There's turkey in the stomach, and a busy day ahead, so it's time for:
To make my life easier, I'm reprinting (and updating) some of my comic book industry essays from my now-defunct Opinion Page (which, seriously, was an early attempt at a blog).
While this one had the right idea, I went awry at the end. Instead of pushing more genres, I pushed changing the super-hero genre, which isn't a solution at all. I think there's a lot of different things happening in comics today which can "save" the industry, but what I suggested will not help at all.
or
HOW FANS ARE KILLING THE COMICS INDUSTRY
a stupid little rant by Laura Gjovaag
Have you heard of a show called "Doctor Who"? It was a British Science Fiction/Fantasy series that ran for 26 years starting in 1963. Yes, I said 26 years. It was about a time travelling alien and his often human companions, and the adventures they had. It was a great show, in a campy sort of way, and for a long time it was also a British Institution. It was something that everyone in England knew about. A shared dream.
In the 1980s, the show started to lose its traditional audience. Part of it was due to the nature of watching television, and how it was changing. But the BBC (who produced the show) did two things that really, in the end, killed the show. The first was a change of time slot. They moved the show from where audiences were used to seeing it, to times that were unfamiliar.
The second problem was that they started catering to the fans. The shows got more detailed and self-referential, the stories became complicated. The fans loved it, much of what was produced was wonderful stuff to them. But the general audience didn't care for it. Too complicated, too much continuity. Too wierd.
And in 1989 the show was cancelled without much fuss.
Comic books, I think, are going along the same lines. In a previous editorial, I discussed the move to the Direct Market. That was comic books changing their "time slot" to a less convenient one. This editorial is about the fans.
Comic books used to focus on a general audience. The people reading comic books were every age, gender, and personality. There were romance comics for women, and war comics for men, and funny animals for the kids. There were superheroes, super soldiers, super lovers, and lovable cartoons. The format allowed for unlimited possibilities, and the stories told reflected that. Comics were published in every genre, and superheroes were a tiny part of a much larger universe of books.
Then came the comics code... and horror comics, possibly the biggest genre of all, died a messy death. And due to the bad publicity, comics became less acceptable. Comic books contributed to deliquency, and therefore were evil. Other genres fell down as fewer people read comics. And the direct market added to the problem.
The direct market came about, in a very real way, thanks to the fans. As young superhero fans turned into adults, they started shops that sold mostly comics. And when they ordered comics to sell, they focused on the comics they loved the most: the superheroes. The direct market saved publishers lots of money, and allowed comics to continue to be produced, but the lack of variety killed off most anything left that wasn't superhero.
This is, of course, a vast simplification of a series of events. But basically, comics were left with one main genre and a marginalized status. Then came the collectors. Into a market that was suffering, they entered and artificially and temporarily boosted sales ten-fold. And when the collector market collapsed, there wasn't a whole lot left. Most of the people reading comics at that point were hardcore fans, willing to go to comic shops to find their books. The people working on the books were fans who'd progressed and become artists, writers, and editors. And because those people working on the books didn't want to lose the fans they had, they started catering to what they thought the fans will like.
See the problem?
Not only are comics out of Joe Public's eyes, they aren't the kind of story that would appeal to good ol' Joe if he read them. They are great stories, some of the best ever written! But Joe Public reads a few pages, stratches his head, and goes back to his Nintendo.
I'll use a personal favorite as an example. If you are reading this editorial, you probably know that I am a major Aquaman fan, and that I really enjoyed Peter David's run on the book. What you may not know is that, while I enjoyed PAD's run, I recognized that his writing is not accessible to new fans or non-comics readers, and therefore I generally didn't recommend Aquaman to people when my opinion on what comic book to get was asked for.
It wasn't a betrayal. It was common sense. The book, though absolutely delightful to my fangirl desires, just wasn't something you could read and pick up without reading more than one issue. So, although it was my absolute favorite book, I didn't tend to recommend it. And that is why I think work like Peter David's Aquaman is killing the industry.
Now, I'm not harping on PAD. If it were only one book, it wouldn't be an industry-wide problem, would it? It's happening all over in comics. The books do not invite new readers in. If the art isn't ugly, the writing tends to be too complicated, or the cast too large. In the previous Ages of comics, art was clean and beautiful, and knowledge of the cast was tackled by standalone stories and splash pages that retold the origin of the character. We can hardly go back to the simpler times, but there's got to be a way to make stories that appeal to a larger crowd.
And I'll be darned if I've got a clue how to do that.
I do see one area of success in DC's realm. There is one product related to DC Comics that "sells" well and appeals to a HUGE audience. I'm talking about the animated Batman, Superman, and Batman Beyond series. Batman Beyond, while not a big hit among traditional Batman comic book fans, is doing extremely well in the ratings, and apparently appeals to an audience much larger than the average comic book has. Batman Beyond is an intelligent show that doesn't talk down to its audience, but doesn't cut them out of the loop by expecting them to know the complete history of the characters. Perhaps the editors at DC need to talk with the folks at WB Animation and figure out what that magic ingredient, the one that makes the viewers love the series, is and see if they can translate it into the comic books.
It probably couldn't hurt.
This column is copyright 1999 by Laura Gjovaag. March 1999
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