Comics / Cult Favorite

If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Rich?

By Philip schweier
September 17, 2006 - 09:07

The title above represents a reasonable thought, that anyone with any brains would figure out a way to find their niche in any given industry – vacuum cleaners, semi-conductors, hamhocks or guitar strings – and find a way to excel and make a pile of cash.

In the narrower field of comics, the industry is faced with a similar, narrower dilemma. If there are so many new comics fans, thanks to Spider-Man, Batman and X-Men films, why has readership been steadily dwindling over the past decade?

Chuck Rozanksi

According to a recent column by Mile High Comics CEO Chuck Rozanski, the average print run for the most popular titles has been about 40,000-50,000 copies per issue. Secondary titles have frequently been under 30,000 copies per issue, and smaller independents are running as low as only 3,000 copies.

This is a dramatic drop from 15 years ago, when popular titles sold 500,000 copies per month. This high demand was created by an unfortunate side-effect of the direct market, creating a collector's market for people who collected comics without actually reading them. With the higher print runs to meet the retail demand, collectibility began to diminish.

Brian Stelfreeze

“When comics became something to collect and not something to read,” explains artist Brian Stelfreeze, “The publishers got to the point where they're saying, ‘Well, who's reading them? We can put crap in there.’ People would still walk into the store and go, ‘Aw, man, X-Men has sucked for 20 years. Here, give me a copy.’

“Right now, everyone is saying, ‘Well, we need to put comics in airports. We need to put comics in bookstores. We need to put comics everywhere.’ Well, if they're crap, then it doesn't really matter where you put them, people aren't going to pick them up. So what you have to do first of all is you have to raise the quality level.”

Like any creative endeavor, comics are a team effort among the creator, the publisher, the retailer, and the consumer. If a comic book fan will buy any work simply because of the character portrayed or the artist illustrating it, publishers have little incentive to demand higher quality of work from their creators. It’s a vicious circle.

It has been argued that artists should demand the best of themselves, and fans should demand the best from the industry. Then the industry will improve dramatically. “The companies are going to publish what you guys want, plain and simple,” Stelfreeze adds, citing Manga as an example. “Marvel and DC are starting to move in a manga direction. Dark Horse is heavily into manga right now. You guys asked for it, and they gave it to you.

Many people, fans and creators alike, feel that comics was at its absolute heyday when they were disposable. Kids would read a comic, trade it, and later they'd throw it away – or Mom might do it for them. At the time, most sales came from spinner racks at the corner drug store, or the local newsstand.

For the most part, such sales dried up as the direct market gained a foothold in the early 1980s, leading to a boom in the number of comic shops. But where once they numbered close to 2000, now there is barely one-fifth that number. Part of this is due to the diminishing number of readers, as well as the general economic climate prompting publishers to streamline and cut costs. By reducing the volume of comics produced, they can more accurately meet the demands of the market.

Mark Schultz

According to artist Mark Schultz, the direct market has become very constricted, a potential liability. “That's starting to change, but the question remains where do we build new readership. Hopefully, it will be in the mainstream, such as bookstores, which is a tough market, too, if it's under stranglehold by the big super-stores like Borders and Barnes & Noble.”

Bookstores, though, are in business to sell books, and comic book publishers are producing a staggering amount of trade paperbacks containing both recent material and classic stories from their archives. As a result, many creators are being asked to write multi-chapter epics aimed at long-time fans, rather than single, stand-alone stories which might appeal to more occasional readers. This has led many to speculate that the comics industry may eventually move away from publishing monthly comics.

“Monthly comics are always going to be there,” assures Stelfreeze. “The idea of the monthly comic to me is like a single off the album. If I listen to the single off the album, and it's crap, then I won't buy the collection. I can invest a little bit, rather than having to invest a lot into it later on. I personally will read the first issue of a comic book, and if I like it, I'll pick up the collection. That's generally how I work, but the monthly comics, they're always going to be there.

“But there's something much, much greater at stake as far as comics are concerned,” Stelfreeze argues. “The companies that produce comics make so much more money on the advertising in the comic than they make on people buying the comic. They make a ton of cash from advertisers, so to say that the monthly comic may disappear, that's like saying, "Tomorrow DC, will you give up the millions of dollars that you make on advertising?'

“I think the cool thing right now is that the industry is at its worst as far as sales are concerned, but you're getting some of the best art and some of the best stories. But as soon as people start flocking to the industry because of it, we're going to start producing crap again.”

Stelfreeze encourages comic book readers to let their voice be heard. “Ask for quality work and you're going to get quality work. Demand it for yourself. Stop buying bad books, please. Start demanding, start writing letters, start doing what you can to make the industry better, and the industry's going to get there.”

Author's Note: The comments of Brian Stelfreeze and Mark Schultz were made during the 2005 Comic Arts Forum at the Savannah College of Art & Design.

Praise and adulation? Scorn and ridicule? Email me at philip@comicbookbin.com

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12