reborn in america

"Did the sales of comics come out last month?" Ibi Dab sat in the office, asking the secretary Serena who had just entered the door.

Serena looked at the glaring general manager, bit her lips, and said after a moment of hesitation: "The highest sales volume of our company's comics is 5 copies of "The Avengers", which ranks first in the single volume sales of the month. No.[-], "Iron Man" ranked seventh with a sales volume of [-] copies, while "Captain America" ​​ranked ninth with a sales volume of [-] copies, and the others were all outside the top ten."

"What are the top few?" Ibi Dab clenched his hands under the table, his face was gloomy, but his tone didn't change much.

"The Batman series of DC Comics, the main story, the Joker, and the double-sided are ranked in the top three, and the Justice League is ranked fourth. The top ten DC comics occupy six seats, and the remaining one belongs to the dark horse comics." Ser Lin Na sighed slightly and said, in terms of the sales volume of the top ten single-book comics alone, it is almost impossible to see that DC and MV comics are at the same level.

"I see. What is the highest sales volume of a single comic book this month?" Ibi Dab frowned and thought about it before asking again.

"The highest sales volume of a single comic book this month is 15 copies of "Batman Returns." Although she didn't know why the general manager asked the question, she still told the data honestly.

Yibi Dabu nodded and said, "Okay, you can go, remember to sort out all the data and print them out as soon as possible."

"Yes." Serena nodded and turned to go out.

And Yibi inside the door leaned on the back chair, frowned and said to himself: "Hey, since Jim Lee and McFarlane left, the quality of comics has dropped significantly. If this continues, it is impossible to compete with DC. Compete."

In 1988, Marvel changed hands and fell into the hands of Ronald Perelman, the president of Revlon. After several efforts, he was successfully listed on the market, which made Marvel very popular for a while.

After going public, Marvel began to expand aggressively. In addition to desperately launching comics, it also frantically acquired other companies, including toy companies, card companies, comic distribution companies, etc., and also incurred huge debts.

When the toy company toybiz was acquired, its shareholder Avi Arad joined Marvel's animation division. "Marvel Films" (marvelfilms) was established.However, the Marvel boss at the time, Perelman, only wanted to sell the adaptation rights, and he didn't want to make the movie himself. The rights to adapt the X-Men were sold to 20th Century Fox, and the rights to adapt Spider-Man were finally sold to Sony after a lawsuit.

Coupled with labor-capital conflicts, in the end a group of pillars of Marvel, Jim Lee and McFarlane, turned out of Marvel.There are even rumors that a new manga magazine image is being planned.As a result, Marvel, who originally held a huge amount of money, was full of ambition to overwhelm his old rival DC, and wanted to compete with Tiangong, seemed to be broken in an instant, fell from a high place, suffered heavy losses, and was almost unable to confront DC head-on confrontation.

And because Marvel is a listed company at this time, the sharp drop in sales of comics naturally caused fluctuations in the stock market. It can be said that when Jim Lee, McFarlane and other pillars of votes decided to leave Marvel, Marvel's stock price entered a decline. endless situation.

"I can't go on like this anymore, otherwise I'll have to get out next time." Yibi sighed slightly, then picked up the phone on the table and dialed it.

Not long after, a familiar voice sounded from the other side, and Yibi said without hesitation, "John, last month's comic sales have already come out, and it's terrible."

The man named John was taken aback for a moment, and then hurriedly said: "General Manager, we need time, after all, the departure of Jim Lee and the others will have a great impact on the entire comic team..."

"If I give you time, who will give our company time? If there is no significant increase in sales before the third quarter, I think you know how the stock market will change. MV company doesn't need an incompetent editor-in-chief." According to Yi Bi said in a cold tone, and then hung up the phone decisively.

"Manager, manager?" John said urgently, but the only answer was the beep of the phone.

"*!" He threw the phone on the table and cursed angrily.

You must know that several popular comics of mv comics company were completed by Jim Lee and the others. The creators of several comic heroes left suddenly, and the impact on the comics was almost catastrophic. Find a cartoonist who is strong enough to replace their absence in a short period of time?

The main reason for this chain reaction is nothing more than the contempt of the company leaders for the screenwriters and main painters. If they are given enough attention, it is impossible for several big-name cartoonists such as Tonard to leave in such an angry way, leaving the current a mess.

"Editor-in-chief?" An editor was about to submit a new issue of comics when he suddenly saw John slamming the phone in anger, he froze there, and then said hesitantly.

"Call all the editors together in the conference room after half an hour." John looked at him, and then said decisively.

"Yes, editor-in-chief." The editor seemed to be pardoned, and he didn't bother to pass the draft in his hand to the editor-in-chief, and quickly responded and returned it.

Half an hour later, the conference room was full of editors. Due to the resignation of several core screenwriters and artists, the entire comic company was in turmoil, and the performance of the comics naturally showed a downward trend. Knowing this reason, the editors I feel anxious.

"The sales volume of comics in the last month is still not optimistic. The general manager expressed his great disappointment. He gave us a period of one quarter. If the sales volume of comics cannot be improved during this period, then all of us here have to leave. !" John didn't give the editors any chance to buffer, and said angrily at the beginning: "I think everyone sitting here is very clear about our boss' temper!"

"I know that everyone is under a lot of pressure, but these are not reasons, because the people on the board of directors will not listen, and they don't want to listen. They just want to see rising performance. If they can't achieve it? Then get out!" John fiercely He slapped the table and raised his volume again.

"Okay, I've finished what I need to say, let's start to arrange the follow-up tasks." John sat down, looked at the editors who were silent, and sighed secretly in his heart. In fact, these words have already been said, But people are not comic heroes after all, they can explode at critical moments, and he is just doing his best and obeying the destiny.

"First of all, those new books in the exhibition hall, are there any booklets that can be released? Carl." John looked to the right and asked.

Carl, who had just breathed a sigh of relief, quickly replied: "Most of the grades are quite satisfactory, and there is nothing special to pay attention to."

John's face turned cold, and he said, "In this case, all the third-level works will be cut in half, and half of the second-level works will be cut in half."

Carl's eyes widened suddenly when he heard the editor-in-chief's words. You must know that although one or two comics will be cut in half every month, according to the editor-in-chief this time, at least more than ten comics will be cut in half, almost more than half Yes, this is a big deal: "But the editor-in-chief, we don't have so many candidates for new works now."

"Then let them use their brains to think about it. I don't need to teach you how to do this, do you?" John looked at Carl and said coldly.

"Yes, I know, editor-in-chief." In fact, what he wanted to say was that he couldn't do it at all, but since the editor-in-chief had mentioned this, he could only bite the bullet and agree.

"As for "Reunion", "Iron Man" and other comics, I don't want comics of this quality to appear again next time." John continued, with a serious expression on his face. If the exhibition hall is a seedling concentration camp, it can grow into a plant It is one, then "Reunion" and other books are their foundation, without the seedlings, just cultivate another batch, and without the foundation, the entire comic company will not exist.

……

The exhibition hall is dedicated to publishing new comics in MV comics. It mainly publishes comics of some newcomers on it to cultivate reserve forces for the company.Among them, the magazine arranges to update the content according to the popularity. Each time it publishes six to seven superhero comics, the more popular it is, the higher the frequency of appearance. If the popularity reaches a certain calculation standard, a special booklet will be arranged elsewhere. , if the sales volume of the single book is outstanding for more than half a year in a row, then this superhero will officially join the superhero camp of mv comics and become one of the main protagonists of the comics, and even have the opportunity to appear in other star-level superhero comics, what's more Fight directly with other superheroes.

Of course there are some successes, but naturally there will be more failures. As long as a new Chaoying manga is still unable to regain readers' love after the new book period, it will have to be downgraded to the ranks of second-level works after the rating. The magazine publishes one episode a month. If it is still bad, the evaluation team will make a judgment after three issues, and it will be downgraded to a third-level work. Only one episode can be published in a quarter. After one year, the evaluation team will continue to evaluate the work. The possibility of publication, if it gets more than half of the elimination votes from the evaluation group, this work will be officially cut in half.

Having said that, cutting more than half of the comics in the exhibition hall this time is a huge loss for the exhibition. Although most of them are second- and third-level works, they also have a group of fans. Fans protested and wanted to restore their reputation, so they could only try to find excellent works from new works to fill in, but how easy is it to find excellent works?

But until now, we can only bite the bullet and continue to do it, such as how to convey the news of this tragedy to those cartoonists whose comic works have been cut in half, and how to get them out of the urge to get rid of the cut in half as soon as possible, and come up with excellent new works. It is to rummage through those postings to find comic ideas worth reading, although this possibility is infinitely close to zero.

And this choice is destined to torture the eyes and IQ of all their editors, but even if it is coped with, it still needs to do face-saving projects.

And Cheng Yi's comics reached MV comics company at this time.