reviewed
February 11, 2023, 05:07:29 PM
I review "Medium Well Done" from Cheryl Blossom #36.
#60
All About Archie / Re: Riverdale Reviewed
February 05, 2023, 05:03:58 PM
I review "P.I.P." from Cheryl Blossom #35.