How long until the comic industry croaks?

The countdown to doomsday is already there if you look at the current state of the industry. I'm estimating we still have 15-20 years before comic licenses have been exhausted or turned into cartoons. Every year it seems like the comic industry's available market shrinks a little more. Increasing cover prices coupled with a diminishing reading audience is not the way to do longterm business. In the long run comic collecting will outlast the comic industry because the 'rare' book collector will always be around for those golden/silver/bronze age books. Sadly I know that many of these same longtime 'collectors' don't read any of the modern books being put out right now. There seems to be a prevailing 'elitist' attitude within the comic community that modern books are garbage. I'm probably preaching to the choir but some of the best art and writing i've seen in the past 30 years have come from recently published books.

Still doomsday is at hand.. it's only a matter of time before the paper universes we love so much go through the final armageddon. I'm guessing many will end up as bargain properties for large corporations like Sony who will only market them as 'modern entertainment' for video games and spinoff movies.

This new renaissance of writing/art we're currently seeing is one last hurrah for old time's sake. One last flash of brilliance before it all fades to black.

R.I.P. Marvel, DC/Vertigo, Image, Crossgen etc.. it was great knowing

He got Morrison to ghost write the maths.

I think thst comic books will be around for awhile longer, but maybe not in the current format. I think the Trade Paperback market may over take the single issues in sales causing the comic book shops to dry up, but as long as money can be made from Borders, Barnes & Noble etc. comic storytelling will still be around.

9 years, 141 days, 12 hours, 8 minutes, 15 seconds. [+- 12 hours]

Well, you asked.

'You could define the subspace topology this way, if you were sufficiently malicious.'

Jeff Meyer, N.C., N.Q.D.Y. [Not Quite Dead Yet]

© 2003 by Jeff Meyer

Originally posted to Usenet. Please, redistribute this article in its entirety and without alterations. Thank you!

Did you follow the math? Do you know what kind of modelling they were doing with the math?

I don't ask to be insulting. You may very well have an MA in economics. I have no idea. I'm just really, really suspicious of people who try to use *math* to show how the reading public will reaction to a certain kind of entertainment. It isn't really a mathemetical issue, in my mind.

Do you remember any of the specifics of their argument? I'd love to hear news that gives me hope that comics aren't going to die.

I was going to construct a detailed and entirely spurious treatment of 'the seminal paper from Morrison et al (_Comic and comicologist_ 58(1999) 358-416)'. But I've got a thesis to write (although in politics, not economics), so I don't really have the time. Anyway, the argument is that comics (and, I think, pop culture in general) goes in cycles of, 12 years, or something. There's some empirical evidence, but I don't know that it goes beyond an observation that comics seem to be tapping into rising pop-culture forms, rather than taking their influence entirely from previous comics (Bendis's Daredevil is probably the best title to mention here). Millar's columns on www.comicbookresources.com have discussed this occasionally, I think.

I mostly agree, although Morrison might make some kind of argument about Kabala and the irrelevance of making distinction between numbers and things, but I don't think a good Catholic boy like Millar would have any truck with that kind of thing.

I think he was being facetious there. Any formula written in 1999 that shows the comics industry will be booming by 2007 has to be taken with a grain of salt anyway.

Knowing Morrison, his probably involved peyote and aliens. Knowing Millar, his probably involved sodomy and serious head injury.

Citation, then, please.

Most graphic novels driving the increasing bookstore sales are geared to kids and teens.

Something's driving the increasing bookstore sales

As a 50 year-old collector since 1962, I totally agree! People today have too many other 'more-exciting' options, and less time. Reading??? Who reads. Computers and calculators do it all now.

Spater, 'old-man' Rob

I think what Mr DiMitri means is that the industry as he understands it is being destroyed by artists actually creating something worthwhile*. I for one will be a happy man if he's right in this.

*Elitism here being understood as the oh-so-evil notion that those who work harder at something will produce something better, and that it's normal for the worse stuff to sell less than the better stuff.

Have any of you had much exposure to European comics? Or are we talking about the American industry alone here? Trying to figure out where you're all looking at this issue from.

Have a nice day!

rose up with the following chant:

I think the experts say 18.9 years or so per cycle of pop culture, but 20 years works for me. And if it *is* 20 years per cycle, we're due for some pretty good comics soon.

Of course, there are other long-term cycles which the 'pop culture' cycle is superimposed on top of. More to the point, there are long-term trends that will affect the comics industry. Even if the quality and the circulation of comic books do improve for the next five years or so, it's not bloody likely that the circulation figures will be back up to where they were 20 years ago. I think that's what the original poster was getting at.

But hey, that doesn't mean that good stories about superheroes are going away. The comic book is not intrinsically any more important to the practice of storytelling than woodcarvings used to be. In ten years or so, when broadband Internet becomes more prevalent, we might see Web comics really take