Gerry Conway: "Cancel all superhero comics!"

[charliehustle415]

I would love to pick up two graphic novels per year collecting 6 issues each for my favorite books.

It would make it soo convenient and easier to read as opposed to single monthly issues.

[PCN24454]

I remember those. I had a great time reading them. I just didnt know if they had anything currently. If they dont you can make room for something like that by canceling one of the fifty X books.

Now there’s “Marvel Action”.

It’s actually not bad.

[PCN24454]

Yes, later Harry Potter books are like 3 times the thickness and much darker and more mature than the first. It's not like Rowling wrote the same book 7 times in a row.

She was writing a story with a beginning, middle, and end. It’s not the same as a comic book where even Stan Lee’s death can’t stop the events of the Marvel Universe.

[Digifiend]

I just want to point out that you really didn't expand on his points, Digifiend: you, like always, came in with a sensationalist viewpoint trying to drum up posts. That ain't cool at all.

The original article headline was Punisher Creator Gerry Conway "Cancel Every Existing Superhero Comic" - so don't shoot the messenger.

[Ikari]

She was writing a story with a beginning, middle, and end. It’s not the same as a comic book where even Stan Lee’s death can’t stop the events of the Marvel Universe.

Don't forget the prequels!
Any way, the point is that merely keeping the story accessible to kids is not what made Harry Potter popular. Conway implies that it was a mistake for superhero comics going mature. I think all the evidence points to contrary. It can be argued that they have become overcomplicated, but that's a different argument.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Don't forget the prequels!
Any way, the point is that merely keeping the story accessible to kids is not what made Harry Potter popular. Conway implies that it was a mistake for superhero comics going mature. I think all the evidence points to contrary.

Even the first HP book had dark stuff...it opens with a double murder, child abuse, then teachers abusing students, sports injuries, and violence. The content of the first HP book is not far from the content of the X-Men or a superhero book. It even ends with the hero killing the bad guy, albeit by accident.

It can be argued that they have become overcomplicated, but that's a different argument.

Right. That's not the same thing.

[ed2962]

No, it is not about WHO is being used. It's about money. It's about a shrinking space for ALL print material.

Yes, there is retail space available, and retailers are highly selective about who gets it. But that selection is based on money. You don't think Wal-Mart is GIVING those six magazines slots at the check out away, do you? No. Those publishers are paying, and paying a premium for that placement.

The other thing that Conway doesn't mention about all those retailers who carried comics before the direct market, is that they only carried them as RETURNABLE items. That's another stumbling block that the industry is hesitant to deal with.

This is a bigger issue than I think a lot of people realize. The non-returnable nature of the direct sales market saved comics in the 80's but it's what's hurting things now as Marvel knows all they have to do is get orders up to make their money. They don't have to sell to the end user.

[Spidey5640]

Can't say I agree with everything he says but it's hard to deny that the print comic is on a decline. Events and variants DO inflate numbers but how long will that last? Speaking for myself, when I visit my LCS, I see guys my age, who got into comics in the 70's and 80's. I don't see many younger readers. I don't know what the answer is but I sure hope somebody figures it out. I always thought Marvel and Dc should be giving out comics at the movies, like Marvel did with Star Wars. Yes the chance of capturing a steady comic reader is low but you have to start somewhere.

[cranger]

Don't forget the prequels!
Any way, the point is that merely keeping the story accessible to kids is not what made Harry Potter popular. Conway implies that it was a mistake for superhero comics going mature. I think all the evidence points to contrary. It can be argued that they have become overcomplicated, but that's a different argument.

I don't think he says it was a mistake to do mature comics, I think he says that a series of shifts in the intended audience has led to a point where it feels like a mistake has been made. His proposal includes mature comics, so he recognizes the market is there. The Harry Potter example was just to show how something that was original marketed one way eventually changed to serve another audience.

This is a bigger issue than I think a lot of people realize. The non-returnable nature of the direct sales market saved comics in the 80's but it's what's hurting things now as Marvel knows all they have to do is get orders up to make their money. They don't have to sell to the end user.

This is why Conway can throw this idea out there, he never actually has to be the person who has to go convince all the other parties that would be required to be willing to risk the money and their jobs to gamble on it, but I don't think he is pretending otherwise.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I don't think he says it was a mistake to do mature comics, I think he says that a series of shifts in the intended audience has led to a point where it feels like a mistake has been made. His proposal includes mature comics, so he recognizes the market is there. The Harry Potter example was just to show how something that was original marketed one way eventually changed to serve another audience.

Harry Potter never changed to serve another audience. Each time a new book came out, new kids discovered the series and binge-read the volumes and all were the same Middle-Graders who started the first. Now of course, the series is done and kids can read it all at once and run through the series in about a week or two. (HP is a very fast read after all).

[GenericUsername]

I'd personally be fine with two graphic novel lines (one for kids, one for older readers). I've honestly grown tired of weeklies and wait now until everything is out. Decompressed stories, relaunches and events forced that into being. I want to just read the complete story. Not get it bit by bit and have to wait for anything to happen at all in some cases.

[Username taken]

I'd personally be fine with two graphic novel lines (one for kids, one for older readers). I've honestly grown tired of weeklies and wait now until everything is out. Decompressed stories, relaunches and events forced that into being. I want to just read the complete story. Not get it bit by bit and have to wait for anything to happen at all in some cases.

Same here.

I like to read complete stories at once.

[Ikari]

Harry Potter never changed to serve another audience. Each time a new book came out, new kids discovered the series and binge-read the volumes and all were the same Middle-Graders who started the first. Now of course, the series is done and kids can read it all at once and run through the series in about a week or two. (HP is a very fast read after all).

A week? Later books are like 700+ pages. I very much doubt too many 8 to 12 year olds can read all the books in a week or even two weeks. I don't think even I could have done it in that age, and I was super fast reader. It's true that first Potter book was primarily targeted for kids, but if she had shown up with a 800 page manuscript for the first book and said "yeah this is going to be super popular with kids" she would have drawn blank stares. In fact that even happened with the first book which was less than half that size.

My point is that maturing with your audience is usually seen a positive thing. If superhero comics had stayed at the same maturity level they were in Golden and Silver eras, I think they would have died out more or less completely. How many children's comics of the 60s are still going strong? Does anyone read Donald Duck in the States (well it's still pretty big in Europe).

Of course it is another question whether at some point the plot was lost and I agree with Conway that it was, it just didn't happen when he says it did. I think it happened in later when editors tried to repeat successes of the 'mature era' and kept jumping the shark until everybody was sick of Fonzie.

[ed2962]

I don't think he says it was a mistake to do mature comics, I think he says that a series of shifts in the intended audience has led to a point where it feels like a mistake has been made. His proposal includes mature comics, so he recognizes the market is there. The Harry Potter example was just to show how something that was original marketed one way eventually changed to serve another audience.

This is why Conway can throw this idea out there, he never actually has to be the person who has to go convince all the other parties that would be required to be willing to risk the money and their jobs to gamble on it, but I don't think he is pretending otherwise.

Well, some one the stuff Conway says others have been saying for several years now. He's not as beyond the pale as some folks what to pretend. What's interesting is how resistant to change a lot of the comics community/industry is. For instance, DC actually did try to sell comics exclusive to Walmart and some of the comic store owners got upset.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

My point is that maturing with your audience is usually seen a positive thing. If superhero comics had stayed at the same maturity level they were in Golden and Silver eras, I think they would have died out more or less completely.

Right.

Obviously things change over the decades, tastes change, children change. Education is another factor...college education is a lot higher than it used to be.

Attitude to childhood has changed, people back in the '30s and 40s were more heavily in a patriarchal world and nuclear family but then the '60s came with women's movements and the divorce rate which went up, and people realized that you can't do a children's tale that so entirely revolves on the role of a father as unquestioned authority anymore.

Something like Spielberg's ET which is about kids raised by a single parent and the entire story being a metaphor for a kid not having a Dad in his life, could never have been done in an earlier era.

How many children's comics of the 60s are still going strong? Does anyone read Donald Duck in the States (well it's still pretty big in Europe).

The cartoons based on the Carl Barks' stuff (the Ducktales 1987 show, and now the ongoing 2017 show) do pretty well, as do video games based on it.

But that's actually a good object example for the real reason for this problem. The real reason is credit and pay. The truth is that those Donald Duck comics were never supposed to be as good as it was and sell as well as it did (in the '50s, Uncle Scrooge was #1 for a while, it outsold Superman). Carl Barks who wrote those stories was not only paid little for his contributions but he didn't get credit either originally. It's because of fans that people realized that some of those stories had to be done by a single guy who they called "The Good Duck Artist".

The '50s was the nadir of comic book exploitation. As bad as things are in superhero comics, in terms of stuff like (Cf, Watchmen and IP Theft), as storied as the Image fight is, the fact is that superhero comics and artists have still seen more progress than other areas...In the case of Donald Duck comics, Disney pays the people who write this pittance even today. Like the writer after Barks who did really well is Don Rosa. That guy worked on those comics as a labor of love, until very recently. He quit and then he told fans why...he's been working a second job all the time he wrote stuff like "The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck" (which sold really well and won awards), and doesn't have any medical benefits or anything. All the time he worked on the characters Disney licensed, he got jack.

As comics matured, so did the demand for writers and artists for better pay and prominence, so did the rise in their artistic self-esteem and respect, and with that publishers and others panicked. This entire issue of fans coming in and writing their favorite characters and then appealing to a smaller audience...that's by design. The original fan writers were hired to work at their favorite characters as a way to replace the original troublesome writing team. Gerry Conway mentioned this elsewhere but he's not talking about it this in his screed here, but that trip to DC he talked about, that happened after DC fired a good chunk of their staff, including Gardner Fox, for *gasp* trying to unionize. The fact is real professionals in comics if they can do creator owned work and get away with it and make a living, would do that obviously. Alan Moore wrote a comic called A Small Killing during the '80s for a non-comics publisher, and a deal arranged by a literary agent. A Small Killing isn't as famous as Watchmen or V For Vendetta, but Moore made more money writing that than he did for the former. Couple that with the rights issues of Watchmen, and is it any wonder why Moore cut himself off the Big Two? Some of these fan writers became good writers and turned professional but they were caught in a kind of vicious cycle of complicity.