Thoughts On How To Save Comics

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Everything you said makes perfect sense and has been said for years now from both fans and professionals. But Marvel/DC have kinda half assed it. Sure they'll do kid's versions or YA versions of their titles. They'll do the scholastics versions. And I guess those do ok...But what about their mainline? They really seem to want to hedge their bets on getting more money out of a shrinking audience of older collectors. Hence, concentrating on multiple titles of their most popular characters, event comics, renumbering etc. It's not 13-14 yr olds who go to the comic stores every week now ( and if they do they're looking for Magic the Gathering stuff), it's adults with disposable income.

That's one of the attractions of manga, they've got a genre for you.

Most 13-14 year olds, male and female aren’t in comic shops these days, they’re in Barnes & Noble or other bookstores cruising the manga aisles where all sorts of genres pique their interest in ways mainstream comics stopped doing years ago. I won’t deny being one of those adults with disposable income, but I’m VERY picky about what I read, at best, I read a dozen titles a month where it used to be three times as many a generation or more ago. The thing is, buyers like me won’t be around forever, and the failure of the Big Two to cultivate new and younger readers will inevitably doom them.

[ed2962]

An interesting article on competitive page rates in comics written by former DC editor Joseph Illidge

https://www.thepopverse.com/comic-bo...ph-joe-illidge

[Zauriel]

I stopped buying comics a long time ago for several reasons as others mentioned. High prices. Rebooting canon that is already too convoluted. Outgrowing the charactewrs you loved to read about.

That's one of the attractions of manga, they've got a genre for you.

Manga has lots of various and diverse genres. Manga is divided into four categories targeted at different groups of readers such as shonen (boys), shoujo (girls), seinen (men) and josei (women).

Genres such as martial arts, detectives, sports, cooking, horror, fantasy, sci-fi, high school life, romance, comedy, humor, action and etc.

They have got many sports manga including Blue Lock which was already mentioned in the thread. In fact, they made some manga about Soccer, baseball, karate, bowling, hunting, badminton (Badminton Girl), ice skaing (Medalist), naginata (Asahinagu), kendo (Bamboo Blade), basketball (slam Dunk), tennis (Prince of Tennis), judo (Yawara!), and fishing (Grander Musashi). I was a bit suprised to discover there are so many baseball and soccer manga out there. My favorite soccer manga was Farewell, My Dear Cramer (Sayonara Watashi no Kuramā)

Furthermore, One of my favorite manga was a fishing manga called Grander Musashi.

There are so many fantasy (including isekai) manga out there, some of which were good enough to put Lord of the Rings to shame.

They also have manga about music, piano, violin, other musical instruments, singing and dancing, albeit various types of dancing like ballet dancing (Kenrantaru Grande Scene) and ballroom dancing (Ballroom e Youkouso). And a manga about playing piano/conducting music is called Nodame Cantabile, another one of my favorite manga.

Manga's food genre is unique, creative and amazing. They have manga about cocktails (Bartender), curry (Addicted to Curry), bread baking (Yakitate!! Japan), Chinese food (Chūka Ichiban! & Iron Wok Jan) and Bambino (Italian cuisine). Some of those manga have lasted more than 12 volumes.

They can even publish a manga about knitting and it would sell.


Comics also has genres such as Westerns, horror, teen humor, fantasy, war stories, but they didn't sell well as the dominant genre called superheroes.

[Username taken]

I stopped buying comics a long time ago for several reasons as others mentioned. High prices. Rebooting canon that is already too convoluted. Outgrowing the charactewrs you loved to read about.




Manga has lots of various and diverse genres. Manga is divided into four categories targeted at different groups of readers such as shonen (boys), shoujo (girls), seinen (men) and josei (women).

Genres such as martial arts, detectives, sports, cooking, horror, fantasy, sci-fi, high school life, romance, comedy, humor, action and etc.

They have got many sports manga including Blue Lock which was already mentioned in the thread. In fact, they made some manga about Soccer, baseball, karate, bowling, hunting, badminton (Badminton Girl), ice skaing (Medalist), naginata (Asahinagu), kendo (Bamboo Blade), basketball (slam Dunk), tennis (Prince of Tennis), judo (Yawara!), and fishing (Grander Musashi). I was a bit suprised to discover there are so many baseball and soccer manga out there. My favorite soccer manga was Farewell, My Dear Cramer (Sayonara Watashi no Kuramā)

Furthermore, One of my favorite manga was a fishing manga called Grander Musashi.

There are so many fantasy (including isekai) manga out there, some of which were good enough to put Lord of the Rings to shame.

They also have manga about music, piano, violin, other musical instruments, singing and dancing, albeit various types of dancing like ballet dancing (Kenrantaru Grande Scene) and ballroom dancing (Ballroom e Youkouso). And a manga about playing piano/conducting music is called Nodame Cantabile, another one of my favorite manga.

Manga's food genre is unique, creative and amazing. They have manga about cocktails (Bartender), curry (Addicted to Curry), bread baking (Yakitate!! Japan), Chinese food (Chūka Ichiban! & Iron Wok Jan) and Bambino (Italian cuisine). Some of those manga have lasted more than 12 volumes.

They can even publish a manga about knitting and it would sell.


Comics also has genres such as Westerns, horror, teen humor, fantasy, war stories, but they didn't sell well as the dominant genre called superheroes.

Exactly.

American superhero comics are overwhelmingly dominated by superhero comics.

Even "shonen" manga which is closest to American superhero comics aren't only about boys/girls with super powers.

Manga is overall a lot more diverse than what we have here in North America in terms of content.

[Username taken]

Most 13-14 year olds, male and female aren’t in comic shops these days, they’re in Barnes & Noble or other bookstores cruising the manga aisles where all sorts of genres pique their interest in ways mainstream comics stopped doing years ago. I won’t deny being one of those adults with disposable income, but I’m VERY picky about what I read, at best, I read a dozen titles a month where it used to be three times as many a generation or more ago. The thing is, buyers like me won’t be around forever, and the failure of the Big Two to cultivate new and younger readers will inevitably doom them.

Agreed.

I've said this before and it bears repeating, the big two's antics has practically led to them skipping an entire generation.

Superhero comics will be around in some form or fashion but the cultural relevance they had outside of film adaptations is going to be diminished even further.

[Zauriel]

Agreed.

I've said this before and it bears repeating, the big two's antics has practically led to them skipping an entire generation.

Superhero comics will be around in some form or fashion but the cultural relevance they had outside of film adaptations is going to be diminished even further.

I also agree with what WPP said. Two of the older longtime comic book fans I knew have passed away, one died of natural causes and the other died in an accident.

The numbers of older generation of comic book readers is slowly dwindling.

I moved away from comic books, because of the antics of the Big Two.

[Gaastra]

Comics are doing well but the biggest sellers are manga and young readers/ teen aimed books. Dogman, smurfs, guts, babysitters club, stitch, plants vs zombies, snoopy, pokemon, super mario, sonic, kirby, bone, big nate and splatoon are all over our kids section at books a million. In fact, the comics section is one of the biggest areas of our books a million kids section! Wal-mart has a roll of kids comics also.

Manga has two rolls at our books a million while marvel, dc and indies share ONE BOOKCASE. That's it. That used to both have full rolls each! They then had a "big sale" throwing the marvel and dc books at $5 each in front of the store. They stayed there for a month! No one bought them! They just were gone one day. Ouch. Our ollies have had the same dc books for $5 to $20 for half a year now collecting dust! Marvel ironic does have more books--in the kids section. OZ, moon girl, squirrel girl, ms marvel, amazing friends and marvel-verse are there. They just added the marvel masterworks amazing spider-man and avengers books to the kids sections also!

Crazy to see 1960s marvel in the kids section. Marvel has more kids books in our books a million than at the adult section! Heard the marvel-verse books are selling well in schools. They got in some trouble over one having curse words however so marvel can't make up its mind who these books are aimed for.

My nephews read manga now mostly. They love one piece and naruto. One is in grade school and other in middle school. Grade school one has shirts of hunter x hunter, naruto, one piece and dragonball! They never read marvel or dc hero comics. They love dogman, big nate, captain underpants, bad guys, and five nights at freddies comics over hero books.

Kids don't go to comic stores unless the parents teach them of them. Kids or teens go to book stores, book fairs, book orders, wal-mart, target or prime or digital.

Plus, why would you pay $10 for two floppies that last 5min of reading or for same price buy a 120 page manga and not have to bag and board it! Also, many public libraries are starting to separate manga from the graphic novels giving manga it's own section!

Like this video--



Told the story before but was at our library and as I was walking in a family was walking out. Little boy was all excited. He had demon slayer and dragonball manga in his hand. His mom or sister was laughing as he jumped for joy. That's how I acted reading new comics as a kid! But he was getting manga!

[Mister Mets]

Exactly.

American superhero comics are overwhelmingly dominated by superhero comics.

Even "shonen" manga which is closest to American superhero comics aren't only about boys/girls with super powers.

Manga is overall a lot more diverse than what we have here in North America in terms of content.

Do you think the problem is the material, the marketing or the audience?

It seems to me that there's diverse material, that does not sell as well as superhero comics.

Is there an audience that could be persuaded to be regular readers if they were exposed to products that fit their niche interests (or maybe there's a potential audience of millions in some cases?)

[ed2962]

Saw this in Target today. There's like 2 or 3 American comics and the rest of the manga/graphic section is all manga. There's even more manga sporadically throughout the book section.

[skyvolt2000]

Do you think the problem is the material, the marketing or the audience?

It seems to me that there's diverse material, that does not sell as well as superhero comics.

Is there an audience that could be persuaded to be regular readers if they were exposed to products that fit their niche interests (or maybe there's a potential audience of millions in some cases?)

All of the above.

Promoting the books that you have especially the NON-big name is an issue and ensuring said books are actually on a store shelf and not just limited to online orders.

I can not go to my local Target (or any Target store) and pick up say Static's upcoming OGN or Miles's latest novel or Beast Boy Loves Raven books. I have to order them online from Target.

That is not an issue it seems with Batman. While MANY will toss out "Batman sells" so CAN the others.

The one thing I heard from folks when I mention some titles or show the ones that I have it's "I never KNEW about (blank)" or "I never knew (blank) had books".

Then we have to look at who gets what. While the entitlement crew is ruining comics with their behavior towards certain books (mainly at the big two) existing or even certain folks or characters existing in comics. They fail to realize there is a world outside of comic fandom.

The comic fandom that has no issue with a John Stewart lead book, a gay Tim Drake, Moon Girl, Ms Marvel, It's Jeff, Saga, Wicked and Divine, Astro City and so on.

Super heroes have to get the folks who don't care to READ about Hal Jordan, Barry Allen, Batman or Superman or X-Men.

I work for a large school district-very few kids if ANY want to read a book with the above. Heck we stopped ordering X-Men books because NOBODY was checking them out. And it was not just my school but district wide. Yet almost all the manga have to be replaced because they are either stolen or read to death.

But if you are relying on floppy sales-that means you are pandering to a certain group.

Who will take issue with so many titles. Yet said titles as trades can find an audience and sales.

So it comes down to do you keep pandering to the folks who HATE Aqualad in comics or do you ignore them and produce material for the out of comics audience that doesn't have an issue with him.

Marvel is probably doing the best with Spider-Man trying to do the best of both worlds. Where you get Miles and Peter instead of the Highlander wars that have ruined Green Lantern and Flash. Peter stays in the tops of Super Hero sales on Amazon while Miles does the same with Teens and kids with both being on both lists.

[Gaastra]

The comic fandom that has no issue with a John Stewart lead book, a gay Tim Drake, Moon Girl, Ms Marvel, It's Jeff, Saga, Wicked and Divine, Astro City and so on.

Moon girl and ms marvel have both done well at schools and bookstores. Moon girl even more with the cartoon out. moon girl even has a series of kids books non comics out. Both now have manga size trades aimed at pre teens out. Your point still stands for the rest, however. Our library kept having to replace super mario adventures manga. They could not keep that manga in and this was a year before the film was out! They wore the book out! A smurfs book called forever smurfette oddly is never in now. It's always out. Not a comic but ninja turtles had to have a few book replaced the kids damaged. One based on the 80s turtles! Kids still like the turtles.

[Zauriel]

The comic book industry is not dying but struggling to keep afloat.

59% of the population in the United States of America has never read a comic book at all.

[ed2962]

It's interesting that Hickman's G.O.D.S came out this week and right before and even now, a lot of folks who were long time comics fans have said that they aren't sure that they want to take a chance on a book that's $9.99. Now, it's a double sized book, so you're getting the same amount of content for price that you would if you bought this month's Avengers and this month's X-Men, but it seems some fans have a psychological aversion to paying that much for a single issue.

[TheKryptonMan]

I think that actual page counts of story make a difference for me anyway .
I don't have a problem with $4.99 for 30 pages of story like DC does sometimes .
ASM is going to $4.99 soon , I'll not pay that for 19-20 pages .

[Zauriel]

I think that actual page counts of story make a difference for me anyway .
I don't have a problem with $4.99 for 30 pages of story like DC does sometimes .
ASM is going to $4.99 soon , I'll not pay that for 19-20 pages .

I am with you on this one. Reading 30 pages of art and writing takes only a few minutes. Why pay nearly $5 dollars for a few minutes of entertainment? Comic book Prices right now are outrageous. Comics used to cost 10 cents in 1940's.

I find manga not only much more reasonably priced, but I find them also more interesting or entertaining than US comic books. There are diverse and various manga that pique all of my interests. Right now I am reading a manga called "Welcome to the Ballroom" (Ballroom e Youkouso), which is about competitive ballroom dancing. I am also currently reading a gourmet manga called Mr. Ajikko, a story about an elementary school boy who is a prodigy at cooking various kinds of foods.


There are manga about different things or genres in which you are not interested, but which you ended up enjoying reading. For example, I enjoy reading A manga about ballet dancing whose title is Kenrantaru Grande Scene (La Magnifique Grande Scène), even though I am neither knowledgeable nor interested in ballet dancing at all.

Even though I don't play golf, I enjoy reading some golf manga, including Ohisama Birdie, Robot x Laserbeam, King Golf or "Birdie Wing: Golf Girls' Story" (Henshin!! - Sonata Birdie Rush)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...nime_and_manga

You'd be amazed at how many sports manga are listed here.

Most of the US Comic books come in only one genre.