So this is an issue that for me has been heating up for some time, but it's finally boiled over due to DC's latest gaff [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0eVa0oO-uo]. I just have to wonder, why the hell are there no businessmen in the American comic book industry?
For those who aren't aware either through not being a customer of the industry or from not being North American (the problem exsists in Canada due to the Marvel/DC market dominance, though it's not as bad due to large amounts of European and Japanese comic imports) the industry as a whole has been in decline for the past three or four decades. This came about as a result of the shift from comics from the supermarket/grocery store/gas station magazine rack to speciality stores that coincided with the industry-wide shift from the content of comic being aimed at children but enjoyable to all ages to being aimed at adults and only in some cases being enjoyable (or even appropriate) to all ages.
This period saw income for the comic book industry increase despite the generation growing up in the 80s not having an easy means of accessing it due to those who where already comic book readers spending more money per person on comics and starting to buy other things like expensive collectibles, graphic novels and other things you'll find in your local comic-con. This increase in income was only made larger by the speculator bubble, but I'm not going to go into that large issue that would quadruple the size of this post if I where to go into any detail. The long and short of it is the industry collapsed in the late 90s due to consumers leaving the consumer base due to age, there not being new readers to replace them, and the collapse of the speculator bubble which saw Marvel go bankrupt for a short while (which lead to one of the fasted and probably biggest comebacks by a company in the past 40 years, but again another story not for here).
So this lead to a problem come the 2000s. Income was way down for both companies (as well as the minor ones which saw many close altogether), and one was bankrupt. Now both companies had sound plans for keeping themselves from going under (DC was owned by Warner and so was easily able to stay afloat off cartoons, movies and merchandise, while Marvel was using their cut of the money from movie adaptations of their IP to fund what we today call the MCU). Now both where not going to go under with their plans, but they needed to keep their comics divisions in the green to justify their continued existence.
Now here's where things start to become head scratching. While DC had for years by that point had its financially and critically acclaimed DC Animated Universe and Marvel was setting up a movie studio, their respective comics divisions doubled down on the solution which had caused the industry to nearly collapse in the first place: catering and trying to be reliant on the late 20's/early 30's reader instead of trying to bring in readers who where younger who had grown up in the 90s immersed in the cartoons and early movie adaptations from the two companies. They did try to bring in new readers with things like Marvel's Ultimates, but that was aimed at late teens and adults. The few attempts at increasing readership wasn't helped by the fact that comic books almost exclusively advertise in other comic books, making awareness of new lines limited to those already in the consumer base.
This also led to the rise in crisis crossovers. Though they had been around since the 80s, the rise in them in the 00's was for one sole reason: to sell more comics by having the story spread out through as many as 200 comic books running in parallel (in what was usually an uncoordinated, incoherent mess) so people had to read comics they'd otherwise never had touched to get the whole story. For a long (and dark) time such crossovers where so prevalent they where happening just as often as not, and where getting more convoluted as time went on until DC finally just rebooted their whole universe and Marvel ran out of ideas and started redoing previous crossovers.
As anyone who has a high school level understanding of economics will tell you, this lead to even further drops in readership due to the fact that people who where not part of the consumer base being too intimidated to get in by the canon and crossovers, and those in the consumer base not to have to read 50 comics they didn't want to understand what was happening in the comics they followed, so either stopped reading during crossovers or stopped all together.
The past few years (since around 2010-2011 for the two companies) have seen another shift in the practice of the two companies which is head scratching. As it stands what keeps the industry going is that current fans are holding it up and comic book stores being easier to find now then ever before online. But the recent initiatives to try and get more readership from new groups has not been the most logical. Where simple business logic would dictate trying to make comics that children would like coupled with making them also accessible to said children (or more accurately, their parents) instead most of the changes of the past 5 years have been ones which alienate the old fans in an attempt to attract people from a demographic which holds no interest in comics (and the sales figures have shown this when taking Issue #1 sales spikes and post launch normalization into account).
So this has lead to each company having very questionable decisions such as Marvel's Thorina and DC's pulling of a Batwomen cover (though these problems are only the most visible and are FAR from the only ones) and as always the trend of the past few decades for readership continues its downturn despite movies and tv series both live action and animated making this the perfect time for a new golden age to start.
While watching all this I can only ask myself the simple question of the OP: where are the businessmen in the industry? Because Marvel and DC's comics have not acted in the way that companies being lead by those following the smell of stable profits (I mean seriously, how hard is it to try and have contracts with Walmart or other nation wide stores to have a few of your comic lines on their shelves next to the register? No way in hell they wouldn't be up for that given how fast that would sell as impulse buys).
Things are going to get a lot worst in the industry before they get better. Thank god France, Belgium and Japan didn't have their industries make the same mistakes.
For those who aren't aware either through not being a customer of the industry or from not being North American (the problem exsists in Canada due to the Marvel/DC market dominance, though it's not as bad due to large amounts of European and Japanese comic imports) the industry as a whole has been in decline for the past three or four decades. This came about as a result of the shift from comics from the supermarket/grocery store/gas station magazine rack to speciality stores that coincided with the industry-wide shift from the content of comic being aimed at children but enjoyable to all ages to being aimed at adults and only in some cases being enjoyable (or even appropriate) to all ages.
This period saw income for the comic book industry increase despite the generation growing up in the 80s not having an easy means of accessing it due to those who where already comic book readers spending more money per person on comics and starting to buy other things like expensive collectibles, graphic novels and other things you'll find in your local comic-con. This increase in income was only made larger by the speculator bubble, but I'm not going to go into that large issue that would quadruple the size of this post if I where to go into any detail. The long and short of it is the industry collapsed in the late 90s due to consumers leaving the consumer base due to age, there not being new readers to replace them, and the collapse of the speculator bubble which saw Marvel go bankrupt for a short while (which lead to one of the fasted and probably biggest comebacks by a company in the past 40 years, but again another story not for here).
So this lead to a problem come the 2000s. Income was way down for both companies (as well as the minor ones which saw many close altogether), and one was bankrupt. Now both companies had sound plans for keeping themselves from going under (DC was owned by Warner and so was easily able to stay afloat off cartoons, movies and merchandise, while Marvel was using their cut of the money from movie adaptations of their IP to fund what we today call the MCU). Now both where not going to go under with their plans, but they needed to keep their comics divisions in the green to justify their continued existence.
Now here's where things start to become head scratching. While DC had for years by that point had its financially and critically acclaimed DC Animated Universe and Marvel was setting up a movie studio, their respective comics divisions doubled down on the solution which had caused the industry to nearly collapse in the first place: catering and trying to be reliant on the late 20's/early 30's reader instead of trying to bring in readers who where younger who had grown up in the 90s immersed in the cartoons and early movie adaptations from the two companies. They did try to bring in new readers with things like Marvel's Ultimates, but that was aimed at late teens and adults. The few attempts at increasing readership wasn't helped by the fact that comic books almost exclusively advertise in other comic books, making awareness of new lines limited to those already in the consumer base.
This also led to the rise in crisis crossovers. Though they had been around since the 80s, the rise in them in the 00's was for one sole reason: to sell more comics by having the story spread out through as many as 200 comic books running in parallel (in what was usually an uncoordinated, incoherent mess) so people had to read comics they'd otherwise never had touched to get the whole story. For a long (and dark) time such crossovers where so prevalent they where happening just as often as not, and where getting more convoluted as time went on until DC finally just rebooted their whole universe and Marvel ran out of ideas and started redoing previous crossovers.
As anyone who has a high school level understanding of economics will tell you, this lead to even further drops in readership due to the fact that people who where not part of the consumer base being too intimidated to get in by the canon and crossovers, and those in the consumer base not to have to read 50 comics they didn't want to understand what was happening in the comics they followed, so either stopped reading during crossovers or stopped all together.
The past few years (since around 2010-2011 for the two companies) have seen another shift in the practice of the two companies which is head scratching. As it stands what keeps the industry going is that current fans are holding it up and comic book stores being easier to find now then ever before online. But the recent initiatives to try and get more readership from new groups has not been the most logical. Where simple business logic would dictate trying to make comics that children would like coupled with making them also accessible to said children (or more accurately, their parents) instead most of the changes of the past 5 years have been ones which alienate the old fans in an attempt to attract people from a demographic which holds no interest in comics (and the sales figures have shown this when taking Issue #1 sales spikes and post launch normalization into account).
So this has lead to each company having very questionable decisions such as Marvel's Thorina and DC's pulling of a Batwomen cover (though these problems are only the most visible and are FAR from the only ones) and as always the trend of the past few decades for readership continues its downturn despite movies and tv series both live action and animated making this the perfect time for a new golden age to start.
While watching all this I can only ask myself the simple question of the OP: where are the businessmen in the industry? Because Marvel and DC's comics have not acted in the way that companies being lead by those following the smell of stable profits (I mean seriously, how hard is it to try and have contracts with Walmart or other nation wide stores to have a few of your comic lines on their shelves next to the register? No way in hell they wouldn't be up for that given how fast that would sell as impulse buys).
Things are going to get a lot worst in the industry before they get better. Thank god France, Belgium and Japan didn't have their industries make the same mistakes.
), but it was the best Cap solo story I had ever read by far. Winter Soldier is my second favorite Marvel film because it was basically like seeing a Brubaker Cap story in live action. Similar tone, aesthetic, intrigue, and it even used all of the same characters from Brubaker's run (minus Red Skull and Sin). It was fucking perfect.