The Shrinking Direct Market - Page 2

I read them and put them back on the shelf.

I don't even read the comics my roommate buys anymore. I pray weekly for the death of superhero comics so that the format can be freed to live up to its true potential.

You'll see the death of comics as a medium before you see publishers putting less emphasis on superhero books.

No you won't. You'll see the death of the major companies and you'll see the death of the specialty store. But the medium will live and will, in maybe ten years, thrive as a legitimate way of telling stories, not just as a haven for emotionally stunted fanboys.

I'll bet you that Oni sells more copies of SCOTT PILGRIM outside of comic stores than inside.

Marvel's Runaways, too.

Hell, look up how many copies Jeff Smith's Bone collections sell.

That's some emotionally stunted idealistic thinking. And for every Scott Pilgrim there are a thousand books you've never heard of, and never will.

Emotionally stunted? I just used SCOTT PILGRIM as an example because Bryan Lee O'Malley recently tweeted that Amazon had to reorder four times their initial order on Volume 5.

The superhero genre is death. I can't even think of another medium that has been so consumed by one genre. Is there any question that Bendis' early crime stuff is head and shoulders above the garbage he pumps out at Marvel? The fact that the direct market props up the corpse of the superhero comic means that it's the only genre that is a consistent 'money maker' (and I know how meaningless that term is in a market where more people read CHUD in a day than buy any of the top ten comics). The big companies and the direct market are clutched together in a death spiral, milking every penny out of the devolved audience to the point where instead of growing their market they kill it. The big two and the direct market pander to these people, keeping normal folks away from the medium; every time there's a stride in making comics legitimate in the eyes of the public, one of the big two kills a major character in a grab for newspaper attention and people remember what a debased, juvenile and moronic thing comics are (since the big two continues a campaign to make comics = superheroes).

I think I typed 'emotionally stunted' because I was reading it as I was responding. Anyways, I'm not disagreeing with you at all on what you just typed, but to say that in ten years the comic industry is going to be stripped down and reborn is way too short sighted. It will be at least another ten years until Marvel and DC start to feel the effects to the point where they have to make drastic changes in the way they do business.

I think I may make this an editorial, but I believe the new Depression could kill DC and Marvel as we know them within 18 months.

This is ridiculous. In Understanding Comics Scott McCleod cites a pre-columbian picture manuscript as an example of the medium, dated 1519. Looking outside American you can see the medium being successful with barely a mention of superheroes (the most obvious being Japan).

I think you'll always see stories with sepctacular events (dinosaurs, giant robots, psychic battles etc) because the special effects are cheaper to do it in comic form than they are in film.

Personally, I only buy a few superhero books (more if you count Hellboy) and then only the critically acclaimed ones (All Star Superman). But my bookshelf is stocked with things like Y the Last Man, Scott Pilgrim, Liberty Meadows Black Hole and Sandman.

Edit:
To clarify my point, comics existed before Marvel and DC and comics will exist after those two are gone.

Yeah, I wouldn't be particularly upset if DC and Marvel got out of the publishing game altogether and let some other genres breathe. But Devin, when you suggest Marvel and DC are on their way out, are you taking their movie successes into account? Because I was under the impression that that was where the Big Two made all their money these days, and comics were a loss leader (maybe not literally, but clearly the least profitable medium for them). Wouldn't that be enough to keep them in the comics game?

They aren't generating new properties at this point. What's the reason for them to exist? How long has it been since Mickey Mouse was in a new cartoon, and does Disney have a hard time selling stuff with his image on it?

I'm glad you read Understanding Comics, but I understand comics.

I think there was a new theatrical Mickey Mouse cartoon a few years ago. And isn't he in a recent TV show? On the Disney channel or whatever?

I think you do need to keep your brand active. Not that Spider-man couldn't survive on movies and TV shows in the short term, but I think "Marvel to stop publishing Spider-man comics" would amount to bad press.

It's not that I can't see the Big Two getting out of publishing comics entirely, but within 18 months seems kinda abrupt.

Have you looked at the economy?

What I'm saying is that Marvel and DC aren't on their own going to move away from superhero comics. The market has to demand it first, and on the whole of the industry, it just isn't.

It's simply not true that movies are overpriced

Theatrical viewing is not overpriced. If you compare movie tickets vs. other entertainment options you will find that the cost of a movie ticket is a better value than it was 20 years ago. It's cost has risen far less than most any out-of-the-home entertainment option.

However, the point you make about comics is a fair one.

It never will. Not in its current incarnation, anyway.

We've seen that comics are a viable medium to tell any sort of story, especially in recent years. But the comic book industry as we know it is all but completely driven by super hero books. And due to factors such as agining audience, lack of younger readers, inability for new companies to enter the market, and the eventual death of print media, it's going to be a super hero driven industry until it dies.

Now, the comic as a storytelling format? That's not going anywhere. Like somebody else said, if something like American Splendor were started in this day and age, it would be done online. That's where things are headed, and that's where the potential to break out of the superhero ghetto lies.

Yeah. Well, that goes back to my wondering about entertainment doing well or poorly in economic bad times. I think Marvel movies making money will allow them the nostalgia, or lack of vision, or whatever you want to call it, to keep clinging to their model for longer than 18 months. I mean, Marvel went bankrupt in the mid-90s and kept publishing. I think it would take a total regime change for them to ditch comics. But hey, I'm not psychic. Who knows where we'll be in a year and a half.

I think you very well may be right about them eventually chucking comics. I just think the timeline's too short.

When, not if...

For me, it seems a question of when the industry will reshape in some major fashion as opposed to if that will happen. If the last "Ultimate Final Crisis of Secret Civil Wars" hasn't truned things around, I don't suppose "Ultimate Final Crisis of Secret Civil Wars: Dark Reign" will do the trick.

Get to writing this, stat!

I used to be as big a Marvel Zombie as one could be, and I'm eagerly looking forward to Marvel and DC, for economics' sake, bailing on monthly comics and becoming more involved on the licensing part of things. That's where the money, and the audience, is now - cartoons, movies, video games, toys, etc. Chances are, even the most hardcore of comic collectors are going to eventually balk at dropping $3 - $5 for a monthly comic, and when that lot goes, so too will the industry. I'm anticipating a huge scale-back of titles from both companies, followed by more of a push towards the graphic novel end of things, probably within the next five years.

Prankster, you seem to be suggesting that movie profits will keep the comics afloat. But I really don't think they'll see it that way. If the movies are making money, and the comics aren't, the corporate powers-that-be will 86 the comics. I doubt they'll see it as cross-pollination. These characters are enough a part of the public consciousness that they can survive as TV and movie properties without the print forms.

This is especially an issue for DC, which doesn't have its own production company like Marvel. They're owned wholecloth by Warners, and they get to call all the shots.

The doomsday clock moves one minute closer to midnight:
http://www.comicsbeat.com/2010/04/12...-for-hachette/

Way to go, Marvel.

It's a smart move.

And it hurts Diamond in the process, so that's gravy.

I believe it. Related: I wonder how the bookstore/online Manga business has been doing. Is it still a popular cross-gender teen fad?
Well, if you've ever attended the Small Press Expo in Maryland, you'll see that many of these indie guys still try and keep print alive:

http://www.spxpo.com/

It's more for love of the medium than a roadway to success, but...

That's just it. The only things keeping print comics alive are a sense of tradition, and a fear of change. We're moving away from physical media, not just in comics, but in music, movies, games, even books. Physically collecting content is an idea that's dying.

Creators and publishers alike need to shake off this traditional thinking and look to the future if they want their medium to survive.

It is a smart move and one that's about 14 years late.

Yes and no.
Electronic publishing should be embraced, absolutely. But there are still so many artistic and aesthetic merits in the printed page. Publishing will still survive as a niche item, which is fine by me as I like books.

As a guy who does webcomics, I'm always kind of astounded at the demand for dead-tree comics. It doesn't make a ton of sense to me, but it's definitely there. I can sell print versions of comics I do online for free, and I'm small fry--people like Chris Onstad and Nicholas Gurewich make a living with print editions of their comics, which are available online for free in their entirety.

So while we may be moving towards more electronic delivery, print comics aren't going away anytime soon. (I include TPBs and graphic novels in this. Floppies may indeed be on the way out, although people have been saying that for years...)

The thing is, Marvel and DC comics are boutique offerings for a niche audience at this point. They already had their big market crash and lost most of their populist appeal back in the mid-90s. If the current crowd of hardcore nerds can keep DC and Marvel afloat in the floppy biz, with the economy as bad as it's been, they'll stay afloat. It is possible that a corporate decision from on high could kill them, but as I said upthread, an announcement that Marvel isn't going to publish monthly comics anymore would probably be seen as bad press.

I predict that superhero floppies and the direct market, while not dying out, will remain a niche for hardcore hobbyists, and be drastically overshadowed by TPBs, OGNs, and online strips within the next few years. Marvel and DC will attempt a series of increasingly desperate moves to muscle into this market (the first of which we've already seen) but they'll probably have better luck with reprints of classic comics than with new material (and Vertigo trades, in DC's case). At that point, they'll be weakened and go into a decline, and in maybe a decade the Big Two will quietly stop publication of original superhero floppies. I wouldn't count on that happening for another five years or so at the earliest, though, barring some major external catastrophe.

God bless ya, Prankster, you're the eternal optimist.
You really do believe that regular people care enough about comic books that the cancelling of periodicals would be seen as bad press.

Sort of. It's like when Coke switched to New Coke. People, reasonably speaking, should not have given a shit, but nobody likes to hear about something they're familiar with falling by the wayside. In this case, there are plenty of people who hadn't read a Marvel or DC comic in years who would nevertheless be upset to hear that they'd stopped publication.

The ironic thing is, this isn't "optimistic" of me--I'd be ambivalent, at worst, to see the floppies go away. The comics medium is probably better served by bookstores and the web at this point, and the floppies were what enabled Marvel and DC and the direct market to keep an unhealthy stranglehold on the medium. I don't even think the death of floppies would kill local comics shops, if they knew what they were doing--they'd just become a kind of specialty bookstore. So I wouldn't really mind that much if they went away--I just don't think they will. People have been predicting their death for decades now, but as long as they have a loyal fanbase I think they'll stick around. That's why I'm predicting a slow fade instead of sudden death.

I can tell you, as someone who once self-published, after so much effort (writing, designing, penciling, inking, lettering, etc), that it's more rewarding to hold your final product in your hand and pass it out to people than it is to send a link to a website. Even if it's a Kinko's xeroxed 'zine.

EDIT: With that said, I do recognize how costly and increasingly impractical print is.

Not to mention environmentally unsound. I'm often amazed at how many of the liberal tree-hugging types are the same ones who say they could never give up physical books.

I can't wait for the day when I tell my grandkids to pick out their bedtime story and they grab their trusty ol ebooks and starts scrolling.[/SARCASM]

I'm honestly curious: how do the dead trees stack up to the energy consumed and pollution created by an ebook? Has there been any research done?

That's a good question, but I have to assume that deforestation is a bigger threat to the environment than energy consumption. Especially now that these devices aren't using disposable batteries anymore.

But I should check that out.

It's more fixed costs than variable costs, so I would imagine that enough copies make it environmentally preferable to paper books, given that you don't need to keep chopping down trees to get more ebooks.

Edit: The marginal cost for each additional ebook made and distributed is lower than that of a paperback I'd wager.

Another thing that bothers me about physical books is that they have to print up a certain number of them, regardless of how many wind up being sold. The rest get their covers torn off and wasted. EReading doesn't have this problem.

I don't imagine that comics use the same procedure, but there's got to be a certain amount of wasted print run.

Trees are a renewable resource, though. There are issues with old-growth logging, but I was under the impression that it was the paper products market--tissues, toilet paper, and so on--that was guilty of this, and that newspapers and books got most of their material from paper farms.

I admit I'm not 100% on this, but certainly there's no reason that buying paper books *have* to contribute to deforestation.

That may be true, And books may not be the main culprit, but cutting back on paper products can still only be a good thing. Paper mills themselves have a pretty dire environmental impact.

Not to mention the fuel consumption needed to transport them. Even the secondary book market has that problem.

Only tangentally related, but it does touch a lot on why the mindset of superhero comics is fucking itself, and to a lesser extent, culture in general.

Fascinating piece.

Makes me even happier that I stopped reading mainstream comics, because that would be driving me nuts.

Based on what I saw at Free Comic Book Day and the Toronto Comics Arts festival, I'm going to make a prediction: BOOM! comics' licensed kids line is going to be taking off something fierce in the next little while. They've already spawned imitators: there's Shrek and Madagascar comics from, I think, Ape Entertainment and a Fraggle Rock comic from Archaia. Now that it's starting to be collected in trades I think they're going to make a lot of money without any help from comic stores.

Wow that is an interesting read. I wonder if the Comic shops are seeing a decline in readership as a result? The Comic shop I used to frequent in Oakland has a pretty diverse customer base, even girls OMG!

It does mark a disturbing trend of a readership that is hiding from the world. At least the Denny O'Neal Green Arrow/Green Lantern series tried to engage with the real world (albeit in a ham fisted way). And the X-Men always appealed to any and all comic reading minorities.

Sims is more generous than I would be in letting them off the hook, by the way. I've heard some horror stories about people who had the temerity to work at DC and not be straight white males. Dwayne MacDuffie in particular seems to have been treated like shit.

Just to play Devil's Advocate for a second, and not addressing creative issues, but the financial aspects of comics aren't all doom and gloom. The market is shaky because they are selling more comics to fewer people, no question, but lines are bigger than ever. Both DC and Marvel will sell somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 different comic books each month, while DC was in the 20s for much of the '60s and Marvel was somewhere around 8 books in the '60s. Plus tpbs and expensive hardcovers. The average may have dropped, but I suspect that the total amount of books sold hasn't changed too much.

They're not paying for printing and pulping half the run that turned out to be returnable. And they pay their writers and artists a decent salary and royalties these days. There are problems, but I don't sense that things are worse than they were in the 1970s, with the DC Implosion being the big flashpoint, or post-crash 1990s. Heck, even in the 1980s you had the black and white explosion and crash and a bunch of publishers rise and fall, First and Eclipse probably most significantly. The current market has been pretty stable, even in the midst of a recession.

So, something is going right.

But, yeah, I agree that there has to be something done to bring in more than the superhero reader into the direct market. I'm not sure what can be done as there are plenty of non-superhero titles out there. Heck, DC even has Stephen King working for them on American Vampire. Is it marketing that's the problem?