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| Satoshi_Miwa 1445th Post
 
Red Carpet Executive Member
    
    
    
    
|  "Re(3):Your current favorite comic publishers"
, posted Sun 8 Sep 23:11
quote:
What is Tokyopop's GN policy and how does it encourage reading but not collecting?
Was there an industry wide problem with multiple covers before? I always didn't like it when the otherwise same publication had multiple covers. It must be only a very small minority of fans who say "ooh! I get to buy another copy of the same comic with a different cover!" I really think it would cause them to loose money becaue people might go looking for a cover that looks a certain way, and the same comic might be at a store, but go unrecognized because of the variation in the cover image.
We'll put Tokyopop on the next vote list. Any other nominations are welcome!
Tokyopop's GN policy is they do nothing but GN's now, and have abandoned monthly comics (Except for one or two series). Since most manga moves in GN form, and it's an established form now (It no longer as to conform to the US standards of releasing, IE a monthly comic) they can easily release their product that way.
As for why it encourages reading? Well by putting it in book form it immediately scares speculators that buy new comics in the hope they increase value. People that get GN tend to read them, and don't lock them away in UV bags never to be read...
Multiple and Gimmick Covers where the bane of the industry for most of the 90's. It was an Image idea (One of their many bad ideas of the 90's) and the concept was that for a new #1 or special issue of the comic they'd ship 3 or 4 comics with different covers, and one of them would be the rare one. The reasoning behind this was it increase hype of the product among fans with the rarity, and it'd also pump up sales as people would get 4 issues of the same comic...
Of course since most Image #1's crashed and burned the comics quickly lost their value, and became worthless (Pissing off speculators, who would still buy the next Image #1). Most of these hot #1 were bought off the shelf, and never read. Add to that the fact most speculators just went with Issue #1 and you have sales that fell flat quickly. Add to that the fact that 99% of Image #1's are IMHO crap and you have a title that couldn't hold readership
Hence Comic retailers were left with a lot of stock they couldn't move.
Sadly Marvel (and to a very lesser extent DC) caught onto the idea and it made the industry even worse till the real comic readers got sick enough of it to stop the nonsense for awhile...Though it is still used by some publishers (Thus ignoring the damage done to the industry by the policy).
But you won't see any of the Big 3 doing it anymore, and even Image itself is wary of the concept.
But what's funny is that the whole silly concept is not the most boneheaded idea of the 90's. That award still goes to Marvel with their stupid decision to go with self-distrbution via Hero...(and is one of the reasons why I'm still wary of Marvel as a publisher...)
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