Truthfully, the only comic 'book' making any success is Donald Duck -serial. It's about 50 pages per issue, and a new one comes out every Wednesday. On top of that, there are monthly pocketbooks and big hardcover collections.
To give you some scale, I might as well describe the magazine shelf in any big store: there are lots of DD-paperbacks, some manga, and then collectibles, and then kiddy magazines(that may include comics), and then magazines for teens and adults. Oh yeah, and paperback books are before the comics. Seriously. Book stores don't sell comic books, and specific stores for comics only are non-existent.
Now I don't usually say it's a problem, since I read just manga, actual books and the TCW magazine that Titan publishes. (The double-translated. It first goes to Sweden and then comes in Finland. It sucks. The last issue just reviewed Water War.)
The pic I chose for this post is actually the problem. As you can see, it's an Avengers character'dictionary', with over 200 pages. It's almost 30 euros, and I had my mom buy it for me (I'm poor : <). Total waste of money. The Star Wars book one shelf below would've been more fun, and it was cheaper.
That book isn't for Marvel Cinematic Universe, not even for Ultimates. It's for the original Marvel series. (I think it's Earth-616, feel free to correct me.) That's so outlandish here in Finland that I just read a few pages of this book and then set it aside. There are mentions to Civil War, and many other story arcs I don't have any idea of. My question is: why bring a book like this to market when no-one in the target group will be able to understand it?
Just from the Iron Man's page: there's the fact that Stark used to be the Secretary of Defence, he can access any computer in the world, was one of the founding members of SHIELD... Even his backstory is different from MCU. Plus, the pages have factoids, not any concrete information. Captain America's page kinda spoils that he(Steve) dies in the comics and Bucky takes his place, and a lot of other stuff.
As I said earlier, I'm used to there being a lot of canon material I don't have access to, but this is ridiculous. This book has no point being sold in Finland, since practically no-one will be familiar with the actual stories.
(Then what kind of comics do we have? Well, newspaper strips are the most popular, I think. Most of the actual comics are sold in kids' magazines that have all sorts of toys with them. I think some war-themes comics exist, but they are only sold in biggest stores, and even then they are nearby the kids' section. Sucks to be a Finn.)
