That's up for debate, but the obvious problem is that sales are in the toilet. Sales data has been rigorously collected and catalogued online since about 2003 (I couldn't find my original source for the following info, so my numbers won't be very specific but they are correct). In that time, overall sales in terms of number of comics sold has stayed almost exactly the same. Little peaks and valleys here and there, but no overall ascent or descent. Doesn't sound that bad, but then you consider that the overall NUMBER of comics published in any given month has skyrocketed in that same period, at least doubled (possibly tripled). So way, way more product on the shelves... and basically the same sales.
The overall message here is that no new readers are coming in. Or if they are, they're at the replacement level. In an ordinary eight-year stretch, that would be bad news, but here it seems senseless. In that time period, Spider-Man 2, Batman Begins, and The Dark Knight have all set movie ticket revenue records. Iron Man was a surprise smash, and Iron Man 2 was in the top five most profitable films of its year. Superhero themed video games have also made a much larger impact than in the past (Batman: Arkham Asylum and X-Men: Legends being two high points). Even superhero merchandising is up this decade compared to the nineties, with countless more t-shirts and lunchboxes than before. Obviously, superheroes make a lot of money, within the comics industry and without. People do like superheroes, and to blame the sales slump on an overproliferation of something that people LIKE seems shortsighted.
But it's not shortsighted to blame the makers of superhero comics for faulty marketing. Manga has experienced some success (though even that is starting to wane) due to its marketing. Let's not pretend manga is better, it deals just as much in cliches and genre conventions as anything else. But, if your friend tells you to try Blade of the Immortal, you go to the bookstore and find Blade of the Immortal Volume 1, and then you buy volume 2, and you do that until there aren't any more. If you like the Spider-Man movie, then you go to the store and... what? Do you buy the first volume of Essential Spider-Man? Marvel Adventures Spider-Man? Ultimate Spider-Man? There's Amazing Spider-Man volume 1, that sounds pretty good... but actually the first issue in the book is really the THIRTIETH issue of the series, and you kind of have to know what came before a little, but even if you do stick it out and get through Amazing Spider-Man volume 10, then Marvel stopped numbering the trades. Hell, I read the things, I'm looking at the list right now, and I can't remember what's next. Amazing Spider-Man: Back in Black? I think that's right, but I wouldn't swear on it. And that's a huge problem. I saw the movie, I liked Spider-Man... where do I start?
Marvel tries, they really do. The Marvel Adventures books are good for kids, they're self-contained... but that's only good if you already know what it is, and that you should be looking for it. Ultimate Spider-Man is accessible to new readers, definitely. And the volumes are even numbered! Big number, right on the spine! But don't get Ultimate Spider-Man confused with Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man, even though it too just says "Ultimate Spider-Man" on the cover, but it's different, it's the SECOND series, so don't get mixed up. So Marvel tries, but after 50 years of continuous publication there are over THREE HUNDRED Spider-Man trade paperbacks out there (searching for trade paperbacks at Mile High Comics with the phrase "Spider-Man" in the title yields 304 results). It's literally impossible to wade into that without knowing where to start. The best place is probably at the beginning, which would be Essential Spider-Man... but are those 60s comics still worth reading?
Regardless, Marvel is trying again. Their new trick is to release a brand new #1 issue of a Thor series at the time the Thor movie comes out:
Looking for an easy to point to "jumping on point" for readers intrigued by May 6's "Thor" film, Marvel Comics announced today that it would relaunch the thundergod superhero's adventures in a new monthly title called "The Mighty Thor" this April. “A wave of civilians will be moved to check the book out, so a clear, clean entry point is always welcome,” Fraction told Marvel's official website. “The first arc of 'The Mighty Thor' is [an] accessible ground floor storyline that veteran readers and neophyte movie fans alike can get into."There will even be a movie poster version of the comic cover, to really make sure everyone really picks up on the movie connection. Look, kids, if you like Thor, you'll love this comic book! The question is, where are they going to SEE this comic book cover? Most books are sold through comics stores, and the likelihood of a new reader going looking for it there is slim. The books will also be on the magazine racks at bookstores, and that'll probably be your major buying audience there. That first issue might rack up some good sales, but the important question is, will new readers stick with it?
As Fraction explained, the renamed series and his "Mighty Thor" alike will connect with the upcoming "Fear Itself" event.And there's that question answered. "Fear Itself" is 2011's big crossover event, like "Civil War." It's structured around a big seven-issue miniseries, and then a bunch of tie-in miniseries, and then of course all the individual books will cross over into the Fear Itself storyline at some point. Marvel are probably thinking themselves to be pretty clever at this point: "We bring them in with a single, self-contained book... and then we hook them with a mega-crossover that introduces them to all the other Marvel heroes!" I remember getting interested in other books through crossovers, but once the crossovers were over then I didn't buy those other books anymore. This is not a model that works, and it's one the industry keeps using to temporarily boost sales which they then have to boost again with more event stories. And now you want to try it on NEW readers? You want to hand someone a Thor book and say, "Hey, hope you like this, and by the way get ready for seven months of pulse-pounding confusion as a whole lot of characters you don't know fight something you don't understand!" Yeah, that'll get the audience in the door, all right.
Huge and aging continuities are exactly the reason that people don't read superhero comics. I didn't read X-Men, I read Generation X, which was a new team of new characters. It wasn't always a good book, but at least I knew what the hell was going on. When I was reading Civil War, I read some early tie-in issues but then stopped because I couldn't follow them. I loved Daredevil when it was relaunched in 1998, and I read every issue up until #61, when suddenly the Black Widow showed up, and SHIELD, and there was something about Nick Fury missing and I just stopped buying the fucking thing. And I LOVED that book. I also love the Ultimate Marvel line, because it's small and I've read all of it. It's my own tiny little universe that I can understand and I can really be a part of. And this is ME! I actually READ AND BUY comics, I'm an existing reader, and you can't even get me interested in the huge continuity! And you want to try this shit with new readers?
It's the same problem in a different form. Even when they do give your readers a clear sign of where to start, they still throw them in the middle of the ocean and hope for the best. Here's a film analogy: Star Trek: Nemesis, the tenth movie of the film series, was preceded by ten other movies and seven seasons' worth of The Next Generation, and it grossed $43.1 million. Seven years later, they relaunched with a brand new series, no continuity or history to it (at least, nothing important), and grossed $257.7 million. One was accessible, one was not. One made a ton of money, the other did not. And you don't even have to relaunch completely to be accessible, look at James Bond! $160 million for Die Another Day, and $167.7 million for Casino Royale. The relaunch made a bit more money, but it's not a huge difference because the first movie was still reasonably popular, because it was ACCESSIBLE. It was a piece of shit, but it was accessible!
Of course, that only speaks to the superhero problem. Small press comic book type people will say "Yes, but my comic book IS accessible! It doesn't have all that continuity weighing it down!" Okay. Good for you. You get the message. So why aren't you selling more books? Big thing could be, nobody knows your book exists. It might also be worth wondering whether your book is maybe just a piece of shit and nobody wants to read such a piece of shit. Even people who already read comic books don't read your piece of shit.
I guess for the small press the biggest problem is obscurity. And not in the "nobody out there knows comic books can be good!" kind of way. To blame the medium in general is, again, shortsighted. Marjane Satrapi sold a lot of copies of Persepolis, and she wasn't held back by the medium. But you know, she also got a movie made of it, and that probably helped. A GOOD movie too, which also helped. And so she sold a lot of books, and a lot of other very good creators don't, because people just don't know about them. And being told "comics can be good!" isn't going to compel people to go out and by them. We all know books can be good, books can be very good, but mostly people just read Twilight and Harry Potter and fucking Nicholas Sparks. They hear of something that sounds good, they find out it's a book, and they go buy that book, and they like it. They don't like books, they like THAT book. People don't go just see movies in general, they see particular movies that are of interest to them (and then there are film buffs, but they're kind of like comic nerds...). If you're a small-press creator, don't go out there advocating for the medium, advocate for your particular work. That's how consumers buy things. We don't buy mediums, we buy individual works.
And that might just be the reason American comic book sales are in a slump. There's just no compelling reason for someone to go buy a comic book. Why should I read a Spider-Man comic when I can see the movies? What, I'm so obsessed with Spider-Man now that I need to read about him constantly? That's a fan mentality, not a normal reader mentality. If Twilight were published monthly, it would have a big boom at first and then die off (like how comics sales were huge in the 40s when superheroes were created, and have never again reached that level). Fan mentality takes hold in a few people, but it just isn't there for everyone.
If you're in the small press, get your damn book in the bookstore and off the comic rack, and try to get some publicity. Sell the thing on its own merits, not as the avatar for an entire art form. You'd be surprised how that will work. Don't expect comic fan mentality to lead people to your creation. It's not going to work for Thor, it hasn't worked for the last eight years, and it's not going to work for you.
Additional Comments by Master Badger:
I think the real problem lies with where comics are sold. They're sold in comic shops, and bookstores. That's it. Is a general person off the street going to see a comic shop and wander in? Probably not. They may be in a bookstore, but then they've got hundreds of overpriced and badly numbered trades to choose from. When I was a kid, I bought some of my first comics from Wal-Mart. They didn't have a rack of single issues, but what they did have were multi-packs containing the first 4 issues of a series, or the first few issues of a major crossover. I didn't know a lot about comics continuity at the time, so the stories themselves were sometimes confusing, but I was reading them. it wasn't that the stories were accessible, it was that the actual comics were physically accessible for a kid from a town of 200 people. Even the grocery store in my town of 200 carried comics for a year or two, which was awesome.
The publishers have to realize that people don't go out shopping to several different stores like they did decades ago. People go to Wal-Mart or Target now to get everything they need, and if it isn't there, they go home without it. Once I knew I liked comics from my purchases at Wal-Mart, then I made the effort to go to comic shops.
Agreement and nostalgia from AlterBadger:
Wal-Mart was an absolute godsend for comics in the early 90s. The big multi-packs in the toy aisle were awesome, I got a lot of X-Men books that way. I remember buying the first issue of a Gambit miniseries off the rack at a Wal-Mart, just because it was there and I could. When Marvel's Iron Man animated series was on the air, I bought the first issue of the comic adaptation on the shelf at a Wal-Mart. It was an awesome time.
Toys R Us had even better multi-packs, those were fucking amazing. I got a ton of Marvel 2099 books that way, a bunch of Spider-Man and X-Men... the best were the 20-packs at Costco. Holy shit! They'd take a pack of 20 books from either Marvel or DC which were all published in the same month, pack them all together and sell them at a discount. That's what introduced me to the Reign of Supermen, and Batman: Knightfall, my very favorite Batman story of all time. And the Marvel pack was even more amazing, I can not even describe the excitement I felt tearing through that stuff.
Today, there is no availability for cheap comics packed by the ton. Those things just don't exist anymore. $4 gets me a single issue? Fuck it. But when $5 got me five books, I was fuckin there.
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