How popular are SuperHeroes in your country/area?

I thought this forum needed a new thread, it's too quiet. And I was actually wondering about this question now that they're closing down the French and German support and stating among other reasons that in those countries there is little interest in superhero comics.

Basically what would the chance be that if you'd ask a random 10-30 year old on the street to name some superheroes, they'd come up with at least a few names?

I'd say around here (Norfolk/Suffolk, England) quite good. What with all the films that have been made.

These days comics are going bad in sales.. and the normal non specialised shops as supermarkets carry almost none.

The huge popularity of the movies takes that over...

If you would ask some young person to name superheroes.. it will be from cartoon and children series combined with movies. The comic link is very bad atm...

Best chances to hear...

- Spider-man
- Batman
- Iron Man
- Wolverine

Movie popularity... followed by...

- Superman
- More X-Men
- More Avengers

Not at all.

Here (Italy) Super heros comic are not too common with youngster.
Is easier that a 25+ know some of them that the under 25.

my 0.02 EUR

There are a number of specialist outlets in my area (Midlands) that do a thriving trade in comics.

The fact they are not often seen in non-specialist outlets is mostly down to distribution deals etc, so far as I understand it. Many of the bigger outlets (such as WH Smiths etc) want to screw the distributors to the wall to get the best price, which reduces their profitability.

In turn the distributor - mostly Diamond IIRC - tends to want like the independent retailer because they can then encourage them to take more stock etc.

So I'd suggest that not finding them in general outlets is not necessarily the best metric with which to measure popularity.

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

Hmmm. I would have expected more responses.

New tax system killed most of comics in middle of 90's here. Before that they were very popular. Nowadays all youngsters reads mostly manga. Of course people know's Superman, Phantom, Spiderman etc but they don't buy those comics. Green Lantern was totally unknown before the movie.

Scarlet Shocker, Thanks for the info.

Quote:

Originally Posted by zachary_EU New tax system killed most of comics in middle of 90's here. Before that they were very popular. Nowadays all youngsters reads mostly manga. Of course people know's Superman, Phantom, Spiderman etc but they don't buy those comics. Green Lantern was totally unknown before the movie.

Are you referring to some sort of tax from the European Unions formation/expansion or a local tax for your country? Does this tax also affect manga?

Here in the US manga is quite popular. In fact I will be going to Fanime in the Bay Area, a 5 day convention with attendance probably ranging from 15,000-30,000 people. 15 years ago the same con pulled in less then 1000. 10 years ago 2-3K, and 5 years ago it broke 10K so anime is growing in popularity here as well.

Ok this is not my normal glossary so I have to use dictionary...

This happened long before we joined in EU (european union). We had big financial depression in early 90's in Finland and government put (I don't know this in english) more taxes to all goods and services. So before those times let say my favourite comic Agentti-X9 paid about 12 finnish Marks (now we have those boring euros ) and that was not so cheap but ok. So prices rised a lot and that was clearly too much and people stopped to buy too expensive comics. Well so many good comics just disappeared very fast. Only big favourites lived over those years like Donald Duck, some war comics, some Marvell and DC, Tex Willer, Phantom and mostly French albums. (they are actually very good)

Things changed and of course we have now also superhero comics but it's not same that it was in those golden times. Manga founded it's way here in some point and filled the gap left by other comics. Nowadays big graphic novels are more popular. But I think those new movies like Avengers and Thor makes superheroes more popular again but slightly different ways.

Here? Not very. There's a few comic book stores around, and once upon a time, a local publisher had a deal to publish x-men comics, but that was a long time ago.

Still, I'm sure just about everyone could name Superman, Spider-Man, Batman and similarly iconic characters.

Here in norway it seems like any foreign comic can't manage to reach any sort of popularity outside of the one that's called... "The Phantom" in english I think it was. We just call him "Fantomet". There's been various tries to introduce foreign comics translated into norwegian, but they all end up dying out. The only reason there's still some sold these days is most likely due to the marvel movies being so popular. The same seems to go for the cartoons a lot of the time. I've no idea why this is the case though. Maybe our culture just makes the market too different? Or we have a ridiculously high level of standard(which I sincerely doubt) up here.

All that said there is a store chain known as "Outland" which deals in foreign comics, books, warhammer stuff and is generally a geeks paradise kinda store. They have about... five stores spread across the country I believe. I doubt foreigners would think of any of them as big however, with perhaps the exception of one of the two in Oslo.

Egads! Necro much?

Turkey in here. We mostly get standard dc or marvel stuff. Some are translated some in original. For a comparision new avengers and civil war and after them just recently translated. I was one of the few who knew about the guy at the end of avengers movie and that was partially because I played alot Marvel Super Heroes fighting game. Superman, batman are being sold in here from dc front and most knows Wondewoman Flash or Green Lantern others not so much. For marvel x-men, avengers, hulk, fantastic 4, spiderman, silver surfer and a couple of otbers are frequently on book stores.