The insular nature of the western comics industry

[Candescence]

Comic books aren’t my speciality, and I don’t read many nor do I have the time or income to make room for the myriad of comics series out there, I generally get my fix by reading Scans_Daily instead, which often has the pleasant benefit of constructive commentary from posters. But, recently, I did make time for buying the entire run of Mega Man up to #55 ever since it was announced that the comic was going on ‘hiatus’. I had been planning to actually buy the series at some point, considering it’s one of my favourite video game series and what I’ve seen of it is some of the best-written comics material ever, but the hiatus is a damn shame, because it is genuinely some of the most fun, intelligently-written comics I’ve ever read. Ian Flynn understands the source material and knocks it out of the goddamn field.

We don’t know what the future holds for the comic, people fear it’s either cancelled (and Archie is too scared of a backlash to say it) or making way for a reboot based on the upcoming TV show (considering the pedigree of the people involved, I’m not expecting it to be nearly as good). I honestly don’t think either of these are true, Ian outright said he has no idea what the hell is going on with the comic, and if Archie and/or Capcom were planning either, he’d probably know well in advance. My most likely guess is that this is mainly to do with Archie’s recent financial issues, which I recall involved botched plans for a kickstarter involving the Archie reboot. It doesn’t help that the Mega Man comic wasn’t selling all that well - Worlds Unite happened because the comic’s sales rose quite a lot during Worlds Collide but didn’t really properly stay at that new level.

Speaking of sales, that brings me to my main point - western comics are the most bizarrely insular industry today. MovieBob summarized this problem quite well when he was talking about DC’s New 52. Despite their material being some of the most lucrative stuff in other mediums, western comic books are bizarrely inaccessible to anyone who isn’t already a fan of the medium. Even video games, despite requiring their own unique expensive devices to actually play (well, unless you’re playing on mobile and PC up to a point where you’re buying enthusiast hardware), are an incredibly mainstream medium that has, in recent years, even surpassed movies in revenue. But western comics, while accessible in digital format, don’t actually advertise on mainstream channels, and physical books are almost always exclusively sold in specialist comic book stores, which also don’t advertise and aren’t friendly to new readers.

Note that I specifically said western comics. Japanese “manga” doesn’t have this problem - hell, it’s a popular media over there. Japan among the highest urban densities among first-world societies, with public mass transport being widely used to get to school and work, and most adults have little time or space at home before or after work. Manga is a very suitable medium for people on the go, due to the size of the books, but also because most manga are distributed first in ‘magazine’ books that have several other manga series included as well. Chapters are also generally distributed on a weekly basis with a similar page count as western comics, though they sacrifice colouring to do so. (As a side-note, Dragon Ball is literally the only manga I know of that got a full colour edition later after its original publication.) It helps that, thanks to Osamu Tezuka’s rather prolific output, manga has a much, much wider array of genres, as opposed to western comics outside of independent fare mostly being dominated by superheroes.

To my knowledge, this status quo hasn’t really changed. The western comics industry hasn’t really made any real effort to reach out to mainstream consumers by actually placing comics in stores where casual readers might actually buy them, or advertise in mainstream outlets. Not to mention entire issues are roughly $3-$5 a pop these days. There are many indie games for little more than that which would get you far more entertainment value, nevermind monthly streaming services such as Netflix having a far better monthly price proposition. All this is inherently limiting when it comes to attracting an audience, and digital distribution doesn’t help much in this case.

It’s also lead to other problems on the creative side of things, specially with long-running franchises, much of it also causes friction with non-comics adaptations of comics material. The first problem being the whole “Running The Asylum” issue. While fans officially working on stuff they love isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it can also lead to problems when they want to change things back to a state they liked more. For instance: Spider-Man’s infamous “One More Day” storyline, caused by a creator director/editor (Joe Quesada) who hated Peter Parker’s marriage to Mary Jane (and this is not the first time editors have tried to destroy the marriage either, the whole clone saga was partly due to this). And for Justice League fans: hey, remember when Wally West was The Flash and Barry Allen was dead ever since the Crisis and John Stewart was the Green Lantern rather than that boring idiot Hal Jordon? (Though, since the Green Lantern movie was a spectacular bomb on top of sucking hard, chances are the Man Of Steel-verse Green Lantern is probably gonna be Stewart.) And don’t even get me started on the differences between the cartoon version of Starfire and her appearences in the comics, especially at the beginning of the New 52... This can be a turn-off for potential readers who are familiar with non-comics adaptations but then run into the big changes mandated by editors and writers who are stuck in the past.

Speaking of which! I know we’re glad the Comics Code is no longer a thing, but comics has a bit of a problem with tone and violence. It was at its worst in the 90s, but a good chunk of that still sticks around, and even resurged over at DC ever since the New 52. Even Marvel is guilty of this from time to time - remember when The Sentry literally ripped Ares in half in Dark Reign, on-panel? Jesus Christ. Comics are still in that awkward phase where they are dominated by male teens/adults who demand ‘maturity’, but this really just means “more blood and sex, plz”. In the current state of DC, Superman is practically an angsty brute. Superman. Granted, this is mostly a DC thing, Marvel has mostly kept the grit in places where it should be lately and even adapted it to great acclaim (Daredevil, Punisher, Jessica Jones, etc), but it’s still disconcerting to see the bizarre contrast in tone between the comics and the more family-friendly adaptations.

Getting back to my original point, I think a lot of how the western comics industry operates is practically incestuous, both on the creative and commercial side, and it’s severely limiting the reach of comic books. Could fixing this have helped keep, say, the Mega Man comic out of hibernation? Maybe, who knows. But western comics could easily reach a much more mainstream audience if they tried. Sure, doing so could result in a lot of changes that might piss off long-time fans, but industry sales have stagnated for years now, last I checked, and nobody has any idea on how to fix this when the solution is staring them right in the face.

[Tornado]

The issue has always been that the industry has always had obscene amounts of tunnel vision. Since at least the 1970s when comics kind of fell out of favor woth the mainsteam, the prevailing seemed to deliberately focus on long term viability plans above anything else. There are countless examples of specific people in companies fuckig p stories in pursuit of this goal, but it's so consistent of an occurrence that it is hard to believe it's just the result of micromanagement from one ortho bad editors.

[Candescence]

It's honestly bizarre really, considering DC and Marvel are both under the ownership of multinational conglomerates who probably know more business sense than they do. I suppose an industry-wide case of tunnel vision is really the only explanation.

[Your Vest Friend]

I was under the impression Manga was even more insular than western comics, unless I'm just thinking of Anime and Manga doesn't have those issues. 

[Candescence]

Anime is actually a lot less mainstream than Manga in Japan, funnily enough, though both are more niche in the west. Anime in Japan, I believe, is generally perceived as more of a thing for otaku than a mainstream thing, aside from programming shown in hours for younger audiences such as the likes of Dragon Ball, One Piece and Naruto, etc. Though, really, those three are massive franchises over in Japan no matter how you slice it.

[Tornado]

Manga's problems are a bit different, due to how generally manga is more like the Japanese equivalent to newspaper serials than Western comic books. Individual artists have a lot more power, and generally are the ones who control their characters for the entirety of their runs, so short of forgetful artists like Toriyama or Kubo you don't have to worry about the messes that Western comic book writers always get themselves into due to different interpretations of events and different knowledge levels of backstory. On the other hand, this also means that it can be basically pointless to get into some of the longer running popular mangas because they can have been going for hundreds of issues and decades of time covering the same basic story arcs as they initially set out to (like Detective Conan); and if you're particularly unlucky a manga artist might bridge multiple of their works.

 

But the issues with Western Comics are a bit more serious when they are handled particularly badly. DC Pre-Crisis was a big offender and probably unfairly taints other similar messes that aren't as bad, but there was a period of time in the 1980s where you couldn't really pick up any comic DC made and jump right into it because it would be referencing obscure shit that happened in other characters' books from the 1960s or whatever and building entire story ideas from it; and there was so much exposition dump required to fully understand what was going on that they just didn't bother explaining it at all. Marvel in the late 1990s was supposedly similar towards stuff that happened in the 1980s, but I don't really pay as much attention to Marvel.
 

 

[Candescence]

Well, at least manga series eventually end as self-contained stories. Dragon Ball and Naruto eventually ended, though One Piece is still ongoing with seemingly no end in sight. Though, to his credit, Oda doesn't have Toriyama and Kubo's forgetfulness, if anything, the crazy bastard is extremely good at foreshadowing years in advance. Aside from intentionally self-contained stories like, well, anything Alan Moore does, the closest things we'll ever see to a climatic conclusion to a mainstream comic are What Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow? and All-Star Superman. The former being one of those stories that happened to be written by Alan Moore.

 

DC's problems partly stemmed from the multiverse being very much involved with the mainline comics, though multiple reboots have their own problems. Hell, they still have Earth 2 as its own bunch of books, and the New 52 version of that was a mess.

Marvel generally seems to just use the multiverse for one-offs that have no bearing on Earth 616, and the second Secret Wars, which was practically Marvel's answer to Convergence but way better, was really just a Fantastic Four story in disguise (with the stories taking place in Battleworld really just an excuse for writers to do whatever the hell they want, I mean, Thors is literally a police procedural except with gods of thunder as the cops and it is awesome) with the end result being 616 not actually rebooted but restored with aspects of other universes folded into it such as Miles Morales (now an Avenger) and Old Man Logan (an X-Man and out to murder Bruce Banner, Mysterio, Magneto and The Red Skull). All things considered, Marvel is relatively good about keeping their continuity nice and tidy.

That being said, the continuity problem is an inherent issue with a shared universe meant to be continued indefinitely. The internet helps a lot with explaining continuity, but you can't fix the symptom without addressing the root of the problem, but that in itself involves ripping up western comics' entire business model.

[Mauro Fonseca]

just quick, not as pedantic as it seems, correction to something that's annoying me here- the West isn't America, by Western you mean American, and by Western Comics you specifically mean USA Superhero Comics.

Because I wouldn't say Spirou or Mafalda are inaccessible.