Do you have a cite for the presses not existing anymore? I’m not in the printing industry, but to my understanding most presses are designed to print various sizes with various degrees of quality, so just because comic books moved up in quality and onto different presses doesn’t mean the old presses aren’t still doing other jobs. I mean, printing presses ain’t cheap.
As for price vs quality, that’s ultimately in the hands of the publishers, not the readers. If the publishers see sales decline due to a price increase they can lower the price (and quality) to get those readers back. Those readers who could afford the price increase might bitch and moan, but what are they gonna do, stop reading comics? C’mon, we’re like crack addicts.
Sales have increased in the last decade, but when you look at the sales collapse that happened ten years ago that’s not surprising. But if you look at sales before the collapse and sales now there’s been a decline.
And any sales increases that we’ve seen for the last few years I’d argue would be attributable to the comics companies using the same gimmicks they did in the nineties: multiple covers, huge crossover events, deaths of major characters, etc… There doesn’t seem to be as big of a collector’s craze surrounding it this time, but I’m willing to bet we’re going to see a big slump in comic book sales in the next 2-3 years due to people tiring of the gimmicks and the overall shape of the economy.
I just spent about $90 in a comic/games shop today. I didn’t have a single basic comic book in my bag. I DID get several TPBs (Fables, 6, 8, and 9) and one HB. I’ve tried some of the basic comic books, but I don’t like them nearly as much as the TPBs. I’d rather read the whole story arc and have it more or less complete in one compilation. I really don’t like the ads in basic comics, even though I was fascinated with them when I was a kid.
I don’t know if I am a common sort of comic buyer, though. I got started by reading Gaiman’s Sandman, worked my way through Preacher, and now I’m into Fables. I tried a couple of Lucifer basic comics, but I’d rather have them in TPBs, if I’m going to buy them at all.
I’m afraid I don’t have a cite. I’m going on recalled conversations where the people on the business side of things are asked, “Well why can’t you go back to newsprint?”
Take out the ads and I don’t think too many magazines surpass that number by any great amount. Even Playboy struggles to break 50 pages of actual content minus the ads and “lifestyle” cross-promotions. Perhaps Comics could move to a subscription business model at a discount like most magazines.
Same here. I quit around 1990 because of the price and being jerked around for being a collector. We know you’ll buy issue #200. Now you have buy version 1, 2, 3, 4, & 5 of issue #200!
I can’t believe kids would cough up $4 for a comic, or that comics are good enough to make adults cough up that much.
I don’t have a linkable cite either (no time to search right now), but I can relate what my comics guy told me a while back.
When all comics were newsprint, there was one printer in Chicago or thereabouts who printed everybody’s comics. Unfortunately for that printer, toward the end comic books were the only thing it was printing.
The comics companies started introducing certain titles on better paper and a different printing process in the late '80s. I don’t remember what they called the format, but I’m referring to the titles that were $1.25 when newsprint titles were still $1.00. (For example, Animal Man from DC and Excalibur from Marvel.) These titles were printed by a Canadian company, as the traditional newsprint presses were not capable of the new process.
Over the next several years as more and more new titles were introduced using the new process and older titles were upgraded, there were fewer and fewer newsprint titles. Eventually it got to the point where there simply weren’t enough newsprint titles being produced to keep the printer in business. The printer closed up shop and all the remaining newsprint comics were upgraded to the higher-quality formats printed by the Canadian company.
With the old printer out of business, the old presses were scrapped, since there was no demand for them and they couldn’t be readily sold. So those old presses are literally gone, and there’s no going back.
I’ve probably left out some details, but that’s the gist of what my comic book guy told me.
The future of Comic books will be as transmedia promotional materials, made to introduce a neophyte to a more profitable core canon like a film a video game or a graphic novel.
I own two copies of the “Green Edition”, as well as a MacFarlane-autographed copy of the “Silver Edition”. Sadly, these don’t seem to be worth much - they’re apparently not the “collector’s item” people were expecting. I don’t know what the autograph is worth, though. That issue arrived at the comic shop already sealed into a bag with a backing board and a certificate of authenticity, and I slipped the whole shebang into yet another bag, and I’ve never opened it (since I bought the “Green Edition” to read).
Sounds to me like that guy didn’t plan well. And just because his presses were scrapped doesn’t mean that other presses in the Chicago area can’t print comic books. Go into your comic book store and look at some independent comics. The quality on a lot of those is close to what you’d get from an eighties comic. Also look at some of the trades like 100 Bullets: the print quality is definitely lower than the monthly issues. Somebody’s printing them and so there has to be presses out there that can print lower quality comics.
Wow, I hadn’t heard of this. I can guarantee that if it’s just a straight price increase without any actual content or packaging change, then that’s it for me (at least for those titles). I can barely justify $2.99 per issue as is, considering how spotty even my favorite titles are, but $3.99 is just that weird tipping point or straw that breaks the camel’s back that’ll have me waiting for the trade - or even just dropping the book, period - rather than ponying up each issue.
Why not write comics for kids again? I know there’s a lot of competition now. But the basic stories have stood the test of time. Look at the movies. Movies have made comics an adult entrainment.
Stop writing and illustrating comics for grown-ups. Write them for pre-teens again. Look at the success of Twilight and Harry Potter.
Marvel was successful in the late sixties and seventies because it was able to reject the juvenile aspects of DC and make their comics something that kids could relate to.
Now they write comics to appeal to those forty and fifty-year olds.
Kids are kids. Write comics for them. And price them for kids.
This is something that occurred to me as I read through the thread. I well remember reading Bugs Bunny, Donald Duck, the Flintstones, and other cartoon favourites in comic books when I was a child. Anybody else remember Gold Key Comics? Each magazine had a few simple, self-contained stories featuring a familiar cartoon figure, and provided a lot of entertainment to a kid. Nowadays, I enjoy such ongoing storyline comics as Fables, the Sandman, and Lucifer–oddly enough, no superheroes–but no matter how good today’s stories and art are, I don’t think I’d give comics any thought had I not enjoyed the simple cartoon stories I read as a child. How can comics publishers afford to ignore the demographic that would grow up, as I did, to enjoy their more adult product?
Those last two posts pretty much show us the problem with the comic book industry today…
Not that they don’t make those comics - because they do - DC and Marvel* both have lines aimed at kids, and several smaller companies have awesome kid’s books… Johnny DC books are even priced cheaper than other books (I just checked my copies of Family Dynamic, and they’re $2.25/issue).
But nobody knows they exist. Comic book distribution is crap, so, unless you go into a comic shop, you don’t know what’s out there. And few people who aren’t already fans are going to go to a comic shop.
This also goes for the stuff about there being no variety, or stuff aimed at a female audience (though that is exacerbated by the fact that the biggest companies - Marvel, DC, Image - are dominated by super-hero books, though even they produce other genres) - it’s out there, but you don’t know unless you go to look.
What the comic industry needs to do, if they want to save the sales of single issues, is get back into newsstand distribution.
Or maybe they should just give up on floppies, and go to long formats directly.
Johnny DC, DC’s kid’s line, is mostly populated by books based on WB’s animated properties - current books include Looney Toons, Cartoon Network Block Party and CN Action Pack, Scooby Doo, and Batman: The Brave and the Bold, plus Superfriends (a toy tie-in, rather than cartoon), and kid-aimed Shazam and Supergirl books.
There may come a time when the comics themselves are considered business expenses rather than revenue streams. Marvel and DC have to keep publishing in order to maintain their various character trademarks, with the real profit being in merchandising and adapting these trademarks to other media including toys, cartoons, and live-action films. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if the merchandising of Superman got Warner more money than the publishing of Superman, but if they abandon the latter, it puts the former in jeopardy.
I worry, should the monthly titles cease to exist, what will happen to my local comic book guy. As it stands right now, comics and comic collecting materials (bags, boards, boxes, etc.) are the only things he sells and I’m not sure what he could logically diversify into if he’s no longer able to make a living selling comics. For the first several years he was in business he also sold gaming materials, but a few years ago a gaming store opened in the same strip mall. He and the gaming store owner have a gentleman’s agreement that the comic store doesn’t sell gaming materials and the gaming store doesn’t sell comics. That wasn’t too big of a hit for the comic store - he already wasn’t selling many gaming books, mainly because of a couple big bookstores opening in town (and even the gaming store does most of its business renting gaming space and selling gaming supplies other than books, like dice, gaming mats, and other items that the big bookstores don’t stock).
But the comic book guy really hasn’t done anything but sell comics since he opened his store some 25 years ago, and it’s never been a “get rich” thing for him. He makes enough to live on, but it’s more of a labor of love. Now he’s in his mid-fifties, which kind of hurts his hirability should he have to close up shop and seek employment elsewhere, and he’s still a bit too young to retire.