This guy cares enough about mainstream comic books to publish a manifesto about how to save them from poor sales and extinction. He’s right to be concerned: monthly printed comics are in danger of fading away. One of his major points is cost: He says comics cost sixty cents when he was a kid, and with inflation they should cost $1.28 today. Instead, they’re approaching four dollars a pop.
He proposes a new comic book business model:
My subscription to Wired magazine costs me twelve dollars a year. My subscription to Rolling Stone is free. I didn’t even ask for it. It just started showing up one day. I also have free magazines arriving a couple of times a month that are related to my profession, computer programming. Who pays for my magazines? Advertisers.
He proposes selling the comics at different venues than comics shops. And he then proposes that comic companies put out 500-page comics, and charge 5 dollars for the whole thing, which would be subsidized by advertisements:
[Comic] books for kids currently are too expensive to make sense for most parents. You don’t buy a collector’s item and hand it to an eight year old. But a phonebook sized funny book for five bucks? That makes sense. Advertisers could sell toys, sugary cereals, bags-o-glass, movies, left-wing political ideas… Do you remember how cool Saturday morning was before the FCC ruined it by saying advertising to kids was intrinsically evil? Well, there’s no FCC here. Go ahead, seduce those innocents. Did you just call me a capitalist pig? My only response is, “Oink, Oink.”
I don’t know if anybody’s told this guy that the advertising market has almost entirely collapsed, but I don’t want to see his face when they do. It’s unclear if the industry is ever going to go back to the glory days of 400-page issues of Vanity Fair. All the magazines that I love are fading into dumber, anemic versions of themselves (and even some magazines I loathe are looking sick—Seattle Metropolitan‘s best of Seattle issue last month couldn’t crack 100 pages, and when it debuted, it was around 200 pages an issue). So in many respects, setting up a website telling comics companies to sell some ads is like throwing a book about learning to swim to a drowning man. But this website is, at the very least, an interesting way to start a conversation. it’s only been up for a few days and it’s already starting to get some latitude on nerd websites.
It’s a terrible mistake to assume that the price of everything moves, or should move, exactly or even vaguely in sync with the CPI. How has the price of books and magazines changed in that time? I think the price is probably fair — in fact, I’d bet on it. If they could charge less, and they believed that sales would go up accordingly, they would. The fact that they don’t suggests that either THEIR costs (writing, drawing, editing, paper, ink, printing, cutting, folding, storing, shipping) have gone up that much, or because their market research tells them that sales wouldn’t go up.
The real problem with his idea is that kids don’t give a shit about comics. It’s not the price. You could probably give these phone-book-sized ones away for free and kids wouldn’t want them. If this guy would like a list of other 1950s-era commodities that are no longer popular on the market, I can supply one. Just because old guys like him think they’re the bee’s knees doesn’t mean a thing.
Paul, you obviously didn’t get yesterday’s 226-page “Style” magazine with yesterday’s NYT (90% of which was ads). People are still advertising out there.
Step one:
Make comics that aren’t total shit. That eliminates… mainstream comic books entirely.
The American comics industry in all its 100+ year history has always been scattershot, confused, short-sighted, desperate for a quick buck and clueless. It is beyond saving. All creators like me can do is keep drawing and hope for the best.
@2, the writer explicitly assumes that mainstream comics have the exact same audience as Wired Magazine, which is unlikely; I think the Style section is even less so. This guy seems to be confused about whether or not comics fans are all as attractive, charming, and well-off as he thinks he is, or not. I’m guessing not. If there was any profit in advertising high-end “timepieces” or $4,000 suits in comic books, those ads would already be there.
Yep, agreed. But since Paul bemoans the loss of his 200-page Seattle Metropolitan and 400-page Vanity Fair, I thought I’d point out that somebody’s sure buying ads out there.
That sounds a lot like the model here in Japan. Walk into any convenience store and you`ll see a wall lined with magazine racks, and half of those racks are filled with comics. The comics are several stories in one volume, sandwiched between advertisements and assorted filler, and usually cost between $4-$10. There are usually people standing around reading the comics in the stores – adults, not kids – and I always see gray-haired office workers reading them on the train . The comics market in America sucks but it`s obviously kicking ass in Japan – hopefully the American companies can pick up a trick or two!
There’s only so much money that companies providing X-Ray Specs and Seahorse pets can provide…
American comics published in the mass market are pretty much just loss leaders to establish IP ownership. Stories, readers, ads, are all superfluous to proving you own that license to sell movies of Aquaman/Thor/Ghost World/Hellboy/etc
Print comics are dying because print is dying. There are tons of high-quality, regularly updated comics on the web and a few of them even make money. There’s no reason to bother saving print. The Web will give us all the comics we could ever want.
@1, good point re: CPI. In fact, my impression has always been that the average price of a comic has tracked relatively close to the price of a gallon of gasoline. Some day I’ll correlate my comics collection to my family’s gas register and prove it.
@3 Seriously shut up. Labeling all mainstream comics as total shit just makes you look like a fucking moron. I can think of tons of excellent X-Men story lines that have come out in the last 5 years. Andy Kubert, Richard Isanove, Joss Whedon, Neil Gaiman, Brian Michael Bendis, Oliver Coipel, Joe Quesada and many other writers and artists are doing/have done amazing things with the Marvel Universe.
@9 Possibly, you don’t really love comics. If you did, you would understand the feeling of holding the comic in your hands, smelling the paper, and knowing you have it forever. That said, I really love Achewood and was excited to be able to buy The Great Outdoor Fight in print and get it signed, something you can only do with a tangible product.