(Comics-Related/Financial) Thought Of The Moment
18 Comments | Posted: July 3rd, 2008 | Filed under: Thought Of The Moment | Tags: final crisis, secret invasionCopies Ordered Of Secret Invasion #2: 182,390
Copies Ordered Of Final Crisis #1: 144,784
Gross Dollar Difference At The Retail Level: $37,606
Estimated Net Difference To The Publishers1 : $15,042
Marvel Q1 2008 Revenue: $45,376,000
TimeWarner Q1 2008 Revenue: $771,000,0001Estimated income after 50% retailer discount and $.10 per copy distribution. Please correct me if the distribution fee is wrong.
Please note that DC’s revenue is not available as a separate unit from the parent corporation.
Yeah, but “Marvel” includes their film and toy divisions.
Are you seriously comparing a corporation that has it’s hands in cable, broadcast television, movies, music and video games with Marvel?
What is the point of the exercise? That Time Warner makes so much money, that it doesn’t even matter if Marvel “won” this round? This sounds like the 50 Cent argument.
Owning 10% of Vitamin Water doesn’t make you a better rapper. I don’t know why fans have to have so much invested in this “race” but you are a huge mark for falling into it. Joey Q is laughing his ass off at this shit.
I’m simply saying the debate is/was much, much louder than it needed to be over $15,000 of corporate revenue. I’m failing to see how I’m a “huge mark” for bringing that up.
Of course, by the above reasoning, the sales of ANY comic book are irrelevant to the corporate bottom line, as the difference between the best selling comic and worst would also be a tiny fraction of corporate income. And if that were the case, no comic would ever be cancelled for poor sales.
No, because there’s no way a corporation would care if an individual product was profitable. Of course not.
Now do Oni!
Brian — But profitable doens’t mean it always outsells the competition every time. It means it makes more money than it costs to produce.
So long as the DC arm gets them more money than they put into it, Time-Warner should be satisfied no matter how Marvel is doing.
I’m not trying to be a dick here, but both issues cost $4 dollars each. At the 50% discount – 10 cents, it’s $1.90 an issue that marvel and dc both make for it. (about $71K). If you even want to take it further considering that SI is 8 issues and FC is 7 issues, and the differences remain the same over the period, it’s like 800k. The argument online isn’t really Final Crisis vs. Secret Invasion but really the fact that there seems to be a trend towards Marvel’s books over DC’s book. When you multiply differences like this across tens of books with a $1.40 an issue, it becomes somewhere around a few hundred thousand dollars. Over a year that’s a few million dollars. In Marvel’s case that’s an important part of their line. DC’s not so much.
Pedro, that’s not the argument online. At least not where I’ve seen it. The argument online has been that DC is panicking/Time-Warner will replace the Executive Editor because Secret Invasion outsold Final Crisis.
Yes, Pedro, you are. You always are.
“The argument online has been that DC is panicking/Time-Warner will replace the Executive Editor because Secret Invasion outsold Final Crisis.”
Honestly it’s just a bunch of fanboys who hate Dan Didio and want him gone, and are looking for reasons why this might happen. It’s rather depressing that this has become as big of a thing as it has.
Nice work Kevin.
“I’m simply saying the debate is/was much, much louder than it needed to be over $15,000 of corporate revenue. I’m failing to see how I’m a “huge mark†for bringing that up.”
The key point, actually, is how much DC *expected* FC #1 to bring in, and how much they had riding on that revenue.
It’s not so much the $15,000, it’s the unknown but higher number that they probably expected, and how important it was for DC’s bottom line that Final Crisis hit that number.
Nobody that knows about these things is going to talk about that number, probably for good reason, yet the chatter goes on and on and on. Why is it even a point of debate/discussion/etc and why is there even any sort “competition” in the minds of readers? Toyota and Honda compete – a customer usually only buys one car ever few years; DC and Marvel share a marketplace – a customer is able to pick up titles from each company.
Because readers are petty and want to feel better than those that are different from them?
Kevin, if you’re so eager to respond to everyone’s opinions with your own, why not just include them in the original post rather than pretend you’re objectively opening up a topic for discussion?
If my talking to people in my blog about a post I made bothers you so much, why don’t you find another place to hang out? I’m sure there’s a need for “Father Bear” elsewhere in this big ol’ World Wide Web.
Kevin, why do you hate the scene?