The Comic Book Industry: Mediocre Products, Darn Good Drama

[anthony!]

You know, coming off of Wizard World Philly and the Kubert announcement just further reminds me that the comic book industry is far more interesting than the comics it produces.

And the best part is that this entertainment can be had for free. :cool:

Heck, the Marvel vs. DC thing is completely harmful to the industry in the long run, but its just so friggin' hypnotic!

[Yoda]

Heck, the Marvel vs. DC thing is completely harmful to the industry in the long run

Why do you think this is harmful?

[anthony!]

Why do you think this is harmful?


For a number of reasons...

I don't think it helps the medium of comics expand. The two companies could easily work together in tandum to get both their books on shelves and in new markets.

The exclusive war sucks, as it prevents/delays creators from doing awesome projects and keeps great stories and ideas from readers.

And personally I think the DC/Marvel war only helps comics remain handcuffed to the superhero genre. Yes I know DC is more diverse, but its not as if Vertigo has swept in an changed the entire industry permanently— if it had Marvel would have rushed to match Vertigo. To this day they don't bother competeing there.

So thats why off the top of my head

[Charles RB]

On paper, the competition between the two should be good, forcing them to make better & more diverse comics in order to outsell the other.

[kingdom2000]

All you have to do is look at the numbers for DC Countdown and others to know that this industry has about 20 years of life left if that. If 200000 is the best a dollar book can do, even assuming only 1 in 4 bought the book, that means looking at maybe 800,000 customers. And thats being generous. The industry is shrinking, not growing which is sad. Some of the best work both writing and art is coming out for the last few years, a crapload of great movies are coming out, and zero growth in the industry as a whole.

Most other industries would re-evalute and try to figure out what can be done. DC, Marvel, Wizard and Diamond continue to monitor their fiefdoms and play silly stupid games. Hell wizard alone, requiring the industry to pay for every article it makes (yeah read that right, if wizard does an article that isn't "Wizard presents" it was payed for), allowing pissing contests to get in the way (lack of coverage on miller, sin city and constantine). Right now those four have a shit load of avenues to truly advertise the comics they create using toys, movies, television, the web and so forth and they do absolutly nothing.

Their "big" effort is the waste of time "Free Comic Book Day" which requires a cash strapped direct market to foot the advertising costs for maybe a one or two day increase in traffic. Its great that Marvel now has a avenue into 7-11, but it seems thats less about expanding the market as having a fall back when the direct market collapses. Its a decent idea, but it will not work.

Yeah yeah everyone is all "but the kids, we just have to get the kids involved!". I agree, but assuming those kids are retards are not the way to do it which is the current approach. Kids are reading Harry Potter which isn't exactly simple or stupid, so writing stories like its 1960 isn't going to cut it. Until learn to write to kids instead of down to them, the industry needs to adandon that tack.

No what they need to do is use the advertising muscle at their (or parent companies) control. Hell simply putting the comic store hotline on everything is at least doing something. Even if putting it on back of every toy, on the tag for every stuff animal and object, before every movie, in with every comic related DVD and so forth. At least thats doing something. Playing pissing contests to other fans accomplishes absolutly zip. Great entertainment, zero reward for the industry as a whole. Sadly I don't see this insular attitude changing anytime soon and really with the rabid way fans behave and some retailers, that alone is a big ole strike one and two against the industry as a whole.

[Clement]

DC trying for years to get the Kuberts was a good story, and a sign of the competition between Marvel and DC, but them actually singing them, could mean 2 things. All I've seen so far on message boards is people saying how a big "fuck you" to marvel that is, and it might be that, but there's also another possibility, and it's not that DC went to great lenghts to get the Kuberts, but that Marvel didn't think they were important enough to keep them. Now, I'm not saying that's what happened, and I think both Kubert bros are great artists, but they are definetly not the big names they were in the 90s. it might be important from a symbolic point of view, but this is not like DC signed Bendis.

[Ian Boothby]

On paper, the competition between the two should be good, forcing them to make better & more diverse comics in order to outsell the other.

And yet what you get are bullshit stunts like House of M and Identity Crisis. Books that really only cater to the hardcore fan while at the same time using cheap drama like killing off B list characters, making fun bad guys psycho rapists and treating female characters as crazy or just having them do nothing.

None of this will expand the market, only cater to the already existing one while making the mainstream canvas of comics a darker place.

[PatrickG]

I think, style wise, comics need to be more sophisticated.

But I don't think Bendis or Azzarello or Johns are hooking the kids, exactly.

I think Cartoon Network has a much better grasp on appealing to a broader audience than either Marvel or DC do and they do it without convoluted plots or cryptic dialogue.

I think there are elements of the writing in 1960 that Marvel and DC need to recapture and instead they're targeting and marketing to the direct market... Which means they're writing to the same people who got hooked in 1989 and are now 15 years older.

I think DC had the right model in the sixties when they didn't count on or shoot for maintaining a readership longer than 4 years. Marvel and DC need a new marketing strategy and a business model which supports a rotating readership.

Super-heroes don't need to grow up. We need people who read super-heroes to either grow up or be satisfied with reading adolescent literature.

Wow, possibly the most alienating thing I've ever said on a comic book message board.

I just think we need MAJOR attempts at young fans. Not a side project that ties into a cartoon but a super-hero company whose central thrust is comics FOR kids that don't talk down to kids.

I'm just tired of Batman and Superman and Spider-man targeting forty year-old geeks. And any time anybody comes out and says this, forty year old geeks come out of the woodwork online to gripe about how they're keeping this industry alive with their $2.50.

In reality, I think this industry is headed for a persistent vegitative state and is being kept alive with jumper cables in a bunch of Baby Boomers and Gen Xers' basements when what it really needs is to breathe ethereal currents in the open sky on the kite strings of ten year-olds.

[kingdom2000]

Thats the problem...there is not "targeting". Just write a good story. Again Harry Potter or any Pixar film is a good example. Those are good stories that don't really target a specfic age group and more importantly assume that adolecents have some brains in there heads and CAN follow complicated stories. Your example with the cartoon network is valid is they have good shows that cater to any age group just as they have shows that cater to a specific age group.

But really in the end, Cartoon Network has something that comics don't have...an advertisement budget. All the catering to a specfic age group or what have you in the world will not matter if those people don't buy a comic to begin with. They don't know what to buy because the major pipe of piqueing people interests, advertisement, doesn't exist in comics. That is one major fix.

The second is price. Kids and adolencents can't afford paying $3 for a comic book. Drop all the pretty paper, go back to newsprint and charge no more then a buck or buck fifty. Return to the days where its a choice between a comic or a candy bar, not a comic or a CD, DVD rental, game, ring-tone, and all these other forms of entertainment that are readily available for the price of 5 comics.

Comics use to be and should always be "impulse" buys. Right now, even die hards have to carefully consider their budget when adding and removing books. The days of trying a new book for giggles is long gone which is large part of the reason that good comics get ignored. We just can't afford to give them a try without knowing absolutly they are worth the buy. Sadly thats how I find out the "buzz" books.

I just can't afford to buy everybook that piques my interest like I was able even 10 years ago. If I was the age i was when I started collecting now, I know I wouldn't have bothered to start, distracted by all the kick ass video games and dvds coming. Limited budgets mean limited choices and the first to go is a $3 comic book in most kids and adolecents (or their parents) list of priorties.

[anthony!]

See all the above proves my point.

This debate and cat-fighting over how to save the industry is tons more engaging than House of Infinite Identity Crisis on M Earths.

Everybody thinks they have the friggin' keys to the kingdom on this issue...

Comics and superheros have had respect for quite sometime now. Anyone who sees otherwise just isn't really following along.

Yes comics to a certain degree should always be an impulse buy, but unlike the market of 50 years ago you now have two very very distinctly different audiences 1.) kids who just want to read kick ass comics and 2.) adults who grew up on this shit and now worship it on a friggin' fine art level.

Both those audience require different approaches to satisfy them. Why do you think Vertigo is so popular with the "sophisticated" adults, yet Manga has taken off through the roof? With those polar opposites the superhero genre has attmpted to creatively satisfy BOTH at the same time, to horrendous and inconsistent results.

IMHO, the reason comics are dying is because they put all the eggs in the superhero genre back in the 60s. Stupid move. Marvel and DC did it to themselves. Now comics are seen and treated as a genre, not a medium.

If the industry had correctly expanded in the last 30 years, today you'd see your average comic book store have fiction, non-fiction, science fiction sections, etc. Instead its all a wash and its all the same.

Who the hell would regularly shop at a bookstore that only sold Fantasy books? Or only sold self-help books?

I'd love to see if a LCS out there have the balls to try something like that in a major mall or shopping outlet. I doubt it would work for lack of material to sell, but it would definately force the market to look at its problems.

[Spackling Compound]

DC trying for years to get the Kuberts was a good story, and a sign of the competition between Marvel and DC, but them actually singing them, could mean 2 things. All I've seen so far on message boards is people saying how a big "fuck you" to marvel that is, and it might be that, but there's also another possibility, and it's not that DC went to great lenghts to get the Kuberts, but that Marvel didn't think they were important enough to keep them. Now, I'm not saying that's what happened, and I think both Kubert bros are great artists, but they are definetly not the big names they were in the 90s. it might be important from a symbolic point of view, but this is not like DC signed Bendis.

It sounds like what happened in the 70's when DC got Jack Kirby over. Kirby just wasn't given a reason to stick with Marvel, from what I've read.

He did some good work at DC. Funny stuff, really. It just seems pretty great that DC gets Kirby and then says, "Here is the co-creator of the Avengers, the Hulk and Captain America! Let's get him to do Jimmy Olsen!" And then when he did Olsen, someone else drew in Superman and Olsen...

[angryrican]

Thats the problem...there is not "targeting". Just write a good story. Again Harry Potter or any Pixar film is a good example. Those are good stories that don't really target a specfic age group and more importantly assume that adolecents have some brains in there heads and CAN follow complicated stories. Your example with the cartoon network is valid is they have good shows that cater to any age group just as they have shows that cater to a specific age group.

But really in the end, Cartoon Network has something that comics don't have...an advertisement budget. All the catering to a specfic age group or what have you in the world will not matter if those people don't buy a comic to begin with. They don't know what to buy because the major pipe of piqueing people interests, advertisement, doesn't exist in comics. That is one major fix.

The second is price. Kids and adolencents can't afford paying $3 for a comic book. Drop all the pretty paper, go back to newsprint and charge no more then a buck or buck fifty. Return to the days where its a choice between a comic or a candy bar, not a comic or a CD, DVD rental, game, ring-tone, and all these other forms of entertainment that are readily available for the price of 5 comics.

Comics use to be and should always be "impulse" buys. Right now, even die hards have to carefully consider their budget when adding and removing books. The days of trying a new book for giggles is long gone which is large part of the reason that good comics get ignored. We just can't afford to give them a try without knowing absolutly they are worth the buy. Sadly thats how I find out the "buzz" books.

I just can't afford to buy everybook that piques my interest like I was able even 10 years ago. If I was the age i was when I started collecting now, I know I wouldn't have bothered to start, distracted by all the kick ass video games and dvds coming. Limited budgets mean limited choices and the first to go is a $3 comic book in most kids and adolecents (or their parents) list of priorties.


Amen...

There is so much competition for the entertainment dollar that it's really hard for a kid or even some adults to plunk down $3 for 10-15 min of entertainment.

Just put out good stories. Not everything has to be a massive event like Infinite Crisis or House of M. That is why certain storylines like "The Dark Phoenix Saga" or "The Judas Contract" can still hold up.

This decompressed storytelling method must stop. I love Warren Ellis as much as anyone, but he can really drag something out. I miss the old days when you got more bang for your buck. I reread Batman:Year One a couple weeks ago and realized that this story would have been a 12 issue maxi series if it were released today. So much happens in the first issue alone that I was almost ovewhelmed.

[anthony!]

There is so much competition for the entertainment dollar that it's really hard for a kid or even some adults to plunk down $3 for 10-15 min of entertainment.

I'd also like my stories to be rereadable. Whats the point of $3 for 10 minutes of entertainment. I might as well throw the comic away at that point...its just taking up space in my apartment.

I've read Marvels, DKR, Watchmen, Kingdom Come, Year One, God Loves Man Kills many times now— and they are still good and entertaining.

[angryrican]

I'd also like my stories to be rereadable. Whats the point of $3 for 10 minutes of entertainment. I might as well throw the comic away at that point...its just taking up space in my apartment.

I've read Marvels, DKR, Watchmen, Kingdom Come, Year One, God Loves Man Kills many times now— and they are still good and entertaining.

Another fine point.