What killed comics in the 90’s?

1. Too many titles.

2. Gimmick issues.

3. Rising cover prices.

4. Lack of quality.

What do we see today?

1. Too many titles.

2. Gimmick issues.

3. Rising cover prices.

4. Lack of quality.

Sure, the art is still good overall, but there’s a lot of art in independents especially, that looks like a child drew it. That sort of art has been creeping it’s way into some Marvel and DC comics, too, i noticed. Why is that? There must be a lot of former artists out there with more talent than most artists today who would work for Marvel and DC if given the chance. Why is the best talent not sought out by the comics companies anymore if they have a choice? At 2.99+ i think the readers would like to see the best art available.

Of course, when i said lack of quality, what i really meant is the writing. That’s by far, the biggest problem facing comics today, i think. It used to be that a comic had a feature length story that was contained in a single issue with lots of action to boot, but what do we see now? Larger panels with less dialogue and less action that take up a whole comic so that a storyline is usually not completed until after multiple issues, so what you get is a lot of nothing as a result. I guess fans of large panels with no action would like it, but who likes that? When i’m looking for a comic to buy, i flip through it and if i see a lot of talking and no action in the story i put it back on the shelf. All talk and no action is not what superhero comics are supposed to be about. Just think if the superhero cartoons were like that. Cancellation would come pretty soon, i think.

This is very true. For instance, the Inferno hardcover just came out, and by far, it is my favorite book this year so far, excepting Legion of Three Worlds.

These days, something inconceivable has happened — I am actually able to see a point in the future where I might no longer buy new comics.

But I’ll always be around to buy 70s/80s/90s reprints.

I’ll be curious to see where the next phase of comics evolution takes us; without the LCS I’m thinking things like the Longbox project are probably going to move in and take over, with a shift in the big publishers to graphic novels and all the left-overs eaten up by small press.

My biggest fear would be that consumers and creators turn to vanity presses, thereby causing the industry and big time bookstore chains to be turned off to comics altogether while having to sort through some really poorly executed ideas slipping through without professional edits or critiques.

Or quit, of course. A percentage will no doubt move online in that scenario, but I would expect that a significant chunk of the “casual” customers - those who buy a small number of comics each month - and even some of the heavier buyers, would just stop in such a scenario.

Watchmen is still selling steadily here, albeit more slowly than prior to the movie’s release.

“As for Alan Coil and his comment to get a life, its funny because every site I go to has repeated comments by this guy, almost like he has nothing else better to do than to comment on all the people making comments. Seems to me that if he had a full and satisfied existence, not only would he not care, he wouldn’t have the time on his hands to post on so many news sites. So, if anyone should get a life, its Alan Coil. ”

I take issue with repeated comments, but, yes, I do need to get a life. Do you happen to know where I can get a job? I’ve been unemployed for nearly 2 years now. Unemployment here in Michigan is over 12%.

News sites where I post: Robot 6, Comics Should Be Good, and here. Sometimes at Comics Worth Reading and Savage Critics, but they aren’t exactly news sites. That’s usually less than an hour a day.

But the good news is I don’t live in my mother’s basement. She died years ago. And, before you feel a need to bring it up, no, I ain’t been laid in quite a while, either.

Anything else you’d like to know about my life, Brett? I’m willing to share more details if you’d like.

To Mark Coale, what percentage of retail people are paying would certainly be good to know, although I can’t see how we ever will find out. I did some polling in Comics Retailer magazine in the 1990s and some of the retailer groups and forums may share that info now, but it’s hard to get a representative sample.

I do believe that the average retailer is discounting far less than in the days of extreme retailer competition of the early 1990s, where I saw competing Diamond and Capital accounts across the street from each other charging walk-in customers 45% off off the rack. No margin of error whatsoever back then, and it ended as we’d expect…

Thanks for the clarification because what you said is true. Just because many of us don’t like or buy NEW comics does not mean we’re done with the medium. As for me, I love the medium and the art form and still read comics all the time, I’m just reading back issues, not the new ones.

As for coming to comic sites even though we don’t buy new comics, some of us come to these sites because they’re great. I absolutely LOVE Heidi’s site and yes, many of the comics news sites are more entertaining than the comics themselves.

As for Alan Coil and his comment to get a life, its funny because every site I go to has repeated comments by this guy, almost like he has nothing else better to do than to comment on all the people making comments. Seems to me that if he had a full and satisfied existence, not only would he not care, he wouldn’t have the time on his hands to post on so many news sites. So, if anyone should get a life, its Alan Coil.

That said, I’ve just switched to mail order and my new retailer says that he’s getting plenty of new customers of late as well. And in my case, it’s simply a case of having an awful local store who have tried my patience one too many times.

It’s probably just a weird coincidence.

That is to say, how many people are not paying $3.99 for “$3.99 books” but are paying $3.10 or $2.99 or less?

I just hope you’re happy with what you’ve done.

The sad fact is that the depressed economy combined with the huge increase in cover prices may be the death knell for comic shops.

Currently, I get by on $20 or less a week on periodical comics. The only titles I’m following on a regular basis: Green Lantern/GLC (more curious about the formalism of the rings than on the characters), Spider-Man Family (lots of good stuff), Irredeemable, Savior 28, and the Fables crossover. Looking at the April/June Previews, all of my bookmarks are for books, not comics, and most of those are either original or classic reprints, not recent material. Absolute Justice might be the newest material.

Give me a free DC or Marvel comic and I’ll read it. Will I continue reading a series with subsequent free issues? Depends on the story.

I’d _like_ to say Watchmen is part of a normal cycle of movie selling books, but it’s the gold standard, not the norm.

I find it sad that there’s a mentality that you need a first issue in order to have top sales.

As a consumer, I’ll more times than not buy a #1 for no other reason than because it’s usually a good jumping on point. If retailers are taking this type of behavior into account when they are placing their orders with Diamond, I don’t know. Since these lists only reflect what retailers are buying, I’m not sure it really matters what I buy or why I buy it.

Or taking the other response to the ridiculous cover prices: Just leaving comics altogether.

Personally I thought “Secret Invasion” was a good read and I enjoyed the recent “Battle for the Cowl” event.

You seem to be unaware of just how badly “Secret Invasion” failed as a storyline. The rationale in SI for keeping the abductees alive — needing them for DNA samples — was obsolete years ago; the basic premise for the event, that impersonation was undetectable, wasn’t valid; the “alien virus” gimmick ignored the existence of embedded processors. Marvel has tried to make their stories more “relevant,” but when Bendis and others thoroughly bungle the realistic aspects of the stories, the result is stories worse than those produced by writers who used pseudoscience systematically.

SRS

06/16/09 at 2:36 pm
I find it amazing that people who claim they don’t read comics any more still come to a comics site to complain. Get A Life!

First, are you sure they’re not reading? Maybe they’re just not BUYING.

Second, if they’re not reading or buying what’s coming out right now, they might actually still give a crap about comics in general and thus enjoy talking about them.

At one point a few years ago, I was buying two single issues a month of long-running series that I wanted to buy until they ended, but I was mostly disinterested in what was coming out. Staying connected to the industry though message boards and news sites I was able to find new stuff worth reading and worked myself back up to an expensive monthly habit. Now, I’m down to ZERO comics per month, but I still enjoy comics and I still read comics… just not this month or probably for the near future.

There are tons of worthwhile comics coming out every month. Few of them are solicited by Marvel and DC. I’m buying them as TPBs when I get around to it.

Also, often Alan Coil’s posts make my blood boil, but he sure hit the nail on the head in these comments

ICV2, John Mayo and I use different publisher sources for these things that usually square up very closely with the estimates (this month, they did so VERY closely) but there are always outliers in individual entries for various reasons. In this case, where there is a large difference, I’d wonder if they only had a partial report from warehousing about what shipped when they ran the data. We’ve seen odd things like this in charts near the holidays.

Rich!

There’s a dissertation out there for someone who can figure out how initial periodical sales influences TPB collection sales. I suspect, as with box office versus DVD sales, there are some general effects and a whole lot of exceptions, mostly on the mainstream-vs.-alternative dimension.

TOP 300 TRADE PAPERBACK DOLLAR SALES
May 2009: $6.88 million
Versus 1 year ago this month, just the Top 100 vs. the Top 100: -13%
Versus 5 years ago this month, just the Top 100 vs. the Top 100: +33%
Versus 10 years ago this month, just the Top 25 vs. the Top 25: +111%

Tough to argue the demise of the direct market when they see a 10 year trend like that.

Again, not knowing the profit margin it’s hard to gauge if 6.8 million is good versus just average, but I’d venture to guess they have lower costs on TPBs than singles. Plus, these figures dont count book store sales, right?

People may hate the editors, directions, stories, price points, but the raw data doesn’t support a crash based on revenue trend.

Now if this continues for a year or two….well….different story.

Heidi’s question prompted me to look at the TPB list for last year…

http://www.comichron.com/monthlycomicssales/2008/2008-05.html

There are some fair-sized “event books” there, too, if we want to call them that. I note that the 100th place TPB actually moved more copies this May, so we may have a situation where last year’s TPB list, like its comics list, was more top-loaded. Last year’s list had 13 items that had orders above $100k at full retail. This year: three. Again, part of what happens with trades is we can see an echo of strong periodical sales — the material being collected — from the months before; we may be in a period where we’re seeing material traded that had softer sales in their first run.

We’re also looking at what was a very high mass-market exposure period for genre properties last year — the Iron Man/Indy/Hulk/Dark Knight stretch — so we might say that there were more events outside the comics shop, too.

May 2009: $18.68 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: -19%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +5%
Versus 10 years ago this month: +10%

Which means 2008 was the sales high point, not that 2009 is the beginning of the end per se. 2009 is still ahead of previous benchmarks. So this “crash” may just be a correction from the 2008 levels.

Without knowing any of the publisher’s actual profit margin it’s hard to say if 18.69 million in revenue is alarming or not.