Are teenagers not reading X-Men as much as they used to?

[shooshoomanjoe]

I think there's a lot of teenage readers on twitter.

Thing is, they pirate it. Especially if they're not from the US.

That's interesting. There's a website where you can pirate all comics from major publishers; except Titan Comics because they've asked them not to pirate their comics. This website also has a presence on social medial with links to their website site so I've always wondered why it hasn't been taken down. Now I'm wondering if US comic book publishers tolerate piracy because it brings in new readers. This website shows that comic book sales have increased almost yearly so there are new readers coming from somewhere.

[cam18]

It was the comic to read when I was coming up but comics these days for many reasons are not nearly as popular they once were.....in spite of the comicbook movie craze......some of those Manga numbers are crazy clearly they're doing something right especially demon slayer but many others as well.

[Habis]

It was the comic to read when I was coming up but comics these days for many reasons are not nearly as popular they once were.....in spite of the comicbook movie craze......some of those Manga numbers are crazy clearly they're doing something right especially demon slayer but many others as well.

Most manga sales are from a few titles, the cream of the crop.

As for why the most popular manga sell better than the most popular American comics... You can buy a manga and have the complete series, from the first issue to the last, in nice tomes; that encourage collectors to buy rather than to pirate...

X-Men comics, on the other hand, started in 1963 and there are hundreds of issues printed, not to mention that you have to buy like another dozen titles (X-Force, X-Factor, Excalibur...etc.) in order to have the complete story, and it keeps going on.

There is no way a kid will try to have everything, and having just a part feels like having the middle chapters of a novel but not the beginning... that discourages collectors... so they just read whatever they want to read from internet.

There is also the fact that Marvel Comics aren't newbie-friendly. They basically run on nostalgia... most stories and characters don't make much sense unless you are familiar with the X-Men and their history, and very often is hard to like the characters and their choices unless you already know and love them... Like, imagine start reading Captain America during Secret Empire, or Avengers during Time Runs Out, or X-Men during Age of Apocalypse... how are you supposed to know that lots of the characters are subversions of established characters? how can you feel the emotional impact of these stories if you don't know who Steve Rogers, Reed Richards, Magneto...etc., are?

You are forced to go to the pirating sites and read a ton of comics in order to catch up, and once you have done that... why start buying?

[Omega Alpha]

That's interesting. There's a website where you can pirate all comics from major publishers; except Titan Comics because they've asked them not to pirate their comics. This website also has a presence on social medial with links to their website site so I've always wondered why it hasn't been taken down. Now I'm wondering if US comic book publishers tolerate piracy because it brings in new readers. This website shows that comic book sales have increased almost yearly so there are new readers coming from somewhere.

Generally speaking, no one complaing about piracy really means it. In many parts of the world (including where I live), it's common to seeing DVDs or Blu-Rays of the latest movies or games in the middle of the street, without disturbance. It's impossible no one ever heard of those, and these are people making profit, not just downloading and then erasing them.

[skyvolt2000]

A few things

1) There are kids reading comic related books. It's the format that they are reading it on is the issue. Archie has ZERO issue with digest sales to the tune of $5-7 million a year. Because most comic book stores have stopped selling the books including the ones folks actually wanted to read like Archie Afterlife.

2. Yes the manga sells but when you look at Amazon top comic sales in general, to kids and Young adults-guess who you see? At any given time and in some cases EVERY time.
Beast Boys & Raven's books, Batman, Harley, Ms Marvel, Miles, Peter Parker, Hulk, Spider Gwen, Guardians of the Galaxy, Jane Foster, Carol Danvers, Black Panther, Brawn, Moon Girl, Squirrel Girl and same version of the Avengers. With honorable mentions to Thor, Falcon, Iron Man, Thanos, Scarlet Witch and Daredevil.

X-Men are MIA unless there is an X-Men movie. Same when Winter Soldier & Falcon aired-Marvel would have made a killing if The Truth was in stock. Hawkeye, Wandavision and Dr Strange as well.

Notice for DC you only see 4 folks. Pretty you remove Batman, Harley, Joker & Catwoman-toss in Beast Boy & Raven and Superman versus Klan-Dc does not exist.

3. Here is another issue. Who KIDS like tend to be the ones the gatekeeping fandom don't like or will throw a FIT if Marvel or DC tries anything with them.

How many pages of complains will we see if Marvel did an Inhumans book? Be honest folks.
We had comic book stores owners BASH Marvel for making other books for Black Panther and Dr Strange when they had movies come out.
The same folks who SCREAM movies and tv shows don't matter when it comes to say Static. Yet will praise DC if they gave a book to say Booster Gold or Deathstroke after he guest starred on a show.

4. TOXIC fans have to go. There are fandoms so toxic I would NEVER by a book starring that character. They will claim they are not but too bad apples keep ruining stuff. I should NEVER hear about folks getting VERBALLY abused in a store asking for certain books. Especially CHILDREN.


As for finding a starting point-I guess we all FORGOT how we got into comics. The FIRST X-Men book I read and OWNED was Uncanny X-Men 266.

I mean how many here watched All My Children or soaps? Aside from Passions & Bold & Beautiful & Sunset Beach-I wasn't alive when the rest started.

[Kitty&Piotr<3]

I was mostly with you, Skyvolt, but the Inhumans reference confused me. Nothing stopped Inhumans books from continuing besides lack of interest from the audience.

[rcaguy]

Most manga sales are from a few titles, the cream of the crop.

As for why the most popular manga sell better than the most popular American comics... You can buy a manga and have the complete series, from the first issue to the last, in nice tomes; that encourage collectors to buy rather than to pirate...

X-Men comics, on the other hand, started in 1963 and there are hundreds of issues printed, not to mention that you have to buy like another dozen titles (X-Force, X-Factor, Excalibur...etc.) in order to have the complete story, and it keeps going on.

There is no way a kid will try to have everything, and having just a part feels like having the middle chapters of a novel but not the beginning... that discourages collectors... so they just read whatever they want to read from internet.

There is also de fact that Marvel Comics aren't newbie-friendly. They basically run on nostalgia... most stories and characters don't make much sense unless you are familiar with the X-Men and their history, and very often is hard to like the characters and their choices unless you already know and love them... Like, imagine start reading Captain America during Secret Empire, or Avengers during Time Runs Out, or X-Men during Age of Apocalypse... how are you supposed to know that lots of the characters are subversions of established characters? how can you feel the emotional impact of these stories if you don't know who Steve Rogers, Reed Richards, Magneto...etc., are?

You are forced to go to the pirating sites and read a ton of comics in order to catch up, and once you have done that... why start buying?

You really don't know very much about manga, do you? A good deal of that stuff is harder to follow than anything ever put out by DC or Marvel, especially when you're dealing with really obscure volumes of material that has never been translated into English, and a good deal of the longer running titles is full of stuff that never been and will never be officially or unofficially translated (basically because of it's nature.)

You argument is basically a straw one.

[Lukmendes]

Manga fans can be toxic, but for entirely different reasons. Once you’re caught up with a manga or an anime you’re just as much of an “expert” as anyone else in that fandom so it’s easy to ignore people that are just adding negativity to the discourse for no reason. With comics everyone can be reading the series and you’ll still see older fans weaponizing their decades of reading comics to push others out of the conversation.

I mean, manga fans may talk **** if you haven't read a light novel or web novel, and if you watch anime they'll definitely talk **** about you for being a normie who watches anime lol.

Maybe it's not as bad as comic book fans (And from my experience, they're just as bad if it gets bad), but they know how to be cancerous as well, which makes sense, they're still people at the end of the day.

Some time ago, after watching some anime and reading the manga it was inspired on, I decided to take a look around their wiki and maybe ask some questions to the "experts". The site had only like 3 - 4 people regularly visiting the forum, and when I dared post a question in a thread I was berated for daring to participate before reading the whole wiki and the seventeen light novels that have been published in Japan and that can only be found in a few niche sites that translate them to english...

These guys seemed to be actively trying to drive people away from the wiki, and to make the anime itself as unpopular as possible...

Cannibal fanbases can be funny to look at lol.

You really don't know very much about manga, do you? A good deal of that stuff is harder to follow than anything ever put out by DC or Marvel, especially when you're dealing with really obscure volumes of material that has never been translated into English, and a good deal of the longer running titles is full of stuff that never been and will never be officially or unofficially translated.

You argument is basically a straw one.

It depends on what you're reading, 'cause most mangas are simple to follow, and the classic example of this is Dragon Ball, 'cause you definitely don't need to need to watch pre DBZ stuff to get what's going on lol.

[rcaguy]

I mean, manga fans may talk **** if you haven't read a light novel or web novel, and if you watch anime they'll definitely talk **** about you for being a normie who watches anime lol.

Maybe it's not as bad as comic book fans (And from my experience, they're just as bad if it gets bad), but they know how to be cancerous as well, which makes sense, they're still people at the end of the day.



Cannibal fanbases can be funny to look at lol.



It depends on what you're reading, 'cause most mangas are simple to follow, and the classic example of this is Dragon Ball, 'cause you definitely don't need to need to watch pre DBZ stuff to get what's going on lol.

DBZ? Easy to follow? You're talking about a Title that's more convoluted than the X-men ever were.

[Lucyinthesky]

It depends really, I started reading X-men comics as a teenager and while I didn´t know their entire character story, the comics used to have character biographies that helped to explain and give a general idea of what was going on before with that team or character but then again, I have never been a collector, I just read what I like and focus on that.

Now I also read manga and while it´s indeed way more easy to follow and understand, it´s a different experience because comic books and manga stories are just way too different.

In both cases what introduced me to comics and mangas were well done cartoon adaptations of those stories so I think if comics want to raise the number of titles sold they could start there. I don´t think they should think of cartoons as just "stories for kids" with dumbed down storylines. They can adapt an interesting comic book story and help new readers understand the title and the characters, on this I believe DC has done a better job than marvel. I can´t remember a cartoon by marvel that adapted a popular marvel story the same way DC has done.

[Lukmendes]

DBZ? Easy to follow? You're talking about a Title that's more convoluted than the X-men ever were.

How is it convoluted? The stories are pretty straight forward and easy to follow, and continuity isn't too heavy (But it's there enough that you can understand details better if you know the past, but it's not as necessary), about the biggest thing you have to keep track of is that most movies aren't canon to anything except, sometimes, each other.

It depends really, I started reading X-men comics as a teenager and while I didn´t know their entire character story, the comics used to have character biographies that helped to explain and give a general idea of what was going on before with that team or character but then again, I have never been a collector, I just read what I like and focus on that.

Now I also read manga and while it´s indeed way more easy to follow and understand, it´s a different experience because comic books and manga stories are just way too different.

In both cases what introduced me to comics and mangas were well done cartoon adaptations of those stories so I think if comics want to raise the number of titles sold they could start there. I don´t think they should think of cartoons as just "stories for kids" with dumbed down storylines. They can adapt an interesting comic book story and help new readers understand the title and the characters, on this I believe DC has done a better job than marvel. I can´t remember a cartoon by marvel that adapted a popular marvel story the same way DC has done.

I remember hearing that Loeb and some other people involved with cartoons saw them as just **** for kids, which's industry speak for "We don't have to care" lol.

I'm not exactly sure how many stories Marvel cartoons have adapted, but the good ones adapt the spirit of instead of just copying stories, something that definitely benefited Spectacular Spider-Man for example.

[Lucyinthesky]

I remember hearing that Loeb and some other people involved with cartoons saw them as just **** for kids, which's industry speak for "We don't have to care" lol.

Then I think it´s time for marvel to rethink this because in some cases it works

I'm not exactly sure how many stories Marvel cartoons have adapted, but the good ones adapt the spirit of instead of just copying stories, something that definitely benefited Spectacular Spider-Man for example.

I agree but sometimes is nice to have one of your fave stories with movement, I liked what marvel did with Astonishing X-men and I think it would be interesting to have classic comic stories animated.

[Lukmendes]

Then I think it´s time for marvel to rethink this because in some cases it works

Well, I think Loeb is out, so maybe someday.

Though I have my doubts, since Marvel really likes to make stuff based on MCU, and MCU is rather bland, and it'd be even more noticeable in cartoons based on it... But hey, maybe stuff can change.

I agree but sometimes is nice to have one of your fave stories with movement, I liked what marvel did with Astonishing X-men and I think it would be interesting to have classic comic stories animated.

Sure, some stories could be better to be adapted with little change, but a lot of them need specific status quos and specific previous stories to have happened, otherwise they don't work, which can be why adapting the spirit of it can be a better alternative, it all depends on what the adaption has done up until that point in the end.

[mozzle]

I entered comics in 2016. I'm a pessimist. 95% of my comic reading is x-men. I'm doing everything I can to collect everything x-men in paperback and hardcover. Never collected floppies. Too expensive for me. I'm in my 30s, I have no doubt that this is an old man's game. Just want what was released before it all ends.

[BESTXMAN]

Marvel buried them good but it won't matter because when you put X-Men next to any other marvel property its just better. It has more depth and is more relevant to today. The cream always rises to the top. They just need the spotlight. Fox really made nothing that was X-Men in those films. Completely missed the whole point of it.