Comic Books - What's wrong with the industry/format NOW?

[Chaos Descending]

In your opinion, what are the biggest blunders/problems/hurdles to overcome that are negatively affecting the comics industry and the comic book format in general today?

Just a few random thoughts of mine:
- Still viewed as "for kids", despite a wealth of excellent adult content.
- Too much market saturation (do we need fifty X-Books?)
- Too many cross-title "events" that are meant to drive sales, but intimidate the casual fan (at $3 a pop, these things rack up a monthly bill)!

What are your thoughts?

 

[Professor Zoom]

Monthly titles are too expensive.
Monthly title stories are built around being put into a trade paperback.
Monthly's are also becoming SO dark, SO grim, that fuck it, it ain't fun anymore.
Monthly titles exist.

They should move to trades. Mangas are doing well. They should look at that model.

 

[Luckyflux]

I love3d comic books my whole life, but as I got older I grew out of them. Now here I am 20 years later and I want to start reading a few books again. Not much, just a few titles of my favorites.....

That didn't take long. I found each book to be a continuation from some other book. Stories just seemed to continue on forever, tying and crossing over into other books. Not only was it too difficult to follow the story, but it made me pick up other titles that I wasn't into. So I would try to read those to follow the story I was into, and there really wasn't that much of the tie in story.

Plus, some of the stories I was reading it was very tough to tell what was going on. I mean, I didn't know too much of the back story behind each character, but I thought I knew enough. Well I was wrong again. As I was reading the stories, it was very difficult to tell what was the point.

So I didn't last too long with my comic resurgence. All I wanted was a good story with familiar characters. I was not able to find that.

 

[Chaos Descending]

So, one good solution would be to move away from the monthly titles, and instead make semi-annual or annual trade paperbacks with a more or less self contained story?

I like that idea.

 

[Professor Zoom]

So, one good solution would be to move away from the monthly titles, and instead make semi-annual or annual trade paperbacks with a more or less self contained story?

I like that idea.

I think Quarterly magazines with full stories or the occasional two parter would be great.

It would however substantially change the business model, and so, I don't see it happening very soon.

 

[M'rk son of Mogh]

So, one good solution would be to move away from the monthly titles, and instead make semi-annual or annual trade paperbacks with a more or less self contained story?

I like that idea.

Except those don't make the same kind of money as the monthlies.

So it doesn't seem likely.

(I've read Joe Quesada and Dan Didio both basically say the same thing. It won't happen because it basically can't.)

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

I've read Joe Quesada and Dan Didio both basically say the same thing. It won't happen because it basically can't.

The brothers Hernandez have been doing just that for the last couple of years and apparently, it works. Actually, European comics have been published that way for years and they're as popular as they've ever been.

 

[Professor Zoom]

I've read Joe Quesada and Dan Didio both basically say the same thing. It won't happen because it basically can't.

The brothers Hernandez have been doing just that for the last couple of years and apparently, it works. Actually, European comics have been published that way for years and they're as popular as they've ever been.

They also might be considered small business owners with no stock holders asking for greater profits. I can't see Warner Brothers or Disney being thrilled with an idea that means LESS profits. Or NO profits.

 

[Chaos Descending]

That leads us to the next problem. Maybe the corporate model isn't the best one for comics. Maybe the "small business" model is optimum.

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

They also might be considered small business owners with no stock holders asking for greater profits. I can't see Warner Brothers or Disney being thrilled with an idea that means LESS profits. Or NO profits.

"Small business?". Sure, the Brothers Hernandez can be considered small business owners. But European comic book publishers can't. To name just one example, Titeuf has sold millions and millions of copies and shows no sign of faltering. I'm sure Warner Brothers would love it if American comics sold that well.

 

[Derishton]

The corporate model has never been the best one for the arts, full stop. It can only do economies of scale, which allows (say) the music industry to use Carrie Underwood to make money so they can also publish edgier, lesser-known artists. Books and film work the same way.

Comic books haven't yet figured out fully that movies and video games drive whatever minimal interest there is in graphic works right now, not the other way around. DC is onto something with their adaptation of some arcs into direct-to-DVD features; Marvel is doing some of that too. The monthlies make money sometimes, but are perhaps now best seen as advertisements for other media adaptations.

 

[ToddPence]

Trying to hard to be "cool" and "edgy". It's all style over substance now.

 

[Professor Zoom]

The corporate model has never been the best one for the arts, full stop. It can only do economies of scale, which allows (say) the music industry to use Carrie Underwood to make money so they can also publish edgier, lesser-known artists. Books and film work the same way.

Comic books haven't yet figured out fully that movies and video games drive whatever minimal interest there is in graphic works right now, not the other way around. DC is onto something with their adaptation of some arcs into direct-to-DVD features; Marvel is doing some of that too. The monthlies make money sometimes, but are perhaps now best seen as advertisements for other media adaptations.

Emphasis mine.

I think that's exactly how Warners and Disney view DC and Marvel respectively. As think tanks for intellectual Property.

 

[Captain Craig]

My list of what's wrong:
-Monthlies are $3-4 a pop, too expensive for 22pgs. An issue of SI is $5 paper, ink, staff, I'm not buying the argument I get less for similar price in comics.
-Not on Newstands, not accessible to Joe Public. Isolated LCS's in a niche corner of one's Burb is not growing the industry
-Too Dark. Comics have been "too real" for the past 20yrs, especially this past decade. Fun is gone. Brain rapes, hell rape, Government imposed sanctions--just where is the escapist fun to Joe Public upon first glance?
-Overly connected. Can I just read about one characters journey without being concerned about 20 other characters?

 

[FPAlpha]

Most importantly.. creatively bankrupt.

Most mainstream comics i know are in an endless cycle of death and rebirth. Remember the huge hoopla when they "killed" Captain America or demasked Spider-Man?

What is happening now? Spider-Man has made a deal with the devil and all these life changing events are reset (including his marriage) and Steve Rogers wasn't really killed but hit by a special weapon and is in a sort of limbo waiting to return

What good is a dramatic death when you know neforehand that the character, if popular enough, will be resurrected soon by some far fetched method? All the drama is meaningless because nothing really changes and staying in one place is deadly.

 

[Derishton]

The death/rebirth arc is overdone, certainly, but it's part of a wider trend (especially in film): to be blockbuster is to always have to up the ante. At this point, the superhero genre is in a holding pattern which it markets as "the next new thing" each time. It would be better to return to more self-contained arcs - in fact, I've long thought it would be better to publish no more than 15 ongoing titles, all relatively self-contained, and do everything else in mini-series or one-shots. Captain America, to use the current example, is a mess right now, because the big events in his life all happen outside his title. So what's his title actually for?

 

[CaptainCanada]

Monthly titles exist.

They should move to trades. Mangas are doing well. They should look at that model.

The cost of trades would increase dramatically if monthly publishing was discontinued.

As it stands, the big problem the market has is lack of accessibility, since comic shops are too out-of-the-way for most people (though this wasn't entirely an industry choice; newstands and the like were a constantly shrinking market through the 1970s, because the comics weren't expensive enough for retailers to want to sell them; shops were as much a replacement for that market).

The next big thing in terms of format will be web distribution, which is still in its infancy, but things like the iPad are probably indicative of where things will go over the next ten years.

 

[Derishton]

As it stands, the big problem the market has is lack of accessibility, since comic shops are too out-of-the-way for most people (though this wasn't entirely an industry choice; newstands and the like were a constantly shrinking market through the 1970s, because the comics weren't expensive enough for retailers to want to sell them; shops were as much a replacement for that market).

Agreed, although the sheer number of book stores has not shielded the publishing industry as a whole from what looks like temrinal decline. If nobody reads - if nobody reads anything - it won't matter where the product can be found.

For comics, I'd link the market accessibility problem to the further problem of "too many title." It's easy, in my tiny town, to find issues of Amazing Spider-man and the Siege prelude. Siege itself? Not so much. New Avengers? Nope. The casual reader who's picked up a copy of Asm then finds that there's three more things he needs to read to know what's going on, and those things can only be found in the nearest comic shop - for me, that's a three hour drive. Reduce the number of titles and you have a better chance of getting core books into corner shops.

 

[Snaploud]

I think the biggest problem is editors with delusions of grandeur. Individual writers should have more freedom to tell their stories without having to tailor their work to the "next big event" (read: civil war or brand new day).

 

[Mysterion]

The event/crossover thing is getting to be a bit excessive. And it seems like we're sliding back into the exclusive/cover variant nonsense again this decade.