4 Ways Comic Books Are Losing Touch With Their Audience

I don't know how many of you buy comics, but I can assume that it's not a lot of you, because comic sales are, in a lot of cases, tanking. And if you do buy comics, good on you. But for those who don't buy or even read comics, pretend for a second that you're entering a comic shop. It smells like fresh pages and Deadpool T-shirts. The floors creak a little bit, and you overhear two guys debating something in the manga section in the corner. You go to the cashier and ask where you should start if you want to get into Marvel. He then lists copious titles that you'd need to buy, which titles probably won't be good, and the money that it will cost. You then leave the shop forever, buy some chicken tenders on the way home, and congratulate yourself because you really dodged a bullet there.

I hear so many people talk about how great it is that they didn't get into comics, or that they stopped buying single issues of comics. They say things like "It was getting pretty bad before I had to stop myself," as if they're discussing heroin or punching elementary schoolers. Comics had ceased to be things that they consistently enjoyed and had become things that they felt like they had to finish. They had to buy every issue of every title so that they could potentially grasp one narrative. You know why a major book being a "standalone title" is often seen as such a awesome thing in comics? It's definitely not because they come around very often.

emiliefarrisphotos/Pixabay
"Oh, you want to complete the 'Spider-Man Locks His Front Door' arc? Ya gotta by the whole bottom row for that."

There's something so satisfying about holding a single issue of a comic book in your hands. It's light, colorful, and reminds you of the good times you had before you had to start paying for the things that kept you alive. So I hate to say "Time to scrap that concept," but the comic book industry needs to lean into the skid of what's actually working. If digital comics are on the rise, do more to promote those. If people are more likely to read trade paperbacks or full-length graphic novels, have more writers working toward creating them. I would much rather buy a graphic novel for $16.99 than a collection of single issues (some of which are probably terrible) for $30.

I don't think single issues of comics will ever go away, at least not in the near future. But I do think that a business model that deals mostly with what's working is a good step toward making sure that the comic industry isn't extinct in 20 years. Oh, and on that note ...

But Iron Man changed things. Now we weren't just setting up some director's individual, specific take on a character; we were being introduced to a universe in which comic characters would all interact with each other in a way that's pleasing to both fans of comics and fans of movies. People who had read Avengers comics for years could now delight in watching their childhood fantasies on screen. And it's made the movie industry a lot of Cocaine and Boats money.

Comics, well, not so much.

99pixel/Pixabay
The SS Comic Writer's Salary.

We've written about how superhero movies are fucking with superhero comics before, but I think there's a lot left unsaid in the benefits of separating them as much as you can. Because in the fight between movies and comics, movies will always win. Whether it's because they're harder to access or because they still have that dumb "Haha, comics are for nerdz!" high school stereotype stink on them, comics are the underdog. And they need to rise up and counter movies. And I don't mean with constant dick punches, which is what I would do.

PavloFox/Pixabay
Prepare your groins, evildoers. A reckoning is upon you.

If movies have entered the realm of the shared universe, comics must provide alternate takes. This is where diversity comes in handy. If the Marvel Cinematic Universe is providing one Netflix series about a female character, one Netflix series about a black character, and a bunch of minority characters who basically serve to provide a round of applause whenever Robert Downey Jr. does something cool, comics can fill in that space. They can do this by introducing more diverse characters, retooling characters to be more diverse, or simply telling more stories that wouldn't fit into the movie mold. I think it would work. Hell, it worked for me.

When Miles Morales was introduced as the new Ultimate Spider-Man, I was a little done with the character. The Amazing Spider-Man movies, with their skateboarding Peter Parker and half-assed world-building, seemed to have lost sight of what makes Spider-Man so appealing. After years of clone problems, intricate plotlines that led nowhere, and character revisions that led to even less, comic Peter Parker had stopped being a figure that I could see myself in, and had become just another hero with a mile-long backstory. And even the Ultimate Spider-Man comics, which were created to breathe new life into Spider-Man, had tumbled into awkward irrelevance.

And then ... hope.

But Mile Morales captured that Spider-Man-ness -- that feeling of being amazingly powerful yet constantly overwhelmed. And to make it even better, he was Black Hispanic, which meant that a whole bunch of readers now had their own Spider-Man. And because there wasn't a Miles Morales movie with special effects that could outdo a comic artist's drawings, I had to go to comics to get this particular kind of Spidey fix. I'm not saying that Marvel should make me GodKing of Business, but I can't be alone in wishing that comics would give us stories that we can only find there, instead of stories that are just movie-lite.

And how Venom is doing on the charts:

Comichron

They're both badass characters, right? Then why is one hitting the top and the other languishing in a puddle of its own mediocrity? Well, one has general hype surrounding it, and the other doesn't. Darth Maul showed up for five minutes in The Phantom Menace, kicked more ass than anyone else in the Star Wars series combined, and left. And even though we've seen him return in various comics and animated series, we're still kind of mystified by him. We haven't grown tired of him.

On the other hand, we grew so tired of Venom by 1991 that we literally had to create another Venom.

Marvel Comics
This new Venom's name was Carnage. He was named that because "KILL EVERYTHING" was too subtle.

But taking a chance on giving a character their own solo series isn't just something that you can do and then sit back and wait for the money enema. You have to promote the shit out of them, especially if they're replacing characters who have been around for 60 years. If there's a new Ms. Marvel (there is, and she's great), you gotta let people know. I know that you're Marvel, and that you're the biggest comic company in the universe, but you're not immune to a little thing called "People don't know, and so they don't care."

If you introduce diverse characters and put them into spots that were previously held for decades by characters even non-comic-readers know about, you can't just do the bare minimum amount of promotion, get two years in, and say "WELP, THAT DIDN'T PAN OUT. I GUESS PEOPLE JUST DON'T DIG DIVERSITY." Spread the word, Marvel. You're doing a good thing. Sometimes you do it very clumsily, but at least you're making an effort to evolve past the days of five white guys and their eternal struggles against five other white guys (from space).

Marvel Comics
"Come on, guys! Let's show Loki what the social norms of 1962 are all about!"

So when someone says that "diversity" is killing the comic industry, what they really mean is "Comics are dying, and we're too lazy to do anything about it."

Daniel has a blog.

For more check out 5 Shockingly Scenes in Famous Superhero Comics and 6 Hilariously Failed Attempts at Making Comics More Diverse.

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