This whole thing, and all its replies, is fascinating to me. The discussions about what Marvel & DC could do to rejuvenate their sales, the trogs insisting their error was to "go woke," and above it all the idea that we should be worried about Marvel and DC at all https://twitter.com/ComicPerch/status/1302344193382125568

Two big rich companies controlling the whole western comics market should be devastating to anyone who cares about comics. That indie GNs and manga are replacing them is nothing short of a dream come true. There's no need to worry about this.

Manga isn't often to my taste, but the qualities that have made it popular absolutely are: a (theoretical) freedom to tell any story the creator can imagine; consistency, with each title retaining the same creative staff throughout and avoiding sudden shifts in feel or identity;

respect for the reader's investment, ie you don't have that lingering dread that any day now your favourite series will drop into an event-crossover pit that requires you to be familiar with other expensive series to be able to continue following yours;

and most importantly they're cheap: the first BOOK of this year's best selling manga series costs less than $2 more than a SINGLE floppy issue of the best selling cape comic of last month.

Incidentally I wanted to also mention how many hundreds of issues deep that particular bestselling cape comic is, to point out one of the many barriers to entry they inherently have - but I can't, because that number has been deliberately obfuscated by multiple #1 renumberings.

As the MCU unfolded, I was constantly amazed that the comics never once seemed to address the record-breakingly vast new audience that would have been interested to start reading comics for the first time.

I was completely lost in comic shops at the time, as hundreds of books stared me down demanding I wrap my head around the paradox that each title was shared by dozens of books which had no shared continuity.

Five Spider-Man books would have the number 1 on their spine, and those in the know might recognise that the prefix (Amazing! Spectacular! Ultimate!) told you some clue about their differences, or that it was useful to look at which writer was on a "run," but all this is nonsense

An easy way to describe the problem was to say that someone who just got out of the latest MCU film wouldn't know what was going on in the comics, but if for some mad reason we're ignoring that audience, you're still making books that almost nobody can follow.

Anyone below the level of expertise where they could comfortably ace "the publications of Marvel Comics" as the specialist subject round on Mastermind had to be guided by the ship's staff about which "run" was good.

And even then, those good runs always, ALWAYS relied on your being aware of something you weren't being encouraged to read. Always, without exception. I spent years trying out those recommended books and fan favourite collected trades and they ALWAYS made no sense

Unless you knew roughly what happened in a recent crossover event, and what that event changed from the previous era. There would always be talk of the fallout from Civil War or whatever the he Other M was or whatever it was called, I still don't know

But indie GNs and manga you just buy book one, and if you liked it, book two, and if you like that, book three, and that's how it works.

Now I've got lots of ideas about how to fix this, and like all of my ideas, whenever I suggest them it's explained to me that they're "never going to happen," which of course I agree with.

For instance.

Marvel and DC both output a stupid amount of comics each month. Just stupid. There's usually more than one for every character. That's ridiculous.

(I am conflicted here though, because I want there to be work for as many comics creatives as possible. I have ideas there too.)

But if they're happy commissioning that many ongoing stories, then just commission some more:

Cape books designed to resemble manga books. No, not by drawing them "manga style". I mean clear black & white line art, printed on cheap paper at manga book size

and most importantly, nothing gets printed until a booksworth of it exists. Or if that model is too scary, then serialise it in something else first.

Not at the back of an existing comic - it needs to be in something mainstream. Some kids' magazine in newsagents.

Take it seriously, make it an ongoing story that comfortably fits into and expands the continuity of the films.

That's one idea, here come more

Sell floppies for £1.

I'm serious.

And yes, that means making them cheaper to produce. Cheap paper, black & white art. They should be disposable.

But fans can then buy the trade collection, just like they can now. THAT'S where the full colour art & glossy paper stock is.

This would mean buying comics doesn't feel like a big investment decision. Readers will try out stuff they don't already know. They'll have *fun* again. Of course comics fans are teeth-grittingly serious to the point of forming hate groups, cape comics are a huge financial risk.

Ok, more ideas, there's no end of things they could do, here's one:

Omnibus editions.

Once a month, a number of related titles are released as a large book, manga style. Every Spider-Man title in one omnibus. Or every title featuring a character in the MCU. etc.

And yes, again, these would be CHEAP and LOWER QUALITY than they're currently dedicated to. Switch off the colour layer, it's just the inks. We can cope. Newsprint paper. The point is not to KEEP it, it's to READ it and move on.

The upshot of this model (which would run alongside the current normal production mind you) is that people would read stuff they might not, otherwise. They'd start to get into ongoing series easily, and accidentally, without bankrupting themselves.

I keep talking about financial risk and bankrupting - I think I'm justified in that.

I knew a guy in 2001 who told me he spent £70 a month on comics. That was an *unthinkable* amount. I spent around that on *everything* at the time. (We were students)

I thought he must be the world's most dedicated comics reader, I'd never heard of anyone so obsessed with superhero comics. He read a stack as long as his arm each month.

£70 now would get you about 15 comics. A couple of trades worth.

That should cost you about 15 quid.

There's absolutely no excuse for printing monthly floppies on the shiny glossy paper they do, with artwork that's pushed a weird ultrarealism for so long that only a handful of people in the world can produce it without keeling over

And have to do twenty-something pages of it per month - it's ludicrous, it's unsustainable, and it means prices have to be *stupid* high to even print them, let alone pay those artists, who, whatever they're being paid it isn't enough.

Cheap paper. Black & white. Price low enough that people can buy it without thinking about it. Stop obsessively trying to make it look like a movie, that isn't working*. If a title does well, colour it and sell a fancy collected edition. Settle the hell down.

*what I mean by this is that indie GNs and manga don't look like this and are outselling the capes, not that the art isn't good.

Now take any of those ideas - the omnibus phonebooks, the small but lengthy manga style paperbacks, the cheap floppies - and sell them in newsagents and supermarkets.

Yes, I want dedicated comic shops to exist. But they've been struggling for years and years

because their product is niche. Even as the MCU soared, their product remained fairly niche.

Compared to what it would be if everyone shopping at Tesco occasionally picked something up mindlessly.

And that, by the way, means expansion of content.

Supermarkets sell crime and romance novels to mums. There's absolutely no reason why there shouldn't be comics there too.

And stop imagining your 65 year old mum. The manga generation is 30-40 now. We don't have houses but we do our own grocery shopping.

Anthony Horowitz should be writing graphic novels. I'd read a Chris Brookmyre crime comic the second I laid eyes on it. Also whoever's writing all those novels at Asda with the ladies looking pensive on the front. THATS MANGA

Do that, and suddenly floods more people start to like this stuff and start to visit the comic shops just to be in a room full of just that.

It's what we did!! We 30-50 year old comic shop customers started when our mums went shopping!

The MCU is what, 12 years old, and Marvel's comics have barely acknowledged their popularity at all, sticking to exactly the same baffling model that kept me, an active fan of comics as a medium, married to a comic shop worker, and read more of cape books to try and get into them

from ever feeling like I rest knew what was going on in anything I read.

(And I tried the "dedicated fan" approach too btw - I read every issue of Ultimate Spidey for years and years, and it kept letting me down with CROSSOVERS!! Stop it!!)

And now the MCU is sort-of over, in a way, it's gone and they've wasted it.

And in that thread in my first post, there's loads of people going "get woke go broke." They've invented out of thin air an explanation for themselves as to why cape comics are going out of fashion.

Everyone who actually knows about superheroes knows they only exist to fight for and represent what we now call social justice issues. That was their origin and whenever it wasn't their purpose, it was brief and because of a particular writer or whatever. We know this.

But you can see why they've ended up inventing some made-up nonsense to explain a really weird problem:

Two companies have been allowed to monopolise US comics, so you'd think they were good at it. But they refuse to evolve their business model to serve their medium's audience.

It *is* baffling and it *does* seem to make no sense, so no wonder their most knee-deep fans, who could've bought a car with the amount they've invested in those ridiculously shiny pamphlets, are creating conspiracy theory explanations

We're not so far away from them being the only people left reading them.

Which I wouldn't mind so much, because now the indie GN market exists for the creators to move into, but it's a shame, because I do like some of those characters.