The men who destroyed super hero comics...

[Magenta]

I agree with the OP. I miss the fun in comics. What I do NOT want are gay characters, rape storylines etc. Leave that stuff out. Marvel for me died in 1998. I have not picked up a modern comic since and I will not.

[The Bat]

Batman: Odyssey was a disaster for the aforementioned reasons as well as the fact that Adams modern artwork is even more hyper-stylized than it was in the 70s (and that's not a good thing in this case) AND he's NOT a writer. He really needed someone to reign in his weird interpretations of the characters.

Totally agree. I started buying the book but was forced to cancel it...Adams is a horrible writer and his art style has changed as well...not for the better.

[MIB41]

Great subject Dwayne. When it comes to comics, my attitude has changed quite a bit in the past thirty years. Man...did I say thirty? Honestly, it has been that long since I could describe myself as an invested comic book fan. When you've lived on this planet fifty years, there's a number of concessions you begin to make for that time spent. You see so many things go through cycles that after a time, it becomes so repetitive you wonder what all the fuss is over. Then you look at the ones making the fuss and look in the mirror and realize some context needs to be applied before an opinion is formed about it's relevance. So when I examine the life history of comics, I have to realize that today's generation probably doesn't share the same sensibilities on the subject that people of my generation hold dear. And I think allot of that has to do with how the comic services that core audience today versus the generation I grew up in.

When I first started reading comics, Nixon had not been impeached yet, Rock Hudson was viewed as the quintessential alpha-male next to the Marlboro man, and the concept of a 12 year old girl being possessed or a shark attacking someone near a beach sounded more like a storyline for Scooby Doo or Jonny Quest. There were also entirely different sensibilities regarding social roles. It's a safe assessment that a cross section of adults in the late 60's and early 70's could not provide you with any meaningful details of a popular superhero outside of acknowledging maybe Adam West from Batman or perhaps Clayton Moore as the Lone Ranger. The world of comic books, toys, and cartoons were relegated as dispensable entertainment assigned to anyone under the age of 12. There were no pervasive attitudes that a teenager or young man in his twenties would be seen as the a-typical follower of these products like they are today. Not even close. And yet, the adults were creating and writing this material for my generation. Therein lies the catch.

There's a safe bet that people like Stan Lee and Jack Kirby did not grow up with the kind of colorful characters they created for my generation. Yet when Stan Lee created Spider-man, he wrote him as someone who was relatable instead of the one-dimensional heroes he grew up with. The same with the Fantastic Four. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby did not paint them as the perfect family like Leave it to Beaver. He made them dysfunctional with allot of infighting stemming from their own insecurities. But the most important quality they brought to the panel graphic art form was a deliberate expression of wit and intelligence. Stan Lee understood the bias he faced on a professional level from his peers. Society viewed comic books as a byproduct of Disney with little to no value as an educational piece. In fact many viewed it as a contributor to juvenile delinquency. So Stan Lee made a deliberate effort to bring a social awareness and intelligence to the art form in response to those attitudes. And I think, in many ways, that kind of desire to remain relevant in the conversation remains at the heart of it's evolution to this day.

But like all generations, there lies a defining measure of values that distinguishes one from the other. Traditionalists likely didn't care for the ideas created by the Baby boomers, nor have Baby boomers probably embraced many concepts from Generation X. And the further you get down that line, the larger the divide. So as much as I agree with every single point Dwayne has referred to in his opening statement, I think ultimately today's comics are speaking to what this generation wants. Our generation is no longer a prominent piece in that equation, so our complaints and outrage no longer serves as valid feedback for those who plunk down the cash because it connects with them. Short answer: We're getting old. We've become our parents with the values we embraced.

[samurainoir]

^ Didn't know that the vertigo stuff was that low of a print run. Just curious at where that number is? is there a site that gives these print run numbers?

My understanding of many of the smaller Vertigo numbers for the most part, were basically operating at a loss, against the much larger and long-term viability of their trade paperback program (of which the majority of readers discovered Sandman, Preacher, Y the Last Man, Fables etc as trades rather than monthlies). Which is why the trades, particularly Vertigo's, came out right on the heels of the monthlies. Sandman and Preacher pretty much pioneered "waiting for the trades" mentality. It wasn't necessarily greed that spurred this on, but a necessity out of a revised business model that began including trades as part of the profit rubric (At least from the Vertigo imprint) to make up for their losses in the monthlies.

I was recalling numbers from a few years ago... it appears that the numbers have shrunk even more on the mid-range and lower end since I last had a good look at them.
March 2015 here...

http://www.comichron.com/monthlycomicssales/2015/2015-03.html

as folks can see with the indy numbers... no one is charging $5 for a book out of greed. No one gets into comics expecting to be rich... and the payout from The Walking Dead is like winning the lottery vs all the indy creators out there in the salt mines. Of that $5, let's say half goes to the retailer, and then $2.50 gets split between Diamond, the publisher and the printing cost. Let's say fifty cents is the printing cost. So if the comic is selling 10-5,000 copies... and there is a buck or so profit. How much is an artist, inker, colourist and writer's page rate coming out of the publisher's end? Is it a licensed book? What's that cut? What are the expenses for running a business in general? Shipping, production, office rent, supplies, does the editor and other staff get a salary? Divided across how many staff and how many books being published?

after the top 25, everything is below the 50,000 range.

DC's Thresholds have apparently reached an all time low.
292 Klarion 6 $2.99 DC 5,091
290 Star Spangled War Stories Gi Zombie 8 $2.99 DC 5,125

All ages...
244 Scooby Doo Team Up 9 $2.99 DC 6,780

this one in particular is a bit of a shocker for me... TV Tie in, priced to intro new readers ground level
267 Izombie 1 Spec. Ed. $1.00 DC 6,077

the other media tie ins. Theoretically the books that SHOULD have walmart shelf space in trade form.
151 Batman 66 21 $2.99 DC 14,238
187 Flash Season Zero 6 $2.99 DC 10,188
206 Arrow Season 2.5 6 $2.99 DC 9,055

Vertigo here:
235 Wolf Moon 4 $3.99 DC 7,124
277 Coffin Hill 16 $2.99 DC 5,785

Vertigo's top seller
199 Fables The Wolf Among Us 3 $3.99 DC 9,352

Looks like Marvel's threshold is around the 10,000 mark
205 Marvel Universe Guardians of Galaxy 2 $2.99 Marvel 9,108
190 Deathlok 6 $3.99 Marvel 10,066
178 Dark Tower Drawing Three House Cards 1 $3.99 Marvel 11,107
172 Elektra 11 $3.99 Marvel 11,634

[Blue Meanie]

^ Didn't know that the vertigo stuff was that low of a print run. Just curious at where that number is? is there a site that gives these print run numbers?

[samurainoir]

Samurai - you're completely right on the distribution, but that shows there is no real justification for issue prices to be so incredibly unpegged from inflation, which started at the same time in the80's, other than a dwindling market.

You and a few others would certainly know better than I do, but I want to know what the associated costs are for 5 bucks an issue. Piracy is certainly a bleeder, but It's more of a killer for smaller publishers than Marvel/DC who can scrub the comic division losses with ancillary dollars or as film/TV developmental. You can't make Avengers money and claim the House of Ideas is strapped at the same time.

so many more factors at work in addition to inflation.

The newsstand/drug store/convenience store/grocery store market (except for Archie digests at the checkout lines) was lost in the 70's and 80's because the limited space for a 50 cent comic was given over to the more profitably $2-3 glossy magazine.

Paper costs has always been cited as a huge factor every time they try and justify price hikes to the public. Particularly in the transition to glossy full colour process on higher quality paper across the past quarter century, as four colour newsprint went the way of the Dodo. It was inevitable as the periodical gave way to collectible object.

I truly believe the future of print comics is as "limited edition collectibles" once more... as true readers move to digital, all the tactile nonsense that can't be duplicated in digital re-emerges. Purposeful scarcity and novelty... with the variant program essentially subsidizing retailers income at this point (variants allocated based on number of copies ordered), and the recent successful return of the Hologram cover gimmick justifying a higher cover-price for an entire month of product from DC. Die Cut, Glow in the Dark, Foil, metallic and neon inks, all the bells an whistles that you can't download onto your iPad to keep the collectible market for comics going as a physical medium. But I digress.

At the end of the day, I don't know any comic book store that has survived based solely on new Comic Books (and many are even done with back-issues). Once that five dollar per issue pie is divided by publisher and Diamond as distributor, the retailer is still only making a couple of bucks at most per issue. The old style neighbourhood comic book store can't survive on those margins (which is why so many have closed by not letting go of the traditional model). Most have embraced toys, statues, apparel, and novelties with much higher price points and much more attractive margins (which makes up most of the back half of the Diamond catalogue these days). Others rely heavily on gaming... or a combination of both gaming and collectible merchandise.

There are fewer individual issues printed overall these days, which impacts costs greatly. Print runs of 15,000 on the lowest selling titles published by DC (in the Vertigo imprint), and the indie titles likely fall well under this, tapering off at around a few thousand as the point at which it's not worthwhile for Diamond to carry you any more. I believe Dave Sim reached this point with Glamourpuss when it was cancelled. Cost-per-issue is bound to be higher the lower your numbers. 150,000 was the cancellation threshold at one point at Marvel... I believe that is the number at which Power Man/Iron Fist was cancelled back in the day. Now, those are the best-selling titles, often spiked by the launch of a #1, followed by a decline and then a respike when they renumber/relaunch at #1 again. rinse. repeat.

and given that Marvel and DC Publishing are housed within giant corporate conglomerates. Who knows what creative accounting goes on internally? Particularly with all the cross-horizontal-integration that goes on across media. There are theories based around the fact that profits generated by publishing are merely a drop in the bucket compared to the larger picture of movies, TV, Video Games and licensing... so the real purpose of publishing at the end of the day is as R&D departments to generate IP's to be exploited in those more profitably areas. Which would seem be hold some truth given Winter Soldier or Civil War being turned around so quickly as cinematic fodder.

And it's not just paper costs right? We've seen the rising costs of gas impact all manner of products as transport costs increase. or the energy costs expended to manufacture anything in general.

[The Toyroom]

Batman: Odyssey was a disaster for the aforementioned reasons as well as the fact that Adams modern artwork is even more hyper-stylized than it was in the 70s (and that's not a good thing in this case) AND he's NOT a writer. He really needed someone to reign in his weird interpretations of the characters.

[hedrap]

Samurai - you're completely right on the distribution, but that shows there is no real justification for issue prices to be so incredibly unpegged from inflation, which started at the same time in the80's, other than a dwindling market.

You and a few others would certainly know better than I do, but I want to know what the associated costs are for 5 bucks an issue. Piracy is certainly a bleeder, but It's more of a killer for smaller publishers than Marvel/DC who can scrub the comic division losses with ancillary dollars or as film/TV developmental. You can't make Avengers money and claim the House of Ideas is strapped at the same time.

[Blue Meanie]

The problem that DC ran into with Odyssey is that it took about a year between the initial 1 - 6 and then the 2nd par of 1 - 7. I don't think Adams really grasped what he was getting into when he took the assignment from DC. BTW, art was OK...but not even close to Adams of the past.

I agree that the comic book form is basically going the way of the Graphic Novel or trade/hardcover format. Problem is the companies are going without a fight because they know that they can still sell both the individual issues and the trade/hardcover to the same customer in some instances. That's why they release a complete trade/hardcover of story arcs and mini series or maxi series about 2 week after then end of said series or arc. PURE GREED...and they get away with it. I don't even bother with mini's or maxi's anymore. I just say to myself that the half price trade and hardcover sellers will have them at the next con I go to and 9 times out of 10 I am right.

[samurainoir]

"Why can't they make comics like they did when I was a kid? I LOVED Neal Adams Batman comics. Why can't Neal Adams do a Batman comic again?"

and DC went and did that. and folks still weren't happy. But given the 40 years in between, I don't think there was any way DC could have met any kind of expectations. Same with any legendary comics creator and the characters they are best known for. On the one hand, why bother doing it if you are just giving more of the same, on the other, you do something different and it will be compared to the original. Sometimes it's best to leave it alone and hand it off to the next generation. Same thing goes with Fandom I think. Let them have their New 52. I've got a pile of back issues from the 70's and 80's that I love, and it's cool discovering all kinds of stuff that I hadn't read before from that that era that are suddenly readily available to me via collected print trades or comixology.

[samurainoir]

and I don't really think it's accurate to represent Batman as necessarily a twenty or thirty year slide into darkness. Sometimes it's a pendulum over that period and now it's a continuum. There is quite literally a product for every age of Batman fan existing simultaneously.

would you have believed it in the nineties if someone told you that a Batman based primarily on the Dick Sprang years would last two seasons and bring BLUE/GRAY Batman back to the Toy Shelves?

If only this sold as well as the New 52 Batman books (which are DC's top sellers, and the reason why Bat-family books will increase). But they do listen and they do try. YOu have to give them credit for that.


I'm shocked that Lego Batman does not have a comic book. But then, why would DC's publishing arm want to split BAtman money with Lego?

[samurainoir]

Here's the thing though... I get what Shooter is saying from a structural POV, in regards to how a single issue ideally SHOULD be framed in a periodical format.

But given that he's been in the business end of publishing long enough to know how the market moved forward when he was still in the industry. The periodically version of the comic book did not have a high enough price point to sustain the space dedicated to it in the retail venues that folks traditionally bought comics (newstands, grocery stores, drug stores). It moved to a specialty niche marketplace to survive the dwindling newstand sales... which formed a life-raft for around two decades before the book/library market embraced the Graphic Novel collection as the primary mass market format. By necessity, the price point on a BOOK justifies the retail space that the periodical floppy comic could not.

By necessity, the story structure needed to evolve to the 5-6 issue "arc" to create that "one and done" experience in a thick graphic novel with a spine rather than a floppy comic book. I'll always point to the Walmart Graphic Novel section as the accurate indicator of where the mass market exists these days (especially as the bookstore market dies). Hardly any Superhero stuff other than video game and movie tie-ins. Naruto and Pokemon Manga. Twilight and other YA Fiction translated into comics. Video Game tie ins. Archie. Amulet. Bone. Drama/Sisters. and all manner of Wimpy Kid style prose/comics/illustrated book hybrids.

Here's the thing about the fact that there are DOZENS of those Naruto and One-Piece and Pokemon graphic novels in the "series". as with comics that were aimed at kids like us back in the day, it was never any real change, just repetition and the illusion of change. Because kids like (and need) repetition... ask any parent who's had to sit through the same movie/tv show over and over and over again. That is why to our adult sensibilities, Pokemon et all is just the same thing over and over... because IT IS!

so kids ARE reading comics... just not Dad's old smelly floppy comics starring Superheroes. Which again, is just nuts because they are buying the Superhero Lego, Video Games, and watching the cartoons and movies.

Decompressed Manga structure has also infiltrated the language of North American comics, as have their formats of closer-to-digest sized volumes.

[hedrap]

Meanie - that is actually quite surreal to read. Shooter is a really confusing guy to me. As you pointed out, he ushered most of this in, but I cannot argue how right he is over the inability to contain a narrative.

...and the panels thing, he knows it was a combination of artists incentives and story protraction, whereas in the olden days, the more panels meant more pages, equaling more money per book. Whole thing was inverted.

[Figuremod73]

I remember when McFarlane became more and more popular during his run on Hulk. He started out with smaller panels and seemed to work with Peter David fairly well but as time progressed he took more power from David and did the stories his way. This carried on into The Amazing Spiderman and into his own Spidey book. The more power he was given from editing, the more violent and graphic it became. It sells and once they get those kinds of sales they will do whatever it takes to keep them. I think this is what happened earlier in the decade with Miller. (Although Miller is much more talented as a writer, IMO)

Watchmen is one of the best graphic novels I ever read but I can do without The Killing Joke.

[Blue Meanie]

I had a conversation with Jim Shooter around 2001 at the Silver Age Legends show in White Plains New York. It was an actual conversation for about a half hour about what his thoughts were on the industry at the time. The whole Image era of comics. I found it interesting at what he told me. He said that what was wrong with comics was the fact that writers/artists can't tell a self contained story in one issue. I found this ironic because he was one of the people in the industry that pushed the so called "soap opera" story telling in comics with one of the first maxi series in Secret Wars. Marvel had been promoting the extended story lines through X-Men and Spiderman. Story Arcs have never left the industry. It sells comics. It tapped into the "I gotta have the entire run" of the story arc collector mentality. IMHO the decline of comic books was already starting to decline before Alan Moore and Frank Miller. I also find it ironic that in these days with many more cases of ADD that comics have lasted this long. Everything in comics these days are story arcs and I don't think you can find one single issue self contained story line these days. There sure as hell are not new creations of characters or bad guys for them to fight. Shooter also said during the conversation that the creative process should be one of using the panels like a movie. Each panel is a scene and that wasn't the process that was being used. Makes sense if you look at the splash pages of those image books...the entire book was a giant splash page. More panels instead of one giant panel would mean getting in enough story to actually tell a story in one issue. I never thought I would agree with Shooter...but he was dead on about the problems of comic books back then. Unfortunately it hasn't changed in 20 years.