A Rant About the Place of Comics in This Our Modern World

As I'm quick to point out, I didn't grow up on comics and until I was involved with the direct market, I never went into a comics store on a Wednesday. So the summer blockbuster "events" of Final Crisis and Secret Invasion came alongside my first exposure to reading new material as it came out.

Well, I've now been out of the direct market for three months and I'm behind on virtually everything I'd been reading except Final Crisis. And my reaction at this point isn't "Good goddess, I need to catch up." It's "damn, Secret Invasion is still dragging out?"

This isn't about cost- I can't even drag my ass to websites to download issues. And you might say quality is to blame, but I used to read them duly and very happily when they were at arm's length.

The real hurdles my interest faces are effort and amount of story. And I think this speaks to something larger underlying the industry and the direct market.

Television serves as an easy analogous comparison to comics, because it's similarly serialized with small chunks of story adding up to a larger narrative. But comics is a niche market, whereas television is big business. What gives?

Now, remember, television and the modern comic book both come out of the 20th century. For decades comic sales were on the magnitude of millions of copies. The explosion of superhero films shows it isn't a matter of interest in the material. People will pay money to see spandex-clad figures punch each other. But Heroes garners 13 million viewers per episode, while Secret Invasion tops charts at 1% of that number.

Well, television is accessible to me at any moment. I don't need to head out to the comics shop and hand anyone money. Hell, with VCRs, TiVo, and streaming video online, I don't even need to plan ahead when I'm going to watch. I'll point out that my alma mater, Midtown Comics, is doing well selling mail order weekly and bi-weekly subscriptions. And Marvel is putting toes in the water towards online distribution. So I think there are fixes to the issues of effort.

But (and this is the "but" I was really building towards), with television, each week I get an entire story or at least a satisfying narrative unit where themes develop and something resolves. Each week. Whole story. With comics, each month I get a scene. For taking time after work to head to a store, shell out $4, I get a snippet of story. 22 pages isn't even 22 minutes.

I think it's no wonder where the direct market stands today: teetering slowly back and forth with the explicit aim of some publishers (and merely the aspiration of others) to serve as an IP farm, selling their characters up the chain to more popular and profitable media. And who is buying comics: the fanchildren who will see their favorite characters through any storm. I don't mean to be dismissive of this group: they're ones with a lot of patience and a lot of interest. And the current strategy of the Big Two is to bleed these loyalists dry: tying together as many of their books as they can and forcing fans to follow a maximum number of titles.

I don't mean to act like a prophet of doom, ranting with a "The End is Nigh" sign on a street corner. I'm just seriously considering what the 21st century has to offer. And, remember, I'm speaking about the place of the direct market. Graphic novels are doing relatively well, selling in book stores, located in libraries and classrooms, and webcomics are a burgeoning field. I don't want to make the ole life blood argument about the direct market, but, simply as an audience member, I'd like to see the medium survive and even thrive.

There's my jumble of thoughts for the day. Maybe tomorrow I'll take the time to unravel them and formulate a list of "What needs to be done."

Until then, may you consume satisfying units of story.