How will the coronavirus affect comics?

[skyvolt2000]

I think Marvel and DC have an advantage in terms of recongonizable characters, but clearly the format and business model of DC and Marvel comics is failing to brining kids as new readers and that will finish them in the long run, if they do not address it.

They are trying to address but ADULTS keep getting in the way.

I'm sure if there was another way to make that amount of money, immediately, the publishers would be migrating there ASAP.

There is one, it just takes away from the "perks" of the comic book store.

The comic book store will tell you ONLY Batman & X-Men matter. It gives you justification to EXCLUDE folks like a Black Panther or Carol Danvers or Young Justice kids. It gives you justification for all those variants and crappy events and flooding the market with certain folks.

You can flood the market with Batman, Harley & Deadpool.

You can use the same crappy writers and get away with it as long as they do the "entitled" collection.

The YA market DOES NOT. It forces you to diversify what you make. Squirrel Girl say HI. America, Riri, Shuri, Ms Marvel and even Nadia have beaten Batman and X-Men in sales. They don't have an issue with an Asian batman, black Dick Grayson, Latina Catwoman and a NICE Joker in Gotham High unless all these so-called gatekeeping comic book fans who claim to know comics.

The YA market sasy it's FINE to give them Peter Parker, X-Men, batman, Superman & Wonder Woman but you BETTER have some more variety behind it.

The YA says they better see POC, LGBTQ & women as leads and as creators.

One FORCES you to do more work. Because folks like myself are looking for these books for our kids and students.

I rather go the YA book route.

You can out a $10-15 OGN a month of a different character or every 3-4 months. Archie did that with Sabrina as did Star trek with Jake Sisko book line.

If gators and stores are going to fight you tooth and nail against any book with a POC as the lead-BYPASS them with a OGN. Get the books to the folks who want to read them.

[Digifiend]

black Dick Grayson,

What!?! I didn't expect Dick to be in Gotham High at all.

[The Overlord]

Exactatiously!
And what has worked for one will not work for the other...at least not without definitively and significantly changing the industry into something completely different.

And how is the comic book industry working at all if it fails to get new customers and get kids interested in their products?

It seems like some fans want to treat comics like their own private club that keeps newcomers out rather something that goes out of its way to welcome in kids and new fans.

[Journey]

So my preorder just got pushed back another week over at comixology. At this point I'm just over it. No real information of substance is being put out, no plan seems to be happening it's just a waiting game at this point and I'm genuinely annoyed. I don't think DC and Marvel kissing ass to the retailers and Diamond and putting out nothing is a solution to this problem. It's honestly really irritating.

[Rzerox21xx]

https://bleedingcool.com/comics/diam...ome-addresses/

what you think

[Digifiend]

Sending back stock to homes? Irrelevant. Until they start accepting new product again, it's a non-issue. If they accepted new product, then store owners could at least send copies to people with pull lists, even though they couldn't open their shops to the public.

[Midnight_v]

I can't help but think after listening to Donny Cates call into a stream that... I might be that many, many artists jump ship and full sail their own projects. What with all the money thats been made the last few years
with crowdfunded graphic novels.
"....something something strange bedfellows"

'And how is the comic book industry working at all if it fails to get new customers and get kids interested in their products?

It seems like some fans want to treat comics like their own private club that keeps newcomers out rather something that goes out of its way to welcome in kids and new fans.

I think the main thing is to do that without crapping on the existing characters in any way shape or form.

So what needs to be done to get people into the product? There are billion dollar movies, toy sales, video games... meanwhile internationally people fall head over heel for manga and the anime
gets people to actually go and buy the books.

The idea that "whats been going on" is them attempting to get "KIDS" interested in their products seems false. Its been an ongoing attempt to please the twitter crowd. Which isn't a big deal except.
I mean "Kids" don't use twitter... there are a lot of them on the gram,Tok, and snap-chat but what kid wants a "Kids" book anyway.

The YA market DOES NOT. It forces you to diversify what you make. Squirrel Girl say HI. America, Riri, Shuri, Ms Marvel and even Nadia have beaten Batman and X-Men in sales. They don't have an issue with an Asian batman, black Dick Grayson, Latina Catwoman and a NICE Joker in Gotham High unless all these so-called gatekeeping comic book fans who claim to know comics.

The YA market is comparatively a bs market to try to break into, but it hits the political socio-political pleasure zones of many people on this *THESE BOARDS* when really what needs to be sought after
is the money going to manga. Thats the nearest market to reach full of young people.

These boards are a weird little echo chamber in a lot of ways, so its hard to fathom how "normies" are just going to "roll their eyes and keep going" or be like "WTH??? They did what with batman? Bwahahaha"

But if you wanna make a "fruits basket" equivalent comic and go for that market you can totally DO that. In fact maybe you SHOULD do that. Lets just stop acting like grown-ups are stopping it from happening.
Its NOT a terrible idea and its been done in comics before, ROMANCE COMICS WERE A THING...

However, using a character set that ISN'T based around the "THE GODDAMN BATMAN" is IDK MAYBE a good idea, for example.

Myself being a person that is really apt to stand back and look at the overall narrative of a tale...

Hawk, Dove, and Kestrel would actually work a LOT better for that type of narrative...again "For example".

Also I've started to resent the fact that so many narrative analysis and rebuttals get downplayed as some kind of bigotry. Never blame malice when stupidity will do. Ala Comic companies tone deaf use of characters over the years.

[H-E-D]

So, basically, Marvel should start wrapping chocolate bars with a few panels of Avengers, because chocolate bars outsell their comics, kid / YA graphic novels, and manga combined?

Maybe they should just get rid of the interior art, and start printing romance novels, beneath covers of muscled men, since romance novels sell at least twice as many copies of ALL graphic novels combined.

What works for manga and kid/YA OGN isn't going to work for Marvel and DC. Anyone that wants black and white, less historied, simply written, self contained stories of a few volumes can go read kid/YA OGNs, but they aren't going to get what they get from Marvel comics.

It's more thhan a bit silly to think that manga and US comic books are as different from each other as they are from chocolate.

Manga are literally comic books. They're the same medium.

I disagree.

Part of the selling point of Marvel and DC is the deep lore and sprawling universes. That's their niche, adventures, battles, and heroism from the detective crime story to universal in scale.

There are effectively limitless stories with a defined middle and end, with no lore or continuity to get into. Sure the market might be bigger but competition is constant.

It's definitely a selling point to a certain audience.

The question is about whether that audience is sizable and sustainable enough to support an industry.

If a kid I knew was interested in Spiderman I'd start them out with a big TPB of the Lee Ditko run.

That's a bit silly. I think Ultimate Spider-Man would resonate a lot more with a kid raised on today's media.

Exactatiously!
And what has worked for one will not work for the other...at least not without definitively and significantly changing the industry into something completely different.

I think the industry might not have a choice in the matter. The current model only works because of LCS. If they go under...

These boards are a weird little echo chamber in a lot of ways, so its hard to fathom how "normies" are just going to "roll their eyes and keep going" or be like "WTH??? They did what with batman? Bwahahaha"

You and I have very different mental images of Scholastic Book Fairs.

Also I've started to resent the fact that so many narrative analysis and rebuttals get downplayed as some kind of bigotry.

And those on the other side of how many of those "narrative analysis and rebuttals" contain explicit bigotry and prejudice.

[The Overlord]

I can't help but think after listening to Donny Cates call into a stream that... I might be that many, many artists jump ship and full sail their own projects. What with all the money thats been made the last few years
with crowdfunded graphic novels.
"....something something strange bedfellows"


I think the main thing is to do that without crapping on the existing characters in any way shape or form.

So what needs to be done to get people into the product? There are billion dollar movies, toy sales, video games... meanwhile internationally people fall head over heel for manga and the anime
gets people to actually go and buy the books.

The idea that "whats been going on" is them attempting to get "KIDS" interested in their products seems false. Its been an ongoing attempt to please the twitter crowd. Which isn't a big deal except.
I mean "Kids" don't use twitter... there are a lot of them on the gram,Tok, and snap-chat but what kid wants a "Kids" book anyway.

There is a huge middle ground between a book that is only for little kids and a book that focuses on sexualization and shock value to sell a comic. There is a lot of pre teen YA fiction that has a middle ground, where the stakes are real and characters can die, but is trying too hard to be adult.

Frankly, I am kinda over the type of shock value and over-sexualization we have seen in comics since the 90s, its hard to be shocking anymore and people can see any sexualized image of famous female characters in general on the internet, it's not really needed in the books themselves at this point and can be a turn off for female readers.

I think the continuity issues are real killer in terms of bringing in new readers, stuff like the Clone Saga, One More Day, the origins of Cable and Stryfe, that is the kinda stuff that would make newcomers roll their eyes.

Frankly, I think the continuity has become a millstone at this point and some creators and readers just fear any sort of change. I keep on asking why for almost 60 years guys like Trapster and Shocker have remained one-dimensional bank-robbing villains with no real backstory who seem only to exist to get punched by heroes, whenever I suggest fleshing them out, I get a ton of pushback, that they should remain that way because that is how they have always been. Meanwhile, some like Batman the Animated series took Mr. Freeze, a one-dimensional thief and made him a tragic character or introduced interesting new villains like Harley Quinn. The other media adaptions are taking more chances than the comics are, in the Spider-Man game Aunt May dies and I doubt they will brining her back and the Arkham games kills off the Joker and ends with Scarecrow unmasking Batman on live TV. The other media adaptions are not trying to maintain an eternal status quo.

[CentralPower]

[QUOTE
I rather go the YA book route. [/QUOTE]

What about those of us who actually read comics?


And, to be honest, if I had a daughter I would expect her to be reading higher than "Squirrel Girl", "Gotham High" or "Ms. Marvel".

[The Overlord]

What about those of us who actually read comics?
.

Is there enough of those people to sustain the industry for decades to come or is that a shrinking base that cannot sustain the industry long term? At a certain point, you cannot maintain something simply because it has been around for a long time, sometimes it will have to adapt or die.

[CentralPower]

So, either way, you are assuming that we cannot keep reading comics.

I have nothing against little girls being able to read comics. But, they are going to read different comics. And, focusing on digital will kill the comics most of us read, along with other elements of the hobby we like.

[The Overlord]

So, either way, you are assuming that we cannot keep reading comics.

I have nothing against little girls being able to read comics. But, they are going to read different comics. And, focusing on digital will kill the comics most of us read, along with other elements of the hobby we like.

I think the current business model does not work long term and likely will have to change to survive. People could have loved watching movies on VHS, but would it make sense to prop up the VCR industry forever, rather than moving on to a different format? Digital is replacing a lot of things, Newspapers and magazines are declining, even cable TV is declining in the face of streaming, how are print comics supposed to survive and how are comics supposed to survive if they can't bring in new customers.

The American comics industry seems to be fueled solely by nostalgia at this point and all the arguments for keeping the same old business model are based on nostalgia. The sprawling Marvel universe does not make sense, because the illusion of change is broken because Marvel is obsessed with maintaining a status quo where everything is set back to the Silver Age, look at Spider-Man, they killed off his Aunt and brought her back saying the woman died was an actor pretending to be Aunt May, Peter Parker's marriage is undone by a deal with the devil, which also undone Spidey's secret identity being revealed, they bent over backward to just set Peter Parker back to some pre-1987 status quo, try to explain that to a newcomer. Or look at the X-Men, they took a normal human supporting character like Moria MacTaggert who died back in 2001 and made her into some immortal mutant who can reset the universe every time she dies and essentially undid death as a concept. If this is what the sprawling the Marvel Universe is doing nowadays, no wonder newcomers do not want a part of it.

[Digifiend]

2000AD publisher Rebellion has postponed some trades, but all one-shots, weeklies, monthlies and digital releases are continuing as normal.
https://www.newsarama.com/49747-rebe...digitally.html

[Anthony W]

The YA market is comparatively a bs market to try to break into, but it hits the political socio-political pleasure zones of many people on this *THESE BOARDS* when really what needs to be sought after
is the money going to manga. Thats the nearest market to reach full of young people.

These boards are a weird little echo chamber in a lot of ways, so its hard to fathom how "normies" are just going to "roll their eyes and keep going" or be like "WTH??? They did what with batman? Bwahahaha"

Gotham High would have been the perfect show to air after Smallville, unfortunately it's nineteen years too late lol.