Comic Industry General Discussion

[Wofano Wotanto]

There's so much to talk about with the comics industry -- all the time -- that we could and maybe should have a full time thread in Geek Talk about it.

Agreed. Here you go.

You've described it exactly. The pandemic managed to break DC's contract with Diamond, and they decided that they would leave because they could but I don't think that they ever gave much thought to if they should (and what it would do to the industry). Of course, Marvel saw DC doing something stupid and said, "Hold my beer!" which caused a cascade of dominoes.

To be fair, Diamond (and through them, Alliance Distribution for games) have been getting worse since the early 2000s, if not the late 90s. There was legitimate concern that Diamond simply couldn't do the job any more during the Pandemic lockdown, and they don't seem much better four years down the road. Neither of the Big Two would last a year without distribution, their pockets aren't deep enough, and if there's one thing the 90s debacle with Heroes' World proved it's that it takes time for a small distributor to grow into a big one. Marvel still hasn't fully recovered from that mess, and it more or less directly led to Diamond's supposed monopoly.

Despite all the continued attempts to spin it as a good decision, the comic industry is significantly poorer for the breakup of Diamond's "monopoly" (it wasn't really).

True, although Diamond did have too big a role in comic distribution for comfort. If they'd suddenly vanished in 2020 the other lesser distributors just couldn't have taken up the full load right away - and maybe not in time to save the industry as a whole. Diamond's position was really pretty unnatural if you look at the history of comics. They more or less lucked into near-monopoly during the 90s speculator boom when DC went to them for security following Marvel's supposed exclusivity deal when they trying to make Heroes' World a giant overnight, and the end of the boom killed so many comic shops that the smaller distributors faded away and left Diamond as king of the hill with no serious competition. They took advantage of their favorable position for years, but that's pretty clearly over with and (for better or worse, mostly worse) we've resumed the older patter of multiple competing distributors with more parity in what they can offer both stores and publishers.

The industry likes to pretend that us Retailers are resistant to change, but most of those guys went out of business decades ago. Those that are left have been asking for change for years and years, but we'd like change that actually makes things better rather than worse. The US comic industry has been colossally mismanaged for most of its history - it's been filled with self-loathing since that idiot Wertham took a shot at it in the 50's. It absolutely could be a big deal, but it's held back by a lot of backward thinking.

I'd say the self-loathing goes even farther back, at least for parts of the industry. Being a comic artist in the 30s and 40s was not a well-respected profession, and even many of the early creators believed that comics would never be anything but kiddie fare. Wertham didn't help any, but at the end of the day it was the industry itself that self-regulated and created teh CCA. That censorial idiocy wasn't imposed from outside, they did it to themselves - at in least in part to kill the competition from Eerie and other more adult comics.

It's bizarre that a business as big as it still is tends to have people running the business end of things who don't seem to take it seriously or really want it to succeed, but since everyone else just wants to focus on creating, selling or consuming comics, you mostly just end up with a bunch of jerks in charge. And even folks who seem to have a good head on their shoulders, like Jim Lee, mostly know just one end of the business (creating comics) which doesn't give them all the information they'd need to fully run a company that also has to worry about distribution and managing the health of the industry as a whole.

When it comes to the Big Two, I don't think any one individual can possibly hope to be good at everything needed to run the business as a whole, no matter what positions they've held rising to the top. It's just too big and too complex, and these days there's a whole other strata of having much larger media conglomerates able to override "local control" and insist on things that will fuel the real money makers - films and tv shows. About the best I can envision is someone who understands they don't know enough and is good at picking more specialized advisors, delegating authority, and negotiating with Disney/Warner to keep them from randomly killing the base of the IPs they're milking.

Even Jim Shooter (who started in the business in his early teens) didn't come close to being able to do everything one of the Big Two need to succeed, and he wound up being one of the most contentious and widely despised people in the industry for even trying to focus on making profitable books that actually shipped on time.

Ideally, places like DC and Marvel and the distribution companies would have people who came up on the creative side working alongside people with experience in the retail end working alongside people with lots of distribution experience and all of whom would have a demonstrated interest in everyone thriving. But that kind of holistic thinking has never been the norm, throughout the modern industry's nearly 100 year history.

Compare and contrast with the manga industry, which has made enormous inroads into the US market in part by doing things so very differently from our native publishing industry. I expect that to continue, and if anything the pace is likely to accelerate - especially as we see more manga and animation that play off of familiar superhero tropes without mindlessly imitating them.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Agreed. Here you go.

To be fair, Diamond (and through them, Alliance Distribution for games) have been getting worse since the early 2000s, if not the late 90s.

I've never really dealt with Alliance, as they weren't remotely competitive with Canadian Game Distributors. A thing here or there, mostly 20+ years ago.

There was legitimate concern that Diamond simply couldn't do the job any more during the Pandemic lockdown, and they don't seem much better four years down the road.

Was it legitimate, though? It seemed to me like standard US-pandemic issues. The shutdowns occurred randomly by state, and the early closure states asked Diamond to NOT send their shipments out, as they wouldn't be there to receive them. Diamond decided that the responsible thing (as well as the fair thing) to do was to warehouse and wait. A few weeks later, Maryland joined the shutdowns anyway.

DC took a look at their contract and found that if Diamond ever "failed" to get their books to market, then they could leave, so they did. Sure, they used the excuse that they thought that Diamond was in some kind of financial trouble (which makes no sense, because if THAT were true, there's no way Diamond would have survived losing 2/3 of its business, which it DID.

Neither of the Big Two would last a year without distribution, their pockets aren't deep enough, and if there's one thing the 90s debacle with Heroes' World proved it's that it takes time for a small distributor to grow into a big one. Marvel still hasn't fully recovered from that mess, and it more or less directly led to Diamond's supposed monopoly.

Yup. Diamond never set out to have a "monopoly" - Marvel caused it. And don't get me wrong - I was never a fan of Diamond. There was soooo much room for improvement. Unfortunately, we didn't get much in the way of improvement under the new system.

True, although Diamond did have too big a role in comic distribution for comfort. If they'd suddenly vanished in 2020 the other lesser distributors just couldn't have taken up the full load right away - and maybe not in time to save the industry as a whole. Diamond's position was really pretty unnatural if you look at the history of comics. They more or less lucked into near-monopoly during the 90s speculator boom when DC went to them for security following Marvel's supposed exclusivity deal when they trying to make Heroes' World a giant overnight, and the end of the boom killed so many comic shops that the smaller distributors faded away and left Diamond as king of the hill with no serious competition. They took advantage of their favorable position for years, but that's pretty clearly over with and (for better or worse, mostly worse) we've resumed the older patter of multiple competing distributors with more parity in what they can offer both stores and publishers.

Yeah, but the big difference is, before Marvels' foolish Distributor War, you could order ALL your comics from Capitol City, for example. The pandemic move didn't really "break up the monopoly" so much as create multiple monopolies for various publishers. If you could legit get all your books from one or the other (or the other) Distributor, that would be a broken monopoly with healthy competition, but instead you pretty much need at least three distributors to be a proper comic shop.

I'd say the self-loathing goes even farther back, at least for parts of the industry. Being a comic artist in the 30s and 40s was not a well-respected profession, and even many of the early creators believed that comics would never be anything but kiddie fare.

Yeah, sure. A lot of the artists and writers were literally teenagers themselves.

Wertham didn't help any, but at the end of the day it was the industry itself that self-regulated and created teh CCA. That censorial idiocy wasn't imposed from outside, they did it to themselves - at in least in part to kill the competition from Eerie and other more adult comics.

Yeah, they really hated Bill Gaines. Enough to shoot themselves in the foot.

When it comes to the Big Two, I don't think any one individual can possibly hope to be good at everything needed to run the business as a whole, no matter what positions they've held rising to the top. It's just too big and too complex, and these days there's a whole other strata of having much larger media conglomerates able to override "local control" and insist on things that will fuel the real money makers - films and tv shows. About the best I can envision is someone who understands they don't know enough and is good at picking more specialized advisors, delegating authority, and negotiating with Disney/Warner to keep them from randomly killing the base of the IPs they're milking.

I honestly think that they should view comics as a dirt cheap IP farm (which they probably do, but it means something different to them than it does to me): I think that they should work hard to dust off as much IP as possible and get it into as many hands as possible (rather than say, launch another twelve Bat-Books). Get creators to pitch "What makes THIS character cool?" And run them 12-issues. Not continuity-free, in that I don't think you should EVER make stories that step on the toes of other stories (I call it continuity-respectful) BUT also that you should never need to read anything else to enjoy the current story being told.

(Within reason - you should never NEED to, but there is room for seeds that would make you WANT to.)

Even Jim Shooter (who started in the business in his early teens) didn't come close to being able to do everything one of the Big Two need to succeed, and he wound up being one of the most contentious and widely despised people in the industry for even trying to focus on making profitable books that actually shipped on time.

Shooter got a bad rap. He was probably just too tall and threw his height around for people's comfort. He was talented, though, and did more for creators than people seem to remember.

Compare and contrast with the manga industry, which has made enormous inroads into the US market in part by doing things so very differently from our native publishing industry. I expect that to continue, and if anything the pace is likely to accelerate - especially as we see more manga and animation that play off of familiar superhero tropes without mindlessly imitating them.

Yup. See also kids graphic novels, where Raina Telgemeier and Dav Pilkey can outsell the entirety of Marvel or DC combined.

And that's not because of the problems with the Direct Market (which are many and varied) but because of a system that created the need for the Direct Market. Also, and this is opening another can of worms, the Direct Market often gets a lot of flack for its drawbacks, but it rarely gets the praise it deserves for what it can accomplish, and for what it does well.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

Yeah, but the big difference is, before Marvels' foolish Distributor War, you could order ALL your comics from Capitol City, for example. The pandemic move didn't really "break up the monopoly" so much as create multiple monopolies for various publishers. If you could legit get all your books from one or the other (or the other) Distributor, that would be a broken monopoly with healthy competition, but instead you pretty much need at least three distributors to be a proper comic shop.

Publisher exclusivity deals in general are bad for the industry (and particularly the retail end of things) but even back in the 80s (when Diamond was still expanding) Capitol City was one of, if not the only, distributor that carried a wide enough range of books from publishers outside the Big Two to be a one-stop shop. If you didn't use them you usually had to order at least a few books from a secondary source, or (as my local shops back then did) make arrangements with nearby stores to swap comics around to fill subs. Shop A would order needed indies from Distributor X, Shop B would order other indies from Distributor Y, and then the owners would arrange to swap the books they needed so they didn't each have to deal with both X and Y themselves. That worked pretty well in some areas where the comic shop density was high enough. Fell apart after the massive closures that followed the 90s speculator bust, although even today you see some overstock trades going on between friendly (or at least non-competing) stores.

From a distributor POV, exclusives are terrific - if you're the one who has them. If you don't they're a disaster, as evidenced by Capitol City's swift collapse after Diamond outbid them on Marvel. Capitol knew it too, but they just couldn't scrape up the cash to save themselves. It's apocryphal, but I've heard stories that they were refused a loan that would have done the job because Marvel's own dire straits at the time made the bank balk at spending big on what looked like a risky investment.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

I honestly think that they should view comics as a dirt cheap IP farm (which they probably do, but it means something different to them than it does to me): I think that they should work hard to dust off as much IP as possible and get it into as many hands as possible (rather than say, launch another twelve Bat-Books). Get creators to pitch "What makes THIS character cool?" And run them 12-issues.

To some degree I think you're seeing that already. There seems to be an uptick in reviving/revitalizing dormant Golden/Silver Age characters, retconning them to have more extensive careers that can be told retroactively using modern storytelling techniques, even creating "old" characters out of whole cloth to give them more supporting characters, eg that flurry of Golden Age sidekicks that got de-erased from history in DC not too long back. The fact that more of that kind of thing is being greenlit suggests someone high-up is thinking the way you are - and not just the way the movie studios want.

Not continuity-free, in that I don't think you should EVER make stories that step on the toes of other stories (I call it continuity-respectful) BUT also that you should never need to read anything else to enjoy the current story being told.

I agree, but that's just anathema to the people at both big companies pushing endless "event" comics on readers whether they want them or not. The idea of self-contained stories is practically dead at this point - finding anything that fits in a single six-issue trade bundle is hard enough.

Shooter got a bad rap. He was probably just too tall and threw his height around for people's comfort. He was talented, though, and did more for creators than people seem to remember.

Also agreed. He was far from perfect, but the (relatively few) swell-headed creators he really leaned on have vilified him so much it drowns the quieter signals from creatives that he supported. And he certainly did make a lot of money for both the Big Two over the years, even if his own endeavors were less reliably profitable. Some of it's purely petty personality clashes too. Look at John Byrne's systemic destruction of the surviving New Universe books following Shooter's departure from Marvel. That was sheer malice, and really broke me out of my foolish nostalgia about the jerk from his old X-Man run.

Yup. See also kids graphic novels, where Raina Telgemeier and Dav Pilkey can outsell the entirety of Marvel or DC combined.

I still have trouble processing what a huge market that is, and I don't see an end to its growth anytime soon (I mean, maybe as population growth numbers drop off, but that's generations of time to really notice...). It kind of amazes me that it took so long to connect the traditional "kids like picture books" thinking with "graphic novels are called that for a reason" but boy, has that worked out.

And that's not because of the problems with the Direct Market (which are many and varied) but because of a system that created the need for the Direct Market. Also, and this is opening another can of worms, the Direct Market often gets a lot of flack for its drawbacks, but it rarely gets the praise it deserves for what it can accomplish, and for what it does well.

I'm old enough (and rural enough) to remember what it was like to find comics for sale when comic shops were something you only saw in real cities, and even then usually only one per population hub. It was worse than bad, and wouldn't work at all with the modern multi-issue decompressed storytelling. Hard enough reliably getting any two issues in a row off spinner racks, much less six. I can remember insisting I needed a haircut as a kid just because the barber was next to the only real newsstand within fifty miles and their comic stock was the best I'd ever seen before the first dedicated comic shop within begging range opened in 1979.

 

[overgeeked]

Ah. Gaines, Congress, and the CCA.

Superhero comics were dead or dying before the CCA came in. If not for that, comics as a medium would have exploded to include every type of story instead of just spandex soap operas. But alas. It was good to see the explosion of indie comics in the 80s and 90s and the subsequent flourishing of non-superhero stuff after the CCA finally died.

The self-loathing in comics is very real and very strange. There’s also a big current of comic book industry hipsters outside the Big Two. I’ve worked comic shop retail, worked for a comic company, interned for another comic company, and freelanced for a few more. Comics industry people are a weird bunch. Some great, some desperately strange.

Manga is definitely eating Western comics’ lunch. Has been for years. Dark Horse recently let slip that manga accounted for 10% of their output but 50% of their sales.

Those numbers were from memory, and wrong. It’s worse. Manga is 1% of their output and 66% of their sales.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

If not for that, comics as a medium would have exploded to include every type of story instead of just spandex soap operas. But alas.

Perhaps. Not all publishers kowtowed to the CCA, most notably Dell and Gold Key (who were already self-policing long before Wertham, in part due to the amount of material they licensed from companies like Disney - can't offend Walt) so there was still quite a lot of "funny books" and a fair bit of scifi on the market. The Sixties and Seventies were rife with all sorts of "comix" that didn't care about the CCA or the wholesale distributors that acted as the code's de facto enforcers, although finding them was quite difficult, especially prior to comic shops booming in the 80s. One of my uncles admitted he used to get his underground comics through the local head shop - which isn't all that surprising, really.

It was good to see the explosion of indie comics in the 80s and 90s and the subsequent flourishing of non-superhero stuff after the CCA finally died.

I'm particularly pleased to see the growth of Big Two books that are aimed at actual children of late. It's very strange that the CCA era saw them practically abandon the "funny book" market, and only now that it's gone are they leaning back into that market. Even that's mostly in response to more trad children book sales, but at least there's some hope that enough kids will grow up reading comics to form the next generation of adult comic readers.

Manga is definitely eating Western comics’ lunch. Has been for years. Dark Horse recently let slip that manga accounted for 10% of their output but 50% of their sales.

Those numbers were from memory, and wrong. It’s worse. Manga is 1% of their output and 66% of their sales.

Heh. And that was two years ago. I doubt the percentages are any more favorable to comics in 2024.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Ah. Gaines, Congress, and the CCA.

Superhero comics were dead or dying before the CCA came in. If not for that, comics as a medium would have exploded to include every type of story instead of just spandex soap operas. But alas. It was good to see the explosion of indie comics in the 80s and 90s and the subsequent flourishing of non-superhero stuff after the CCA finally died.

The self-loathing in comics is very real and very strange. There’s also a big current of comic book industry hipsters outside the Big Two. I’ve worked comic shop retail, worked for a comic company, interned for another comic company, and freelanced for a few more. Comics industry people are a weird bunch. Some great, some desperately strange.

Manga is definitely eating Western comics’ lunch. Has been for years. Dark Horse recently let slip that manga accounted for 10% of their output but 50% of their sales.

Those numbers were from memory, and wrong. It’s worse. Manga is 1% of their output and 66% of their sales.

And for Dark Horse, most of the rest of their sales are Hellboy.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

And for Dark Horse, most of the rest of their sales are Hellboy.

I mean, Dark Horse has always been best known for doing the stuff the Big Two don't. Very few spandex hero books, much more diverse selection of subjects. For a long time they were probably doing best with licensed material - Star Wars, Alien, etc. The last time I can remember them making a serious push toward the kind of big shared-setting supers stuff that (for better or worse) define US comics to many people was the Comic's Greatest World range way back in the Nineties, and that had a pretty brief lifespan (which still managed to include a set of Predator crossovers, so there's the licensed IP thing again). Just not their gig, where Hellboy certainly is. What's the closest the Big Two have come to that, their old horror books from the Seventies when the CCA relaxed the "no monsters/occult" rules? Kirby's Demon run?

But hey, at least we got that cinematic masterpiece Barb Wire out of their books.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Hellboy has chilled out over the last decade, but there was a time when volumes of Hellboy (in tradepaperback) outsold (at my store) ALL of Marvel's tradepaperbacks PUT TOGETHER (in a year).

Of course, there was also a time when Walking Dead outsold all of both Marvel and DC together. (Though this was after DC had systematically murdered Vertigo* and before Walking Dead died down from overexposure, so it wasn't a terribly long period of time).

*Speaking of which - WHAT A DISASTER that was! Vertigo was by far DC's best selling, and best reviewed line, and someone at the company got offended by it, and killed it. DC tradepaperback sales have never fully recovered.

 

[overgeeked]

Hellboy has chilled out over the last decade, but there was a time when volumes of Hellboy (in tradepaperback) outsold (at my store) ALL of Marvel's tradepaperbacks PUT TOGETHER (in a year).

Of course, there was also a time when Walking Dead outsold all of both Marvel and DC together. (Though this was after DC had systematically murdered Vertigo* and before Walking Dead died down from overexposure, so it wasn't a terribly long period of time).

*Speaking of which - WHAT A DISASTER that was! Vertigo was by far DC's best selling, and best reviewed line, and someone at the company got offended by it, and killed it. DC tradepaperback sales have never fully recovered.

It's really sad. Vertigo was the best stuff from DC. The Big Two seem to vacillate between "no really, comics are for adults" and "no really, comics are for kids" without any ability to simultaneously publish for both audiences. I think that's indicative of the self-loathing and hipster vibes in the industry.