What's Next?

Running a business,  even one that is slowly dying and has a short shelf life is taking more time than I thought.  Needing to focus on the blog wasn't fully expected.  I thought I'd be able to gas on and on about comics without effort but maybe I spend less time thinking about comics that I thought I did.  Of course, this isn't paying any bills.  This is just me playing at blog stuff,  with comic books being the main theme.  

I listen to Thinking Critical and Comics by Perch and they cover the new stuff better than I can since I have given up getting the new stuff a couple years ago now.  Let me tell you,  when I stopped getting DC comics no one noticed,  that's how poor the sales were.  There's now some buzz surrounding Absolute Batman and Absolute this and that and the Batman VS Deadpool crossover "event"  (Scam? Trick?  Cover variant scheme?)  but almost anyone coming in to ask for those is someone I have never seen before.  

It's now been two years since I stopped getting Marvel comics,  and I have long boxes stuffed with Marvel, DC and Indy comics from 2022 or so that will not sell at any price.  Dollar apiece doesn't move them.  $25 a short box barely moves them.   I may have to go to $10 a short box to get them the heck out of here.  It's a little depressing. 

The future of comics doesn't look bright --- if you only focus on the superheroes and ignore everything else.  It's annoying that so many voices advocating for "better" comics at Marvel and DC only talk in terms of superheroes and in bringing back  Big Name talent to sway the comic book audience into spending $5-$10 for a story better told with better art 40 years ago.  

I'd say the future of comics is with people like Ed Brubaker and with comic series like Criminal.  Here is a comic book universe where not only does death matter,  there are ramifications from that death.  Being being killed is noticed,  after all.  There's a mix of emotions, and reactions to death.  There isn't any secret clone or robot or magic door to bring the dead back and in Criminal you really don't want the dead back because they're not good people.  

Of course,  Brubaker, along with others leaving the superheroes behind them,  is not going to be getting too many toy offers.  That Criminal hasn't been picked up by Netflix or some other service is a little surprising,  but comics aren't necessarily made to enrich the creators to insane levels of wealth.  Robert Kirkman is a fluke,  not the norm.  

Ultimately what's killed the superheroes is they stopped being characters and became products.  Peter Parker is forever stuck somewhere between adolescence and adulthood because that's what the corporation wants.  That Spider-Man, and a host of other super-powered beings,  make more money as t-shirts,  action figures,  posters and breakfast cereals automatically reduces the comic book as the least important part of the money chain.   What happens in the comic book is immaterial to the bottom line.  And boy oh boy, does that show. 

Superheroes used to be a small slice of the comic book pie.  There are entire genres of comics that have faded away in favor of the superhero explosion,  which for better or worse, was launched by Marvel in the 1960s.  There used to be so many different comics to choose from,  funny animals,  horror, romance, war, western, spoof, and action adventure comics that weren't superpowered.  That could happen again as superheroes lose their polish and become excuses to buy covers -- never mind what the story is. 

I don't know enough about manga to say that they'll take over the US market, but I do know that the US market is in danger of total failure if they don't figure things out.  I believe that both Marvel and DC could produce low cost reprints that would get the public interested again. They key being "low cost."   The facsimile editions are too expensive, just as regular comics are too expensive.  There is no need to reprint the old ads or letter pages.  Instead,  encourage NEW letters,  have fan art contests,  return to a policy of direct interaction  between the publisher and the readers again -- and don't do it online.  I'd jump at the chance of getting some reprinted Tales to Astonish from the 1950s or Batman from the 1940s, especially if it was at $2 a pop.   Maybe I'm crazy and it wouldn't work.  But it would be absolutely idiocy not to try.