How Are Comics Still Niche?

Fox12

AccursedT- see you space cowboy
Jun 6, 2013
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It all comes down to business, friend.Let me lay it out for you.

1) It's all about the bang for your buck. I can get a ten dollar game, Persona 3, that will last me over a hundred hours. That's one dollar for ten hours of entertainment. Even if I bought, say Skrim, for sixty dollars, that's an insane value. Lets say I spend the same amount on Scott Pilgrim. I can finish that in maybe an hour and a half. And this is a volume that took over a year to create. Comics require a lot of time and money for low output. They're just not economically viable. In a recession, people are going to gravitate toward cheaper entertainment.

2) Inventory. Most stores try to push new inventory, and clear out the clutter. Comics are literally the only medium that actually BRAG about overstocked inventory. You want to clean house as soon as possible to make room for new merchandise, not hold on to clutter.

3) Barrier to entry. Comics just aren't bringing in new fans. Lets say I'm a ten year old boy who just saw Batman, and I want to start reading the comics. I go to the nearest comic shop. They're hard to find, but I'm committed, so I actually bother to find one nearby on the computer. I get there and ask about Batman. I find that there are about ten different runs of Batman, on top of Batwoman, Batman Beyond, Nightwing, and multiple graphic novels that are unrelated to one another. On top of that some of the stories intersect with a bunch of characters I've never even heard of. Whose Green Arrow? There's more than one Robin? I finally find a series that sounds interesting, and then discover that they only have issue 2,5,8, and 12, and that I'll have collect the others as they come. In the end I throw my hands up in the air and go buy COD for twenty five dollars. Basically the market has become an ever shrinking market of white middle aged men. This brings us into...

4) Formatting. It's extremely hard to start reading comics, because even if you know what you're looking for, you have to find a dozen different issues to complete a story arc. It gets worse. If the story involves numerous characters that are interconnected,then you can't get the full plot unless you buy a dozen different comics across multiple franchises and characters. A good example is that Marvel Civil War thing a while back. Comics also assume that the reader has been a part of the community, as they often make call backs to various events in the universes history that newer readers won't understand. It's all just too inconvenient compared to film, television, games, and novels.

5) Public Relations. Many people see comics as this weird, creepy fetishistic little medium. They're largely right. Comics don't present themselves very well. When the crowned prince of comics is a bearded magician who writes child pornography about classic fairy tail girls, your medium may need a better PR team. Anime has the same problem. Of course there's good material out there, but you have to wade through a lot of garbage.

6) Lets talk about sexism. It's rampant in comics. Games are going through an awkward adolescent faze where it's becoming more accessible to different groups of people. Comics never did experience that. Instead it's mired in its own filth, filled with sexism, racism, and anti-semitism. Women feel alienated by comics, and I don't blame them. They're often ostracized from the community, and even if they weren't, why should they feel welcome when comics look like this:

http://thehawkeyeinitiative.com/

As a result comics have become increasingly homogenized, aimed at a shrinking market of white, middle aged, geeky men. A lack of diversity leads to the stagnation of the industry, as the companies fight harder and harder to control a shrinking market. Comic will only become more exclusive as a result, further raising the barrier to entry.

7) Hope? Digital comics are the future. You can read a series from start to finish on comixology. All the issues are there to collect. Children can access it on Kindle or the computer. People who can't access a store can just download material. I got into comics through kindle. I hate to say it, but Disney may save the industry. They can give comics a certain pedigree. They can also create a family friendly image of comics, which the industry DESPERATELY lacks. If they make more kid friendly material then they may bring in young blood. They may also simplify their branch of the medium, which is good. After all, Disney has one of the most effective marketing departments in the world. Finally, the sheer volume of hero films have raised public interest in comics. Comics have a unique opportunity to usher in a new golden age, IF they take advantage of it. All of out television, films, and entertainment is based on comics. So far they've screwed up, but they can turn things around if they begin to aggressively compete. Disney, at least, can do that.
 

Shock and Awe

Winter is Coming
Sep 6, 2008
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I think its partially because comics at this point are almost impossible to get into without a lot of research and/or monetary commitment. The story lines for a lot of the older heroes are simply ridiculous at this point and there is just so much canon out there most people(myself included) don't find it worth the trouble when comics are fairly expensive considering how long it takes to read them when I could get a regular novel for about the same price that lasts four or five times as long. And thats being generous.
 

vIRL Nightmare

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Jul 30, 2013
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Specifically to the question how can comic books still be niche? Off memory can you recite how many times Hal Jordan changed Lantern Rings? How about how many Peter Parker Clones are there? How many different robins are there and what became of them? To most people they'd have to google it, those that fall into those niches could tell you off memory.
 

Weaver

Overcaffeinated
Apr 28, 2008
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For me it's because I have a shitload of other stuff to do and comics just don't interest me at all.
It's like someone asking me why I don't take up growing bonsai trees. I just have no interest in it.

Also, there's just too fucking many comics. The Walking Dead is at 115. Even if I wanted to read it, where am I going to get 1 - 114? And if I found it, how much is that going to cost me? Put this in perspective that I can get a paperback copy of the first 5 Song of Ice and Fire books for $30 and I won't need an empty shelf to hold them all.

There are people in this thread saying you can just start reading comics from wherever. If that's the case, I really don't think that's the kind of story I would care about reading to be honest.
 

SonofSpermcube

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Aug 10, 2013
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tippy2k2 said:
For myself, it's bang for the buck.
Compare the US comics market to any place where comics aren't a small niche, and no fuckin' joke. For the price of a 20 minute pamphlet in the US you can get a weekly or monthly phone book in Japan. In Korea it'll be half the price. Collections cost a little more, but nowhere near the 20 bucks many US graphic novels are. Even when they're in color in Asia, they still cost less than half what they do in the states.

Combine this with the fact that you have to go to a nerd dungeon to get most current-run comics that aren't superhero comics, and you've pretty much guaranteed the audience will never grow.




V4Viewtiful said:
Every comic is someone's first, if you can't get into the first thing you pick up either the writer isn't for you or the writer didn't do an adequate job.
Imagine that, in a thread about complaining about comics.




I really don't want to come off as arrogant, and I'm sorry if I am... but to me, comics just don't seem worth it. I enjoy Manga (though not to the point of being a "weaboo") but that's mostly because it usually takes longer than five minutes to finish a book of it, it's numbered so you know where to start, it's easier to pick up the storyline and start from the beginning, and most importantly... it's a story. With the possible exception of Dragonball, you're following the story of very real characters, where death isn't cheap, things progress, and change isn't met with "M-MULTIVERSE! NOW!"
you need to keep in mind how manga is published, they release a few pages in the anthologies at a time then they collect the arc in bulk, Manga are essentially just small graphic novels. (plus there's no colorist most of the time so less time to make, among other things)

They don't collect the arc in bulk, they collect periodically, keeping the collections roughly the same size. That may or may not include a complete arc; usually not.

The thing about numbering is important; Try shopping for American comics collections and figuring out which ones you need to get if you want to get a few to read in order. For some titles, sure it isn't hard, they have numbers. For others, good fucking luck. But what's really confusing is when you've got a title that DOES use numbering, but it's in a catalog/inventory system that doesn't include the number in the title, or where it is otherwise not RIGHT OUT THERE IN FRONT. With manga there's no ambiguity. They save the cutesy chapter titles for the monthly installments and the interior pages.

Or you can like a consistent revitalized version of characters (Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy and Nova by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning, yes, recommending) and then some other overrated creator steps in doing his own thing instead of continuing what made the last style popular (Brian Michael Bendis). Sometimes it's a role of the dice :/
Or you could not rehash and reboot the same characters a dozen times. This doesn't happen NEARLY as much with manga, and there is a lot more original material and a wider variety of genres coming from major publishers, which don't require going out of your way to find them.

God I have felt so strongly about this since I learned Japanese. Once I started reading manga in Japanese I had a hard time looking at American comics. Even the stuff I still liked just offended me in its presentation and pricing.
 

fix-the-spade

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Feb 25, 2008
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Wizardly-K9 said:
Why do people keep coming back to the big two? The best-selling comic of 2013 was published by Image Comics. Marvel and Dc monopolized slots 2-10 on the top 10 best sellers of the year list with all their reboots. I find that hilarious by the way. The Big Two went through all the trouble of rebooting their series for sells, and they managed to take every spot except for number one; which is held by a long-running series created by an indie publisher.

The irony.
For most of the world it's the big two or nothing. I'm an hour's drive from the nearest shop that sells comics at all and then it's DC, Marvel and some Rebellion stuff (lots of Judge Dredd, Nemesis and the like), no Image at all and no Walking Dead.

The best selling comic is also the one with a highly successful TV series behind it, which is awesome, but the fact that the big two are positions 2-10 shows that it's a big old anomaly, would it have got anywhere without AMC putting it in the non comic reading world's consciousness?
 

Zontar

Mad Max 2019
Feb 18, 2013
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fix-the-spade said:
Wizardly-K9 said:
Why do people keep coming back to the big two? The best-selling comic of 2013 was published by Image Comics. Marvel and Dc monopolized slots 2-10 on the top 10 best sellers of the year list with all their reboots. I find that hilarious by the way. The Big Two went through all the trouble of rebooting their series for sells, and they managed to take every spot except for number one; which is held by a long-running series created by an indie publisher.

The irony.
For most of the world it's the big two or nothing. I'm an hour's drive from the nearest shop that sells comics at all and then it's DC, Marvel and some Rebellion stuff (lots of Judge Dredd, Nemesis and the like), no Image at all and no Walking Dead.

The best selling comic is also the one with a highly successful TV series behind it, which is awesome, but the fact that the big two are positions 2-10 shows that it's a big old anomaly, would it have got anywhere without AMC putting it in the non comic reading world's consciousness?
Plus it has the Telltale games to also work as free advertising on top of it all, and unlike those watching the show there is a far better chance of creating overlap with the gamer community. (though given the quality gap, it's much more likely that a gamer would also drop it, since unlike the show the game sets a precedent for quality the comics doesn't deliver on, but that's another thing all together).
 

Alterego-X

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Nov 22, 2009
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For the same reason why anime is a really obscure niche in Japan, while the same stories and art styles in manga, light novel, and video game forms are huge pop-cultural elements.


Random cultural baggages, stereotypes, and appeal.
 

SonofSpermcube

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Aug 10, 2013
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BigTuk said:
Wizardly-K9 said:
True it's everywhere.. but no single manga is... see how that works.
One Piece, Fairy Tale, to some extent Naruto. Dragonball was. Hokuto no Ken never fully fades.

AFAIK One Piece is the best selling comic series ever, anywhere.
 

V4Viewtiful

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SonofSpermcube said:
Or you can like a consistent revitalized version of characters (Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy and Nova by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning, yes, recommending) and then some other overrated creator steps in doing his own thing instead of continuing what made the last style popular (Brian Michael Bendis). Sometimes it's a role of the dice :/
Or you could not rehash and reboot the same characters a dozen times.
tell that to Marvel and DC :/

This doesn't happen NEARLY as much with manga, and there is a lot more original material and a wider variety of genres coming from major publishers, which don't require going out of your way to find them.
The comic industry does however The big 2 don't cover them all.

Which is why I said there is a difference between them most of the Marvel and DC characters are licensed and dictated by those in charge most of the time, they often feel in order to be "relevant" they have to move with the times. It's unavoidable.
I don't think they know how to market to a larger audience either and if they did the audience isn't as big as it used to be to sustain it. Take for example DCs latest reboot, they covered lots of genres and many were good but it didn't have a large enough audience to keep going (which pisses me off, for sure).

Manga doesn't have that problem, most of them are self contained and owned by the creators who can explore different styles provided by publishers, and they release their stuff in bulk, which helps the buyer get a full story. Both industries are very different
 

kasperbbs

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Dec 27, 2009
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1) They are ****ing expensive for something that i will be done with in a couple of minutes.
2) I wouldn't even know where to start, most of them have been around for many years and even been rebooted a bunch of times.
3) I have no idea where to even buy them. (ok, i made a quick google search and found a few websites that have them, but the issues they have seem to be random and if you want to read all of it you're out of luck).
4) I would rather stick to reading manga/webtoons online since it's less of a pain in the ass in every way.
 

diligentscribbler

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Oct 22, 2013
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Comics are my favorite medium so I am tempted to say it's because manga and mainstream american comics are bullshit that make it hard for really talented people to get their names out.

the Watchmen just isn't the high water mark for comics any more, super heroes comics just need to back up and stop saturating the medium as does manga.

This incessant genre inbreeding is what drives new comers away from comics.

(also less hard cover/deluxe editions. would it kill publishers to offer an affordable paperback.)

Edit also; I know this is a nerd culture site but after reading through all of these comments my soul just hurts.
 

SonOfVoorhees

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Aug 3, 2011
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You can get comics online now though dont know how much they cost. They do save on storage of back issues but their is still something nice about having the actual physical comic in your hands.
 

Da Orky Man

Yeah, that's me
Apr 24, 2011
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Gary Thompson said:
BigTuk said:
The reasone avengers can kill while the comics lag is because the movies have been carefully crafting their own continuity, rather than drawing on the comics.

Also buying comics these days is a pain. I mean you can't follow a single story arc without buying at least three different titles. And then to figure out what's going on you have to tunnel through the gordian maze of continuity and continuity reboots etc.


Movies basically skip all that and create their own self contained continuity which is much more accessible.

There's also the fact that comics... aren't equally available everywhere.

Being niche isn't a bad thing though... I mean look at what it's done for Manga. Niche allows you to tell tight focus stories that can actually show some development and lasting change in characters and most importantly.. they can end. There's nothing worse than a story that's been dragged on for so long that it just feels tired.
But most popular superheroes have been around since the 40's.
Which, while continuing to be enjoyable to both long-time fans and to people who started reading them at a relatively early age, makes it difficult to be picke dup by someone starting them later in life. People generally want to start from the beginning, which in this case, is often more than 70 years ago. This can be rather overwhelming, even before you take into account the numerous reboots, retcons and alternate universes.
 

NihilSinLulz

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May 28, 2013
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Wizardly-K9 said:
BigTuk said:
The reasone avengers can kill while the comics lag is because the movies have been carefully crafting their own continuity, rather than drawing on the comics.

Also buying comics these days is a pain. I mean you can't follow a single story arc without buying at least three different titles. And then to figure out what's going on you have to tunnel through the gordian maze of continuity and continuity reboots etc.


Movies basically skip all that and create their own self contained continuity which is much more accessible.

There's also the fact that comics... aren't equally available everywhere.

Being niche isn't a bad thing though... I mean look at what it's done for Manga. Niche allows you to tell tight focus stories that can actually show some development and lasting change in characters and most importantly.. they can end. There's nothing worse than a story that's been dragged on for so long that it just feels tired.
What? Manga isn't niche in Japan. It's a cultural staple there. It's everywhere. You know how sometimes you'll be on the bus or the train and there will be some guy playing an iphone game, or some older woman doing a crossword puzzle? That's what manga is in Japan. It's not a big deal there, its just... there.

Also, older women do read manga. So do older men, because manga has different genres for different ages, genders, and sexuality. Western comics, or at least the Big Two, don't. There's too much homogeneity going on. The Japanese comic industry never has to worry about stagnation thanks to their diversity. We do.
You'll have to thank the Comic Code for that. Prior to the code, quite a few comics were starting to branch out with romantic comics actually having a period of popularity amongst young girls. Then the Code hit all the creativity went tits up leaving us with only Archie and superheros (even then, just shadows of their former selves).

Thankfully, comics have been seeing a resurgence of creativity thanks to all the indie titles coming out. The big two might suck right now, but at least the internet is making it easier and easier to hear about, buy, and more importantly recommend more daring titles.
 

ChristopherT

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Sep 9, 2010
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I just want to put this out there, if you are interested in reading some Marvel comics, but price is the biggest factor, consider trying Marvel's Marvel Unlimited service, I don't know if it's available outside the U.S., I don't know if you'll have as many problems as I had trying to get it to work (usually took 3 - 5 refreshes before a comic would open without problems), but $10 a month, you get access to "1000's of comics", can browse by series or events. It's not a great system, but when it works, you get some nice comics to read. Anyone who does want to read some comics, but the price is too steep, and digital is okay, it might be worth trying at least for one month.