Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="WizarDru" data-source="post: 1262679" data-attributes="member: 151">Well, that theory has been put forward before, and it's never panned out.  I think stevelabny's wrong that the industry only has five years left in it...but I do think that they're on the way towards a major shrinkage if something doesn't change.  Movies have never translated into increased sales, even when Marvel or DC makes some weak overtures to capitalize on it.  Usually, they only benefit the industry as a property, fueling merchandising sales and character usage.  Spiderman was a phenomenally popular movie, but it didn't register in a change in Spiderman sales.  Most of the audience had some idea of who Spiderman was before they walked in the door.  That doesn't equate to a sudden influx of readers.  The same is true of the X-men and Spiderman cartoons.  Comics are still being made for current comic readers.  Many are difficult to get in to, and not written for a new audience.   Kids today are not going to drop $50 a month on comics.  Or if they are, they won't be doing it until they're in their mid-teens.  Consider this: Shonen Jump costs $4.95 for 288 pages or so.  A 32-page comic, with supporting advertisements, costs $2.25 to $4.95 or more.  Where do you see a kid with a limited budget putting his money?  I know that I never would have been reading the new X-men in their golden days if they had been as relatively expensive. The comics industry has been in a crisis for years, by it's own admission.  I used to get Comic Buyer's Guide Weekly, and it was no secret that readership had been steadily declining for years.  The move in the industry in the past five years has been to collections and graphic novels, and its pretty clear how many titles are now being written and edited with the expectation of a collection occuring.  Comic book distribution has maimed the industry, and new readers have to extend considerable effort to become new readers.  When I was young, you could get comics almost everywhere.  Drug Stores had spinners, newstands carried them, supermarkets, bookstores and departments stores all sold them.  Now, with some rare exceptions, it's only at comic retailers.  In a large city like Philadelphia, there are maybe five or six large shops, and a single spinner at Borders.  The industry needs to find some solutions, or an implosion is due. Consider this:<img src="http://www.needcoffee.com/html/fcf/images/comicland.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /></blockquote>

Verification