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?
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?
Steady as it goes (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Steady as it goes (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
dying or thriving? (Score:4, Funny)
Ask Netcraft...
Re:dying or thriving? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re: dying or thriving? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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Re:dying or thriving? Neither. (Score:2)
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)
Re: So what (Score:3)
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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.
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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.
Re: So what (Score:2)
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)
Re: So what (Score:2)
American comics have not exactly been short on merchandising and film/TV adaptations, yet the industry continues to flounder. There may be other reasons.
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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.
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Problem is that the "loyal customers" weren't buying comics. Sales were way down. Meanwhile manga sales were way up.
They realized that they needed to attract new readers, and they adapted. It worked too, sales went up.
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How were they insulted?
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Kids: this is what a censored media does to you. You're not aware of the most basic of facts.
Here's Kelly Sue DeConnick's message to comic book fans, that is quite famous and how can you not have heard of it. [youtube.com] This was in 2017.
How's it going in 2021? Kelly Sue DeConnick Laments The Abysmal State Of Comics After Telling People Not To Buy Her Books. [boundingintocomics.com] DeConnick said, "Boy, that's hard because from our perspective the industry has contracted and we're very worried about comics right now. So, it's always int
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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
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Music remains music,whether it's compact cassette, records, or as a file. Comics do not remain comics when characters and settings are adapted to video games or film. The corporate owners of the publishers have done well
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But now you're contradicting yourself. Music my remain music regardless of its shift, but you've ignored when I pointed out how it is also more used in other ways movie/tv license deals, etc (live performances, in ad campaigns, vid
Re: So what (Score:2)
You pretend not to understand, but I'm sure you're not actually that much of an idiot.
The comic industry is dying, the same way that the cd industry and the vhs industry died.
The superhero industry is still raking in money like the music and movies industries still are.
Whatever mental gymnastic you make will not change the fact that the cd and vhs industries are dead, and that the comic industry is following in step.
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Before reading this it's important to understand the concept of a category. 'a class or division of people or things regarded as having particular shared characteristicsâ(TM). A category describes things. Film, TV, novels, and comics are distinct categories of things. A film adaptation of a novel is not a novel.
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And the purchasing of comics even in physical has changed. When I was a child, it was single issues. Now, a lot of comics are coming in graphic novel packs and not just at my local comic shop but in books stores all over the country (my local Chapters has I think around 8-9 shelves full of western comics in graphic novel format, the manga section? 5-6).
But when you walk down those aisles, how many of those are The Walking Dead, or Batman, or a modern reprint of an extremely popular story from many years ago (in other words, Batman)? What I'm getting at is that the trade paperback market is a problematic way to break into comics. It's hard to want to invest $25+ on something you don't really know anything about. So most new comics try to break in with affordable pamphlets, but if those don't sell for some reason (which might have nothing to do with their p
Newsstands? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Re: Newsstands? (Score:2)
Re: Newsstands? (Score:2, Funny)
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...
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Just checked. I've got five comic book stores between me and my local mall (a half hour drive away). I've been to four of them.
I don't go often, but when I do I make sure I buy some stuff. Gotta support the local economy.
(Yes, yes. Survival of the fittest. But if I was being dispassionate and only buying stuff from the cheapest place available, my community would only have Dollar Stores and Amazon warehouses. It takes a community to keep a community together.)
I mostly read indie stuff. Especial creator owned. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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The TNG Mirror Universe series was fun. New one dropping soon I hear.
Re: I mostly read indie stuff. Especial creator ow (Score:2)
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
So: Why Are Japanese Comics a Thing, Then? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.,.
Re:So: Why Are Japanese Comics a Thing, Then? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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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
Money vs Originality (Score:2)
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
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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.
Only one thing can save them now (Score:5, Funny)
Another round of #1 issues.
Overpriced, ad-filled brochure? (Score:2)
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That said, in Japan they do not publish individual issues l
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The MSRP of most Amer
Re: Overpriced, ad-filled brochure? (Score:2)
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>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 (
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Change in target demographics (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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
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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
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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
Re:Change in target demographics (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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The regular audience probably don't recoil in horror like the conservatives, but they might find the material too preachy.
The normal is just to consider gays/lesbians etc as regular people, but if you keep hammering the regular folk, you end up on the same bargain bin as the overly ecological mascots of the 90's.
Preachy or just not compelling? (Score:2)
The regular audience probably don't recoil in horror like the conservatives, but they might find the material too preachy. The normal is just to consider gays/lesbians etc as regular people, but if you keep hammering the regular folk, you end up on the same bargain bin as the overly ecological mascots of the 90's.
Hmm, what I am hearing is not that you're being hammered, but the stories just weren't compelling, which I think is a nicer way to state it. I dig gay stories, if they're GOOD gay stories, for example. If your story is mundane, but with a queer twist, it sucks. If you tell all the same stories, but with a black actor, you're not doing much for diversity. If something is preachy, I read that as "uncompelling." I've seen some extremely preachy stories that were quite well told and thus I didn't think of
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"Conservatives like you"
And THIS is exactly the problem, I'm not a conservative, I'm a liberal (in the true sense of the word, not the "cancel anyone who doesn't agree with me 100%" self-righteous brand that's reared their ugly head); I'm pro gay rights/marriage, pro-reproductive rights, the typical platform of most Democrats.
What I DON'T do is live in an echo chamber of my own thoughts, and I try to avoid confirmation bias. While I do listen to NPR, CNN and the like, I will on occasion read news from the r
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Famously, Jerry Seinfeld said he'd never play college campuses because of wokeness run amok. Yup...people groan at your jokes...it can't be because they're stale and lame to that crowd...nope, college kids are too sensitive.
You are being disingenuous. The concern from Seinfeld and other comedians is not that people "groan at your jokes" but that you can be tarred, feathered, and run off campus.
I googled for an example:
The Asian American Alliance at Columbia University last week interrupted an act by a relatively prominent Indian American comedian and former writer for Saturday Night Live, Nimesh Patel, during a cultural event the group sponsored.
His offense: jokes -- including some about black and gay people -- that alliance members perceived as insensitive. Organizers kicked Patel offstage in the middle of his set, criticizing his gags on race and sexual orientation but letting him deliver brief closing remarks before cutting off his microphone.
https://www.insidehighered.com... [insidehighered.com]
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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 (Score:2)
Easy to digest artistic value (Score:2)
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
Aging Out (Score:3)
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]
Dying, but depends on your metrics... (Score:2)
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
Re: (Score:2)
It's a different world (Score:3)
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.
What Comic Book industry do you mean? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
I've seen this one. People are bored ofSuperheroes (Score:2)
Fudging the numbers (Score:2)
Manga is doing fine, traditional drivel less so (Score:2)
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
Ups and downs (Score:2)
Every market has this and it's normal.
Comics aren't going away.
politics and its cancer is what is killing comics (Score:3)
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!
Re:Removed from newstands (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah. Christians thought comic books were somehow related to Satan and created a huge moral panic (video games, D&D and heavy metal were also heavily assaulted during this same time).
At least they got one thing right. Satan is responsible for heavy metal and orgies. Meanwhile, god is responsible for plagues, great floods, and pandemics.
Makes you wonder whose side they're on.
Re:Removed from newstands (Score:5, Insightful)
This is true, but it not why comics disappeared from the general markets and newsstands. Spinner rack distribution disappeared for paperback books as well; the old national distribution model broke in the early 80s. Newsstands in general died-- still some in the largest cities, but they're thin on the ground elsewhere.
Differenent people had different explanations of why, but 'satanism' really wasn't it. http://jimshooter.com/2011/11/... [jimshooter.com]
Re: Removed from newstands (Score:3, Funny)
Gee...what could have been killing newstands for the past 35 years or so...?
What changed about the way people got their information in that time...?
It's a mystery and perhaps will remain a mystery forever with no hope of ever clawing that knowledge from the unforgiving sea of chaos...
clawing knowledge from the unforgiving sea (Score:4)
Gee...what could have been killing newstands for the past 35 years or so...? What changed about the way people got their information in that time...?
Hard to say. Not the advent of computers, certainly; the die off of newsstand circulation in the early 80s occurred when the internet was a text-only medium accessed by a dozen universities and national labs with 300-baud acoustic-coupled modems.
Possibly the advent of the chain bookstores and then the super-bookstores like Barnes and Noble?
It's a mystery and perhaps will remain a mystery forever with no hope of ever clawing that knowledge from the unforgiving sea of chaos...
If you come up with an answer, let me know.
Re: clawing knowledge from the unforgiving sea (Score:2)
Cable news started in the 80s
Pocket-sized AM/FM radios became a Big Thing in the 80s. You may not remember this obscure gizmo called a Walk-Man, but I'm told by people in the know that it had quite an effect on how people spent the idle time they might have otherwise spent with their faces buried in newspapers, print magazines, and comic books.
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Cable news started in the 80s
Well, it's a hypothesis hypothesis. News stands did sell was newspapers, and it's a plausible case that cable news could have caused a drop in newspaper sales, a drop in newspaper sales took newsstands out of business, and the newsstands going out of business took down paperback and comics circulation as collateral damage.
Only problem is: newspaper circulation didn't fall.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fa... [pewresearch.org]
Pocket-sized AM/FM radios became a Big Thing in the 80s. You may not remember this obscure gizmo called a Walk-Man, but I'm told by people in the know that it had quite an effect on how people spent the idle time they might have otherwise spent with their faces buried in newspapers, print magazines, and comic books.
I'm finding it hard to credit that people didn't buy comics or paperback books because they wer
Re: clawing knowledge from the unforgiving sea (Score:2)
Not all people who frequent a newsstand to purchase a newspaper would subscribe to that newspaper too. In fact, my guess would be that the overlap is small. If you come home to watch the news, that might cut into your desire to buy a newspaper for the trip home.
Newspaper subscriptions also used to be dirt cheap because the paper was subsidized by print ads. It's still the case that paper+digital subscriptions can be cheaper than all digital since there's fewer ads on the web version. At least for WSJ.
It's q
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If you come up with an answer, let me know.
People are looking at this backwards.
When the local independent comic stores opened, there were still comics in the supermarket checkout line. But they disappeared soon after that.
And the comic stores during that period were lucrative businesses, they were often crowded with long checkout lines.
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If you come up with an answer, let me know.
Saturday morning cartoons. They made all the good comics into TV series in the 80's and kids stopped reading them. Why bother when they are on TV now for free.
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I grew up in an area between dense suburbs and the farms further out and it was like 97 or 98 when the last comic rack disappeared from local stores. Even before then they had order sheets you could buy specific books with but once I found the comic store 15 miles away I never bought anywhere else.
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Comics aren't dying, they are more popular than ever. However because the US has only one company (Diamond) to distribute things, they decide what goes on shelves/racks. So if anyone is to blame it's Diamond.
On the internet however, comics have gone digital, and are easier to get than ever. Where in the 80's and 90's you could only get comics from book stores, if your city even had one.
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That article's really interesting. Thanks for posting a link to it.
Re:From the lifelong collectors I know (Score:5, Insightful)
Are they doing as well as manga? No. Why? Because manga has been open about what it allows in its pages for DECADES. Here you are going on about how manga has a larger market share and their content is way more "woke" than the stuff you see in American comics. It is like you don't even read manga. There are entire manga genres dedicated to this stuff. Go and look up yuri or yaoi and it will blow your wig back. That is the tamer stuff that they actually release here. You have no idea how deep the rabbit hole goes.
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Seriously, though, is there a record of this somewhere? Sounds interesting, from a sociological/intersectional perspective.
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Re: Thriving! (Score:2)
Come on now...a dude who makes a show of prancing around in a brightly-colored form-hugging outfit and pals around with all manner of purple-haired weirdos and you're surprised they made him gay?
Newsflash: Batman's a furry (got a thing for cats apparently) and The Flash has to report himself as a sex offender to the cops whenever he moves.
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Honestly, Deadpool one sounds funny enough to read.