Also DC Comics' Printer Closes Tomorrow

Yep. This might make all comics go to digital and kill comic shops. 

We live in a nostalgia-obsessed era where grown men will pay $40 for a perfect reproduction of an action figure they paid $8 for three decades earlier.

Physical comics will never go away for too long. At the very least, those $1 reprint editions will remain a steady source of income for our publishers.

It all goes with the old saying: may you be cursed with living in interesting times 
And it is indeed some Strange and Stranger Days now. 

The comic industry has been going through a transformative period for about the last five years. Exploration of digital platforms, expansion into the young adult book market, reshuffling of editorial teams, experimenting with formats, realizations that the monthly periodical format is a dinosaur but lack of a real plan as to how o respond to it, loss of retail outlets, shrinking of the direct market overall, etc. have all characterized the past five years or so. The recent events in response of to the COVID-19 pandemic will only serve to hasten the process. It will not be the end of comics or the comics industry, but what emerges on the other side will be a different version of the industry. The direct market is not the industry, monthly periodicals are not the industry, they are simply the most common path to market for the industry over the past several decades, but that has not always been the case, and it may no longer be the case moving forward.

The problem remains that the core direct market customer base is regressive and resists any kind of change to format or path to market, and feels they should remain the exclusive focus of the industry, even when they represent a market with zero-growth potential and too small a revenue stream to keep the existing model viable. The growth markets that are out there have no interest in the traditional path to markets the industry has used for the past several decades (month periodicals sold in the direct market niche shops). This sector represents what is the current mass market. The industry has spent the last five years paralyzed in their transformative process because they are torn between these two mostly mutually exclusive markets.

If we are lucky, the current crisis will serve as a metaphorical alchemist's fire for the industry, boiling down and refining what works and purging what doesn't so that what emerges is positioned to grow and succeed. I am not entirely optimistic that will happen though. I suspect too much time and energy will be spent trying to preserve the archaic market elements that weren't working simply out of a sense of nostalgia or fear of change, and not enough will be put into fixing/abandoning the things that aren't working and devising new ways of doing things that will position the industry for the future (rather than simply trying to preserve the past). I think comic shops and the direct market can still serve an important role for the industry moving forward, but some of the archaic practices and infrastructure associated with it need to be rethought.

For example, if so many publishers can shift things in terms of returnability, discount structure, size of the slate of books offered, etc. to reduce the strain and risk on their retail partners in response to the crisis, why weren't they doing those things already to position those shops to survive the shrinking market crisis they have been facing for the past decade. If Diamond can restructure their invoicing and billing policies to give shops more flexibility to manage cash flow and more time to sell products, why have they not done so before instead of forcing issues with a C.O.D. policy that forces shops to pay for all the non-returnable product before the can put it up for sale. And I suspect that as soon as pandemic crisis has passed, they will try to revert to past policies returning all the financial risk and burden on retailers instead of looking at it as a way to strengthen their retail partners, help improve the path to market and grow their market overall.

There are a number of things about the direct market model that no longer serve the current marketplace well that have nothing to do with storylines, events, variant covers, continuity, revamps, SJW characters, reboots or anything else fans try to blame for the decline of the market, and these are the things that need to be addressed and fixed for the industry to move forward, and the current crisis should be seen as an opportunity to test some of these measures and see what can work under duress that can be incorporated moving forward to strengthen the industry as a whole.

I don't think this will be the end of the industry (or even the end of the industry as we know it). but it will be a transformative time, and hopefully the result will be an industry positioned to survive into the future and not one desperately vying for survival by clinging to the past.

-M

Darn, I've been relying on digital the last two weeks. It'll stink not getting to read new books but if it helps them or brick and mortar shops then I'm for it. 

I've got a stack of unread comics, unread books and unwatched DVD/blurays, and long watch lists on Netflix, Amazon Prime & Dinsey +, plus a host of stuff I would love to revisit, enough that I could start reading/watching now and not run out for a few years, so I am not worried about getting any new material for the nonce. I always say I'll get to this stuff when I have time, well now I have the time so I am focused on getting to some of this stuff not on acquiring new stuff to add to the piles.

-M