IDW Publishing announced this week that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #300 has topped 200,000 pre-orders from comic book stores, alongside its blind bag cover program.
Blind bag comics with "collectible" covers is an incredibly cynical, greedy, customer-hating tactic. I can't fathom how the dwindling number of floppy readers didn't reject this nonsense outright.
Look at what gamers did when they rejected loot boxes in video games years ago. The industry was gearing up to pillage console gamers, it was denied, and they've never recovered. These massive flops of online multiplayer games are happening because there was this thought baked-in to the design that 200-300 million dollar budgets didn't matter--it was a selling point even of TRIIIPLEEE AAA--because micro transactions would make them billions.
Loot boxes do still exist, but nowhere near what the industry imagined.
The problem I think, is that comic READERS now buy collected editions: much less hassle, easier to read, far easier to store and sort, don't have to run down two dozen single issues.
Comic COLLECTORS, SPECULATORS, and HOARDERS buy the floppies, not to read, but as either some perverse investment or because they have a legitimate problem and can't help themselves. (That last one is sad, and a despicable indictment of the industry.)
The floppy fans didn't rise up and protest because they wanted this excrement show. They wanted this "investment opportunity," never realizing that the only ones buying are other speculators and that sooner or later, all bubbles burst.
Meanwhile, the rest of us stand to one side watching in some ratio of horror and bemusement as a once beloved medium circles the drain in ever-accelerating and tightening spirals.
What is wrong with people? Seriously?
Blind bag comics with "collectible" covers is an incredibly cynical, greedy, customer-hating tactic. I can't fathom how the dwindling number of floppy readers didn't reject this nonsense outright.
Look at what gamers did when they rejected loot boxes in video games years ago. The industry was gearing up to pillage console gamers, it was denied, and they've never recovered. These massive flops of online multiplayer games are happening because there was this thought baked-in to the design that 200-300 million dollar budgets didn't matter--it was a selling point even of TRIIIPLEEE AAA--because micro transactions would make them billions.
Loot boxes do still exist, but nowhere near what the industry imagined.
The problem I think, is that comic READERS now buy collected editions: much less hassle, easier to read, far easier to store and sort, don't have to run down two dozen single issues.
Comic COLLECTORS, SPECULATORS, and HOARDERS buy the floppies, not to read, but as either some perverse investment or because they have a legitimate problem and can't help themselves. (That last one is sad, and a despicable indictment of the industry.)
The floppy fans didn't rise up and protest because they wanted this excrement show. They wanted this "investment opportunity," never realizing that the only ones buying are other speculators and that sooner or later, all bubbles burst.
Meanwhile, the rest of us stand to one side watching in some ratio of horror and bemusement as a once beloved medium circles the drain in ever-accelerating and tightening spirals.
Is there any comic book title left that has had an unbroken issue count?
I think Spawn.
Paramount Skydance can easily strip IDW from the licenses of TMNT at any time. IDW never cared about storytelling.