Comic book sales are not great and I think Marvel and DC sales figures prove this. People are NOT abandoning print but there are factors to take into account.
The first is that Marvel and DC have suffered badly because the people in charge have forgotten what comics are supposed to be. Fun and entertaining. I wrote a while back how both companies COULD fight back and, hopefully, start building themselves up again. The solution is simple. Pay me and I'll tell you how!
Both companies have lost interest in doing what MADE both successful: produce good stories and comics and stop insulting or ignoring your fans.
I wrote that this situation would happen...15 (I previously wrote ten but I've checked since) years ago and I really hoped that I would be wrong so giving the finger to those who said I was wrong is not rewarding.
BUT you cannot fight back unless you are willing to do what is necessary and take the risks.
We had the huge comic geek chic wave where TV shows like The Big Bang Theory made comics "cool" and from that people seeing $ signs opened up more stores and started charging huge prices. That could only be sustained for so long.
I predicted the crash in comic shops and that was 10 years ago and about four years ago I repeated that prediction. It's all online.
Marvel CAN be good again. DC CAN be good again but it requires the money men and a complete overhaul of companies.
Comic Cons also need to take the blame. 99 per cent of them said "screw you" to comics well over a decade ago because they wanted the MONEY from merchandise and did not give a crap about comics -publishers were shoved in to corners.
Independent comics can survive because they have always survived on low or medium sales.
I have seen how badly Independents get hit. I have seen one publisher after another go out of business through lack of 'comic fans' buying books.
Kick-starters...I've tried that and I get thousands of views a day and over 4 million views since 2011 when I moved over to Blogger. Absolutely no interest. Patreon -no interest.
I got super hero comics. I got sci fi...horror...you name it. I publish books. Sales...nope.
Comics -printed comics- will not die and DC and Marvel....perhaps a little panic has set in amongst Bloggers and Vloggers but there is no reason for them to vanish.
Let's see where we are in one year.
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