Post by Deleted on Mar 6, 2016 17:08:22 GMT -5
coke & comics pointed me to a column by Greg Hatcher on the Broken Frontier anthology in another thread here, and in it he discussed mainstream vis-a-vis comics and his thoughts were relevant to this conversation we have been having, so I am quoting it here...
for the whole column... Sunday on the Broken Frontier
emphasis mine.
This pretty much sums up how I felt when I started this thread. The direct market of big 2 super-hero comics right now reminds me of nothing so much as the wargaming market of about 20 years ago-a small number of publishers dependent on specialty outlets and vying against each other for the remnants of a once larger customer base more focused on beating the other guy and squeezing as much money out of the reamaining customers than on growing the market or finding a wider audience for their product. A big problem was the main audience aged and stopped buying new product which they felt didn't measure up to the stuff that drew them to the hobby to begin with.
How's the wargaming market today...? Aside from self-publishers doing crowd-funded print-to-pre-order or PDF only products there is no wargaming industry, even though the concepts, type of gameplay, and overall milieu of the games have been adapted to other mediums and not only survives but thrives in those venues. And if it weren't for other products (the rise in board games and the cash cow that is collectible card and miniature games), those specialty outlets that once serviced the wargaming industry would be gone, and there are far, far fewer of them than their were. The distributors that got fat on the industry at its heyday and were largely responsible for reshaping the industry to the form that led to its demise have gone the way of the dodo as well.
You can still see tons of people into wargaming-I see them every year at Origins and there are several self-publishers selling their wares there and people playing, and out local town just adopted a regional mid-west wargaming convention last year that had outgrown it's previous home-but interest of the people was not enough to sustain the industry because the industry did not adapt to the times and cannibalized itself-which is exactly what I see big 2 super-hero comics doing these days despte the fact their artform and characters are more popular than ever.
-M
for the whole column... Sunday on the Broken Frontier
Greg Hatcher from his CBR column...
Recently, I’ve been going through one of these ‘meh’ periods long-time comics fans go through every so often; you know, when you look around the comics world and you think, Jeez, what a rut we’re in. DC’s rebooting their whole line again, Marvel’s relaunching a bunch of their core titles with new #1 issues again, and everywhere I look it’s nothing but stunts and crossovers and other similar flailing from a comics industry that looks like it’s trying to survive by eating itself, and I wonder why I still bother with the damn things at all.
This is usually when I get the forcible reminder that Marvel and DC aren’t the whole comics industry. Really, they’re not even mainstream any more. Superhero comics are a hobbyist thing now, relegated to an insular specialty market that’s about on the same level with the one for model train enthusiasts and scrapbookers.
But the important thing to remember, the thing that is so easy to forget when you spend too much time inside the superhero bubble, is that comics, the artform, is healthier than ever. This is really one of the best times to be a comics reader in the history of the medium in terms of the diversity of the material available and how much of it is out there. “Mainstream” is all about indy publishers and bookstores and the internet. That’s where the real action is.
Recently, I’ve been going through one of these ‘meh’ periods long-time comics fans go through every so often; you know, when you look around the comics world and you think, Jeez, what a rut we’re in. DC’s rebooting their whole line again, Marvel’s relaunching a bunch of their core titles with new #1 issues again, and everywhere I look it’s nothing but stunts and crossovers and other similar flailing from a comics industry that looks like it’s trying to survive by eating itself, and I wonder why I still bother with the damn things at all.
This is usually when I get the forcible reminder that Marvel and DC aren’t the whole comics industry. Really, they’re not even mainstream any more. Superhero comics are a hobbyist thing now, relegated to an insular specialty market that’s about on the same level with the one for model train enthusiasts and scrapbookers.
But the important thing to remember, the thing that is so easy to forget when you spend too much time inside the superhero bubble, is that comics, the artform, is healthier than ever. This is really one of the best times to be a comics reader in the history of the medium in terms of the diversity of the material available and how much of it is out there. “Mainstream” is all about indy publishers and bookstores and the internet. That’s where the real action is.
emphasis mine.
This pretty much sums up how I felt when I started this thread. The direct market of big 2 super-hero comics right now reminds me of nothing so much as the wargaming market of about 20 years ago-a small number of publishers dependent on specialty outlets and vying against each other for the remnants of a once larger customer base more focused on beating the other guy and squeezing as much money out of the reamaining customers than on growing the market or finding a wider audience for their product. A big problem was the main audience aged and stopped buying new product which they felt didn't measure up to the stuff that drew them to the hobby to begin with.
How's the wargaming market today...? Aside from self-publishers doing crowd-funded print-to-pre-order or PDF only products there is no wargaming industry, even though the concepts, type of gameplay, and overall milieu of the games have been adapted to other mediums and not only survives but thrives in those venues. And if it weren't for other products (the rise in board games and the cash cow that is collectible card and miniature games), those specialty outlets that once serviced the wargaming industry would be gone, and there are far, far fewer of them than their were. The distributors that got fat on the industry at its heyday and were largely responsible for reshaping the industry to the form that led to its demise have gone the way of the dodo as well.
You can still see tons of people into wargaming-I see them every year at Origins and there are several self-publishers selling their wares there and people playing, and out local town just adopted a regional mid-west wargaming convention last year that had outgrown it's previous home-but interest of the people was not enough to sustain the industry because the industry did not adapt to the times and cannibalized itself-which is exactly what I see big 2 super-hero comics doing these days despte the fact their artform and characters are more popular than ever.
-M
