Gerry Conway: "Cancel all superhero comics!"

[Digifiend]

How many funny episodes of the Simpsons were past season 9? I can only think of one. Sometimes keeping things on forever does not make a great product long term.

If people didn't still like it they wouldn't still be making it. The people who think it stopped being funny 20 years ago are a very loud minority.

[Username taken]

Really popular mangas often go on forever. Mangas are wrapped up when they stop selling...
Reason why Marvel and DC continuity is so convoluted compared to mangas or long novel series such as Song of Ice and Fire or Harry Potter, is the frequent change of creative control.

Not necessarily.

Blade of Demon Destruction was pretty much set to become one of the highest selling mangas of all time and still ended. Same with Promised Neverland. Attack on Titan is still selling gangbusters but is coming to an end very soon. They are all ending basically because the stories have come to an end despite massive sales.

Big selling mangas tend to go on for extended periods due to high sales but nowadays we are seeing top selling mangas end after just a few years.

[Ikari]

Not necessarily.

Blade of Demon Destruction was pretty much set to become one of the highest selling mangas of all time and still ended. Same with Promised Neverland. Attack on Titan is still selling gangbusters but is coming to an end very soon. They are all ending basically because the stories have come to an end despite massive sales.

Big selling mangas tend to go on for extended periods due to high sales but nowadays we are seeing top selling mangas end after just a few years.

True but even 'short' popular mangas tend to go on longer than just couple of years. Fullmetal Alchemist, relatively compact for a major manga, lasted 9 years, Attack on Titan has been going on for 11. And of course some popular mangas get sequels and spinoffs, Ginga comes to mind here.

[Raye]

Just going to sum up my feelings by saying that I really dislike when the publishers go all in on any one direction, (DC is especially bad about this though) I don't think it is a good move to make ALL your books target one audience. By all means, targeting kids with accessible continuity lite books is a good thing. And yeah, that the industry has maybe leaned too far towards the old guard is probably true. But I don't think you have to just toss out everything and target (almost) everything at those younger new readers. You create gateway books, like they have done before, like with Squirrel Girl, Moon Girl, Ms Marvel, Strange Academy etc. these are all books that fit the demographic he is wanting to go after, and they seem to do well with them, even if all of them don't sell well in the traditional markets of single issues at comic shops. I've given several of those books to my niece while she was the perfect age for them, and now she's ready to dive into the other stuff. If they all just stayed directed at tweens, except a line of sporadic OGNs, she'd just get bored and wander off, but now they have a long term fan because there is stuff that she can transition into as she gets older after getting into things with the all-ages stuff. These new readers will not be buying 50 books a month, so publishing a handful aimed at that audience is fine, and there is still plenty of room for the publishers to also publish books aimed at older fans. And of those, some can be punchemups, some can be detective/noir stuff, some can be cosmic, some can be more relationship/daily life focused, some can be fumy, some can be tragic. The point is, if you make every book in your line one thing, you're just excluding fans. If you publish a variety, everyone can find something, and that goes for young readers and older ones. And you don't have to reboot the universe to get rid of continuity to make books that don't focus on it too much. The books I listed before are not very reliant on continuity at all, either because it was just squarely focused on the present and their own little corner of things, or they were brand new characters, so had nothing much to catch up on, (ms Marvel probably being the one with the most baggage due to Inhumans stuff, but it was nothing terribly hard to get a handle on from Ms Marvel alone) even if they existed in a universe that went back decades. You can have and use continuity without it being a barrier to new readers, it's all in the handling.

Absolutely, more should be done to grow those alternate markets and try to get the books to younger readers, but that's not a problem that can simply be addressed by making every book in the line all-ages and continuity free, the bigger problem is marketing and making them available without having to go to a comic shop, they need to be pushing digital, subscriptions and trades harder.I agree that trades should be a much bigger focus, and maybe some books should be trade-only, (stuff like Vision comes to mind) but I think maybe he's backwards about which ones should get this treatment, I think the younger-ages stuff would do better in trades than the older-audience stuff, but I don't really see a reason to make either one exclusive to a specific format. I also agree that i would have WAY fewer events. I do think his idea of offering subscriptions for paper comics through Amazon is a really good one. I get my niece subs, and it has to go through Midtown, but being in Canada, this is pricey, but she likes having the paper copies, (she was slow to learn to read due to a couple different learning disabilities, and that is a large part of why i got her comics to read, so i think having the physical item is a point of pride for her at this point) but her mom just isn't into any of this stuff at all, completely clueless about it all, aside from watching the movies, and won't take her to comic shops, so... subscription from auntie it is. But yeah, Amazon would be much easier than dealing with Midtown, and it would be far more accessible to a greater number of people.

But all this stuff is already there, there are already all-ages continuity lite books, the books are already available in trades and digital, everything he wants is already happening. Just, people have other things they want to spend their entertainment dollars on, it's not an easy sell, and that's the real issue.

[PCN24454]

True but even 'short' popular mangas tend to go on longer than just couple of years. Fullmetal Alchemist, relatively compact for a major manga, lasted 9 years, Attack on Titan has been going on for 11. And of course some popular mangas get sequels and spinoffs, Ginga comes to mind here.

Compared to the 60+ years of Marvel, that's nothing.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Just going to sum up my feelings by saying that I really dislike when the publishers go all in on any one direction, (DC is especially bad about this though) I don't think it is a good move to make ALL your books target one audience. By all means, targeting kids with accessible continuity lite books is a good thing. And yeah, that the industry has maybe leaned too far towards the old guard is probably true. But I don't think you have to just toss out everything and target (almost) everything at those younger new readers. You create gateway books, like they have done before, like with Squirrel Girl, Moon Girl, Ms Marvel, Strange Academy etc. these are all books that fit the demographic he is wanting to go after, and they seem to do well with them, even if all of them don't sell well in the traditional markets of single issues at comic shops. I've given several of those books to my niece while she was the perfect age for them, and now she's ready to dive into the other stuff. If they all just stayed directed at tweens, except a line of sporadic OGNs, she'd just get bored and wander off, but now they have a long term fan because there is stuff that she can transition into as she gets older after getting into things with the all-ages stuff. These new readers will not be buying 50 books a month, so publishing a handful aimed at that audience is fine, and there is still plenty of room for the publishers to also publish books aimed at older fans. And of those, some can be punchemups, some can be detective/noir stuff, some can be cosmic, some can be more relationship/daily life focused, some can be fumy, some can be tragic. The point is, if you make every book in your line one thing, you're just excluding fans. If you publish a variety, everyone can find something, and that goes for young readers and older ones. And you don't have to reboot the universe to get rid of continuity to make books that don't focus on it too much. The books I listed before are not very reliant on continuity at all, either because it was just squarely focused on the present and their own little corner of things, or they were brand new characters, so had nothing much to catch up on, (ms Marvel probably being the one with the most baggage due to Inhumans stuff, but it was nothing terribly hard to get a handle on from Ms Marvel alone) even if they existed in a universe that went back decades. You can have and use continuity without it being a barrier to new readers, it's all in the handling.

Absolutely, more should be done to grow those alternate markets and try to get the books to younger readers, but that's not a problem that can simply be addressed by making every book in the line all-ages and continuity free, the bigger problem is marketing and making them available without having to go to a comic shop, they need to be pushing digital, subscriptions and trades harder.I agree that trades should be a much bigger focus, and maybe some books should be trade-only, (stuff like Vision comes to mind) but I think maybe he's backwards about which ones should get this treatment, I think the younger-ages stuff would do better in trades than the older-audience stuff, but I don't really see a reason to make either one exclusive to a specific format. I also agree that i would have WAY fewer events. I do think his idea of offering subscriptions for paper comics through Amazon is a really good one. I get my niece subs, and it has to go through Midtown, but being in Canada, this is pricey, but she likes having the paper copies, (she was slow to learn to read due to a couple different learning disabilities, and that is a large part of why i got her comics to read, so i think having the physical item is a point of pride for her at this point) but her mom just isn't into any of this stuff at all, completely clueless about it all, aside from watching the movies, and won't take her to comic shops, so... subscription from auntie it is. But yeah, Amazon would be much easier than dealing with Midtown, and it would be far more accessible to a greater number of people.

But all this stuff is already there, there are already all-ages continuity lite books, the books are already available in trades and digital, everything he wants is already happening. Just, people have other things they want to spend their entertainment dollars on, it's not an easy sell, and that's the real issue.

Well put, I agree entirely.

[Digifiend]

Not necessarily.

Blade of Demon Destruction was pretty much set to become one of the highest selling mangas of all time and still ended. Same with Promised Neverland. Attack on Titan is still selling gangbusters but is coming to an end very soon. They are all ending basically because the stories have come to an end despite massive sales.

Big selling mangas tend to go on for extended periods due to high sales but nowadays we are seeing top selling mangas end after just a few years.

The difference is, mangas don't tend to switch creative teams. If the writer quits, that's it, it's done. Whereas if a writer quits a Marvel book, it'll probably be relaunched with someone else.

[Zero Hunter]

Conway is absolutely right. My god have you tried reading the X-men books? Can you imagine a child trying to read them? It’s crazy! 15 books all being written for grown men. They are the definition of the problem Conway is talking about! They sell a lot to collectors and their base but that’s it nobody is reading Hickmans run as a kid

Again. Kids are not reading comics period. They don't care about comics. Comics are too expensive for kids to pick them up on a whim. Dumbing them down is not the answer because then you are just insulting everyone. Dc and Marvel have both done simple younger lines over the years, and if they sold they would still be going.

[Digifiend]

Again. Kids are not reading comics period. They don't care about comics.

ROFL. Kids do read comics, just not US format superhero floppies.

[cranger]

ROFL. Kids do read comics, just not US format superhero floppies.

I think that is what we are talking about overall in this topic. It gets tiring trying to spell it out all the time just because some people decided to start broadening the category to include manga and Dog Man just to continue internet squabbles with people making their own dumb arguments about the market trends having to do with other things.

[Ikari]

Compared to the 60+ years of Marvel, that's nothing.

Give them time...

[Ikari]

Again. Kids are not reading comics period. They don't care about comics.

This is not true at least where I live. It's true that kids read less comics nowadays than in the past. It's no surprise as new forms of entertainment are invented every year. They also read less books and watch less TV than back in my childhood and play much less with toy cars, dolls or action figures. But many kids certainly do still read comics. Donald Duck has weekly circulation of like 200,000 in this country. Titles like Moomin, Bamse and Winnie the Pooh are still read by small kids and preteen girls read horse and princess comics like Frozen etc. Boys read tons of manga. However superhero comics have largely died out here. They became popular in the '80s but I think Spider-Man is pretty much only one still locally translated and circulated. X-men were terminated couple of years ago. Batman and Superman titles have also gone the way of the dodo, ditto for Judge Dredd. Marvel, DC and 2000AD are nowadays only translated in graphic novel form targeted for adult readers, or collection formats put together from old issues. They still have plenty of adult fans but they buy English omnibus formats sold in bookstores or read online.

So comic market is much smaller than it was like 25-30 years ago, but it definitely still exists, even for kids. They might not buy much comics themselves, but their parents still do, especially those who are worried that their kids don't learn to read and buy or subscribe them as presents. However it does look like Marvel and DC market share has fallen even quicker than overall readership, at least that is my perception here. I don't know anything about retail side of things so I can't comment anything about that.

[Digifiend]

Yeah, and here in the UK, The Beano (an anthology humour title starring Dennis and Gnasher and Bananaman among many others) still does well.

[The Overlord]

Quite a few I think. His run on Fantastic Four did pretty well I recall.



I do not have access to the mind and sentiments of every single reader of comics. We're also forgetting the elephant in the room: piracy. When we think of comics readers and measuring reach, we are only considering legal readers but in terms of eyeballs, these comics tend to be pirated a lot and maybe have a bigger audience than one assumes. Piracy is a rampant problem with comics. Digital piracy is a problem for movies, music and games too...but those industries had deep pockets to claw back to some extent, comics on the other hand don't.



Comics' history is full of Blockbuster Videos = Fawcett Comics (which in the '40s outsold Superman), Charlton Comics, Quality Comics, Malibu Comics, Milestone Comics, Wildstorm. Marvel and DC have survived and swallowed the rest.



I'm insisting that Conway's ideas and proposals are poorly reasoned and premised. That's all. I have nothing against the concept of change, or the choice of change. I have nothing against people saying that the comics' industry is in a bad strait, because it is. The thing is in a crisis, there are those who try and fix it, those who try and look ahead, and those who use the crisis to settle scores, who pick up cudgels and use it to justify and vilify and scapegoat. Conway's screed in targeting some arbitrary field of decline is in the latter camp.



Again just because one should try to innovate that doesn't mean every proposal has to be validated or considered justified for the same reasons.



Not putting someone on a pedestal doesn't mean you try and ignore it altogether. Life isn't black-and-white, just because racists misuse and misinterpret canon doesn't mean canon is inherently worthless.



It's a tool and a good one yeah. Canon provides value to the character and injects value and emotional richness to the story one tells.

Just because some people take canon as dogma doesn't mean we just put into apocrypha either.



According to you. But there are others who find the show pretty funny after that. I still drop in now and then to check out Simpsons and there's still a lot of laughs to be found.

I am getting tired of the giant wall of texts we are exchanging, so I am going to go to bullet points:

1. You keep on saying that Conway identified a real problem, but his solution is wrong? Why is his solution wrong? You keep on saying his solution wrong and the only evidence you have offered is how things have worked in the past, you have said nothing about the present. What is your solution? If you are going to say ''I have no obligation to answer that'' have you really beaten Conway, if you cannot provide an alternate solution to this problem, how do you know he is wrong? Its easy to just criticize, coming up with real solutions is where actual thinking comes in.

2. How do you know DC and Marvel are not a Blockbuster Video? Your whole argument is ''what Marvel and DC did in the past worked, why shouldn't those same tactics work now'' can be applied to Blockbuster video, with Blockbuster execs saying that their business model worked in the 80s and 90s, so they do they have to change in 2010s? Past success does not always predict future trends.

3. You seem not to want to acknowledge how convoluted Marvel continuity has gotten? Let's look at X-Men, it was recently revealed that Moria Mactaggart was a mutant whose power is she will reset the timeline every time she dies and she has already died several times and reset the timeline each time she died. This is in canon, how is this a good selling point for new readers? This is nonsense, willing suspension of disbelief doesn't mean writer can defy the rules of the universe they set up? Could you imagine any other medium introducing such an insane retcon? How does this bring in new readers? And just because you do not like this retcon, doesn't mean its not in the canon, this is X-Men canon now, how is this a selling point?

[Revolutionary_Jack]

1. You keep on saying that Conway identified a real problem, but his solution is wrong?

Yes.

Why is his solution wrong?

Because it's not blaming the real culprits, i.e. the system of editorial and distribution. It's making the work of fellow creators who write after him into scapegoats.

You keep on saying his solution wrong and the only evidence you have offered is how things have worked in the past, you have said nothing about the present.

Except for the Pandemic, nothing in the present situation is substantially different in the comics market since the late 2000s and so on.

What is your solution? If you are going to say ''I have no obligation to answer that'' have you really beaten Conway,

It's not my desire or intention to "beat" Conway. Merely refute the assumptions and poor reasoning behind his screed and defend what I feel is collateral damage.

if you cannot provide an alternate solution to this problem, how do you know he is wrong?

Not everyone knows how to be a president or how to run a business, but they know enough that a certain someone is doing it all wrong.

Its easy to just criticize, coming up with real solutions is where actual thinking comes in.

By this logic "ingesting bleach" is also a real solution that demonstrates actual thinking. This kind of nostrum that one is wrong for merely criticizing is anti-intellectual pure and simple.

2. How do you know DC and Marvel are not a Blockbuster Video?

Because again look at the graveyard of companies that have collapsed.

3. You seem not to want to acknowledge how convoluted Marvel continuity has gotten?

I don't see any evidence that this issue of continuity is the reason for the problem of the industry.

Let's look at X-Men, it was recently revealed that Moria Mactaggart was a mutant whose power is she will reset the timeline every time she dies and she has already died several times and reset the timeline each time she died.

An issue that was immediately touted as one of the best single issues in recent Marvel, instantly popular and beloved, and widely welcomed and embraced across the board.

This is in canon, how is this a good selling point for new readers?

People like science-fiction.

This is nonsense, willing suspension of disbelief doesn't mean writer can defy the rules of the universe they set up?

No rule set up in the X-Universe was violated. We never once saw the original meeting between Moira and Xavier.

Could you imagine any other medium introducing such an insane retcon?

I am sure people can chip in examples...but take "Luke I'm your father", that was a retcon introduced in TESB, "Leia is your sister" introduced in ROTJ...all of those movies were successful and made bank.

How does this bring in new readers?

New readers get to be part of history. They get an issue that boldly and permanently changed the X-Men stories and from then on, they get to say, "i was there when The uncanny life of Moira X hit the stands' and to paraphrase Napoleon, it would suffice for one of them to say that for later generations to reply with awe, "now that's a fanboy".