Is the comic book market dying?

Shops seem to close every week, or "expand" into general book or hobby stores to survive.

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sounds like a place that would let you fuck dogs in the backroom

That place was a fucking shithole with rude unfriendly staff.
Fuck em into the dirt and throw their corpses into the fucking Tay!

>That place was a fucking shithole with rude unfriendly staff.
story time?

No story just a shit shop.
What you're seeing through the window is the entirety of their stock.

What is even there in the pic, Pokemon cards?

Maybe hiding your entire industry in tiny specialty shops that only enthusiasts visit wasn't such a bright idea after all.

like 80% of the shelves look like they have action figures kek I hate that kind of "book store"

surprisingly, my local comic book shop is still around, I went back after 3 years recently, although its actually more of a arcade and trading card game space now. I am glad they are selling new issues again though.

>Is the comic book market dying?
No.
>Shops seem to close every week, or "expand" into general book or hobby stores to survive.
Comics market =/= comic shops. Shops close all the time. The comics crash killed up to 50% of shops (or far more by some estimates). Most shops are stable, albeit with low margins. The issue is more that some enthusiasts open shops with no business acumen and those tend to close because they don't understand the business. Established shops tend to be okay unless there is a huge shock and most of them diversified to gaming etc a while ago.
The history of the comic book industry led to this entrenched system, it wasn't like they all purposefully did it just because. It is super easy for people online to be like "lol just completely change the industry" but incredibly hard to do it in practice.

>The history of the comic book industry led to this entrenched system
Not history, just one dude, Phil Seuling. He established the direct market system because newspaper distributors did not offer enough space or variety. What he seemed to miss was that normies got into comics through newspaper stands, not specialty shops.

i went to a newbury comics store in massachussetts for the first time a few mon ths ago and they had like one shelf of comic books. the rest was action figures and t shirts and vinyl records and collectibles and shit but barely any fucking comic books or trades.

who the fuck is buying so much vinyl in 2022 that you need a whole fucking corner of the store dedicated to it? why not cally it newbury vinyls and collectibles? shit is retarded

Its been like this for like 20 years dude. The market for comic shops gets worse and worse. The shop nearest to me got out of selling comics YEARS ago and most shops have long since branched into Yea Forums shit or Funko Pops or something else.

>who the fuck is buying so much vinyl in 2022
I heard they made a comeback in recent years. Even selling decently well in places like England and the US. Not sure why.

Almost like you don't even know the history either. The problem with the old distribution system is that you'd sell a bunch of issues to distributors supplying newsstands with a couple copies each. Unsold copies in the newsstand market would be sent back, similar to unsold papers. Distributors would often keep unsold issues and sell them on without passing the profits on to the publishers. This almost destroyed the market. The direct market and speciality stores enabled much better profit sharing, selling issues in bulk to one place was much more efficient and stores could have back issues at a time when trades weren't a thing. It had a bunch of benefits over the newsstand and came to be the dominant market.

Of course subsequently it has a bunch of problems, entrenched industry issues, cultural perceptions on how shops are. But like my aforementioned point, it is easy to act like they could fix it instantly.

>goes to comic book store
>buys old Matchbox and Hot Wheels for my collection
>leaves
>opens them and plays with them

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Meanwhile manga is booming.

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>action figures
You mean Funko pops ?

Should've just regulated the distributors instead. If it worked for most of the century, it could've worked after that. Instead, the market is absolutely bleeding money right now, while manga found a comfy normie place in book stores and completely took those over.

I think it's just that people buy way more vinyl than comics.

>Should've just regulated the distributors instead.
The Direct Market was attacked by anti-trust laws as a monopoly and broken up. And then in the 90s the crash completely decimated the industry and Diamond were the only distributor standing, and an anti-trust investigation, with some witnesses from the first Direct Market investigation, basically concluded that without Diamond the industry would crash so kept the monopoly. I am all for criticising the issues of the American comic book industry but there are reasons for a bunch of it.

>while manga found a comfy normie place in book stores and completely took those over
American comics has cultural baggage from the Comics Code Authority declaring the medium for kids and this damaging cultural perceptions of comics + leaving only some games in town with certain genres (and the CCA still defines perceptions today). Plus the 90s crash destroying comics as an American Pastime. Where as manga came in during the 80s/90s with some of the best works being imported first and entering outside these distribution issues straight into book shops etc with none of the historical/cultural baggage of comics and the foreign = cool/reject parental culture factors than shot Japanese/weeb culture to the mainstay of geek/nerd culture.

>ing

Warmer audio quality, sounds more pleasant

Also while Diamond was the only distributor for comic books, it wasn't the only distributor in the periodicals market and there was nothing stopping other distributors from entering the comic market.

Something else that needs to be considered is that it took manga 30 years to go from niche import to mainstream, and it was heavily stereotyped and stigmatized well into the 00s. Another interesting note is that the anime and manga audiences were much more separate until the 00s when companies began to coordinate manga and anime releases in America.

it fucking should die, with the way it's going.

Sales in the Direct Market for everyone BUT IDW actually increased

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Deadhead comics was pushed out for these fags under cutting, then they moved to 80% toys, 15% manga and 5% comics after dh went under.

Honestly fuck them and the manager was an actual nonce who use to fliet with the 15 year old stinking goth burds who hung around there.

Meant ahoy.
Deadhead was esinburgh.

Vinyl is very unforgiving medium when it comes to sound mastering. Which means, when you buy a vinyl, it isn't brickwalled because "louder = better lol" and has actual dynamic range.

You still believe this shit? Since they broke away from Diamond they're all making up numbers

>This doesn't fit my narrative
>therefore all the numbers are made up because I say so

Reminds me of that brainlet who thought Comichron was invalid because they didn't count newsstand numbers (which would've been too miniscule to count during the 00s and 10s to begin with)

None of those publishers in that picture broke away from Diamond

Don't hold on to ATAT (Warner, DC parent company) stocks.

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this comment could be applied to a lot of Specialist stores in Perth and Dundee though.

There are two that I know of near my home. One became an antiques store and the other survives on card game tournaments.

Do you mean Edinburgh?

Floppy sales are dying, the comic market itself is fine. Pandemic hit some shops hard, epsiecally the ones focused on weekly comics and general nick nacks like Pokemon cards and tabletop games that people would just pick up week to week that they now just order online.

Prices on everything are going up, so if you can get a comic cheaper online guess what most people will do.

Every industry has turnover. Comic shops are more stable than restaurants case by case.

There are a lot of new vinyl releases that use the same normalized mastering as the digital versions, but due to the physical limitations of the medium, they can never make it loud enough to clip.

Floppy sales aren’t dying, dc and marvel floppy sales are just lower than they were

I believe it more than I believe you. You seem to have more of an agenda than they do

Shit never actually went into the shop, this means there is no more comic book shop in town huh? Dont realize theres a lot of dundoniggers here

Comic shop by my house seems fine, but then again they also sell Manga and TTRPGs and host Magic every Friday.

It's that low? I should buy

This. Video game stores are dying across the country but the gaming industry is seeing record growth

Modern video game stores. The retro ones are expanding, because people want variety and they want to experience the old again. One nearby has exploded recently.

And now globohomo tries to infect anime and manga with yuri/yaoi/trannyshit. Great.

Kind of. Several of them have started becoming 'internet cafe' type with lounges. They've also started putting tables for magic/gaming. At one point they were hiring 'staceys' to bring in the nerds/normies and had them dress very skimpy (bedrock at westhiemer, bedrock at nasa rd, and 3rd planet off kirby) - houston. many also started doing cosplay and meet 'artist' along with free pizza.

alva at third planet always wore tiny shorts to show off that ass and thicc thighs along with her booster gold t-shirt.

sadly all those girls at third planet and the bedrock comics are no longer there.

They're failing.

Absolutely wrong. There has been more of them in the last decade than ever before.

truth. that shit is like weeds. all over the place.

Last time I walked into a comic book shop, they had a wall of Funko Pops by the entrance. I never went back.

>in the Direct Market

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Weird to announce closing so close to FCBD
Or maybe that was the plan. Have a going-out-of-business sale while everyone is there to grab the free books. That way they have the highest chance to ditch all this inventory and close without having even bigger losses and old inventory upkeep.

Lol no. Out of the 5 stores in my area, only 1 closed and it was closed BEFORE the pandemic due to the new owners having no fucking clue what they were doing. Most places just held online auctions or sold bundles online for pick up. I talked to two places who said it was rough, but they found ways go keep the business profitable.

Very true.

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No one wants to buy shitty comics that scam people out of their money or support tabletop companies that hate their customers. Switch over to manga predominantly is the only thing that'll save these places.

Manga are comics retard

Manga are comics that sell. Big difference.

Manga is comic