The Winter Of Our Relative Content

I continue to be bullish on comics' ability to survive and even thrive in a period of relative economic dismay. I think the industry has experienced, invested people in most positions of power and influence. I think there are more people interested in making comics for people to read and then profiting from that material than there are people invested in using comics as the means to an unrelated and perhaps undeserving and exploitative end. I think the art form seen in a wider context -- one that gets away from the weekly exchange of money for serial comics -- has a lot to offer right in terms of overall value and artistic impact. I think there is hope for a significant role for comics in entities that may replace fading institutions that have supported comics in the past. In other words, I think comics can be okay in the years and months ahead as much as circumstances allow for any art form and the industries servicing them to be okay.

That said, I think it's important to stress comics likely hasn't come close to seeing the first wave of blows struck by this current, deepening economic trauma. It's not until after that first period of economic adjustment that we'll begin to see comics' potential outcome under a sustained downturn. That doesn't mean people aren't already hurting, both within comics and certainly without. People have lost their jobs, lines have ended, comics have been canceled, book publishing contract offers have dried up, and so on. It's tough out there. Just this morning, Newsarama reported that Wizard Entertainment had canceled its Wizardworld shows in Dallas (November) and Los Angeles (March) -- later confirmed by Wizard via e-mail as a cancellation of its Texas show and a postponement (without set return date) of its California effort. I'd suggest, however, that in many cases these were uncertain entities to begin with, institutions that were going to have a problem continuing even if the general economy were going swimmingly, businesses reaching a crisis point in the comics economy rather than the general one. That was certainly the case with Wizard, which had been firing people in editorial and in administration like nobody's business back when auto industry executives were making use of private jets without anyone scolding them. The fact that the general forecast is no longer so super-fantastically sunny that some dubious enterprises are no longer as effectively buoyed, that just isn't the same as a series of actual economic blows.

Many folks have pointed to the fact that the comic book Direct Market in January has always performed poorly as a danger sign, I believe the logic there suggesting that we should be on the lookout for stores succumbing to external economic pressures common to this month. If January were bad in previous year, it could be really bad this year. I have some sympathy for that argument and it certainly could be true. I'll confess to the opposite gut reaction, however: that January is so bad that many people in comic books are now accustomed to slower Januaries and Februaries, or at least should be. The bigger issue therefore isn't whether this year we get another terrible January but if smaller publishing outputs and cautious buying habits from consumers continue in a way that makes for an awful May. We don't quite know yet what will be announced, to what extent if any the various comics lines will re-swell after the typical mid-winter decline. Nor we do we know the content of conversations that many retailers are having as they get past the 2008 holiday seasons and begin to order with 2009 more firmly in mind. I've been told in the past that the New Year is a period of reconsideration and tweaking orders-wise for a lot of stores. For example, one shop owner I talked to recently said his staff was likely going to start cutting a lot of moderate-selling DC books after the holidays based on what they had seen that Fall. Additionally, publishers should over the next three to five weeks get a handle on what Spring bookstore market initial interest is going to be like. This holds within it the possibility for significant changes from years past. Fold in increased external pressures with layoffs and job cuts worldwide, and the effect of those things on the disposable income of comics fans in several regions of North America. I think it's safe to say that June could be -- could be -- a tougher month than any January.

There are also content questions that should come into play between now and then. Editorial cartoons lost a number of their folks during an historic election. Will those positions seem like an even bigger luxury without Obama, Clinton, McCain and Palin out there to focus our attention? One could easily make the argument that Marvel's Dark Reign and whatever DC has planned for after Final Crisis concludes don't exactly put the Big Mainstream Comic Book companies in a position of strength if it comes to fighting for their customers' dollars, even before the expected 33 percent price bump on serial comics. We don't know yet how many newspapers will shutter -- newspaper will shutter -- and how many may move from full-time print publication -- this will happen as well -- so we don't know how the syndicates might feel the effect of those actions. You can make a content argument with strips, too, that it's been a bad decade for the kind of mega-hit around which an industry can rally. There are as far as I know no major superhero movies this year after Watchmen, so no tie-in trade sales for certain companies, and in Watchmen's case there's that thing to watch where superhero movies arguably diminish the captive "audience in perpetuity" for certain books after they come out on the big screen. (I don't think that's going to happen to any great effect, but it's hard for me to imagine 2009 being better than 2008 there, and I wouldn't be surprised at this point in both big mainstream companies' trade program for there to be a lot of cutbacks generally.)

Just because I'm hopeful any problems can be conquered -- survived, really -- doesn't mean I'd ever suggest living in denial about their potential size or imminent arrival in bigger and badder forms. I don't think we've been hit yet. Not really. That's great because it means comics isn't the first one at the domed stadium with mismatched socks, no money and a need for a place to roll up and fall asleep for a while. That doesn't mean we've avoided the storm. I suspect we're not in the eye of anything, not yet, but as better writers than I have put it, we're in that all-too-quiet pause right before the first wave of storms hits for real. Good luck to us all.
 
posted 7:30 am PST | Permalink
 

---

 
Daily Blog Archives
November 2019
October 2019
September 2019
August 2019
July 2019
 
Full Archives