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Thread: Fix the Comic Industry

  1. Arcade Fix the Comic Industry

    I saw a surprising statistic the other day that there's only 200-some comic shops currently in operation, down from upwards of a thousand in the 70's/80's. Superhero films are going great guns, but the source industry seems not to be benefitting much. Yeah, I know Civil War is selling great, and that's certainly nice and all, but one event does not an industry revive.

    So, what would you do to turn things around?

    ------
    First and foremost, magazine-esque, Shonen Jump-style digests should be adopted. Let's face it, $3 for a 22-page read that can be finished in 5-15 minutes is a pretty crummy cost-reward proposition relative to other forms of entertainment. $5-6 for 100-150 pages and several story installments would be a much more enticing deal. And it would be a much better testing ground for new titles than the current method... rather than asking the reader to seperately pick up a title they have no inclination towards, this way you can rope 'em in with the big names and then gage what works and what doesn't before a broader audience... If something doesn't work, the customer won't feel so ripped off because there's other stories to fall back on, and if it does work, it creates a successful new title that may have otherwise not have been given a chance by most consumers and fallen flat on its face seperately.

    And hey, maybe if it looked more like a magazine it could get grouped with the other magazines where the average person would see it, instead of at knee-level grouped with a smattering of coloring and board books.

    One interesting notion that I came across somewhere and agree with is that there needs to be more crap. By that, I mean big budget movie-style, shut your mind off and have a good time drivel. The European market has been driven by stuff like XIII and Martin Mystery, Japan by Dragonball Z and Detective Conan. One could of course argue that superhero comics are just this, and I don't disagree, but it just takes up too much of the pie. I know there's plenty of non-cape books out there, but you sure wouldn't know it by the marketing dollars allocated. The movie industry wouldn't fare too well if all they really ever got behind was superhero movies, and the comic industry has emphatically proven this.

    One recent try at this actually did enormously well; Cliffhanger comics created a huge buzz in the industry, and what were they? Fairly low-brow but artistically lush genre pieces by well-established names within the industry... the perfect approximation of the Hollywood blockbuster formula! The line was betrayed by continual delays, but it proved without a doubt that the non-cape books can be successful with big names and a little marketing muscle behind them. The model need to be dusted off and put into play again... preferably, again, in the digest format where customers are largely in charge of shaping the book into a maximum success. This would also alleviate the Cliffhanger dilemma, as a missing title could simply be filled in with another that could threaten to replace it if recieved well enough. This mercenary model would ensure a bit more timeliness from those involved, methinks.

    So, there's my piece. What say you, knaves?
    Last edited by Bacon McShig; 26 Jun 2006 at 05:12 PM.

  2. Quote Originally Posted by Bacon
    Let's face it, $3 for a 22-page read that can be finished in 5-15 minutes is a pretty crummy cost-reward proposition relative to other forms of entertainment.
    This is the biggest problem with comics imo. Comics make gaming look like the cheapest hobby ever by comparison.
    Last edited by elfneedsfood; 26 Jun 2006 at 04:27 PM.

  3. That's why I am going more and more to trades.
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  4. #4
    The Japanese model should technically work well. However, you'd have to forgo color and well, that'll probably never happen.

    Comic books should drop their prices back down to a dollar. Going back to newsprint paper might be a step in the right direction.
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  5. Quote Originally Posted by Revoltor
    The Japanese model should technically work well. However, you'd have to forgo color and well, that'll probably never happen.

    Comic books should drop their prices back down to a dollar. Going back to newsprint paper might be a step in the right direction.
    See, I think having to forgo color would suck. I want my comics in color, but I also want them reasonably priced. This will probably never happen.

  6. Quote Originally Posted by Revoltor
    The Japanese model should technically work well. However, you'd have to forgo color and well, that'll probably never happen.

    Comic books should drop their prices back down to a dollar. Going back to newsprint paper might be a step in the right direction.
    I don't think they'd have to forego color. If a relatively smallish company like Viz can put out Shonen Jump's 250 pages monthly in B&W (and a smattering of color pages, as well) for $5.99, a massive media conglomeration like Warner Bros (DC) can damn well put out 100-150 color pages monthly for the same.

    And really, at the risk of being greedy, I don't think they'd even have to downgrade to newsprint, maybe just a lighter stock of glossy. A sensibly-priced, well-marketed digest bearing Superman, Batman, the X-men, or Spider-man on the cover could damn well sell more copies than a lot of full-color, glossy paper mags on the market... I mean, shit, have you seen some of the niche shit on newsstands that gets A grade presentation? If mags like Play and Ferret Lovers Monthly can do full-color on glossy paper, I see no reason why DC and Marvel can't.
    Last edited by Bacon McShig; 26 Jun 2006 at 05:16 PM.

  7. Quote Originally Posted by Bacon
    I saw a surprising statistic the other day that there's only 200-some comic shops currently in operation,
    Wow, really?

    There are 7 within a 20 min drive from my place right now. However half of them also deal heavily in toys or CCGs.
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  8. The Astonishing X-Men by Joss Whedon has been getting good reviews. His first story arch (Gifted) was pointed out in a couple reviews as the way a story should be told, and the fact that the X-Men actually sat down and spoke with Colossus and showed a breadth of emotion because of his return made it potent and meaningful. Do away with the "oh you're back, lets move on" mentality.

    His second story arch (Dangerous) was reviewed well, but overall was said to be derivative from earlier works where Cerebro corporealized in to a person. This time the danger room was given the treatment, and I'm willing to hedge my bets that a healthy dosing of foreshadowing and resonating was in this story.

    These comics are selling well.

    All it takes are higher profile writers and some decent know-how to move issues. I'm not really sure how to hook people like me who lose interest really fast other than that.

    I also think the 200 comic shops still remaining number is highly suspect. I realize it's probably dwindling, but there's 4 comic shops in my region that I know of. And I'm not even getting in to how many are in Toronto itself.

    I'm sure there aren't as many as there were in the 80's but 200 is a very suspect number.
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  9. Quote Originally Posted by Bacon
    I don't think they'd have to forego color. If a relatively smallish company like Viz can put out Shonen Jump's 250 pages monthly in B&W (and a smattering of color pages, as well) for $5.99, a massive media conglomeration like Warner Bros (DC) can damn well put out 100-150 color pages monthly for the same.
    Viz isn't creating the material, rather only localizing and publishing.

  10. Quote Originally Posted by Bacon
    I don't think they'd have to forego color. If a relatively smallish company like Viz can put out Shonen Jump's 250 pages monthly in B&W (and a smattering of color pages, as well) for $5.99, a massive media conglomeration like Warner Bros (DC) can damn well put out 100-150 color pages monthly for the same.
    Basically. DC and Marvel really need to rethink the entire way they do things though. Continually trying to find ways to push the same sets of characters for decades is terrible and is basically what helped turn the comic strip pages into the wastelands that they were when I stopped reading them. Japan did have huge titles like Dragon Ball but that ended a looong time ago, and even though a manga might reach 8000 pages before it ends, those 8000 pages will come out in less then 10 years. The weekly manga collections, besides their ridiculously huge circulations, also serve as constant advertising for new series. They could easily put X-men, Spiderman and Avengers in one book with two or three smaller titles with them, and those other titles which may usually only sell 20000 issues in a month if they're lucky will all have readerships close to Marvels biggest titles, and when those become popular enough on their own their popularity can be used to push other comics.

    They need to try and establish new individual characters in their own universes, and then make them as popular as their larger brands and when they figure out how to do that, they need to move away from the Superhero universes. Not necessarily abandon them, but don't depend on them. They could do a final relaunch of the main series...es and then give them complete stories. Tie them together in a "super hero world" story if they like but anything to get themselves out of the habit of milking and rehashing the same group of characters as much as possible.


    But the biggest thing is the general comic market size. Which is really really small, and getting good writers isn't going to fix that. There are already good writers out there. Same goes for good artists, and people have no trouble finding well written stories or movies with great art direction without having to worry about comics. Comics shouldn't need specialty shops for distribution at all and the fact that they seem dependent on them is more of a telling problem than the number of them out there. Kids should be grabbing them at the supermarket and get collections from bookstores which people are lucky to find more than one "not manga" shelf, I think. America's biggest comics like Superman used to sell millions of each issue before the industry was attacked in the 50s and it's never recovered and American popular entertainment developed largely without comics. No such thing happened in japan and so what is going on over there is basically what America could have been like. Comic strips didn't suffer from that and were doing alright until not too long ago and that's why the Calvin&Hobbes collections could sell so well... because it was a quality comic that had channels available to it to reach millions of people. Comic publishers apparently are either incapable or unwilling to reach a broader audience. Manga has added to it out here but I'm guessing the majority of anime fans don't read too many comics as anime is all over the TV and I think a well selling graphic novel is one that gets into the ten thousands but the immediate association people make between the two is a plus.

    I think the most curious thing going on with comics now is that large publishers like Scholastic are getting into things. Depending on how things go they can take brands they've already established and reach their already large audiences who are mostly youngsters who will have less problems with picking up a comic instead of a regular novel, I think. And if they're successful enough then reading comics will be more normal for kids, and some time down the line adults.If they're not there'll just be a tiny "scholastic graphic novels!" shelf right next to the manga.


    I'm interested in knowing how much the Whedon books are selling though. Cliffhanger comics as well, but finding comic sales numbers isn't as easy as other things. I'd imagine if they did well it's more in the context of "for comics" and not in the way Pokemon comics were briefly selling around a million copies of each issue.

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