Confessions of a Comic Book Guy is a weekly column by Steve Bennett of Super-Fly Comics and Games in Yellow Springs, Ohio. This week, Bennett looks at the state of the comics industry.
I never try to ever be more than cautiously optimistic about anything, but even I have to admit things are looking pretty good for the comic book industry right now. Retailers like to grumble (though to be fair we usually have more than our share of legitimate gripes), but at the moment you can feel a pervasive, upbeat attitude working its way through every aspect of the sequential storytelling trade. And happily, it's more than just a feeling; I'm more of an anecdotal evidence sort of Comic Book Guy but it's nice for once having math on our side.
I mean, look at the numbers (see "Comic Market Up 22+% in March"), not to mention the circulation of Guardians of the Galaxy which actually broke the 200,000 copies mark (see "Guardians Debuts Over 200K"). Which is nothing short of amazing, considering you could make the argument that it's not even a standard superhero comic (at Marvel even space-based superheroes count as "diversity"). Sure, knowing that there was a major motion picture based on it working its way through the pipeline probably didn't hurt sales. As well as the completely unnecessary move of placing Iron Man on the team which seems like a whole lot of second guessing and hedge betting, not that anyone asked me.
Of course there are the "other numbers," like in last week's Comic World edition of Publisher's Weekly there was a piece by Todd Allen titled "Analysis: Marvel NOW! Has a Sales Retention Problem:"
"The average #1 issue of Marvel NOW! has sold 199K copies. The average #2 has sold 64K copies. That’s a 46% drop from issue #1 to issue #2. For the 16 titles that have shipped at least 5 issues, only two (Superior Spider-Man and Avengers Arena) retained over 50% of their first issue sales. By total sales, the combined 16 titles were down 58% from the first issues."
I'm not sure what the problem with Marvel NOW! is, or if in fact there is a problem, other the seemingly inevitable downward sales spiral that seems to plague every ongoing comic book coming out from Marvel and DC these days. Maybe there's just too many of them, in particular ones featuring the Avengers. Iit sure seems to be a lot, especially what with Avengers 2 not scheduled to come out until May 1st, 2015. Something that got lampshaded with the announcement of yet another, Avengers AI, an ongoing series spinning out of Age of Ultron about a group of android Avengers. To which I can only say, what, no Pet Avengers? Because, seriously, I would much rather see another series of Pet Avengers.
So, like I said at the beginning; I'm cautiously optimistic.
As I've noted before a lot of my favorite comic book artists don't work in comic books nearly often enough to suit me, and definitely included on that list is Patrick Broderick. He's an artist known for his work on Batman: Year Three, Micronauts, Captain Marvel, Green Lantern, Doom 2099, and Captain Atom, though my particular favorite of his was Realm of the Ultra-Realm. It was a six-issue mini-series written by Doug Moench published by DC in 1986 that unfortunately seems to have disappeared without a trace. Of course in a world where everything seems to get collected, I’m still holding out hope.
I often write about how classic comic "brands" are constantly being reinvented to try and appeal to a modern audience (i.e. Joe Fisher's saintly prizefighter Joe Palooka becoming a Mixed Martial Artist). Well food brands often find themselves in the same boat, which is the only way I can explain something I got the last time I was at Walmart--"Cracker Jack'D," a.k.a. “snacks with impact.” For roughly two bucks you get a small 3.0 ounce package of "flavored snack mix;" I chose "Cheddar BBQ Hearty Mix" but it also comes in "Zesty Queso," "Berry Yogurt" and "PB & Chocolate." What I got was a not very impressive collection of nuts, clusters and what appeared to be the clusters crushed into pebbles which looked uncomfortably like aquarium gravel. Frankly, I was not impressed but then, I don't exact belong to the demographic this product is desperately chasing.
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.