In the past, before the DM, comics shifted gears often. Superheroes would fade out and romance or horror comics took center stage. The DM and the catering to aging fans have eliminated this and the stores, often run by fans themselves, do the same.

It doesn't mean superheroes don't have a place, but we need true diversity, diversity of genres, like manga does. And a focus on entertainment and escapism, like in the past. And we need to capture the younger readers too. Business-wise, we need more long-term thinking. The publishers, specifically the big two, need to treat the stores and the other outlets as key partners, and realize the healthier they are, the better they will be. They also need to get rid of exclusive deals and Diamond needs to allow sub-distributors

https://icv2.com/articles/columns/view/ ... s-be-saved

We've mentioned this ad nauseam, but I think the distinction should be "Can American Direct Market Comics Be Saved?"

Comics are doing very well in the manga and kids markets right now. Comics geared specifically for the online audience like Webtoons get tens of millions of views. Periodical publications are fading altogether -- magazines, newspapers, etc. -- so I wonder if monthly magazine comics are just going to the way of the pulps at this point. Some fans and creators have lamented the loss of the newsstand market but there really isn't a newsstand market to shoot for. It looks like original graphic novels and bite-sized online strips are the future.

Yup, Hanzo's right- comics are actually very healthy right now. There's a wide variety of quality material available to all age groups. It's only the Marvel and DC dominated, 32 page periodical focused dinosaur direct market that's in big trouble.
Frankly, I think it's beyond saving.

I think the sales are gone forever. But I'd like to get back the quality and the feel of a relevant, mass market, serial comic. Then freshness it had when it was geared to attract and retain new readers. The timelessness of it - the sense that there was long continuity but that the status quo was reliable and uncomplicated.

Superhero comics just aren't very good today. And they used to be, primarily because of the constraints that good editors put on good writers and good artists.

I think floppy comics are dying, but telling stories in comic form is thriving.
If I were Marvel/DC i would cancel monthly comics.
Put out OGN's once or twice a year.

Always the question when articles like this appear. Are they discussing comics in general, comic shops, or the big Two. Very distinct differences.

For the first 1, manga shows there is a demand and so does things like Webtoons etc, Forms have changed, i.e. monthlies are struggling, but in general, comcis are doing fine,

The shops are 2nd. Can they survive? Especially without the weekly visits by regular fans who buy the monthlies. Bookstores don't have irt easy either so converting to that model is no guarantee.

The big two are clearly suffering on the comic book end and need some drastic changes.



Sadly true but they do feed the stores. Maybe more manga sized monthlies are better, like my previously mentioned in another thread, the 100 pagers. Funny how we went to expensive paper and production, resulting in higer prices, and mange fans could care less.



Me too. We need less books but better ones. Between the Big Bang Theory and MCU, the fact we haven't been able to leverage both, is a huge failure.



Helps them but can stores survive on those? And do we need the stores?

One thing that is curious to me is how the younger generation has not only embraced manga, but also so many analog things like vinyl records. Making record shops cool hangouts. We are missing something here.

I do think it's true that comics are suffering from what is a larger problem for the publishing industry. When I was younger, I subscribed to a lot of mags. I received Newsweek and Time weekly. Now, Newsweek is online only, and Time is only published 14 times a year! Rolling Stone has gone from a weekly to a monthly I think. Others like Entertainment Weekly and Discover have just bit the dust. The fact that comics have continued to limp along in this environment is probably testament to its hard core fans and collector mentality, but many of those are boomers and boomers (let's face it) are aging out. They are not being replaced by newer fans, as those have been raised in the world of streaming and do not see the value of retaining physical copies of media (LP records aside). Movies have kept Marvel and DC viable longer than they might have been otherwise. We are sadly on a sinking ship. The question is how long it'll take to go under.

The surviveabliilty of Direct Market comic stores is a separate argument.
Most succesful comic stores diversified a long time ago.

Has there ever really been a time since the 1989 Batman where a superhero movie or TV show significantly drove up the sales of the monthly comics, though?

I'm not talking about trade collections like Year One or The Long Halloween, for example, which got a boost from Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy or other graphic novels/trades. The monthly comics are just too hard to find for most people. A kid from my hometown in SD who loved this summer's Spider-Verse movie would have to travel 2 hours to find a Miles Morales comic book but they could at least order a trade off Amazon.

They're not available in what I consider to be the Mass Market. Until that is solved, they will continue to be for the existing hobbiest reader.

Yeah, I would hate to see the monthlies go extinct, even if the realist in me knows it's just a matter of time. But I do think there's some merit in the big 2 focusing on collections of both new and existing material, even if it would mean the death of most comic shops. At some point the publishers have to go where the readers are, though, and if that means manga-like volumes, that's what they'll have to do.

What I wouldn't want to see, though, is collections mixing old and new material. If I'm going to pay $20 for a 200-page collection of Batman comics every month, I want it to be all new stuff, not half new and half stuff I already have.

Comics are fine, Marvel and DC producing monthly 32 page comics and, subsequently, the direct market, are not.

Although, as a kid, I loved the Big Batman Giants and Annuals and Bigger & Better just for the very reason that they
contained a nice selection of Golden and Silver Age reprints along with the new lead story. Of course, I never owned
the originals of the repeats, and it never seemed to me that I was being charged the same price for the older pages
as the newer pages (whenever I would do the math and count the pages in a 20¢ all-new book).

It doesn't effect new issues at all.
Pertinent back issues skyrocket.

Nobody is interested in the current product, but there is still great love for the characters.
I can sell reading copy DC books from the 70' on Ebay for $2-$5 each without any problem.
I can't even get a view of modern stuff for $1 each.

Seems like I recall the last one I was in having a lot of LPs to browse through as well....

What made Vinyl have a resurgence and not magazines? Even physical books are doing well for some reasons, and obviously manga



Agree but are there enough for the impulse buys?





So if back issues skyrocket, what can they do to convert them to buyers on a regular basis?



Agree but somehow manga gets around this





I think a nice mixture, if done correctly and not randomly (i.e. old stories that relate to the modern ones) is an excellent way to produce bigger books more cheaply, yet also offer more to the new readers. Big fan of this concept. price would be too high in Plum's example. I'm thinking 4-5.95 for 100 pagers .



Smart store. There is a bridge to be made for sure

Re vinyl, you'd have to ask the Millennials, as many of them have bought into the argument that LPs sound better than CDs or streams. They think that, even while they play them on Crosby turntables so go figure. I have a fairly high-end turntable, and to me, some of my records do sound better on that turntable than the CD counterpart, but I still prefer CDs for ease and convenience, not to mention price, even if the sound quality is at times slightly lower. At another site, the point is made that mastering rather than format dictates sound quality, and there is certainly some truth to that, but I digress.

I think it's whether the audience considers something disposable or not. People buy a vinyl record with the idea that it's music they'll want to own and play forever. People don't do the same with the latest copy of Time or People -- you're supposed to read it and then toss it away. People are more willing to accept content they only want to consume once -- news, celebrity gossip, sports analysis, etc. -- in a digital format (that's often available online for free to boot).

Weekly manga is actually declining too, more people are trade-waiting on that stuff as well... but their numbers were so sky-high at their apex that they are still incredibly strong compared to American comics -- "Compared to its peak in 1994 at 6.53 million copies sold, [Shonen Jump] is now selling under 1.5 million copies."



Nothing, those back issues are bought by people our ages who are already "all in" on American comics. They are definitely not a gateway drug to the hobby.



DC just tried this a couple years ago. It didn't do much and they were gone after about a year or two.

https://www.comicsbeat.com/walmarts-dc- ... the-store/

Yeah, I looked for those. Never in stores near me.

This entire conversation is based on the presupposition that DC and Marvel are worth saving at this point. Are they? What can they contribute besides licensing IP, the most valuable of which has been around for decades? Do they release comics now that will stand the test of time?

From what I remember, most copies got snapped up by collectors or for resale on eBay instead of their intended audience.