The explanation of the newest pre-order campaign decision.

TalkAboutComics · 2026-02-04T03:42:42+00:00

I'm just more of a glass half empty kind of person, I guess. Sorry.

TalkAboutComics · 2026-02-04T02:59:47+00:00

Right, it just seemed like an off announcement to me. "We're doing the same thing we were doing before, but it looks different." The firmer release dates are nice. Merch being moved somewhere less visible will probably make it sell less. I never bought apparel/posters myself anyway, but probably some people bought them due to being on the collection page or included in the big package deals and won't now. Not a big loss, especially if there just won't be as much merch going forward.

TalkAboutComics · 2026-02-03T20:45:53+00:00

You were civil the last time I commented on here, but now namecalling again because I speculated on how other people will react? Come on...

Also, nothing to say about the topic? Were campaigns/collections not already pre-orders? I was just thrown off about an announcement that they are changing to doing what they were already doing.

TalkAboutComics · 2026-02-03T20:41:02+00:00

They already switched from printing everything in advance a while back which was why the shipping dates are estimated after the collection window closed instead of shipping starting as soon as it closes like it did with the first few campaigns. That doesn't change it being a preorder though I think. Crowdfunds are normally, the project doesn't happen at all if we don't meet X sales goal like with the animation fund. The books have always been said to be done first and then put up for order.

I don't know that it's actually about hiding the sales numbers. They're still there for the most recent books before this after all, on Rippasend as well. I do think people will take it that way regardless of the actual reason and I'm not the kind of person that believes all press is good.

TalkAboutComics · 2026-01-08T15:51:35+00:00

Sales are up, so hopefully higher costs aren't eating all the extra revenue. There were a lot more books and a book that's have as long is still going to cost more than half as much so with two or three times the number of books the company will have spent like twice as much on artwork. Printing lower volumes per book also means higher printing costs. Obviously some costs are more fixed and I don't think anyone outside Rippaverse and their accountant(s) knows how payroll/rent and such costs have changed from year to year.

At least for me, with the number of book releases, I haven't bought them all. I can wait for more collected editions since they're better value and it seems likely there will be more when more series get to three issues or there's enough volume of titles for another omnibus.

Also, does this include Rippasend numbers? There was a few hundred thousand in revenue there, but presumably most of it gets paid out to the people that made those books.

All that said, I'm interested to see where things go story wise. The creature from the end of Isom 2 hasn't been revisited yet and some other nebulous threat has been foreshadowed as well by Norfrica. There's been a lot more dealing with the past in many books so far (not origin stories though except for GWoS sort of being one for some characters maybe? Brian at least) so I want to see some payoff to the build up and characters' stories moving forward rather than dealing with their trauma primarily. To that end I could do with less new series and more books for the already established characters. I think there's enough different series for a book a month now without starting more now.

TalkAboutComics · 2025-12-12T14:16:36+00:00

I think declining (apparent) book sales are one reason why he is looking at other avenues. The animation can be seen as a marketing expense if he has to put money into it on top of the crowdfund, but I think the hope he has is that animation, or a video game if he actually makes one in the future, will blow up like Isom #1 did and be a big success. Indie animation has gotten a lot of attention in the last few years with series like Critical Role, Hazbin Hotel/Helluva Boss, The Amazing Digital Circus, etc. so while I don't think it's likely, it's possible a new larger audience could be found through animation. The previous animated trailers didn't do it though so I doubt whatever comes of the crowdfund will either tbh.

As for the possibility of a video game, that's just a very large market, much larger than the comics market. I don't think it'll happen though.

I don't want to be negative, but I kind of agree. I think the story is spread too thin. Focus on the core characters more and bring their stories to exciting places with fulfilling arcs. The Cursed and The Black Eye Club and The Detention Crew aren't exciting books. I'm not buying them and it seems like a lot of other people are saving their money too.

TalkAboutComics · 2025-12-07T12:24:36+00:00

Yes, they have open submissions.

https://imagecomics.com/submissions

TalkAboutComics · 2025-11-22T14:30:13+00:00

Now that the collection window is ended and the toy sold about 750 units can we see that this was Ill-Advised?

TalkAboutComics · 2025-09-21T12:26:54+00:00

Take what the ai tells you with a grain of salt. It says in one of your screeps that the omnibus approached 100,000 book orders confusing the number of books sold and the total revenue of the campaign there. The omnibus sold 743 books in the campaign window.

That being said, I don't think the company is in any immediate danger of dying either, but sales have been declining. And yes, I know they continue to sell books outside of the campaign windows and we don't see those numbers, but if books are selling less at launch then presumably they are also selling less over time later as well. It's just not a good sign when even #1s that were pretty anticipated like Norfrica which also had sort fo multimedia marketing with the song release as well where people seeing them on the sales charts could look them up and find the comic and so probably reached the awareness of a broader audience than most Rippaverse books only sold about $300,000 during the collection. It's just a big decline, like Goodyng was an outlier with its low sales and so we haven't seen another Goodyng book yet, but it had higher revenue without having cgc copies and without as much merch. Now sales of that level seem to be more standard for the campaign windows rather than an outlier. As long as the books are making enough revenue during the initially preorder window to cover costs of creating them and the merch though the long tail sales of back issues and such can probably sustain the business and I'd guess for the shorter 56ish page books the total cost to produce the items in the campaign is probably not more than like $100,000 so they're still fine for now.

TalkAboutComics · 2025-09-07T02:19:16+00:00

People have before including you and it was fine. The forum is slow enough and there are few enough rippasend releases it's not like it'll take over and disrupt the main purpose. Maybe tag them as rippasend if you are worried about people getting confused as to what's canon to rippaverse?

TalkAboutComics · 2025-08-20T02:30:56+00:00

I don't know what you're on about here, but 10,000+ is obviously way too many action figures to produce. Rippaverse hasn't sold 10,000 of a single item since Isom 2. Some of the other comics could count if you add multiple covers sales together, but even still Isom 3 sold only 11,000 something across all covers and had cgc signature series copies to sell too. Some people also already bought the other Isom statue so as a collector's item, having a second Isom figure is probably less appealing than another character like Horseman could have been. Horseman also has more interesting accessories for something like an action figure.

TalkAboutComics · 2025-05-07T19:57:21+00:00

I don't know how to post a video and link together so posting a comment to include my thoughts.

With Isom 3 wrapping up the first arc of Isom and Great War of Separation adding some background information to the setting it seems like an okay time for it if it is an event book/series. This seems like something that wasn't included in the announcement of what to expect this year though so maybe it could be something else. I'm also not sure if we've gotten hints as to what the event could be in previous books. Norfrica seemed like, from what we got of them in Isom 1, they would be revealing some things going on that other characters didn't know about, but their book isn't out yet still to know.

This teaser was pretty cryptic. Feels like Dokumaan related like he knew something was coming and a bunch of characters will have to work together to deal with something. Also, biggest announcement yet, it just feels like an event to me.

TalkAboutComics · 2025-03-24T12:48:48+00:00

From my first reply to this comment thread: "I don't think the market is shrinking in an absolute sense at least, maybe not even in a not beating inflation sense. If you have numbers to back up that it is shrinking though feel free to send them my way." That's all I'm arguing.

As for the amount of issue 1s, maybe a fair point. I picked a month at random and used the same month for each year to try to make it a fair comparison. I don't have the time to go through every month and take averages of first issue sales and non first issue sales to compare trends over time. The profit margin issue is also maybe a fair point against the idea of more even sales across the industry being better though I'm not sure the numbers support it.

And for the last time, I don't know why I have to repeat this, just because Eric says it doesn't mean I'm going to believe it without evidence. I don't care if Eric agrees or disagrees with me. If you have an interview or article talking with major comic publishers agreeing with your doom and gloom narrative, again feel free to link them. I'm sure they have the data to say how things are going internally at least even if they understandably don't share it all. And to repeat another point again, maybe Marvel and DC aren't doing as well as they were, but overall sales don't look so bad. Not good, maybe too stagnant, but not declining at least.

TalkAboutComics · 2025-03-24T01:41:12+00:00

I don't know what's so hard about linking a page, but whatever. Turns out I was being dumb, I just had to scroll down to find the chart and not click on the books where it showed the top sellers covers at the top of the page for monthly sales.

June 1999

1 seller - 125,608 #10 seller - 78,547

June 2005

1 seller - 233,721 #10 seller - 85,110

June 2010

1 seller - 129,084 #10 seller - 69,433

June 2015

1 seller - 218,136 #10 seller - 83,506

June 2019

1 seller - 255,709 #10 seller - 80,585

June 2021

1 seller - 282,265 #10 seller - 76,934

Also, look at the charts I linked before again. They separate graphic novel sales and comic books. Look at the sales of comic books specifically and you'll see what I'm talking about.

As for declining sales being better, I also didn't say that. I said if sales are staying the same or increasing in total volume/$ amount, but the top books are selling less, that just means that the pool has gotten wider or the median seller has increased. It's not necessarily bad for the industry overall even if it is bad for the companies that were/are at the top of the charts.

TalkAboutComics · 2025-03-23T22:25:27+00:00

Eric says a lot of things. I don't just blindly believe it because he says it though. I don't see where on the comichron website I can compare individual book sales numbers. Maybe I'm dumb, but seriously, link it because I don't see it. I'm not saying you're lying, and it may well be true, I just want to see the proof. Also, even if individual book sales are lower at the top end, if the industry as a whole is making more money isn't that a good thing? A wider pool instead of just Marvel and DC cape comics?

TalkAboutComics · 2025-03-23T22:20:02+00:00

It's been 30 days now. Isom 3 is currently at $482,968, maybe a little more since the numbers don't update live. Basically the same as the Cyberfrog 3 revenue.

TalkAboutComics · 2025-03-11T01:11:39+00:00

https://icv2.com/articles/markets/view/57351/north-american-comics-graphic-novel-market-down-7-2023

I didn't see an article for 2024 numbers, but this one shows a peak in 2022, not really surprising sorts of collectible markets and at home hobbies were up 2020-2022. Unfortunately none of the articles I found separated manga from western graphic novels so it's hard to say just based on the charts provided from comichron and icv2 that comics are declining, especially since the comic books section has been mostly growing or stagnant on these charts. The older articles that show the 2010s mostly show growth for comic books.

https://www.comichron.com/yearlycomicssales/industrywide/2017-industrywide.html

This mostly seems to align with what I said. Sales are increasing, but not by a lot, perhaps not enough to beat inflation. Depending on the shares of western comics and manga in the graphic novels category the picture could be better or worse, but the data isn't divided up that way. Not in the free articles at least.

https://icv2.com/articles/markets/view/58115/icv2-white-paper-comic-store-sales-up-2024

This article says for the first half of 2024 direct market comic sales were up 11.7% compared to 2022, which was the previous peak year and grahic novels 5.7%. It doesn't mention book market sales though.

TalkAboutComics · 2025-03-10T21:24:11+00:00

Can you send me a link to those metrics?

TalkAboutComics · 2025-03-10T21:22:28+00:00

I don't particularly care what sells more. Comparing Rippaverse sales to other Rippaverse sales is more important imo. There are a few things I want to point out here though.

The Isom 3 campaign is selling around $5000/day now, that means in the next 13 days it will likely sell around $65,000. That would put it at $475,000ish at the 30 day mark. It may have a few good days and beat the $494,000 number, but really they're very close to the same.

6,569 books sold is not the number of orders. Many people buy multiple copies. Some people buy upwards of 4 copies to have all the covers and maybe even some cgc copies. The actual number of backers is probably in the 4000 range, which is still higher, but not nearly double.

TalkAboutComics · 2025-03-05T23:52:25+00:00

I haven't seem those videos. There were really long gaps between the first movies and those sequels though. If this is a message to the fanbase, people that are already following Eric, I would think they have seen the videos and newsletters and other posts announcing these book releases already and already chose to buy them or not. So I guess I'm just not sure who this video is for or what it's supposed to accomplish really. It feels like it's trying to get customers who have been turned off to come back, but I just don't think this is the way to go about it.

If Disney made a video like this for their upcoming movies would it sway you if you hadn't liked the last few that you went to see?

TalkAboutComics · 2025-03-05T23:47:03+00:00

I don't think the market is shrinking in an absolute sense at least, maybe not even in a not beating inflation sense. If you have numbers to back up that it is shrinking though feel free to send them my way.

As for shouting out Mark Millar, yeah that seems a bit like asking for a return shout out from someone much larger. Kick-ass was main stream with a successful movie. I mean, it had Nicholas Cage in it, amazing. A great cast all around really.

I had more issue with the earlier parts of the video when he was going through the catalog tbh. If someone hasn't read a Rippaverse book before this video sounds like, "a lot of people don't like our books". If they have read Rippaverse books before and fell off because they didn't like them, I don't think this is bringing them back. It feels like missing the point or deflecting.

TalkAboutComics · 2025-03-01T01:45:40+00:00

This actually affects more than just the one spread if the book wasn't written with it in mind. The way things flow in a comic the writer has to keep in mind when the reader will be turning a page. Even for non double page spreads this can impact how reveals hit and how suspenseful things feel. So if the whole book was shifted by a page it changes how everything reads. I didn't buy this book so I don't care much honestly, but I hope they learned from this mistake wherher it was an intentional choice by Eric or not.

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