A Couple Of Thoughts On The Supposed Death Of The Traditional Comic Book

Newsarama has a lengthy summary of the panel at Comic-Con International speaking to the decline of the traditional serial comic book.

The one specific takeaway is a number provided by Image's representative in terms of what breaks even: 3500 for black and white comics; 4600 for color comics. This is interesting because companies almost never provide numbers like this so as to not limit their ability to spin sales figures. A widely-traveled number that slipped out of one of the mainstream companies in the late 1990s was always vociferously denied as an accurate representation of minimum profitability, particularly when that company's numbers routinely slipped below that number. Also, back then, publishing a comic book that wasn't profitable frequently led to charges that said company was sustaining losses in order to seize market share and/or drive smaller publishers from the stands. In the movie option and licensing world of the modern comic book, publishing below any conceivable profit point can be a way of life.

The rest of the panel I'm not sure adds to our understanding of that specific format's decline, although it's worth a read to catch up on the basics. Two factors that seem to impede conversations of this type are 1) an inability to process the strengths and weaknesses of on-line serialization in terms of its emerging role in achieving many of the low-cost access point benefits that traditional comic books used to boast of exclusively, and 2) an inability to process all of these market strategies as those that serve niche audiences, instead of suggesting a made-up dichotomy where one way reaches the masses and one doesn't. Once we pitch the notion that there's any post-1947 comics delivery model that has the favor of a supposed mainstream, we will no longer entertain with a straight face calls to dump a model just because one can loudly assert it fails to hit with that imaginary audience.

My hunch is that comics is ill-suited to maximize its traditional comic book opportunities because it involves the kind of not-glamorous, not-always-fun, basic strategic reforms the industry prefers to punch past with follow-the-money hits or ignore by pointing out that x-amount of money is being made when we don't do anything at all. No one likes to think about what used to be automatic; those that do tend to be those with an interest, however slight, in watching the old ways crumble and fall. It's a lot more fun to announce new product lines at San Diego than it is to announce ways to support them in reaching their intended audience. It's more exciting to drop a 632-page graphic novel or announce a limited series featuring creators with a certain sales pedigree than to talk seriously about reforming the month-to-month release schedule in a way that would help the best retailers help their best customers make the most of their trips to the comic shop.

It's also hard not to want to look away. There are obvious structural impediments in terms of the costs of each unit making a joke of the low-entry point advantage and Diamond's egalitarian, see-what-sticks nature crowding the playing field with unsustainable garbage. There exist cultural impediments in terms of a hardcore audience that can be goosed into buying by-themselves unsatisfying traditional comic books at a price point that subverts that entry point advantage and limits the ability of the market to expand to new readers. One can even point to historical impediments in terms of non-mainstream companies not having the kind of chance in the marketplace that has since encouraged them to place a lot of their efforts into arenas where they're not treated with a mix of loathing and contempt. It's tough out there, and getting tougher.

Yet many serial comics still sell at a major profit, and the money made in that area makes viable the basic mainstream comics model -- and with it the industry part of the American comics industry. What I'd suggest for right now is a re-orientation towards that market that sees the millions made there as an opportunity for a sustainable future market, maybe one that doesn't make total sense but a market to be sustained and nourished and encouraged, a market with unique advantages for developing a diverse and passionate readership. I'd further encourage we no longer see any way of buying comics in terms of its worst and most out-sized behavior, and certainly not as a point on an unstoppable historical arc to whose inevitable outcome the industry must acclimate itself in dour -- or gleeful -- fashion. Remember, if front-running and loping towards the most amenable and convenient and supposedly mainstream solution and grimly accepting the inevitable were the answer for comics every time out, the American comic book industry would have gone away nearly 50 years ago, and with it a lot of great and valuable and entertaining art. We may not be able to solve the many problems facing the comic book right away, but we can certainly improve the quality and frequency of our attention to the matter. If it goes down, let it go down fighting.

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two entertaining serial comic book series; one is a hit, the other was not

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posted 8:10 am PST | Permalink
 

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