Comic Books Should Call It Quits

[stevekenson]

I was thinking this morning: comic book publishers make the vast majority of their money off licensing (particularly to other media like films) and sales to the book trade of collections (trade paperbacks and things like the Essentials or Showcase reprints), plus now the release of back-issue collections on CDs (much like TV on DVD).

They should just stop publishing monthly books altogether: they're a dying market, rarely on-time anyway, and create a needless treadmill that demands X pages of story and art every month. Instead, when creators have a story to tell, have them tell it, either as a complete graphic novel (or series thereof) or a "short story" that can appear in a collection (or as a downloadable webcomic, or both). It was one thing when comics were printed on pulp paper "all in color for a dime!" but now that individual comics are going for around three bucks, it's time to pack it in, if you ask me (and anyone who knows me knows what a comic book-loving geek I am). Times are changing, time to change with them.

Comments

[gamescribe.livejournal.com]

I kind of sit the fence on the whole isse. On the one hand, there are some books that are just meant for monthly format (Exiles, for example) while others are decidedly self-contained. I'll admit, I pretty much only reas mainstream comics, but one of the things I do like (most of the time) is to see how different writers and artists portray the same characters, which I think is easier in monthly format.