That has been true for a long time now. The number of people who read the actual comic books is very, very small compared to those seeing the same characters in other media.
Yep. Which is why, throughout history, comics have incorporated characters and ideas created for their mass-media adaptations. Superman comics took the
Daily Planet from the newspaper comic strip and Perry White, Jimmy Olsen, and kryptonite from radio, and allegedly Superman's ability to fly from the theatrical animated shorts, though I think he was flying on radio before that (or jumping in a way treated indistinguishably from flight). Batman comics adopted Mr. Freeze from the Adam West series (before then he'd been a single-use villain named Mr. Zero) and changed Catwoman's look to resemble the TV version; then a generation later they revamped Gotham City to look like it did in the Tim Burton movies, then adopted Harley Quinn, Renee Montoya, the Paul Dini version of Mr. Freeze, and Lock-Up from B:TAS. The comics' Incredible Hulk spent a few years as a lonely wanderer when the Bill Bixby TV series was on the air. The current Marvel comics have adopted a black Nick Fury, Agent Coulson, and the
Agents of SHIELD characters into the comics. And the Green Arrow comics have added John Diggle from the
Arrow TV series and revamped the pre-existing Felicity Smoak character into a closer parallel for the TV version.
Which is why its odd to me that DC and Marvel use recent reboots and story lines to be adapted into tv shows and movies. Presumably because they are "successful" in the comics. We are talking about the lowest comic readership in the history of the business. So is that representative of anything? Other than pleasing a small niche. It would be nice if they explored their whole history for ideas, back when the readership numbers mattered.
I don't think the readership figures of comics were ever large enough to make much difference by TV and movie audience standards, except maybe decades ago. And the shows and films do draw on older as well as newer ideas; for instance, the upcoming
Daredevil series looks like it'll be drawing far more on the Frank Miller era than the current Mark Waid era. And
Batman v Superman is drawing heavily (far too heavily, I feel) on
The Dark Knight Returns, which came out nearly 30 years ago.
I think the use of current ideas has a lot to do with the fact that the comics creators themselves have taken more direct charge of their screen adaptations (whereas a lot of screenwriters for comics projects have moved into comics writing in turn). So both the comics and the films/shows are drawing on the same pool of ideas from many of the same people.
