That’s all well and good. But again, that was not my point, nor was it what I said. You’re creating this straw man argument, @Vann.
If you thought that I was saying that Todd doesn’t use the Spawn character for his business endeavors, when I clearly said that profits are not his main concern with the Spawn book, then I don’t know what to tell you.
It was even followed up with nothing more than the price of the book, $2.99. I was clearly talking about the book, and the book only. I don’t know how I could have made those two sentences to be more easily understood.
You are arguing a very obvious point (that Spawn and McFarlane are synonymous), @Vann, not to mention that you are putting words into someone’s mouth in order to make your argument. It’s a straw man argument, that you have used reductio ad absurdum to try to validate. As I said above, there is no argument that some Spawn Toys are based off of Spawn comic characters. I’m trying to tell you what I said/meant, and you for whatever reason, you want to take it as something else. It’s ridiculous, tbh.
If you want to debate that topic, @Vann, I’ll bet dollars to donuts that McFarlanes other toy licences (DC, NFL, MLB…) make him a lot more money in profits than any Spawn line that he did. Alas, I digress.
Oh he’s making profit on Spawn comics. I did a quick lookup of costs that publishers have shared. I found one where they did one book with 4k print run that came to around 74 cents a book. The more you have printed, the lower the cost per book. So this was an indie book that didnt go through diamond to retailers so the profit margin was higher if they sold directly.
Now I’d imagine since Image is the third largest comic publisher behind Marvel and DC, they likely have pretty decent deals in place with the printers they use to print their titles.
I would guess they’re likely spending 25-30 cents a book, might even be less.
So lets do the math. Image claimed Spawn #310 was 130k print run right? Minus 20% for the freebies is 26k. So for easy math, lets assume it’s just 100k that are being sold through diamond then on to retailers.
Lets assume each book costs 25 cents and Diamond buys them for 75 cents each to make it an even dollar to turn around and sell at 50% off cover price to make 50 cents per book.
If these were real numbers, Image/Creators take in 75k while Diamond takes in 50k and then retailers are making a $1.50 off each sell… The more they buy and sell, the morenthey made if they actually sell them.
So yes, even books at $2.99 are likely making creators money and we likely see most indie books at 3.99 or higher cause the less they print, the higher it costs from the printer.
These are all assumptions since we’ll never know the deals between printers, publishers and distributors but I think its safe to say this is close to real work example.
Times like this I wish my dad was still alive… I could ask him what it would of likely cost since he worked as a master printsmith for over 30 years before becoming a truck driver.
There is no question that he, McFarlane, is making money off of the comic book, as is Image, as is Diamond, as are the retailers; all at different levels. I believe the conversation deviated from the tribute cover McFarlane made to the conversation about making “profit” off of the death of an actor. Just because he made a tribute cover, does not mean he cannot make money from that; he was making money anyway. Just the act of creating the cover shows respect for the actor, he shouldn’t have to give money away to somehow be morally competent. Those are opinions, and each of us are allowed to have them, and to disagree. As Poyo indicated, he would prefer to boycott this cover, and that is his right, just as it is the right of anyone to purchase it, of which there will be thousands. I would bet that there are people out there that will actually buy it because it was a tribute to an actor, not because someone made money or not.
Specwise…flat. After the initial fanfare, it will be just another book, probably 2x cover, especially with how many will be printed. Sell them fast, but I am hard passing on this one for speculation.
not sure but on several sites it’s listed as the A cover,…the B&W sketch variant as I can tell is listed as a 1:5. Ordered mine and probably get a B&W to boot
