How do you deal with comics?

Seriously whats up with cape comics?
Basically my friend just pushed me to reading Teen Titans from '11 to now, and to get the whole god dam story i went through
and i have no idea about

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simple
Don't read capeshite

Western cape comics are a mess and the big two are the biggest problems in the comic industry in general. There's no saving Marvel. DC has some chance of improving but there's still too much that makes no sense or involves you having to read several other books at once. Cape comics in the western world just aren't good anymore. They could've been great pieces of work about the human spirit, the meaning of what makes someone good, or the responsibilities of a hero but that's not happening. Now they're just cheap products to use as soapboxes for politics. If you want good cape stuff then switch to manga. You want good comics in general then just switch over to manga. Not everything's a jewel but there's way more good stuff there then there is with western comics right now.

like what

Don't read something you don't like. Try to go to a profesionnal to see what you can do with all your autism.

Tiger and Bunny
Ultraman
My Hero Academia
One Punch Man
Zetman
Various Kamen Rider manga
Astroboy

Or at least read good capeshit

Aren't most of those over? Except for One Punch and Hero Academia. But Onr Punch was originally a webcomic, and the manga just follows whatever the webcomic does, so i'm not sure it counts.

Ultraman, My Hero Academia, and One Punch Man are still going. I think Kamen Rider Spirits is still going too but I'm not sure.

OPM still counts.

Don't japs hate capeshit though? It's almost a hipster genre in japland. In fact, it is. Despite having influenced the pop culture of Japan, it actually doesn't make that much money, and it's not as appreciated as you would think just based on the cultural influence it would be succesful, but it's totally the opposite. Of course i'm talking about Super Sentai, Kamen Riders, etc. Also despite making "top numbers" Hero Academia's financial performance is shit. It sells like capeshit, 150,000 or so copies per volume.

You're probably correct but this is about quality over sales numbers. Simply trying to point some people in a direction of other stuff to fill the void that American capeshit has left.

I'm just saying, if you like capes switching to jap stuff is not the solution, because it's a really niche market that doesn't have much of a future anymore. I don't know man, I think capes are doomed tbh. Once Disney is done with Infinity Stones, it will seriously be the beggining of the end for capes, and for real this time.

superior nipponese race look down upon all gaijin trash

Is superhero really a cultural thing or just a new word given for stories of myths and legends? Tons of stories over time have had people with extraordinary abilities or powers overcoming dangers that would kill a normal man. These stories were usually reserved as something provide an explanation for why things are, how this or that exists, how this was created.

But I feel like capes in the main companies in the West have lost their way so hard. They're no longer stories of intrigue, no longer the large feats made to overcome some shit like a meteor hurtling towards each, giants robots rampaging downtown. Even then there are ways to take it in a clever subtext but all the people who they hire nowadays in any fuckin popular form of media have the subtext or writing ability of a damn 1st grader. Why? Because their shit is already popular so they don't have to try most of the time, they're already attached to the biggest name that no longer has to claw it's way to the top. They can do or write about whatever shitty subject they want because even 50 years from now DC and Marvel will still be here holding onto the top of the crop like it's no fuckin tomorrow.

People with more creative sense want to feel like there's something to strive for. Like what they're making is gonna be remember for it's awesome story telling, that cool fight scene or that dramatic scene where a character has some realization. But for writers in the West it's all become an assembly line process.

A dying genre perhaps but there's still good stuff you can enjoy now even it it won't be around decades later. Or at least not in as big of a way.

Source of first pic?

It's your own fault if you fell into the crossover trap, especially when most wikis will recap of the important stuff. As for your question, you deal with it by knowing what you want out of a story, making informed choices, and knowing when to stop if you don't like it..

In your case, it's the illusion of continuity.

You see, continuity doesn't exist in cape comics. The Big Two desperately want you to believe it does, but that's a lie. When you're reading Teen Titans, you aren't reading an actual story, but rather a series of never ending events to make you think you're reading a story, leaving you waiting for a payoff that will never come. That's how modern capes reel in the readers. Like a fucking crack dealer.

The best way to handle this is acknowledging this fact and being more diligent with your choices. Stay away from the long running books. Go for mini-series, individual runs, or creator owned.

Manga's greatest advantage is it's accessibility. Unlike western comics, you can start from #1 and just keep reading since the entire run is by single author. That's a novel concept in our market that's ruled almost entirely by corporate characters.

They're people utterly flummoxed that you can even start reading a comic at volume 1. It's that bad over here.

That's true. I didn't even think about that. With manga you practically never have to bother with reading orders or worrying about a dramatic change in story because of a new writer. But there's also the shonen manga that never end like One Piece or Naruto. That's the closest manga gets to being similar to the western comic industry. Only difference being no writer or artist changes.

I heard the old Fighting American other than issue #1 was pretty good. It was written by Jack Kirby so….

I also recommend reading Astro City for great universe of capeshit.

Not really. It's just that they have so many comics released weekly and monthly it's pretty hard for capeshit to compete. Also DC and Marvel don't bother spending more on promoting their comics there.

I think the biggest problem is not just the illusion of continuity but the concept of legacy. Back then DC tried so hard to make legacies. Like killing the older Green Arrow and inserted a greener Green Arrow (heh). Or Retiring Hal Jordan and inserted Kyle Rayner. Unfortunately older writers who still got raging boner for older characters refuse to write for them and forcing reboots to bring back older characters. The biggest waste was Batman Begins. Terry McGinnis was so well written and yet no one want to use him.

You are better off with sticking to mostly self contained runs and "what ifs." Anything other than that is rarely worth time and effort.


Marvel and DC painted themselves into a corner. Comics started as pulp stories, where each issue could be your first one, but now are at a point where in order to fully enjoy a story you need a foundation. It's not a problem with a 12-episodes a season TV show or 7 book long series, but in comics you have to deal with hundreds of back issues and multiple series per character and crossovers that feed into each other. Constant reboots, retcons, events, and renumberings only complicate things further.

You do realise that there are capes outside of the Big Two?
The creator-owned stuff is often constructed better, with a beginning, middle and end.
Even some of the more self-contained books from the big companies were able to pull it off, like Walt Simonson's Manhunter.

the problem is most of them are closed down, bought by DC or Marvel or don't have any significance whatsoever.

Chaos and Harris closed down, Wildstorm including Homage was bought by DC and slaughtered and mangled into pieces. IDW only published to niche market. Image comics used to make a lot of capeshits but now they distanced themselves from it. Malibu was bought by Marvel and received worse fate than Wildstorm.

The only survivors of those dark years were Valiant, Top Cow and Dark Horse. But Top Cow must beg to Marvel so they can use several Marvel characters to sell their books and Dark Horse also shying away from capeshit.

My Favourite publisher, Cliffhanger, was the victim as well. Man I miss Danger Girls and Battle Chasers.

If you think you've lost track of the plot somewhere along the line and can't be fucked reading another series/run, just google the synopsis.
I do it all the time, and no one will judge you for it.
I doubt even the guys that work at DC read every issue. Actually, I know they don't, as there's so much continuity error.

W E W L A D.

How can people actually read manga/doujins? How do your eyes not fucking die from the greyscale mess, in which they try to fit a trillion things into a panel, but the lack of colour makes it glaringly painful?

...

:^)

There is nothing wrong with comics in black and white. Both color and B&W have their strengths and weaknesses. I would say that colors allow artists get away with more bad and unoriginal art.

None of these are an issue if artist knows his craft.


I gave up on it due to delays. Did it at least get a somewhat satisfying end?

I gave up as well. It's the epitome of the independence publisher's problem. Delays all the time and comic artists acting like diva. They thought just because their comic is successful it's fine to delay them.

Oh yeah forgot to mention a dev team made a game and its target release is December 2016 for PC, Xbox One and PS4.

battlechasers.com/game

I feel like I got into comics too late. I read some Beano's when I was a kid, but other than that I was mostly a videogame and tv child. Now I don't even know who half the heroes are and there's so many different stories that even if I read the origins of all of them I wouldn't know where to go from there. I'm too much of a casual at this point until recently, I thought Deathstroke was a hero.

So you're not going to find many decent crazy-long runs, apart from properties that jump between publishers, like Grendel, Badger, Nexus, Flaming Carrot.

There's still self contained runs in the cape genre that stand up because they were short: The Nazz, Gilgamesh II, Gerber's Foolkiller, Simonson's Manhunter, Niteside And The Rock, The Rocketeer, Normalman, Watchmen (at least before DC dug them up and practised necromancy), the first Tick series, Brats Bizarre.

I could also mention longer runs like Concrete, Empowered, Spinnerette, GenXorcist, Zenith, Miracleman, Zot!, The Crow, Elementals, the first Marshall Law stories, before he became a joke, Southern Squadron…

The Japanese Spider-Man comic was really good, too.

But yeah, long runs by multiple writers will eventually make a horrible dog's breakfast of any character, and that's what big companies demand of their properties. Creator owned means you get to decide when to end the story.

Personally I always felt Western comics needed an end to their story or at least just let the characters age and grow and new ones take their place or something.

>>>/bog/

Like I said before, those series might be good but most mainstream media rarely talk about them. People are too afraid to experimenting with new series. Pretty ironic since most comics can be purchased digitally now. It means easy access and easier storage than before.

I have no faith left in western comics these days, my dude.

You get used to the black and white over time but I would still love color. But that would mean more time waiting and possibly a drop in quality from the artist/writer.


Digital stuff is okay but the feeling of holding a physical copy in your hands will never be overthrown.

The problem is limited number of copies distributed in the States and far less overseas.

Back then rarity used to be a good thing for collectors. But because of that if the copies run out new readers will have a hard time keeping up or must wait for the TPB version.

I prefer TPBs anyway.

wait what happened to topcow that they gotta beg for marvel stuff?
i like reading about Velocity after Roccafort did her art

Read older stuff that's largely self contained but in a larger universe.

Power Pack, Hero for Hire ect.

Why is /a/ so fucking determined in bringing down Holla Forums's morale?


I am fucking tired of it, I can't stand the sensibilities and aesthetic of Japanese media at all, you fuckers can't understand people have different tastes, you are worse than the JW.

Fucking Japanese heroes are extremely ambiguous and their power feels artificial, like how some retard claims to be movingbfaster than light when it was just a way of Japanese people being dramatic.

AndnI can't explain why, but despite being "perfect" and more complex to draw, Japanese aesthetics remind me of hospitals for some reason and medicine smell, I hate it.

I always believed that Golden/Silver age heroes should be old now and their kids or successors take their place. Unless the character is immortal or grows old slowly. That way new characters could be added in while leaving legacy characters alone with their lore.
But this would require the big 2 to not want to go for the easy cash and short term sale spikes. Gotta fuck with a characters lore, just to un-fuck it and than fuck it up again later.

The only good Anime is Dragonball Z

I can't stand Anime because for me it is squarely in the uncanny valley unless it is something like nichijou where it is stylized enough to not make me uncomfortable.
I don't care if this makes me sound like a huge faggot but they're too human-like but not human enough to make me feel ill when they start moving

How is anime even close to uncanny valley?

The truth is if you want good comics, you have to switch to manga. That's not opinion, it's a sad fact of life.

Western comics are dying. They've been on life support since the 2000s, and everyday their audience gets smaller and smaller. 9/10ths of what is produced is garbage designed purely to con shops into buying them. Whatever is good starts to go to slip into shit by the 10th issue. The people working in comics can't make it a career, often having to work two to three jobs just to get by. Comic companies can't even get webcomic artists to work on their books. With the meager scraps given by pateron looking like a fortune compared to what DC or Marvel would offer them.

Meanwhile, manga is still an actual, viable, industry. It might have it's fluctuations in popularity, but they've never gotten as dismally low as the Western comic market has become. The people working in the medium can make quite a bit of money, enough to afford a staff and still provide for their families (if they have any). As for the quality of the books, thanks to how big the manga industry is and the filtering effect caused by licensing, only the "not abysmally bad" books reach the states, sold in stores everywhere.

We can talk about the style or the aesthetics until we're blue in the face, but the reality is that manga better right now. I want western comics to be better in my heart of hearts, but I'm not going to delude myself that manga isn't consistently superior to western comics right now.

I'm glad someone else here realizes the sort of situation we're in.

Having new characters every 5-10-20 years is annoying as they have to create an entirely new character with a new personality every time.
Sure, it sounds great on paper, but imagine the uproar when there's a new Flash who acts like Barry. Everyone would go "You're just copying Barry!!!111!!".

Also, by doing this, it means that characters would fade out of the spotlight. Say you have 3 Green Lantern legacies. The 1st is/was super popular, and so is the 3rd. The 2nd one, however, wasn't as liked, so now there's 5-10-20 years worth of publishing that's redundant. You can argue that's how it is now, but as it's the one character, you can just ignore it and continue with the rest of their appearances.


No, it's not /a/, but it's more likely /freechintlwhatever/ trying to disrupt boards. Might be Holla Forums for shitposting, but not likely.

Recommending anime and manga on the cartoons and comics board is just a fucking stupid idea. There's boards for it, go post there.

...

user, not everything is shitposting or people trying to undermine the subject of the board. Simply put people are just tired of the stagnated state of shit the industries are in right now. Manga provides a way to fill the void while also exposing others to a different cultural medium. Were comics in a better state these days then there would be no need for that unless someone specifically asked to know about it. But that's not the case. Comics and capes have become cheap products instead of passion projects. There's no heart. There's no effort. There's only spreading ideology and hiring workers for dirt cheap. It's awful and shouldn't be allowed to continue. The only way to save the industry at this point would be to stop buying from the bigger companies, read indie titles, webcomics, or just don't buy comics all together. But for those that want to keep reading similiar stuff but are sick of the western practices, there's manga to satisfy their needs.

So many threads have someone say "Go to manga!", instead of actually addressing the prompt. This thread is a prime example.
It may not be shitposting or undermining, but that's what it feels like, and I'm pretty sure it's less than 5 anons that do it.

If the thread asks for something to do with western comics or cartoons, the answer is not "Lol, just to east :))))))) west iz ded xD"

When it's a thread like this about the horrible state of comics in the west then it's perfectly appropriate to suggest an alternative.

Subjective opinions form both you and I are clearly at play here. Doubt we'll ever reach an agreement.

Why not just not read Marvel and DC?

Alot of the stuff the other guy is talking about pretty much prescribes to them. Do some shit like take a look through the indie list of comics or stuff by other companies, you'd be surprised what you could find. I've done that a few times and stumbled upon some pretty good stuff. Go back to the old classic of going down a list, reading a description and going 'Hey that sounds pretty good actually' then diving in.

I suggested going to indie stuff as well. The manga suggestion is more for people entirely fed up with western comics in general.

Tbh I'm not fed up with western comics I'm just fed up with Marvel and DC. I can still find a few good western comics for all genres besides cape shit. There are still people doing passion projects for the western market and sometimes they churn out some good funny shit.

That's fair.

This is to attempt to create an incentive to buy more of their books. Not make the stories better, not create a wider storytelling plane with more fleshed out intricate characters and settings. They're just trying to grab more of your money.

It's sadly true that Japan is doing comics better than America, but that doesn't mean much. It's a low bar. Manga is the same level of generic cliched dogshit that American comics are right now (possibly worse on a few storytelling levels), it's just a different flavor from a different culture, therefore manga SEEMS more interesting than it really is to some people. Some manga is legitimately good at least, but it's not a vast majority, it's a select elite (and for the record, One Punch Man is only good for the first 15 or so volumes, after that it gets really really dull and ordinary, like most "parody" anime that turns into a straight version what it was a parody of, that's been happening in anime and manga since the 1980s).

You know what's keeping western comics from being better? Five series. Just five good series, and America will be back on top. And no, capeshit does not count, never will count. Not any more than a Twilight fanfic will ever count as good prose. You wouldn't go into a backed up sewer looking to CREATE fresh water, would you? That's what you're trying to do when you're hoping that cape comics will suddenly revitalize America's comics industry. You have to leave the sewer, find a new source entirely, not merely ANOTHER sewer that you hope is cleaner and less filled with shit. You have to forget sewers entirely, you practically have to forget what a sewer is. If you can't forget what a sewer is, you will never have good taste in anything, ever. Which is why western and American capefags will never create the big new comic that saves American comic books. Hey, there's nothing too wrong with that, you wouldn't ask a polar bear to do your taxes, and I wouldn't ask an American who likes superhero comics to write me a good story.

If you want to have comics that will save American comics, you have to give screenplay writers either encouragement or incentive to write their movies/TV shows as comics instead. The biggest and easiest incentive is money, followed by fame. Neither of those are in comics, especially compared to every other avenue (and no, Joss Whedon doesn't count, for the obvious reasons). No one makes a movie or TV show hoping they make a comic about it, they make comics hoping someone else makes a movie or TV show.

Top Cow made a lot of crossover comics. Usually with licensed characters like Tomb Rider. Back then the classic Lara Croft still sell but after years of stagnation they had to borrow characters like Wolverine to crossover with their own licensed characters just to attract buyer.

You are forgetting European comics. Amusingly enough, there are series like Dylan Dog that have been going on for ever, and yet they retain their quality much better than superhero books.
When it comes to American market, there are also creator-owned and indie books, among which there are few ongoing series that are worth reading. Most of what you are talking about is limited to Marvel and DC, and whole "western comics = Marvel + DC" mindset is not doing industry any favors either.


If Top Cow is so desperate, why won't they do something interesting. Getting people like Campbell, Cho, or other artists that like to do cheesecake, to work on Witchblade could create some buzz and get people interested in the book. They could also try to turn some of their properties into games and creating some interest in their books that way - both Darkness games were good and did well. so why not try it with something else from their catalog.

user. Legacy characters go through personality changes every 10 years or so. Or do you want to forget new 52 happened? What I was mostly getting at is that "new" characters could be added in so as not to fuck with a legacy characters personality, from which happens frequently in the big 2.

In this politically correct era them SJW going to shit on cheesecake comics. I mean some people already shit on Marvel for making annual swimsuit editions even when back then no one give a shit about it. Top Cow is too pussy to go through with that.

But yeah, Cho can do wonder with strong female characters. His Jungle girl comic was pretty fun. I want to see him pencil Witchblade.

neck yourself, OP

Zetman was fucking baller.

Heard a new translation group picked up the last volume and finished it up.

Official english release never ever.

The one thing you can definitely say in manga's defense is that the fantasy and sci-fi genres are alive and well (even if they are riddled with some obnoxious fucking cliches like isekai and haremshit and power levels).

In the United States, the best you can find is capeshit in disguise like Guardians of the Galaxy. It's nothing but capeshit trying out other genres.

Never. It's pretty much deconstruction of superhero. The guy live a shit life. His foster mother only take care of him because her face got scarred. The other hero pretty much use his hero fame to fuck his fan girls. No one's happy. Reading that manga make me depressed.

Isn't Top Cow just another Image imprint running on the fumes of whatever Stjepan Sejic puts out?

My beef with defaulting to "just read manga" is that the Japs are just as vulnerable to things like franchise exploitation, cliches, writer fatigue, bad pacing, and so on. It doesn't help that most of the off-beat/unconventional stuff either gets the axe or is just straight-up anathema to overseas publishers [and the occasional scanlation group]. God help you if your tastes go beyond shounens, seinens, and SoLs.

I don't read many comics for this reason. It's just too much to make sense of. I want to start from 1 and have it all make sense in the end. I know that's asking for too much from the industry now.

I started reading The Sandman, and that's more of what I want. Something with a beginning and a full end. Self contained stories about superheroes are also ok.

So you want shoujo manga?

Are you some sort of fag?

Don't read shared universe stuff. Or if they do it make sure it's something that feels fairly self contained. Even sometimes Marvel or DC can do that right at least.

I still keep up with the Suicide Squad comics from time to time because they feel fairly grounded to an extent. They aren't constantly bombarding you with 'OH THIS GUY IS SOME KILLER FROM THE PLANET SO-SO THAT APPEARED IN A REALLY OLD COMIC' usually it's a straight forward adventure shooting some soldiers in a far away location.

It got the axe in US mainstream publication only. You can find a lot of interesting fantranslated manga online.

For example there's a short comic called Hotel. It's about how human put their dna samples in one giant self sustaining building after the earth went into second ice age. The building is sustained by an AI that trying its hardest to survive for thousands of years.

Then there's Koukoku no Shugosha. A manga about a platoon of soldiers with their trained Sabretooth Tigers fighting a war in harsh snowy condition.

Agartha is pretty much a story about a boy and his crazy superpowered murderous girl(friend) in post apocalyptic world.

So yeah, dig deeper and you can find gold.

Just stay away from capeshit. Anyone who recommends capeshit is probably still drinking the Kool-Aid.


It's a fucking lie every time. It's always some Marvel or DC fanboy trying to sucker another person onto their team, so just stay away from shit published by those two companies.

Try this link for some stuff that isn't Big Two:
mycomicpost.net/?cat=58

I've stuck to mostly Image and Vertigo for the longest time.

untrue

any sources for these statements?

fuck off


fucking this.
also check out relatively self contained runs of books and treat it as it's own story.
Take New X-men by Morrison for example, it works on it's own and it's spectacular.
But take later canon into effect and shit like Xorn makes no sense.
Simple solution is just treat runs as their own story.
Forget crossovers and events.

Also faggot OP.
Check out Hellboy.
Any.
It's designed to be self contained.
Book 1,2, 3 or whatever.
Just read it.


From Hell is black and white and worth the pirate


you're not even trying

Best way is to read whatever from both.
I was recently reading BPRD and One Punch Man at the same time.

People always mention how manga is good compared to "capeshit".
That's just wrong and silly. You're comparing a medium to a genre.
Does manga have a teen male orientated power fantasy genre that's over saturated the market for decades?
Yes. Shonen


get the fuck out you absolute casual


please tell me you're pirating.
Gaiman's a literal cuck.
Try out Lucifer too.
Damn good.


you can't make this shit up

I only just scrolled past Aaron Doctor Strange and I'm disgusted with your taste.
that page 4 is sickening.
kill yourself hypocrite

...

It's okay, user. You saved her. Hopefully she realizes it's not worth it.

In manga's defense, seinen are fairly more varied than shonen. Just to put an example, all Ghost in the Shell, Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Dungeon Meshi and motherfucking Shin Chan are seinen manga. Shonen also have some non-powerlevel dickwaving contest and non-SoL mangas, although they are rare.

I can understand why would you say your tastes are above shonen, but saying your tastes are above seinen is pretty stupid.

I don't care what Holla Forums says, comics will never be a respectable medium until it can produce comfy comics about frying up monsters.

You're right, in a way. American comics need variety. Luckily, non-big two books are kind of getting there, but unfortunately Marvel and DC are harming the industry by flooding market with lazy stories about people in tights punching one another, and by exploiting their employees. To DC's credit, at least they have Vertigo and other imprints that provide avenues for something different than their usual books.

For things to change, capes must be pushed out of the spotlight. Luckily things seem to be slowly moving in a little better direction, with more and more foreign comics being translated into English, and non-big two publishers gaining bigger and bigger shares of the market.

What is that badger bear koala thing?

Capeshit. Cry more.

She's one of the ork leaders in Dungeon Meshi.

Looks more P'orc than Orc.

There's also one problem about the stigma that comic is solely for children. This came from the idea that drawn media is far more simpleton than written media like novels and autobiographies.

Your capeshit is shit.

I will warn you, the last time this happened Marvel and D.C. killed the American comic book industry.

In fact, those two are responsible for the three great comic book crashes (yes, there were three) that killed off dozens of genres and smaller companies like extinction events.

The Big Two would rather burn everything to the ground than lose.

Seriously? i didnt know.

Well that's a shitty thing about a monopoly. When there's no more competitive, there's no strive to actually improve. Which is happening on almost all damn fronts of entertainment.

Yeah, look at WWE after Vince bought out WCW and ECW. It took awhile to start sucking but when it does suck (PG Era), it stank out loud.

yea, funnybook history is shit and really makes you hate the big 2

Well lets talk about Op's example
you'd have little info about the culling, why beastboy was half dead, how raven got reunited with her father, how they got stranded in time, or how superboy died and later came back, if you stick to teen titans and dont read the other comics OP mentions
so yea its true
anyone with half a brain

Mostly Marvel.

You're mistaken. DC and Marvel are competitive. However, the difference is that DC and Marvel are so huge that their attempts to run the other out of business are fucking devastating to the entire comics medium.

For example, the Great Comic Book Crash of 1993. Marvel attempted to gain control of the entire direct market (the system to which comics are sold to comic shops) by making their comics exclusively available through a single distributor that they owned, Heroes World. The plan was to take away the massive revenue generated by Marvel comics from the numerous regional comics distributors, which would force them out of business, leaving Marvel's Heroes World the sole distributor of comics in the United States.

DC, in response, went exclusive with Diamond Comic Distributors.

The result was the complete collapse of the direct market. The loss of the backbone of their sales caused all of the regional comic distributors in the United States to go belly up. Many comic shops closed. Heroes World was so rinky-dink that it failed almost immediately, forcing Marvel to go exclusive with Diamond, which made Diamond the sole comics distributor in the US. It was a crash so apocalyptic that our current comics market is still suffering from it, and will more than likely never recover.

That's comics.

Is that the second or third comic book industry crash? Care to tell us the rest of the crashes?

Nah, both of them have done plenty of shit that have ruined the business behind comics

I'm not that user, so I don't know what he might've been talking about. To my knowledge, The Great Comic Book Crash of 1993 was the third, and last, crash.

That was preceded by the Black & White Boom and Bust in the 80s, where numerous stores invested too heavily into indie titles thanks to the high prices issues of the original teenage mutant ninja turtles were fetching. This resulted in a glut on the market and the closure of a lot of shops. It was a major set-back for alternative comics.

Finally, the earliest one that I would consider a crash would be the DC Explosion/Implosion in 70s, where DC attempted to over-take Marvel's market-place dominance by beating them at their own game. Marvel was dominating thanks to the increase of titles they published, so DC announced a slew of new titles. The blizzards of 1977 and 1978, monetary inflation, the economic recession, and the rise in the cost of paper made the venture unprofitable. The result was the cancellation of 40% of DC's comics and staff layoffs.

With the last one, while Marvel did trick DC into increasing the price of it's comics to $1.00 per issue, the effect it had on the Implosion is debatable.

The House of Mystery crew had a good chuckle about that shit.

This time situation is a little bit different. Other publishers and self publishing are more prominent today than back when other crashes happened. As soon as Marvel and DC would try to mess with say Darkhorse or Image, they would trigger massive outcry and news would spread like wildfire thanks to the internet. Even comic book news sites would be furious, because of all the hipster comics that would be endangered. Same would happen if new comics code would be in the works, and that would mean removing things like breast feeding and fucking from Saga, or people losing limbs in The Walking Dead.

Part of that problem is because the stories no longer happen in a vacuum. So shit gets stupid.

Based Sergio Aragones


Good point.

I cant stand the way japs draw stuff tho. Too crowded with random crap and always zoomed in too much.

I dont think they want to touch other publications now thanks to dwindling sales and online distribution. But Wildstorm already dead.

The situation isn't different at all.

The majority of comic shops rely on Marvel and DC for the lion's share of their sales. The sale of Big Two books keeps the lights on and the rent paid. This allows comic shops some flexibility when it comes to what books they want to stock on shelves. They can take a risk or two with a new Darkhorse or Image book because of guaranteed income generated by DC and Marvel titles.

Now imagine what would happen if one of those two pillars holding everything up suddenly collapsed. The entire comic book industry, from the shops to the publishers, would be annihilated. The comics market would be set back over eighty years.

fuck off


I don't want anyone to read any genre, just read good stuff regardless

Will Diamond ever lose their monopoly?