So, how do we "save" comics? Comics, in terms of paper floppies, are dying. There is just no doubt about it. Some months they are fine and some months they aren't, but the general trend is that fewer and fewer people are buying any. I don't particularly think it's a writing quality issue (lets be real, a lot of the most beloved comics on Yea Forums sold like shit).
Should there be a general move to trades? Should they push subscription services harder?
Transition to web release-focused industry. Subscription model. You buy a character for a year and get access to every book that character's in, past, present, and future, until the year is up.
A medium that is unable to sustain itself in the face of a changing environment is not worth "saving", because preserving it beyond its natural life will be equivalent to making it into a zombified husk. If conditions arise later that revive the medium, that's fine, but artificially extending the life of a medium does nothing but reduce quality.
Also stop writing absolute horseshit.
The medium is itself artificial. Artificially extending its life is just extending its life.
By killing all the women and minorities. #MAGA
Lackdaisy Cats and kill Six billion demons are better than anything Marvel is doing right now.
Let them die. Then only passionates will be left. Drop the MCU.
Comics always has been a niche medium. Even with the success of the movies.
One of the biggest issues it may need to address is the perceived barrier to entry. Especially in regards to Superhero comics.
Another issue it needs to address is the way it markets itself. Unless you are already interested in the medium it is unlikely you will be aware of whatever hot new title or event the publishers are trying to push.
The industry is alienating their base to force more leftist oriented material into the comics, and ultimately the leftists that agree with that political bullshit don't really care about comics.
Floppies are retarded
baste
People don’t read . Period
I think the entire distribution and method of selling comics needs to be changed. Floppies are too expensive and a bad way to tell these long as stories that are the norm anyway. Even if they were a decent price the fact that they are only sold in Comic book stores makes it hard to get an audience. I never got into comics when I was young because there were no comic book stores around to buy them. I imagine that's the same for a lot of people. Shit you can look at the success of comics sold by scholastic or web comics to see examples of better alternatives. They also need to market and advertise themselves better, I don't think anyone not already into comics ever hears about anything they are doing.
They have a thing call digital comics? Perhaps you heard of it?
And what's there to be "save" whn the only people that whine about it are complete useless fags and manbabies that won't grow up or even get with the times
When alienating you mean whiney fags, outrage fags, and old fags?
Single title floppies are retarded and should have died in the 1990s. They're for fanzines only.
Anthologies, where big titles help give small titles traction does work in Europe and Japan, but the reading culture is different in America.
Kill floppies.
Kill Diamond.
Toilet paperback anthologies for people who want to read physical, or aren't allowed Internet.
Internet distribution for everything else except collectors' editions that can be hardcovers and have good paper.
Single tittie floppies will NEVER die
underrated
This.
LCSs need to fucking die, they're holding the medium back.
Comics as a whole is doing just fine.
What you're concerned about is just comics from one country, made by two publishers, in one genre.
There's been more and more of a push towards trades for years now. I used to think that was the future, since I worked in a book store and saw firsthand how they were bringing in all kinds of new readers and people who would never consider entering a comic shop.
But over the years I started to notice some things:
1) we were selling LOTS of Vol. 1's, but not many Vol. 2's and 3's, and numbers greater than that we usually didn't even bother stocking.
2) even when Marvel books got relaunched, unless there was a major status quo shift like ANAD Cap and Thor, it was still the original Marvel NOW Vol. 1's that were selling. Lots of KSD Captain Marvel Vol. 1, but none of the relaunched runs, for example, same with Ms. Marvel and Unbeatable Squirrel-Girl which had popular Vol. 1's.
3) people had a lot of interest in Marvel Unlimited and asking for DC equivalents, but very few seemed interested in buying collections of older material, of any kind, unless they were looking for a specific character and wanted a recommendation.
4) there wasn't as much of a problem with people buying Vol. 1 and just never coming back as the above would imply: in reality, they'd usually come back for Vol. 1's of other characters instead.
So anecdotally, I now think that TPB market is actually NOT as sustainable as I thought, since the books that consistently sold well are New 52, Marvel NOW, Rebirth, and certain ANAD Vol. 1's. It's possible people were buying the future volumes online instead, but that goes even further to suggest to me that what said actually IS the better direction, which is the opposite of what the companies are going for. They should be writing stories that keep you coming back month after month instead of ones that make you want to read/buy in 6-issue chunks.
>same with Ms. Marvel and Unbeatable Squirrel-Girl which had popular Vol. 1's
Yeah Marvel proved how stupid they were by fucking up the titles that actually succeeded in reaching new audiences. The readers of those titles do not give a shit about crossovers or events, and when you tell them to buy the new #1 with the same creative team how many of them will think it's just a reprint?
To continue, I've always hated when people say "comics need to be more like manga", but I'm now seeing some truth to that statement, in a way.
When someone comes and buys a long running manga like Naruto and One Piece (which I know nothing about), they buy ALL of it, religiously, we're talking dozens of volumes here, and from what I gather most of these people ALSO read the comic online and try and stay caught up with the Japanese releases. I can't say firsthand, but from what I can gather there's an addictive, serialized nature to that genre, its constant availability and sense of continuity keeps them coming back for years.
Clearly there is something to the fact that it's really easy to find the entire library of one manga online for free, read all of it in a couple of weeks on your phone, and follow the new issues every week always being excited to see what happens next in the manga's world.
Marvel and DC comics are a much different situation obviously, but I feel like there must be some sort of lesson that could be taken from that.
Even the shorter, usually girl-focused manga, the people who buy one volume almost ALWAYS buy all of them, I've never seen that with comics. I don't know what the fuck they're doing to get people that hooked, but if it's really not just gay bait like I've been told, then they must be doing something right.
Or maybe Marvel just needs to release a steamy Cap and Bucky romance series.