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.
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.