Punisher Creator Gerry Conway "Cancel Every Existing Superhero Comic"

Bleeding Cool ^ | 09/25/2020 | Rich Johnston

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

How come US comics are dying, whereas Japanese manga and Korean manwha are going gangbusters?

By comparison, US comics are a “closed shop”, but the Oriental versions are wide open to anyone with graphic and writing talent. Their comics are divided between action and romance, but there is huge ground for creativity and uniqueness.

Many manga and manwha can be read free online with English (often fan) translations. And some of them are top notch for their art and writing.

[reed13k]

I have a collection of over 50k books. All I buy now is 1989 and older.

The Diamond distribution monopoly took books out of drug stores, groceries, dept chains, etc. and went all direct to specialty shops. Two generations of kids never saw a comic till they were a teen. As a result print runs dropped from 100s of thousands on main issues in the 70s to 10s of thousands by late 80s.

Asingle floppy has gone to around 4-5 dollars. Partly due to use of glossy paper, low print runs, and gimmicks like multiple covers [a repeat of the dreadful 90’s].

Writing went to crap for the most part, with the only decent stuff focused strictly on adults. Any kid stuff is written for a 4 yr old while little is written between those two.

Some of the modern art is beautiful, but it’s a select few and the really great ones don’t do interiors.

Take it back into general stores on newsprint, target kids with adventure, heroism, and a drive for good. Margins will be smaller, but positive, and volumes will pick up. DC has broken with of Diamond in past year and had some success with Walmart, but waiting to see if they will go that route.

My 2 cents.

[Durus]

Deconstructionism is the appropriate term. The woke writers of today call it “Subverting Expectations” and treat it like their only moral compass (unless the subversion contradicts the narrative, then stick to the narrative). Which is why we are seeing mainstream, big budget, productions about villains. It's why season 8 of GoT sucked so bad, why the latest StarWars movies sucked so bad, why pretty much every form of entertainment is becoming a battleground of ideology. Until recently we have clearly been losing. Leftist ideologues infest every major form of entertainment from comics to sports. If they can't control the production they control the advertising and marketing, and if they can't control that they control the critics and awards. All they care about is control (really it's about power), and that is ultimately what the war is about. The good news is that these are not problems without solutions, the bad news is that most people can't even see the problem.

[Dr. Sivana]

Wish I had those today.

I DID buy them. They didn't appreciate so much, especially if you actually read them. The comics that are worth money are the ones that were created BEFORE collectors started buying them (golden to early silver age, 1933-1967 or so) with few exceptions. Some of the oversized comics that were new stories (e.g. Superman vs. Spiderman, Superman vs. Muhammad Ali) appreciated some, but not as much as you'd think, and very little if you read them the way a 12 year old boy reads comics. I was also DC, and in the early '70s, the comics went from 15 cents to 25 cents with more pages, but mostly reprints.

I LOVED reprints from golden age and very early silver age, particular the Jay Garrick Flash. Collectors consider them worthless. They are collectors. I thought I was collector, but I was really just a kid who liked reading comics of nearly every type (heck, I was okay with picking up "Richie Rich" [Harvey], "Little Lulu" [Gold Key], "Dino" [Charlton], "Archie", "Strange Sports Stories" [DC] and "Dennis the Menace"[Fawcett] except for the romance and war comics.

If you also just want to read them, go to the big used comics stores in the medium sized and larger cities, and you can pick up well-used 1970s comics at a reasonable price if the store is any good.

[Dr. Sivana]

Thanks for your background information on what had happened in the industry. I remember the moment when I was sure it was going downhill, I was 12 years old when in the Time-Warner buyout of DC, they replaced director Carmine Infantino (not a great artist, but venerable, and was a good editor who understood the genre) with Jenette Kahn, who had never worked with comic books.

I was so mad. My anger was not misplaced.

This was a bad time to be a comics publisher. The kids I was growing up with were more into television and record albums. Comics weren’t reviled as they were in some quarters in the early ‘50s, but they were considered low, and parents steered their literate children towards juvenile fiction which had already turned largely sour, but the parents didn’t know it.

Comics are now respectable, as now they would be seen (if they ever got back to normal) as Americana, and the inspiration of so many movies the kids are seeing anyway.

The same people who say, let the kid read Harry Potter, at least he’s reading, would not have an issue with the kid picking up a comic book.

For my children, as I sold off my 2,000 comic collection years ago, I have a few volumes of classic reprints. They prefer the movies(many of them unwatchable, or needing Clearplay), I am afraid, though a recent reprint of the first handful of Spiderman caught my son’s eye, and he did read them.

[ealgeone]

A buddy of mine had almost every Ritchie Rich comic there was.

[ealgeone]

I even still have a couple of issues from The Monster Times....yes I was geeky as a kid.

[Dr. Sivana]

A buddy of mine had almost every Ritchie Rich comic there was.

Dang, like Dennis the Menace, Richie Rich had about 8 separate titles at one time.

[coydog]

While American comics are on life support, manga has moved in on that “young middle grade reader” market and is eating their lunch. Why? The japanese comic creators don’t give a rat’s rear about wokeness and keep their focus on material their readership actually wants. This is something their counterparts on this side of the Pacific desperately need to re-learn.

[plain talk]