The High Cost of Four Color Fun - Comic Books decline and their pricing

Blog by Erik Weems, graphic artist, website designer and sometimes cartoonist. His design business site is here. All pages site map.

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High Cost of Four Color Fun Reaction to Tom Spurgeon's essay on the state of comic books

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Spirit #15 Art by Paul Smith. DC Comics

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Tuesday, May 13, 2008

The High Cost of 4-color Fun

Tom Spurgeon (over at his very fine comic book site comicsreporter.com) says:

I've always been loathe to throw my lot in with the crowd that constantly yells, posts and cavils that comic books cost too much. They remind me of those people that complain about gas prices but drive everywhere they possibly can in giant sports-utility vehicles.

Spurgeon then describes Jeff Smith's "Bone" series as an example of a good price-point return in serial comic book entertainment. He presents it as showing that in the case of the Jeff Smith brand, pursuing an "installment" series pays off with quality and entertainment throughout over many issues. But Spurgeon then says:

Most comics aren't that well executed nor are they as attractively designed nor are they always part of a focused serial that flatters the format. Even the best serial comics only approach those standards occasionally, it seems, in between larger segments where nothing very much at all happens and what happens doesn't happen in a way that's memorable. Serial comics readers remember the good runs for decades afterward, and I think live in partial denial about the dominance of the fallow periods.

Fair enough: I know that disappointing runs in a series I subscribe to makes me ponder both dropping the book completely, and if I see enough awful comic books from various series all at once, I gloomily consider dropping pamphlet comics altogether and only paying attention to trade collections and 'event' books. ( I'm well past severing my allegiance to the medium, no matter how mad it might make me at times.)

Spurgeon's points become squishy and blurred when he goes on to say things which mix together an amorphous experience for comics books as a whole, and the economics of the publishing endeavor (particularly the independent publisher):

The fragmentary nature of American comic books post-1980 encourages the purchase of a wide array of comics, an experience where the consumer finds satisfaction across several titles in part because it's missing at any one time in a single series.

Heck, we already know a lot of comics will sell at least a moderate amount no matter how frequently or for how long they fall into a creative stupor.

The fact that a Buffy the Vampire Slayer comic book can break into the Diamond top ten doesn't seem to me as important as the certainty we will never return to an historical moment when a significant number of creator-owned books could sell 6500 or 9000 or 12000 copies...

How is this really different from the general history of comic books? Comics based on movies or television have always existed. And the "fragmentary nature" of American comic books is what exactly - - the causation of buying multiple books? But comic book readers have always bought multiple books.

I once wrote that the only comic book that was too expensive was a bad comic book, and I think that's true as far as it goes. But I also think that a market that allows us to experience not-great comic books is part of what makes most of us better, more passionate readers, and a significant part of what provides the marketplace with the great talents of tomorrow. Do comic books cost too much? Yes. They're too expensive to facilitate a multi-level, satisfying buying experience -- the experience that structurally they cultivate -- for all but a declining few.

That leads me to ask: who are those few?

The one dilemma that supercedes the modern comic book industry problems of distribution, quality, and price is its inability to capture a wide audience on any terms. The medium no longer maintains both a dedicated group of aficionados and a large shifting mass of transitory readers who intermittently buy comics when it appeals to them. Alas, it seems all that is left is the one group, and though it is reliable, it is not getting any bigger:

The superhero comics that kids once knew (and perhaps loved) are in trouble. Notwithstanding Hollywood's recent infatuation with big-budget superhero movies, for much of the past 30 years the monthly comic book adventures of Spider-Man, Batman and their kind have been suffering from shrinking readership and slumping sales.

For example, during the heyday of the late 1970s, a bestseller from DC or Marvel Comics, two of the biggest publishers, could expect to sell 300,000 copies. These days a similar title would be fortunate to move more than 50,000.

(From "Comic Books in Decline," The Toronto Star, March 18, 2007, written by Brad Mackay.)

But, there is alternative readings to the situation out there, for example Chris Fluit at Captain Comics:

Do you want to know the best-kept secret in comics? It isn’t Superman’s secret identity or Lex Luthor’s latest master plan. It’s that the comic book industry is growing, and actually thriving. Some time this month, Diamond Comic Distributors Inc. will release their sales charts for December 2007 and make it official: the comic book industry has experienced seven straight years of growth.

So why is this such a secret? Why are so many people still predicting the imminent demise of the comic book industry when all of the numbers are going up and have been for years?

...there are other reasons why so many people continue to be pessimistic about the future of comic books even in the face of so much success. A lot of those reasons, I think, are due to misunderstandings. There are basic misunderstandings that arise because of the way that the sales numbers are reported. The misunderstandings are so common that I think you can accuse the numbers of being mis-reported.

...The comic book industry has always had a cyclical nature. It would rise for a while and then peak. Then, it would fall for a while before bottoming out. And then it would rise again. So there have been plenty of industry collapses before: the late ‘40s after the end of World War II; the late ‘50s in the fall-out of The Seduction of the Innocent and the Comics Code Authority; the late ‘60s as Silver Age enthusiasm wore off; the late ‘70s as the newsstand distribution system fell apart; the late ‘80s when the black and white boom was followed by the black and white bust; and the late ‘90s when the whole industry went bust. On the one hand, that makes the pessimism understandable. Every period of growth is followed by a period of decline.

While some of the pessimism may be understandable, I think that the up and down history of the comic book industry should actually be a cause for optimism, a reason for hope. The industry has survived decline before. It’s escaped collapse before. As comic book legend Will Eisner has famously said, “I’ve seen the industry die four times already.”

(From "Seven Straight Years of Growth: The Problem of Pessimism," captaincomics.us, written by Chris Fluit, January 2008)

The question which comes to me, though, is that the economic numbers indicate growth, but what are the readership numbers?

The small dilemma I see for comics is the spotty opportunity to access comic books. The hard-core collector knows where all the local comic book stores are, online sources and if the local big-box chain bookstore has a worthy 'graphic novel' section. But where does the potential 'transitory' reader see a comic book and thus to maybe draw on their curiosity or mere impulse?

Movie goers see a flash of comic book credits at the beginning of superhero movies, so it is easy to say that most Americans know comic books exist, just like jazz, opera, and theatre plays. But few bother to seek out niché artforms.

Flashback

I've read this many a time over the years, and wondered it it were true: without the aficionados, the mainstream industry would have become extinct before the licensing dollars came flowing in off the big movie successes, 'ala Batman, Spiderman, etc.

To illustrate: In the late 1970s, I was taken to a large supermarket where I was given a stack of some hundred-plus new comic books which were piled up in a back room. The store was no longer bothering to put out comics because they were making no money with them, which I am guessing was the situation all across America.

What shocks me still is that no one working at the store wanted the books, that a kid visiting from another state was awarded the free surplus that had piled up. That all the comics were DC and Marvel (no Disney or kid comics) leads me to believe those were stripped off prior to my arrival by employee parents for their kids at home.

What if they printed a comic book but no one wanted it?

The Big Questions

In the "large" picture, have comic books slid into being just a seed-bed for conglomerates to harvest in order to make 'real money' in movies and television shows based on lifted comic book ideas (not to mention underwear, T-shirts and so on)? Is the readership only the provence of the die-hard nostalgic middle-ager, some hipsters, and a relatively small pool of dedicated readers spread across all age groups? How do small publishers like Fantagraphics, D&Q, Dark Horse, and others stay alive in an industry where independents crop up and die out rapidly?

The biggest head scratcher for the American comic book industry has got to be the rise and market size of Manga. Shouldn't those be their dollars?

I once wrote that the only comic book that was too expensive was a bad comic book, and I think that's true as far as it goes. But I also think that a market that allows us to experience not-great comic books is part of what makes most of us better, more passionate readers, and a significant part of what provides the marketplace with the great talents of tomorrow. Do comic books cost too much? Yes. They're too expensive to facilitate a multi-level, satisfying buying experience -- the experience that structurally they cultivate -- for all but a declining few. The squeezing of profits through elements like pricing that outpaces inflation leads to an ossified marketplace that has come dangerously close to fully abandoning its role as the fertile, chaotic creative ground that feeds the medium entire.

Spurgeon seems to be saying how can comic books survive when the satisfaction with comic book quality is wanting, only amassed by the reader by canvassing through multiple series.

Because of Manga, the medium seems to being forced to mutate sideways. Most of the Manga I have seen is similar to the 'kid comics' of yore, though with some special extra 'something' to it I cannot identify. But Manga is clearly influencing America comics in general, and going forward into the future the combined industry of traditional comics and manga will hybrid into something containing aspects of both (this is already seen in American superhero comics which is being steadily influenced by Manga anatomy distortions, for example).*

I think the medium is made of such strong stuff that it can't but survive, however much it gets abused by the short-term commercial considerations of the short-sighted businessman, or dead-end experiments by superstar artists. My chief complaint against comic books is the quality: a problem conquerable with every new artist, writer, or even editor who is dedicated to making something truer, readable, and better.

Spurgeon's complete essay on this topic is at the comicreporter.com

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Some further reading about comic book reading, economics and the like:

Baltimore City Paper, September 7, 2007 "Iron Men: Geppi's Museum May Preserve Comic Book Heroes in Amber, But They Don't Need the Help" written by Violet Glaze. Examination of the Steve Geppi Comics museum, and about the readership problem of comic books in general. A key quote in summation:

The decline of the comic book has been a source of much hand-wringing and finger-pointing in the industry for the past few decades, but at this point the evidence is irrefutable: At some point in the latter half of the 20th century, comic-book readership switched from children to an increasingly insular community of adult fanatics/collectors.

Stephen Krashen, "The "Decline" of Reading in America, Poverty and Access to Books, and the use of Comics in Encouraging Reading," Teachers College Record, February, 2005. A quote:

There is no current research that I know of on the use of graphic novels, but there is evidence suggesting that comic book reading can be a conduit to "heavier" reading. In our study, we found that middle school boys who read comic books read more in general than boys who did not read comics, read more books, and enjoyed reading more...

Mike Gold at Comic Mix on W.M. Gains' "Hot Dog Index" which seeks to put comic books in some pricing perspective:

The legendary EC Comics publisher William M. Gaines used to judge inflation by the Hot Dog Index. When he was a kid (slightly before the invention of light), a pushcart hot dog cost a nickel and a comic book cost a dime. Today, that same hot dog costs about two bucks, so comics have actually become less expensive on the Hot Dog Index.

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* Reminds me of how Japanese director Kurosawa has been the largest influence on American cowboy movies for the last four decades, and yet he never actually made an American cowboy film. What has followed since that influence is yet the American "western" genre, but its not the one the existed before Kurosawa's influence.

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