Daily Comics Digression #21: Is Comics a Real Industry?

Daily Comics Digression #21: Is Comics a Real Industry?

So I've harped a bit about how comics are too expensive for consumers to feel got about what they're buying. However, there's another leaf to examine on the barren tree of the comic book industry: product availability. I want you to think back and try to remember the last time you saw a piece of superhero  merchandise for sale. Ok, now that you've remembered something that probably happened in the past five minutes, try to remember the last time you saw that superhero's comic book for sale in a store where you frequently buy things. For many normal consumers, the problem isn't that this is a difficult question to answer, but rather that it's an impossible one. For all of the merchandise being sold for films like Guardians of the Galaxy, Black Panther, and even mainstays like Spider-Man, there is an enormous market of people who have never seen the actual comics for sale in front of them in the stores they frequently visit.

I'm sure you can see how this might be a problem for an already impotent industry that shrank by 10% last year. For a more depressing perspective, let's take into account that Spider-Man, who is one of the all-time money earners in comics and in merchandise, ships, not sells, around 50,000 comics a month, nationwide. Considering the millions of people who buy his products or watch films featuring him, this number is beyond anemic.

Defining this industry spanning problem is the means by which comic books make it from the creators to the hands of consumers. Simply put, one of the main problems with the industry is the ever shrinking pool of actual stores where people can easily go and purchase comics. Since comic books are only really sold in specialist comic book and gaming stores, they are cut off at the knees from the markets upon which they cut their teeth. Go talk to your grandparents and ask them where they bought their comics, and you will be told about spinner racks in grocery stores and newspaper stands. Today, comic book stores are thinly spread, and you may not have access to one at all. For a periodical based industry, this state of affairs is disastrous.

For being the elephant in the room that it is, this problem is not one that comic book fans often talk about. I first learned about it by listening to an interview with industry professional Chuck Dixon. So while comic book fans argue and debate about which gender Thor should be, the entire industry is basically bleeding out through the arteries. At this point, is the comic book industry even real, or is it just an intellectual property farm, a loss leader necessary for parent companies to sell merchandise?