HHComics wrote:This ties into why major chains (Chapters, Indigo, et all) don't carry Drawn & Quarterly or Fantagraphics prominately or at all in their stores.
The reason they don't carry D&Q or Fantagraphics prominently in their stores is because those companies lack the resources of Marvel or DC to pay for prominent display, or the sales momentum of manga to take up a substantial section in their own right.
The only time I've ever seen Marvel prominently displayed at a major bookstore was on a table where they were 50% off. The only time I've seen DC comics displayed prominently was a set-up dedicated to Vertigo--not a lot of superheroes there. I have seen an endcap solely for First Second books. And in terms of variety of titles, the art/lit material (Maus, No Towers, Persepolis, etc.) and non-cape genre material (Sin City, Fables, Hellblazer) have almost as much presence as the capes--together they get maybe two shelving units with no distinction made between them beyond the bigger stuff (Absolutes, No Towers) going on the top shelf. Manga gets its own substantial section, but again, it's treated like a single genre the way "graphic novels" are, with all sorts of material jammed in to the same shelves.
But my original point was that bookshops are organized in different genres: horror, sci-fi, romance, fantasy, etc. And I've never, ever seen a bookshop with a section set aside for superhero novels. Because the superhero is an extremely minor subgenre when it comes to books, and only recently a genre in its own right when it comes to movies.
While the market is more diverse than ever, a combination of a disinterested audience and/or a lack of quality are not generating new readers. What is, however, are mainstream comics and manga, gateway books to get readers in speciality stores and asking about "What else is good?"
Whatever gets them in the door, I suppose. I have trouble believing that mainstream comics in bookstores drive more people to specialty shops than Archie in checkout lines at supermarkets, but you'd be better positioned to make that judgment than I am.
Breakout hero? The Watchmen, Iron Man and even Batman are breaking out again thanks to cross market promotion. Were some of them already established? Sure but now they are attracting people into shops or BACK into shops and that's a good thing.
Let me rephrase the question: have their been any NEW superheroes created since Spawn that have had any staying power?
"Some" of them were already established? One of the highest-regarded comics of all time and two that have been in publication continuously for forty years? Yeah, I think so. But the point remains, people don't seem to be clamouring for new superheroes.
And I don't buy the "the sparsity of comic shops to begin with" as there are plenty of stores across North America and only people who don't want to find one in this age of information, won't. Comics are also still in drug stores, supermarkets (admitedly not a prominately but I still see Archie's at every checkout) and mainstream bookstores, where people who read frequent.
When I was ten years old, there were at least three places I could easily walk to every week to try and find the latest issue of X-Men, Star Wars, and New Teen Titans. I knew those comics existed because I walked into a drug store, saw a copy of Star Wars, and got hooked. And I lived in Lacombe, a town that, at the time, had less than 5,000 people in it.
The last time I was in Lacombe, there were no comic shops I could find. There were no bookstores I could find. I might have seen an Archie in a grocery store, but that's not going to do much for a ten-year-old. I did see at least two stores devoted to selling videogames. So tell me, where's the next kid going to discover this medium? (Answer: online, probably, but that doesn't do much for comic retailers.)
People won't know they want something if they never encounter it. And finding a comic shop is one thing; getting to one is another. The sparsity of comic shops is an issue because comics aren't easy to stumble upon these days, and as a result it's less likely a kid's going to get involved with the medium. And then, even if they do, if they're unlucky enough to live in a remote area, or have asshole parents who won't drive them to a comic shop, they're kinda out of luck even if they are interested.
In the end, all publishers can do is respond to what works and attempt to off shoot from that success with alternative publishing (Hellblazer's only been in print for about 20 years that has to count for something). And while blame for a lack of success can be spread all over the place, at least the big companies are trying to create (or re-vision) characters for stability where smaller companies are more interested in to trying create IP3's and folding like card houses when things don't catch fire.
The IP model is one of the few that offers any chance of success for a small comics publisher in this day and age. Hell, it's one of the few that offers a chance of success for a new title from an established publisher in this day and age--Zuda's clearly built on that model, TimeWarner and Dark Horse both look to tie down multimedia rights...
The direct market is openly, and understandably, hostile to anything that comes from an unknown quantity. There are plenty of people whose goal is to publish comics who can see no feasible way to achieve that goal other than to try and exploit comics properties in other media. That speaks to the weakness of the market as much as the naivete/lack of business sense of the publishers.
I would say that, thankfully, mainstream comic readers are far more likely to take a chance on something new and different from what they normally read than those people who deem themselves "graphic novel readers" or are only interested in alternative or indie books. The latter group is unbelievable difficult to satisify becasue of their, generally false, preconcieved notions about anything produced by a corporation or containing a corporate character.
If their preconceived notions are that anything corporate is going to suck because it was created for a corporation, then that is an unfortunate and false preconception--at least part of the time.
If their preconceived notion is that corporate work is making a bunch of executives money off the back of unfairly exploited creators like Siegel, Shuster, Finger, Kirby, Ditko, Gerber, Wolfman, as well as all the creators who, by circumstance or choice, continue to create material on a work-for-hire basis, and they choose not to support those companies based on moral grounds, that's not inaccurate or unfair.
It's the mainstream comic reader that's keeping the industry alive and giving hope to the success of alternative material (Fables, Y).
For now.
Well, them and webcomics readers, anyway.
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