The Problem with the Comic Book Industry
- Thread starter Andonagio
- Start date
Actually, we can. Both Marvel and DC do have all-ages lines that are throwbacks to the way "comics used to be", but not that many seem interested in that.
Only because they couldn't go any lower, IMO.Mr Light said:
The industry reached an absurd peak in the 1990s when financial speculators convinced tons of people who normally didn't buy comics into buying comics as future retirement investments or as means to put their kids through college. The industry once again catered to demand and started publishing and selling issues by the millions. Profits skyrocketed, lots of people got very stupid rich, and life was good for all the big players.
The subsequent crash when those non-comic book readers realized that comics were just comics and they weren't going to be able to retire off them very nearly killed the entire industry off. In some ways, it still hasn't recovered from the '90s and hasn't really changed its business model much since those times except to squeeze more money out of its remaining readership to keep their profit margins high. You once had books that sold over 400,000 copies a month now considered doing well if they sell 40,000 copies. Publishers are now looking at online publications as another venue for them to pursue alongside trade collections and the monthly issues.
Well, that just means consumers don't want that, either.
But that may be marketing-- there is not the distribution that there used to be, either. And kids these days would rather play Mario Bros than read.
You used to be able to buy comic books at any news stand but those have vanished. You used to even be able to buy them at many groceries. You could buy your favorites regularly, and buy single issues to check out a new magazine.
Now, you can't follow any title regularly, much less browse for new ones. The only place you can rely on finding comics is in dedicated stores, which do not happen to be in every city. The nearest comic book shops to my town are thirty and ninety miles away. Comics have abandoned their less profitable markets and struggle to compete with each other and their old issues as well at a relative handful of comic book stores. No wonder they've convinced themselves that getting buzz for sadomasochistic drivel is like being successful.
Now, you can't follow any title regularly, much less browse for new ones. The only place you can rely on finding comics is in dedicated stores, which do not happen to be in every city. The nearest comic book shops to my town are thirty and ninety miles away. Comics have abandoned their less profitable markets and struggle to compete with each other and their old issues as well at a relative handful of comic book stores. No wonder they've convinced themselves that getting buzz for sadomasochistic drivel is like being successful.
^^ Exactly right.
I don't disagree there, but Planetary, Ex Machina, and iirc Sleeper are all superhero books--especially Planetary, which by the end is nearly purely superheroics. And it ends anticlimactically as hell. It was also a 27-issue monthly series that took TEN YEARS to produce, which says some pretty terrible things about the monthly format.
I want to echo the comments about the biggest problem in mainstream Marvel/DC superherodom being the lack of lasting, permanent change, especially in regards to the biggest change of all--death.
If I had to point to four particular personalities, whose influence I would purge from the timeline through--say--a deal with the devil, those personalities would be Dan Didio, Joe Quesada, and more reluctantly Geoff Johns and Brian Michael Bendis, their hatchetmen. Concomitant with the rise of mediocrity, some the greatest writers in superheroics have fallen down, at least and particularly in that genre: Warren Ellis is an old regurgitator of the same set of ideas he was already propagandizing us with in 1997, Grant Morrison suffered the long-awaited final crisis with his already strained storytelling ability, and Frank Miller maintains only enough shame and attachment to reality to acknowledge his own descent into self-parody.
Hence we have the current situation, where the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.
But, hyperbolic doom and gloom aside
, one thing that I don't think was explicitly mentioned here is that the format of superhero comics is and has been conceptually dead for at least twenty years, yet the major producers still shamble along, like a Marvel zombie or Black Lantern, just as insidiously and with even less real artistic merit, producing monthly issues for a decaying market. Serialized prose fiction went out eons ago, to the best of my knowledge. A near-total shift to the graphic novel format was predicted by the brightest minds twenty years ago and ten years ago... but all we've gotten is monthlies prepared for trades, which is not at all the same thing.Hence, stories with no business being published litter the shelves because product needs to go monthly, economies of scale do not function, and the soap operatic restraints of the genre ossify and strangle us all...
BeakerFullofDeath said:
Well, it would have to be. But Dave Gibbons and Alan Moore's collaboration worked the best mise en scene in any comic in history. (Possible exception: Moore and J.H. Williams III, in Promethea, which has greater technical wizardry but served a script that could be bent infinitely to Moore's will, whereas Watchmen had the burden of telling a story instead of an--albeit interesting--lecture.)
This elicits a flat what.
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The problem with distribution of comics is caused directly by Diamond Distributers actively not putting or advertising comics in the grocery and convenience stores and newsstands that were their primary source for the first sixty or so years of their existence. Marvel and DC have nothing to do with it.
And the catering to the aging fanbase has been described by pros in the business as "instead of 'mature' they should be called 'sophomoric.'"
And the catering to the aging fanbase has been described by pros in the business as "instead of 'mature' they should be called 'sophomoric.'"
Dusty Ayres
Commodore
Strange how I've seen comic books avaiable at bookstores (remember those?) like Chapters/Indigo/Coles (or if you live in the States, B.Dalton Bookseller; if England, W.H. Smiths) and at places like 7-Eleven, as well as newsstand shops where magazines are also sold. How is it that I've seen them there at these places, and you've not?
Again, please be reminded; grocery stores have to want to sell said things like comic books. Most do not, and so, you don't catch them there. Besides, a dedicated comic book store, or subscriptions, are better for getting comic books at than grocery stores anyway. As well, independent comic books companies can't sell books at a grocery store, book chain, or newsstands; that's why there are comic book stores, as great and as necessary to the industry as independent, non-chain bookstores are.
Compared to the sophomoric stuff done decades ago, I'd rather have what we have now.
Subscriptions are for mature spenders who already know what they want. Kids who would have to save for a sub or anyone who hasn't yet committed to buying them all is out of luck.
As for these bookstores that carry comics, those are big chains like Books-a-Million. Those aren't in every town, any more than comic books stores are. The nearest one to my town is eighty miles away.
I'm starting to get a whiff of urban provincial contempt for the hicks too stupid to live near good shopping.
As for these bookstores that carry comics, those are big chains like Books-a-Million. Those aren't in every town, any more than comic books stores are. The nearest one to my town is eighty miles away.
I'm starting to get a whiff of urban provincial contempt for the hicks too stupid to live near good shopping.
Dusty Ayres
Commodore
STJ, I have no contempt for you or anybody else that's rural, and it's your choice. You can either complain about it, or do something about it as I've suggested (there are also mail order companies, on line and off line, that sell comic books). Either way, you're not going to see comic books on sale at the Piggly-Wiggly or whatever supermarket chain you have where you live, because they don't sell them anymore. Possibly, they may even have given reasons for doing so; have you ever asked?
EDIT: As for the kids, they can ask Mom or Dad for the money to subscribe to comic book titles, and they most likely would oblige.
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Dusty Ayres
Commodore
^^^Will check it out. Following is refugee post from another thread.
"Without seeing some samples, how can I tell if a sub is worth it? Subscriptions are blind buys.
Trying to sell the house and move to a bigger town with a comic book store strikes me as kind of crazy anyhow, but, in this housing market?
"
"Without seeing some samples, how can I tell if a sub is worth it? Subscriptions are blind buys.
Trying to sell the house and move to a bigger town with a comic book store strikes me as kind of crazy anyhow, but, in this housing market?
"B. Dalton? Didn't they go out of business? Borders, Barnes and Noble, yeah, they're around. And they carry trades exclusively. No periodicals at all.
As others have posted, dedicated bookstores are few in number compared to the number of potential customers, and located in remote areas far from the average buyer. Subscriptions are pretty much the exclusive province of those who already know what they want, and kids are an audience that by definition doesn't know what they want because they've never been exposed to it before. As I said before, the biggest problem is Diamond Distributers. They refuse to market comics to the grocery stores, so they couldn't refuse to carry them if they wanted to. Once upon a time, not that long ago, the grocery stores, book chains, and newsstands were the only places where comics could be found, and they were in those locations literally by the millions, by more publishers, big name and independent alike, than there are today.
Considering that what you call sophomoric is all ages, and what you call 'mature' today is, by dictionary definition, sophomoric, you can keep the crap you get today. I'll take the stuff I can show to my kids to get them to like comics.
IIRC, the dominance of the direct market was a result of comic book companies being able to make more money there than they could on the newsstands, and they could also push a larger selection of titles there. With the direct market, publishers could have smaller print runs of issues and not have to worry about eating the costs of returns, since there isn't a return policy (most comic book shops are simply stuck with any copies that don't sell, so they usually have to order very carefully).
In my area, I still see Marvel and DC titles in my local grocery stores, but the selection is incredibly small--only between four and six titles, tops--and absolutely nothing from the other independent publishers, aside from Archie. Something about having to pay for shelf space for each title (Marvel rose all of their few newsstand titles awhile ago to $4.00 to combat this, including those titles that are still $3.00 in the comic book shops).
In my area, I still see Marvel and DC titles in my local grocery stores, but the selection is incredibly small--only between four and six titles, tops--and absolutely nothing from the other independent publishers, aside from Archie. Something about having to pay for shelf space for each title (Marvel rose all of their few newsstand titles awhile ago to $4.00 to combat this, including those titles that are still $3.00 in the comic book shops).
Dusty Ayres
Commodore
Exactly what I was trying to say, C.E.-thanks.
The dominance of the direct market is due to Diamond Distributers being able to make more money from the comic shops than the newsstands, due to the no-return policy. Renting shelf space, which I've never heard of, and would be too big a hassle for the grocery stores/7-Elevens, has never been an issue.
Actually, shelf space is very much an issue in regards to every magazine. Magazines are not just placed randomly. Publishers do pay for where their publications are located (that's why some magazines always stay in front while others always stay in the back). Incidentally, it isn't just magazines, but the placement of the majority of items in a grocery store is paid for as well (ever notice why certain products always have more space than others?).
You can hate the direct market, but it made perfect business sense for publishers to pull out of the already declining newsstand market due to the greater profits that were available in the direct market. They went where the money was.
You can hate the direct market, but it made perfect business sense for publishers to pull out of the already declining newsstand market due to the greater profits that were available in the direct market. They went where the money was.
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=10745Comic Book Resources said:
Unfortunately going where the immediate money was pretty much killed off their biggest avenue for NEW readers. They might not have made as much money from newstand distribution, but newsstand (grocery/convenience store, etc) distibution put those books out their where casual and new readers could see them. And buy them. Today if you want to buy a comic you have to purposefully seek them out.
If I was a publisher and two thirds of my books were being returned on a routine basis, I might consider reducing my print runs by two thirds.Comic Book Resources said:
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