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Is the Comic Book Industry Dying or Thriving? (gamesradar.com) 163

Somewhere on Yahoo, one writer asks "Is the comic book industry dying or thriving?" There was a time when comic books were sold at newsstands alongside mainstream publications, according to Forbes, but that changed in the early 1980s when periodical comics all but disappeared from newsstands. From then on, the vast majority of comic books were sold through independently owned retail comic shops.
But GamesRadar+ notes a boom started in the 1990s — when comic books became an investment: Long story short, folks outside of regular comic book readers discovered that, in some cases, key comic book issues (such as those that debuted popular characters or titles) could be worth significant amounts of money on the secondary market, leading to some fans buying dozens of copies of a single issue in the hopes of someday capitalizing on their monetary value...

Someone should've explained supply and demand — the bubble burst because when everyone is buying and meticulously preserving a million copies of a comic book, there is no rarity to drive up the value to the level of less well-preserved comic books from earlier eras.

Their article also points out that this era saw the dawn of lucrative "variant covers". But the '90s also saw a rebellion of top Marvel artists who left to found Image comics, "the first major third-party publisher to challenge Marvel and DC's reign over the industry in years," which led to "a rise in independent and creator-owned comic books, both large and small, and helped the rising tide of indie publishers gain a solid foothold as an overall industry presence." (Presumably this "rising tide" would also include publishers of manga and anime-derived titles.)

So where are we now? The article on Yahoo notes the vast popularity of comic book movies, and also argues that "The billion-dollar comic business continues to boom." According to Publisher's Weekly, sales of comic books and graphic novels topped $1.28 billion in 2020, an all-time high. It's no fluke. With a few exceptions — sales fell a little in 2017, for example — comic book sales have been rising consistently for decades.
But who's actually reading comic books? Is it teenagers? Nostalgic adults? Investing collectors? People who saw the movies first? (If you're 12 years old, are you going to read some comic book, or watch The Avengers?)

Comic books now also have to compete with incredibly immersive videogames, virtual reality, and a gazillion cellphone apps — not to mention social media, and even online fan fiction. So I'd be interested to hear the experiences of Slashdot's readers. It seems like we'd be a reasonably good cross section of geek culture — but can we solve the riddle of the state of the comic book industry today?

Share your own thoughts in the comments. Is the comic book industry dying or thriving?
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Is the Comic Book Industry Dying or Thriving?

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  • Steady as it goes (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Linsaran ( 728833 ) on Sunday October 17, 2021 @12:54PM (#61900737) Homepage
    There are some unique qualities to comics that make them attractive over other media. For one thing it's far easier to self publish a novel concept or story in comic form than it is to create a fully animated feature. It's also much easier to 'eyecatch' someone with a comic given it's visual medium than it is to sell someone on prose. It's less of a time investment than a full length book, which is appealing for both people trying to sample something to see if they'll enjoy it, and for people who don't have lengthy periods of time to sit and read. You can typically get through a chapter of a comic in just a few minutes.

    So I don't think that comics are dying per se, just like how radio didn't completely destroy the written medium, or video games destroy television. It's a different form of entertainment and has it's own strengths and weaknesses just like any other.

    • by quantaman ( 517394 ) on Sunday October 17, 2021 @04:09PM (#61901209)

      There are some unique qualities to comics that make them attractive over other media. For one thing it's far easier to self publish a novel concept or story in comic form than it is to create a fully animated feature. It's also much easier to 'eyecatch' someone with a comic given it's visual medium than it is to sell someone on prose. It's less of a time investment than a full length book, which is appealing for both people trying to sample something to see if they'll enjoy it, and for people who don't have lengthy periods of time to sit and read. You can typically get through a chapter of a comic in just a few minutes.

      So I don't think that comics are dying per se, just like how radio didn't completely destroy the written medium, or video games destroy television. It's a different form of entertainment and has it's own strengths and weaknesses just like any other.

      It didn't destroy them, but it changed them.

      Radio destroyed the kind of serialized novels that Dicken's did. Episodic dramas transitioned to radio, and then from radio to television.

      Serialized storytelling involving superheroes used to be beyond the budget of television, now that television (and movies) are able to tell the same stories the audience is moving away from the comic books. Not to mention the Internet is eating up a lot of the "casual entertainment" time that comics used to fill.

      Comics won't die, but the niche they occupy has gotten a lot smaller, and they'll have to shrink to match it or find a different format.

  • by fustakrakich ( 1673220 ) on Sunday October 17, 2021 @01:01PM (#61900749) Journal

    Ask Netcraft...

    • by SniffTheGlove ( 1261240 ) on Sunday October 17, 2021 @01:07PM (#61900773)

      Ask Nerdrotic on Youtube, Used to won a comic in SF but the comic industry went down hill brfore the pandemic, during the pandemic they closed lots of shop as DC/Marvel stopped distributing them.

      • by RightwingNutjob ( 1302813 ) on Sunday October 17, 2021 @02:12PM (#61900937)

        I'm pretty sure his answer would be "woke liberals killed x" for whatever value of x you want.

        I only came across him a year or so ago, so I don't know (or care) if he's a life long rightie or if it was the lockdowns and the poor quality writing for Discovery and Picard that redpilled him hard...

        All I know is that he's a grown-ass man making his money by yelling into a camera about fictional characters he now hates. Diverting...in the same way that "My 600lb Life" is. Not something I care to watch regularly or often.

    • It's been in various stages of multiple organ failure for 30-40 years.
      Around 2000 it went full brain dead.
      Around 2010, the entire thing was doing nothing but mouldering in a grave.

      The people in charge have fed the entire industry fish tank cleaner cocktail, cut with strychnine.

      And all these useless, talentless nothings do when their ideads turn out to be shit is they get ignored.

  • So what (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Aaaarrrggh ( 8470263 ) on Sunday October 17, 2021 @01:02PM (#61900751)
    You know the answer but maybe too scared to say it aloud. American comic books are dying while manga is thriving. Why? Because one of them is a better product, that respects the customer and has an actual plot.
    • It wasn't because Manga was better, it's because there's a much more diverse range of styles and subject material. But more than anything else... porn.
      • Also a lot of it is black & white on newsprint-type paper. Keeping costs low means fans can afford to buy more items each month.

        • by PCM2 ( 4486 )

          Keeping costs low means fans can afford to buy more items each month.

          Well, or more pages at any given interaction. The $12 you spend on a volume of manga gets you 5x more pages, or more, than a modern, $4.99 single issue of a comic book.

    • Manga is thriving mostly because of merchandising and anime made around it. Also, veteran manga readers would be glad to tell you how manga is getting dumbed down (hint: Isekai/Harem)

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      American comics haven't been doing this well for decades. The movies have brought in a lot of new readers. The writers responded by reinventing the characters, which upset some people who don't buy comics but worked well with new readers looking for somewhere to start and stories that resonated with them.

    • I don't know about that.

      Manga may be (maybe...) selling more physical copies, but it seems that digital comics that are selling, are more western (I'm aware there is a piracy issue). Also, western comics on an IP level seem to also be making bucket loads more, see the entire Marvel Universe movies, DC movies, The Walking Dead series. I'm not aware of any manga making anywhere near as much money as these. Now add video games to the mix with western comic IP vs manga IP.

      According to Comichron, manga digital s
  • Newsstands? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MMC Monster ( 602931 ) on Sunday October 17, 2021 @01:04PM (#61900759)

    I anyone buying newspapers in news stands? Who cares if comic books are sold there?

    I buy comics at the local book store. Every Barnes and Nobles I've been to has at least a couple shelves of comics: Trade Paper Backs (TPBs), which are collections of multiple issues that cover a single story line.

    I haven't bought single issues in decades, but buy a lot more TPBs than I did back in the 80s. If I want single issues or special orders, I'll go to the local comic store. Every town I've been to has one. My kids are teenagers and mostly read comics in TPBs, as well. They're generally not interested in buying single issues.

    A better article would be the metamorphosis of the local Comic Book store. What have they evolved to when there are less casual readers?

    Comic Book stores I've been to also do a lot of table top gaming (ie: D&D, Magic The Gathering, etc.), comic-related merch (ie: posters, T-Shirts, etc.), and whatever their communities want. They also will special-order and hold non-comic items (ie: SF/Fantasy novels) for regular customers.

    • What the hell is a newsstand? Oh, you mean like a Kindle for old people.
      • It's like a Food Truck but they sell hardcopy books, trinkets, and small trade publications.
      • No, it's like a kindle for unwoke people.

        Those savages!

        Do you know that once they buy their hardcopy paper newspapers, books, and comics, it's not possible to revoke their access to them when the subject matter invariably becomes problematic all the bad ist's and phobic's?

        Why there ought to be a law...

  • by Lando242 ( 1322757 ) on Sunday October 17, 2021 @01:13PM (#61900787)
    I do ready a few titles from the big two but then mostly their smaller series. Ms. Marvel (Kamala Kahn), Harley Quinn, Ghost Spider (Spider Gwen), Shazam, that kind of thing. Often times these series are only limited runs or run intermittently. They have only a single creative team working on them and have cohesive storylines. Reading the larger series is kind of exhausting. There's often several Batman, Spiderman, Wonder Woman, etc. series running at once and keeping up is a chore in addition to being expensive. They also tend to be uneven in quality. I've read a few of the Marvel Star Wars books and only Darth Vader and Doctor Aphra kept me interested (I recommend both). For series that have been running for decades, whew, I don't even want to go down that rabbit hole.

    Manga is often the same way. Most times. you just start at volume 1 and you won't miss anything. Even if a series has been running for decades you just start at the beginning. I know that is a big criticism that people that read manga have when they are asked why they don't read American comics. With most manga titles having only a single author/creative team for their entire run vs the American system, where you sometimes have multiple writer/artist teams in a single issue. It can be jarring.

    As for the movies, I see almost all of them. I've seen every MCU film, several of the TV series, about half of the DCU movies (they have been very uneven in quality), and exactly one of the Sony X-Men films (Old Man Logan, again, because of quality issues). They are much easier to jump into because I don't have to worry about not knowing something about the character/setting.

    Oh man, don't even get me started on webcomics. Its like a whole nother world. You' don't see anything like Daughter of the Lilies, I Roved Out, or Kill 6 Billion Demons coming out of the standard American comic book industry. Image has published KSBD trades though. I don't think they would have touched it if it had been an original pitch versus an established online comic.
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The TNG Mirror Universe series was fun. New one dropping soon I hear.

    • Yep, exactly, I read a lot of manga and European graphic novels. I tried to read some comics, I couldn't, for the very reason you stated: where the fuck do I start? How many other series should I read it i want to understand that one character?

      It's way too much investment (money, time and effort wise). And it's not limited to comics, I tried getting into the star wars EU...

      But the problem is not inherent to comics, it's due to the system where characters are owned by corporations instead of authors.

      The corp

  • by LionKimbro ( 200000 ) on Sunday October 17, 2021 @01:14PM (#61900797) Homepage

    When I go to the local bookstore, I see shelf upon shelf upon shelf of manga (Japanese comics.)

    But the American comics get a single shelf.

    What are the sales figures for manga in the United States, vs. American comics? I'm looking around on the Internet, but having trouble finding figures.

    The theories presented in the headline here -- That (A) comics were overbought in the 1990s, and speculators are no longer buying, or (B) that video games, VR, phone apps, social media, and fan fiction are cutting into comics -- don't explain to me how it is that Japanese comics are booming, while American comics are suffering.

    If comics were overbought in the 1990s, that would mean that the demand for graphic storytelling was never very big at all. Either there is another huge surge today of manga speculation (seems odd to me, ... -- I see that anime festivals are very popular, and I don't think speculators can do that,) or there is an interest in graphic storytelling that goes beyond just 1990s speculation. And why would people speculate on Japanese comics, of all things, and not contemporary American comics?

    If the answer is that video game, VR, phone app, soc. media, and fan fiction are cutting into comics, -- then, why wouldn't they equally cut into interest in Japanese comics?

    And whatever the answer is, it should explain something about how it is that Japanese comics specifically are so attractive to people. And it isn't just American comics that Japanese comics are doing well against -- it's pretty much the entire Anglosphere -- European comics are totally a thing: Tin Tin, Asterix, Heavy Metal, etc.,.

    • by alexgieg ( 948359 ) <alexgieg@gmail.com> on Sunday October 17, 2021 @02:07PM (#61900915) Homepage

      What are the sales figures for manga in the United States, vs. American comics? I'm looking around on the Internet, but having trouble finding figures.

      A good source is ICv2's Markets section [icv2.com]. It regularly lists "top n" sales figures for comics in general and subcategories, with global rankings (comics and manga together) in the "NPD" articles. Alas, the actual sales figures are behind a paywall, but looking at the ordinal lists alone one can see that comics have been in very bad shape. September now [icv2.com] was the first month, in years, in which a Western comic entered the top 20, and only because it's a weird Batman/Fortnite crossover that likely appealed to players curious to check it.

      Sometimes someone on YouTube with a Pro subscription talks about the actual sales figures, and they're astounding. One from months ago showed the top manga titles sell 2 millions books per month, month after month, non-stop, while the most successful comic rarely reaches 60k per month, the odd exception being #1 issues following high expectations or weird stuff such as the aforementioned crossover, which however don't turn into consistent high(ish) sales in subsequent issues.

      To put it another way, the difference in sales is so enormous that the most successful comics are basically rounding errors compared to their manga counterparts. Mainstream Western comics are basically dead.

      Oh! And notice that the most successful manga, My Hero Academia, is a superhero story, which means comics readers are still enthusiastically purchasing superhero comics. What they've aren't doing anymore is purchasing Western superhero comics. DC, Marvel, Image and all the others simply don't create superhero stories that interest the fans of the genre anymore, so they turned to Shueisha, which thus has became the main worldwide publisher of superhero comics.

      • by Jiro ( 131519 )

        Not only is the most successful manga a superhero story, successful manga is littered with series that are *essentially* superhero stories--they feature characters with superpowers using them to fight each other, even if they don't have secret IDs and codenames. That list has Dragonball Super, Demon Slayer, Jujutsu Kaisen, and Chainsaw Man. August also has Jojo's Bizarre Adventure.

        I suspect that the biggest reason for the problem is that comics are just several times more expensive per page than manga. Th

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by alexgieg ( 948359 )

          I suspect that the biggest reason for the problem is that comics are just several times more expensive per page than manga.

          I think that partially reverses inverts cause and consequence. See, if comics stories were incredibly attractive to lots of readers, that'd increase sales, which would allow Western publishers to reduce cover prices in an effort to increase sales further, profiting from a low-margin/high-volume dynamics, as used to be the case for decades. But since stories have become unattractive to mainstream consumers, that results in the inverse dynamic, with publishers focusing themes and narratives on the ever shrink

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        That doesn't mean that comics are doing badly though, just that they aren't doing as well as manga. Comic sales are increasing, not dying off.

        I think the quality of manga is partly down to the shear amount of it being produced. There is a LOT being published in Japan and of course we only see the best best stuff that gets translated.

        • Comic sales are increasing, not dying off.

          The problem is that the yearly sales charts we find show aggregate values that include both manga and Western comics. So, yes, comics as a whole are selling more and more. But Western comics, specifically, are a different matter, which explains why it's hard to find figures showing how much they alone sell. And not only that, but the figures that do appear are of aggregate sales by distributors to points of sales, which don't deduct returns of unsold issues, if allowed, or their destruction or dumping at co

      • Young men aren't interested in reading Woke Shit(TM). That's why.
    • I haven't been paying attention to manga or comics in quite a while, but I think it's worth mentioning that the difference doesn't have to have much to do with any difference in any particular kind of "quality". Sometimes things just come and go because they're "new" or "old", and people want new things.

    • And whatever the answer is, it should explain something about how it is that Japanese comics specifically are so attractive to people.

      There's a lot of contributing factors to low demand for western comics but a huge one is they tend to hew towards giant tits and muscle action titles. To find western titles that aren't cover to cover tits and muscles you need to head to one of a dwindling number of comic book shops.

      Manga, even what's found in chain stores, is far more diverse in subject and content. There's

      • There's a lot of contributing factors to low demand for western comics but a huge one is they tend to hew towards giant tits and muscle action titles. To find western titles that aren't cover to cover tits and muscles you need to head to one of a dwindling number of comic book shops.

        I paused a while, not sure if this is parody? It's the complete opposite of what you describe. American publishers (e.g. Marvel, DC) have been doing their level best to defeat the 'male gaze', reducing breast sizes and making wo

  • There is still originality in original comic books. Not much profit.

    There is huge profit in the movies based on comic books, but not much originality.

    Which means the companies get the profit while the new artists get the credit.

    Which is basically the way the industry has ALWAYS been. The artists of Superman, Batman, and most of the employees of Stan Lee were basically screwed over by the companies.

    The true fans still exist and continue to be served. At least no idiots are trying to kill the industry by

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      There is tons of profit. Currently at least one of the best selling comic is a superhero story.

      It's just that it's a Japanese comic book, and therefore not woke. To the point where one of the big publishing bosses in Japan recently made a public comment that Japanese writers should get more woke to avoid potential censorship on western platforms, he got pilloried by the public so hard, he announced a significant pay cut for himself in his apology.

  • by Dirk Becher ( 1061828 ) on Sunday October 17, 2021 @01:32PM (#61900837)

    Another round of #1 issues.

  • I nearly picked up a couple of comics recently, and would have regretted the purchase. Almost half of the comics were ads and about five dollars each, and not that thick. Manga is a far better purchase, you get wayyy more story, a thicker volume and very little ads. Now for comics, there are publishers like Drawn & Quarterly that seem like actual works of art that you are buying, but in terms of conventional comics, it is a bad purchase. Sometimes you can get graphic novels on sale and that is a good bu
    • This isn't a good comparison. Manga is originally published in magazine form. The paper quality is not as good as American comics, you have to pay a lot more for the whole magazine, and it will also include tons of stuff you have no interest in reading on top of having ads in it. What you are talking about is the "Tank&#333;bon". It is the collection published after the story arc is completed without ads. It is also smaller than the original magazine size and often has pages that were originally in colo
      • And Slashdot ate the special characters. "Tank&#333;bon" should be Tankobon with a horizontal line above the first "o".
      • Noooo, I do have the option of buying manga at comic book shops. What you are referring to are Shonen Magazines. I am talking about 'Manga'. Big difference. Whether in Japan or elsewhere on the planet, you have the option of buying Manga. if you want to sample different things or are not sure what you want, Shonen Magazines could be the way to go. But Manga, by far, are much better value than comic books. Kindly get a clue.
        • Manga is the entire medium, not just the format you buy it in. "Shonen Magazines" are just one type of magazine available in Japan. Shonen means something like young teen male. There are many other types targeted at many other groups. Seinen (older male), shojo (teen female), josei (older female), and kodomo-muke (little kids) are the other major target demographics. Those are pretty board strokes too. We're not even getting into genres or anything.

          That said, in Japan they do not publish individual issues l
          • Yes, there are no manga in Japan. https://www.kanpai-japan.com/k... [kanpai-japan.com] Thanks for that.
            • I'm sorry, what exactly is it that you are trying to say? Is there some kind of translation issue going on? I'm not trying to denigrate you or anything, it just seems like you genuinely don't understand what I am saying...
              • Clearly, you suffer from cognitive dissonance. I can walk into a comic shop and spend five dollars on an issue of Doctor Who by Image comics and get 40% ads and a poor story. Or, I can spend ten dollars and get a manga, which has a far more comprehensive story, good art, and very little in the way of ads and a far better value. Granted, some of the stuff by Drawn & Quarterly is pricey, but the ads are few and you are generally buying 'art' in a comic book format. Otherwise, I will avoid getting ripped o
                • Again, you are buying a tankobon not a 'manga'. Manga just means 'Japanese comic'. A tankobon is the format of release. In this case a collection of individual issues that were originally serialized in a magazine. Comparing it to an individual issue of a western comic is not a valid comparison. Comparing it to a trade paperback is closer to correct. A trade paperback collects several issues of an American comic and is much cheaper than buying them all individually, just like a Tankobon.

                  The MSRP of most Amer
                  • Many comics started off in serialized form in newspapers, then graduated into comic book format. So what? Comics also come in different formats, like graphic novels. Guess what? Manga is still a great value, often better than conventional North American comics. Sure, some manga started off serialized in shonen mags for publishers to determine market, but that still does not change the value of a good manga. If you walk into a comic book or anime shop and ask for manga, the staff will know what you are talki
                    • I'm not talking about the format a comics starts in versus where they end up. Nor am I talking about the value of a manga as entertainment. You were comparing APPLES to ORANGES. Saying that a collection of a manga (aka a tankobon) is a better value than a single issue of a comic is disingenuous. Of course it is a better value! It is a release specifically meant to be a better value versus one that is not! You are comparing the the first release in a prestige format versus a lower quality, size reduced, mass
                    • Tell you what, if you can get the Japanese manga museum to change their name to tankobanko or whatever, then I will change, until then, it's a manga. I am pretty sure if you ask for manga in Japan, they will not give you used panties. Moreover, if you take your comics, rip out the ads, you are left with very little story. If you add up the comics it would require to match a manga for story (once you rip out the ads), manga still comes out ahead in terms of value. Sometimes comics are compressed into a compe
                    • >Tell you what, if you can get the Japanese manga museum to change their name to tankobanko or whatever
                      >I buy comics outside the USA
                      I think something has been lost in translation here, that is why you are having so much trouble with this. Manga means comics. It is not tied to a specific format. Newspaper comics are manga, magazine comics are manga, tankobon comics are manga. American comics released in Japan are called manga there. Tankobon means a collection of manga that were previously serialized (
                    • You are the buyer and are confronted with a Marvel/DC/DarkHorse/whatever and have to shell out either three or four dollars or whatever for 40% ads and 60% shitty story, more often than not. Then you have a manga that costs more, but a chance to immerse into continuity. You can get a Marvel compendium and pay more and get more story. The Manga costs a little less than a graphic novel but more than a comic, but you get something, more often than not, pretty cool and good value. The buyer does not have the so
  • by Morpeth ( 577066 ) on Sunday October 17, 2021 @01:38PM (#61900855)

    Hard for me to say, I don't buy as many these days -- I think the publishers are targeting the woke/SJW crowd (Superman's son is bisexual, bad guys are now just 'misunderstood' etc etc) so not sure if the new target audience is purchasing

    The same has happened to table top games like Dungeons & Dragons (https://humanevents.com/2020/08/26/the-woke-police-came-for-dungeons-dragons/) the portrayal or orcs and drow are 'racist' and they're being rewritten in newer versions, etc.

    Wizards of the Coast are removing 'problematic' cards from Magic because they're now racist or biased, etc. (https://www.rt.com/news/491582-magic-the-gathering-racism/)

    I think the old crowd of comic book buyers, AD&D gamers, etc. are 'out' as a target audience, which is interesting, since most of have way more expendable cash than teens and 20-somethings.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      so not sure if the new target audience is purchasing

      you know one thing you can absolutely count on from publicly held profit-making companies, that they do what makes them the most money, so yes, people are buying because the demand existed before the companies created the supply to meet it

      The same has happened to table top games like Dungeons & Dragons (https://humanevents.com/2020/08/26/the-woke-police-came-for-dungeons-dragons/) the portrayal or orcs and drow are 'racist' and they're being rewritten in newer versions, etc.

      Wizards of the Coast are removing 'problematic' cards from Magic because they're now racist or biased, etc. (https://www.rt.com/news/491582-magic-the-gathering-racism/)

      I think the old crowd of comic book buyers, AD&D gamers, etc. are 'out' as a target audience, which is interesting, since most of have way more expendable cash than teens and 20-somethings.

      Again, these companies are in business to make money, so obviously there is a demand for what they are selling.

      But I do take note that you posted links from a literal propaganda engine of a foreign enemy and an extreme right wing outlet known for outright lies and has a fl

      • you know one thing you can absolutely count on from publicly held profit-making companies, that they do what makes them the most money, so yes, people are buying because the demand existed before the companies created the supply to meet it

        No, they're really not. As quoted above from the industry's own statistics outlet ICv2, the top 20 comic series month to month in the United States are all manga from Japan, with only rare exception. The top 200 are utterly dominated by manga. NONE of the crap Marvel and DC are producing is selling worth a shit. There are world famous characters headlining books which sell less than 20,000 copies in a month, and this has been going on for years now. Meanwhile manga comics sell millions in the US alone

      • you know one thing you can absolutely count on from publicly held profit-making companies, that they do what makes them the most money, so yes, people are buying because the demand existed before the companies created the supply to meet it

        This is just, in this case sadly, not true. Both DC and Marvel have been shrinking steadily in sales. There is a multitude of reasons for this, but the end result is despite in theory being publicly held profit making companies, they have been making pretty much a whole host of decisions completely counter to that goal. However, both are insulated from the consequences of that as the public holdings are to much larger media entities. Still, even that protection is starting to wear thin as they have been

      • by Morpeth ( 577066 ) on Sunday October 17, 2021 @05:54PM (#61901525)

        You can get triggered by the websites if you'd like, but the information is correct -- those are just some articles I came across. I'm sure there are other sites than are more to your liking that confirm the information -- that Wizard of the Coast has made some significant changes to D&D and Magic that anyone would conclude are unarguable left leaning.

        Just saw today that they changed Superman's slogan and took out "... and the American Way" which will I'm sure upset many moderates and conservatives.
        https://www.cnet.com/news/supe... [cnet.com]

        Whatever the source, point it, comics and a lot of other 'nerd' hobbies are shifting. As it pertains to the question in the article, I think time will tell is the shift will pay off. Again, their crowd seems to be far-left / SJW or whatever you prefer to label it, but many of those folks are younger, maybe saddled with college debt and early in their careers, and I wonder how much spare cash they have.

        According to some other data others posted here, DC and Marvel seem to be struggling compared to manga (which I don't honestly know well), but perhaps the content/themes/subject or manga appeals to a larger audience, or at least one willing to spend the money.

      • by Mitreya ( 579078 )

        Again, these companies are in business to make money, so obviously there is a demand for what they are selling.

        I am less familiar with comics. So as an example, here's the viewing numbers for Batwoman [tvseriesfinale.com]. A show would normally have to have better numbers to be renewed, and yet they were renewed for Season 3. Maybe it's a brilliant marketing plan. Or maybe there are some other factors at play.

  • It is about quality. Few care to buy bad quality Western comics when you can read translated Japanese manga for free online. I am someone who has been reading Western comics and then lost interest in comics until I discovered manga. While there are crappy manga too (cliché, or bad story or bad art), in general it is easier to find manga with much higher quality and you can see that enormous amount of effort that went into them. In the past we had some good comics in West (Tintin, Gaston Lagaffe, Aster
  • I do periodically browse Comics & Graphic Novels section of the local foreign books importer (online, shop not in my city). Recently I found this section to be most exciting of books - perhaps because the notion of comics did diversify from what I see mentioned here. There are many original presentations of visual books, surprising with imagination and craft employed. This may be subjective, and not quite what you might accept as The Comics Book (where it is sliding into Graphic Novel), but I will sketc

  • by Bigbutt ( 65939 ) on Sunday October 17, 2021 @10:11PM (#61901823) Homepage Journal

    I’m an old fart. I stopped buying comics back in the late 70’s/early 80’s when they started reaching a buck a comic. We would buy a stack of comics from the 7/11 generally and pay 15 bucks for 20 or 30 comics. At 75 cents we started looking at finances and a little sideways at comics as a luxury. At a buck, we’re out. We can’t afford a comic habit and eat at the same time.

    My new wife and I were in the Army and we were making maybe $800 a month. We had to pay rent, car payment, utilities, car insurance, gas, and food out of that. (My current paycheck is about what I was getting paid per year back then! We had lower enlisted on foodstamps.)

    My biggest issue is sometimes we couldn’t afford comics that month or the comic we were following wasn’t available, sold out or we simply missed it. So there are gaps in the stories.

    Nowadays a comic is what, 4 or 5 bucks? I can buy a paperback book from Amazon or B&N for like 8 bucks. Of course it was like that back then more or less. Fifty cents for a comic and a buck or two for a paperback book.

    My books seem to have re-readability though, moreso than the comics I still have from back then. I’ve reread many of my paperbacks from back then but never reread any of the comics.

    [John]

  • I have friends who do comic book art and they're all telling me they have to get into other careers/passions because the industry is so near death, it's not really a sustainable way to make your living anymore. (One guy I'm friends with on Facebook is thinking of buying a food truck.)

    On the flip-side, I have friends who still love to patronize their local comic shops, and I've seen some of those shops grow and add new locations in recent years.

    I was never really much of a comic book reader. I used to get th

    • by RevDisk ( 740008 )
      I was never into comics. But I saw Invincible and really liked it. So I bought the phone book sized collections of the individual comics. It was pretty good so I went looking for other stuff. Basically coming in from scratch? Yeah, comics are in a bad place. From what I gathered, comics collapsed in the 90's. With sales low, pay is low for most creators at the big studios. Low pay means the bulk of creators are not going to turn out the best quality work. And if they're not in it for cash, they're in it f
  • by Joosy ( 787747 ) on Sunday October 17, 2021 @11:07PM (#61901903)

    When I was a kid (1960's) we read comic books (and played hide-and-seek, baseball, etc., etc.) because we had to come up with our own ways of being entertained. With smart phones in their pocket and a 75" TV showing cartoons 24 hours a day kids no longer have to hunt for entertainment or stimulation: it's slopped in their faces from the time they can walk.

    In the early 1980's some of the Marvel lines - particularly Daredevil - were pretty good. And Pacific Comics was an indie publisher with some great titles, such as Twisted Tales [wikipedia.org].

    By the 2000's when my kids were starting to read we would read old comics I bought on eBay, as well as Peanuts and Calvin & Hobbes. The new comics you could find (in comic book stores) didn't seem to be written for kids, but for adult collectors or the super-geeky with the patience to follow a complicated universe and its twisting soap opera plotlines.

    For young people today, the phrase "comic book" makes them think of a movie franchise, not anything printed on paper. And if the latest Black Widow movie is anything to go by, they're missing out on an awful lot.

    For me? I read comics sometimes to relax when going to bed ... but only scans of old comics (mostly pre-1970) - mystery, horror, sci-fi and romance (they're a riot!) - downloaded from sites like comicbookplus [comicbookplus.com] and loaded onto my 12" tablet.

  • by Qbertino ( 265505 ) <moiraNO@SPAMmodparlor.com> on Monday October 18, 2021 @03:34AM (#61902197)

    Do you mean the comic book industry or do you mean what US americans think is the comic book industry?

    To clarify: Comis is not Superhero Comics. In fact Superhero Comics are a very small subset of the comic book industry. The market of comics you might call "Eurocomics" that used to be called "Franco/Belgian Comics" is huge and ever grown, doing pretty fine. I've actively restrained myself from starting to many new series but I just finished a German one earliyer this year (Gung Ho [cross-cult.de] (Link is original German edition). Really good. Check it out. ... Those are eurostyle large A4 hardcovers, in case you're wondering about the price.) I could easily drop a few thousand euros on contemporary top-quality comics aka graphic novel series without a single super-hero in them. So that real comic book industry market certainly isn't dying.

    However, if you're talking about this "niche" that is superhero comics and mainly dominates in the US and that some USians might consider "the comic book industry", that could be dying, probably because customers are bored out of their effing mind on cheaply produced and way overpriced thin glossed "variant covers" repeatedly rehashing the same plot structure. That sure might be dying (I don't know, I don't read superhero stuff).

    AFAICT mangas are through the effing roof aswell. So, no, I don't think the actual comic book industry is dying.

    My 2 eurocents.

  • The thing about those numbers claiming that the comic book industry is doing better than ever is that the figures from when comic books were sold in news stands are not comparable to the ones we have today. Today's figures include independent artists' direct over-the-internet sales, crowdfunding and, most importantly, sales of manga which are beginning to eclipse that of western comic book series'. Singular manga series like Demon Slayer is selling issues in numbers both DC and Marvel only wish they could s
  • Superman etc are for children (and adult losers who like kidshit, get over it).

    Manga covers a far greater range and most is directed at adults. Digital sales are the major venue:

    https://www.asahi.com/ajw/arti... [asahi.com]

    "Combined sales of print and digital manga surged beyond 600 billion yen ($5.5 billion) in 2020 for the first time since records began in 1978, Shuppan Kagaku Kenkyujo (Research institute of publication science) said.

    The 23-percent year-on-year increase to 612.6 billion yen surpassed the previous sal

  • Every market has this and it's normal.

    Comics aren't going away.

  • by telek83 ( 1350439 ) on Monday October 18, 2021 @02:24PM (#61903789)

    It's clear why DC and Marvel aren't even in the top 20 anymore...No one wants a gay Superman that cries about the environment, they want a Superman that has a great story arc, not pandering to minority groups.

    Look at Manga, wanna know why it's becoming more and more popular? Because they don't push nonsense, like it or not, people don't want real life shit in their media, they want to get away from reality, and don't want to relate to the characters.. anyone who says they can relate to a being that has powers of any kind needs help, you can't hang upside down, you don't have claws coming out of your hands that are made from magic metal, you can't control peoples mind... how can you relate to these characters if you can't feel what they do? You can't.

    Comics in the west went woke, and now they are going to go broke... I don't understand how people don't understand this, if you don't sell what people want to buy, how long do you think you are going to stay in business for? Not very long! This is not rocket surgery!

As you will see, I told them, in no uncertain terms, to see Figure one. -- Dave "First Strike" Pare

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