Why back issues rule

[ctc]

>If I can walk into a comic shop and not find a single book to buy that looks even remotely interesting

See.... that's what I'm getting at. Outside the comic shops there are TONS of comics being sold: collections of Japanese books, European albums, compilations of old comics, collections of undergrounds.... Hell; even them Archie digests are available EVERYWHERE! Superheroes aren't doing so well, but they're not the sum total of the comic book universe. And kids read TONS of comics; just not the ones the old superhero crowd reads. (SOMEBODY'S been buying nearly 40 volumes of "Prince of Tennis.")

>As a comic fan and avid reader for more than thirty years..., save for a Marvel Masterworks or DC Archives reprint...we have a problem.

Well.... "we" as in the old superhero fan/comic shop crowd, yes. "We" as in everyone else, not so much. You gotta see the bigger picture.

>can you pull an online comic out of a box and give it to your children or grandchildren?

Okay; BIGGER than that! Comics as a medium are incredibly resilient. It's one of the few where ONE person can have their complete say, and it combines a lot of aspects of writing and movies, and as such allow for a great deal of impact. The physical aspects may change, but the medium will last. Even the subject matter changes. One day someone will decide to push superhero comics again. For kids who grew up surrounded by the Shonen Jump stuff it'll be weird and novel; and BAM! superhero boom once again. ('Course their parents who grew up READING the Shonen Jump stuff'll go all geezer about it. "Batman? FEH! Oooohhhh.... Naruto Super GT-Hyper Ninja Fighter 3! Now THAT'S a comic!")

It's the circle of life....

>Industrywide new comic sales are down.

They are; but look at the insane boom the Japanese stuff had for the last 10 years. And even with the decline, there's still a lot of stuff available.

>the fact that Mattel is making retro Megos shows that these guys are finally waking up as to what the fans want.

....what the OLDER fans want....

>if they can bring back that same level of fun and excitement that we all felt when we were growing up, a new generation of kids will fall in love with them just like we did.

That's the key to a lot of things. When I hear older fans say stuff like this I can't help but suspect; like I said, that they're not really pining for the comics themselves, but for the feeling they got reading them for the first time. That won't come back. Problem is; the older fans won't let go (even when the books are no longer FUN for them) and neither will the companies who keep trying to placate them. The reason Marvel and DC keep "adulting" up their books isn't to entice the kiddies, it's to hang onto their dimminishing audience.... an AGING audience. Like I said; they're still trying to cater to the 80's comic shop bunch. And they're losing because no matter what you do, it's going to be different and the old crowd will complain. ('Cos they're trying to recapture the FEELING.) And the potential NEW crowd will wander off 'cos they don't know why Batman with a little yellow circle is so significant, or who "Obscure McBadGuy" is, or why harkening back to the Byrne era is a big deal....

The kids are doing fine. They've got lots of comic book heroes. I can't help but wonder how many kids who's appreciation for Naruto meets with grunting disapproval from parents who's appreciation of the Teen Titans met with grunting diapproval from THEIR parents. It's the circle of life, and you'd think it'd end 'cos folks who obsess over Batman, or Nascar, or the Red Wings, or American Idol would understand those feelings in someone else; even if that person felt them for something they didn't.

Don C.

[enyawd72]

"Well.... someone must not have been to a bookstore in a while. Comics as a whole are fine, superheroes are flailing. There’s a difference. And if you count online comics; comics aren’t doing fine, they’re DOMINATING!"

Comics are most certainly NOT dominating. Industrywide new comic sales are down. You hear about second and third printings of Blackest Night, but what they don't tell you is even with three printings the total number of books sold pales in comparison to thirty years ago. And online comics? Please...can you pull an online comic out of a box and give it to your children or grandchildren?

As a comic fan and avid reader for more than thirty years...If I can walk into a comic shop and not find a single book to buy that looks even remotely interesting, save for a Marvel Masterworks or DC Archives reprint...we have a problem.

And I know I'm not the only one. I have three local shops within driving distance, and two of them say the paperback Masterworks series are outselling a lot of the new stuff coming out. Look at the most successful line of Marvel merchandise to date...the Bowen statues and busts. They sell like crazy, despite being expensive, go up in value on the secondary market, and are 90% 1970's based interpretations of Marvel characters.

Mattel is grasping this too, as evidenced by including characters like Killer Moth in their DCUC line. Who under 30 even knows who Killer Moth is? Just the fact that Mattel is making retro Megos shows that these guys are finally waking up as to what the fans want. And I really believe that if they can bring back that same level of fun and excitement that we all felt when we were growing up, a new generation of kids will fall in love with them just like we did.

At least I can hope...

[ctc]

>I truly fear the comics industry is quickly coming to an end,

Well.... someone must not have been to a bookstore in a while. Comics as a whole are fine, superheroes are flailing. There’s a difference. And if you count online comics; comics aren’t doing fine, they’re DOMINATING!

>there will not be a new generation of comic readers to replace the old.

There will; but they’ll be more into speedlines and zipatone than capes and tights.

>let's see how long we can hook these suckers into buying all these mini/maxi series

I’d agree, but I think there’s also a touch of the writers WANTING to produce actual events but being hamstrung by the nature of a perpetual book. A lot of the ....er.... “mini” series I’ve read lately seem like actual events in the life of the character, but are neatly quarantined so when the NEXT writer comes in they can clearly see what needs to be amputated to make way for THEIR version of the character.

>Self-contained stories were becoming a rare item even in the 70's

Marvel in the 60's upped the game by focusing on continuity, so I’d think that’s where continuing stories for superhero books really started. Thing is; I don’t think they expected their books to last as long as they did, so by the 70's you have the bugaboos of “been there, done that” creeping in. (The first 50 issues of The Fantastic Four contain durned near EVERY FF story ever, in one form or another.) Marvel used to do something sneaky though: they’d produce single issue stories, but divide ‘em up so you’d get the first half at the end of an issue. Next issue would be the last half of the preceding story, the first half of the next.

The problem for the older/long term fan is that you start noticing fairly quickly; and once the novelty is gone, the kick diminishes rapidly.

>they milk what sells and new stuff gets less and less of a chance because it's too risky to start up a title with an unknown character

Oh, HELL yeah! I think the audience is to blame too. Folks don’t want something new, especially the older fans. They want the same old, but with the feeling it had when they first discovered it. (Which tragically, isn’t possible.) NEW stuff makes ‘em feel old and irrelevant. If people REALLY wanted new, we wouldn’t have so many folks scared for the comic industry ‘cos Marvel and DC ‘aint doing so good. (“NEW” is out there, just sometimes you have to read it right to left.)

>Back in the 70s and 80s how many kids had video games?

You never had an Atari? WE were the video game generation, not out kids. Video games are ubiquitous now. No; I think what killed superheroes for kids was the last twenty five years of catering to the aging “comic shop” crowd; the folks who knew all the ins and outs, and cared more for the names producing the book than the books themselves. Even the cartoons, which are nominally produced for a general, wide audience are still wrapped up in huge levels of oldster pandering. Would a kid, who’d been reading DC for two years REALLY be impressed by an appearance from the Shining Knight? Or is that put in more to appease the parents. (Who control the purse-strings when it comes to buying the toys, et al. “You don’t need any more of that ‘Naruto’ crap! HEY! A figure of the golden age Crazy Quilt! AWESOME!!!”)

Don C.

[MegoSteve]

Jack Staff is awesome. Paul Grist is a vastly underrated talent and it's a shame that more people don't buy his book.

Regarding back issues... I like them more than new issues because they are cheaper. New comics cost $4 each. For that much, I can get a worn out Silver Age book or a pile of 50 centers.

To me, the best period in comics is 1958 through around 1965, give or take a few years in either direction. On the Marvel side, you have the creation of just about everything, on the DC side, you have all of the classic Silver Age Superman stories and the introduction of Supergirl, and on the Archie side, you have Dan DeCarlo's work. That period is awfully hard to beat in terms of creativity and innovation.

[johnmiic]

For those of you who long for the glory days of comic books of your youth, which were not too serious, I highly recommend this ongoing series. The art is somewhat minimalist but the stories rock! This guy, Paul Grist, has created an entire universe of his own that resembles Marvel & DC at their heyday and includes pop-culture tv series character-types similar to Buffy, X-Files, Kolchack, etc. The plotting is often fast paced and stories are complex. It's somewhat a parody-but not entirely. If you are unsure try a major bookstore chain with an extensive graphic novel section and see if it's in stock and sample it. He even has a facebook page:

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[jemboy2004]

well one reason comics are dying slowly is kids are no longer interested in them. I think it's all about the video games now so I don't blame dc or marvel for it. Back in the 70s and 80s how many kids had video games? It's the thing the kids are into now a days and I don't think comics has a chance to grab that big market again. I sure would love to see comics return but doubt it will.

[HardyGirl]

I'll tell ya why back issues rule for me:

Aside from the obvious, (that I love all things 70s), last year and the year before when I was teaching after school care, 1 one my boys asked his dad to loan me some classic Batman comics, 'cos he thought I'd like to read them. Another one gave me 1 of his uncle's vintage Marvel comics, (I think it was Godzilla), and yet another one was out w/ his mom to a vintage collector shop and bought a Sub-Mariner comic for me.

As much as I used to get on their cases for misbehaving, my kids loved me enough to think about me. That's why back issues rule for me! *sniff*

[B-Lister]

I dig some of the oddball characters from the 60s and 70s....I just bought a huge lot of Metal Men, and Metamorpho books, as well as some old Rip Hunter books......

I'd love to get my mitts on a complete run of all three titles, as well as Brother Power, Creeper, and some of the other estoteric runs of the 60s and 70s, just because I dig the coloring.

I'd also love a full BA run of Batman......

anyway, I'm an editor for a website called CriticalMess and it's a love letter to all things retro and fun. We're primarily DC Comics and DC Toy fans, but everybody's welcome, you're precisely the type of audience we cater to!

[Joe90]

I do still think the 70's were the best though. That's when Marvel had had a few years to develop and really hit it's stride, and DC was getting back to it's roots and away from the campy stuff.

DC's campy period actually lasted from the Golden Age through the Silver Age. It's usually blamed on the 1966 Batman series, which is ironic because by the time Adam West's Batman appeared on television, DC was already two years into the change to a more Detective based story line. All the DC comics I have from the 1950's and 1960's (pre-1964) are all campy. Really, the dark "roots" of Batman was only at the very beginning, and within a year the inclusion of Robin changed the tone significantly. The whole Batman mythos has grown up around that lighter tone.

My preference is towards the lighter tone of the Silver Age. The whole switch towards darker subject matter strikes me as the comics trying to be "relevant" (to use an early 1970's buzz word). The first attempt I can remember where comics tried to be cool/relevant was Brother Power. It came across as pathetically corny... Two issues corny...



But I'm not saying the Silver Age was perfect! Some of the Science Fiction elements they used were pretty corny as well: Bat-Mite, Mr Mxyzptlk, Dinosaurs and Robots in WWII...

I guess the whole point of the comic book industry was to sell comics, and the switch in the 1970's and 1980's did boost sales significantly. They had obviously got the mix right back then. Right now they are scrambling again to find that ever elusive "relevant" factor. From my perspective it's coming across more as Brother Power than The Dark Knight.

[enyawd72]

@ Kryptosmaster...

No offense taken...I see some of your points. I wasn't aware of there being that many titles available from Marvel or DC at the time either...I'm looking at an issue from 1978 and it shows 16 Marvel titles available for subscription.

Avengers, Cap, Conan, Dr. Strange, DD, FF, Ghost Rider, Hulk, Iron Man, Marvel Tales, Marvel Team-Up, Ms. Marvel, Peter Parker, Power Man, Spider-man, Thor.

I can't recall what other titles were around at the time except the non-Marvel stuff like Star Wars and BSG

I do still think the 70's were the best though. That's when Marvel had had a few years to develop and really hit it's stride, and DC was getting back to it's roots and away from the campy stuff. The Hulk and Spider-man were on primetime, Superfriends and Filmation Batman on Saturdays, and of course the reason we're all here...MEGOS!!

[kryptosmaster]

Hope you don't think I'm nitpicking your comments to death but I see a few inaccuracies with your statements.
I can tell you love comics so as a fellow comics lover please don't take my comments too personally.

I agree with everything said here, and feel I have to add some more to it. I truly fear the comics industry is quickly coming to an end, and they don't even realize it. NEW readership is way down, so much so that there will not be a new generation of comic readers to replace the old.

This has been the consensus for quite some time now. I remember talking about this subject over 10 years ago. They are doing it to themselves and you'd almost think deliberately. They can't be that stupid, can they?

IMO, comics take themselves WAAAAY too seriously these days. Multiple crossover story arcs and year long universe-altering sagas have become the norm. There's no good jumping-on point for new readers anymore. The stories themselves rely far too much on trying to be adult and realistic and the fun and fantasy elements of the comics we grew up with is now gone.

Marvel has almost always been that way and DC fell into the same trap many years ago. I think this went into overdrive in the 90's and got out of control. I thought the whole Blackest Night, Final Crisis, Identity Crisis, 52, etc etc was going to "lighten up" the DCU but so far all I've seen is "let's see how long we can hook these suckers into buying all these mini/maxi series" and still feels the same to me.

I don't think comics will ever get back to the glory days of the 1970's and early 80's, unless the publishers wake up. I miss single issue self-contained stories. The occasional crossover or multi part story is fine, but not EVERY issue! Secondly, they need to cut back on the QUANTITY of titles, and focus on the QUALITY. Back in the day, pretty much every kid read every book. It was totally possible to pick up every single monthly Marvel and/or DC book, bacause both companies only published like 12 titles, and each book was 25-35 cents.

Not even so sure I'd agree with the glory days being the 70's & 80's. That would be more fitting to the 50's & 60's, but I see your point. When compared to today ANYTHING looks like glory days!
Self-contained stories were becoming a rare item even in the 70's and by the early 80's pretty much EVERY title was continued from issue to issue in some respect.
As for your quality vs quantity comment; I agree that there seems to be too many of SOME titles. Do we need ALL those Batman-related titles? The problem is they milk what sells and new stuff gets less and less of a chance because it's too risky to start up a title with an unknown character when they can just give Alfred his own Bat-title and it'll probably sell more.
I totally disagree on your assessment of title prolification and affordability though. There were way more than just 12 titles being published. A quick grab of a Marvel from 1980 showed 29 titles for that month and that doesn't even count the reprint titles or one-shots (Annuals, etc).
A DC from 1977 subscription ad lists 40 titles!
I know I didn't have the money back then to even get 12 titles a month let alone 30-40.
But even at 35-40 cents apiece they were WAY more affordable and had more value than the $3 minimum cost of one comic today.

Another problem with books today is the "artistic license" given to those who work on the books. I want to see people who look like people. Not misproportioned, googly eyed freaks. Back in the day, artists were allowed to illustrate in their own style, but still had to follow a style guide, so that a sustained consistent look existed across the board. Costumes and character looks are now changed month-to-month and many times the covers are by a different artist than the interior.

Well there were plenty of cover artists back in the 70's/80's that didn't do the interiors either but I agree with you on the abundance of sub-par "art" passed off in a lot of today's books.
The lack of someone like a Curt Swan or Dick Dillin who each worked on their respective assignments for decades and became associated with those charcaters/titles does hurt today's comic world.

I also feel a lot of the coloring is grossly overdone these days. I've compared some recolored reprint TPB's with their original counterparts, and the originals have MUCH more visual appeal. The colors are fewer, but they're much brighter...they just POP, and the original black and white line art isn't buried by all the shading.

Unfortunately I think a lot of the blame for that has to go to technology. They came up with all these new printing processes since the 70's to make things look better but they lost a lot of what made comics feel like comics along the way. Sacrificed charm and simplicity for the latest and greatest which also contributes to the increase in cost due to the more expensive paper, etc.

Rich

[enyawd72]

This might be one of the most important threads on these forums.

I agree with everything said here, and feel I have to add some more to it. I truly fear the comics industry is quickly coming to an end, and they don't even realize it. NEW readership is way down, so much so that there will not be a new generation of comic readers to replace the old.

IMO, comics take themselves WAAAAY too seriously these days. Multiple crossover story arcs and year long universe-altering sagas have become the norm. There's no good jumping-on point for new readers anymore. The stories themselves rely far too much on trying to be adult and realistic and the fun and fantasy elements of the comics we grew up with is now gone.

I don't think comics will ever get back to the glory days of the 1970's and early 80's, unless the publishers wake up. I miss single issue self-contained stories. The occasional crossover or multi part story is fine, but not EVERY issue! Secondly, they need to cut back on the QUANTITY of titles, and focus on the QUALITY. Back in the day, pretty much every kid read every book. It was totally possible to pick up every single monthly Marvel and/or DC book, bacause both companies only published like 12 titles, and each book was 25-35 cents.

Another problem with books today is the "artistic license" given to those who work on the books. I want to see people who look like people. Not misproportioned, googly eyed freaks. Back in the day, artists were allowed to illustrate in their own style, but still had to follow a style guide, so that a sustained consistent look existed across the board. Costumes and character looks are now changed month-to-month and many times the covers are by a different artist than the interior.

I also feel a lot of the coloring is grossly overdone these days. I've compared some recolored reprint TPB's with their original counterparts, and the originals have MUCH more visual appeal. The colors are fewer, but they're much brighter...they just POP, and the original black and white line art isn't buried by all the shading.

Anyway...end of rant. Just thought I'd share my views

[Earth 2 Chris]

Since I've all but given up on modern comics, I rely on my back issues to supply my dosage of daring-do.

I dug out some old dog-eared, coverless comics this week. A bunch of DCCPs were among them. Great stuff. Love the occasional Jose Luis Garcia Lopez art!

Chris

[Bruce Banner]

Damn right.
Love DC Comics Presents. Still have a bunch of them in my long boxes.

[kingdom warrior]

nothing, NOTHING beats the 'smell'.

YUP!!!!!!! Nothing says real comics like the smell the bright colors and the fun and adventure of pure escapism of an old comic......