A Quote by Chris Roberson

The direct market has evolved into a machine that is very good at selling corporate-owned superhero titles published by two main companies: DC and Marvel. — © Chris Roberson
The direct market has evolved into a machine that is very good at selling corporate-owned superhero titles published by two main companies: DC and Marvel.
The difference between a Marvel superhero and a DC superhero is that we place Marvel superheroes in the real world that we recognize and that we know.
I believe that the mainstream publishers, DC and Marvel, need to catch up as well. Out of the fifty-odd books that are published each month, just a handful are written by women, and even less of those are written by women of color. It's not right, and it's not good for the companies in the long-term. It's also not good for fans, for readers.
I still love Marvel to death and I had a great experience, and it was a really tough decision to leave Marvel. It was a very easy decision to come to DC; it was very difficult to leave Marvel. And I really wanted to draw Batman, and really, that was entirely the discussion when it came to coming to DC.
I'd like to get into the superhero genre. I'd love to do either a DC or a Marvel character.
The dirty little secret about comics is that the wall to getting published is actually not that high. You can publish your own comic. You can have your comic printed by the same people that print Marvel and DC and Image's comics for, I think, it's about $2,000 for a print run. So you can Kickstart it and get your own comic made. It depends on what is considered success to you. So if you need to be published by the Big Two to feel that you've made it, well, you should start working very hard.
The great problem with corporate capitalism is that publicly owned companies have short time horizons. Unlike a privately owned business, the top executives of a publicly owned corporation generally come to their positions late in life. Consequently, they have a few years in which to make their fortune.
Tech stocks were the cubic zirconium of the market. They looked good and were sexy, but they just were a way for the company selling them to make money. That's always going to be transient in terms of the stock market. What's real is that companies have to compete. Technology used well is a great tool to enable that if only because most companies dont use technologies well.
When we came then to the 1967 negotiations we had the problem of one market between two countries fully under the control of the American companies that owned the facilities on both sides of the border.
I was never a DC kid - I went through a phase from, like, 11 to 17 where I would try to buy as many Marvel titles as possible. And '2000 AD' was kind of the sort of sci-fi/punk of British comics.
Because Comic Con in San Diego is crazy, and it's very commercialized, and it's corporate, and it's all about money and selling, selling, selling... I think people want to go to smaller, specialized cons.
People at Marvel and DC, we're rooting for each other. And when we're friends, like me and Jeff Lemire, or Charles Soule, or even Dan Slott - it doesn't matter if you're Marvel or DC. You'll talk story with each other, and there's like an agreement that you're just helping each other out.
I've always loved both Marvel and DC equally, but I don't have a career without DC giving me the original 'Hawk and Dove' mini-series.
I think DVD has been a real gold mine for a lot of reasons. You were selling a packaged good in a big mass market, so you could make it huge. You were selling or renting a thing that people didn't consume. You go to Blockbuster, rent five movies, and only watch two. That's a good business to be in.
I'd begun reading Crumb shortly before that, and other underground stuff, so that was an influence to some degree. Of course the Marvel and DC comics, they had been my main interests in my teenage years.
I like Comixology and I think they have a very captive audience which is good and bad. I hope that getting my books on there expose folks who just read Marvel/DC/Image to try something different.
I've been very fortunate at having good titles but I just think in terms of titles. I'm doing a workshop now where people write books and they come and I name their books for them. I'm good with titles.
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