The Comic Industry
I had a really interesting conversation last night with a good friend of mine, The Geek Who Landed. We talked a little about the present state of the comic industry, and how people who were once avid fans and readers are being turned off to collecting. He brought up some great points that I agree with completely, so I thought I’d share (with his permission, of course).
THE GEEK: I had the strangest conversation today actually at my store that was weird. In the aspect of what’s going on with the comic industry. The massively erratic nature of it. My comic guy basically told me that if things don’t improve on their end within two years they could be out of business.
ILCT: D: Seriously?! That’s awful!
THE GEEK: I know! o.O I was shocked. I sort of did a double take. For I knew things weren’t great but jeez. He mostly mentioned it because of the fact that sales are down in a lot of things and mentioned within five years it could be bad.
ILCT: ;__; That’s sad. The comic industry really needs something to boost morale and interest again. It seems the more people I talk to, the more I find that folks just don’t want to buy or even read anymore.
ILCT: As a comic newbie, that’s pretty disheartening. It’s like I stepped into this hobby at the worst time.
THE GEEK: That’s a big part of what I said in there. I said that people just need to be re-energized again. For awhile when I got back into it back in the late 90’s it was a fascinating time period. Around when the new Avengers book came out by Kurt Busiek and George Perez it was a time period in which things looked grim but it worked out and it turned out okay in the end. Right now though people are in this state of mind in which nothing is really appealing to people. They’re suffering from massive event fatigue and sort of being into this shock comic age isn’t a great thing. The aspects of the 90’s of speculators jacking up prices of comics coming into play hasn’t helped morale for people at all.
THE GEEK: Right now people are looking for good stories, good art, and just in general just good books. They want to like comics they really do. They’re thirsty for something to catch their eye. New ideas, new energies, new thoughts, and so forth. They want that fire back. They’re dying for it.
THE GEEK: They feel like in a way the industry is letting them down and yes there are a good bit of great titles out there but they end up drowned out in the crap factor and it gets people cynical. Also that little aspect of 3.99 a pop for a lot of books isn’t helping.
ILCT: I agree entirely, man. And it SUCKS
ILCT: Not to mention that if there IS a good title, a lot of the time they just flippin’ milk it for all its worth rather than let it run its course. Too much merchandising, too many spin-offs..
THE GEEK: Exactly. Make note of Deadpool. Deadpool is an giant example of this right now. I like the character by nature but right now he’s being so overmilked it’s not even funny. Terrible really if you think about it.
Check out The Geek Who Landed on Youtube and Twitter! He also does fantastic reviews.
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-9 Comments-
Hi ILCT ,
I f I didn’t mention it already, I’ve subbed to your blog. :-)
I know the comics industry has been treading water lately, but
while I agree with the Geek that ppl are longing for good art,
good stories and the like….. I believe that that’s a bit of an
over-simplefication, because while all those things are true,
simply to state that folks just want more quality…..does not
take into account that tastes vary.
So that even if their’s a huge ground swell of quality, if it’s
spread out over a myriad of titles…without any particular block
of titles getting the lions share, everybody’s back still at square
one
Cool interview, I hope that you post more!
Continued success to you
Hi Phil!
Thanks so much for subbing, I really appreciate it!
I understand what you mean. There probably was some over-simplification involved in terms of how I worded things, and I think we were just trying to get the main point across, haha.
– ILCT
I would question the premise that people want to enjoy comics at all. Go onto any message board and the majority of posts are just people bitching about how so and so change x thing that they love or are ruinning all of their fond memories of y from their childhood.
Do people still collect comics as an investment scheme?
I agree that people will always look for faults, that goes for everything. And, unfortunately, yes – comic fans, especially, dislike change (take the new Wonder Woman costume or Jaime Reyes as the new Blue Beetle). I think (and hope) that as a new generation of comic-lovers grows, that they will be more open to what writers and artists in the industry are trying to do in expanding things with change. And, hopefully, get over comics as an investment scheme. Someone on Twitter recently said something along the lines of “you shouldn’t buy a comic because of what you think it’ll be worth in the future – you should buy it because you want to read it.” Hit the nail on the head! But, there are definitely still folks who love comics for the sake of loving and wanting to read them (like me!). I just wish we were more vocal about it.
We can all agree that the industry has a ‘milking’ problem. They also have a ‘finishing’ problem. What I mean, is that most major events that take place over a year long period, spanning numerous titles(milking), almost always fizzle at the end(Civil War, World War Hulk). Even more fatal is that they never really end. Why is it that every event has its own “aftermath” event? If the story had any lasting significance on the characters, it would be evident in all subsequent stories and you wouldn’t need to label it.
What about the not-so-deadly, not-so-final deaths? When will everyone just stay dead? It becomes tiresome to see characters you enjoy being dragged back and forth between the living and the dead(Jean Grey anyone?) There should always be a Bat-Man, Super-Man, Captain America, and Spider-Man for fans to follow but I think there needs to be a greater emphasis on the next generation.
Call me crazy but I thought Spider-Girl was amazing. Well…maybe not amazing, but it was a fresh start and it had a definite progressive feel to it. Perhaps with a better staff behind it, progressive titles like Spider-Girl could flourish and become the norm. Maybe then readers wouldn’t feel like they were Thor when they read their comics, perpetually stuck in an ever repeating Ragnarok cycle. If that doesn’t seem possible or in good taste, look at what has already been successfully done with Steve Rogers and Bucky, Dick Grayson and Tim Drake. and Wally West. They even almost got it right with Kyle Rayner and Bart Allen before they shoved those evolving characters to the side in favor of relying on familiar patterns again.
I believe that if ‘milking’ were minimized, and more finales felt final, fans would return, regardless of price tags. Great stories are what drove me to sneak into Mom’s change purse on Wednesdays as a kid. I never spent my lunch money in the cafeteria and allowances were stretched to insane lengths in pursuit of the next issue. Now as an adult, I need not stoop to such lows but the principle is the same: If something is really awesome and you really want it, you will find a way to get it, period.
I would start talking about how trade paperbacks and superhero movies are hurting the industry but I’ve gone on long enough….
I agree about finishing an arc, etc. For instead, Second Coming was great, and I guess it had some sense of finality what with mutant births happening again, but… It all seemed so forced and left the key questions that brought readers INTO the series unanswered. For instance, what happened with Hope?
Character deaths are tricky. For instance my favorite, Nightcrawler, died in Second Coming. I would love to see him re-enter the comics because I feel his death was unnecessary and cheap, but at the same time I feel like it would cheapen his character even further if he were brought back. A lot of times, under-appreciated characters like him amass a cult following only after they die (like Ted Kord), though so little emphasis was put on his passing in the first place that I doubt that will happen, either.
I agree! To take up the example of Ted Kord again: they recently released the demo of the live-action Blue Beetle show DC has in the works. 2/3 of the comments on the release were fans complaining how they would never come to accept Jaime Reyes as the new Blue Beetle, how Ted Kord is the only Blue Beetle, how DC is stupid to try this, etc. etc. Jaime is actually a very clever character and his comic (though it didn’t sell well) was fantastically written. Ted was great too, but he’s been dead for years! Move on people, change is not always so bad.
Actually this was interesting for I was talking with another friend of mine today and there’s another thing to add to this is the gimmicky nature of comics. The economy is one major thing too but the gimmick nature of death here, event there, finale there ooopps not a finale, and so on and so forth. That’s not helping the general industry at large right now.
People crave good stories, good art, and just in general quality in their comics. In any sort of genre mind you. For example you get into the manga boom. The manga boom here in the US was sparked because we were getting mostly some of the better stuff for a bit there coming out of japan. Now we’re hitting the weird patch in which once the boom began we started getting well everything. We have gotten some pretty painful stuff here in the states because of that and it didn’t help matters.
Now we get into our current comic industry and you see that one some people are trying to revive the speculator market. Oh it’s been there but it’s coming back with a vengeance. That’s not helping. I’m deadly serious with mass variant covers and trying to inflate sales in that matter doesn’t help things. I’m actually researching into these aspects for an upcoming video series. This is one of those things that can be explored for ages and should be. For the thing is right now we cannot be defeatist in the attitude involving comics. We have to as fans speak to what we want. More on this later…
Oh God, the variant covers… That makes me so upset. I mean, sometimes they’re beautiful, but why can’t they just include them in every issue? Or just release ONE variant? Or have several variants, if you absolutely must, that are all equally stocked in stores? Instead of this “omg this issue is gunna cost $15 because it’s speshul” crap.
Excellent post! Really loved it, havent seen an artice this good in a while.