Is The Comic Book Industry Still Alive?

There’s no real way to deny that despite comic book superheroes being more popular than ever in video games and movies, the comic book industry itself is not flourishing. The hard truth that a lot of comic nerds like myself don’t really want to talk about is that most of the problems that the comic book industry as a whole has are ones that they pretty much created for themselves. Even as the pandemic era takes on the appearance of a comic — desolate urban centers, masks everywhere — the ink-and-paper industry is at a standstill that some believe jeopardizes its future, casting doubt on how many shops will make it through and what might befall the gathering places of proud nerds, geeks, and readers everywhere.

As someone who grew up in Egypt, I had and still have very little access to printed comic books and shops dedicated to them. If you live in a third-world country, generally speaking, you find it easy to put yourself in my shoes. Still, I have been able to find ways to read comics online since a young age, all thanks to the internet and the sites that share digital prints of comics for free, even if I still never experienced going to an actual comic book store or enjoyed the luxury of keeping up and paying for any new issues that come out of my favorite publishers and characters.

But that doesn’t mean that I can’t rant about the industry and where it stands now.

You see, if you are looking for an answer to the article’s headline, you will probably assume that the industry is slowly dying. However, I took the time to research the matter and learned more than I expected—and this definitely amped up my optimism for a future where comic book stores will still exist, at least for the next 50 years. But don’t you get your hopes up quick, dear reader! Let’s start with the main problems first, and for the purposes of this article, I’m going to be focusing on the main two comic book publishers: DC and Marvel Comics.

The Continuity Can Be Irritating

Let’s get the most obvious issue out of the way first. Marvel and DC have needlessly complex continuity that is unfriendly to both insiders and outsiders and alienates new readers.

This was my biggest hurdle when trying to get into comics during my teenage years and it’s generally what I hear people claim when they say that they don’t even want to try comics out in the first place. For decades, these big two publishers have told literally thousands of stories in these large, connected universes that outsiders think that they need to have memorized in order to enjoy books and while that last part just isn’t true, it doesn’t change the fact that this misinformation is a huge problem.

It was hard for me to accept that I was never going to know everything, but that was a realization that I had to get to by talking to people at geek conventions and online. Both big publishers release plenty of great jumping-on points, but they do a terrible job of making that clear. Marvel was really weird recently by putting a big #1 on issues that started a new story. The idea was “This says #1 and it’s the start of something new so this will entice new readers to give it a shot!” However, these books generally also had a separate issue number on them which is very confusing for these new readers.

Like it or not, it’s human nature to want to start at the beginning of something. Even if it is a new storyline then most people aren’t going to want to start a book that’s at issue twenty four no matter if you put a giant #1 on it or not.

Lack of Focus on Mini-Series Comic Books

That also brings me to another point which is that the numbering system can also scare away people. I would personally like it if books were printed as mini-series more often, you know, like how there are a lot of TV shows out there that count as mini-series?

I understand that this is not a great idea from a sales standpoint, but having a legitimate issue #1 is going to entice more people than having a huge legacy number that’s just going to confuse and scare off potential new readers. Even then though, it’s great to have a new jumping-on point, but that means essentially nothing if you don’t advertise it.

Little Investment in Marketing for Big Publishers

Boy oh boy, where do I start from? The comic book industry is ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE at marketing. The only places that I’ve ever seen comics advertised are in comic book stores, comic websites, and other comics themselves. How is that supposed to grow your audience? All you’re really doing is milking more cash from an already shrinking market. If there’s a new badass Iron Man book coming out that would be a great place for new readers to get started then let the people know! Buy a billboard, make some Facebook ads, do something other than hoping that people will like the movies enough to drop by a store out of sheer curiosity.

Even then, some people don’t even know where to buy comics. With the exception of collected paperbacks and graphic novels being stocked at book retailers, the only real place to get single issues of comics are at your local comic book shop, something that 1) not everybody even has and 2) some people don’t even want to visit with the awful reputation that they’ve gotten in the media. Making comic books more available would definitely not hurt—especially in international markets where you genuinely can’t find them.

Here’s another issue that I have, the need to read multiple books to keep up with one storyline. Now, this is not the same as needing to keep up with an entire connected universe. I’m talking more about how it’s stupid that for say, the “Death of the Family” story, you need to read Batman then Batgirl then Catwoman then back to Batman, etc. This one storyline needs you to read nine different series. It’s one thing to have tie ins, but when the literal next part of a Batman storyline is in a different book entirely then it is extremely transparent that this is just done to make people buy books that they normally wouldn’t purchase.

A big reason why indie comics and manga are getting so popular is that there’s only one book that you need to read in order to get the complete story. If you like the series then all you have to do is just keep reading it. Making it to where you need to buy extra products just to get the core narrative is incredibly tacky since comics, albeit cheap issue by issue, get pretty expensive after a while.

To help offset that cost, it sure would be nice to buy them digitally since most digital copies of traditional books are cheaper than their physical counterparts. Nope, nor for comics! A brand new issue of a comic is the same price no matter what format you purchase it in! That makes no sense. I get that physical books have advertisements in them which helps offset the costs, but you’re telling me that not shipping out thousands of physical books is just as expensive as releasing a .pdf?

If Marvel and DC released some more of their more classic stories in their entirety for free then there is solid a chance that this could potentially hook new readers, allowing them to fall in love with characters with no financial bar to entry.

Storytelling in Comic Books Can Use More Genuine Work

I’ve been focusing a lot on distribution a lot for this article, but that’s not to say that the storytelling couldn’t use some work as well. I honestly have a problem with the comics more or less only being used to test concepts for stuff like the movies and video games. It often feels like by trying to constantly force new characters instead of building off of already great established ones that are lesser known and/or underutilized, Marvel and DC are just throwing a million new ideas at the wall and trying to see what sticks.

And for the stuff that does end up sticking, the cool and complex changes that are made to the status quo tend to get instantly undone around the time that a big movie comes out. See, comics do in fact bend backwards so much in order to accommodate the movie watchers. As a big example of this then just take a look at Star-Lord from Guardians of The Galaxy. He was not only completely redesigned to resemble his MCU appearance, but his entire personality changed to be more in line as well. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing since, in my opinion, the MCU Star-Lord is a much better character all around than his comic counterpart, but it just goes to show that the source material frankly isn’t what matters anymore and that sucks.

The COVID-19 Pandemic’s Impact on the Industry

The comic book industry, like so many others around the world, has felt the impact of the coronavirus. The Pandemic has made this last year difficult for every aspect of the industry, including comic book shop owners, event coordinators, and even the creators themselves. At the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, no one thought that the comic book industry would come out of this without utter destruction. Media outlets spoke about how the coronavirus is the last nail in the comic book industry’s coffin.

But 2020 was nothing short of a rollercoaster for the industry.

With comic conventions canceled and people not taking vacations, many fans concentrated on making their collections more complete. Many customers fled into the comic book stores to buy whatever they can. Delivery by mail and online deliveries also added to the treasury of these stores. It appears that sales patterns have stayed relatively consistent, with X-Men and Batman remaining the most valuable franchises at Marvel and DC, respectively.

I love comic books so much, and I still think there are here to stay, in some shape or form, for the next 50 or 100 years. I believe that the industry can and should be better than it currently is because right now, it’s going to shrink more and more until the source material for these video games, these shows, these movies are going to not be a viable business practice and I really think that if we give enough love and attention to grow this, then we are going to be in a brand new era of comic books.