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Wallace Sellars
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 01 May 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 17669
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| Posted: 26 April 2016 at 5:35pm | IP Logged | 1
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And I can't imagine a long-running series about traffic cops giving
tickets!
---
The bottom half of that figure has looked "off" to me ever since I first
saw it.
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Dave Phelps
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Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 4178
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| Posted: 26 April 2016 at 6:32pm | IP Logged | 2
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Jason Czeskleba wrote:
| At any rate, Adams' departure from the series could not have been a factor in its cancellation, because the decision to cancel the book was made before sales figures on Adams' final issues had come in. |
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Still could've been a factor, though. Not due to sales impacts (actual or anticipated) but rather in a "hey, we need to get a new artist on X-Men" "eh, why bother?" kind of way. (I obviously have no way of knowing either way.)
Eric Jansen wrote:
| Though the delayed sales figures on his issues led to the book not being cancelled immediately, but turned into a reprint mag for a while, because "kids didn't know any better." |
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Other way around. It was cancelled, and then revived a few months later as a reprint mag when the sales figures came in, which continued up until the new X-Men showed up. Hopefully there were more readers pleasantly surprised when Giant-Size X-Men #1 showed up containing an all-new story than there were those disappointed it didn't have the concluding chapter of the X-Men/Avengers crossover promised at the end of #93.
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Jason Czeskleba
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Joined: 30 April 2004
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| Posted: 26 April 2016 at 9:15pm | IP Logged | 3
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Dave Phelps wrote:
| Still could've been a factor, though. Not due to sales impacts (actual or anticipated) but rather in a "hey, we need to get a new artist on X-Men" "eh, why bother?" kind of way. |
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According to interviews I've read with Roy Thomas, the sequence was:
1. Adams left
2. Sal Buscema was given the assignment
3. The decision was made to cancel the book.
So it appears the cancellation had nothing to do with the transition to a new artist. Buscema completed one issue, and then the decision to cancel was made, after the completion of that issue but prior to its publication.
I suppose it's possible they anticipated a sales drop due to Adams leaving, but that's hardly a given. Fan favorite artists didn't necessarily translate into higher sales in those days. One notable example a couple years later is Conan, which had a significant sales increase when John Buscema took over for Barry Smith. So I don't think they would have presumed sales would go down just because Adams left and cancel solely on that basis.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
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| Posted: 27 April 2016 at 5:20am | IP Logged | 4
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I suppose it's possible they anticipated a sales drop due to Adams leaving, but that's hardly a given. •• It's difficult to imagine the bean counters of that vintage actually allowing themselves to acknowledge that a lowly artist might have an effect on sales. Also, the sales reporting was not instantaneous back then. We used to say it took 11 issues to cancel a book. That was how long it took to gather all the sales. So X-MEN was canceled before there were solid numbers even on Adams' first issue.
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Peter Hicks
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Joined: 30 April 2004
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Posts: 1890
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| Posted: 27 April 2016 at 7:44am | IP Logged | 5
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Stan Lee asked Neal Adams at one point why his Marvel covers were not as good as the covers he had done at DC. Neal did not hesitate to say it was because of all the changes that were made to his Marvel covers after he handed them in.
Stan always wanted Neal to do an A list book like Avengers. However, Neal insisted on starting with a C list book to see if he could improve it, so that was why he spent a year doing X-Men before his all too brief run on Avengers.
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Dave Phelps
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
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| Posted: 27 April 2016 at 5:13pm | IP Logged | 6
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Jason Czeskleba wrote:
| So I don't think they would have presumed sales would go down just because Adams left and cancel solely on that basis. |
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Oh, I certainly agree with that. Like I said, if Adams' departure WAS a factor, it would've been a logistical consideration rather than an economic one. And to supplement your point, given the delayed sales figures, they wouldn't have necessarily known if there'd been any sales increases since Adams had arrived; much less ones significant enough to worry about messing with.
My speculation was based on the cancellation notice printed in the last issue:
So if Sal was a fill-in artist and Neal wasn't coming back, then no need to keep a "low seller" going, right?
I'll obviously defer to Roy's recollections, though.
(And just for fun, here's a peak at those "low sales figures," from the Statement of Ownership that ran in the last issue:
Times sure have changed, huh?)
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Eric Jansen
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| Posted: 27 April 2016 at 6:22pm | IP Logged | 7
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"Stan Lee asked Neal Adams at one point why his Marvel covers were not as good as the covers he had done at DC. Neal did not hesitate to say it was because of all the changes that were made to his Marvel covers after he handed them in."
Hmm. Looking at Neal's X-MEN covers, I notice that the best ones focus on a single figure (the Living Colossus, Ka-Zar, Cyclops) while the ones that are slightly less exciting have the X-Men as multiple tiny figures. I would say that the single figure ones are as good as any he did for SUPERBOY or SUPERMAN. The tiny figure ones are "only" as good as his ADVENTURE COMICS (Legion of Super-Heroes) ones that also often contained numerous little figures. Maybe Stan's impression was based simply on the fact that team covers can be harder to do (and still get the story across).
What "changes" do you suppose Neal was referring to?
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Jason Czeskleba
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| Posted: 27 April 2016 at 6:53pm | IP Logged | 8
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Adams' original cover for X-Men #56 was rejected and Stan had him redraw it. The main rationale was that there was concern the logo was unreadable to kids flicking through the books on the spinner rack. Adams' response was that based on how X-Men was selling, it was not necessarily a bad thing that the logo was concealed:
Another factor that may account for the difference between Adams' Marvel and DC covers is that many of his DC covers were based on layouts or sketches done by Carmine Infantino.
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David Miller
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| Posted: 27 April 2016 at 8:21pm | IP Logged | 9
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How much did Marvel charge for a subscription in 1967? It looks like X-Men subs were netting Marvel less than $100 a month. Course back then you could buy a new car for a nickel.
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John Byrne
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| Posted: 28 April 2016 at 5:51am | IP Logged | 10
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And just for fun, here's a peak at those "low sales figures," from the Statement of Ownership that ran in the last issue:•• You need the E line to have the full picture.
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Dave Phelps
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| Posted: 28 April 2016 at 4:25pm | IP Logged | 11
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I figured the 110 freebies weren't significant enough to add another inch or so to an already overlong post. But for the sake of completeness, here's the unabridged version of the distribution section:
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
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| Posted: 28 April 2016 at 6:08pm | IP Logged | 12
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The significance of those numbers lies in comparing the E and F lines. Note how many copies are unsold. These were the days when success of a title was not measured by the number sold, as today, but by the percentage of the print run those sales represent. And, to make matters more complicated, many of those unsold copies were victims of poor distribution. Some didn't even leave the warehouses!Problem, then, was that 400,00 copies had to be printed, to sell 200,000 (arbitrary numbers). If a book slipped too close to the 50% mark, the axe fell. Often with numbers today's publishers would sell their children to attain. The Direct Sales Market made it possible to print only as many copies as were ordered -- vanity press in a nutshell -- thus making even struggling books profitable. But the DSM quickly became its own set of problems. And here we are today.
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